A Baron of Bonds (Conduit of Light #2)

3. Rev

Chapter 3

Rev

Standing inside Viridis, I reflected on the last time I saw its beauty. Years ago, the gilded halls had shone in the sunlight that would pour through the glass-domed ceiling. The courtyard of swaying tress at its center would softly rustle in an ever-flowing breeze that had no source. But that was Viridis. The magic it contained allowed the unexplainable.

My gaze lifted to the highest levels—fourteen in total—and I did my best to remember what they once were. The Blight now surrounded every surface, every crevice of stone and pocket of books. In those first few years, we had dared to steal books back from its dark grip. The more we did so, the more the Blight grew, until one day it pulled Clairannia into its center. It took all of us to get her out, scraped and bleeding.

I never could hold the Simulair Solum spell like Karus could.

I refused to let anyone in from that point forward. Figuerah tried to convince me on several occasions that as long as we all were there, we could save each other from the Blight’s desire to consume.

I would not relent. I would not become a Baron who would risk lives at the cost of books. I began sending inquiries throughout Arcaynen that day, requesting copies of the books in all the libraries of the great cities.

No one had gone back into Viridis until Karus had asked. I had been afraid to say no. By the Blightress , I never wanted to say no to her.

Shoving my hands in my pockets, I stepped forward to get a closer look at the trees that grew on the staircase landing. When Karus had cried out in anguish that day weeks ago, the Blight had grown into something I’d never seen before. When she had tried to use her magic to heal the courtyard, she had instead produced these monstrous trees.

There were thirteen of them. Their trunks pulsed still as if in slumbering breaths. Black fruit hung heavily on their branches, but no longer fell to grow new monstrosities.

Seven years after she had destroyed most of it, we still knew little about the Blight. Moira reported to me regularly on what the fae had learned, but with Karus’s sun that pushed it back, the concern for the disease was not as forefront in anyone’s thinking.

I studied it regularly. It gave me purpose, just as finding the rhyzolm had. All those years, I grasped the hand of hope, refusing to loosen my grip even slightly in fear that even a small slip would cause me to lose her forever.

I knew that when she came back to me, she would want to know more. I knew that when she returned to herself, she would ask what I’d been doing all this time.

I chuckled, kicking aside the pulp of a black fruit that had not rooted into the marble, its pit spilling inky sludge. No, Karus would never let me wallow in my pain. Even when she had been gone from me, I could hear her voice still, urging me to keep going, urging me to keep fighting because I had to. Because it’s what she would have done.

I had been Baron of Felgren for seven years without her, but still her voice stayed within me. The day she had demanded to know what I was doing about the Blight, I refused to pretend I did not love her. Seeing her rage about what she thought I wasn’t doing, I refused to go a single moment longer without telling her the words I was forced to silence for years.

I pulled the pocketknife from my vest and pried a sample of bark from the black tree in front of me. As it gave way, it tore in a sickening sound of flesh ripped from bone. I dropped the dark, sticky wood into a jar, taking a moment to pick up the pit of the black fruit and add it to another.

I corked each lid and wiped my hands and blade with a handkerchief before turning to leave through Viridis’s green, glistening portal. As I stepped through, the eerie silence of the desecrated library followed me out into the massive stone hallway in the Fortress.

My gut wrenched at the sight of the enormous rhyzolm on the endless doors of Viridis. The stone marked the portal that would grow if one would say their true name aloud. Again, I wished I had the stone we shared. Karus insisted on taking it with her everywhere, saying it was helping with the return of her memories when she held it.

I didn’t like it. I wanted to keep that rhyzolm myself in case…in case I needed it to find her. I feared losing her again every second of every day now that she had come back. There were times these past two months when I couldn’t sleep and would take the rhyzolm from the music box at her bedside table, clutching it as I paced the dark halls of the Fortress. It would hum as I held it, pulling me back to where she was as it always had before I gave it to her. Anxieties aside, it was no longer mine to keep. Returning all of her memories, all of herself, was more important than this constant fear of losing her.

My magic shone blue on the way to the laboratorium. A dreary, desolate place, I used it to research the Blight.

“ Incendo ,” I murmured, unbuttoning my vest to hang on the rack near the door, donning a black coat to keep the filth of the Blight off my clothes. I set the jars down on the long table and opened the journal I had not touched in weeks.

Karus did not yet know of this place, but I planned to bring her tonight. I had let her in on the details of the last seven years slowly, letting her absorb the events that had led up to her awakening little by little.

I knew she would appreciate this place. I knew she would be proud of the progress I had made, little as it was.

I wrote the date and time in the journal and opened the jars, spilling their contents onto a clean porcelain tray. Using a metal pick, I studied the bark and pit closely, writing notes about their appearance, texture, and smell.

The scent was awful. It always was with the Blight. Every specimen I had ever taken back to the laboratorium reeked of decay, warning the most primal part of me that it was dangerous. Using a small knife and the pick, I split the pit of the fruit. Black liquid seeped onto the tray, viscous and glistening in the bright glow of the flickering torches along the walls.

I let the ooze seep across the surface, watching the reaction of the bark from the deformed tree. As soon as the liquid touched the edges of the wood, it began to pulse as the tree itself had—just as I expected it might.

As with every sample of the Blight I had ever taken, it reacted to its own parts with life. It was as if the fuel it needed to survive was more of itself.

I slumped into the tall black chair beside the table and rubbed the side of my neck. I understood the reaction. I understood the smell, the appearance, the texture. I understood that there were different versions of the Blight—that there were parts of it we still had not seen. But I did not understand its origins. I did not know how it had come to be, why it grew in Karus’s presence and magic. Through all these years and research later, I still knew little of what I considered essential to our future.

Once again, I thought of searching Heimlen’s study for answers. When I had discovered what was hidden there after Karus had found it first, I refused to go back, disgusted and enraged at the man I thought I knew.

But it might be time. I was stronger now than I had been then, and I knew we needed answers. Karus had proven that the Blight wanted her, and if we were going to stop it from consuming Felgren once more, we were going to have to make the choices we did not want to.

It could wait, though. I would begin my search through Heimlen’s study tomorrow, after sending the channelers off on their research in the library we used to store what books we had left. It was possible Karus would want to go with me this time.

No, it was likely. Once she learned of the research I had done, she would want to help me discover more about the Blight.

Lost in thought, I felt a tug on my legs that I knew well. Pompeii was calling me to come to him. Our connection was silent and strong. He had been a good friend to me as Overseer to the Fortress before Karus had fallen, and since then, we had grown into family.

I stood and stretched. I knew better than to leave the specimens out on the tray. I had made that mistake only once before, discovering hours later that two separate pieces of the Blight left out together had grown into something new and steadily pulsing across the long table.

I took a large jar from the shelf and scraped everything into it before wiping the tray clean with the towels I used in my research, tossing them into a bin by the door for Pompeii to wash later.

The tug on my legs was more insistent this time, so I quickly wrote down what I’d observed before closing the journal and sliding out of my black coat. I rinsed my hands in the basin and opened the door, heading to Pompeii who pulled me to the foyer.