Zyneth’s still waiting on Vardi—we only have two weeks left now until he’s free to leave—so life continues as usual. There’s a gods tournament coming up right before that expiration date, and I’m very interested to attend. Zyneth has reluctantly agreed to let me check it out without him, if needed, contingent upon Noli and Rezira coming with, and me attending in disguise. I eagerly look forward to it. I can’t say how, but I suspect it will finally provide an avenue for progress on locating the lost souls.

In the meantime, there’s always my glass to work on.

Caecius is in the middle of a job when I next visit. The back door of her workshop is open—as it always is when she’s working—and the dracid is bent over her furnace, runes and glass alike glowing in the shimmering heat. She glances up when I step inside, but otherwise ignores me as she turns back to the glass. I wait patiently for her to finish.

Finally, she puts the work away, strips off her gloves, and turns to face me, hands on her hips.

“You’re back.”

“I am,” I say. “If you’re still looking for help.”

She nods to the textbook bulging from my bag. “Did you read it?”

“Er.” There wasn’t a lot of time, really. I spent most days walking and chatting with Noli, and there’s no way the predator would let me use up its hunting time at night by sitting down to read a book instead.

“A bit of it,” I say. “Had to skim, mostly. But I did get a chance to try out a generic heat amplification spell.” I take the book out and offer it to her.

She snorts. “If that’s all you read, best hold onto it for now. And make better use of your time.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

Instead of answering, she heads back over to her workbench, checking some notes on the next order. That’s a yes, then: Caecius doesn’t like to repeat herself.

“I got a few things for you, actually,” I say, following her over to her bench. I retrieve several of the tools I’d taken from Trenevalt’s cabin. I’m not completely sure what all of them are, but Echo had labeled them as being used for glasswork and artificing, so I figured they go to better use here than rusting out in the woods.

I set the tools on her workbench. Caecius pauses to pick up what looks like a blunt scalpel, turning it over in her hands. “Where did you get these?”

You’d think I would have already thought up an answer for that, but I’d been so caught up in getting back to learning more glasswork that I hadn’t.

“A friend,” I improvise. “One of their relatives who had the tools passed, and they knew I had a glass Affinity, so they gave them to me.”

“They lived here in Harrowood?” she asks, setting down the first tool to examine the next.

“Peakshadow,” I say, deciding the less I lie the easier it will be to all keep straight.

“Ah. The Ocherwoods?” She sets the tool down and flips through her book again, settling on an alchemic circle. At a glance, it’s something to do with glass manipulation. She uses a work blade to surgically cut the page free.

Of course she’d know every glassworker in the area. “Yes, I believe that’s right.”

She turns to give me a flat look. Then she sighs. “Wrong answer. Pity.”

Crap. “Well,” I start, “it could have been someone el—”

The spell circle pinched between her claws illuminates, and then almost casually, she touches it to the back of my hand.

My body seizes up.

[Your glass has been subjected to an Immobility spell,] Echo says.

Panic lances through me. I can’t move my glass. Even though it’s Attuned. It feels like a vice has closed around my body, and I’m briefly thrown back to Raz, in Yedzaquib’s library, when the mage had similarly cast a paralysis spell on me then.

Reacting to my fear, the predator surges forward, alert, angry, searching for our assailant. Its attention falls over Caecius.

She did this.

Caecius steps back, folding her arms across her chest as she circles around me. “Ain’t that some shit.”

The predator seizes our void, which is when I realize only the glass part of me is frozen. It lunges for Caecius, and in a panic, I grab at the void too, yanking back.

“No!” I cry. The void stabs out the end of my sleeves and quivers there, caught in a mental tug-of-war.

Caecius raises an eyebrow, gaze lingering on the very visible black claws that have rippled through the illusion around my hands.

“Please,” I say, strained, grappling with the predator as much as the fear that’s squeezing my soul. “Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”

“Bullshit,” she says. “You weren’t going to fess up on your own. Lie after lie after lie.”

The shadows stretch, not just from my sleeves, but out from the bottom of my coat, from the neck, from the seams. The predator strains against my hold, furious with Caecius for attacking us, furious with me for holding it back—and it’s winning.

“You have to release me now,” I say, terror turning to dread as I realize the inevitable. “There isn’t much time!”

Still eyeing the twitching shadows, Caecius leans back over and grabs the spell circle. The light goes out as the paper peels away, and I stumble back, crashing into a table.

Still holding the paper between two fingers, Caecius leans back against her work bench, arms folded once more. “Well that was illuminating.”

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Both of us surprised to be released from the spell, the predator’s attack falters. I seize the opportunity to wrangle the void back in, though I continue to back away from her, placing as much space between us as possible. The predator quickly resumes its seething, offended she would dare lay a hand on us—and embarrassed, I think, at being caught off guard.

I calm it down enough that I don’t think it’s in immediate danger of launching us at her. Though to be honest, I’m pretty pissed too.

“That was dangerous.” I press a protective hand to the glass above my soul.

Caecius doesn’t seem bothered by my reaction in the least. “For you or for me?”

“You,” I snap.

“You mean those shadow things?” she asks, clearly not as bothered by all this as she should be. “What are those?”

“It’s… defensive arcana,” I say.

Caecius frowns. “Lie. Try again.”

“That’s not a lie!”

“But it’s not the whole truth.”

I eye her warily, and use both a Check and Inspect to try to figure out if there’s any other spells in effect that might be acting as some kind of truth detector. As far as I can tell, however, she’s clean. “How do you know?”

“I’m just good with people,” she says flatly.

I snort.

“Now are you going to tell me what you are?” Caecius holds up the spell circle. “Besides made of glass, clearly.”

Now that my initial panic is starting to subside, and the predator has downgraded its bloodlust from murder to maiming, I’m finally able to start processing everything.

“That was a test?” I ask, skeptical. “All that just to confirm I was made of glass?”

She shrugs. “Seemed the quickest way to know for sure.”

“It nearly got you killed.”

Caecius sets the spell circle down and flicks it across the desk—a peace offering, perhaps. “That’s not the first time you’ve underestimated my abilities.”

I shake my head. She might have caught me off guard, but if I hadn’t been there to stop the predator, I doubt she’d have come out of it alive. “That was stupid.”

“What’s stupid is this charade you’ve created,” Caecius says. “So are you going to drop the act now, or what?”

She has a point about that, at any rate. No sense in burning through the illusion magic when it’s no longer hiding anything.

[Illusion spell deactivated.]

Caecius raises her eyebrows as I lower the cowl and scarf. Her eyes roam over my glass hands and prism head. “Well. Can’t say I was expecting that.”

“And what were you expecting?” I demand.

Caecius shrugs. “I’m not sure. I just knew something wasn’t adding up.”

“Like what?”

“Hm.” Caecius looks around her workbench, then grabs one of the small metal tools I’d brought her. (A present she’s no longer deserving of, I’ve decided.) “Here. Catch.” She tosses it to me, slow and underhand.

I catch it, rather pleased with how dexterous I’ve become, and the metal tings against my hand.

Caecius points at me. “That. That’s not what skin sounds like.”

“Ah.” She has a point there. I’ve just gotten so used to it, I’ve stopped noticing it most of the time. Guess I must have slipped up in front of her.

“Also, you never blinked,” Caecius adds.

Crap. That, too. I thought I kept my head down most of the time.

“And the other week you grabbed a tool after it had just been in the heat,” Caecius continues. “You didn’t even seem to notice, and there were no burns, either.”

“Okay, okay, I get the point.” I set the tool down. “I make a terrible human.”

The dracid looks at me curiously. “You sound like one, anyway.”

“Small miracles,” I say dryly.

“So you’re a homunculus?” she asks. Her tone sounds skeptical.

“No. Well, yes, I guess so. It’s complicated.” I relax, fractionally. As stupid as that was, she really doesn’t seem to mean me any harm. Convincing the predator of that is another matter, however, so I continue to keep my distance.

She tips her head. “Are you going to tell me, or will I have to dig that out of you, too?”

“I’d really rather you didn’t,” I say, still a bit irritated. But I don’t see any reason not to be honest about things now. “Not that I expect you to believe me, but here goes: I died, an unfortunately-timed and slightly-broken spell stuck my soul in a homunculus core, and I’ve had to build my body up from scratch since then.”

Caecius stares at me for a beat longer. “Oh, that’s it? I thought there would be more.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” The predator has finally stopped reaching for our void, and now just warily regards the dracid. It doesn’t sense hostility from her. But it also doesn’t trust her, after what she just did. It’s confused by this, and annoyed.

You and me both.

“And that’s why you want to learn glass magic?” Caecius asks.

I splay my hands in a gesture toward myself. “No, I’m just here for your charming personality.”

She snorts, mouth quirking in a toothy grin. “So what’s with the disguise then?”

“It helps with being seen as a person instead of an object,” I say.

“Can’t you just tell people?” she wonders. “Homunculi can’t talk.”

“Tried that.” I shrug. “Most seem to assume it’s some kind of gimmick.”

“What about magic?” she asks. “Homunculi can’t perform magic. Float some of your glass around, and that should do the trick.”

I remain skeptical, thinking of Raz. “I’ve done similar before. It generally fails to convince most people.”

Caecius grunts. “Most people are assholes. But that’ll be true whether or not you hide who you are.” Straightening up, she grabs a brush and heads back over to the spell circle on her furnace, preparing to clean the area off for her next project.

I watch, baffled. “What are you doing?”

“Getting back to work,” she says, returning to her station to set a few tools next to the furnace. “Can’t stand around chit-chatting all day.”

Chit-chatting?! “You put a paralysis spell on me, find out I’m a soul in a glass bottle, and then you’re just going to go back to work?”

She glances up. “Unless you’d rather talk about that shadow thing you still haven’t explained.”

“I’m not going to talk about the shadow thing.” The predator agrees with this; it’s better to maintain the element of surprise.

Caecius turns back to her furnace, lighting the runes. “Good, then shut up and give me a hand with this.”

I remain standing here, disbelieving. “You still want me to work with you?”

“Sure,” she says, grabbing a rod. “Why not?”

“I’m not sure if I want to work with you.”

She pauses to give me an irritated look. “Sorry for freezing your glass and giving you a panic attack. There. Is that what you want?”

“I didn’t have a panic attack,” I object. I only panicked a little, and that was entirely for Caecius’s sake.

Well, mostly for Caecius’s sake. “And that was hardly an apology,” I add.

Caecius doesn’t answer, going back to her work. She sticks a glob of glass over the furnace runes, then starts rolling the rod back and forth across a metal ledge near the furnace to keep the glass rotating.

I heave a mental sigh. This woman is infuriating.

And somehow, I still like her. Maybe even a little more than before.

I head over to the furnace, keeping an inner eye on the predator, even though it’s finally simmered down. Caecius passes the rod to me, and I take it as she retrieves her tools.

“I’m still irritated with you,” I grumble.

“That makes us even.” Caecius begins shaping the end of the glass, using a mix of tools and spells. “I don’t like being lied to.”

We work for a few minutes in silence, save for the dracid’s brief and infrequent orders. The glass begins to turn into a vase. With the addition of another shaping spell, a spiraled design appears over its surface.

“The wizard who put me in this body died,” I finally say. “That’s why I was gone for the last week. It’s also where I got the tools.”

Caecius swaps out the tweezers for a paddle. “Good to know they’re not stolen.”

“His name was Trenevalt,” I continue. “Did you know him?”

Caecius shakes her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

I’m surprised to find myself disappointed. Had I wanted her to know him? Had I wanted her to tell me more about who he was?

I guess it doesn’t matter now.

“So what did you decide on?” Caecius asks.

I tip my head. “About what?”

“Your practice piece,” Caecius says. “You’re ready. Something for your body?”

I’d almost forgotten about that offer. But I have thought of something. “No, it won’t be for my body,” I say. “I’ve got something else in mind. Do you have any obsidian?”

She raises an intrigued eyebrow. “I don’t. I can only partially alter the material without a glass Affinity of my own. It’s different from anything else we’ve been working with. But for someone like you…” She trails off, looking at me thoughtfully.

It’s the first time I don’t feel like I need to avert my gaze.

Caecius smiles, revealing her crocodile teeth. “Yes. I think I could make that happen.”