“I warned you this might happen.”

Carwyn finished stuffing his pipe without answering, chewing his words in the constrained silence.

He and Sophia had been spending a quiet afternoon in the library, reading and discussing politics in the warm glow cast by the sinking sun. Sophia sat on the opened window seat with a silk shawl around her shoulders, one long leg tapering to the floor and the other bent up to her chest. She was smoking a cigarette from an ivory holder and blowing the smoke out the window. Carwyn despised shoes on the furniture, but in the case of his wife he did not object.

“This is good though,” Carwyn assured with false confidence. “This means Malak is in the city, and close. I’ll put in extra security around the cards, now that they have arrived. I’ll make decoys. We’ve never been stolen from before, why would we be now?” Carwyn’s words were gruff and firm, but his wife waved them away with her long, white fingers like useless flies.

“Because we’re dealing with theoretical science, curses, and magic now.” At this Carwyn stood up, mouth open to retort, but Sophia continued with placating eyes. “It’s too late to fix things darling.”

“And it is too late to go back.”

“This is so messy. This is exactly why I did not want to do this in the first place.” At that Sophia turned back to the window taking a long drag off her cigarette and frowning at the gardens beyond.

“We didn’t have any other options. It’s the twenty-first year. If we do nothing, we will lose you. You can’t expect me to sit back and watch you… watch you… Sophia, look at me!”

Sophia turned slowly. Her bird-like ribs expanding and contracting with breaths of a woman’s patiences, her eyes trained on her fuming husband. She stared at him without seeing and in that moment he realized she was gone. It was not a sad stare or a consoling one. It was the empty eyes he had first seen twenty one years ago.

“You know, I love you darling,” she began, her rosebud mouth pouting, but her eyes dark.

“Of course,” Carwyn answered, his voice soft. He stood up and walked across the room to her side, some of his agitation dissipating. “And I you. My Soph.”

Now her eyes did grow sad. Sad and cold like a blue sea hardening to black ice.

“I am not your Sophia,” she said, rising from the window seat in a flurry of silk. “Not anymore.”

“Now, now darling, don’t say that.” Carwyn forced calm into his voice. Fear and desperation already creeping unbidden across his bloodshot eyes.

“You have been so lovely to me Carwyn and I truly thank you for that.” Now her voice became high and lilting. “But I don’t think I can do this anymore. Everything is going terribly wrong. If the public manages to reveal the truth that we have been elbows deep in dark magic for the last decade, then we will be ruined. I must go now before it is too late.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Carwyn’s heart was a riot in his chest and sweat glistened at his temples. He could feel years of friendship, love, and loyalty slipping away like sand between his fingers. No matter how many times it happened, losing his love hurt just as terribly as it did the first time.

Sophia’s voice climbed in intensity while staying low, each word cutting like glass. “You have always been ambitious and so have I. I would go so far as to say that is what brought us together.” Her eyes became unfocused and there was an uncanny smile on her lips that did not match the sudden tearful lilt of her voice. “We were attracted by each other’s power and ambition. It is exactly what has made us so successful. When I married you it was as though the whole world was open doors. Now they are all closing faster than I can escape and I only see one way out, but it is not with you.”

Carwyn’s jaw rippled, tense and biting. Every bone in his body ached to go to her. To hold her to his chest and stroke her hair. But that would only make this worse. That little bit of love might kill her all together.

“You are the one wrapped up in all of this now. You you you you,” she said, her voice changing from sad to singsong in a matter of seconds. “I am innocent. Just a wife. Wife wife wife.” Now she burst into hysterical laughter so violent she fell to her knees on the library carpet.

“Sophia it is time for bed,” Carwyn said, trying to sound firm.

The laughter stopped just as suddenly as it had started, but she did not look at him. Her eyes stared into a world all their own.

“I can get away with anything. I must go away, run away. Go away, run away,” she said in a whisper still staring unblinkingly into space. “This was not my idea. I knew nothing of raving greed and dishonest schemes. Bring the dead back to life.” Tears slipped from her eyes in twin rivers. “Not me. I am innocent. I am virtuous. Such a pity.”

Carwyn kneeled down beside his wife, careful not to touch her. “Hang on just a little longer and everything will be okay,” he said, his voice even from years of practice. “We built this empire together. We walked down this road together. Hell, we built this city from the ground up. More than half of our success is due to your ingenuity. We will find a way out of this together. Like we always have.”

Sophia had gone perfectly still, her head slightly tilted downward as though reading though her hands were limp and empty. She looked like a windup doll whose song had finished. Frozen and lifeless she sat, her face porcelain-pale and slack.

The quiet gave Carwyn the space to think. It was unnerving, yes, but it had happened many times before and as much as he despised it, he knew it would happen again.

What was the boy doing in The Business Center? Was this something he could really pull off?

“He is the answer,” Carwyn said, very softly. If Sophia had heard him, she gave no indication. “We have the cards. We have his power. We will cheat death.”

At the word death Sophia finally looked up at Carwyn and released a shuddering breath. Carwyn smiled slightly.

“There is still hope, my love.” Wrapping his arm around her shoulders, Carwyn pulled her up to her feet. She was ice cold and limp in his arms, unable to stand on her own. “Let’s go to bed now. We have a lot to do tomorrow.”