Iris couldn’t stop tapping her feet and chewing on her cheeks. She needed to cuss desperately, almost like she was having withdrawal symptoms. Her nerves were calming down but too slow for her liking. She needed to pace up and down the waiting area—get the frustration out of her system before she took it out on herself.

Mr Caynes was standing on the far side of the nurse’s office door, checking his watch and looking nervous in his own right. His classes had started a few minutes ago, but he seemed conflicted in leaving his post. After answering Iris’s plea for help, he had carried Crestana to the sick bay before handing over the unconscious student to the nurse. Things had been as swift as they were, thanks to him.

“Thank you, sir,” Iris said. “But you have classes now, right?”

“I do…are you sure you’ll be all right?” he asked again. “I’ll drop by your class on the way back; let them know where you are.”

Iris gave a weak, toothy smile in response and nodded her thanks.

“Well,” he said, voice box crackling as he patted down his suit. Iris blamed it on the fabric’s age, but it really did look like there was dust flying off it. “If you need anything else, please let me know. And if you’re not back by third period, I’ll leave you and Crestana some notes you can follow. Does that sound acceptable?”

“Very…sir. Thank you.”

Mr Caynes sighed and stepped closer, kneeling before her like a caring parent would. “Crestana will be fine, and you did a lot to help her. I’m sure she’d appreciate you.”

Iris pursed her lips, knowing how little of the situation he understood. If he was aware of it, Iris was sure his words wouldn’t have been so friendly.

She should have been watching her. It was her job. Her only job.

Mr Caynes stood up, muttered a ‘see you soon’, and left, leaving Iris alone with her thoughts. The room behind her was quiet. She guessed that was a good sign, considering that if Crestana’s condition was critical, there’d be more than just a single nurse tending to her. But silence was silence; no matter how used to it she got, it was inherently disquieting. Silence followed death, after all.

Sometimes she’d see the end of a shoot-out on the job. The small glimpses she’d see before Evalyn shooed her off to another room were always oddly…tranquil. Whatever deafening violence had occurred hours or even minutes prior, the silence was all that was left. She’d learn to attach the absence of sound with it since, and that association had almost never been wrong. Luckily, this day was a rare exception.

The nurse opened the door, an older woman with a motherly face who directed that warmth squarely at Iris. “Your friend’s awake. Would you like to speak with her while I call administration?”

Iris nodded mindlessly and got up to follow, but paused when she neared the doorframe. She could see a bed just beyond the nurse’s dress, curtains pulled halfway around it, and wondered what she’d say. All she could say was ‘I’m sorry’, but that wouldn’t grant her forgiveness. Nothing would.

What would Crestana say? Iris deserved it, whatever it was.

Again, overthinking things. Iris didn’t like it, how suddenly she felt herself changing. What made this girl so special that she had to second guess everything she did or say?

The nurse furrowed her eyebrows subtly and egged her on, making it look as nonchalant as possible. Reluctantly, Iris followed the nurse’s orders and entered.

Crestana was sitting upright on the bed, back propped up against two pillows as she vacantly stared forward, through the blue curtains and brick wall beyond that. Her shutters weren’t moving at all. The expressiveness that had made her so human was absent for the moment, and she was left a tranquil statue.

She saw Iris approach and shuffled in her covers, straightening her back a little as she did so. Her blazer was neatly folded on her bedside, and so was her tie. Apparently Spirits that wore clothes were recommended to loosen or remove excess layers in the event of Aether Influx, so her attire affirmed Iris suspicions.

“Hello,” Crestana said as Iris sat on a stool beside the bed. Iris kept silent, unable to bring her eyes level with her client. She felt bile rise in her throat whenever she even tried to.

“I’m…sorry,” Iris strained. “This shouldn’t have happened.”

She didn’t get a timely response, and the air seemed to hang thicker around her with every passing second.

“What happened?” Crestana asked, her voice cold. Iris tried to speak, but her jaw stupidly hung half open, the words tripping over themselves in her throat.

“I uh…when I came back, I saw…our music teacher come out of the gym and run away. And—”

“Mr Forecer?” Crestana muttered. “I don’t remember seeing him.”

Iris paused for Crestana, only continuing once she received her nonverbal permission.

“And I ran in, and I found you collapsed. There was a thing, on the back of your neck. A small circle, red, had a pattern in it. I think that’s what was causing it.”

“And how did you get rid of it?” Crestana asked her, stunning Iris. She fumbled her answer, forgetting every scenario she had rehearsed and every excuse she had thought up.

“I can’t tell you,” Iris said. “But it’s gone. I know that.”

Another pause, and Iris hung her head, waiting for her cue to leave.

“Iris?” Crestana instead asked softly, almost as though she was pleading with her. “Am I in danger?”

Her client’s Aether was infectiously mellow, and Iris realised it was half the reason she herself was feeling so downtrodden. In spite of it, her voice still demanded an honest answer. Iris nodded slowly, wanting to be honest above all.

Crestana shuddered; even her mask seemed as though it was coiling in on itself. “I…see.”

“I’ll talk to your aunt about it, strengthen your security detail and—”

“No. Don’t tell her. Please.”

“Why not? You’re in danger without stronger security.”

“I don’t want her worrying about me. She can’t handle stresses that come with the family business. It's why she left when she got married. She’s taking these attacks hard already."

The words themselves sounded condesending, but Crestana spoke them with empathy more than anything else.

"And besides, if what you said is true, there’s no security detail I can think of that can do what you did.”

She outstretched a hand, took Iris’s trembling palm and held it. It was cold, and Crestana’s skin was shifting against her own. Iris looked up, startled more than an act driven by courage.

“Thank you.”

The words weren’t as cold as her skin, nor as cold as her speech always was. The weighty insecurity radiating from her was still potently viral, but so was the small glimmer of warmth nestled amongst it.

“I’ll stick with you. Even closer this time,” Iris said, smiling weakly and refusing to sew another seed of overconfidence so early. The vines had blinded her last time, and the small warmth in front of her would be snuffed out if she let them ensnare her again.

At that moment, a sharp-eyed man burst through the door, thick wool overcoat thrown over crinkled pyjamas. “Iris?” he called, looking through the room before his eyes fell on her.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“Dad?”

“I got a call from the school,” he said, striding over and kneeling beside her. “Said you were in the sick bay, and I thought it might have been something serious. You golden?”

Iris smiled, the turn of phrase giving something familiar for her to latch on to. “Yes, dad. I’m golden.”

He checked over her, looking for any trace of injury or fatigue before his eyes fell on the occupant of the hospital bed beside her.

“Oh,” he muttered. “And you must be Ms Mallorine?”

“Crestana, yes. Nice to meet you,” she said, dipping her head and performing the top half of a curtsey. “I hear you’re a pilot, is that correct?”

“Wow you really are high class,” he mumbled under his breath before his brain caught up with his mouth. He shook his head, readjusting the screws in his skull. “Sorry, the way you spoke reminded me of my wife, is all.”

“Mum doesn’t talk like that,” Iris interjected.

“She used to when I first met her.” He turned to Crestana. “Yes, by the way, I am a pilot in the Special Operations Air Force, although I uh...don’t exactly look the part. Are you feeling all right?”

Crestana dipped her head again as thanks for the concern, but Iris noticed Crestana’s mask wasn’t exactly level with Elliot’s eyes. “Thank you. I am feeling better.”

“Dad,” Iris whispered, noticing the door open as the nurse re-entered the room. “It was some sort of magic, as a small symbol on her neck.”

“What did it look like?” he asked, matching her volume.

“A small circle, with lines going through it like a pattern.”

“And what did it do?”

“I don’t know, but it knocked Crestana out and had her spasming. I got rid of it before it did anything else.”

“The nurse said I had Aether Influx,” Crestana whispered, joining in on the hushed conversation.

Elliot scratched his chin as he thought, a fine layer of stubble growing on it that Iris had never seen before. “I’ll go to the East Excala Library now, see if Al and Tony's Aetherologists have anything useful on it. If this is linked to the attacks, I’ll make sure to let Evalyn and Colte know, all right? Now, is there anything else before I get kicked out for wearing pyjamas in public?”

“There is,” Iris continued. “I think our music teacher did it—”

“It can’t have been Mr Forecer.”

Both Elliot and Iris turned to Crestana, her interjection creeping out of a whisper and coming dangerously close to the nurse’s ears. “It couldn’t have been him.”

“Why not? I saw him running out of the gym?”

“I don’t know about that…but I know him. He’s been good to me, and I think before my mother died, they were, you know…, ‘good friends’.

“Ah…,” Elliot sighed. “If anything, that just muddies the motive more.”

“What do you mean ‘good friends’? Why are you saying it like it’s weird?”

“I’ll tell you when you get home, darling,” Elliot said, ruffling Iris’s hair before standing. He gave each a meaningful glance.

“Be careful, all right?”

One final smile, and he left the room.

Iris breathed a sigh of relief, and her gaze lingered on the door for a moment as she already began to miss him. The air hung again, slowly crawling from the ceiling to the floor in a slow, thick torrent that muffled all other sounds.

However, it was light on her shoulders, washing away her worries and putting them into context.

She couldn’t wait to get home, away from the pressure of having a person's life under her direct care. She’d go home and forget she was involved in something so petty as a business struggle or, even worse, a family spat. She’d disassociate from all of it and continue on her days doing nothing.

What would even happen? Crestana would die, a girl she barely knew. One rich family would trade places with another; that happened all the time. What was so special about the Mallorine family’s particular fall from grace that warranted her involvement, her sacrifice?

And then she caught herself, recognising the thoughts as foreign. She imagined the words in her voice; they were distinctly her thoughts, there was no doubt about it. But she didn’t agree with them or even believe she could conjure such ideas.

She tried to turn to Crestana but couldn’t. Her body was paralysed again.

Why do you care?

She could feel a tingling run along her markings, crawling under her skin like cockroaches. She wanted to scream but she had no mouth to scream with, at least one she could see or feel.

Is this worth it?

A sceptical call for her name. Too timid to break through the viscid air, too weak to earn her attention, her trust, her life.

Why this? Why help them?

Evalyn. Bloodstained. Her skin pale, dead, drained of warmth stood in the corner of the room, barely in Iris’s vision. The white cloth sewn into her face rose and fell with her laboured, croaked breathing, new splatters of blood and plasma seeping through the fabric and drying.

This. Will. Change. Nothing.

A princess, a general, a warrior, a clergyman. One by one, the souls that had feasted on the veins in her neck crowded the room, lusting for another bite at her power from beyond the veil. A jewellery showcase of encrusted greed and gluttony, humans and Spirits who let their nature corrupt them.

These people all lied to me, her thoughts seemed to say. Their promises were fake. The world never changed.

Gas seeped from the ventilation shafts, invading the room from between the hinges and wafting from underneath Crestana’s bedframe. Glass in her throat. Blood in her eyes. Her vision was stained pink as her hair, her face, her body began to atomise, disassemble, become one with the pink mist.

What’s different now?

Construction armour. A convoy of stout H.O.A. units stomped down the main street below Evalyn’s hotel window. Heavily modified compared to the combat and peacekeeping units in Geverde, Trepedite’s commercial H.O.A. industry was diversifying at a rapid pace, almost faster than Sidos’s. Instead of rank insignia and sleek bodies created for speed and manoeuvrability, construction units brandished yellow warning stripes across their heavily reinforced bodies, their inner workings thoroughly protected from the debris and dust kicked up during demolition. Their feet left black footprints amongst the grimy, off-white snow, and the diesel spewing from their exhausts felt like an industrial blaze: irritatingly warm on such a cold day.

Behind their stunted cylindrical bodies were mass cargo trays; the units going past her window in particular were carrying construction material by the tons and quickly accuring snow as they went.

“A Sigil? That’s what Elliot said, right?”

“Apparently,” Evalyn answered, retracting her head from the window and closing it. “He said that’s what the East Excala Library’s Head Aetherologist said based on Iris’s description.”

She sat on the bed in the room’s centre while Colte poured over a stack of case documents from the Trepedite Police Department. Tight lips from the foreign cities investigating similar attacks had loosened slightly, but not enough for a conclusive investigation.

“Here,” Colte said, pointing at a particular page of evidence. “There’s something about…suspicious markings. Apparently, a constable found it amongst a wall of graffiti burnt into the wall. They treated it as nothing until he began to see it all over the place. Twelve locations.”

Evalyn peered over Colte’s shoulders at a page of twelve film prints. Being run through a duplicating machine, the prints were hazy, but the same etching was visible in several photos. A ring with patterns running through its centre, burnt into the brickwork.

“Elliot said Sigils are an older form of magic patterns from before the Vesmos Empire invented magic infusion. Harder to make, and practically a lost art outside of old Spirit country, but it doesn’t need to take magic from a Spirit, nor is it restricted to just one action.”

“Sounds dangerous and a perfect fit for what’s been going on. Makes sense that no one in old human country would know what it is.” He turned to Evalyn, a concerned look on his face. “Then this is it. Whoever is doing this is in Excala.”

Evalyn chewed on her lips. Hearing the news from Elliot had almost sent her sprinting out the door and racing for the airport. Colte had managed to stop her, but even he was second-guessing their stay.

Seven interrogations, and each one had felt like a repeat of the other. The evidence to suggest business rivalry as the motive existed but was nowhere near substantial enough to be considered actionable. Colte had suggested a new avenue of investigation focusing around a different rival to the Mallorine family, but no other business fit the bill. Criminal families were obviously another possibility, but the motive was essentially the same.

“Hate against a Spirit family, business…I don’t know. But this entire thing, it’s too big for there to be no evidence here, in Trepedite. God…we really have nothing right now. I’m going to get on the phone to the East Excala Library, chat to Al about this more. You, once you’re done with that, start calling around, see if anyone knows if there’s a list or…registry, some formal record of everyone who’s able to use Sigils.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Colte grunted, returning to his work. “Sorry about the single bed situation, by the way. Somehow this monster of a hotel is booked out.”

“I think people live in a lot of the rooms anyway. It’s fine, though. I don’t mind.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Elliot knows, and he made fun of me for even thinking I should mention it.”

“What did he say?” Colte sighed.

“That you’ve probably forgotten how to sleep in the same bed as a woman anyway.”

Colte swivelled around in his chair, his mouth reaching for a comeback but finding none. Evalyn threw her hands up. “I didn’t say it! I know you get around.”

Colte looked perhaps even more defeated by Evalyn’s statement. “You think I sleep around at my age?” he asked her, eyebrows raised in disbelief.

“I mean, yeah. At least you were when we did jobs together.”

Colte rolled his eyes. “No. Nothing interesting for a while now.”

“Aw come on!” Evalyn complained. “No more weird girls you’re going to complain to me about?”

“No…well,” he said, pausing his perusal of the case files. “I can tell you about one I kept a secret.”

“Oh?” Evalyn said, invested already.

“Your old mentor, Lyanna.”

Evalyn gasped. “No! Really?”

“Mhm,” Colte said, flipping a page. “This was long before you entered the picture; Marie was building the Espionage Division and Special Operations and came to a few Witches and Wizards to make it happen. We met, had a few drinks, and thought it might work out if we were both in the same career. Long story short, it didn’t.”

“She made you feel dumb, huh?”

“Yeah. I mean, for someone who could make you spill the beans involuntarily, she could read you like an open book without the magic. I felt like…I don’t know, like I was her pet.”

Evalyn smiled, savouring the thought. “Long term, huh? I don’t think I’ve met another Witch with a husband.”

“More people the state can use against you, more relationships you’ve got to strain while you’re travelling all over the place. You’re lucky; that’s what you are.”

Evalyn chuckled, reading the jealousy as something familiarly light-hearted. She’d been rooting for Colte to settle down for years, but it always seemed like he was unhappily married to the job.

“Hard to imagine you and Lyanna as anything but my mentors.”

“Iris is going to be saying the same stuff about you in a couple of years.”

“Yeah…I wonder.”