The pain of losing the artifact would be nothing compared to the loss of Fen.
“Tell Lord D’Luc I’m unwell,” said Ru, not bothering to glance back at her friend as she spoke. “We’ll reschedule for tomorrow.”
* * *
So this iswhat love feels like, thought Ru, staring glassy-eyed at the ceiling. She had eaten part of her breakfast before she felt compelled to lie down on the floor, lacking the strength or will to move to the bed. Now, hours later, she was still lying there.
The carpet was growing uncomfortable, but she couldn’t move. Every once in a while, she tried to reach out to the artifact for comfort. The thread connecting them had thinned, though, frayed, and the pull was weak.
The artifact had abandoned her when she needed it most. Like Fen.
There was no point in going on with the research now, not when the connection between her and the stone was all but dissolved. Maybe this marked the end of her horrors, a fade to normalcy. She supposed she may as well give the artifact to Lord D’Luc and the Children. They could keep it. She didn’t want it. They could do what they wanted with it, play with it, poke and prod it, she no longer cared.
Ru was convinced that Fen had left the Tower entirely. She imagined him saddling his horse and riding away, back into the wilderness, to his traveling life. She hated how her chest ached at the thought, his lone figure in the wilds, no city or village to call home. No one to keep him safe.
Weeping overtook her then, her eyes unexpectedly flooding with tears. She sobbed, choking and gasping, until she had to roll onto her side to avoid suffocating. She cried for the loss of Fen, the impending loss of the artifact, for the lives she’d cut short with a touch.
She wept until she had no tears left.
It was a long time before she stopped, before the tears dried on her cheeks. Ru sat up, rubbing a sleeve across her stinging eyes. Glancing at the window, she saw she had been lying on the floor all morning and well into the afternoon.
She needed to bathe, to change into fresh clothes. But the weight of Fen’s absence hung heavy on her, unmoving; she was helpless beneath it.
A melody floated up from the courtyard through the open window, an old song. It was familiar to her. She went to the window, unsteady on her feet, aching, and looked out. A group of academics had gathered below in the grass, lounging, one of them strumming a lute. From so high up, he could have been Simon — his reddish hair caught the sun, gleaming.
Ru leaned out over the windowsill, closing her eyes. The music and the sun and the breeze washed over her, clean and new against her senses. The song, so ingrained in her memory that she would recognize it anywhere, was a tune that Simon had played for her when they were young. It was one of the melodies that had felt like magic to her, wrapping her in the invisible, a palpable hum of pleasure, notes falling one after another in perfect harmony. A sad melody, but tinged with hope.
If magic existed, she thought, then music was proof enough.
She moved away from the window, renewed. That feeling of ease, the beauty in the melody… themagic. This was the oxygen that filled her lungs, the ceaseless rhythm of her heart, the reason she was here at the Tower. She had lost a part of herself with Fen, but…
No one, not even Fen, could take magic from her.
* * *
It wasn’tuntil the sun’s rays were lengthy, the western sky fiery red, that Ru finally ventured out of her room. She had bathed and changed into fresh clothes, eaten the rest of her cold breakfast, and washed it down with hot tea. She proceeded through the halls almost aimlessly. But where earlier that morning she had felt empty of all meaning, now she was awake again, felt like herself again.
The artifact’s pull on her was so weak it might have been gone altogether, except she could still feel the faintest pulse, the lightest touch.
She found her way inevitably to the guest wing. Despite the lower ceilings and smaller windows, the sun still managed to burst through and paint everything in rich amber tones, despite the darkening shadows.
Fen’s door was shut. If by some chance he was still here, she wanted to believe that she would be able to feel him there. But whatever bond had been vibrating between them at the party, whatever wonderful connection they’d shared, had faded to nothing. The loss of it wasn’t debilitating, but it was as if Ru’s world had lost the smallest fraction of its luster.
Ru leaned against the door and pressed her cheek against the cold hardwood. She was certain, now, that he was gone from the Tower.
Your little project.
His words echoed in her head, over and over.
Fine, then. She would do it herself. She would do everything herself.
CHAPTER35
Ru had never seen the dungeon so packed with bodies. She was sure their instruments and devices would be knocked over and broken, or the lamps shattered, or her own feet trod on. Everything but the central table had been moved to one side of the room, away from the unprecedented gathering of people who now stood in a crescent, facing the artifact.
Archie and Gwyneth were there, dressed in their nicest clothes. Ru suspected Gwyneth had even styled Archie’s hair, which she had never seen so coiffed. Professors Obralle and Cadwick had also come, the latter of whom was endlessly mopping his brow with a cloth. Obralle’s pink hair was uncharacteristically plain, a simple bun at the top of her head.
Lord D’Luc stood still as a statue, dressed all in white, his fingers flashing with silver rings. His eyes glittered like cut sapphires, and a dozen white-robed Children had arranged themselves behind him like vacant specters. Ru saw Inda, Ranto, and Nell near the front of the group.
