When Ty finally remembered to breathe, Theo was already gone. His eyes didn’t leave his beloved master’s figure for a second as it disappeared down the hill, at which point he, too, disappeared into the Academy.

  “It’s him,” she said quietly, turning to look at Darius. “Em.”

  Darius was rummaging through a shelf in the back of his workshop and paid her no attention. He was busy pulling out a long, thin rapier which he picked up with a deep red cloth and placed onto his workbench.

  “Come in,” he spoke purposefully, meeting her eyes while wiping the blade slowly with the cloth.

  She picked up her mug and looked back once more, fully expecting the renowned sorcerer to be standing right there by the fence, watching her not ten steps away.

  He wasn’t.

  “Come,” beckoned the Ancient again.

  Ty hurried inside lest he actually appeared, sitting across from Darius. The weapon he was working on was one she hadn’t seen before, a rapier with a jet-black grip and several golden rings on its hilt. Even the blade was dark, with flecks of gold that looked almost like petals—did he bring this with him to the Academy? She had never asked him to craft any rapiers.

  “You know him, don’t you?”

  “I do not.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “No.” He opened a drawer beside him and put his piece of cloth into it before getting up to pull a tome off the shelf behind him. Curiously enough, she had never noticed it before, but all the tomes on that particular shelf were uniformly crimson.

  “Why do you remember, and I don’t?” It all seemed so arbitrary.

  Darius moved the sword up and placed the tome in front of him. “Ancient high magic, adult can resist. Unaffected by commoners’ low magic. We remember.” Then, he closed his eyes and stretched his arms out so that they just reached the blade.

  Ty did not interrupt him this time, having had much time to accept her own shortcomings and to reflect on Nate’s words that haunted her. One day, she told herself. One day.

  Slowly, Darius started to cast. His pronunciation of the Ancient language was flawless, enunciated with such clarity and gentleness it sounded like he was another person entirely—the weaponsmith she knew spoke bluntly, with effort and with careful deliberation, but his script was quick, to the point. Nothing short of divine.

  A golden glow similar to his aura gently surrounded the tome and blade as his words flowed through them, enshrouding the rapier with such an intense sheen that its color seemed to change entirely.

  And despite it looking finished—as she had seen his process of enchanting blades before—he continued to speak. He continued to cast his magic, let the gold run through him and the tome until the book started to darken.

  “D-Darius?” she stuttered.

  He continued to cast, and the tome continued to blacken.

  She knew Ancients’ anima pools were far greater than commoners’, and she herself had delivered spells that had lasted several minutes long, but she had never blackened a tome before. Out of everyone, he should have been the most conscious about the problem with blackening tomes; every magic practitioner was always taught that every book had a soul, and when one deliberately kept channeling a spell for far longer than the regular length of the passage, it would slowly blacken and die. The book would pull the life out of the rest of the tome before tying its life to the caster’s own, weakening their anima for as long as the book could not find peace. That was where book burning rituals came in, so that one could return the book to the Earth Mother through a washing and burning process, ultimately relinquishing the user and allowing them to perform magic once more.

  One small problem, however, prevented most people from abusing tomes, convenient as it was: only Ancients and MATS officials could successfully perform book burnings.

  Here Darius was, doing it casually in front of her, and all for an enchanted rapier. Did it not hurt? Was he not worried about binding himself to the tome all for a sword?

  “Darius,” she spoke clearly this time, starting to sweat as the tome had turned so black now that she couldn’t tell where the cover began and ended. “You’re…”

  And then there were footsteps at the door.

  Ty snapped her head around and raised her arm up toward the sound.

  “Woah, woah, woah.” Kor raised both of her hands in surrender, and Darius, sensing the atmosphere shift dramatically, stopped enchanting.

  “Oh, the Graces.” Catching herself, Ty doubled over the desk and rubbed her eyes, exhaling loudly. “Sorry, come in. I thought you were someone else.”

  “Well damn, lemme know next time so I can bring a change of pants,” Korinna sputtered, lowering her hands and walking into the workshop.

  “I’m sorry.” Ty breathed in deeply again and exhaled, noticing that the surprisingly hale Darius had pushed the tome aside and was now putting the rapier back into his drawer.

  “Kor, list,” he asked brusquely.

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  “Ah, yes.” The chemist reached into her pocket and produced a long sheet of paper. “Here you go.”

  Exhaling, Darius brushed his hands together and took it, examining it intently while Ty realized that this was only the second time she had ever seen the weaponsmith in a room together with Kor.

  “Anyway, what’s up? Who were you waiting for?” Kor asked, pulling up a stool to sit on and crossing her legs, smiling interestedly at Ty.

  She wondered what the best thing to say was. “I, um…saw someone odd outside,” she started hesitantly, still seeing the image of Em’s eyes in her mind. “I thought he came back.”

  “I see, I see,” nodded Kor, her attention waning as she checked her long, painted nails. “Where’d you go last night, anyway? You should have played cards with us.”

  “I don’t know how to play cards,” Ty answered stiffly, awkwardly shifting her eyes to Darius instead.

  “So? Elias didn’t know at first, we taught him.” Kor lowered her hands and then started kicking her leg impatiently. “Get cards. Get rid of cards. Remember the element wheel for simple play or read the description for classic. More fun when drunk, t—”

  “This more than last time,” interrupted Darius before Ty could respond, getting off his stool again to walk over to his apothecary chest. “Silverthread become Thorncap…”

  Eyeing Darius rifle through his herbs, Kor remarked, “That’s the thing for the throat. The synthetic version’s some silvery-white shit that’s bitter as all hell to chew.”

  It took him all of half a second to reply. “Yes, I remember.”

  Watching the Ancient place packets of medicine on the workbench, Kor sighed loudly. “Parents fighting and all, don’t wanna get between them. Moms, am I right?”

  Instead of replying to Kor, Ty watched Darius intently. He certainly went out of his way to help the chemist even when she occasionally made disparaging remarks about his people. If the obstinate chemist had ever apologized to the Ancient, Ty wasn’t aware.

  “Okay, check if right.” Darius placed the last few remaining herbs onto the sheet, explaining each substitute while Ty made sure to write in her notebook to check the common room board tomorrow night for the misconduct slip as well as take the time to refine some more translations she had done in her notebook earlier.

  Absorbed in her own tasks, Ty only looked up when she heard her name being called for the second time. Kor was holding a paper bag, and in front of Darius was his blackened tome in a dish.

  “You mentioned you wanted to do some crystal stuff?” asked Korinna with a raised eyebrow.

  “Oh, yes.” The whole Emrys situation had thrown her off kilter. “I was wondering if…say I cast a crystal, could I either keep it glowing or have it stay that way forever?”

  “Oh, hmm,” mumbled Kor, tapping her fingers on the desk. “I can definitely get you a compound to keep it glowing, but if it’s, like, spell crystals, I don’t think it’d work. We could probably reproduce something similar. Won’t be the real thing, though.”

  That was what Ty essentially expected to hear.

  “Need anima to keep shape. No unlimited anima,” concurred Darius. “Unless put anima in crystal. Anima soul. Very bad, like trapping self.”

  The tactician bit her lip, not very satisfied with the answer. “Okay,” she proposed, “If anima is life and blood, what if I regularly gave it some of my blood or anima?”

  “Is bad for you,” maintained Darius. “Is gift, no? Kor way work. Synthetic last long time.”

  When did she tell him it was for a gift?

  “Can you make it?” Kor asked, holding out an open hand. “If you can do it right now, I can see if I can get a similar material for you.”

  She blanked. “I…I don’t know it.” There was a possibility she could produce something similar, but she had no idea where to start. More importantly, she didn’t want someone else to know that she was a halfling so soon; she had just told Faris the day before.

  Kor slapped her leg and got up with a laugh. “Well honey, I hate to break it to ya, but you’ve gotta learn how to do it first. Then, come to me.”

  “Yes,” admitted Ty weakly, letting her head shamefully hit the desk as she listened to Kor say her goodbyes. “Yes, I will.”

  Darius patted her on the shoulder. “You can do. I know.”

  “I know,” groaned Ty, not moving from her spot because she found it oddly comfortable. “You have to burn that book.”

  “Yes, I remember,” he responded promptly as Ty sat up and watched him nonchalantly chuck the tome from his silver plate into his workshop hearth.

  She sat up, eyes wide. “Did—did you just—”

  Darius turned to her with a smile on his face and childish innocence in his eyes. “Good reaction. Impress Theo, too.”

  “What was it for, that rapier?”

  “I must enchant rapier many times,” nodded Darius, walking back to his cabinet and taking out the weapon. He put it on the desk in front of Ty. “Must make very powerful.”

  She nodded absently, transfixed on the golden-black sword. “What was that spell you put into it?”

  “Is life spell. Transference. I give my energy, give power. Temper sword with spirit of Earth Mother. Pure,” he explained without hesitation, pulling out the red cloth again to resume wiping the blade. “Earth Mother bestow us life. All things living, sword has life, too. Sword anima can be blackened too, like tome, and be dull. But if I put care and love, sword will not fail. It will be pure. It will not dull, after many use. My father teach me method.”

  “Is this his?”

  “In…a way,” he nodded slowly. “My father begin before…die.”

  …Die?

  He then placed a single index finger onto the blade and flipped it over after barely a touch for Ty to see. There was a small, clean cut where the edge of the sword had been. “I watch him make when I young. He use Ancient material, black stone, from sacred fires. Fragile, but when tempered, very valuable. Very sharp. Very special.”

  How bizarre, she finally thought, to have such a beautiful blade in the possession of a weaponsmith who can’t fight. “Did you ever learn to duel, after all this time?”

  The look on his face was fond. “Hehe. Yes, Elias teach. but I do not do. All Ancients make vow to Earth Mother to not hurt.”

  Yes, that was common knowledge. “How do you know when it’s finished?”

  Darius smiled, pointing to the gold petal-like flakes on the sword. “See gold? Entire sword become gold when hundred. That is Purity. I do more, a thousand.”

  “A thousand?” she gawked. “Will it stay gold forever then, or will it still turn black?” she thought aloud, thinking about the sheer number that was a thousand tomes.

  He nodded. “Yes. Will turn black. Take long time, can only do once, but last long time. Hundred becomes Purity, what we usually use for other item, like knife. Axe. Maybe sword more easy to blacken. But thousand is many, more pure. It will be imbued with the life of the Earth Mother.”

  “Well, it’s very beautiful,” she said, unable to think of another word to describe it. “I like rapiers.”

  “Ah, this I know,” revealed Darius. “It must have been fate.”

  Sitting up in her seat as if struck, Ty looked at Darius, and then back at the sword, and then back at Darius one more time. “Is this mine?” she whispered.

  Without saying a word, he smiled, gently lifting the sword off the desk.

  Ty’s eyes widened. “Can I hold it?”

  “No, no, not yet,” chuckled Darius heartily, filing it back into his cabinet. “Not ready. I prepare, though, in case you need.”

  “Like for the war,” she whispered.

  “Yes, the beginning of the end.”

  Silence eclipsed the two as the evening bell rang, their gazes fixed on the entrance.

  “I work on sword. You work on crystal,” Darius gently insisted when the bell finished ringing. “Both important.”

  “I need Theo for that,” replied Ty equally quietly.

  “Then you must find Theo.”

  It was a flower. Why was she so afraid? Her chest ached.

  “I, too, am afraid.”

  Ty raised her head up to the towering Ancient.

  “But wars are not won through fear. They are won through courage.”