Chapter Text
She wasn’t supposed to go to many of Frank’s big parties, or at least, not stay at them so late, since many of them went on past midnight, and even sometimes to dawn, but only in summer.
Jupiter hadn’t officially imposed something as ridiculous as a bedtime on her but she was trying to keep a low profile, not end up in the background of any photographs which might be published. She knew full well that her guardian, that Squall might know where she was by now, but she was trying her hardest to keep that idea out of her head, and away from her.
Tonight was the midsummer festival, the night in Nevermoor where it was only dark for three and a half hours. In the far north, it didn't even get dark at all, something to do with the curve of the sun, but Morrigan was still excited.
She had a new dress on, and she had Weaved her own shoes, which were shiny leather with silver thread through them. She wasn't trying to make any fashion statements, but it was fun to get to dress up, even if she was only going to hang around at the edges of the party, along with Jack.
He had a dark purple suit on, and a golden lapel chain, leading to his pocket watch, tucked into his top pocket. “I heard Princess Alba is making an appearance tonight.”
“Who's that again?”
“Queen Caledonia's granddaughter.” He jokingly hit her shoulder. “Her sister, Scotia is the heir, but she likes coming to fancy parties and causing problems. I can't imagine why Frank invited her.”
“Maybe it's a different Alba?”
“A different Her Royal Highness Princess Alba? Sure, I'll believe that there's at least two.” He rolled his eyes at her. “Anyway, it should be entertaining. Last time she was here, she told the Countess of Geurlde that her dress was hideous and that her husband was having an affair.”
“Was she right?”
“On both counts,” he said. “We'll stay out of her way though, it's funnier to be on the sidelines.”
That reminded Morrigan of watching her grandmother tear into her father for whatever perceived political weakness she had seen in him on any particular day. “You haven't got anywhere to be?”
“And be stuck handshaking and being told that my parents were brave heroes?” He made a face. “Pass. Rich people are so annoying. I had to comment sympathetically when one of them was telling me that they couldn't go skiing this year because it hasn't snowed enough in the Third Pocket for it to be worth going. Spare me.”
“I met a duchess over in the Republic who told me-” she paused, waving at the man who was coming through the door. “Jupiter!”
“Uncle Jove!” Jack jumped out of his chair. “How's it- hello Inspector Rivers.”
She had followed in behind him, and for the first time, Morrigan noticed two things. They were both frowning heavily, and they were both making a beeline for her. “Is something wrong?”
“About twenty minutes ago,” Inspector River said, eyeing Jack, who stepped just out of her line of sight, even though he was still obviously listening in. “I received a report that there's been an attack on Nevermoor. From the inside. I need details of your movements today.”
“Like-” she paused, looking over at Jupiter. “Like an alibi?”
“Morrigan didn't do it,” Jupiter insisted. “I can confirm that for you now.”
“As much as I personally trust your word, Captain North,” Inspector Rivers said. “It’s not necessarily enough in a court of law to prove a person innocent.”
“You are not putting her on trial.”
“I was in the hotel,” she said. “I was… on the roof this morning, by myself. Martha saw me go up, and maybe some guests too, but I don't know them, maybe for a few hours, and then I was in the Smoking Parlour with Dame Chanda and down here, watching Frank with Jack.” Her shoulders curved in, making her hunch over, making her smaller. “Where did the attack come from?”
Inspector Rivers’ face betrayed nothing, “I'm not at liberty to share those details. But you were in the hotel all day, and multiple witnesses can confirm this? Yes?”
“Yes,” she said. Jupiter looked at her strangely, and she realised he must be able to see that she was holding something back. She stared back at him, hoping he would understand the later she was trying to communicate entirely through eye contact.
“Is it in Proudfoot House?” she asked. “The attack?”
Inspector Rivers looked away from her. “Stay here tonight. Don't go anywhere.”
She opened her mouth to argue but Jupiter looked at her meaningfully and she shut her mouth again. This wasn’t a time to argue.
She had no idea if this would work, but empowered by Squall's ranting about what was owed to Wundersmiths, and what she would be able to do when she got to Nevermoor, she managed to make her way down to the floor where every Wundersmith except her and her fellow Cursed Children had been educated.
She dashed down there, cloaking the whole room in darkness. The Stealth had been upstairs, but they had been looking in all the wrong places. She knew where this attack was coming from.
“Henry!” she shouted. “Whatever you're doing, you need to stop!”
“I don't need to do anything.” He came out of the chamber to her left, hands in his pockets, smiling politely. “Hello, Miss Crow. Pleasant evening isn't it?”
“What are you doing? You don't understand what you're doing.”
“I'm letting the Wundersmith back into Nevermoor, of course.”
“By unleashing the Divinities? You're not doing anything you understand.” Truth be told, she had no idea what he was really doing either except it was genuinely the stupidest thing she had heard in her life.
“I know exactly what I’m doing.” There was a look in his eyes she was too familiar with by now. Calm, cold determination. Henry was set on this path now, and she didn’t know if she would be able to drag him off it. But she could stop him. Maybe.
But if she stopped time now, she might not have the energy to stop whatever he had done already. She couldn’t afford to risk using Tempus now. It took too much out of her. She would have to stop him another way.
She barrelled towards him, letting her feet carry her, running through him like a sports player on the field. He was more solid than he seemed, but she was letting her anger control her now. It made her bigger, and stronger. He was on the ground, yelping a little in a way that disgusted her. She wanted to stay with him, beat him to a pulp, knock his teeth out, kick his ribs until they snapped. But there wasn’t time for that right now. She had to get to the Liminal Hall.
It was hot. It was searingly hot, and something was very wrong here.
Henry was pushing the door to the Liminal Hall open, in a way that Morrigan couldn’t really work out, but she spotted some things he had pressed onto it, like runes or a sort of Wundro-Magnetic Pulse, to knock out any of the wundrous energy in the surrounding area.
She squinted, trying to see if there was any wunder activated, but it was all dull and boring, so she started to hum, hoping she could at least reactivate it. The well was opening, its cover being stripped back, and she could feel it like nothing she had ever felt before. It was like having a strong coffee injected behind her eyes. It made her eyesight sharpen, her hearing increase. She could feel every single little thing crawling on her skin, and taste the ozone in the air, as Henry gasped, and kept holding the door open.
“Who Dares?” a voice echoed from the hall. “Who Dares Disturb The Kindling.”
“The Kindling?” She tried to shout at Henry to shut the bloody door, and run, but the idiot, and fool he was, wouldn’t even look at her.
She got to her feet, forcing her brain to comply with her body, using wunder to haul herself up, taking step after step like standing on shards of glass. She could hear so much. A car was honking at another in Eldritch. In Gresham, children were laughing as they played on the swings, and the wind was rustling against the chimes one of them had tied to a tree, and in Sub-Nine, they were about to unleash something which should never have been disturbed.
Or at least, not like this.
“Who Pulls Me From The Hearth?” Each word was punctuated like a fist to the stomach. She clutched her own, still moving one foot in front of the other, still making her body do the work, when all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and beg for mercy, and to see another day.
But if she did that, there would be no other day. There could be no forgiveness. Either because The Kindling would smash her, Henry, and everything in the general vicinity/the entire Unnamed Realm to little pieces, or Squall would flood back into Nevermoor and destroy everything she loved in front of her, and then, kill her probably also.
She had to keep moving.
There was a little voice in her head now. It was probably in her head. It could be on the other side of Nevermoor, it could be anywhere, but she was listening to it anyway.
Just one more step. One foot, then the other. You don’t want to die here, do you? Keep going.
She tasted something metallic in her mouth, and then something rancid, but swallowed it down. She needed to stay focused here.
Sometime ago, she had become distantly aware that there was something moving inside the Liminal Hall. Something was shifting, and waking up, and she didn’t know what it was exactly, but there was no chance in hell that it could be good.
“Henry,” she tried one last time. “Close the door. We can still leave.”
He was crying, but the tears were drying on his face as soon as they were being produced, his hair breaking, skin reddening, “I don’t want to die.”
“We’ll all die if you don’t close the door,” she said.
“I can’t,” he gasped. “I have to do this. It’ll be worth it, when I’m through.” He didn’t sound like he was talking to her anymore.
And then he wasn’t talking to anyone. And he never would again.
On the floor, where he had been standing, hauling open the door, letting all the wunders of the world flood out, there was a sooty pile of ash. It was a little greasy.
Morrigan couldn’t contain her vomit now. It controlled her before she even had the chance.
But when she stood back up again, shaking, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes stuck to the pile of ash that had been a teenage boy seconds ago, there was someone else with her, looking at her. Looking.
“Are you the Kindling?” she asked. “I don’t.” She broke off, coughing a little. “I don’t know if I have an offering to bring you.”
“You have the mark,” it said, reaching forward one of its long twigs, hitting her square on the forehead.
She was… at home again.
Not the Deucalion. Not even in Squall’s flat.
She was in Crow Manor, feeling her eyes glaze over, as her father laid into her for a reason she didn’t even remember any more. And she was angry, there was something in her that was puttering like a flame being smothered, ready to come to life at a moment’s notice.
And her father said something, it sounded like rushing water in her ears now, but he said something, and he had put petrol right onto that flame.
She spat fire at him, it coming out of her because she had nowhere to put it anymore. It had grown beyond her now. She could hardly control it.
It caught him in the face, and for the first time, she remembered the yell. She heard it now. The screaming last breath her father had taken as he was engulfed.
Was it worth it? She wanted to ask. Had it been worth it to him? To spend his last moments alive berating his daughter over something so achingly unimportant that she couldn’t recall it now even if she cared to try?
Had that been a worthy use of his last minutes alive, to Corvus Crow? Had ten years of banking up that fire inside her, feeding it with every drip of poison he had forced her to swallow, been a worthy use of his time as a human being?
Had it been worth it, to him, for how it had ended the lives of Ivy, and Ornella, and the maids?
Was it worth it to her?
She shot out of the memory like a cannonball being fired into the enemy line, choking and gasping.
“You killed your own father,” the Kindling said.
“Do you condemn me for it?” The sounds around her had disappeared. Was the well covering up again, being protected from Squall once more, or had he grasped enough of it, that she couldn’t even touch it anymore?
“I did not come here to absolve nor to condemn. I have no interest in human morality,” it said. “I have never been offered a patricide before. It brings flavour.”
Morrigan wasn’t sure how to feel about the murder she had committed being described as flavourful, especially not by a being which had destroyed a young man in front of her so entirely that her brain was struggling to connect the pile of greased ash to Henry Mildmay who had existed before it. Her eyesight was dulling now, the colours returning to what they had been. She still tasted blood and bile at the back of her throat.
“Right,” she said. “What happens now?”
“Someone was trying to tamper with the well,” it said. “That has stopped now.”
“Because you came out here?”
“In part,” it said. “Perhaps it was a combination of factors.”
Morrigan clenched her fists, realising she had no good or elegant way to say this. She went with the bad, clumsy way instead, “Will you go back into the Liminal Hall?”
“Yes,” it said. “This realm is not for the likes of me.” The phrase sounded like it had been cut in half, but the only thing keeping her on her feet was the flood of adrenaline being pumped through her body, so she didn’t think about it too much.
“Right,” she said. “Good, right. Um, are you going now?”
“Yes,” it said. “Only, one thing first,” It pressed a twig to her finger again, to her imprint, and it began to dance on her finger. A flame, ablaze. “I am rarely the first art the Wundersmith takes interest in, even for one as old as you. Your life has been hard already.”
It did not tell her it would get better. It did not tell her it would get worse. In fact, the Divinity said nothing about the state of the future. Only what it could know from the past.
“I will leave now,” it said. “This realm weakens me.”
The Liminal Hall door slammed shut. The temperature in the room dropped by at least twenty degrees. And Morrigan Crow collapsed onto her knees.
She hoped someone would come find her. Surely at least a few people could have put two and two together by now. She had given everything she had had to stand in the room with the Kindling, the Kindling in a realm it was never supposed to enter, in a state which was never supposed to exist. She had nothing else to give.
She could hear people coming down the hall, clamouring and clashing against the stone floor and swayed on the spot. The shape of a group of people were coming closer and closer and as she squinted until she recognised one of them by his hair, bright like fire, but not so violent, nor as hot as what she had just seen.
Jupiter strode towards her, and dropped to his knees. “Mog,” he said, in a slightly broken voice. “What-”
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t understand.”
“No,” he said, looking at her. They were at eye level now, which she found more vexing than she would ever admit. “No, I don’t think I do either.”
She was shaking, she realised. Something in her couldn’t control her body, and it was moving. She bit back a sob. “What’s going to happen now?” Her voice was tighter than she thought it would be.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said, reaching for her, his hand passing through her own. “All will be well, I promise.”
She stumbled, almost falling again.
“Morrigan!” She felt, rather than saw Jupiter gather her up in his arms. “Can you tell me what happened? Try to stay awake, talk to me.”
She tried to open her eyes, but they were too heavy. “I stopped it? Did I stop it?”
“I think so,” he said. He lifted her, and started running down the hall, letting her head lean against his shoulder, until she noticed it getting darker, knowing they must be on the Sub-Nine platform now.
She wasn’t sure exactly when reality faded away, but it was somewhere between being lifted onto a bed, and having something pushed into her arm, and having her hair smoothed back.
It took a few days for the pain to stop and for Morrigan to stop saying strange things because of her medication. Her body twinged in places, mostly the spots she had been hit in, and her shoulder from the body slam she had done to Henry, whom she tried not to think of now. What the Kindling had done to him made her skin crawl and her stomach churn to think about. He had been a human being, even if he had been a traitor, one second, and the next he was a greasy pile of soot on the floor.
It barely computed in her mind. It didn’t make sense that that much power could be produced in such a specific and centred way. And it made her feel ill, besides.
The Elders wanted to see her apparently, but they hadn’t been yet. It seemed that there was a lot going on, and she was quite far down on anyone's list of priorities since she was no longer actively dying.
Sound had come back first. “Absolutely- well you can tell the Elders to knock it off. She’s my patient regardless of if she’s in the society or not.” She dozed for a while in between things before she really understood anything however.
“Captain, if you don’t leave now I will have you removed. You can come back in when your ward wakes up, but not before.” She shifted a little, trying to get comfier in her blankets before her eyes flickered open.
“See!” someone said. “She’s waking up.”
“Fine,” the other person said. “You can stay, for now.”
“Morrigan?” Jupiter patted her hand, and she tried to smile at him. All the muscles in her body hurt, and she winced from the sudden pain. “Don’t move too much, I’ll- Nurse, can you do anything? She’s in a lot of pain.”
She heard the nurse walk over, before he popped down into her line of sight, “Good morning, Miss Crow. How are you feeling?”
“Bad,” she tried to say. Unfortunately getting her jaw to actually do anything was so much work that she gave up halfway through the word and ended up saying “Bafh” instead.
“Understandable, pet,” the nurse said. “I’ll see what can be done about your pain medication as soon as I can, but in the meantime, try not to move too much.”
She tried to nod, out of habit, which was stupid, and yelled, using as few muscles in her mouth as possible.
Jupiter clutched his hair, “Nurse Tim?” he asked.
“It’s okay,” he said, stepping away. “I’ll see about upping the dosage.”
She wasn’t sure exactly when the dosage hit her, but at some point her eyelids shut again, and she wasn’t in nearly so much pain.
“Are you putting her forward for the Trials then, Jove?” someone in her periphery asked.
“Yes,” he said. “For 919. She’s the right age for it.”
“She’s prepared, certainly,” the other person said. “Show Trial ought to be a breeze. I mean, I’ve already seen what’s what and I’m putting myself down on the ballot for the next council.”
“Is Eventide so close then?” she heard him ask. “I thought eighteen months, not six.”
“Unclear,” the other person said. “The chronologists are all in a tizzy about it. But given… all of this, the wunder gathering will be ready to disperse for a new Age. It’s time, I should think.”
“They say that about everything,” he said. “They said that about the mini-budget disaster, and the three prime ministers in two months.”
She heard a deep intake of breath from someone whom she would have assumed was a) very old, and b) very tired. “Perhaps. They do enjoy their drama, but I would say this time, with- all of that. It’s likely.”
Jupiter hummed. “You might be right, Gregoria.”
She tried to move her head, and sit up, but she was so tired that her body just wouldn’t move. It was like the time she had exhausted herself, and her guard- Squall had brought her soup.
But this was worse. This wasn’t just feeling tired. This was having no energy whatsoever. Like a yawning void inside her had opened up, and sucked all of it away.
And she was stuck here until it closed. If it closed.
It was hard enough focusing on the things people were saying around her, and to her. Eavesdropping was difficult enough normally. She couldn’t put up with this now.
Her eyes closed, no matter how much she fought to keep them open. She supposed she could rest for a little while now. All the work had been completed, after all.
“I’m not giving up,” he said. “Just so you know.”
She groaned, turning over in her bed so that her back was facing him. She didn’t particularly want to be so unguarded against him, but it wasn’t as if he could do anything to her through the Gossamer. This whole mess had proved as such.
“Go away,” she said. “Leave me, and Nevermoor alone.”
“I don’t have anything else to interest me,” he said. “Coming back to Nevermoor is my sole desire in life.”
She threw her pillow and it sailed right through him. “Get a hobby then. Take up knitting or whatever it is old people enjoy.”
“I’m not here to gloat,” he said.
“Gloating? You lost, I never thought you were gloating.” She imagined his stupid body being drop-kicked off a cliff by the behemoth she had once woven as a mistake, and used the strength from that to sit up in her bed. “Henry is dead because of you.”
“Henry is dead, strictly, because of you, I’m afraid. You need to become more comfortable using people for your own ends or you’ll never get anywhere.”
“I don’t want to get anywhere if it involves anything like that,” she spat at him. “Why are you here then, anyway? Tell me so that you can leave sooner. Or just leave, I don’t really care about hearing what you have to say.”
“I won’t be the only one not giving up,” he said softly. “And you should be glad your family is dead now. It’s the only thing stopping President Wintersea from using them against you.”
“What is she doing?”
“Couldn’t tell you, even if I wanted to, Miss Crow. That’s something for you to find out for yourself.”
She lunged for him, forgetting that she had spent two weeks in bed, and her muscles weren’t prepared for anything like that, and also that she was in a bed, and clattered onto the floor as he vanished into thin air.
Nurse Tim hurtled into the room, “What happened?”
“I fell,” she grumbled. “Mistimed trying to roll over.”
He tutted, helping her up, and back into bed. “Try to sleep on your back from the time being. It’ll put less strain on your body, and if you snore it’s not as if anyone else is in here to be bothered by it.”
She looked around the strangely empty ward. “Is no one else ill?”
His mouth twitched, “They’re elsewhere.”
“Are they afraid of me?”
“If they are, they’re complete morons. I don’t care that you contained a god for twenty seconds, you’re also ten years old. Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Yes please, milk and sugar if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Course,” he said, heading off into the little kitchen, leaving her staring at the ceiling again, letting Squall’s words dance through her mind. President Wintersea isn’t giving up either. You’ll have to find out on your own.
Well, she thought. She would. After a cup of tea, and a nap, of course.
Sofia had brought her books about the works of the wundersmiths when she found out that she was in the hospital. “I had to get special permission to get these, the original copies, I mean, but these are all copied out so you can keep them.”
“Isn’t that plagiarism?” Morrigan asked, already eyeing up the volume in her arms.
She shrugged, and passed it to Morrigan. It was heavier than she had thought it would be, and she had to brace herself against the weight. “One of my teachers told me that you only ever made it as an academic when people start plagiarising you.”
She laughed, and managed to get through the first chapter of one of them before she dozed off again.
When she woke up, she was in her room. At the Deucalion. No awful, slab-like Wundrous Society Teaching Hospital bed. Just a nest of pillows, and blanket after blanket after blanket, pressing her to her mattress. Keeping her safe.
She closed her eyes again, feeling her muscles relax against the mattress, letting her whole body go limp. She could get used to this.
Someone knocked at her door, and pushed it open, which ruined all her plans of sleeping here for the next seven weeks straight.
“Morrigan?” Jupiter came in. “You awake?”
“What?” she muttered. “I was sleeping.”
“I know,” he said. “You’ve been sleeping for the better part of the week.”
“Why am I back home?”
“Your doctor thought you might recover better in a familiar environment, and the society is picky about having unwuns inside for too long, even if it’s the hospital.”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course.”
“How are you feeling?”
She took stock of herself, wiggling her toes, moving her shoulders up and down. “Fine, really. Much better.” The abyss was gone. She could have jumped for joy, except for the fact that she was still lying down, and she didn’t want to see what state her legs were in after being in bed for a week. “How is- what- Sub-Nine?” Her brain was apparently not quite tuned perfectly just yet, but she felt she’d managed to get her question across.
“The-” he moved quickly, closing the door, before returning to stand by her bed. She shifted, moving to sit up, and pushing her hair off her face. More of it had ended up in her mouth than she would have liked, and she spat it out. “The situation is being kept under quite tight wraps for the time being, but there’s been no real resurgence or concerns about the wunder levels, even down in Sub-Nine. Everything seems to be normal.”
“I have a hard time believing that,” she said, before taking a breath to steady herself, trying to word her next question more delicately. “Mildmay- I mean, is he really?”
Jupiter’s face tightened up, she could see every line on it deepen, the skin slightly more sallow than it ought to have been. “His remains have been handed to his family.”
“I thought his parents were dead. He always implied that.”
“They are,” he said. “But he had an aunt in the fifth pocket, it seems. Next of kin. I don’t know what they’ve told her, but I doubt it’s the whole truth.”
“What, that he almost destroyed the world, and got burnt to a crisp in the process? I bet.”
Jupiter looked at her, his eyes flicking around quickly. “Yes,” he said finally. “That must have been hard to see.”
“Not as hard as it would have been for Henry,” she said, hugging her knees to her chest. “But I suppose.”
“Hm,” he sat down on the edge of her bed, and started fixing her hair for her. “I was much older than you when I saw someone die, or, maybe not too much older, but I was in the society. I’d been… prepared, in a way. There’s no real way to properly prepare, but as good as it gets, I suppose.”
“I thought that I might watch everyone die,” she said. “Only one person did. And he isn’t the first person I’ve seen die either.” Jupiter’s hands tugged her hair and she flinched.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, taking his time to undo the tangle. “I know. But it doesn’t get easier.”
“It was quicker this time,” she said glumly. “Henry didn’t even scream.”
She closed her eyes and saw him again. His eyes had been wide. Had they been scared? Had he known what he had been looking at when he had seen the Kindling, and it had turned him to almost nothing?
“Doesn’t make it better,” he said. “You can’t act like you don’t feel bad about it around me, Mog. I can see past that.”
“I know,” she looked down at her hands. The new imprint was there, dancing away, almost happily, on her skin. “The Kindling was strange.”
“I can imagine,” he said softly. He ran a finger down her parting, sorting the hair into each side, and patted it flat. “What did it say to you?”
“I don’t- I don’t really understand it now. I did then,” she frowned. “It made complete sense when I was standing in front of it but… I think it wanted an offering. It went through my memories, and looked at the one where I-” her voice cracked a little. “burned Crow Manor,” she finished, trying to clear her throat, swallow down the lump that had suddenly grown there. “Something about it… tasting interesting, I don’t really know now. It seems nonsensical now.”
“Where did it go?”
She looked at him strangely, “Don’t you know?”
“No,” he said. “We only arrived after it was over. You’d passed out by the time we got to you.”
“I heard you come in, I think,” she said. “But I could have imagined that, I guess. The Kindling went back into the Liminal Hall.”
“Why?”
“Doesn’t like the Unnamed Realm, I think,” she said. “I’m not completely sure, though. I asked it to go back, and it wanted to, so it left.”
He blinked a few times, “You… asked a Wundrous Divinity to go back, and not destroy the whole Realm, and it did? After it killed someone in front of you?”
“Essentially,” she frowned. “It didn’t want to kill Henry. Well, it doesn’t want to kill people. I think Henry really offended it, or he couldn’t stand in its presence. It’s difficult, really.”
She didn’t want to think about it. Had Henry dug his own grave? Did Henry deserve to die like that? Was it the Kindling’s fault?
Was it hers?
Maybe she should have stopped it from happening. Somehow. She wasn’t really sure how she was really meant to have done that, but she should have tried at least.
But as much as she wanted to persuade herself that there had been some incredible thing she could have gasped for, some extra strength she could have summoned to stop things already, she couldn’t manage it.
There was no universe where she could have improved this past what had happened. And that was worse, to her.
“Morrigan,” Jupiter said softly. “You did what you could. No one can blame you for that.”
“I didn’t do anything,” she said. “He’s still dead.”
“I don’t know who ought to be blamed and held responsible for the death of Henry Mildmay,” he said fiercely. “But it wasn’t you, Mog, do you understand me?”
“He says he's not giving up,” she said to Jack as he dealt the cards out between them. “Squall. And Wintersea isn't either.”
Jack looked at her worriedly, “Do you know what that means?”
“Not at all,” she said. “It's probably bad though.”
“Their… idea with the Kindling was probably their best attempt at the thing,” he reasoned. “Would it have been effective?”
“Depended on if the Kindling decided to destroy reality as we know it first,” she admitted. “Can't be sure, though. Not really. I doubt it. That wasn't really the original plan, but Mildmay couldn't carry it off in the way I could.”
“How did he get the Liminal Hall open in the first place?” he asked.
She wiggled the finger where her new imprint sat, burning merrily away on her skin, “Stole some of my blood.”
“Could that happen again?”
“He needed Squall’s help to do it,” she said. “He couldn't possibly flub it on his own. He must have had a way of instantly preserving it, like it had been freshly bled.” She picked up her hand, keeping her face clear of any expression even though it was awful. Maybe she could bluff her way through it.
“Have they increased security? Down in Sub-Nine?”
“No idea,” she said. “I'm not in the society yet. Couldn't tell you, except for the fact that I know for sure that only a handful of people are supposed to be able to get down there, and Mildmay was not on that list. Someone's been messing with permissions.”
Something occurred to her right then, and she slapped her head with her free hand, “I’m so stupid.”
Jack, trying to angle his face to see her cards, frowned. “Why?”
She ignored that he didn't say that she wasn't stupid, and rolled her eyes. “Jupiter shouldn't have been able to get to Sub-Nine either. He came down to get me when the Hunt kidnapped me.”
“When the what did what?”
“Long story.” She waved her hand.
“You got kidnapped by the Hunt and dropped into the most off limits part of the Wundrous Society and you're saying it's a long story?” he shrieked.
She covered his mouth with her hand. “Anyway, yes, long story. The point is, Jupiter shouldn't have been able to get down there. We assumed his permissions had been updated at some point without him noticing, but what if they hadn't? What if they'd all been shut down for everyone so that Mildmay could get through?”
“Why wouldn't Mildmay just edit his own permissions?”
She shrugged. “Don't know. Maybe he couldn't, or maybe for plausible deniability, or maybe he's not Squall’s only agent within Wunsoc.” The last point bothered her more than she was willing to admit to. She couldn't shake the idea that there could be any number of them, waiting around the corner for her to walk into them and for everything to collapse again.
“We didn't point it out, or Jupiter didn't, in case it was a mistake and he had to say why he was down there to begin with but-”
“Can't undo it now,” he said. “As long as whoever, the Stealth or the Elders, know now, they can fix it. Probably.”
“Maybe,” she said, trying not to think about what Jupiter had mentioned about the sheer number of internal audits going on inside the Stealth and the Stink now, in the wake of Mildmay breaking out of prison. “You go first.”
He grinned, and she raised an eyebrow at him. He really needed to get a handle on his poker face. “I’m all in.”