Page 91 of Serpent and Shadow

I talked for what felt like a very long time.

Luc brought over hot chocolate for me, and when the others asked, he went back to the kitchen, pulled out a larger saucepan, and made more for everyone else. When he came back to our circle the second time, carrying a tray and handing out more mugs, he set his own on the table next to his half of the couch.

By then, I’d just started to explain about Petrov the Dragon and his wife, Antonia, and about the caelum ignis who lived a perfectly lovely life with his wife and kids until his wife unexpectedly died and he incinerated the better part of four or five villages.

When I was finally talked out, my mug of chocolate was sucked dry.

Jolie and Nyx had also finished theirs, but Luc had seemingly forgotten his, which had gone stone cold on the table next to his armrest. Alaric had drunk most of his, I think, but still had his mug balanced on his knee.

He continued to stare at me, eyes wide, for a few seconds after I finished talking.

“How long have you known?” Jolie asked, breaking the silence first. She’d bandaged the cut on my throat after using a spell to close it, and smearing it with herbs. “How long have you known what he is, Leda?”

Thinking about that, I flushed.

“Yule,” I told her. “Roughly.”

Hesitating at their silence, I added, “But we both knew. Not the specifics, maybe, but we knew something was different with him, and with us. He’d known he was different since he was a kid. His father told him without ever giving it a name, and hid him, claiming he had some kind of ‘illness’ so he wouldn’t need to go to school until he could control it better.”

I exhaled, staring into the fire as I shook my head.

“The thing with us was obvious from the start,” I admitted. “Not just our primals, but, well… everything. The way we could hear one another’s thoughts. The way his magic didn’t hurt me. The way we both got around one another.”

Luc’s jaw had firmed when I glanced at him. I could see him thinking, his expression taut as he stared sightlessly into the fire.

“Have any of you…” I hesitated, glancing between them. “…heard of caelum ignis? Before this, I mean? Is it something you grew up learning about?”

Nyx shook her head. She glanced at Jolie, who nodded to the questioning look in her eyes.

“No,” Jolie said, looking at me. “I’ve never heard it mentioned in any of my magi-physiology courses, either. Not even when we’ve been studying magical maladies, or magical genetic mutations, or magical birth defects. It’s never come up.”

I glanced at Alaric, but he also shook his head.

When I looked at Luc, he hesitated, his blue eyes studying mine.

Then he shrugged.

“I read a little about it,” he admitted sourly. “It came up when I was reading about solutions to magical degeneration.” When Alaric’s eyebrow quirked in his direction, Luc scowled at him. “I didn’t say anything because it didn’t seem to be a particularly helpful reference,” he grumbled.

His blue eyes returned to mine.

“There was a group of Magicals in the 1500s that wanted to try and deliberately induce physiological mutations that increased magical output. Caelum ignis was considered to be physiological, although I’m not too sure about the science behind that, given the time period. Regardless, because of how they believed it formed, it was one of the mutations under discussion. Given what you’ve told us about Bones, I can guess why.”

Grimly, Luc added, “The suggestion was controversial, to say the least. Petrov was mentioned, and there was a pretty big faction decrying the ethics of deliberately creating a mass murderer ‘for science.’ Ultimately they were forced to drop the experiment.”

I clasped my hands together between my knees and nodded.

“I’m not surprised,” I murmured.

The room fell silent again.

I grew acutely aware of how late it was. It had to be close to four in the morning. I tried to remember what day of the week it was, and drew a blank.

Before I could answer that question in my mind, Alaric broke the silence.

“Have any of you ever heard of divinities?” he asked cautiously.

At our collective silence, he cleared her throat.