The Bound (Ascension #2)(86)

“I don’t know, Dean.”

“It is my birthday,” he added with a cheeky grin.

How can I say no to that? “Okay, Dean, I’ll go with you,” she said.

She just prayed to the Creator that she wasn’t making a horrible mistake in accepting his invitation.





“Ahh!” Rhea screamed futilely. “Work! Blasted work!”

She stood so quickly that she threw the chair she had been seated in back against the wall. It clattered and dropped to the floor. She didn’t even care. Once, she might have. But considering the work her Master Caro Barca should have been doing—that she was now tasked with doing—wasn’t functional, she just couldn’t find it in her to care.

She hadn’t seen Eren in over a week. The Eos holiday was today, and she couldn’t even leave her stuffy quarters in the Nit Decus castle.

Her master had been relocated to Byern when court returned from procession, and she had been forced to come with him. They had been set up in a nice, rather secluded part of the castle. In fact, she didn’t think anyone had been in this part of the castle in hundreds of years.

It was a large, open circular room with a glass ceiling that made no sense with the rest of the dark stone construction. The walkways to and from the corridors were so large that she could have fit boats through them, if need be. It was absurd. The rest of the castle had these neat, slim corridors with artwork and gorgeous vines in the molding. But these quarters looked as if someone had wanted them to be fireproof.

It was punishment. She was sure of it. She just didn’t know what for.

Captain Merrick had claimed the King had specially given them these quarters, but she doubted it. It was Captain Merrick who was a plague on the King and the country, as far as she was concerned. He had done this out of spite. No more, no less.

And she couldn’t do anything to change her lot.

Tonight, Master Barca would be setting off a spectacular display of Bursts fireworks that were unlike anything anyone had seen before. They had spent the last week making sure they would have enough space set up outside of the castle grounds so that they were ready to fire. The only thing left to do was light them tonight after dusk. She should have been thrilled that she could even help him create these contraptions that she had once thought were magic.

But no…Cyrene had magic.

And this was…pure science.

Similar in so many ways. Yet, completely different in others. At this point, she wasn’t particularly fond of either—magic or science.

All she had to do was make the mechanism for the fireworks into some kind of contained explosion. She had seen Master Barca do it time and again with Bursts. He just hadn’t figured out how to perfectly replicate it. And he had stopped caring about what court demanded of him. He cared much more about his own pursuits.

For what felt like the thousandth time, she wondered what her genius Receiver had been thinking when he created the formula for Bursts.

“I have it!” Master Barca said, stepping eagerly into the vast cavern.

“Have what?” Rhea asked irritably.

“The exact formula!” he said triumphantly.

Rhea warily looked at him. He had said that several hundred times since being in Byern, and every time, it was about something ludicrous that had nothing to do with her work on making explosives.

“What formula?”

“The only one that matters!”

“Master Barca, you’re not making sense again.”

“What we all search for. What we all want to discover. The ultimate power.”

“Whatever are you talking about? Have you figured out how to make your Bursts contain that explosive power? Have you figured out how I can report this to Captain Merrick?”

Master Barca looked at her as if she had sprouted horns. “Why ever would I want to militarize my Bursts?”

“What?” she stammered.

He seemed completely lucid in that moment, and she had been unprepared for it.

“My Bursts are for a merry festival occasion. You’ll see them tonight. Putting that power in the hands of the guards would be catastrophic. Did you believe I had not thought of it? Imagine what they could do if they had that knowledge.”

Rhea could imagine it. They could conquer the world if they wanted. But she wasn’t here for judgments. She was here to advance their society. What would be the point of all my work if I couldn’t even move forward?

“No, child. This is much more important.”

“What is it?”

“The means to attain immortality.”

Rhea’s eyes widened. “Immortality. Are you sure? I mean…how could you know that?”

“It is not in the knowing. It is in the believing,” he said. Then, he muttered to himself, practically speaking in tongues for all Rhea could decipher.

Master Barca disappeared from the door from which he had entered, but Rhea had lost the fire for her quest. She had been trained better than what her current pursuits required. She had been trained to ask why. But the pressure coming from Captain Merrick and the King himself was enough to make her quake in her slippers.

What exactly would be the consequences of creating firepower? And how different would that discovery be from magic itself?

Sure, she wasn’t creating it outright from physical prowess of her own body…from something that had been born into her bloodline. But she could mix powders and chemicals together and create an explosion. If she harnessed that, it could be deadly…beyond deadly.