Chapter 781: Restraint

Thepes recognized the wrong movement in the blood above Alex’s hand.

Each uneven pulse pressed against the next before it finished. The power tried to hold together, failed, then gathered along the same damaged path again.

He had felt something like that inside his own body.

When Lolth pulled through him, the strength he took from her had caught against the blood feeding his core. For a short time, both had moved as he wanted. Then her will had pulled the joined parts in different directions.

Thepes looked at the thin flesh covering his right arm. He still hadn’t recovered what she had taken.

"Stop pushing the clear part," he said.

Alex turned toward him.

Thepes tried to point with his left hand. The fingers were still short and crooked; growing them back had consumed blood he needed elsewhere. He settled for turning the unfinished wrist against the ice and paid for that with a sharp stab of pain.

"That one. Every time you follow it, the part beside it folds over."

Vesa watched the suspended blood, then him. Her four wings had gone still. He knew that look by now: she would take an answer from him, but she still hated what had been made around her Master’s artifact.

Alex held his hand still.

"Can you follow the other part?" he asked.

Thepes looked at the rune above his wrist rather than answering at once. He recognized parts of its old foundation, but Alex had changed how they joined. He had yet to find an opening.

They had spent the battle cutting him off from every source he could reach. Now Alex needed his help to make the connection work. Thepes wanted him to understand the difference.

Another broken sound reached the room as Vesa tried to hold the response clear.

Thepes looked away from the rune. There was someone behind that noise. Someone trying to push an answer through blood that would not carry it properly.

He remembered the light woman holding his arm while he tried to force more power through it. He had wanted to believe the next surge would belong to him. The harder he pulled, the more of himself she had been able to reach.

"Let me hear it," he said.

Vesa carried the faint response into the room.

The sound broke twice, leaving a breath and part of a word. Thepes couldn’t tell what the speaker had tried to say. He followed the uneven pulse instead.

It was not the same as the pattern around his core. The interruption came in a different place. But he knew the pressure of powers forced together without enough space to settle into one movement.

"I can hold that part long enough for the voice to cross," he said.

Mingyue stepped closer to him.

"How?"

"With my blood."

Alex looked at the restraint.

"A small amount. Your body stays where it is."

Thepes’s jaw tightened.

He could refuse and make them continue listening to the broken answer. He could enjoy the fact that they needed something from the person they had forced onto this floor.

Then the sound broke again, and the thought lost some of its appeal.

If there was a will behind it, the person should be able to speak. He had no wish to hear Alex decide what that silence meant while he could see why the answer failed.

"Open a gap by my wrist," he said.

Alex crouched beside him and changed two of the marks.

The ice around Thepes’s joints stayed in place. A narrow opening appeared beside his unfinished left wrist, with a second boundary waiting outside it.

Thepes parted the thin skin at his wrist and gathered a few drops of blood.

He felt the nearest rune press against them as they moved outward. Alex adjusted it rather than striking the blood away, letting the small amount pass into the space between them.

It was the first part of himself they had allowed beyond the restraint since the fight.

He wanted to force more through the gap.

Mingyue’s sword was already beside the opening. Alex watched his chest as well as the drops, ready to close the path if the pressure changed.

They were waiting for him to try. Before he could force the rest of himself through, Alex could close the opening again.

Thepes kept the rest of his blood inside his body and brought the small sample toward the pulse Vesa was holding.

The distorted response caught against the sample. He changed its movement to match the part that kept folding over. It hurt beneath his chest, a small pull against the damaged places around the artifact.

He held it anyway, and a woman’s voice reached the room.

"Can you—"

The sound broke.

Thepes tightened his hold and reached toward the part pulling away. He wanted it to come back to the place where he could keep it clear.

The woman cried out.

"My arm!"

Mingyue’s sword moved between his sample and the gathered blood above Alex’s palm.

Frost closed the short stretch of space, splitting the connection before Thepes could pull it back.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"You moved her," Mingyue said.

"I was holding the part you couldn’t."

Vesa kept the woman’s voice apart from his sample for a moment longer.

"Don’t do that again," the woman said. Her words were broken but clear enough now. "I didn’t move it. My hand just—"

The response weakened beneath another uneven pulse.

Thepes stared at the blood hanging inside Mingyue’s frost.

He had felt something answer when he pulled. In the battle, that had meant the body at the other end would follow.

He had used the same pressure here before thinking about what would move.

Alex closed the opening beside his wrist.

Thepes looked at him sharply.

"The sample stays outside," Alex said. "Nothing else comes through while we work out what happened."

Mingyue kept the two parts separated.

"She can hear us better," Vesa said. "But your movement reached her body with the voice."

Thepes wanted to tell them that they had asked for his blood. They had wanted a way through a pattern that refused theirs, then cut him off the moment he made something answer.

But the woman hadn’t cried out to answer him. He had pulled, and her arm had moved.

He remembered Lolth’s hand around his wrist, and his damaged shoulder tightened beneath the restraint.

He had hated feeling his own strength become the way someone else reached inside him.

The woman’s cry still rang in his ears. He had made her sound like him, and the realization was more offensive than Alex’s suspicion.