There may also be some inaccuracies, since English is not my native language.
Essentially, TBATE is first translated from English into my native language - and in that process, some details are already altered to make it more understandable for us. Now I'm taking that adapted (and somewhat distorted) version, revising it, rewriting it, and then translating it back into English.
I hope you'll point out any mistakes in the text that I might have missed.
× × × × ×
Caera Denoir POV
I kept my face expressionless and my posture straight as I entered the classroom. After all, the others were supposed to see me as their colleague and nothing more.
So why, in Vritra's name, had I addressed Lucius by name, making it obvious that we already knew each other-and in that tone, no less?
The students around me were already whispering in surprise, trying to determine what kind of relationship might exist between us. My mind was already racing through the words I should say next, hoping to smother any rumors that might spread after that little scene.
I tried to make my way through the wave of spoiled teenagers, only to have my path blocked by a furious young woman with very short blond hair.
She performed an obviously well-practiced curtsy before speaking loudly enough for her classmates to hear.
"Lady Caera of Highblood Denoir, my mother and father asked me to pass along their best wishes to you and your Blood if we happened to meet at school."
"You must be the younger daughter of Highblood Frost," I said in confirmation.
"Enola," the blonde replied proudly. "I've admired you ever since your first ascents became known in high society. I hope that one day I'll become an Ascender as remarkable as you, Lady Caera."
I gave her a nod. "Then you should pay very close attention in this class."
The Frost girl and the students surrounding her frowned in confusion as I passed by. The girl to Enola's right, clinging to her with the servile devotion so typical of Blood Redcliff, hurriedly curtsied to me before following her lady out of the classroom.
The whispers only grew louder as the students tried to puzzle out what I had meant by my last words. But my own attention was fixed on the very tall assistant standing on the training ring with his arms crossed.
Lucius said nothing. His face, as always, remained frozen in a mask of calm, but it seemed to me that he was in unusually good spirits.
Had something good happened to him? I knew he had been happier ever since he formed the second layer of his aether core, but right now he seemed even more expressive than usual-so much so that for a fleeting moment I almost imagined that his strange heterochromatic eyes were burning.
"My apologies for the rudeness of my peers," came a voice, pulling me from my thoughts.
The speaker was a slender young man with dark skin and piercing eyes. Moving past several others, he extended a hand toward me.
"I am Valen of Highblood Ramsier. I've not yet had the pleasure, but-"
"I have business with your assistant," I cut him off, ignoring his outstretched hand, then swept a cold gaze over the crowd of students. "And as was already said… class is over."
The heir of Ramsier clenched his jaw before withdrawing his hand and departing with what dignity he could manage. The murmuring and whispering only intensified as the rest of the class followed his lead. When the last student left-the one who had not spoken a single word before then-his thin body hunched forward as he struggled up the stairs without once lifting his eyes from his boots.
I adjusted my blouse and began descending toward Lucius. Now that we were finally alone, my mind frantically searched for the right words to ease the tension that had formed between us.
With a quiet sigh, I stopped halfway down the stairs and finally said, "It's good to see you again."
Lucius gave the faintest nod. His long hair, bound in that strange hairstyle, shifted slightly, drawing all of my attention for a moment. Then his calm voice sounded right beside my ear, making goosebumps rise over my skin as he passed me and began quickly putting away the classroom materials.
"I'm glad to see you too."
Something in that soft, even tone-so completely unlike the stoically calm voice I had heard in the Relictombs-sent a tremor through my soul. With effort, I forced myself to steady myself and slowly turned toward him.
He had already put away all the teaching equipment and was heading toward the office door.
"I was just finishing up here. Want to take a walk? We need to talk about what happened."
I let out a slow breath, finally calming my wildly beating heart.
"That may be wise."
After he locked up the office, we left the building and slowly made our way toward Windcrest Hall, where we both paused for a moment.
"So…" I began after a minute of awkward silence. "Assistant Lucius, then?"
"Yes. It will be…"
"Practical?" I finished for him.
He nodded in agreement.
"It was a clever move," I said with a faint smile. "But where is Grey right now? Fighting somewhere in the Relictombs?"
He raised a brow meaningfully and tilted his head slightly to the side. For a moment our gazes met, and a familiar faint smile touched his lips.
"Where else would he be?"
I gave a soft huff. "And what exactly was I expecting?"
For a few moments, we walked in a comfortable silence while students rushed past us, but that calm was shattered by a voice from behind us.
"Lady Caera."
Lucius and I both stopped. I turned fully, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed that he had only slightly turned his head, his face already settling once more into that eternal mask of polite calm.
The speaker was a mage with hair styled far too smoothly and a very dramatic robe. I did not recognize him.
"Lady Caera," he repeated with a bow. His eyes never left me. "It is an honor to finally meet you. I am Janus of Blood Graham, a teacher-"
"Forgive me," I said in a polite tone that nevertheless made my refusal perfectly clear. "I'm afraid you've interrupted my conversation with Assistant Lucius. Perhaps we can speak later, at a more appropriate time."
With a brief nod, I turned away from the man who looked as though I had slapped him across the face. When I turned back to Lucius, hoping to see his reaction, the unsociable Ascender had already gone ahead. Though his stride remained characteristically slow and unhurried, his great height had allowed him to put quite a bit of distance between us.
"Idiot," I thought with a frown before quickening my pace to catch up.
I caught myself staring at him-at the sharp line of his profile, at the way the wind lifted his hair so that he looked almost like some asura in flowing robes from a child's tale.
Pff... Yes, yes. An asura who can control aether and enter the Relictombs. By Vritra's horns, I must have gone mad.
We walked in silence until I finally said, "I apologize if people start spreading rumors because they saw you with me."
"It's fine. Though, admittedly, I would prefer if a little less attention were directed at me, but…" Lucius paused for a moment, almost deliberately drawing it out.
Then his hands rose slowly to the back of his neck, and with an easy, almost lazy motion of his fingers, he let down his long hair. Dark strands mixed with white immediately spilled over his shoulders, sliding softly against the fabric of his clothes. At that very moment, sunlight fell across his face and hair, tracing the sharp lines of his cheekbones, his snow-white skin, and the faint curve of his lips. It was so unexpectedly beautiful that for a fraction of a second I forgot to breathe, mentally cursing both him and myself for such an absurd reaction.
"Thanks to my mother's genes," he continued calmly, as though completely unaware of the effect he had just produced, "I've had, let's say, far too much attention on me since the day I was born."
I gave a quiet laugh, trying to hide my own embarrassment behind a trace of mockery.
"Vain."
"You disagree?" he asked, and a shadow of that lazy, almost teasing smile flickered over his lips.
Lucius turned his head slightly and casually pointed toward a group of female students passing nearby. The girls, noticing that he was looking their way, immediately tried to act as though they were absorbed in conversation with one another, but their flushed cheeks gave them away completely. Several of them nervously tucked their hair behind their ears; one lowered her gaze too late, clearly realizing she had been caught staring outright. And yet, however much they tried to hide it, their eyes kept drifting back to him again and again. They seemed not to notice me at all.
I shook my head and answered with deliberate dryness, even though I knew he was mostly joking.
"I had no idea you were such a narcissist. And I assure you, the adoration of impressionable teenagers does not make you any more attractive in the eyes of everyone else."
He let out a soft huff, as though my answer had only amused him further. Then he leaned slightly closer, his lazy smile growing just a little more distinct. For one brief moment, I thought he was about to say something especially cutting, but instead his gaze drifted across my face, as though he had noticed something amusing-or worth noting. Yet he said nothing. He merely straightened and nodded toward something else.
Following the gesture, I saw a group of older women-clearly other professors-well-groomed, elegantly dressed ladies in their forties or perhaps a little older. They stood by the path, watching us with no effort whatsoever to conceal their interest. One of them, her hand lightly against her cheek, blinked at Lucius as though he were the hero of some cheap romantic ballad. Another arched her back just slightly and smiled with that particular, languid expression a woman uses only when she wants to be noticed. The third did not even bother pretending she was looking anywhere else.
I slowly turned my gaze back to Lucius, who spread his hands in an innocent gesture. I could only sigh faintly.
For several moments, we walked in silence. The noise of the school gradually receded, dissolving into the rustle of the wind and the muted voices of students moving along the paths. I kept my eyes fixed ahead, but my thoughts had already drifted somewhere else entirely. The words I wanted to say felt both inappropriate and far too important to leave unsaid.
At last, I slowly turned to him and, after a pause, began, "About your mother…"
The words caught in my throat.
He turned his head toward me, and the instant I met his eyes-
For one terrible, endless moment, they ceased to be the eyes I knew.
Their usual color vanished. Even the soft, hidden mockery that so often lived in his gaze disappeared. Instead, the eyes that looked at me were blacker than a starless night, cold, motionless, almost inhuman. There was no irritation in them, no pain, not even any open threat-only a dead, empty, terrifying detachment that sent a sheet of ice down my spine.
It was not the first time I had seen him like that.
It lasted no longer than a single heartbeat, yet it felt to me as though several long minutes had passed, during which I could neither breathe nor look away.
Then he blinked.
And it was gone.
His eyes became normal again. His face returned to that calm, almost indifferent expression, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet and level, as though nothing had happened.
"I don't want to talk about that."
His tone was perfectly calm, but that very calmness was what made me finally fall silent.
We continued walking side by side, and outwardly nothing had changed. The wind still stirred his loose hair. Students still laughed somewhere ahead. Sunlight still fell across the path in golden patches. And yet, inside me, something had shifted, and I could almost physically feel how the distance that had only been shrinking until now had, in the span of those few words, opened up between us again.
Even after several more minutes of walking, I could not stop thinking about the color of his eyes.
I had seen something like that before-in the White Bone Zone, in that instant when he first activated that strange relic. Back then I had not had time to fully process what I had seen, telling myself I had imagined it, that the fault lay in the tension, the exhaustion, the warped aether around us. But if before there had still been room for guesses, uncertainty, and cautious speculation, now I was almost completely certain of one thing:
Now I knew exactly whom he was searching for, and that realization-along with the pain hidden deep within his eyes-made me feel sick.
When we finally reached Windcrest Hall, I followed Lucius into his room. When he opened the door for me and I looked inside, my mood noticeably improved, and I found myself smiling despite everything.
He raised a brow and glanced around the room. "What?"
"Sorry," I said, still suppressing a small smile. "It's just… everything here is exactly as I imagined it would be. Perfectly sterile, impeccably ordered, every single thing in its place. Though I admit, the flowers surprised me."
The mask of his eternal calm cracked for a moment. A brief but bright smile appeared on Lucius's face, reminding me of the time we had spent together in the Relictombs with the Shadow Claw Clan.
"A childhood habit," he replied, brushing a finger along the petals of a strange red flower whose insides seemed to glow faintly with patterns.
I nodded softly, choosing not to pursue the subject, and leaned toward the Sovereigns' Spore board. Reading the inscription, I ran my fingers across one of the carved red stone pieces.
"I like the red and gray Gerkross pieces," I remarked absently. "They're much nicer than my plain black-and-white ones."
Moving away from the window, Lucius passed me and lowered himself onto the sofa. He laced his hands together and rested them between his knees, settling into that habitually composed, almost deliberately calm posture of his.
"We both know your being here isn't accidental," he said, abrupt as thunder.
I was silent for a couple of seconds, more from the sharpness of it than from surprise. I had expected this conversation.
"It isn't," I admitted, stepping closer to another strange flower whose petals pulsed in a slow rhythm with bluish lights. "It isn't accidental."
I waited for him to say more-to ask questions, to tell me to leave, or something else entirely—but he only remained silent, slowly shaking his head in some odd, measured rhythm.
"Do you intend to do what the Denoirs and that mysterious mentor of Scythe asked of you?" he said at last.
I felt blood rush to my face. That was exactly what worried me most: even after everything we had been through together…
"If you think I'm going to spy on you or Grey, even after I admitted that I was sent to do exactly that, then one of us does not deserve to be entrusted with shaping the minds of young Alacryans-and I can't say for certain which one."
"Then why are you really here?" he asked in that same calm tone.
The question should not have caught me off guard, and yet I was still trying to form an answer.
The truth was that I could not shake the feeling that Lucius-or Grey-somehow held the key to uncovering the mysteries of the Relictombs. Both of them were enigmas, people unlike anyone I had ever met before.
And though I kept telling myself, over and over, that I was driven only by interest, one part of me understood the truth too clearly: what I felt toward Lucius was slowly becoming something more than mere curiosity.
I drew in a slow breath.
"Because I trust you," I said at last. "There are not many people in this life about whom I could say that. But I trust you. And I still hope that one day I might earn your trust in return."
At that, he very slowly turned his head and looked me directly in the eyes.
But unlike the earlier moment, nothing in him wavered.
Not his face, not his gaze, not even his breathing betrayed the slightest excess emotion. Everything about him remained under perfect control-so much so that goosebumps rose along my spine. I had expected something, anything: the faintest widening of his pupils, some shadow of feeling, a slight furrow between his brows, any sign at all that my words had struck him.
But there was nothing.
His eyes remained exactly as they had been the day we first met: polite, pleasant to look at, calm-and infinitely distant. As though we had barely known each other. As though there had never been anything more between us… and that hurt more deeply than I wanted to admit.
"All right," he said quietly, without looking away. "Reliable people are rare. And I would like to trust you as well. We'll let the Denoirs continue believing you're doing what they want. Send your reports. Tell them whatever you think necessary. I'm sure Grey's thoughts on the matter are more or less the same."
I was the first to look away from his calm, lake-smooth gaze.
"What? You're serious?"
He gave a faint nod and slowly rose from the sofa. With a lazy motion, he rolled his shoulders, then cracked his neck twice. In the simplicity of that almost domestic setting, standing so close to him, I only now truly realized how much taller he was than I was. I had to tilt my head back every time I wanted to meet his eyes, because even though I was considered tall for a woman, standing beside him, I barely reached his shoulder.
Lucius bent down until his face was level with mine. His eyes lit with that familiar inner glow that made my breath falter every time I saw it.
"Well then, now that we've discussed what happened and agreed to trust each other…" he murmured, and the faintest smile touched his lips. "Would you like to help me steal a dead relic?"
Lucius Zogratis POV
"You got it?" I asked when Caera pushed back the hood of her cloak, closed the door behind her, and stepped into the room.
Her damp blue hair clung to her temples and neck, and water still dripped from her clothes, quickly gathering into a small puddle near the threshold. Despite the cold rain and the late hour, her eyes were alive with a bright, almost mischievous gleam.
"Of course," she said confidently, that same playful spark dancing in her eyes.
With a flick of her hand, she activated her spatial ring and pulled out a fist-sized sphere the color of tin. Its metallic surface was covered in marks, grooves, and cracks, making it resemble a round metallic sponge.
Caera held it out, and I carefully accepted the sphere from her hands.
"It's heavy," I commented, tossing it up and down lightly in one hand to feel the weight.
Meanwhile, Caera unfastened her soaked cloak and hung it by the door.
"I don't think that will affect the switch," she said, running a hand through her wet hair. "I didn't notice any runes carved into the pedestal that would suggest it's sensitive to weight. Did you see anything like that?"
"No," I replied, continuing to examine the relic. "You're right about that. And by the time anyone notices the substitution…"
"Professor Grey, Assistant Lucius, and Assistant Denoir will have long since left Central Academy," Caera finished for me.
I smirked.
Before this, we had gone over the strengths of each dead relic together-or at least everything we had managed to learn about them from books, archives, and Caera's careful questioning of the Relictombs vault's keeper. Since the original story never described what other artifacts were kept there, we had to spend some time on it, but in the end we settled on the one that granted access to the Relictombs.
After discussing what would be required for the theft, we ultimately chose a single dead relic that needed to be "liberated" from the vault.
According to the keeper, the surface full of marks had not been that way when the relic was made, but rather because it had worn down; when the relic was first discovered, it had been a flawless, perfect silver sphere, but once it was removed from the Relictombs, it rapidly deteriorated. The researchers had assumed it was some kind of tool-possibly something used in the creation of the Relictombs themselves-and that its sudden degradation had been a kind of safeguard meant to prevent the secrets of the ancient mages from being uncovered. Beyond that, however, the keeper could provide Caera with no further information.
And the moment everything aligned, I chose that relic without hesitation.
Arthur returned that same evening-slightly battered, tired, but, strangely enough, in rather good spirits. And now the three of us sat in my room, discussing the best way to carry this through.
"And you're sure the keeper…" Arthur began, still eyeing the fake relic in my hands with visible doubt.
"For Highbloods, it's hardly uncommon to possess counterfeit dead relics for the sake of impressing their friends… and rivals," Caera replied evenly, pointing at the metal sphere. "She will keep quiet. Because in a matter like this, having too loose a tongue would most likely get her killed."
"And still, if she talks…"
Caera brushed his concern aside with visible irritation. "As you know, I was disguised and passed myself off as a representative of another Blood. So even if she says something, it won't lead to any complications."
A small smile tugged at my lips as a better idea began to take shape in my mind.
"I have a better one."
The mischievous gleam immediately returned to Caera's eyes. "Oh? And what exactly did you come up with?"
I raised the sphere slightly higher, continuing to roll it thoughtfully between my fingers. "The simplest possible method. We only need to get within roughly three hundred meters of the vault."
Understanding appeared on their faces almost at once.
Caera was the first to frown.
"But doesn't your teleportation rune prevent you from moving objects through it? I understand that you can steal the relic, but how exactly do you intend to replace it with this one?" she asked, indicating the sphere in my hand before casting Arthur a skeptical glance. "Can you do something like that?"
"No," Arthur answered, without taking his eyes off me. "Are you sure you can?"
I nodded slightly and answered in a confident tone, "More than sure. I practiced for some time."
"Let's go," Arthur said. "The vault should already be closed by now."
The weather was miserable. Rain fell from the sky, and the occasional flash of lightning illuminated the filthy university district. The weather suited us; it meant there would be far fewer people outside.
The rectangular outer hall ran around the large central chamber where the dead relics and other more valuable items were displayed. While the front chamber remained open-though guarded-the Relictory itself was sealed and locked during off-hours.
As we walked through the rain, I activated God Step several times, trying to use spatium to locate the target relic inside the vault. The world split apart before me into its familiar countless threads and knots of space, that strange rope-like structure in which distance lost its ordinary meaning and became merely a question of understanding.
Two more steps-and I finally entered the right zone.
I stopped abruptly.
Caera, walking behind me, bumped quietly into my back.
"Ow," she muttered under her breath, rubbing her nose. "Why did you stop so suddenly?.. Mm? Did you finally feel the connection?"
I simply nodded without speaking, tearing my gaze away from the complex weave of spatium and shifting it to my companions.
"Cover me. It won't take long, but the light from using the ability might attract attention."
Arthur and Caera both turned serious at once and gave silent nods.
I lowered myself directly onto the wet ground, paying no attention to the cold or the mud. Rain immediately began running down my hair, my neck, and unpleasantly under my collar. Raising my hands, palms up, I focused, gathering my thoughts into a single point. Space obediently shuddered-and in my right palm, the familiar metal sphere appeared.
I exhaled slowly.
Then I activated my rank-10 intellect at full power.
At once, my thoughts began branching, splitting, and unfolding in every direction simultaneously until their number reached forty parallel streams. Each worked separately, and yet all of them moved in perfect harmony, like the parts of a single mechanism. Activating God Step again, I immersed myself in the world of spatium and, absorbing information from its countless threads of space, quickly found what I needed. The relic lay exactly two hundred and seventy-nine meters from where I sat.
Then I activated the godrune of Theft.
Transparent hands overlaid themselves upon the pathways of the world of spatium, as though sinking into the very fabric of space. Everything happened too quickly for an ordinary mind to fully comprehend. I felt the invisible hand reach the target, close around the relic, and already begin carrying it toward me along the aetheric path. In that same instant, the fake relic vanished from my own hands and appeared upon the pedestal, taking the place of the artifact that had just been stolen.
And almost immediately, I felt it.
The fake sped away along the aetheric path to its assigned place, while in my hand, with a faint crackle of aether like a distant roll of thunder, the original relic appeared. It was astonishingly light, almost weightless-like a feather-especially compared to the heavy tin copy I had held only a moment before.
Quickly tucking the relic into my inventory, I listened as the guards of the Relictory began to converge in a rush, the alarm system having triggered the moment the relic was lifted from the pedestal, even for a second.
Without wasting time, Arthur and I met each other's eyes and exchanged a nod. With one swift motion, I pulled Caera close and activated God Step twice in rapid succession. First I appeared roughly a hundred meters from my room, and literally half a second later, I was already standing inside it.
I released my grip on Caera's waist, and she awkwardly disentangled herself from me and exhaled sharply.
Caera Denoir POV
The moment Lucius let go of my waist, he immediately unclasped his luxurious black cloak and tossed it into the corner, then began removing his soaked robe. Though I knew I ought to avert my eyes out of courtesy, my attention fixed instead on the runes on his back-
-and on his back itself.
Realizing I was staring, I forcibly looked away, though the image of his broad back, with droplets of water slowly sliding down it, still hovered before my eyes.
"Gulp… So? Are you going to let me hold that relic?" I asked, swallowing the saliva that had risen in my throat because of that… gulp… sight.
Something touched my shoulder in answer. Without turning, I took the sphere. It was light, nearly weightless.
"So the weight wasn't a problem after all?"
"It's resting a little more sunken into the cushion than the original did, but I don't think anyone will notice, since the relic wasn't there for long," Lucius's voice drifted out from his bedroom.
I sat down and turned the sphere over in my hands while waiting for him to return. When he did, he was dressed in black trousers and a blue tunic embroidered in white. The outfit suited him; against it, his strange hair and eyes seemed even more vivid.
At that same moment, Grey appeared in the room, shaking water from his hood and quickly removing his shoes under Lucius's stern look.
Nodding to Grey, I tossed the dead relic to Lucius, and he caught it in midair.
"Hurry up. I'm dying to see what this thing can do."
"Yes, madam," he muttered, holding the sphere in one hand.
Regis, in his puppy form, emerged from Grey's side and leapt onto the sofa beside me. I scratched him behind the head when he leaned against me.
Lucius focused on the sphere. He must have activated his aether rune, because sparkling amethyst particles began dancing along his arm toward the relic. Once they reached it, the motes slid across the polished silver surface and vanished into the cracks and holes.
As the wear and damage began to disappear, the marks filled in, the wrinkles smoothed away, and the dull gray surface cleared. Then the flow of particles narrowed to a thread, then finally stopped, and the last speck of amethyst vanished.
Lucius now held a perfectly smooth sphere, turning it so that it caught the light and gleamed like a silver moon. As it rotated, I noticed a line dividing the upper and lower halves of the sphere, so thin it was almost invisible. Lucius must have noticed it too, because he took one half in each hand and twisted slightly.
The relic split apart.
"Whoa," Regis said quietly.
Inside the sphere was an organic framework holding a crystal that cast pink light across the entire room. The crystal shed a fine dust that drifted in the air, floating aimlessly around Lucius's hand.
"What is that?" I asked, breathless with excitement.
As his attention to the crystal sharpened, it shifted slightly, and he let the empty half of the relic fall. At once, the faintly glowing crystal flared with bright violet light.
"What the hell-" Grey started, just as half the sphere slipped from Lucius's fingers and hit the floor.
My hand flew to my mouth, and we stared in stunned silence as the crystal began to break apart before our eyes. A cloud of glowing pink particles rose from it and drifted above the relic half, each grain carrying a fraction of the crystal's light. When the last fragment vanished, the cloud released a flash of shimmering light so bright it made my head swim, and I forced myself to look away.
Regis winced, lifting a paw to shield his eyes. "I'm pretty sure this is exactly how demon lords get summoned!"
Peeking from the corner of my eye to make sure the flare had passed, I gasped.
"By Vritra's horns…"
The cloud dissolved, becoming an opaque oval floating in the air, its surface gleaming with an oily sheen and radiating a faint violet glow. Lucius and Grey exchanged a quick look, and for just an instant I thought I saw some silent confirmation and certainty in Grey's eyes.
"It must be an ascension portal," I said, sinking deeper into the sofa. "But one that can be activated anywhere… that means…"
"We can enter the Relictombs whenever we want," Grey finished, staring from the portal to Lucius.
They exchanged another serious glance, then Grey turned fully toward the portal.
"Caera, wait here."
I had barely begun to rise from my seat when Lucius's figure silently dissolved into the portal. I stood up quickly, nearly knocking Regis off the sofa.
"Wait… you could at least take me with you, and is it even sensible to go in there without any investigation or testing at all?"
"This is the test," Grey said, his eyes still fixed on the shining doorway through which Lucius had disappeared.
I opened my mouth to argue, but all that came out was a frustrated huff.
"Fine. I'll stay alert in case some girl decides to break into Lucius's room in the middle of the night and finds a glowing portal in the middle of it."
He looked at me with obvious amusement.
"You have no idea how much you're helping by doing that. Come on, Regis."
The tiny shadow wolf looked at me, spread his paws in an almost helpless gesture, and then obeyed.
Something in Grey's expression told me I had been right-that women really had tried to get into Lucius's room before.
"That's none of my business," I told myself.
Soon after Grey left, the door hovering above the opened relic began to fade; the oily opaque surface turned transparent, like mist vanishing from a mirror. Within seconds, only a ghostly outline remained in the middle of the room.
I stepped closer to the inactive portal and cautiously reached toward it. When my fingers touched the transparent oval, they passed straight through, and I felt nothing. I waved my hand from side to side, but the movement changed nothing about its shape.
So that's how it works.