Suddenly, the one Menehem had touched shot into the air, towering over the chemist. Grass sizzled, and the sylph shrieked so loud and high that Sam and I both covered our ears.
Other sylph awoke, equally enraged. Smoke billowed where they burned the grass. They converged on Menehem and—
And they seemed to think about it. Something passed among the sylph. Communication? I couldn’t tell. It was so fast, and they were still keening….
At once, all dozen sylph fled the area, leaving patches of scorched earth behind. Menehem slumped to the ground, an unused sylph egg rolling from his hand. He’d almost been killed.
He’d almost been burned alive, but the sylph decided not to do it.
“What…” I stared at the screen until Menehem soberly got up to declare this portion of the experiment finished. The video stopped. “Did he even realize the sylph chose not to kill him?”
“Hard to say with Menehem.” Sam switched to the next video but didn’t play it yet. “It didn’t last very long, what he did to the sylph. A few minutes at best.”
I checked one of Menehem’s diaries. “This says the initial dose was small. He eventually increased the doses, but they grew resistant.”
Sam nodded. “And the dose he gave to Janan?”
Oh. If it affected both sylph and Janan the same way, then it was logical to assume Janan would develop a tolerance, too. I checked Menehem’s notes, flipping several pages toward the end. “It was a massive dose. At least a hundred times larger than the biggest dose ever given to the sylph.”
“So what he did during Templedark won’t work again.”
I shook my head. “No, looking at the logs, the tolerance grew quickly and exponentially in sylph. If anything were to affect Janan again, it would have to be—I can’t even comprehend. There’d have to be a lot of it, and it would take months to make, even with that machine in the back doing all the work. The delivery would have to be unbelievably enormous.”
“Yeah.” Sam considered for a moment, then touched my wrist. “At least there’s something good in this.”
Was it bad? I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, let alone whether it was good or bad.
“Should anyone accuse you of wanting to attempt another Templedark, we have proof it isn’t possible.”
Newsouls were supposed to be impossible, yet I’d been born.
Getting into the temple should have been impossible, yet I’d been inside.
Poisoning Janan again wasn’t impossible. With a bigger dose and a bigger delivery system, it could be done. I just didn’t know how. Or whether I should.
Inside the temple, Meuric had hinted about something horrible happening on Soul Night: the spring equinox of the Year of Souls. That threat nipped at my thoughts.
“We still can’t tell anyone about the poison,” I said. “I don’t want the Council—or anyone—to know we came here and looked. They’ll assume the wrong thing. They’ll assume I’m like Menehem, and I’m not.”
“I know.” Sam lurched up from the couch and paced the room, shoulders and back stiff.
After a while of watching him walk ditches in the floor, I asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” He stopped and sighed. “No. Sorry.”
Sorry for saying yes when he didn’t mean it? Or sorry that he wasn’t okay? I waited for him to go on.
“I’ve never gotten involved in disputes. I don’t like them. Even in the beginning, I stayed away from conflict.” Emotions shifted over his face, and he looked at me. “I’m on your side, Ana. Every time. Before, it was easy to stay out because I didn’t care. I just made music, and no one expected anything more from me. But with you, I do care.”
And by being with me, the controversial newsoul, his life had changed. What he’d been before—notable for only his music—was gone. Now he was notable for living with, and frequently kissing, the newsoul, and that forced him to take a side. Mine.
“I’m on your side,” he said again. “But I have to admit the idea of being in something is frightening.”
I pushed my notebooks to the sofa and crossed the floor to Sam. His cheeks were warm beneath my palms, and stubble scraped my skin. I wanted to—something. Thank him. Reassure him. Make him know how much I appreciated him and cared about him. Express everything I felt, but nothing that found its way to my tongue felt big enough. So I brushed a kiss over his mouth and stayed silent. His hands tightened on my hips.
Moments spiraled between us, ripe with words unsaid, until finally I pulled away and gathered up my notebooks to work at the table. He’d relaxed a little; that was what I’d wanted.
“What are the sylph?” A book slid from my pile and hit the floor with a loud slap.
“Shadows?” Sam bent and retrieved the book smoothly, and sat across the table from me. “Fire? I’m not sure what you’re asking. They’re just sylph.”
“But they’re—” I dropped to the chair. “Are they like people? Do they think? Have emotions? Societies?” They seemed like creatures with reason in the videos we’d just watched. They’d made choices.
Choices I didn’t understand.
“I don’t know.” Sam eyed me askance. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m not sure. I mean, we know centaurs live in communities, right? They have language, traditions, and hierarchy. They go on hunts together.”
He nodded.
“And trolls? They’re the same?”
“Different, but yes. They live in communities, too.”
“What about dragons?” I didn’t want to ask him about dragons, all things considered, but I was chasing a point. An idea. A question.
“From what we’ve been able to tell, yes. And rocs nest with a mate and care for their chicks until they’re old enough, like eagles do. Unicorns live in herds. They’re not human, none of them, but they do seem to be more.” He studied me with those dark eyes. “You’re trying to figure out sylph.”
“Aren’t you?” I glanced out the window, where ranks of sylph still guarded the building. “We know so much about everything else surrounding Range, but not sylph. We see them in swarms sometimes, or off by themselves, but we don’t know if they stay with the same group or just join up with any other sylph they meet. We don’t know if they eat, how they think, whether they reproduce. Are there a limited number? We haven’t been able to kill them, but what about other creatures? Centaurs are intelligent. Can they kill sylph?”
Sam just stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “I don’t know. Sylph are all over the world, rather than generally keeping to one region, like we do, or dragons or centaurs or trolls.”
“There are bears and flies all over the world, too, but sylph aren’t like bears or flies.”
“No,” he agreed. “They’re much different.”
“But how? Please tell me you at least understand the questions I’m asking, even if you don’t know the answers.”
“Of course.” Sam frowned, eyebrows drawing together to carve the thinking line. “Why wouldn’t I understand your questions?”
Lightning struck inside my chest. He couldn’t even remember that sometimes he didn’t. It was okay, though. Most people couldn’t remember things about the temple, or Janan, or understand why I asked so many questions. I said gently, “What’s inside the temple, Sam?”