"Over the last year, ever since Thomas was in Eudae and we were trying so hard to get him back, I've been amassing texts. Lots of them are ancient, books of legend and myth that the world thinks are just legend and myth. Many obscure religious texts. Among the books I've been procuring, there's one called the Dai Codex. In it, I found references to elium. What it is. How it works."

"How to get it out of me?" Metallic desperation coated the back of her tongue at the question.

He didn't answer for a moment. "I'm still working on that one, Claire."

She closed her eyes in defeat.

"But we do know more about elium, so we're getting closer."

She opened her eyes. "It's a weapon. I know that much. Adam reached in and sort of… tasted it and it's made of elemental Eudae."

"Demon magick."

"Yes."

"It is a weapon. Claire, you're carrying a magickal weapon big enough to destroy all the magick on Earth and probably Eudae, too, if it's used toward that end. It can kill, as well, render death to thousands if employed with that aim."

She touched the bone between her breasts—over the seat of her magick—with shaking fingertips. On some level, she'd already known that. The heaviness of it weighed her down inside. Death. Destruction. All hiding within her. Resonating like a tuning fork to the energies of the Atrika.

Like to like.

"It's the equivalent of a super-charged EMP blast," he continued. "Only in this case it would render all elemental magick hit by it null. It would also affect all the elements within the strike radius in a negative way—earth, air, water, and fire. The world would be plunged into utter chaos if the elium was ever fully deployed."

"You make it sound like I'm carrying a nuclear bomb."

"You are. Essentially for witches and daaeman, you are carrying a nuclear bomb. I expect that the Ytrayi probably used the elium as a threat against the Atrika. Rue probably carried it himself. But Rue probably also understood that while the Ytrayi wouldn't use the elium as anything other than a way to press the Atrika into certain behavior, the Atrika wouldn't hesitate to deploy it in order to wrest control of Eudae from their enemies."

"So when they broke into the palace, he panicked and passed it to me."

There was a long pause that made Claire's stomach tighten.

"A normal witch—a normal aeamon—wouldn't be able to carry the elium, Claire. I wonder how much of his tweaking of your magick over the years was in preparation for just such an event." He drew a long, slow breath. "I also wonder if he imbued you knowing that no one, not even the Atrika, would be able to extract it."

Her hand tightened on the phone. Had Rue done that? Had he planned since the day he'd made her handmaiden at the tender age of eight to give her the elium in the case of an Atrika uprising? Had he allowed her to sleep next to him all those years with such cold-hearted intentions?