Page 92 of Heartbreak Prince

“Or better,” I suggest. “You could share it first with less well-known artificients. Give the knowledge to those with fewer advantages.”

“But as with everything else, it will migrate to the upper tiers and be guarded by those of the higher classes,” he counters.

“You speak as if you’re not one of them. Listen, holding onto the discoveries you’ve made won’t keep them from getting out into the world. Eventually someone else will figure out the same thing. At least this way you have some control over how the knowledge is dispersed.”

“I suppose you’re right.” He heads into the bathroom and returns with a clean cloth, which he tosses to me. “I could be persuaded to part with the designs I use to prevent accidental activation of lower glyphs. But I will not share my other secret. It’s too dangerous.”

“The secret of how you keep glyphs perpetually in effect.”

“That’s the one.”

“And you won’t tell me?” I pretend to focus on wiping his cum from my chest, but inwardly I’m rabid with curiosity.

He groans, dropping onto the other side of the bed and rolling towards me. He places a hand over my breast, a casual caress that startles me at first, but it thrills me, too. His thumb sweeps back and forth, every little stroke a lick of flame that sears right through the bandages to my skin.

“You’re killing me, sweetheart,” he murmurs.

“I’m just asking a question.”

“You’re going to hate the answer.”

“Tell me anyway.”

After a few more seconds of pondering, he says, “I kept them permanently active by incorporating a morpheme from one of the unknowable glyphs, along with a reverse stroke sequence.”

“Wait.” I turn to stare at him. “I know there are forbidden glyphs, but the unknowable ones—I thought they were mythical.”

“They’re very real. Several of them were created by an ancestor of mine on my mother’s side. I have one of his notebooks, half full of designs, and I’ve added my own. Those glyphs don’t appear anywhere else. They’re symbols entirely of my own invention. Without the foundation of his research, I couldn’t have developed them. They took some trial and error, but when you’re an artificient, you can practice on yourself.”

His smile is entirely mirthless, his eyes shadowed. I’m half afraid to press him for more information, but my instincts are screaming at me to make him tell me everything. His lower glyph set was doing something terrible to him—I just know it. And if that’s the case, I need to convince him not to apply them again.

“A perpetual glyph has to be fueled by something,” I say quietly. “Where were you drawing the energy?”

“From my own life force, much like a healer would. The morpheme I use is a derivation of the first death glyph ever devised, which shares several elements with a standard healing glyph. Once I apply the art to the surface of the nail and activate it with my blood, the glyph continues to function as I intended, indefinitely. For every hour it’s in effect, it sucks the equivalent of an hour’s worth of my life-force.”

“So you’re shortening your potential life span just to—what? To feel more pleasure in the present? To deaden your negative emotions and amplify the pleasant ones?

“To survive.” His eyes are icy caverns, filled with the long darkness of despair. “I told you I nearly killed myself—not once, but many times. There’s something twisted in my brain, Syth. Sometimes I sink so low that I feel like I’m choking on misery every fucking moment. It’s like living in a pit of black ooze, sucking it into my lungs with every breath. You don’t understand the horror of existing like that. To alleviate the agony, to soothe the pain and enjoy my existence, I would gladly shorten my life. I’d rather live briefly and colorfully than slog through a long, dark existence or suffer so much that I make a final, brutal end of it, long before my time.”

“But how do you know when ‘your time’ is? How do you even borrow from years that don’t exist yet? How does it work?”

“I’m not sure. Something to do with the fabric of the fates, I suppose. Perhaps a more methodical student of the craft would dig into it further and find those answers—but I only know that it does work. When my perpetual glyphs are active, if I focus on them, I can feel it. The slow drain of time.”

I can barely form words because my throat is tightening and my eyes sting with impending tears. “How is the slow drain of your life better than the darkness?”

“It’s better because I feel better. I don’t sense the drain unless I bend my mind to it. Otherwise, I’m fine. I’m charming and witty and carefree.”

And dying. Dying sooner so you can enjoy your youth. But I don’t speak those words to him. They reek of judgment, and I don’t want him to shut me out, so I choose my next question carefully. “When did the darkness begin?”

“I was around twelve, I think.”

“And you told no one?”

“I mentioned it to my sister Terith. She was sympathetic, but I don’t believe she really understood. The way I described my inner darkness seemed to scare her, and after that conversation she avoided such talks with me. So I hid it and I endured it, until I’d had enough training with glyph-craft to experiment with solutions.”

“You’re brilliant, you know,” I confess. “Your solution is genius. But it will end your life so much sooner. The people who love you want as much time with you as they can get.”

“The people who love me?” He vents a bitter laugh. “There are precious few of them left. And no, I don’t count my friends from Kyr. They like me because of my face, my money, and my willingness to try anything at least once. They do not love me. They enjoy the version of me that’s possible because of the glyphs I’ve designed. They wouldn’t like the real me beneath it all.”