The stimulant in William's tea kicked in halfway through his second cup and Pete's suggestion, sending him from half-asleep to wide-awake in the space of a heartbeat. He took a few breaths while his heart rate settled and tried not to twitch.
"So we do both," he said, glancing over at Mikey. "Those who are suited to developing a cure should focus on that, and the rest can comb through the appropriate books looking for possible causes. We have one already. Dallon and I don't know what that bindrune does yet, and the timeline fits."
They had two, actually, but William had panicked about it enough last week; he wasn't going to bring it up unless someone else did first. The charm-web had been full of threats they hadn't identified before it all came crashing down around them, and William's shielding had gotten erratic enough at the end, when he had a knife stuck between his ribs and burning timbers falling overhead, that something could have gotten out. That would have been his first guess, actually, if he'd been one of the ones to come down ill. There had been charm-work on the handle of that knife, and whatever it was meant to do, it had definitely entered his bloodstream.