Link here to a general overview of the novel
Prologue, Chpt 1, Chpt 2, Chpt 3, Chpt 4, Chpt 5, Chpt 6, Chpt 7, Chpt 8, Chpt 9, Chpt 10, Chpt 11, Chpt 12, Chpt 13, Chpt 14, Chpt 15, Chpt 16, Chpt 17, Chpt 18, Chpt 19, Chpt 20, Chpt 21, Chpt 22, Chpt 23, Chpt 24, Chpt 25, Chpt 26, Chpt 27, Chpt 28, Chpt 29, Chpt 30
Chapter Thirty-one
Sebastian
“Why won’t you talk to him?” Nuée’s going on again. She’s been at it forever, since Daav finally left me alone from where he’d hovered since I woke. I’m not sure why she bothers. “Daav looks like a kicked puppy,” she continues.
Oh, this is the guilt trip route. But I know about puppies. They die in the end, and that one doesn’t care enough to try to survive.
“If you won’t come out of the room for Daav, then come out for Tuck. He’s only been here for two bells and he’s scared. You need to meet him, help reassure him. You did it, you saved your brother.”
But I didn’t save him. The rest of them did, retrieving him from the house where he’d been locked in. And he doesn’t know me. They’ll take care of him fine, he doesn’t need me.
“This is getting old, Seb, you not talking. I’m sorry, babe. I know you went through a lot and you’re entitled to take some time, but we’re worried.”
Bullshit. Plus, it’s better here in the dark. Maybe not the actual dark, as Hanna stormed into the bedroom earlier after Daav left and pulled the curtains and shades down from the windows, called me a selfish punk, and then stormed out after telling me that Daav doesn’t deserve this silent treatment. Guess she’s all in on Daav now that he’s no longer her mortal enemy. But no matter the damned sunshine pouring into the room, it’s still the dark. My glorious barbed shadow and it wraps me well. Its cold and heavy weight is easy to face.
“Fine. Be a whiny bitch,” she says. Rich, since I haven’t said a thing. Guess the bell-long, one-sided conversation finally gets to her.
I turn over on the bed away from her, face the wall and stare it down. At least it doesn’t yammer on. And I’m tired. I’m sorry they’re worried, but I can’t do it. Don’t want to. The dark is nice. I’ll curl up with it. Sleep.
She finally gets the hint and leaves, slamming the door behind her. No wonder she and Hanna get along well.
I’m not sure how much later, or if I’ve slept or not, but the door creaks open again. Is she back? Better than if Daav comes again to try to talk.
The mattress shifts as a body sits on the edge. Whoever it is stays silent for a while.
“I really dislike sharing a house with so many people insisting on drama,” Colleen finally pronounces. “Nuée storming around hardly surprises me, but she’s infected Hanna.”
I cringe at how close her thought is to the one I just had.
“Poor Ravel’s upset he can’t make Nuée feel better,” she says. “Christopher’s sulking mostly for the same reason, and Pike’s getting all barky thinking he can get everyone under control.” She hums. “I’d blame it all on distress over your dire experience and refusal to speak, but I think they’re freaked out about the way Daav pulled everyone into their Verse when he did his big thing saving you. Bethany and Esther are having a field day speculating about that bit of magic, so at least they’re happy.”
She’s silent again. Then a long sigh.
“You’re really going to punish him longer? He’s been on the verge of losing it since the moment he understood you were gone and the circumstances. He needs your forgiveness.”
I’m not punishing him, I’m being realistic. But the mystery of Colleen nudges at me, ruffling awake the barest of curiosity about why she cares so much.
“Really this act is your own version of dramatics,” she continues. “You’ve spent a lifetime in love with that man, and you’ll have me believe you’re willing to walk away?” She snorts. “This is the wrong time to try to prove a point. I understand his yo-yo behavior is exhausting, but why don’t you simply spank him already and get on with it. He’ll be thrilled to his toes with the chance for penance.”
What the fuck? What right does she have making pronouncements? She knows nothing about us, about me. It’s enough to have me turning over to face her. Or maybe her dark calls to my own.
“You’re not my friend, Colleen.” My voice croaks with its first rusty use. “After years of shitting on Frederick and this group, you’re the last person to give me advice. I get you’re trying to redeem yourself now that you’re alone, with your evil friend Victor dead and your plaything leaving your abuse behind, but go sell it somewhere else. You’re the poster child for twisted relationships, so no thank you.”
“It’s easy then, to throw him away?”
My chest constricts, knots painfully. Funny how I count on my dark, cold numbness to let me slide away. But still it hurts. Ah lovely pain, okay, you’re not leaving soon.
Colleen’s accusation is wasted. I understand all too well what I’m worth, to my parents, to Daav. Why bother trying?
“He’s just as willing to do the same to me.” She doesn’t deserve my truth, and I’m not sure why I give it to her. Fuck, I sound like a petulant child.
“And that makes it right? Tit for tat? Like some kid in a school yard fight sticking his tongue out with a ‘I know you are, but what am I?’ You’re better than this.”
Another scarily similar thought to mine. We’re too much alike, Colleen and me. Both hopelessly broken.
She actually makes a tsking sound then, the bitch. “You’ve spent your life caring deeply for others, and him most of all. Don’t deny your basic identity.”
“You think you know me. What? Did Victor talk to you about his boys?”
That last word is a bitter parody as it shoots from my mouth.
“I have eyes, and despite what you think of me, a heart. Plus, I know something about the cost of bad decisions. I may be a bitch, but that doesn’t mean I’m always wrong.”
This is pointless. I turn my back to her again. She’ll leave if I ignore her long enough. They all do. The cold barbs run their points down my skin. She huffs at my action, then lets out a sigh.
“Astrid and Asher, the names of our Cohort mates who died years back.”
I freeze. None of the Mentors ever talk about the two they lost. Just like we barely mention Trina.
“Twins. Rare that both had magic and were kept together by the Conclave. They placed them in separate Mentor households, although within the same Cohort. Supposedly an experiment to compare how their magic levels grew each following different paths.”
And then I hear Colleen’s breathless laugh.
“Sweet Verse, they were spectacular. And just like the love affairs your own Cohort nurtured, Victor and I fell in love with them long before we finished growing up. Desperately in love. They were…light and joy. Laughter was their natural language. And tenderly sweet.”
Her voice softens into a cloud of lovely and longing as she tells me.
“Since they refused to be separated any of the time they were allowed outside their different Mentors’ homes, the four of us were together constantly. Even in sex they wouldn’t be apart. Not because they wanted to fuck each other, there was no desire there, they simply couldn’t stand not to share any intense, emotional experience. So the four of us became one unit, we were everything to one another.”
Now my silence is because I’m afraid to speak, afraid to break the spell of her story. This can’t end well.
“We hid the unusual relationship because as relatively progressive as the Conclave has been through time, even this was beyond their tolerance back then. And not even justified by peculiarities of a Mentor’s path, just the plain old love and lust of youth.
Then she laughs again, but this time it’s jagged.
“But Astrid’s Mentor figured it out, found us one night when Victor had goaded us into taking a risk to be together at her home when he thought we’d have the house to ourselves. We were nineteen.
“Her Mentor reported us, and the Conclave exploded with the scandal. It forced Asher into a new Cohort, one whose eighth member had died in an automobile accident the year previous. He and his sister were forbidden to interact with one another. A month after that they ran away, made it to the Praly border before being caught. Victor and I had tried to help them with the escape, as much as it hurt to lose them. They were not meant to be apart. But a mage is a valuable resource and the Conclave tracks us well. We weren’t clever enough.”
Colleen’s words are a tremble as they lurch from her. I’ve never heard her this vulnerable.
“They were locked away separately for months, the Conclave believing they would come to their senses, tire of the confinement and agree to behave. Victor and I hated every moment because they suffered. We fought with each other about the situation, what we could do about it. Visiting them was like spending time with broken, fractured automatons. We finally agreed that if we arranged a chance for them to see one another it would help. So we did.”
She pauses again, and I hold my breath.
“We smuggled Astrid into Asher’s cell. I wanted to stay, but they begged us for alone time. Victor agreed, argued their case and I ultimately caved. We could only risk a bell of time and then we came back to retrieve her, but that was all they needed to make sure they’d never be parted again.”
Her words dry up, but she doesn’t have to speak them for me to know what happened next in the story.
Her voice hitches as she continues. “The Conclave had taught them about the death of hope. Asher and Astrid were creatures of light, but never learned how to keep that light alive in the face of darkness. And that’s the secret, isn’t it?”
My heart races in my chest, a loud pounding in my ears, a chemical taste on my tongue.
“Victor and I made our choices after that, choices about what to do with our own pain. And we failed just as much at hope as they did. Grief and guilt can melt and whither souls. Victor blamed himself for both the initial discovery of their relationship and giving them access to one another that day. Maybe my reaction took a different path, but what we’d done locked us together in a lifelong spiral down into nasty places. Apologies are worthless, because they don’t fix what’s been destroyed.”
I close my eyes like I can block out the picture she paints. I don’t want it. I don’t want to feel compassion for her, or Verse twist it, for Victor. Or weep for two people I never knew. I don’t want to cry at all, just let the wicked dark drink me into nothingness. I don’t want to feel a damn thing.
“On the surface you and I have a lot in common,” she says.
Fuck!
“Suicidal lovers, a dab of self-hatred, a relationship with pain,” she goes on. “Even a talent for healing, as ironic as that is for us. But you and your Prince, since he shares a few of the same tendencies, are more. You know about darkness, Seb. You’ve embraced it all these years and somehow kept your hope. I have no idea how. But do you really want to stop now? You have choices to make. Mine aren’t meant as morality lessons or warnings. I can’t decide for you, and it’s on you, not me. I have plenty of my own shit I’m accountable for.”
My throat is choked closed by swallowed tears. I feel her at my back, a withered soul accepting her depravity and defeat. Although she’s more than that, or she wouldn’t be sitting here.
She sighs at my lack of response. “Well, at least I can depend on you for some quiet. And I’d let you have it and bask in the calm, but I’m afraid I have to insist you join us again. I’m more than happy to let you wallow, but there’s every reason to believe we may get a visit from Harkness soon at this lovely beach house, so it’s all hands on deck.”
“What?” The shock of her words pushes past the blockage.
“Oh, he speaks again.”
I’m turning to face her, sitting up, not sure I hear correctly. “What do you mean Harkness is coming here?”
“Done with the wallow? Ready to be one of the in crowd and get caught up on all the gossip.”
“Cut it, Colleen.” I’m a million emotions from clarity, but fear is first and foremost. Funny, since I believed myself beyond it.
She makes a shrugging gesture. “Harkness called Isolde a quarter bell ago and claims he knows she’s in Orreance. And knows about Gil. The boy’s eyes apparently lit up gold soon after Daav’s Verse connected mine, Pike, Hanna and Frederick’s together. Gil went gold similar to both our Cohorts and every mage in Orreance.”
“What do you mean, every mage?”
“Exactly what I said. When Daav connected us in his effort to get you out, everyone with mage power felt the effect and got drawn partway into their Verse, at least shimmered their sight gold. Apparently not just in our country. The news is only now covering the extent.”
Earlier, Daav had told me he connected the four of them, as if the fact was proof that he’s changed his tune, willing to give me what I want. I didn’t believe him, don’t believe him. His attitude is a lifetime in the making.
“So Isolde is freaking out, Daav’s pacing up a storm, and I won’t be seeing any peace for a good long while.”
“How can Harkness come here?”
“Orreance’s defenses, mage and otherwise, are fractured with the chaos of the disasters. A man with the means and technology, both Staltz has, can find his way.”
“Why isn’t Daav in here telling me?”
Now she’s laughing in my face.
“You made yourself quite clear with him, and the rest of the crew believes you’re too fragile and are listening to his demand they leave you alone. Well, Nuée isn’t listening, but she stormed out didn’t she?”
“But this…..?” My question disintegrates. I know what this is, more of my Prince’s protection. “So you took matters in hand?”
“I’ve said it before, family is everything. I fight for my family even in all my evil definition of it. And we need everyone ready, all our resources. Are you willing to be one of them?”
###
I’m filthy and still so exhausted I’m stumbling more than charging from the bedroom they’d stashed me in to recover. Heads pop up in surprise as I enter the living room. Everyone’s here. Daav is at the far side near the fireplace with his back to me, speaking into a cell.
“Bring Gil and I’ll return to Staltz with you. Make my execution a public affair and show your people that you win in the end.” He pauses, listening. “Isolde has nothing to do with it. She’s been our prisoner. You went to extreme ends, sending her to infiltrate and gain my trust, but you win, I’m sick of this game. She goes free as well if you deliver Gil. That’s my price.” Another pause. Then, “I’ll send the coordinates.”
He swipes the screen of the device and drops the hand holding it to his side.
“He’ll bring him?” Isolde asks from where she sits on the couch to his side.
“Maybe, so he says. He’s apoplectic with rage, which makes him difficult to read. I’m calling Johan next.” He’s mid spin in her direction. “I need the—” His words dry up when he sees me. “Sebastian…”
The cold is back again hearing this plan after Colleen’s stupid speech almost made me thaw. But the numb can’t block the knife twisting in my gut. Because this is Daav. He’s been the first and last thought I’ve had every day since Victor answered the door to him when we were five.
“You’re inviting him here?” My words are bullets, but Daav doesn’t answer my question, he’s staring at me like I’ve been resurrected from the dead.
“It’s a trap for my father,” Isolde says to me instead, smart enough to read whatever’s on my face. “Daav’s not really returning with him.”
My gaze flips to her. How can she go along with this? “And what army are you raising to make sure of that? Setting a trap for a madman where strategy is out the window?”
Daav takes a step closer. “Sebastian, I’ll use my magic. We can practice blending Verse. I tried to tell you.”
I ram my fingers through my hair. Sweet agony, he doesn’t get it, or he refuses to.
“Even if I believe you, those are the worst fucking odds ever. You might as well gift wrap your head in a box for him because you’ve essentially killed yourself anyway.”
“Can I speak to you in private?”
“What difference will that make?”
“Daav, you need to call Johan first,” Pike interrupts. “The margins for time are slim.”
Daav’s jaw ticks and he shoots Pike a glare before returning it to me. His eyes sweep me head to toe, as if he’s checking for injuries. Well, fuck you, that’s not your job anymore.
“Don’t leave,” he demands.
I stiffen.
His voice softens into a plea. “Please. Don’t leave. Please.”
At my nod, he raises his phone again, staring into my eyes as he taps the screen and puts it on speaker as we listen to it ring.
“Daav, what the fuck have you done?” Johan’s voice barks from the device.
“Scold me later, Johan, but first I need your help.”
“Help you? Do you know the chaos we have on our hands? Our country’s blowing up. Do we have you to thank for that, and for that flash to everyone’s Verse?”
“I think I have a way to stabilize the disasters, and dirt on Harkness that might even get him off our backs.”
“His daughter as our hostage might have gotten him off our backs.”
“I doubt that. Listen to me, I have reliable information that Harkness has magic of his own. A small amount, but he’s been hiding it his entire life.”
“What? You’re crazy, he couldn’t hide that. Where’s this information coming from?”
“I think it’s what Victor had over him all those years. Can you get that last message that Pasqua sent to Chelton before he died? I have suspicions about what he meant and it may be the proof we need.”
“The word ‘reflection’? Dated Saint Jallop’s Day, I already remember.”
“There was a time stamp, too. That’s the part I don’t have. And I need all televised video feed coming out of Staltz covering their own holiday that day. They celebrate some sort of workers’ rights at the same time we hold Saint Jallop’s.”
“Why should I do this for you?”
“Because I’m trying to save Orreance. The Conclave has been training me my entire life for this. Tomorrow’s my quarter century. I can put it all together, I just need that footage.”
Silence on the line.
Then, “I believe that you believe this, because otherwise you’d be an idiot to contact me. Or maybe I’m too tired to analyze your machinations. I’ll call Chelton and send the timestamp and the footage to your phone. And know that if we hadn’t been putting out literal fires and unburying people from rubble we’d be all over you and your Cohort and have you locked away tight. We know where you are.”
“Of course you do. Helping our people was way more important than chasing us down. Thank you for that.”
“Get off the fucking line and let me get you what you asked. I hate that you’re our last hope, although it serves me right getting what I asked for.”
“Bye, Johan.” He tosses his cell to Isolde, still not moving his gaze from me, but clearly talking to her. “When it comes through, look for anything relevant involving your father in that time frame. Get me if something looks promising.” He takes another step closer to me. “Will you talk to me alone or not?”
Those sea eyes bore into me, and I know it’s a mistake to look into them because their power over me hasn’t lessened. It’s why I kept my back to him when he tried to talk to me in the bedroom earlier. I reach out to the nearest chairback and grab on because fuck it if I’m not swaying on my feet.
Daav lurches forward and grabs my bicep to brace me. “I’m taking you back to bed.”
“No thanks. We can talk, but down here.” I gesture down the hall toward a smaller family room.
Aside from Isolde and Pike’s interruptions, almost everyone remains shut-mouthed with our exchange, although their attention is riveted and follows us as we leave. Glad we’re such an entertaining show.
The door clicks shut behind me and I’m at the window, pushing aside some gauzy drapery thing to latch onto the view of the ocean, the sun dipping down at the horizon. Seems I can’t give up my lifelong fix searching for peace in its waves, despite the now polluted memory from the beach of my childhood.
“Where’s Tuck?” I ask. They’ve told me earlier about the outcome of the rescue mission and that he’s safe and here at the house, but I haven’t seen him.
“Napping. Isolde’s spent time with him. I think it helps her worry about Gil.”
“Good.”
“Do you want to see him?”
“No. I’m sure he’s taken care of, and he doesn’t know me from any other stranger.”
Daav doesn’t speak immediately. The window’s open and the quiet in the room is enough so that I hear the crashing sound of those waves.
“I apologize,” he finally says. “I have so much to apologize for, an ice age could come and go before I’d finish.”
His voice is tight and hoarse and coming from way too close behind me.
“I’m sorry you always had to prop me up, give me a sense of control in our sex because I couldn’t manage feeling so helpless from my father and Victor. I’m sorry I forced our tangles together in the lab the day of the explosion because of my selfish impatience.”
“It’s not–”
“Let me finish, please.”
My lips press together, and I squeeze my fingers into a fist against the flicking I’ve started on my thigh.
“I spent every day fighting to justify my existence, driven to prove my worth. But my obsession with that task meant I hurt you, shutting out what you needed. It meant I didn’t try to find you after you left. That’s unforgivable, the years I made us lose, and Verse, but I am so, incredibly, sorry, Angel.”
The waves keep tossing, the orange sun glinting off the water’s surface painting it with swirling colors of blue, black, green, gray in the softly landing twilight.
The colors of Daav’s sea eyes.
I turn around, and there are the tears I hear in his voice streaming down his cheeks as he stands just apart from me, leaning forward but holding back.
He’s so close, the heat of his body warms my skin. And I want to go to him, and hold him, and promise it’ll be alright, but I can’t. Because it probably won’t be. Instead, from my careful distance, I give only what I have left.
“I’m tired, Daav. Tired of being strong, tired of the pain.” A ragged laugh escapes me with that irony. “Never thought I’d say that, but I am. I couldn’t save my brother, and I can’t save you. Even if you think you found a possible solution, there’s a good chance you’ll die. And you still need to do it and I understand you have to. But no matter how illogical, I just want to be selfish and have you run away with me, choose only me.” I suck in a shaky breath. “But if you did that, you wouldn’t be the man I love. So really I’m fucked.”
“Then I’m just as fucked,” he says. “Because I need you, I can’t do any of this without you. That’s what I got wrong. I was searching for redemption all alone, but really the only true redemption comes through being part of something bigger with you. Letting that be my truth. Even my Verse wants it.”
“I don’t want you to die.” Warm wet slides down my face. I’m too tired to care, and there’s no way I can stop it anyhow.
“I know, Angel. And I promise you I’ll try to live, but if I don’t will you forgive me? It’s not because I don’t choose you. It’s because I do choose you, the example you showed me loving all of humanity so damn much. That love inside you is so big. I can’t run away with you, but I will fight this thing with you by my side if you allow it. You’re so amazingly brave.”
“No, I’m not.” I shake my head.
“You are. Why help your friends all these years, why help Jellisia? She can’t be cured, her pain will keep returning, but you do it anyway. Because you hope, Angel. And hope has nothing to do with any real promise of things getting better. It’s in the way you keep going through pain each time you’re kicked down. Hope is the only answer to a world of darkness. And twist it, but I understand that now, finally learned that from you. I love you.”
I’m still shaking my head, and haven’t stopped through his ridiculous words.
“You don’t have to feel any different about me from when you woke up,” he says. “That’s not how it works, I get it. Just let it sit right now. I’m learning to shut up that damn voice of fear in my head that drove me hard, so I can be patient.”
“How?” I ask through a clotted mucus filled throat.
“A pretty big choice got shoved in my face recently and woke me up. Choose to face what terrified me most and save you, or maybe lose you forever. And when it came my way, there was no choice at all.”
I hear Colleen’s words again. “You know about darkness, Seb. You’ve embraced it all these years and somehow kept your hope. I have no idea how. But do you really want to stop now? You have choices to make.”
Apparently Colleen and Daav also share the same ideas. About hope and choices. All three of us are those broken things, but maybe it’s enough.
I stop shaking my head. I stop fighting, stop pushing. Stop looking to understand the swamp of this dark and light, life, death, and sweet, true pain of this love.
Yyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssss, my tangles whisper, hissing awake.
And I walk forward into his arms.