INDEX:
Link here to a general overview of the novel
Prologue, Chpt 1, Chpt 2, Chpt 3, Chpt 4, Chpt 5
Recap: We join the story in a modern day alternative earth as mages Sebastian and Daav have been reunited 8 years following a traumatic incident that forced them apart. They’d been raised together by a psychopathic Mentor and had fallen in love as teens. Now Sebastian is taking them to a hideaway to keep Daav safe from his biological father who is trying to assassinate him for being born with magic. On the way they stop at Jellisia’s home. She is Sebastian’s friend, and he’d promised to use his magic to help her chronic disease. Sebastian successfully helps her but overloads himself and collapses. Daav is concerned seeing Sebastian collapse and a past memory floods him.
Chapter Six
Daav
We are eleven years old, and even after the last six years spending every day with him, part of me holds back from trusting Sebastian, despite being Victor’s possessions together. Sebastian takes all of my harsh words and ridicule with a smirk on his face like he knows there is nothing beneath the bluster of my words. He’s done that since I came.
Sebastian makes fun of my stick up the ass language, as he calls it. He calls me a mini-martinette technologist like my people. But then he gives me a genuine smile, welcoming. Sometimes he stares at me with wonder and it always makes my skin get hot and itch. Most of the time I look away, but really I crave those stares. I mistrust them, but hope they never go away.
So maybe I keep up my harsh words just to test him. If anyone has true magic, it’s Sebastian. The ability to look through someone and see their truth. It’s a scary power and one more people should worry about. Those clear gray eyes see it all.
On his eleventh birthday Victor surprises him with a puppy. Victor praises him for the care he takes of the animal and gives him extra hours to take the dog on long walks around the park. Sebastian loves the animal and the little mongrel is in love with him, following him around and tripping over his own feet to press against Sebastian every moment of the day. I don't blame the dog. All Sebastian wants is to take care of others, so this is his dream come true to have this puppy who worships him and loves all the care and attention Sebastian offers. They’re ridiculously happy.
Everyone loves Sebastian. The rest of our Cohort, the Conclave leaders, everyone. Except Victor. Even now when he’s kind to Sebastian, I know it’s not real.
Victor did not give me a puppy when my birthday came about a week after, but I don't care. Animals are fine but they’re an indulgence, a distraction. My jealousy comes from the puppy spending all of that time with Sebastian. The dog is a constant ball of motion, jumping and darting and making happy yelps of joy. Maybe I’m not too kind to the animal because I’m jealous, but I keep staring at them together when Sebastian isn’t looking.
It’s breakfast, and I’m at the table at six am since that’s what Victor demands. Alone. I wait for Sebastian and the puppy to join us. They have stayed behind in our room getting ready when I come down. But they’re still not here. Victor joins me a half an hour late and I sit quietly waiting, not allowed to eat until everyone is at the table. But when Victor joins, he says nothing about Sebastian’s absence. Instead he starts drinking his coffea and eating his dry toast and single hard boiled egg. He barks at me to start eating when I sit there waiting.
“Where are Sebastian and Clark?” I ask. That’s what Sebastian’s named the puppy.
Victor tells me it’s none of my business and to finish up with my food and get to the lab.
My stomach’s a mess all day and I want to vomit. Victor’s done it again. I don’t know what, but I know he has. There are stretches when he treats us with neutral attention and sometimes praise and affection, and then everything flips. But so far the pain he gives us has been simple. Spankings with stiff brushes, forcing us to stand with hands above our heads holding up objects for long hours. Usually he apologizes after and tells us it cannot be helped.
Maybe Victor is sick in his brain. He gives us good food, education, and we live in a spacious and fancy home. He thinks there’s a purpose to the stuff he does to us. That it will help with our magic.
But now I’m just scared. Sebastian and Clark are missing. I don’t get much done in the lab and Victor keeps yelling at me for my messy, inattentive work. I am afraid for Sebastian, but also I can’t stand the idea of being inside the Verse to pull tangles where it feels so good. Not when I know whatever is happening to Sebastian is the opposite. It feels disloyal to taste the ecstasy of the Verse without knowing if he’s even okay.
It’s three days later. I’m a mess. I’ve asked Victor each morning where Sebastian has gone and when he will be back. Victor says nothing, ignores me and doesn’t speak to me between his educational lectures when he works by my side in the lab, mixing chemicals to make a stock of reagents and lecturing about their properties. I’m dropping vials as my hands shake. I fail each time now that Victor tells me to open the Verse.
It's the night of the third day. Sometime after midnight the door opens to the bedroom. Sebastian and I share a room with two twin beds, Victor’s attempt to keep us humble in this gigantic manse with plenty of space. The lights are out but I haven’t been sleeping. I hadn’t been able to since Sebastian disappeared. I realize now how much I depend on him, and my weakness without him. The door creaks as it opens and there’s a soft click as it closes. I sit up in bed.
“Sebastian?” I whisper.
His shadow limps into the room and he smells like blood and excrement. He walks straight to the bathroom attached to our room and I get up out of bed and follow him.
The light in the bathroom shows blood and dark streaks covering his shirt and pants. His feet leave red footprints on the tile.
“Are you okay? What happened?” I say.
He turns on the shower and pulls off his clothes, stepping into the water without even testing the temperature. He says nothing, just stands there under the stream, face up and gulping down the water as it falls.
Then he stops and stares, his face blank as he lets the water run red into the drain, swirling around his feet.
I’m panicked. Sebastian is never like this. He’s the one who smiles and makes a joke during our worst moments. He savors our best ones. He’s open and optimistic and never complains. Me, I’m the one who makes fun of those things about him. And he smirks back at me.
But now he’s only sliding down into the basin of the tub, sitting with his knees grasped to his chest under the shower. I try to get him to talk, standing at the side of the tub and demanding he tell me.
I try for maybe twenty minutes, am yelling at him to answer me by the end. Then, I step into the basin with him. The water is freezing and I curse, turn it off and lower myself next to him. I haven’t bothered to take off my pajamas, and just wrap an arm around his shoulders. He’s freezing. I shiver from even my brief time under the water and am even more worried that he’s been sitting there in the cold all of that time.
I try to pull him out of the tub, but he won’t come. My fear spikes higher. I hadn’t thought it could grow. So I get out and grab towels and then climb back in and wrap them around him and hold him more. Like he’s done for me too many times to count after nightmares or Victor’s cruelties.
Finally, after what must have been an hour, he starts to whisper about what happened. No tears, just calm, empty words.
It’s brave of him to tell the story so soon after it all. I could never have done that. I can only say small stuff about what haunts me, a stammered word at a time.
Sebastian tells me how Victor walked him and Clark up to an attic room that morning, asking him to go inside and retrieve something. Then when he opened the door, Victor shoved him in, Clark bounding after him of course. Victor locked them in.
The room, he says, was windowless and lightless. Dark as void. And that right away Sebastian found himself falling on piles of broken glass strewn over every part of the floor. Inches deep. It cut his skin to ribbons and he cried and yelled for help, banged on anything he could reach without more injury. He thinks the room must have been soundproofed by Victor. Clark barked, whined and yelped with pain, unable to understand how to avoid the glass. Sebastian tells me how the glass cuts them both quickly and easily. How when he realizes what is happening that he tries to keep them both still to avoid damage. How Clark took longer to contain, suffered more wounds.
Sebastian describes to me how Victor left them there seemingly forever and that he doesn’t know if it had been a day or twenty. There is a slot in the door of the attic near its base that opens. Later, Victor speaks through it and tells him he can get out and have their wounds tended if Sebastian can call the tangles to move the shards into a large pile and fuse them into one mass. Tells me that Victor placed a half cup of water right inside the door through the slot when he left these instructions.
Sebastian admits he took more damage in order to crawl to the cup and sip at the liquid in the smallest amounts, trying to spill some onto Clark’s tongue who by that time is barely conscious. He whispers to me about how hard he tried to use the magic even as he cried constantly, holding Clark as they bled. How he kept opening up the Verse but could not move more than the smallest pile of the glass. Could not heat any of it enough to melt and fuse.
He tells me how later the slot opened again and a light shone on him for a moment, blinding him. And then Victor said if Sebastian cannot accomplish the task he must be punished. Told him he can only get out if he uses the shards to cut Clark’s throat. Until then Sebastian would get no more water and would not be let out.
I listen to the story and do not know what to do for my friend; do not know how to overcome the horror as he says how he eventually decides he better do something before he gets too weak to move. Says how Clark has already stopped moving, stopped responding to his name even as Sebastian pets him the entire time as he tries to keep them still. He is almost sure Clark has already died. But Sebastian is so cold himself he cannot tell.
Sebastian says he knew I would be worried, and that he worried about me, that he could not leave me alone in the house with Victor. He does not tell me anything about what he did with Clark, but only that the next time the slot opened he had managed to croak out to Victor that he had followed the instructions.
Victor came in wearing protective equipment and turned on all of the lights, lifting Sebastian out of the room, depositing him in the hallway and calmly proceeding down the stairs with no other word, leaving Sebastian alone with his bloody injuries and filth.
I cry that night, although I always cry with Sebastian. It has nothing to do with my past or my own pain this time. I tell Sebastian that I will run with him, run from Victor. He shakes his head. He tells me that the pain Victor believes will grow our magic is not something we can escape. He tells me that every time he opens the Verse it is filled with pain. That this is how he experiences the Verse, ugly and jagged and full of everything dark. It is the first and last time he describes his Verse to me. He says that pain will always be there, it is part of the world. We cannot outrun it.
This is the most beaten down I have ever seen my best friend. I am done in by it. And I never want to see him suffer this way again.
I finally get him out of the tub, badgering him into new pajamas and into his bed. Like so many nights, we sleep together in a single twin. And it was only after the shower, under the blanket when I hold him, that he finally cries. He does it for maybe twenty minutes. Then he stops.
The next day Victor delivers soup and water and lets Sebastian sleep the entire day. Me he drags back to the lab. When I’m allowed to return after supper, Sebastian is still asleep though four bowls of soup are empty on a tray and the water pitcher is empty as well. I climb into his bed and sleep with him again.
The next morning I wake as he is climbing off the mattress and searching for clothes to wear. His smile is back on his face and he pretends the last days have never happened and tells me to get down to breakfast on time so Victor won’t snap at us. I try to get him to talk more and tell him he’s mad to pretend nothing happened. He’s about to leave the room, the door already pulled open, and he stops and turns to look at me over his shoulder.
“We’re stuck here, Prince. He’s evil but he’s our evil. If we run, the Conclave and Victor hunt us down. You don’t need more of that. The choices out there for us aren’t better. I’ll take the pain for us both when I can. I’m used to it. You just get stronger. Change the world, and bring back the magic. I know it’s you. He owns us, and that’s just how the country sees it.”
Then he leaves.
Sebastian groans from his heap on the floor of Jellisia’s living room. The memory leaves me.
And I reach for him.