21
EVIE
I n a deep trance, my head dipped, my body grew heavy, and my soul lifted free like a feather in the wind.
I was searching for something, but I couldn’t remember what it was. The smell of burning cedar provided almost enough clarity to recall why I was spirit walking, but as soon as I picked up the reins of awareness, they were yanked out of my grasp again.
My vision cleared, and I saw myself in my crafting room. I was sitting cross-legged, palms resting on my knees, facing up. My head was tilted down, a veil of blonde hair eclipsing my features. The fabric of my pink dress pooled around me.
I approached my body in my spirit form, my feet hovering above the ground. When I trained my gaze on my physical self, I could see a field of color and etheric matter crawling over every inch. There were so many murky gray attachments clinging to my aura, blocking my energy pathways.
In my periphery, glowing balls of light danced around. I felt multiple presences at my back, and I knew that they were protectors and guides. No negative force could enter the sanctity of my spell room.
My instinct was to remove the etheric burrs lodged in my body, to ask my guides for help. The one at my throat was the biggest, with grotesque appendages that reached to my heart and even lower, down to my sacral and root centers.
So much fear. So much pain.
Who had stolen my voice?
I reached with fingertips made of transparent etheric matter, channeling a frequency of healing from the world around me. But as soon as I brushed the ugly gray mass, I was yanked from the room.
Things worked differently in the otherworld. Fear was more a vibration than a scream.
My surroundings slowly took back shape.
No. No, no, no.
I was back in my childhood bedroom. I stood in front of the windows overlooking the farm. Other homes loomed in the distance. I could just barely make out Tilly and Melody playing on the small playground the coven had built a few years ago.
Our home was the biggest, maybe because Lillian had blessed my mother with a human son and a half-witch daughter with humanlike blood.
She was a powerful witch and the closest to the Dark Goddess, the coven said. Next in line to be our High Priestess.
No!
Someone inside my mind was screaming. I pressed my hands over my ears as my head pounded.
The door behind me flew open.
“Evelynn Lockwood,” my mother bellowed.
At the tone of her voice, I stilled and went quiet, my hands going back to my sides. I slowly turned to face her.
Idris was on her hip, hands so small, just a baby—reaching, reaching, reaching.
His blond hair made golden ringlets, and his fair skin was rosy as he wailed and reached for me.
I walked forward, extending my arms toward Idris, but as soon as my fingers brushed his, Mama yanked him back and out of my reach.
“What is wrong with you? I told you we had to leave in an hour, and you are in the same clothes, your hair is a mess, and you’re filthy. ”
Tears pricked my eyes, and I followed her gaze to my feet, streaked with dirt and grass from playing outside with the other children.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t realize time had passed. I couldn’t even remember what I’d been doing for the past hour. My head was empty and useless.
Idris continued to wail. He looked at our mother, and she ignored him. She didn’t bounce him, didn’t soothe him. She didn’t even acknowledge his existence.
A lump formed in my throat, this desperation that had no end.
I had something to say. But I didn’t know how to say it.
With a flick of her wrist, my knees hit the hardwood floor with a thud. A piercing throb echoed through my bones, but I knew better than to make a sound as tears streamed down my face.
“Recite three prayers to Lillian. May she have mercy on your soul,” Mama spat.
I stared at the floor as my mouth moved, and that lump grew heavier and heavier.
Whispers spoke to me from the corners of the room, and something inside my blood felt strange, like a low buzz.
Idris continued to cry, and it reminded me of all the times I had cried for my mother and father. I’d wailed just like him, my hands reaching for something that I didn’t understand, something I never received.
Idris hadn’t learned yet that crying didn’t work. Only being good worked, though I could never really get that right. The rules were always changing, and I could never keep up. Everything inside me was bad and useless and wrong.
“When we go into the village, you are not to speak a word to anyone. Do you understand me?”
Don’t cry.
A trembling sob wanted to escape, and I squashed it back down. My eyes betrayed me, tears slipping free.
“Yes, Mama.”
Don’t speak. Don’t argue. Don’t fight. Don’t question.
Mama watched my lip tremble with irritation. “Why are you crying ? What is wrong with you ? The world doesn’t revolve around you, Evelynn. Have you ever once considered anyone else’s feelings but your own indulgent ones?”
She huffed. Idris sobbed and then hiccupped.
“We don’t have time for the Evelynn production today. If you don’t shape up, I’ll be telling the entire coven about what an ungrateful, disrespectful daughter you are.”
I studied my hands. So small. Just a child.
The voice in my head screamed, and the world split open. Time sped up. The last thing I smelled was smoke. The last thing I felt was a heavy weight in my arms as I ran.
I re-entered my physical body violently. My breathing was shallow, an unmovable mass in my throat. It had been there for so long. No matter how far away I ran, no matter how good I was, these remnants of the past tormented me. Punished me.
I curled into a ball and cried until I felt numb.
Then I sat up, cleaned up my altar, closed my circle of protection, and tried my hardest to forget about the experience and move on with my day.
The past no longer existed. There was no use dwelling on things that would never change. I’d rather look to the future—or literally anywhere else.
In a haze, I drank my coffee, slipped on my not-so-white-anymore sneakers, and made the thirty-minute trek to campus.
There were far more born in the streets than usual, no doubt a reaction to what had happened at the library a few days ago. Through magickally delivered notes, I’d learned from Idris that one shelf of books had been completely destroyed, with the rows above and below partially impacted. Whatever Ky— the masked vampire had done when the lights went out had saved countless books from destruction.
I kept my head down each time I passed a vampire, absently rubbing the obsidian protection ring on my right ring finger.
The moonstone pendant necklace Kylo gave me still rested around my neck.
Because why let a pretty thing go to waste? I loved pretty things.
I came to a halt as I turned a corner and entered the safety of the campus’s vampire-free zone. I suddenly remembered the book that had been gifted to me weeks ago.
Of course, it had been him.
Which meant… gods, I’d only met Kylo once when that had happened. Yet he knew exactly which book to buy me, as if he’d seen me eyeing it on one of my walks through town.
How fucking long had he been stalking me?
My stomach rolled over. Fate had nothing to do with our meeting. I might’ve first run into Kylo in that library, but that was only because he’d planted himself directly in my path.
I was already on edge when I found Idris in the courtyard between four academic buildings. I tried my best to table my feelings for when I could unleash them on my stalker, but after this morning’s disturbing visioning session, it was hard to reorient myself to normalcy.
Idris was lying on his back, his head cushioned by a backpack as he read one of his architecture textbooks.
“Not the best position for taking notes,” I called.
When he spotted me, he smiled and pointed to his forehead. “Don’t need notes. It’s all up here.”
I sat down on the quilted blanket he’d laid on the grass. Students milled about, some faster than others as if late to classes or meetings. Others sat on benches or in the grass like us.
“Did you bring snacks?” Idris asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Is that all I’m good for to you?”
He sat up and shrugged a shoulder. “On occasion, you say something surprisingly witty. And some of those times, you even meant to be funny.”
“You’re my harshest critic,” I muttered, reaching into my satchel for the jars of berries and biscuits I brought.
“That’s what brothers are for.” He smiled. “I keep you honest. It’s my way of motivating you to be your best self.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, throwing a strawberry at his head.
He swatted it away in record speed before it could hit his cheek.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Idris said, raising his hands up in a silent truce. “I thought you were a pacifist.”
I shook my head, glaring at him only half-heartedly. I popped a biscuit in my mouth, deeply inhaling the fresh air. Across the yard, a bush of pink flowers emitted a glowing aura, alerting me to the presence of active plant spirits. I tucked away a half-formed spell idea for later.
“It used to freak me out when you did that in the middle of conversations.”
My gaze snapped back to Idris, who was shoveling raspberries into his mouth.
I scratched my neck. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head, brows furrowing. “No need to apologize. I don’t find it spooky anymore. You wouldn’t be Evie if you didn’t randomly space out and gaze into the great beyond.” He paused. “How are you? I feel like you’ve had to deal with a lot lately. Jacob, then the vampire attack, then what happened at the library…”
Some might call a collection of undesirable events happening in quick succession bad luck.
But I was beginning to suspect a different explanation—one with a distinctive four-letter name.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I just hate what’s happening to Etherdale. This city used to be the safest in the realm.”
“If you keep talking like that, people are going to assume you’re a loyalist,” Idris said, voice low as he scanned our surroundings.
Frustration coiled up my spine. “You know more than anyone that I hold nothing but hatred for the born.”
Idris swallowed, his face dropping. A faraway sadness bled into his soft brown eyes, gone in the next blink.
“Yet you’d rather they terrorize us, traffic and kill us without repercussion, than do anything at all to fight back.” He shook his head. “Evie, they killed my classmate last semester. One day she was sitting next to me, talking about her family in Morha—how they wrote to her constantly and sent her care packages they couldn’t afford. How they couldn’t wait until she came back and used her studies to uplift her whole community. She was bright. I’d never seen someone that excited about even the most boring parts of studies. One day, she was sitting there, laughing and taking way too many notes. The next, we were at her memorial.”
My stomach sunk. That familiar lump in my throat arose, and this time, I recognized it. This bundle of my deepest pain, the trauma that had taken my voice. The only time I had power was when it was spilling out of me beyond my control.
I could feel it now, building.
“We are always, ” Idris said, his voice low yet strong, “at memorials .”
Through the pain and anger in his eyes, I saw a mirror, a window into the past. And I wanted to run. Gods above and below, I wanted to fucking run.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I’d failed him long ago, and now he didn’t trust me to protect him.
“For what?” he asked, searching my eyes. He was always looking for something there, something we both lost in some nowhere village in the hills.
Idris said he didn’t remember much of our childhood. He said he didn’t remember that night—the night we ran. But there were dark circles under his eyes, evidence of the same nightmares that happened year after year.
Hide under the bed and don’t come out until I come back for you, the ghost of myself whispered.
I remembered the way Idris had looked when I said it. Those wide, frightened brown eyes had stared up at me with a buried strength.
He’d believed in me. I was his guardian angel, the only source of light in a world of darkness.
Now, he just looked disappointed.
“I’m sorry you’re surrounded by incredible violence and grief,” I said. “And I’m sorry I failed to protect you from all of it. I’m sorry you think I’m so weak.”
“Is that what you think?” Idris’s face twisted. “Evie, you have it all wrong,” he said, shaking his head. “I want to protect you. Not because I think you’re weak. I want to help protect this city we both love—the one that welcomed us with open arms.” He stared down at the blanket. “How could you think that you failed me?”
I shook my head. I could hear it—the meaning between the words, the culmination of my every doubt and fear.
“Idris, please, don’t,” I said, my voice breaking.
Don’t cry. Don’t you fucking cry.
He refused to meet my eyes, only confirming the truth I’d foreseen weeks ago in the coffee shop.
“Please don’t turn your back on Helia,” I begged. “You’re eighteen—you’re still a ch?—”
“I am not a child,” he snapped. “I won’t be turning any time soon. They wouldn’t allow it. But I want to start the process. I want to serve something greater than myself. Like you do—with your magick.”
I couldn’t think straight anymore. One of my feet was in the past, remembering how it felt to run up those steps, searching for Idris as he screamed. The other was in the future, imagining my brother as a bloodthirsty monster, always in danger from forces infinitely stronger than him.
“I’m not a kid anymore,” he said again. “You can’t control everything. You can’t shut your eyes and dream reality away. All we can do is clean up our little space in this world. Everything else is out of our hands.”
Like hell it was.
I trembled with rage. I suddenly remembered what Kylo had said in the library, when I’d asked him what he’d been working on.
Curriculum to effectively radicalize the youth.
I was such an idiot. And Kylo knew it—he’d been laughing at me, feeding off my naivety and ignorance.
To think I’d allowed him to touch me. To make me feel so delusionally safe.
“Evie,” Idris said, his eyes wide.
I snapped back to myself. I followed his eyes to the slowly spreading black rot extending from underneath our blanket.
My anger had me bleeding death from my palms. Sowing destruction.
I was no angel.
“I’m sorry,” I said, quickly rising to my feet. I stared at Idris in horror. He blinked quickly, and I didn’t miss the flash of fear in his eyes.
“You need to go,” he said. “It’s not safe for you here.”
I knew he was talking about the fact that the born were hunting for powerful witches. Chaos witches.
But all I heard was rejection.
I wasn’t good enough for him. That was why he wanted to kill his humanity, our link by blood, and join a new family entirely.
The sky rumbled. Rain began to pour, as if Helia were mourning with me. A student yelped at a resounding boom of thunder that had seemingly come from nowhere.
The moment I felt eyes on me, I snatched up my things and ran.