7. Caly
7
CALY
F oggy gray mist rose from the frozen black water of Lake Sheridon. It drifted up into the air like dead souls that’d finally escaped their confines.
The air around the lake loomed with ruination and an uncomfortable feeling of emptiness, just like the rest of the in-between. There was no wind to make a sound. It felt like even the trees were afraid of waking anything in this eerie, unwelcoming area.
My eyes easily found the only ray of sunshine in the vicinity—Eli sat on a fallen log on the lakeshore.
I had expected to find him in some type of wild battle, flanked by thousands of horrifying monsters, from the way Mendax had described the racing of Eli’s heart.
Mendax must have thought so too, because we shared a look of confusion as we trudged closer to the blond fae. Something wasn’t adding up, and it made the hairs on my arms rise.
Eli, no doubt having heard our heavy footfalls, turned around to face us. His eyes passed over Mendax and landed on me with a look of profound disappointment.
Immediately I recalled the reason Eli had left the cave, and I fought off a wave of embarrassment and shame. But all anxieties about anything else left my head when I saw what he held.
“What did you do?” I screamed before launching myself at him.
Eli’s look of disappointment turned ashamed as he held his hands up in the air; the broken pieces of glass shifted in his palm with a tinkling noise that echoed through the large expanse.
“The scroll was broken when I got here.”
“Now wait a just tick, sunshine. The post of lying, conniving bastard for this group has already been taken,” Mendax stated. “You were pissed off when you woke up and found your—as you call her—fiancée wrapped around my cock like a cobweb. So you left, beat us to the next clue from Zef, and broke it like the whiny , jealous bitch that you are.”
Eli glowered at Mendax, and a jolt of magic rippled through me. I could physically feel the hate from each of them clashing through the bond and the tie like an electric shock. I had to bite my cheek not to cry out.
I took note of all the lines under my friend’s tired eyes. I trusted Eli. What reason would he have for sabotaging our journey into Moirai? He wanted the bond broken as much as Mendax wanted the tie between Eli and I severed.
“It—it just seems odd—” I tried to reason with him.
Eli took the last step that separated us and reached out to lightly brush a stray hair away from my face. His brows pinched together over his weary eyes. “I know it sounds like I’m lying, but I swear to you, Calypso. I found it shattered here on the ground.”
I glanced around the area, listening for anything that might help me understand this situation. None of it made any sense though. Who would have broken it? No one was here but us.
“That falcon delivered us the scroll last time,” I stated, trying to piece it all together. It seemed unlikely that they would just leave the scroll sitting out in the open for anyone to see or grab.
“I was just looking for the rest of the pieces when you guys arrived. If they are big enough, we’ll be able to piece them together and still see what it says,” Eli said softly.
I could see the hurt lacing his features this close. It always took me by surprise how different he looked when he wasn’t smiling. It made me realize how infrequently that actually happened. His grin fit him more than anything else ever could. He was meant to be happy and smiling, and when he wasn’t, his sunshiny demeanor and aura felt wrong, as if the world had split in two.
I knew he was telling me the truth. He could never lie to me without me knowing.
“Well, then—” I began but faltered as flashes of “Earl” and the forest in Michigan popped into my head. Eli had lied to me before, and I’d had no clue. Maybe I wouldn’t know if he was lying? I cleared my throat and started again. “Well, then let’s find the other pieces.” My eyes caught on the glimmer of glass he’d missed next to his feet. I bent down and grabbed ahold of the pieces before he could step on them.
My breath hitched as the thin pieces cracked in my palm. These weren’t shards of glass in my hand—they were frozen glasswing butterflies.
“Why would these be out here? They obviously aren’t from here. They are all frozen and dead.” My eyes darted between the two faeries. The luna moths and monarch butterflies that typically followed the two of them had withered away to nothing as we’d walked through the in-between. “This doesn’t make any sense.” I glanced back to Mendax. “These glasswings belong to something, and if Eli is telling the truth, then it seems as if that something is trying to stop us from getting into Moirai.”
“He already knows where all the pieces are,” Mendax accused.
My head snapped to Eli. “Well? Where are the rest of the pieces?”
My best friend’s eyes fell, and I knew whatever he was going to say next was going to be bad.
He said no words and instead pointed his limp arm toward the black water of the lake.
There, on the ice, about a hundred feet from the bank, lay a limp black falcon and the other chunk of the glass scroll.
“Oh my suns,” I whispered as my mouth fell open.
“Yes, I’d say somebody definitely does not want us in Moirai,” Mendax added.
“But how? There have been no other tracks. We would have heard something between the three of us, right?” I asked, completely puzzled.
Mendax shrugged before walking to the edge of the lake to look out at the scene.
“I am the lightest. I’ll go out and grab the rest of the scroll—” My words and footsteps onto the ice were abruptly halted when Eli whipped me away from the edge.
“No!” he scolded. “Watch.” After setting me down, he turned to Mendax and held out his hand. “Give me your boot.”
Mendax looked to his left and then behind himself. “Excuse me?”
“Give me your boot,” Eli repeated, wiggling his fingers impatiently.
“I’m not giving you my boot,” Mendax snapped.
“Fine. Then give me your chest plate,” Eli said.
Mendax scrunched his face in a deep scowl as he took a few steps back. “Use your chest plate.”
The cold stung my wool-covered toes as I shoved my boot into Eli’s hand. It was his turn to scowl at me as he gently shoved the boot back at me. “What are you doing? You’re going to get your foot all wet! Put your boot back on.” Eli grimaced and turned back to poke Mendax roughly in the chest with an accusing finger. “You made her foot get wet. Stop fuckin’ around, and give me your chest plate. You’ll get it back in a minute.”
“ She made her foot get cold when she took her own shoe off.” Mendax rolled his eyes but finally acquiesced and slid off his black chest plate from where it hung off the back of his belt and hurled it at a waiting Eli.
Eli walked to the edge of the lake, twisted his body, and whipped the armor onto the frozen lake where it slid to a stop amid the flaky snow that dusted the top of the ice.
“You piece of shit,” Mendax declared.
Eli held up his hand to silence the other fae as he stared out onto the still lake with a blank expression.
Mendax and I exchanged looks.
I was about to ask if Eli had fallen on his head when a grayish-white shape moved in the black water of the lake and slammed into the underside of the ice so hard, I felt the vibrations rise up my ankles where I stood on the bank.
Eli caught my eye with a soft nod, silently urging me to keep watching.
Several more slams sounded from underneath the ice, moving across the entire lake and rattling me even more. Apparently there were several things in the lake, and they sounded quite pissed off at the chest plate. How were we ever going to get the piece of scroll if we couldn’t get across the ice?
“Kelpie?” Mendax asked Eli.
“I don’t think so. I saw hands,” he replied. “Being that we are in the in-between, there is no telling what that creature could be. It’s more likely we’ve never even heard of its existence.”
The lake fell quiet again as the creatures stilled and the murky forms moved out of our view.
“Oh my suns,” I repeated.
“I tried to get the scroll already. I think they can smell our flesh or something. I was two steps out, and the ice started to creak like it was going to break. One of those things was trying to bite through the ice to get to me. I was trying to figure out how to get out there and get the rest of the scroll, but then you two showed up,” Eli said.
“So you throw my chest piece to demonstrate?” Mendax glared at Eli.
“You thought I was going to let Cal go on that to get her boot? Get out there, and get that armor, Smoke-Show. Hey, while you’re out there, why don’t you go ahead and grab that piece of scroll?” Eli goaded. “I’d move fast if I were you.”
“I’m the lightest—” I interjected, interrupting a staring contest between the two men.
“No,” they said in unison.
I flinched. “Agh, stop doing that!”
“Save the day, hero. Fly your golden ass out there. Get the fucking scroll and my armor,” Mendax growled.
A muscle flared in Eli’s sharp jaw, and I think I heard a tooth crack.
“As you already know, I don’t have enough power right now to fly. I need more time to heal.” His gaze flickered to mine briefly.
“Because of me.” My voice cracked.
Eli’s eyes snapped up to mine. He began to shake his head to argue but stopped.
“You’ve been sending me enough through the tie to keep me from feeling any pain, enough to keep me healthy. Mendax has been doing the same through our bond.”
Eli slammed his fist into Mendax’s face before the dark prince even had a chance to flinch. “You son of a bitch!” the Seelie cursed.
Mendax grinned, eyes darkening as he wiped the black smudge of blood from his cheek.
“Knock it off!” I shouted, stepping between the two men.
“You’ve been sending powers through the bond, you piece of shit. And then you tell her? How do you think that makes her feel?” Eli tried to move me aside to get at Mendax again, but I blocked him in a weird hug-like move.
“I don’t understand. Wouldn’t it be more helpful if you both were sending me stuff through the bond? It would use less of each of your powers that way?” I asked.
Mendax chuckled under his breath behind me, and Eli’s face heated, turning a shade of rosy pink.
“Just like you can’t be bonded and tied to one person, you can’t accept things from the bonds and ties from more than one person. It’s too dangerous. He could have killed you,” Eli snapped as he pushed around me and shoved Mendax hard in the chest.
“Stop!” I shouted.
Mendax smiled darkly. “You think she’s going to die from too much healing in her mortal veins? I knew what I was doing.”
“This is exactly what I’m talking about!” Eli shouted in Mendax’s face. “You don’t really care about her, or you wouldn’t have even risked it. You didn’t know how much power I was giving her! And fucking her in the cave? Had to do it so that I saw? That’s exactly what you’re after. Tell me, do you just sit around all day and come up with ways to hurt her and get back at me? You are going to die in Moirai, because you’re the shittiest one out of all of us. The Fates know who truly cares about her. You won’t be able to lie to them like you do her.”
“You know nothing about what you speak of, Seelie. She was clearly on top, fucking me,” Mendax replied with a devilish grin.
“That’s it. I’m gonna kill him, Cal,” returned Eli. “Cal?”
The ground trembled as the eerie thuds rang out, echoing around my feet on the frozen lake.
I barely heard Mendax’s and Eli’s cursing while I walked as fast as I could across the slippery ice, trying not to look down at the monsters that waited below. Both men were shouting at me, but I couldn’t let myself listen. I needed to focus on the piece of scroll, glinting against the white dusting of snow scattered across the black lake like beacons.
“Fu—ah!” The hard slam under my feet caused me to slip. I caught myself before I fell, but my eyes made contact with the grayish-white thing beneath the ice.
It was ghastly looking. Its skin almost reminded me of the smooth texture and color of a beluga whale, except unlike the beluga whale, its upper body was similar in shape to a human with long arms and hands, but that was where the comparison ended. I couldn’t really tell what was beneath its torso, as its upper half was the only part visible as it pressed violently against the other side of the ice. Its pale gray head pressed against the frozen water before pulling it back and slamming into the hard surface again. There was no face or hair, no ears—nothing on the smooth, murky face but a mouth full of long, spiral teeth.
I caught the scream in my mouth and moved a few steps, trying to get away from its hideous body. It was directly under me.
“Oh my, ooh my fuck.” The terrifying thing sped under me again as I moved, rattling my senses. Another slam into the ice, then another. There were at least four around me. They had me surrounded under the water. “Okay,” I said, trying to calm myself. “Only a few more feet. Then I’ll have the key to Moirai. To killing my father.” I let my eyes fall closed at the comforting thought, breathed out slowly, and continued walking. It was too slippery for me to move much faster, but I tried anyway, desperate to get the scroll and get off the lake.
Slam. I hit the ice with my face.
Immediately, one of the creature’s faceless figures was under mine. All that separated us was a sheet of clear ice—probably not as thick as I’d like. This close, I could hear the muffled scream of the creature in the water. I scrambled to all fours, struggling to get my footing.
Slam. Slam.
They were hitting the ice together. They were working as a team now to break the ice.
A crunch sounded, and I looked to the right in horror. The ice was cracking about ten feet behind me. Panicked, I looked to the shoreline where Eli and Mendax were shouting, but my adrenaline was too loud, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying with the sound of blood rushing in my ears.
I scrambled to my feet and took off at a shuffling run, barely lifting my feet off the ice. If I didn’t hurry, they were going to shatter the ice. If I fell again, I could crack the ice and fall right through.
Eli. That meant he would die too.
With renewed fight, I slid as steadily as I was capable against the textured surface, occasionally pushing dustings of loose white snow. I could see the letters etched into the glass of the scroll, I was so close now. Mendax’s black armor lay only a few feet to the right.
Slam. Slam. Slam.
The hits from under the ice were harder now. The ice behind me crackled and broke. Black water began to spill over the cracks and onto the surface as a clear triangular sheet broke apart and was swallowed by the black water.
My heart was beating painfully hard now. I was gasping for air. I clawed at the ice with my hands, pulling myself to the scroll and the dead falcon as I felt the shivers of breaking ice settle in my bones. Shimmers of light moved across the small area.
Glasswing butterflies littered the area, some still flapping their crystal-clear wings.
The outstretched tips of my fingers touched the broken glass of the scroll. It slid against the ice, now a few inches farther away. The black bird lay completely still in a lifeless heap of blue-black feathers.
Icy water sloshed behind me, leaching through the fabric of my pants as more ice broke behind me. I struggled forward, finally able to grip the scroll, trying not to break it any more than it already was in my panic.
A scream shot into the air, so shrill and grating to the senses that I dropped the glass scroll, my hands slapping over my ears, trying to block out the painful sound. Behind me, the ice had cracked, and a wave of murky, black water rocked and peaked behind me. I wouldn’t be able to go back. I was trapped now and had no choice but to cross to the other side.
Another shrill scream from the open water shook me to my core, pushing out any other thought but the horrific vibration of that sound.
I reached down and grabbed the piece of glass. I wouldn’t let these…these… things stop me from getting to my father.
“Calypso!” Deep shouts came from behind me.
Movement snagged my attention. My own shrill scream let loose at the sight of the faceless creature as I watched it pull itself up and onto the ice. Its sickly colored skin made my stomach twist as the scarce contents inside rose up my throat, but it was nothing in comparison to the sight of its twisted ivory teeth when it let out another scream. It stretched its long, humanlike arms and hands across the ice, digging its translucent claws in and pulling the rest of its disgusting body toward me, teeth flashing with each movement it made. Dents and rivets of bone and skeleton showed under its rubbery milky-gray skin with a creepy tail that hung like loose, dead flesh.
Another one leapt onto the ice behind it, and they both began sliding toward me, quickly gaining speed.
Suns! I would never be able to reach the other side in time.
I grabbed ahold of Mendax’s armor and slid it on. The smell of him still clung to the hunk of smooth metal. I moved diagonally, seeing that more powdery snow covered the ice in that direction. It would give me more traction.
A scream tore from my lungs when I felt the inhuman pressure and muscles of the lake creature’s hand wrap around my ankle and pull me down.
The stench of rotten, stagnant water laced with rotten meat and fruit, with undertones of decaying flesh, curled into my nose. I kicked at its face, but with no eyes or even a nose, my boot only slipped off its featureless flesh. It tugged roughly at my ankle and began dragging me back toward the opening in the ice. It was going to pull me in. I would be lost forever.
More screams cut through the air as the creatures’ shrieks grew stronger and more frenzied with every crack in the ice. The lake vibrated beneath me as they went frantic, pounding the other side as their friend dragged me toward the black, sloshing hole of water.
The awful thing stiffened and froze just before the opening, suddenly dropping my ankle as it glided as fast as it could behind me. The other creature followed.
Slam. Slam. Slam! Slam! Slam!
Now the hits were coming from my left. More screams.
Still holding the piece of scroll, I glanced to see which side of the lake was still intact and the shortest distance to the shore when I saw the cause of their recent frenzy.
Eli was behind me on the ice, just in front of the bank, taunting the creatures, while Mendax was to my right, moving out toward me.
They were distracting them.
I needed to go diagonally, where none of them were. It was the longest route, but there were no cracks in that direction, and I had a chance at pulling the creatures away from the guys so they could get back to the shoreline safely. I would need to move quickly though—quicker than all of them, as two were still on the surface, headed straight for Eli.
I had an idea, but it was either going to be the dumbest thing I could do or the most efficient.
“Fuck me,” I grunted as I tried to pick up speed while keeping my footing.
Ice is slippery because there is a thin layer of liquid on the surface. The pressure applied to the ice by the weight of someone standing on it lowers the melting point of the ice, making it incredibly slippery. I needed to find a way to increase my surface area so I could lower the applied pressure, therefore increasing the friction, which would in turn make the ice melt even more, making it even more slippery.
I held my breath and did a belly flop onto the snow, hoping I had been moving fast enough. My neck pinched and strained as I struggled to keep my head as far away from the ice as possible.
Slam! Slam! Slam!
It was working. The creatures sensed more mass in this direction, with my full body on the ice in comparison to the feet of the boys. Mendax’s smooth chest plate worked as a sort of pseudo sled. I tucked my legs in tight to my body as I climbed on top of the giant fae’s armor and had a bit of room to spare.
I slowed to a stop on the ice, still a good twenty feet from the snowy bank of safety.
Hideous, faceless heads cracked against the ice beneath me. There had to be at least fifteen. Trembling, I stood in a fluster and struggled to take steps as every muscle in my body was taut with panic that I would fall as the ice cracked, and I’d be lost to their long, sharp teeth. With so many under me and the ice already cracking, I had seconds before I was lost.
“Come on, sweetie. You’ve got this!”
Eli was moving onto the ice right in front of me. My blood turned as cold as the ice I stood upon.
“Go! Get back! You’re too heavy!” I shouted. It didn’t matter. I knew Eli would never let me die out here alone.
No matter what he had seen in the cave, Eli and I had something that ran deeper than any tie. We had been raised with it; it had grown in our bones deeper than any anger or magic ever could.
I sped up and repeated my belly flop, sliding across the expanse like a penguin until I was almost to Eli.
“Move! You have to move! Go to the bank, or it will be too much weight on the ice!” I shouted, though who knew what it sounded like with my neck strained as it was.
I needed to locate Mendax. He was bigger than Eli, and if he decided to move onto this section of ice, we would all be dead in the water.
“Come on! That’s it,” Eli calmly encouraged as he held out his arms.
I finally reached him. Now only a few feet left to go?—
But instead of picking me up off the ice and running us off the lake, Eli put his foot onto the back edge of the armor and shoved me toward the bank.
“Wha—come on!” I yelled, unsure of what he was doing.
It was more than enough to propel me to the bank, where Mendax appeared out of nowhere with waiting arms to pull me up and away from the edge with a fervency that contradicted his stoic demeanor.
Panicked, my eyes shot to the ice. I looked out at my best friend—and yet again my hero—as he shuffled across the ice, his amber eyes full of determination and locked on me. Not an ounce of fear radiated through the tie as the ice trembled and cracked around him.
He really was a hero. In every sense of the word.
“Stay,” Mendax ordered, squeezing my shoulders.
He walked to the ice, and my stomach flipped and plummeted. What the hell?!
The humungous fae took a few steps out onto the ice carefully and extended his hand to Eli. “Get the fuck off the ice, you golden sack of shit.”
Well…at least he was still helping him.
Eli scowled, moving gracefully over the holes and cracks in the ice, reminding me of his fox. Even with his litheness, he was running out of places to leap that weren’t littered with the snapping teeth and grabbing hands of the voracious lake creatures.
I’m not sure if Mendax grabbed Eli or the other way around, but when they made contact, Mendax flung him like a Frisbee off the ice and into a bank of snow, burying Eli’s head completely in the white powder. I let out a stale lungful of breath and finally relaxed into the snow.
Mendax walked over to me and stopped, his dark figure looming over me as his eyes hooked to mine.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
He continued to stare at me, a harsh look.
No one will ever take you from me in any form. That includes by dying on the other side of the tie. Don’t mistake my actions, pet. Aurelius dies the minute the Fates sever the tie. Should they break our bond and kill me, I will gut Aurelius with pleasure, knowing you will accompany me to Tartarus.
I shivered, feeling Mendax’s voice through the bond and inside me.
Even though it’s against my wishes? I pushed back. Do you really want a partner or a captive pet?
A smirk darkened his features.
I want to crawl inside you and consume my way out, knowing that every part of you is forever a part of me. I crave command over every thought you’ve ever had, to feel every worthless surface that has ever touched your skin. I want your needs and cravings buried so inside my own flesh and bones, they become indistinguishable from my own. That’s what I want, pet.
“Do you still have the scroll?” Eli interrupted as he moved to sit on the snowy ground next to me and put his arm around me.
Mendax let out a deep, chest-reverberating growl.
“Shut up,” Eli snapped and squeezed me tight before leaning back to look me over. “Are you all right? Suns, you scared the piss out of me, Cal.”
I nodded as I took in the contrasting appearances of the men in front of me. The realization of exactly how much they each meant to me stung my eyes. I doubt anyone in the world was lucky enough to have something so powerful and deep between themselves and even one soul, but to have it with two…
“We can’t go to Moirai. I don’t want to go anymore.” I struggled to speak over the lump in my throat that seemed to be cutting off my oxygen as well. I grasped Adrianna’s ashes as they dangled from my neck. The V-shaped scar on my thumb methodically ran back and forth over the metal vines on the pendant. Getting vengeance for my mother and sister—getting to Moirai and killing my father for what he had done to them—meant everything to me; it was all-consuming.
Until this exact moment.
The men shared a look before Eli turned my shoulders to face him and gently took Adrianna’s pendant in his hand. He whispered a respectful “Feuhn kai greeyth” before dropping my pendant. “Cal…we don’t have a choice. The strain of the bond and tie are killing all of us now—slowly but definitively.” He brushed the hair behind my ear, ignoring Mendax’s hum of disapproval. “It’s already gone too far. Even if you decide not to kill Zef, which I don’t think you should, it’s inevitable. We have to go to trial in front of the Fates.”
“No.” I couldn’t stand to hear him speak the words right now.
“At the end of this journey, Mendax or I will no longer exist.” Eli looked away, trying to hide his own emotions.
“I personally can’t wait to watch them kill you.” Mendax’s gravelly voice broke the gentle curtain of emotions that hung in the air. “Keep your paws to yourself, or I’ll detach them.” He collected the piece of glass, keeping an unsettling stare on Eli, before he started to walk to the other side of the lake, where the rest of the pieces of the scroll remained.
Eli moved to follow, but I grabbed his forearm, keeping him next to me. Mendax continued walking, a black drop of ink leaking across the pale snow.
“Cal, if this is about?—”
“I’m so sorry.” I cut him off. “The thought that I’ve hurt you?—”
He put his hand on my thigh, and I swear I heard Mendax’s protest in my head.
“ I’m so sorry,” he returned.
Any words I’d prepared to say dropped from my mind. My brows tugged together, not understanding why he apologized. I shook my head to stop his nonsense, but he continued.
“I—I just missed you so much, and I was so worried about you being in Seelie for the first time unprotected. It all happened so fast. Then my mother was pressuring us to marry, and I thought about it. I thought about how much I hated being away from you and how much I love you, how happy I would be to see you every single day, and, well, I guess I just didn’t understand. You are beautiful, and I have never been that interested in another woman, so I just…” Eli rambled on.
“I missed you too. Eli, none of this is your fault. You saved my life and put yours in a constant state of risk by doing so. If anyone is sorry, it’s me,” I said. “I let a childhood crush get out of control.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t see you and Mendax for what you were before,” he choked out.
“What—”
“He loves you,” he stated as he turned and looked out at the dark figure across the lake. “In a way that I am incapable of.”
Like a broken bobblehead doll, I just nodded, unable to figure out what it was I really wanted to say.
“You and I are not supposed to be together in that way. Be honest with me, Cal: we both feel it. What you and I have is a soul-tied friendship. We’ve been through things most family members don’t go through together, and we are both insanely good-looking. Of course we were going to get a little confused after not seeing each other for so long,” he said with one of his ridiculously charming winks.
I let out a soft sigh. It felt like a thousand pounds had been suddenly removed from my shoulders. “You’re right,” I mumbled, realizing just how much sense his words made. “We were destined to be together in some way. I guess neither one of us cared what shape our relationship was in as long as we were going to be together.”
“Mendax will never ever experience the friendship you and I have…but we will never have what you and he do. When I woke up in the cave, I watched you two?—”
“Eli, oh my suns,” I said, feeling my face heat.
“No,” he chuckled. “I left when clothes started coming off, but before that, I saw how he looked at you and, more importantly, how you looked at him. Through the tie, I felt what you feel for him. I saw the man I’ve fought a thousand times, the man I would consider worse than any monster alive, turn gentle and kind, even vulnerable, with you.” He let out a soft chuckle as he looked at Mendax. “He’s swearing at me right now for sitting so close to you. I can hear him from across the lake.” He shook his head slowly as a smile pulled at the creases of his eyes. “What I’m trying to say, Cal, is you are family to me, and nothing and no one will ever change that. If I had the choice, I’d tie my life to yours all over again, but our life together is as friends. We both know that.”
“Are you breaking up with me?” I snorted, unable to hide the relief I felt. I had realized a lot of things when I was in the cave with Mendax. No one would ever compare to Eli in my eyes— no one . He was there for me more than my own parents were. He was my only ray of sunshine when my world was draped in gray skies and devastation. Even now, he was my beacon of light, the warm glow of the candle’s flame that enveloped me in comfort and safety when bleak horrors threatened to suffocate me.
“No, because we never had anything to break, and what we do have is unbreakable.” He smiled his usual warm, comforting smile. The one that made my insides feel cozy and at home.
“Feuhn kai greeyth,” I whispered, and then with a laugh, “even though I am but a lowly human.”
His shoulders relaxed at my words, and his eyes sparkled. “I dub thee with all my unofficial powers a true Seelie now, never again labeled as a lowly human,” he laughed. “And it will always be true, Cal. Our love and friendship are eternal. No matter what. I need you to remember that, especially with everything we are walking into.”
His serious words rattled me, bringing me back to the situation. It was amazing how comfortable he could make me feel sometimes.
“And just between you and I, Smoke-Show is starting to grow on me. I think you might be right about him. Maybe my dream of peace between the Seelie and Unseelie realms isn’t so far away after all.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I replied, in awe of my friend’s golden heart. “Except he’s still planning to kill you as soon as the tie severs.”
He rolled his eyes. “He won’t admit it, but he’s starting to like me too. Hey, do me a favor,” he said as we stood to leave. “Don’t tell Mendax we don’t feel like that about each other. Not yet anyway.”
The boyish, mischievous look in his warm amber eyes told me all I needed to know. He was about to mercilessly antagonize Mendax.
We walked to where Mendax was and saw that he had laid out the glass pieces. Just as with the other scroll from my father, this one looked and felt exactly like normal glass with the exception of how malleable the material was, reminding me more of hot plastic except for the fact that it broke and cracked off when you manipulated it too quickly. As a scientist, I struggled to wrap my mind around it. Large chunks were missing, and it was impossible to read with all the cracks and chips.
“Mendax, show me the bottom of your boot,” Eli said wearily.
“I’d be happy to,” the dark fae growled menacingly.
Eli rolled his eyes so hard, they almost closed. “I need to see the track. Look at this,” he said, pointing to a few odd-looking footprints.
Mendax lifted his boot alongside Eli’s. The tracks were much smaller with no details in the steps other than the outline.
“Someone is definitely attempting to stop the three of us from finding Moirai,” Mendax said with a laugh.
I didn’t think it was funny at all.
“Who would be trying to stop us? How would anyone even know where we’re going? How did we miss them following us?” I asked, growing more irritated by the minute.
“We didn’t see them following us because I think we are following them,” Mendax said.
“Who all did you tell that you were going to kill Zef? He is the Artemi Titan. I imagine he has somewhat of a rather powerful range of admirers,” Eli said.
“Look,” I said, pointing to the ground around the markings. “Glasswing butterflies—more of them. Whatever attracts these butterflies most definitely is who or what is trying to stop us. They were all over the falcon on the ice as well.”
We moved away from the footprints, all a little more confused now than before.
I put handfuls of snow over the shards and chunks of the scroll and asked Eli to heat it up. I felt how hard it was for him to call even a small amount of power, but the water blurred the cracks and chips, making it a little easier to read.
Calypso Petranova,
Salutations and so on. Presumably, if you are reading this, you have made it past the benthyc of Lake Sheridon.
For further directions to Moirai, continue onward to the weathered. Coax her into initiating the flood, and further instructions will find you.
The Fates