3. Ben
We weren’t the only group that’d come to this hospital upon being stranded in Cerris City. The waiting room for emergencies was overflowing when we arrived, alive with energy in a city that’d seemed dead on the outside. Luckily—if you could count anything that’d happened to us lately as “lucky”—Lucas had been jumped to the top of the list of priorities for the medical staff.
I sat in a quiet room with him on the third floor. My brother was hooked to several machines, so pale and still in the sea of white sheets he’d been buried in. They’d just allowed me in the room after a doctor had cast a hurried set of spells before rushing off to the next patient.
An equally harried nurse had told me not to touch anything, then left me with Lucas. I’d withstood the silence afterward for only a few minutes before jittering in place, all my excess energy and worries spilling over. I could barely look at the state the Hungering Darkness had left my brother’s body in, but I had to. The sight had to be permanent in my mind. This was the evil we faced…the evil I hadn’t protected him from.
I sat alone for a while, until there was a tentative knock on the door, followed by Cress peeking inside. I gestured for her to come in, sweeping her into a hug and a quick, delicate kiss. It was a relief to have her here, to touch anam cara marks with her and feel the spark of wholeness between us. She wore a couple butterfly bandages over the cuts on her face and had the bulk of wrapped wounds peeking through her torn sleeves.
“My mom told me where they put Lucas. Is he…?” She bit her lip, looking over at the bed.
“The doctor called it a magically-induced coma,” I answered quietly, weighed down by worry. “There’s not enough healing magic to go around for everyone right now, so they… He’s on life support.”
“Oh, Ben, I’m sorry.” She gave me a squeeze around my middle, still standing in the circle of my arms.
I tried to give one of my usual carefree shrugs. “Hey, it could be worse, right? The Hunger could’ve gobbled him up…or…” I wracked my brain for how this moment could be worse. It was like having my brother alive but unresponsive and sickly was somehow more severe than if he’d simply died.
There was no guarantee he’d wake up or if he’d be the same person after carrying the Hungering Darkness within him for months. The brother I knew may be long gone.
I choked on the burning sensation of tears. Out of long habit, they lingered at the corners of my vision half formed. Cress gathered me closer all the same, holding the back of my neck. We stayed that way for a few long minutes. I was glad to have her with me, warm and whole. She smelled of antiseptic and the musky staleness of the tunnel we’d come through. At some point, she’d scrubbed the blood from her clothes and skin…something I still needed to do.
“He’ll be safe here, for now,” she said.
“Is there such a thing as ‘safe’ anymore?” I asked with a sigh. “Did you hear that we’re stuck in this city?”
“Yeah.” She shared what áine and Hana Graygazer had told her, drawing a muttered string of curses from me.
“But there’s some good news,” Cress added with a hesitant lift of her lips. “Hana says we’re not going to be kept in the dark anymore. We’re invited to meet with the leadership of Ashbough Protective Services, plus the Graygazers and the surviving members of the Crown Coven, tomorrow to decide what to do next. The rest of the day is for us to rest and recover.”
My gaze veered back toward Lucas. I didn’t know how much of either task I would be doing. As a blood witch, I’d already healed all the cuts and bruises I’d sustained in the earlier fight. My body was ready for another round, even if my heart and soul remained wounded and in denial.
“And your aunt is waiting to talk to you, too,” she shared.
She released me so I could open the door out into the hall, and standing there patiently were two people. I should’ve expected as much. Aunt Jordan had yet to see my little brother, and Geo was never too far from Cress if he could help it.
Jordan had escaped any serious harm. She still wore a beautiful formal robe stitched with falling stars, but dust clung stubbornly to it and the limp brown hair around her head. She had a soft face made for kindly smiles and sympathy, which I could barely stand to see on her expression when our eyes met briefly.
“You want to see Lucas,” I said, stepping to the side so she could enter the room.
She pushed off the wall and went straight to me for a big hug. I froze, surprised. “Tell me you’re all right first,” she said.
My aunt released me just to look me over critically, and I wondered if this was what it felt like to have a mom…someone who would fuss because they liked you whole and healthy, even if it was a little embarrassing. “As good as can be expected.” I felt stiff and awkward. Before we’d met about a month ago, I’d never been fussed over. There had been no mother figures amongst Garroway’s coven of assassins, only blood and pain.
She nodded and gestured over her shoulder. “I made sure to take your staff with us. Unfortunately, the case was left behind…but such a thing can be replaced.”
Propped against the wall were two celestial witch staves. The first was made of golden wood and embellishments, with a single piece of paper hanging from a bar that crossed under a small molded sun resting at the top of it. That paper was a prepared spell, waiting in reserve. Since celestial magic was a long and grueling process, it was typical for spells to be ritually created and then stored on paper slips on a staff.
“My” staff was the impressive creation next to it. Its name was Evening Guidance, and it’d been my father’s before his untimely death. The wood was coated with black varnish and painted with silver trails of stars to match the centerpiece of a silver-plated crescent moon wrapped in the tails of several falling stars. Dozens of prepared spells were still attached to it.
The last time it’d been used was in Cress’s hands, firing a ray of pure power at Lucas to separate him from the Hungering Darkness. Neither of us was a celestial witch, but somehow, she’d called upon the power to use it anyway. I saw Evening Guidance as her weapon now, even if it were sized and balanced for a man’s use.
Her magical book’s spine was perched on it, front and back cover flickering like a strange butterfly. As I ushered my aunt into my brother’s room, I heard it utter, “Hey Cressie-poo, were you worried about me too?” It sounded a lot like a squeaky toy, and Cress loved it to death even though it was a flying, talking, know-it-all nuisance.
“Of course I was, The Librarian Witch’s Handbook,” she cooed.
Oh, and she had to address it by its full name, else it pouted. “Annoying” was part of its charm.
Their voices were muffled as I closed the door behind us, letting my aunt meet Lucas for the first time. She took his hand and prayed to the Goddess while I stood back to give her some privacy. Something told me his condition was not for the divine to heal.
His soul needed Phaeron Sudair’s help, the one thing we didn’t have.
Evening came swiftly, and I’d been dragged from Lucas’s bedside to join my coven and friends in one of the only rooms left unused on the fourth and final floor of the hospital. It had two curtained beds, and we drew straws for who would pile into them versus sleep on the cold floor tonight.
It was like a strange slumber party, all of us huddled under blankets, watching the evening news from a tiny television mounted in the wall, and eating our rationed share of hospital food. Geo, who’d returned to his human form finally, helped me bracket Cress between us in the back of the group.
The supernatural news stations were dominated by grainy footage taken of a glowing white figure sitting on the Crown Coven’s dais as if it were a throne. News anchors warned viewers multiple times before playing a few carefully curated shots of Myuna interacting with the two men still alive with her.
Though the news jumped around to avoid showing the reality of the situation, Myuna’s mouth and chin were streaked with blood, standing out in shades of gray and black from the grayscale recording.
“She’s eating the bodies left behind,” Cress murmured, the first to acknowledge the gruesome truth.
“And Garroway’s feeding her,” commented Bianca.
The olive-skinned woman was the other person in this room that didn’t bear any injuries. She and I were perhaps the only two blood witches to escape Garroway’s coven and live to tell the tale. We would always bear the runes he’d carved into our skin and the scars from his relentless training. That made us trauma siblings, even if she was about as friendly as a lit fuse most days.
As much as I wanted Garroway to suffer for everything he’d done to us, I hoped Myuna didn’t kill him. I’d vowed to finish him myself and intended to keep that promise.
“But not Phaeron,” Cress said, her voice tinged with hope.
The news only showed the dark gray figure of the dimensional prince standing there, watching. He appeared to be standing in the same place in every shot.
The talking heads on every station reported that it was Myuna, quoting a red-skinned dimensional woman who’d come forward earlier to set the record straight for the greater supernatural community. She’d shared who Myuna was and why she was there. And once that footage was exhausted, talk turned to that of survivors and missing family members who hadn’t had the means to escape the pocket dimension in time.
It looked bleak for them…for us. Cerris City would not come off lockdown for anyone when a world-eating goddess could escape behind them.
“I bet you someone is streaming the uncut footage.” The husky-voiced suggestion came from Wren, who sat on one of the beds. Though she’d stopped crying, she looked and sounded exhausted, wearing her grief with her spine curled in.
Several of us spoke up at once. Wren ignored it all, typing away on her phone screen.
“We need to have some eyes on the inside. Why not a camera?” suggested our resident changeling in disguise. We only knew him as Grant Norwood, the verdant witch who he appeared to be at the moment. Since áine was also in this room, he kept his true form hidden. As they were from enemy courts, she was bound to be the last to know we had a changeling in our midst, and I didn’t want to be around for her wrath if she ever learned the truth.
I glanced over at him, wondering if we could send him to spy on Myuna. It would be more accurate than the news or a recording presumably being streamed online.
An awful buzzing noise came from Wren’s phone, startling most of us. She grimaced and turned it down with a few rapid clicks on the side of her device. “This hacker is saying that when Myuna spoke for the first time, all the audio got messed up. But this is what she’s doing right now,” she said.
Her phone was passed from hand to hand, quickly ending up with Cress. “They’re just…doing nothing?” she asked. Myuna hadn’t moved from the dais, and Phaeron was a motionless statue below her.
The device stopped in Roe’s hands last. She angled its screen away from Willow, who had recently received magical healing for a concussion. Our intrepid leader was the only one here willing to scroll as far back in time as the stream would go, making a sound of disgust as the black and white shadows played over her face. “Okay, gross,” Roe muttered. “So she eats everyone…then she starts talking to Phaeron… Oh, this might be something.”
We gathered into a tight knot behind Roe as she played the video at three times its normal speed. Myuna made a come-hither gesture, and Phaeron responded. She worked magic over him and blinded the camera with beams of light…
“Fuck,” Cress spat in frustration. “What’d she do to him?”
When the light cleared, Phaeron was assuming the same spot where he’d apparently been standing since this moment. Myuna turned to Garroway and said something, then Roe paused the video. “He’s taking one of Phaeron’s swords and leaving,” she said.
“We have to go get Phaeron,” Cress said.
“Not yet,” Geo rumbled. “He has to leave the goddess’s side first. And something tells me she won’t allow him to do that…unless he is fully under her control.”
“We’ll figure out how to nab him, promise,” Roe put in.
Everyone voiced their agreement in their own ways. Willow, áine, and Wren gave weary nods. Grant, Bianca, and I cracked our knuckles, signaling a readiness to fight. I raised a brow at Grant since he’d said more than once that his pretty changeling ass was no good in combat. He offered a brilliant smile and a shrug in reply.
Roe, Geo, and Cress exchanged glances, determination in their faces.
“In the meantime, I’m declaring Yule to be on pause. I bought a gift for each and every one of you, and you’ll get them when we escape this pocket dimension,” Roe continued.
“If you haven’t noticed, they’re not unsealing the pocket dimension for anyone to ‘escape,’” Grant said with air quotes.
“Not until Myuna is dead,” Cress spoke up. “And Hana Graygazer believes the right group has been trapped in here with her to make that happen.”
“Who…us?” Wren asked, glancing around. A bit of that rich girl judgment returned to her gaze and tone. “Most of us can barely cast five spells.”
“Two of us are trained assassins with many kills to their names,” Bianca retorted. A claim she could make about herself, especially in hunting unnaturals, but less about me. I had the “trained” part down, but Garroway had barely sent me on any missions.
Wren turned a glare her way. “You’re not even in this coven.”
I knew that look in Bianca’s face, ready and excited for a fight. I murmured her name, practically begging for her to glance my way and not start this conflict. Not now.
She said without pause, “I will be tomorrow.”
Several emotions passed over Wren’s face before she settled on betrayal. She tilted that look toward Roe. “Heath’s body isn’t even cold yet,” she said, going breathy with emotion. “I mean, before some monster everyone calls a goddess ate what’s left of him. He can’t be replaced like that.” She snapped her fingers.
“Wren, you have to understand—” Roe began to say.
“I’m not having this conversation around everyone,” the other woman said abruptly. She stood and snatched up her phone, putting it in her pocket and sailing out the door. If she was trying to outrun the first sob before we all heard it…I could pretend it hadn’t happened before she was out of earshot.
Roe heaved a tired sigh before following after her. After a few moments of hesitation, Cress followed, motioning for Geo and me to stay behind.