Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
The mansion's circular drive came into view, and Daniel barely registered Adrian parking his car while he himself sat in the passenger seat. They'd refused to let him drive.
Smart. Daniel would have driven them into a ditch, absolutely incapable of focusing on anything other than what had happened at the church.
His only concern was for Caelen.
For now, he didn't even have the capacity to feel mortified over the way he'd broken down in Knox's arms, or the way everyone tiptoe'd around him now.
"Daniel?" Leon's voice came from the backseat. "We should go inside."
Daniel made himself nod and climb out of the vehicle. He stopped when he noticed a blue car sitting in front of the mansion. Jamie's car. Daniel blinked, trying to make sense of it. Jamie was supposed to be at the bookstore, three hours away. What was he doing here?
The door to the mansion opened before they reached it, and there was Jamie, worry etched deep in his familiar features. One look at Daniel's face and Jamie's expression shifted from concern to alarm.
"What happened?"
Daniel meant to say something casual. Something reassuring. Maybe ask why Jamie had driven all this way. Instead, his breath hitched, and the words spilled out. "I felt it. What Morthul does to him. I felt all of it."
Daniel half-expected his big brother to admonish him again for worrying about what happened to Caelen, but Jamie didn't scold him. He only looked at him for a moment. "Oh, cracker."
The love and care in his brother's voice was all it took to set Daniel's lips wobbling again, but he wasn't going to cry anymore. He'd cried enough.
"I knew something was up when your friend came to the store," Jamie said. "C'mon, let's get you inside." He pulled Daniel into the mansion as if it was his house, rather than a place he'd arrived at maybe an hour ago. But everyone else seemed glad to let him handle the situation.
Daniel was glad too.
He didn't protest when Jamie steered him into the kitchen and pushed him gently into a chair. Numbly, he watched as his brother moved around the unfamiliar space, opening cabinets until he found mugs, then hunting down tea bags and sugar.
The familiar routine of Jamie taking care of him made Daniel's chest ache. How many times had they sat like this in the back room of the bookstore? Jamie making tea while Daniel rambled about some book that broke his heart, or some guy who'd turned out to be exactly what Jamie warned him about.
It really wasn't fair. His brother shouldn't always have to pick up the pieces when Daniel threw himself at someone who broke him. He'd promised to do better after the last one.
And yet here they were again.
But this was different. Caelen hadn't hurt him. Caelen was hurting. He was fighting and screaming inside his own mind while something ancient and cruel used his body like a puppet. And no amount of Jamie's tea was going to fix that.
"I thought…" Daniel's voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I thought I understood what was happening to him. But I didn't. Not really."
Jamie set a mug in front of him, the tea still steeping. "Tell me."
So Daniel did, words spilling out of him as his hand curled around the warm mug. "When we connect, it's like I can see inside of him, and what I see there…" Daniel's breath hitched. "There is so much darkness, but it isn't his. It's this thing possessing him, and it's hurting him, all the time, to control him. He can't fight it, but he does, for me, to protect me."
His vision blurred when he looked up at Jamie. "I've never experienced pain like that. I can't… I can't let him keep suffering by himself. I won't."
Jamie got quiet again, as he did when he processed things. He stirred his tea. "Just once," he asked eventually, "can you save yourself?"
Daniel's chin jutted defiantly. "You don't get it."
"No, I think I do. You said Caelen was fighting to protect you. Those were your own words. Do you think he wants you to throw yourself at him, or does he want you to stay away and be safe?"
That wasn't fair.
Daniel swallowed down all that he wanted to say as he remembered Caelen telling him 'goodbye' in their shared dream, as if they were never going to see each other again, as if Daniel could stay away.
Jamie took his silence as confirmation. "He warned you away, didn't he?"
"It doesn't matter!" Daniel burst out. "I have to help him! You didn't feel it! But I did, and I…" He rose from his chair, voice catching. "What Morthul's doing to him, no one deserves that! Not even if they've done terrible things!"
"I thought you'd say something like that," Jamie admitted. "The more they don't deserve you, the more you love them."
"This isn't like that." Daniel stared at his brother, willing him to understand, even though there was no way that he could. Jamie hadn't been there in his dream, hadn't felt the softness of Caelen's lips on his and seen who he really was when he was stripped of all that made him the Shadow King.
Jamie blew out a breath. "Okay," he said, surprising Daniel. "You want to help this man, we find a way to help him."
Daniel blinked. "You're going to help?"
"I obviously can't talk you out of this."
"No."
"Then I'm going to do the next best thing, which is to make sure you actually have a plan."
"What kind of plan?"
"I don't know. But we've got a whole bunch of books to look through."
"Books?" Realization hit Daniel slowly. Malik had gone to get the books from Veridia that had appeared in Jamie's store. "You brought all the books here?"
"Yup, they're all here. Even a few more than the ones you'd found. They're all in Malik's library now." Jamie collected their mugs. "Shall we go and have a look?"
Daniel tried not to get his hopes up. He remembered looking through the books yesterday and not finding much of anything that was helpful. Sadly 'How to Exorcise an Ancient Dark God' had not been among the titles he'd found.
But he couldn't think of anything better to do, either.
"We don't have much time," he told Jamie as he followed him into Malik's personal library, because of course Malik had a personal library (and it was huge.) "The Barrier Keepers will be back at sundown."
"Then we'd better get to it." Malik's voice. He sat in a leather armchair near the window, a stack of books balanced on the side table next to him.
"Any luck?" Daniel asked.
"So far, I've found three different treatises on proper tea service at the Night Court, and what I think might be a book of children's nursery rhymes. So, no."
The rest of the Veridian books were stacked on a table near the door. "What exactly are we looking for?"
"Anything about Morthul," Daniel said, grabbing a book at random. "Or possession. Or..." He trailed off as he got a good look at the book in his hand. A Complete History of Veridian Sheep Farming . Great.
"Maybe we should sort them first?" Jamie suggested. "Make piles based on subject matter?"
Daniel nodded, but his eyes kept straying to the grandfather clock in the corner. How many hours until sundown? How much time did they have before the Barrier Keepers came back with their ultimatum?
He needed to make his decision by then. They'd said their solution could separate Morthul and Caelen… and also that it could kill Caelen in the process.
There had to be a better way.
"Okay," Jamie said, taking charge as if they were in his store. "History books here, magical theory there, and..." He picked up the sheep farming book from Daniel's hands with a raised eyebrow. "Agricultural texts in that corner?"
They fell into a rhythm, sorting books into growing piles. Fiction. Cookbooks. Poetry. More farming manuals than Daniel would have expected from another dimension. Every now and then, someone would call out a promising title, only to find another dead end inside. Magical Contracts and Bindings was actually about political marriages and The Ancient Dark a very dramatic fictional tale.
"This might be something," Jamie said, holding up a black leather tome. " Dark Arts and Ancient Practices ."
Daniel nearly knocked over a stack of cookbooks getting to his brother. But the book, when opened, released a cloud of dust and revealed itself to be nothing but old farming rituals for ensuring good harvests.
"Why are there so many farming books?" Daniel groaned, dropping into one of the leather chairs. "How is any of this going to help us save Caelen?"
"Don't give up, yet," Jamie said. "Have a little patience."
Shortly after he said that, though, the grandfather clock chimed three. Only a few hours left until sundown. Daniel groaned and got back to it.
Leon poked his head in. "I brought sandwiches. Have you found anything?"
"Unless you want to know about proper sheep-shearing techniques in the shadow realm, no." Malik's voice was dry. He set aside another farming manual with a grimace.
Leon set the plate of sandwiches down on a table. No one reached for one.
Another few minutes passed in silence while Daniel leafed through a book titled The Art of Shadow Walking. It turned out to be about court dances.
Just when he was about to throw it against the nearest wall, Leon spoke up again. He held a thin book with a yellow cover. "I think I've got something."
Daniel looked up from his useless book of court dances. "What is it?"
"Records of the Third Age." Leon held up a thin book with a yellow cover.
Daniel tilted his head. "The Third Age?"
"It's when people started worshipping Morthul." Leon shrugged. "Most relevant gods appeared during that time."
Daniel managed a weak smile. It was so very like Leon to know nerdy lore like that while the rest of them dug through absolutely useless books.
"There's a whole section about Morthul here." Leon's eyes moved across the page, his expression growing more serious. "It talks about his hosts."
Something in his friend's tone made Daniel's stomach clench. "What about them?"
Leon's brow furrowed as he read. "According to this, Morthul has taken many hosts over the centuries. Faithful followers who gave themselves to him willingly." He paused. "None of them lasted very long."
"What do you mean?" Daniel's voice came out smaller than he intended.
"The possession itself killed them. Their bodies..." Leon trailed off, scanning further down the page. "It says housing a dark god was too much. Most only lasted a few months at best."
Jamie set down the book he was holding. "How long has Caelen been possessed?"
"Way longer than that," Daniel whispered. Caelen had made that deal with Morthul to reclaim his kingdom, and that happened years ago, when he set up his Shadow Court.
Had he known all along that he was inviting his end? Had he not cared?
The words from his dream echoed in Daniel's mind: Kill me if you must . His chest tightened as the implications sank in. No, it couldn't be. "Caelen's lasted longer than anyone, so maybe it doesn't affect him the same way?"
While he was speaking, though, Daniel's thoughts raced back to the church, to the pain he'd felt through his connection with Caelen. The agony of fighting against Morthul's control.
It was all wrong. "Caelen was supposed to be Morthul's downfall. Zev was thinking maybe Morthul possessed Caelen to prevent that." Daniel's hands curled into fists. "He must be laughing as he's killing Caelen from the inside. Either Caelen obeys him or..." He couldn't finish.
He looked out the window at the afternoon sky. Soon, the Barrier Keepers would be back to ask him to cooperate with them, so they could draw on Caelen's power to close all the portals. A process that might separate him from Morthul. A process that might kill him.
Daniel hated that idea, but he understood now that he couldn't let Caelen continue as he was either.
What if the Barrier Keepers' plan was the only shot he had at saving the soul of the man he'd come to love?
Could he afford not to take it?