Chapter 7
Seven
Avalon
If you die, everyone you love will follow you. You must fight.
The voice was soft. Familiar.
Zier had his head resting on an executioner’s block, his gaze steady and defiant.
People in the crowd screamed, “Traitor!” over and over.
The executioner’s axe came down, the sound of Zier’s head hitting the boards making me scream.
A sword pierced through my chest, carving out my heart, and I desperately tried to hold it together with my hand.
My champion. You must fight.
I woke up panting and covered in sweat, clutching my chest as if my heart was trying to burst through the cage of my flesh. Hayle stood beside me, his knife in his hand, looking for threats, but all I had were bad dreams.
“It’s okay,” I muttered groggily. “Just a nightmare.”
He hovered for a little longer, but then climbed back in beside me. The other two hadn’t even woken; Vox was still pressed tightly to my back, though his hand had migrated up from my stomach to my chest, as if he could calm its beating like you’d calm a spooked horse.
Hayle pressed close to my front, brushing his lips across mine. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head lightly. It felt… wrong.
Everything had been exaggerated. When I’d held my heart in my hand, it had been shaped like the kind you found carved into trees, and not the kind that existed inside a body.
Even I could tell it wasn’t a memory of the past, not like my old ones.
The ones that hadn’t really been nightmares, but me remembering the death of my mother in every reset.
This wasn’t the same.
It made it more unnerving, though.
“Just a dream.” However, the defiant look on Zier’s face as he sat on the chopping block wouldn’t leave my mind. Tomorrow, I’d ask Kian to send a message. Check how he was or something.
Hayle wrapped himself around me, his head tilted back so I could tuck my face into his throat. I breathed him in, the scent so familiar, so comforting, I fell back into a thankfully dreamless sleep.
A loud clanging noise woke me, and I started up in bed. The guys around me all stumbled to their feet, but Alucius still lay on the rug, looking more annoyed than anything. So clearly, not a threat.
Hayle groaned. “It’s just Meela. Braxus said it’s the breakfast bell.” He rolled his eyes. “He’d like me to tell you that there’s breakfast sausage.”
I grinned, because Braxus had my back. I loved breakfast sausage.
I loved that hound.
“Tell Braxus I think she’s got quite enough sausage in her life,” Vox grumbled, leaning over to kiss my head as he pulled on his shirt. “Good morning, love.”
I smiled up at him. This soft, early morning version of Vox was one of my favorites.
It was like his skin hadn’t been cured into the impenetrable shell he lived behind just yet.
He brushed his lips across mine, and I chased them.
I wanted longer kisses. I wanted longer, lazy mornings, where I could just lie on his chest without fear of anyone finding out, or being attacked by assassins.
Lierick squeezed past me toward the door, kissing the back of my nape. “Morning, Avie. Fuck, you’re beautiful.” Then he sandwiched me between Vox’s body and his own, and kissed Vox’s cheek. “You too, handsome.”
Being between them like that might be my new favorite position. I made a happy humming noise, but Hayle interrupted. “Normally, I would say we should take this back to bed, but Meela and Reeba scare the shit out of me, and I’m terrified they’ll appear when I’m balls deep in my Soul Tie.”
Lierick laughed. “And Kian Halhed might actually neuter you like a horny dog.” He grabbed my hand, and we all left the bedroom.
Up in the main living area, Kian, Celis, Powell, and Iker were already sitting around the long table. We would definitely be putting a dent in the old women’s food supplies, and I wondered if I could ask Kian to get them more before he headed back to Rewill.
“Good morning, good morning,” Meela sing-songed. “Sit down. You have a big day in the archives, and you’ll need your fuel.”
I didn’t even know what we were looking for.
Would there be something on Recreationists?
I knew Lierick and Iker wanted to go through their own family archives, but I was pretty sure that was more for nostalgia than anything else.
Reeba seemed convinced that the Goddess had directed us here for a purpose, though, and we’d just have to trust that we’d know it when we saw it.
“Where’s Epsy?” I asked Braxus, but it was Hayle who answered.
“Apparently, Reeba asked him to catch a little mouse that’s been avoiding traps in the archive rooms.”
I winced, remembering my little mouse friend back at Boellium. “Can’t you just ask the mouse to, I don’t know, evacuate?”
Hayle laughed. “I did ask, but it gave me the mouse equivalent of the finger. My companions are merely that; they have minds of their own, and the one running around in there has an attitude and a real love for the wooden crates that hold the artifacts.”
Meela humphed. “Sneaky little mouse. I swear, it’s Reeba’s archnemesis. If your stolt is successful, she might try to keep him.”
I grinned, but shook my head. “He’s pretty devoted. He even had an eagle deliver him to a boat in the middle of the Alutian Sea.”
Kian looked at me like I’d lost my mind, and I shrugged. It was the least insane thing that had happened.
The conversation around the table was easy, with even Celis and Powell seemingly relaxed, like they knew they were finally safe. Kian had to leave today to head back to Rewill, but he’d return in a few weeks to bring supplies for Meela and Reeba.
They’d invited both Celis and Powell to stay, and I knew they would.
Even though the Librarians were traditionally women, Meela and Reeba had no problem with Powell staying too.
“Goddess knows, we’re getting too old to heft around some of those boxes,” Meela had grumbled.
“No, some young blood would be good here. Refresh the soul.”
Once breakfast was done, and the others were helping with the dishes, I walked my brother up to the rundown hut that was acting as a front. He’d saddled Nimbus, and Stratus as well, but was leaving Glory for me.
“Take good care of her. She was always meant to be yours,” he murmured as I hugged him goodbye. “Where will you go next?”
I shrugged, because honestly, we were making this up as we went along, in a holding pattern until something forced our hand.
“Hayle wants to go home to Hamor. Even though we already have the Third Line’s support, it would be good to have somewhere to rest, just for a moment.
Then maybe Bine?” I hesitated. “Kian, you can’t trust Father anymore.
” I sucked in a deep breath. “If you ever thought about making a move against him, now is the time. Not just for Lierick’s war, or even for me.
He’s a threat to you, to Bach. If anything happened to you two…
” I shook my head. I couldn’t stand the idea, not really.
Losing them would be like cutting out another chunk of my heart.
“It’ll all be okay, Avalon. I promise.” He used to say that to me when I was little.
Some of my earliest memories were him rocking me on his shoulder as I cried, whispering those words.
I’d believed them with my whole heart then, and I still did now.
It was the innocent hope of a child, but I could hold onto it.
Still, I swallowed hard. “I don’t know how it could be.”
He had no reply to that, so he just gave me another frown and climbed onto his horse. “Let me know how you’re going. Every week, Avalon. I mean it.”
I gave him a grin. “Okay, I promise.”
He rode away, the promises we’d shared hanging on the wind, both impossible to keep. I watched him go, before turning back to the trap door, walking down the ramp until I could pull it closed behind me.
I wasn’t surprised to find Hayle at the base of the stairs, waiting for me.
Since the last reset, he hadn’t been more than a few feet away from me at all times.
I tried to work out what had changed since the other times, but it didn’t take much brain power to realize the difference was that it had been me who almost died.
Not Hayle. Not Vox. Not even Lierick, but me.
“You okay?” he asked, scooping me up into his arms until his palms were under my ass and I was wrapped around him. It wasn’t sexual—well, no more than any other embrace with my wild Soul Tie. No, it was like he just couldn’t be close enough to me.
“I’m okay. Are you?”
He shook his head. “There was a world in which I lost you. I don’t think…” He trailed off, but I understood what was unsaid. I kissed him softly, and he rested his forehead against mine. “What was your nightmare about?” His words were soft, but I flinched at the memory of my dream anyway.
“Zier Tarrin. I dreamed he was being executed for treason. It felt almost too real.”
Hayle sucked his bottom lip between his teeth. “Do you think it was precognition?”
I shrugged as he easily walked us back down the hall. Sometimes, I forgot how strong Hayle really was. “My dreams have always just been that. Or memories of a past reset.”
“You’re probably right. Maybe it’s all that repressed lust. It seems to be contagious at the moment,” he teased, and I knew he was speaking about Vox and Lierick. “But you should talk to Lierick or Iker about it anyway, just in case.”
We made it back to the kitchen, and he placed me back on my feet. “Ready to dig for a needle in a haystack?” Lierick asked with a smile.
“Impossible odds are my favorite kind,” I replied, only a little sarcasm coloring my voice. It was a joke, but every day, I woke up, hoping that the hardest days were behind us. It was a foolish wish, but I’d never stop trying.
We moved down toward the archives, where the heavy doors swung open by themselves. “What Line’s magic does that? Are Reeba and Meela First Line?” I asked Vox softly, and he shook his head.
“Their magic doesn’t feel like mine.” He paused, squinting at the door. “Their magic doesn’t feel like any Line’s, exactly.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Reeba was perched on the top of a stack of crates, and I watched a purple flash weave in and out of them.
Epsy. “It means we are of no Line, baby Halhed. Or perhaps we are of all Lines. Being deep in the soul of Ebrus changes a person.” She smirked and waved a hand at the archives.
“Now, get to work. We might have magic, but the research isn’t going to do itself. ”
I walked to the closest wall, pulling down the first book that looked like it could be helpful. A History of the World. I knew there was more to the world than just Ebrus, but seeing it in black and white after it had been hidden from our learning for so long seemed almost unreal.
Moving to the large table in the middle of the room, I sat down and began to read.