Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
EVEREST
“When you say back door . . .” Tenn let his sentence drift off.
I sighed and scrubbed my face as I continued to pace the living room, my thoughts a panicked mess.
Sam’s message had come in a few minutes ago and I was fucking spiraling.
If Mother had Auryn in her own realm, then she knew the truth.
No child of Lilith could enter her realm and not cause a reaction.
Sam had. Auryn would. Even if mother hadn’t known she was mine when they grabbed her, she’d know now.
My stomach rolled, shooting bile up my throat.
I bent over and rested my hands on my knees to try and just breathe through it.
Eight hundred years of fearing this exact scenario and it was so much worse than I imagined.
My hands were shaking, my eyes twitching.
I knew my magic was swirling around me simply by the wide berth the rest of The Coven had given me.
“Don’t shut them out, Everest,” Myrtle whispered as she stopped beside me and rubbed my back. “Especially not now.”
“Tell us about this back door.”
I turned to face Tegan. “You cannot enter Lilith’s realm. None of you can. It would be a death sentence . . . and a painful one.”
Tegan pursed her lips. “Mortals have been taken—”
“Oh, I’ll go!” Mei-Ling jumped up with her hand raised. “I wanna help.”
“No. Francelina would never forgive me if I let you.” I sighed and tugged on my hair. “Besides, by now Mother has learned the truth of Auryn’s bloodline. She’ll have taken her somewhere within her realm no mortal could reach.”
“Can anyone reach it?”
“Me, Tenn. Only me.” Fear gripped me unlike anything I’d ever known. It felt like a hundred hands made of glass squeezing my spine. My breaths grew labored. “I have to go into Lilith’s realm and rescue my daughter.”
“And you’re gonna let us help you,” Bentley finally spoke up. He was gripping the Hierophant’s locket and orange crescent moons flashed in his eyes. He didn’t look at me. “Right?”
“My plan will still work.” Tegan stepped into my line of view and ducked to get my attention. “If you’re going in there, we’re going to give you as much coverage as possible, as much time as possible.”
“What are you thinking, Everest?” Hunter walked over to get in my line of view without trying to touch me with his hand or magic. “I can feel your emotions. Please trust us with them. Think out loud.”
I whined. I actually whined.
“I’ve only been a father for eighteen years, so I can’t pretend to have more experience than you, but I do know exactly how it feels to have your child’s life in danger.”
“We understand the helplessness you feel right now.” Devon leaned against her husband’s side. “We understand this pain and fear, this suffocating fear.”
My face fell. I nodded. It was suffocating.
“It feels kind of like your skin is simultaneously being burned from your body while you’re drowning at the bottom of the ocean.”
I nodded to her. “I’ve never . . . I’ve never felt . . . this before. She’s always been . . . safe enough.”
“But we have,” Devon spoke softly, and I saw the haunted, tortured expression in her eyes.
I glanced to each of her four children and my heart sank. If any parents understood how I was feeling, it was the parents standing around me now. Hunter, Devon, and Myrtle.
“Talk to us,” Hunter’s voice was soft and warm, everything a supportive father’s should’ve been. “Think out loud.”
“I made the door,” I said in a rush. “When I was a young child . . . I wanted a way in and out of her realm that she didn’t watch or control. So from inside . . . I made a back door.”
Tegan narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to the side. “Where’s the front door?”
“It’s not a literal door. It’s actually an orb . . . that has been located inside Sweyn’s tower room in the center of Avolire.”
They all groaned and cursed. I appreciated the immediate grasping of the situation.
Tegan lifted one finger. “Do you have any reason to suspect your mother knows about said back door?”
I shook my head.
She nodded and I could see the wheels turning in her eyes. “So, your mother and Sweyn are definitely expecting you to come into Avolire and trade for Auryn.”
“Yes.” I put my hands on my hips and stared at the ground as my thoughts raced away from me. “I am confident I can get Auryn out.”
Tenn scowled. “But not yourself?”
I shook my head. “My magic is not as strong as Mother’s, obviously, so while I was able to create a back door and conceal it from her for a thousand years, only one person can go through the door at a time. I can go in and get her back out—”
“But you’ll have to go through the front door,” Tegan finished for me. When I nodded, she started tugging on her bottom lip and pacing the room.
“You see the problem?”
She turned and grimaced. “Unfortunately.”
Thiago cleared his throat. “Not sure I do?”
“While I can rescue Auryn and get her out of Mother’s realm, I will be forced to leave through the front door . . .” I shrugged. “Which is undoubtedly where the trap is set.”
Tegan paused mid-step and frowned, then turned devious green eyes to me. “How do you feel about torture?”
“How do you feel about figuring out how to get me back out?”
Tenn flinched. “Wait, hold on. What?”
Tegan grinned. “I can still enact my previous plan to give Everest the distraction he needs to slip in the back door and throw Auryn out. They won’t know this until Everest steps through the front door, which will most likely be right in front of them.”
“Wait, wait, hold on.” Tenn ran his hand through his hair. “Are you suggesting Everest actually allow himself to be captured by Lilith? She’ll torture him.”
I’ve been tortured since the day Celina died. Nothing else could hurt worse. But I didn’t say that out loud. Instead, I cleared my throat of the sudden hot lump of emotion that had formed there. “It’s not the physical pain that worries me.”
Half the room scoffed.
Tenn threw his hands up. “Then what is?”
“I fear, now that I’ve betrayed her, once she gets me inside her realm, none of you will be able to get me back out against her will.
” I rubbed my hands together. “I am not human in any way. I was not born in this realm, and I am in no way tethered to it except for by emotional connections. Her realm is my realm. To sever that bond . . . Well, it is beyond magic any of you could wield.”
“What about Celina?” Tegan asked me telepathically. “Can Celina or any of the angels born in Heaven sever it? Would they possess the power to get you back out?”
“In theory, yes,” I responded back telepathically. Out loud, I said, “In order to pull me from my home realm—as much as that sentence hurts me to say—you’ll need something of this realm to tether me to.”
Devon whistled. “Would have to be one hell of a tether.”
“What about a Heavenly tether?” Jackson’s gaze was distant but sharp. He was thinking hard. “You said before that a weapon of Heaven would be the only way to kill you where she couldn’t get to your soul, even in death.”
Tegan snapped her fingers in his direction. “More cowbell. Yes. Continue.”
Warner snort-laughed so hard his drink sprayed out of his mouth. Several others chuckled. The Bishop family shook their heads.
Jackson rolled his eyes. “I’m just saying, what’s a Heavenly tether that you could pull on?”
“Blood.” Braison turned to me. “In October when you drank from Tegan, couldn’t you, like, track her that way for a bit?”
“Yes, but that wouldn’t help her find me.”
“What about a block?”
We all turned to Savannah with confused expressions.
She glanced around nervously. “Is there a way we could prevent him from leaving this realm?”
Royce smacked the table. Then signed H-E-N-L-E-Y.
Tegan was already shaking her head as she paced. “The spell we did to prevent the shadow-demon from leaving this realm wouldn’t be near strong enough for Lilith and her son.”
“OH.” Savannah’s eyes sparkled. “When Frankie was going looking for Everest in her dreams, Myrtle had her wear her diadem—”
Tegan and I gasped at the same time.
We all turned to look at Myrtle, the Lead Crone.
She frowned. “Bentley?”
He leaned back against the couch and shrugged. “It does blend in with his hair.”
Myrtle grinned and pulled a chair out from the table. “Sit. Now.”
The moment I sat she began braiding her silver diadem into my long white hair, burying it at the base of my skull against my skin to try and hide it from Mother’s sight.
Tegan gripped her crystal necklace, causing the Book of Shadows to pop out.
The pages quickly flipped until they landed on what she wanted—her eyes widened.
“Babe?” Tenn asked concernedly.
She looked up at him with sad eyes. “I need your sister’s locket.”
His face paled, then he turned to Jackson. “Do you mind if I . . .?”
He smiled but it was full of pain. “It’s your mother’s locket. She’d want you to use it in her absence.”
“Be right back.” Tegan vanished into a wall of bubbles. About thirty seconds later she reappeared holding a locket in her hand. “Babe?”
He took it and unlocked it with the key hanging around his neck. There was a flash of light and then a small leatherbound book sat in his hands. He immediately held it out to Tegan. She smiled and squeezed his hand as she took it but otherwise said nothing, just began flipping through the pages.
Her eyes widened and her grin grew wicked. “I’ve got a spell I can put on you, Everest, to help us against this problem. I won’t tell you what it is or says, and it’s in the angelic tongue, but it will stop your body from being able to leave this realm without your consent.”