Chapter 51
Rylee
“You’re running out of time.” Evaluna’s voice rings through the recesses of my mind.
I slowly sit up, blinking the sleep from my eyes.
Pierce is asleep next to me, Kal and Axl having retired to their rooms in Kal’s home hours ago.
“Voting Day?” I ask, finding Evaluna on the balcony.
It’s always the balcony. The moon is always in view.
“Can you blame me?” she says, motioning to the moon and stars.
I’m sure it glows brighter at her attention.
“No,” I say honestly. “I’ve always loved the night.” I always felt freer with the darkness shining over me. No daylight hours threatening to break me in the Ashlands. “You keep coming to me in my dreams,” I continue. “And then what you say usually turns out to be true.”
“Is there a question in there?”
I shake my head. “I feel so lost.”
Evaluna looks at me with pity. “All do who are put in your situation.”
“What can I do to help you?” I ask, urgency rising inside me. “To help the others? I feel like that’s what I need to do. But I don’t know how.” I shake my head. “Also, it seems grandiose of me to assume you need help from me.”
Evaluna’s eyes widen as she nods.
I don’t know what she’s agreeing with.
She opens her mouth, then shuts it. The same strangled speech I’ve seen her do before. The Fates preventing her from—
A memory slashes through my mind. One of my sister acting the same as Evaluna. Like she couldn’t tell me what she wanted to. I thought it was a show of mistrust, but . . .
“Something is preventing you from speaking plainly to me.” I don’t ask. She’s said as much before. “The Fates.”
She nods.
“Could that be the same for regular people in Lumathyst?”
“Your sister,” she says, nodding again. “Though it’s not the Fates that tie her tongue.”
Cold shock trickles through me. “You were able to confirm that just now,” I say, tilting my head. “Some things you’ve been able to work around in telling me.”
“Some things aren’t forbidden to say . . . if one asks correctly.”
“No offense, but the Fates and whoever is stopping anyone else are a real pain in the ass.”
Evaluna’s lips twitch into a smirk that reminds me of Jax.
That hollow space in my soul aches.
“What else can I be missing?” I mumble to myself. “The Faders?”
She blinks.
“My sister?”
Evaluna’s eyes flare, flecks of starlight flickering in shining silver.
My sister. Evaluna says I’m running out of time when it comes to my sister.
“Is everything connected?” I ask. “All the questions we keep running into?”
Another small, almost imperceptible nod.
“It would be much easier if you could just wake up and tell me this in person.” I laugh. “It’s hard to get people to believe me when I tell them you visit my dreams.” I run my fingers through my hair. “Can Jax dreamwalk?”
“Jax is my son,” she says with ease, relief lining her gorgeous features as she speaks freely. “He can do a great many things, if he decides to.”
“I miss him.”
“I know you do. He misses you,” she says, shocking me.
“You know?” I ask, hopeful. “Is he okay? Why isn’t he home yet? Is he on his way?” The questions pour from me quicker than water through a net.
Evaluna opens her mouth, then closes it again. “He misses you. You’re running out of time.”
Right. Can’t stand here and steep in my separation from her son. I need to move. She’s hinting all this has to do with my sister, even going so far as to suggest something is preventing her from talking to me, too.
Hope threatens to build in my heart, but I keep it latched down.
“You keep much under lock and key,” she says on an exhaled breath. “It’s like you don’t trust yourself.”
“I’ve made mistakes before,” I say. “I don’t want to again.”
She tilts her head. “And yet,” she says, “sometimes trusting yourself is the only way to truly understand yourself.” She casts her eyes toward the sky. “Hurry.”
My eyes open, and I’m back in bed with Pierce. No longer on the balcony.
Ash meows at the foot of the bed, grumbling as I shift the covers aside, slip out of bed, and get dressed.
I cast a look at Pierce, contemplating waking him. Waking the others.
Something gives me pause. If Erin is being forced to not tell me certain things, then she certainly won’t open up if I bring them with me.
The last time I ventured out like this, Faders attacked. I have to hope that won’t happen again. Especially with Evaluna’s urgency.
I leave a note and head out of the Ruby Aire, bound on velomage toward Obsidian City.
As I ride there, I unlock the doors on the powers rippling along the bonds.
Pierce’s snapped back to me sometime in the night when we were lost in each other.
Same for Axl and Kal. I don’t let them fully free, but I can feel them awaken beneath my skin.
I don’t want to be caught unaware again, and now that the antidote runs through my veins, I have no fear of Tox.
I park the velomage, heading to the small hut in the hopes she’ll be there. It’s a fool’s hope, but I have to try.
“Pushy, for a goddess, isn’t she?” Erin’s voice fills the small space the second I close the door behind me.
“Evaluna told you to come here, too?” I ask.
“Clearly.”
“I could strangle you,” I say, heart thudding against my chest. “For last time.”
“I saved your life,” she fires back.
The fight goes out of me. Erin looks worse than before, her features haggard, her shoulders tense, purple beneath her eyes.
“What’s happening to you?” I ask softly.
She forces out a laugh. “Lot more than I bargained for, that’s for sure.”
“What did you bargain for?” I ask.
She flinches, then shakes her head.
Right. If something is preventing her from speaking, I have to be smarter about the way I ask.
“You dreamed of Evaluna, too. Is this the first time?” A casual enough question.
“Yes,” she says. “Honestly, I thought I’d come here and you wouldn’t. That it was just a dream.”
Chills erupt on my skin. If Evaluna wants us to speak, she can’t fully hate Erin for her role. Hope builds again, and this time I let myself feel it.
“I could strangle you for a lot of things, you know,” I say.
“Are you keeping a list?” she asks.
“I’m not really a fan of lists,” I answer. “Seems like any time I end up on one, I get hurt.”
“I understand that more than you know.”
“Did you enjoy the Choosing? I was a fan of the strawberries.”
Erin laughs. It’s almost healing to hear it. “I went for the art.”
We share a smile. Hers is slightly broken, but I can see reflections of the sister I knew in her features. “Yours is better. I’ve already picked out spots for the pieces I’m going to have you paint me once you come to your senses.”
Her eyebrows draw together, sadness replacing the familiarity. “Ry . . .”
“After the Choosing,” I hedge when she doesn’t finish. “You went to the Ruby Aire?” I ask, remembering her painting of Ash near the library.
The light drains from her features. “No.”
“Emerald?”
She shakes her head.
“Sapphire?”
Another shake.
“One of the lowers?”
“No.”
“Obsidian?”
Another shake.
“You went nowhere after the Choosing?”
Erin visibly swallows. “Not for a while. Then I did.”
“Where did you go after?”
She parts her lips, then furrows her brow.
“This is asinine.”
Erin laughs again, and I smile at her.
“Do they treat you well?” she asks, startling me.
“My mates?” I ask.
“Yes. The Legends of Chaos. Only you would go to the Choosing a single time and suddenly become queen.”
“I’m no queen,” I say. “And yes, they treat me well. Better than I could’ve ever imagined. They’re mine, and I’m theirs. It’s hard to explain how well we fit together.”
“That’s . . . I understand that.”
I tilt my head, taking a step closer to her. “You do?”
She nods.
“Their . . . fathers,” she says, almost like she’s testing the words. “How do they treat you?”
I shrug. “Some are kind, others less.” Though Lucas’s help with the flowers has gone a long way in my opinion of him.
“Others.”
“Yes, Baydel isn’t my biggest fan.”
“Baydel.” She says his name with emphasis, and I understand that she may not be as intimately familiar with his name as I am.
“Yes, Jax’s father.”
Erin nods, her eyes widening. “Jax’s father,” she says.
Instinct has everything inside me narrowing to her body language. The powers inside me twist and push, Pierce’s practically begging for attention.
I draw it toward me, holding it fully, and push it toward her mind. She might kill me for it if she knew, but I don’t stop until I’m in her mind.
It’s silent.
Visions flash so quickly I gasp. All through a dense fog that’s hard to clearly see through. The palace’s balcony. Groups of royals in their finest gowns. The Choosing. Her sneaking in and out of palace rooms, stuffing her pockets with jewels. A shadow looming in the hallway.
The vision speeds up. Stops.
She’s slipping on a Fader outfit. Bruises dust her cheek.
The heavy sensation of sheer exhaustion and terror.
She’s drained. So drained. Baydel. He’s in a darkened room, in the farthest corner.
Erin is looking at him, but he’s not looking at her.
He’s looking at his Occuli, those green flames flickering once more.
One is there, standing behind Baydel, his diamond helmet tilted in Erin’s direction.
I draw myself out of her mind when the images repeat.
No words, no thoughts, just images. I haven’t explored enough minds to know if that’s normal or not, but I hardly have a second to figure it out.
Not when I can’t stop the image of Baydel replaying in my mind.
Him looking agitated, much like the time Evaluna sent me to find him in secret.
“Will you come back with me?” I ask just as I did last time.
“I can’t.”
“Would you?” I swallow hard. “If you could?”
She parts her lips, then blows out a breath.
“Sometimes, I have this dream,” she says.
“It’s the night before the Choosing. The last one I attended.
Instead of getting ready for the ball, I pack a bag.
Then I pack yours. We say goodbye to Ivy and Layce, grab Ash, and we leave.
Sneak aboard a ship heading for Cardrayton or Vleyica.
We get seasick,” she says, a broken chuckle leaving her lips.
“But we manage. And when we set foot in the new realm, we’re no longer Erin and Rylee Gray.
We’re . . . free.” Tears make her eyes glisten.
She angrily swipes them away. “Then I wake up.”
A heaviness tugs at my heart. I can’t imagine a life that looks like that. I can’t imagine a life without Axl or Kal or Pierce or Jax.
I refuse to believe the price of that happiness is my sister’s absence.
“Wake . . . up,” she says, the words broken and stuttered.
Their previous sting doesn’t hit me. Not now. Not when I have perspective. “What word aren’t you able to say?” I whisper under my breath. I even peek into her mind again, hopeful I can glimpse what she’s not saying, but it’s nothing but the same visions on repeat.
“Jax’s father,” she says, and I blink. “Do you ever do the same to him?”
A crease forms in my brow.
She taps her temple.
Holy shit, can she sense when I’m entering her mind?
“I’m your sister. I always know when you’re spying on me.” A soft smile.
I’m frozen. Because what she’s implying . . .
She wants me to read Baydel’s mind?
“It’s an important day today,” she says, casting a look out the window at the predawn light filtering through as the sun starts to rise.
“Voting Day,” I say.
And Jax has yet to return.
The idea of hearing the vote, of possibly ascending the thrones without him, seems so vehemently wrong.
“Busy day,” she says. “Lots of action at the palace.”
I swallow hard. “Action?”
“Lots of people to see. Uninvited guests might attend.”
My blood runs cold. An attack? She’s warning me about a Fader attack on the palace.
“When will I see you again?” I ask for confirmation.
“Soon, sis,” she says. “Very, very soon.”
I silently thank her for the warning, then hug her quickly. “We will end this,” I whisper into her ear. Then I push further, into her mind, weaving my words there. Whoever has a hold on you, who’s forcing you to do all of this, I’ll find them and end them. You’ll be free soon enough. I promise you.
She hugs me tighter, then releases me. There’s a tense look to her eyes, and she parts her lips before closing them.
“Erin?”
“I have to go.”
“Wait—”
She flickers out of sight, and the door opens and closes before I can try to follow her. I push through the door, scanning the area despite knowing I won’t spot her. She’s never found if she doesn’t want to be.
There’s so much more I wanted to ask her, but now, I have to get home.
Because today is Voting Day. Not only a day that will most certainly change my future, but one that, if my sister’s warning is true, will be a massive battle.
And somehow, unsurprisingly, Baydel is right at the head of it.