Chapter Twenty-Three Trey
That Evening
An Inn Along the Road to the Grimnight Forest
Eating Dinner
“What. Are. Those?” Angelica demanded, thoroughly scandalized.
“My ears!” Delilah exclaimed, playing with the furry triangles poking out of her frizzy hair. “And my tail!” She turned around to show off the long, fluffy mass, slapping it across Angelica’s face.
Angelica sputtered and pushed the tail away, glaring at Delilah over the fur. “You’re getting cat hair in our food!”
Delilah hissed, exposing her new fangs. But she sat down and stopped waving her fur everywhere. “I lost my original collar during … a fight,” she stumbled over the explanation. “So my Uncle Rick made me a new one!”
“Why would you want one?”
“Oh, right, you don’t rem—know yet.” That time, she barely caught herself.
Angelica seemed the least affected by the time-loop. She never went misty-eyed or talked about things no one else remembered. There was no unexplained hostility or affection. The only difference I noticed was the romance novels she’d insisted on bringing along for ‘research.’
“What don’t I know?”
Delilah cleared her throat and straightened up in her chair. “I am a cat.”
Angelica stared at her, possibly waiting for a better explanation.
Fitz nodded along, like he’d heard it before—which he probably had—and focused on his meal.
Maximus reached out a tentative hand, pausing an inch from Delilah’s head. “Can I pet you?”
“You may,” she said, like a queen granting a petitioner’s request. Her eyes closed in contentment as he rubbed her ears. A small, feline smile curled her lips.
That went on for about thirty seconds before Angelica demanded, “Does no one think this is weird?” She looked around the table for an ally, her gaze finally landing on Wilde.
Wilde blinked at the unexpected attention. Finally, slowly, he said, “One of these days she’ll become a real cat, which will certainly be harder to explain.” After a few seconds, with a completely straight face, he said, “Meow. See? Harder.”
Angelica covered her face with her hands and muttered, “You’re all weird.” Then she dropped her hands, picked up her book, and continued reading her smutty orc novel at the table.
The inn had prepared a private dining room for us, and all the food was laid out on the tables, so there was no reason for the staff to disturb us. It was the perfect time to discuss the quest. “So, how do we defeat the Lord of Grimnight?”
I’d asked the question just as Delilah had taken a large gulp of water. She choked and sputtered and sprayed half of it into Angelica’s face.
Angelica sat frozen, her face contorted into ugly surprise. One eye twitched for several seconds, the only part of her that moved. “You beast!” She smacked Delilah over the head with her book, then looked down at the damp pages in dismay. “The ink is smeared!”
Fitz winced in sympathy and slowly inched his own book further away from Delilah, then handed Angelica a napkin. “We can find you a new copy.”
“Where exactly are you going to find me a new copy when we are on the road to a haunted forest? Do you think the forest has bookshops? A library?” By the end she was shouting so loudly that the dishes on the table rattled.
“Well, yes,” Fitz said. A confused, foggy look entered his eyes, one I recognized as another set of memories. “Doesn’t it?”
“There’s a library,” Wilde confirmed, “but I’m not sure you’ll be welcome.”
Fitz made a noise halfway between a cat’s mewl and a strangled yelp. “What do you mean I’m not welcome?”
“You upset the librarian,” Maximus said. He blinked, considered the statement, then nodded to agree with himself.
I tried to remember the library. Pictured the card catalog, with its neat font. The librarian standing behind the circulation desk, cheerful and ready to help. The rows and rows of books—no, I was just picturing a normal library.
“I—what—how could I—I’ve never been there before!” Fitz started to stand up from his chair, but Maximus grabbed his arm.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I have to apologize!”
I snorted and then outright laughed. “Do you plan to walk there? Or were you going to steal the carriage?”
Fitz sat back down. “No, I wouldn’t steal anything from our quest. That would be evil.”
A phantom pain squeezed my heart and released it just as quickly. I swallowed and looked away from him. What had I asked before the library distracted us? Right, I’d wanted to discuss the Lord of Grimnight. I focused on Wilde, thinking the mage would be the best place to start.
Wilde stared at Fitz, his expression hard to read. Until now, he typically avoided looking at the other man. Any time Fitz addressed the group, Wilde looked down or away, not necessarily ignoring him, but not meeting his eyes either.
The brief memory I had of Fitz on bended knee flickered in and out of focus, flitting away the moment I tried to grasp onto it to examine it closer. What kind of relationship did they have in another life?
The longer Wilde stared at Fitz, the more unease twisted in my chest, clawing at my scattered memories and coming away with new insecurities. It was easy to find Wilde’s hand under the table when we were connected. I slid mine into his, palm to palm, and squeezed.
Wilde’s gaze finally shifted to me. Because of the handcuffs, we’d sat close together, the seats of our chairs pressed flush. He had to tilt his head up to look into my eyes. At this angle, it’d be so easy to lean down and—
“Please do not kiss at the table,” Angelica begged. “We’ve had enough spit and hair and everything else in our meal for one day.”
I laughed, Wilde didn’t.
Instead of addressing the question to him, I asked the whole table, “How do you defeat an evil mage?”
The answers all came one after another, almost overlapping.
“Kill him.”
“Imprison him.”
“Thwart his plot.”
“Turn him good.”
Only Wilde hadn’t offered a suggestion. I bumped my shoulder against his. “How would you defeat an evil mage?”
“Kill them,” Wilde said, dispassionate, like he was talking about swatting a fly.
Delilah gasped. “Wilde! You can’t say things like that!”
Wilde nodded toward Maximus. “He did.”
Maximus glared at first, then his expression softened into confusion when he realized Wilde had agreed with him.
“We are the good guys,” Delilah insisted. “We don’t kill people.”
“Chosen Ones kill evil mages all the time,” Wilde replied. “Why should royal champions be any different?”
“But we can’t kill the Lord of Grimnight,” Delilah continued through clenched teeth. Her eyes bugged out as she silently but not subtly tried to convey another message.
Wilde wasn’t even looking at her to catch the message. “The Good Wizard’s Council prefers imprisonment, at least until a trial is completed. However, they only interfere during truly egregious evil plots, which typically means the victim is important, though they’ll happily tell you otherwise.”
“You don’t seem to like the Good Wizards,” Maximus said. “Why is that?” His question had a quiet, coaxing hostility that I didn’t like.
“Anyone who says they are the authority on all that is good in the world is either delusional or lying,” Wilde said. His flat expression and tone didn’t invite any follow up questions.
“How do we imprison an evil mage?” Angelica asked, even though she’d originally suggested it.
“You can’t,” Wilde said. “Only the councils are powerful enough to imprison a mage in specially enchanted crystals. Though the Council of Evil only chooses imprisonment if they want the option to use the mage later.
“As for thwarting his plot,” Wilde continued, nodding at Fitz who had offered the suggestion. “You’d have to know what it is first.”
Fitz’s brow furrowed. “Isn’t his evil plot to take over the city of Traumstead? Turn it into a haunted forest?”
“Is it?” Wilde asked.
“I … well … isn’t it?” Fitz repeated.
“If you don’t know, you can’t thwart it.”
“Not true,” Delilah piped up. “There are plenty of ways to unintentionally thwart evil plots.”
“Is unintentional enough when you need guaranteed results?”
She slumped in her chair, her ears and tail drooping. It was nice to see her in them again, I realized, even though I’d always hated them before. They drew too much attention from strangers and emboldened her actions until she leapt at giant centipedes with only her claws.
Well, that hadn’t happened yet and might not happen again. Maybe she’d be more cautious this time. I almost laughed aloud at the thought.
Delilah’s fur and energy quickly perked back up. “What about turning him good? What if we make friends with the Lord of Grimnight and he willingly gives up his evil ways?”
“Delilah, he cast this curse fifty years ago,” I reminded her. “He’s at least seventy, if not older. Why would he want to be friends with a bunch of twenty-year-olds and a teenager?”
“You didn’t have to single me out like that. Besides, he’s not even—ow!” She glared at Wilde and snatched her leg up from under the table, cradling her knee to her chest.
He stared placidly back at her.
“You don’t befriend evil,” Maximus said. “Especially ones who are Great and Terrible.”
“Exactly,” Wilde agreed. “If the Lord of Grimnight wanted to be good, he would have chosen that path a long time ago. He is an evil mage because he wants to be, and there’s no point in convincing him otherwise.”
Why does it have to be an evil mage?
Because it’s the only way to get what I want.
I stared at Wilde, more pieces clicking into place. I’d thought the time-loop was a curse, and maybe I wasn’t far off. What kind of mages played around with curses? Evil ones. Who had caused time to keep repeating? Wilde. And now he talked about the Lord of Grimnight like he knew him personally.
Is he—no. I cut that thought off immediately. Someone else was the Lord of Grimnight. Someone who practiced evil laughs and always wore a black hood. Someone who slipped out of contracts and promises like he was covered in grease. Someone with shadow and fury in his eyes as he raised a black sword—
I shoved away from the table. Wilde yelped in startled pain as he was dragged back with me. I’d forgotten we were connected. For his own good, which meant I couldn’t unlock him. But I needed a moment alone …
I looked at Delilah. Someone needed to keep an eye on Wilde, but I didn’t have to be his keeper one hundred percent of the time. I whispered the command word and unlocked only my cuff, then slid it onto Delilah’s wrist before Wilde realized he was free. “Look after him.”
“Trey, where are you going?” Delilah called as I stormed out of the dining room.
A chair scraped against the floor as someone got to their feet. Someone else told them to stay, let me go.
As I ran out into the night, confusing, panicked thoughts filled my head.
Brendon Banes was my father. Rick Woeful was my dad. The only ones I’d ever known. So why did I remember another voice, sneering and petulant, shouting, “I am your real father!”
What did ‘real’ father mean anyway? I may not be blood related to either Brendon or Rick, but they took me in when I had no one else.
Not just as a citizen, an orphan, a ward.
For every moment of my life, they treated me as their son, even so far as to give me the title of ‘prince.’ I couldn’t remember who I’d been before—
Why not? Why can’t I remember? I paced through the dark streets, thinking back on the memories of my first meeting with my fathers.
Hector kindly holding my hand as he guided me to a magic tower that was like something out of a storybook.
Prince Brendon slamming the door shut after he saw me—why did he do that?
A frantic, frazzled conversation between the two.
Pulling away from them, thinking, “I want to go home. I don’t like this plan. ”
What plan?
My whole life felt like a portrait that had been sliced up and crudely stitched together. I picked at the threads, prying them apart to expose the ragged edges of a missing figure. A low warning throbbed through my head, telling me to leave it alone, to stop before I learned something I’d regret.
I pushed past the pain and ripped open the past.
And finally, a single memory slipped through the gash.