Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
The screaming grew louder as they moved north through the transformed city, and with it came a sound that made Ava's teeth hurt—something between a roar and the screech of metal being torn apart. Whatever was making that noise was big, angry, and probably extremely dangerous.
“That way,” Bitty pointed toward what had once been the theater district, her tiny face pale but determined. “It's coming from the Boston Opera House.”
“Of course it is," Ava muttered. “Because nothing says ‘dramatic supernatural crisis’ like an opera house full of goddamn monsters.”
As they got closer, the architecture became increasingly bizarre. The familiar red brick facades of Boston's historic buildings had been invaded by the twisted tree spires that belonged in Tir n'Aill.
Street lamps had become crystalline trees that chimed in the wind, and the sidewalks were paved with sheets of music. No, they were built from sheets of music, compacted together instead of bricks or concrete.
The Boston Opera House itself was barely recognizable. The original archway of the facade had been replaced with thorny vines that pulsed with a sickly green light, and the traditional marquee by floating letters that spelled out words in the First Language.
The building itself seemed to be alive. More than that, the building itself seemed to be the source of the roaring. Its walls were flexing with each inbreath and then shrinking with each muffled sound.
“The fuck?” Ava could only stare up at the literal monstrosity.
“I do not know, but I do believe we are about to find out.” Serrik sighed.
Another roar echoed from within the building, followed by a distinctly feline yowl of distress.
Something in Ava clicked. She knew that yowl. “Lysander!” Immediately, she took off running toward the entrance.
“As predicted. After you, Bitty.”
“Come on, Mr. Serrik!” Ava heard Bitty yell. “We have to help him!”
The main doors had been replaced by what looked like the entrance to a cave, complete with stalactites dripping some kind of luminescent fluid. As they approached, Ava could hear voices from inside—multiple voices, all speaking at once in tangled, echoing cacophony.
“—not real not real NOT REAL—”
“—just a dream just a story just a—”
“—what's the point what's the PURPOSE—”
And underneath it all, she could hear Lysander's voice, strained and desperate. “Stop! Please, just stop talking! I can't—I can't think—”
They rushed through the cave-mouth entrance and into what had once been the opera house's main lobby.
The space had been transformed into something that looked like a collision between a concert hall and an Unseelie throne room.
The ceiling soared up and twisted in dizzying ways, supported by columns made of crystal.
The floor was a mosaic of mirrors that reflected the room around them, but not them.
And in the center of it all, something massive writhed and twisted.
It was hard to look at directly—the creature seemed to shift between forms faster than the eye could track. One moment it was a giant cat with too many eyes, the next a humanoid figure made of shadow, then something that seemed to twitch and spasm like a glitch on a computer screen.
It was the source of the cacophony. All the muddled, screaming voices that were talking and howling at once.
But through the chaos, there was one phrase that it was repeating over and over again.
One phrase that all the voices seemed to be chanting beneath all the rest. “What are you? What are you? What are you?”
Lysander was backed against one of the crystal columns, flickering between his humanoid and cat forms in time with the flickering of the monster in front of him.
Sometimes he was translucent, other times solid.
When he spoke, his voice kept changing—sometimes his own, sometimes echoing with voices Ava didn't recognize.
“I don't know!” he screamed, his form shifting so rapidly it hurt to watch. “I don't know why I exist! I don't know, please stop!” His voice changed mid-sentence, becoming deeper, more resonant. “—what purpose do I serve—” Another shift. “—if any purpose at all! Why wasn’t I allowed to just die?”
The nightmare creature clearly fed on his confusion, growing larger and more solid with each word. It reached out with appendages that might have been claws or tentacles or something worse, trying to engulf the flickering fae entirely.
“Hold on, Lysander.” Ava stepped forward, reaching out to tap into her new power. But as she started to draw on her new abilities, the creature turned toward her. Something in it seemed to snap, like lightning finding a grounding rod.
She caught a glimpse of its true nature.
It wasn't just Lysander's nightmare. It was hers.
That made sense, didn’t it?
She made him, after all.
His doubt was hers. And all that shame she'd felt about creating him, about whether their friendship was real or manufactured.
The guilt over making someone to serve her needs without considering what he might want for himself.
The fear that she was no better than the fae she'd criticized for manipulating others.
All of that was in him now.
The monster roared.
“Clever. And unfortunate.” Serrik was standing beside her, his voice taking on a dangerous edge. “It is feeding on you both, now.”
“Then how does she stop it?” Bitty asked, hovering near the entrance, clearly wanting to help but not knowing how.
“She cannot.” Serrik sighed, rolling his shoulders back, audibly cracking them. “I must.”
Before Ava could ask what he meant, Serrik was already changing.
She'd seen his true form before, if not for long. And even then, it was only in a dream. But watching the transformation happen in physical reality was something else entirely. His elegant human shape dissolved like mist, replaced by something that belonged in nightmares—and yet she couldn’t deny she found it undeniably beautiful in its own terrible way.
His torso remained humanoid, though his skin took on that chitinous sheen she remembered. His face retained its features, but his golden eyes multiplied until there were eight of them, arranged in an arc across his forehead. His green hair became wilder, longer, draping down his back in waves.
But it was the transformation below the waist that took her breath away.
Where legs should be, his body transitioned into the form of a massive spider, covered in dark green and black fur that seemed to absorb light.
Golden, jagged patterns decorated his back, almost mimicking the First Language tattoos that marked his humanoid skin.
Seven enormous jointed legs extended from his spider body, raising him up until he towered over them all. The golden stump where the eighth leg should have been gleamed in the strange light of the opera house.
The tips of each leg from the last joint down were cast of solid gold and etched with more of that mysterious First Language. Golden threads dripped from the joints of his inhuman limbs like liquid sunlight. The dangerously sharp, almost needle-like tips tapped on the mirrored floors as he moved.
And from him poured forth the sheer aura of terror that she had felt in the dream, only so much more magnifying now that he was a nightmare made real.
He was horrifying. He was magnificent. He was everything the stories had said and more.
And the shadowy creature that was tormenting Lysander took one look at him and tried to run.
“No.” Serrik’s voice was deeper and more resonant in his true form, carrying harmonics that made the crystal columns ring. “You do not escape so easily.”
He moved with a speed and grace that defied his size.
He leapt forward, landing in front of the creature in a split second, blocking its exit.
He reared up to his full height, sending the monster scrabbling backwards in a panic.
But Serrik was faster. His seven legs carried him across the mirrored floor in a dance that was both hypnotic and deadly.
Golden threads shot from his fingers, not binding the creature but slicing through it like razors, cutting away the fear and doubt that gave it substance.
The creature fought back, lashing out with appendages of crystallized anxiety and self-loathing. But Serrik was two thousand years old, and he had spent most of that time learning to destroy things that shouldn't exist.
“You are doubt given form,” he said as his threads carved through the creature's essence. “But in this form, you can be harmed. Return to the un-reality in which you should remain, creature.”
With a sound like breaking glass, the creature began to dissolve. Not destroyed, exactly, but returned to the realm of abstract emotion where it belonged. Its dying wail echoed through the opera house before fading to nothing.
Serrik turned toward Lysander, who had stopped flickering and was now staring at the spider form with a mixture of awe and pure fear.
Serrik’s expression was cold. He turned from the cat-like fae, many legs tapping on the ground. “You are safe now. The manifestation of your doubt is gone.”
“B-but the doubt itself isn’t,” Lysander whispered. His form was still translucent, wavering like heat haze. “I-I can feel myself still…slipping. Like I'm losing coherence. What if I just…fade away? Shouldn’t I? I don’t—I don’t belong, I shouldn’t exist—”
Ava approached slowly, her heart breaking at the naked pain and suffering in his voice. “Lysander…”
“I don't even know if I want to exist,” he continued, his voice shifting again, becoming that of a stranger.
“Ava made me because she needed a guide, a friend, someone to help her navigate Tir n’Aill.
But she doesn't need that anymore. She's the Weaver now.
She's powerful beyond imagination. What purpose do I serve?”
He was talking like she wasn’t even there. Like he didn’t recognize her.
Her heart shattered in her chest.