Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Felix
In the non-weirdest way possible, Felix loved to watch Avery sleep.
The slow rise and fall of her chest, the slight part of her lips.
He was utterly bewitched. It was the only time he had to really look at her, without the voice in his head telling him he should look away.
That looking too long would mean wanting things he couldn’t have. He looked anyway.
Each night, Felix memorized the clusters of freckles splattered over her skin like paint on a canvas.
Some would find them imperfections, but he loved that out of all the people in the world, only one person looked exactly like Avery.
That she had freckles that only she had.
And now he knew the taste of her. But it wasn’t enough.
He still didn’t know what her lips tasted like.
They had kissed once already, yes, but he didn’t pay attention the first time, and now he wished he had.
Leaving her to sleep, Felix swiped her phone and stepped out of her dorm into the hallway in his human form, wearing the Caerwyn uniform.
Only a few stragglers remained in the halls when he passed, most too focused on their own business to give him more than a glance, including Callum, doing his usual duty of standing by the bottom of the stairs.
It took everything in him not to slam Callum’s head against the stone stairs for what he did.
Callum didn’t deserve Avery. But Felix wasn’t sure if he did either.
Even now, she was only upstairs, but there was an incessant pull that led him right back to her every time.
At first, it was annoying. Now? He would be empty without it.
What a cruel thing life is. To give a taste of heaven and then rip it away.
When it came to it, he didn’t know if he would let it go.
He shook his head. She was distracting him, again.
And she wasn’t even here. He had spent long enough working on the riddles, and there was still the blaring question that Ciro had left him with the other night.
Shifters kept going missing, and every road led to Caerwyn.
And with the way Eleri had looked at him at the dining table could have been coincidental.
When his gut told him something, he listened to it.
Felix traced the path back to the council tower where Avery had taken him for dinner, and using his shadow cloak, he slipped past the guards unnoticed.
The main hall was grand, with towering spiral staircases and vaulted ceilings.
Paintings of previous councilors lined the walls, their eyes following him as he clung to the edges where the flickering candlelight didn’t reach and climbed the staircase.
He would start in the suite where they had dinner.
That seemed the most logical first step.
Hopefully, Avery’s mother wasn’t there, but more than likely, she hid her secrets like a goddamn dragon hoarding gold.
Which was a harmful stereotype to his dragon buddies, but to his credit, he had seen them literally hoarding gold in the caves below their den.
There were some instincts nature could never break.
Halfway up, small gusts of dust blew in like tumbleweeds, blocking his path. He could have stepped over them easily, but instead, Felix stopped in his tracks. They weren’t just any specks of dust. They were goddamn dust bunnies.
Crouching, he gave one of them a pat on the head before they hopped toward him, making circles around his legs excitedly before running off.
Change of plans. He was going to follow the little creatures.
Was following a dust bunny a bad idea? Probably.
But they had been helpful before, so he trusted his gut screaming at him to follow it.
It had kept him alive this long. Curiosity wouldn’t kill him this time, bitches.
The creatures led him down the stairs and then down another spiral staircase that led deep into the underbelly of the council tower.
The space became so small that Felix had to duck his head to avoid the basalt walls carved out of the very earth itself.
Moss hung from the cracks, the air becoming thicker the lower they descended.
Nothing made a sound, not even his heavy footfalls.
At the bottom, a large arched door ended the path.
When he walked closer, he noticed an engraving of Cerituen defeating his god, Arawn.
The goddess was sending her two dogs onto Arawn while holding a spear over him as he begged for his life.
Felix was no artiste but the door didn’t look as ancient as it made itself out to be.
Its color was too uniform to be weathered naturally.
But what the fuck did he know? He was just a cat in a witch’s world. Nothing worked like it should have.
Ignoring it, he went to open the door. But before he touched it, the dust bunnies squeaked at him with an alarm he hadn’t thought they were capable of.
The fuck?
Felix’s hand jolted back, and lo and behold, a faint shimmer of a barrier was up in front of the door.
A ward.
He had gone through many in his time; witches had a habit of warding their apartments against shifters, but he always got through them.
There was only one barrier he couldn’t get through back in London.
And he absolutely didn’t let it get to his ego that a shimmery wall stopped him.
This one was the same, blood rippling through water.
Purely out of spite, he sent his magic into the ward. Usually, he felt some sort of resistance. Some sort of pushback against him. He would need to strain to pull it apart, limbs shaking like a shitting dog.
But this one was far too easy. It split almost instantly for him, creating a doorway just wide enough for him to grab the handle, open the door, and step through before it snapped back behind him.
Ego restored. He was the best.
Still, the little inkling in the back of his mind knew that something in him had changed. His magic had changed. His goddamn heart had changed for the little witch he had left sleeping in the dorm.
Inside, the space opened up to a carved cave, the black walls swallowing the light.
Even with his superior eyesight, the room was like a void.
As far as he could tell, there was no one here, but that didn’t stop his senses coming alive as if there were.
Grabbing Avery’s phone from his pocket, he turned on the flashlight and followed the wall until he came to a shelf-like structure carved into the very basalt.
Looking closer, he realized they were animal statues.
Hundreds and hundreds of animal statues.
The room tilted.
Why the fuck would witches have a room full of animal statues protected behind a barrier? Dread crept into his chest like it was rotting. The further he moved along the dusty shelves, the more that rot spread.
A griffn, a selkie, a pegasus, and a basilisk. Were they familiars? Were they just statues?
No. That would be the easiest thing to believe, but deep down, he knew. The cloying scent of magic almost confirmed it. It invaded his senses, an involuntary gag taking over him. There was far more magic in this room than just the barrier.
Felix held his hand up to one of them, the magic radiating out of it so palpable that his fingers started to shake.
He moved his hand closer, and closer, almost touching before a sharp pain tore through him.
He pulled his hand back, pain lacing through it.
Another fucking barrier. How had he not seen it?
He held his trembling hand as it numbed from the shock, a stifled groan slipping from his mouth.
Voices wandered down the hall. Felix’s cat ears pricked up, trying to pinpoint the sound.
Instinct kicked in, and he darted to a dark corner, willing his body to shift.
But it didn’t come. He couldn’t even use magic to hide himself.
It was the last confirmation he needed. This room didn’t keep shifters out.
It kept them in. Imprisoned in fucking statues like experiments in a goddamn jar. Killing them would have been kinder.
Bile rose to his throat as he pressed himself into the cold stone.
He knew witches were sick, but this was far beyond that.
What the hell were they keeping a full army of shifters in their basement for?
He had to tell Ciro. Had to get off this island before they found him and imprisoned his ass in some ceramic cat statue.
It would be the prettiest one on the shelf, though.
When he heard the voices fade away, he grabbed Avery’s phone and took pictures of them with shaking hands. Not statues. Them. Hundreds of lives trapped in stasis. Ciro would undoubtedly believe him, but it helped to have proof. Even with the photos, he still wasn’t one hundred percent sure.
His head pounded from the stale air, or maybe just the massive headache that witches always seemed to give him.
Why couldn’t they just be normal and not some villainous cartoon rubbing their hands together?
After he sorted this out, he was going on a vacation.
For a moment, he let himself imagine somewhere warm and sunny, no water, Avery splayed out naked on the bed. Perfect.
For a moment of bliss, the thought carried him happily back through the barrier.
It parted for him again with no questions.
Unfortunately, the thought of his little witch opening her legs like a meal wasn’t enough to keep his mind from spinning about the literal shifters kept underground.
Eventually, he knew he had to leave. He couldn’t keep playing a pet for the rest of his life.
He needed to get back to the den as quickly as possible.
Something splintered in his chest at the thought of it, of leaving Avery.