Chapter Sixty-Five
Dylan
DYLAN STEPPED OUT INTO THE WARM NIGHT, TO FIND Callum sitting with his eyes closed and face to the dark sky.
The hotel’s unusual entrance was a stone courtyard, which invited guests in from the sloping street. It was a simple space, with two chairs and old walls adorned with plants.
Callum didn’t stir, but Dylan knew the Empyreal didn’t need his eyes open to be lethal.
He hadn’t been able to budge Callum’s grip on his father. And the rage in his eyes … it had been like starlight. Terrible, powerful.
It echoed something in Dylan that he hadn’t realised had been there for his whole life, since the moment he saw his mother killed and could do nothing about it.
So, he said nothing and took the seat opposite.
His senses opened up when he closed his eyes: all the details and echoes of a city at night, for once feeling less like a threat and more like the reassuring normality of a world that didn’t know about gods and monsters and myth.
That carried on. There was laughter and lovers, the strain of police sirens and music.
The casual reality they were aiming to protect.
Sitting beside Callum in the night, the tight fist of uncertainty around his throat began to relax.
When he opened his eyes, Callum was watching him – the energy between them taut and thrilling.
‘How did you know?’ Dylan asked.
The evening sang in the long moments of silence that followed.
‘Let’s just say it’s not my first dalliance with a Demon.’
Dylan wouldn’t have left it if he wasn’t so exhausted. So, he didn’t press, even though disappointment saturated him at the vague answer.
Then Callum spoke once more. Offering, finally. And Dylan knew it was a truth, from the way pain rang in every word.
‘They took my family from me,’ Callum said.
A crush of grief tightened Dylan’s chest. ‘Are they …’
Alive? Dead? He didn’t want to say the words. Knew how much easier it was to avoid them.
‘I don’t know,’ Callum said quietly.
The shared moment of unfiltered truth and connection threaded something recklessly hopeful in Dylan’s chest. It almost made him get up and run. Almost made him want to reach out and touch the enigmatic immortal opposite, as if he might actually be reachable.
Instead, Dylan stayed and allowed that feeling to sear and sear.
‘How about this?’ he said, his words echoing those Callum had spoken in the Speakeasy. ‘When we’ve dealt with the Wake and unbound you from the oath, I’ll help you find out.’
He couldn’t promise the death and revenge Callum had promised him. He didn’t have the skillset of an ancient warrior. But he could promise to be there for the search, or there in the grief.
Callum stared at Dylan’s mouth for a too-long moment, and when his eyes met Dylan’s, they were so devastatingly unguarded, Dylan’s heart gave a painful lurch.
‘Deal.’
Bells
LYING ON THE SILKY THROW ON THE HOTEL’S BED, BELLS read the next passage in her mother’s bestiary on the Seers’ High Council.
Chosen for the scope of their power, accuracy of their visions, and mental fortitude, the Council contains five High Seers. An ‘Angel of Death’ (Death Seer), Seers of the future, present, and past, as well as the rare Prophetess, who Sees all three aspects of ‘time’.
Bells skimmed, looking for the section accompanied by a sketch of the John Collier painting, Priestess Of Delphi.
PYTHIA’S POISON: the highly confidential and almost legendary process by which a High Seer will lose their sanity if they change fate more than once.
Changing the outcome of a vision is an ability only the most powerful Seers can use, as the attempt has shredded the minds of lesser ones.
Many destinies can be changed by action instead of a High Seer’s one chance at intervention.
A High Seer is granted one opportunity to do so, as a Seer’s powers are gifted by the Morrígan sister Badb, and while she is the Goddess of Fate and War, Madness is also her dark domain.
While a High Seer may survive the process, once is risky enough, and if it doesn’t cause outright death, it can begin their decline.
The starkest symptom of the Pythia’s Poison – beside the insomnia or nightmares, sweats, and inability to determine what is real or not – is the Seer scenting brimstone no one else can.
This may be due to the chemical changes in a brain that is beginning to shut down.
Its name is derived from the Pythia of Greece, as she was deemed by some human scholars to be inhaling natural gases from the mountain, not – by their human understanding – truly Seeing the future.
Bells pushed the bestiary aside, leaving it open on a wicked-looking illustration of a female figure holding a scythe and pulled back over the cracked and faded tome of Seer history.
This was the book she’d found the Badb ritual in back in Estwood.
Perhaps there was another one in here she could use to—
‘Hey.’
Bells jumped, twisting around to find Remi in the doorway of the suite’s bedroom. ‘Oh,’ Bells gasped, trying to calm her racing heart. ‘Hi.’
‘I wanted to check on you. You okay?’
Everyone had gone, either to sleep or to try to grapple with the news. But Bells wasn’t able to sleep even when she wanted to. She touched the Tène, back in its comforting coil around her wrist.
‘I think so. I just—’ She reached behind her to close the books. ‘I was just looking for something that might help or make sense of this all.’
Remi’s eyes softened. ‘Find anything?’
‘Not really. There’s not much on ancient Demon Gods, ironically. I wondered if it might explain my powers, or Dad’s, a bit more, but I couldn’t find anything other than an old illuminated story book. Don’t worry, you don’t need to look after me. You can head to bed.’ She made herself smile.
‘I actually wanted to speak to you alone.’
Bells’ stomach fluttered and she felt suddenly self-conscious of her unpainted toes and pointelle pyjamas – white with pink flowers. She tucked her legs beneath her, turning more fully. ‘You did? Why?’
‘I never thanked you, for trying to help me in the cathedral.’
‘Oh, you shouldn’t thank me for that.’
Remi’s eyes shadowed, braids falling like water over her shoulder as she tilted her head. ‘You ran into danger, not knowing what was happening, and with no clear way to help me, but you did it anyway. Why did you come in? You could have been killed.’
Bells took a breath, wondering how to explain. ‘I See death almost every night. So often, the dying are alone.’ Upset seared her throat like fire. ‘I didn’t want you to be alone, if the music did something terrible to you.’
Remi’s eyes silvered with tears, and for the first time in her life, Bells felt truly seen by her. Soft heat prickled her cheeks.
‘You would have watched over me, even if you couldn’t do anything?’
Bells nodded. ‘I – I would have held your hand.’
A sound like a smothered gasp preceded Remi striding across the room and hugging her. ‘Oh, Bells.’
Bells sighed, allowing her arms to close around Remi’s waist. ‘I’m glad you’re okay.’
Remi had always looked out for them; she had been a trustworthy friend to Nicole when there had been little but isolation in their lives.
Though Nicole and Remi were the closest, that friendship had spilled over to Dylan and Bells too.
But that was who Remi was. She was so bright and warm, and Bells felt like a flower in her presence, as attuned to her as the sun.
‘Just, try not to put yourself in danger again, okay? I don’t want you to get hurt.’
Bells smiled. ‘I’ll do my best. Are you pleased you were right, at least? The harp really is the key to reharmonising the spheres. Your father was right all this time.’
‘Oh.’ Remi sighed and let her go, sitting on the bed for a moment before lying down to stare at the canopy. ‘That – I have no idea.’
Bells slowly lay down beside her, hoping Remi wouldn’t ask about the mysterious tome. ‘Do you think it will change the stars?’
Remi sketched them out in the air, each circular planet a spiral of her fingers. ‘We’ll find out, I suppose. But I’ll put it together and play it, if that’s what it takes.’
A flutter of panic stirred Bells’ stomach. ‘But, you won’t have to, remember? We need to find someone who can. A descendant.’
Remi hesitated a moment. ‘Right.’
‘Do you wish you could?’ Bells asked, wondering at the concern on Remi’s features as she pulled the bridge piece from her pocket and placed it on the bed between them.
‘I don’t know. I think so. Now I’ve heard even a subtle strain of it, I feel …
’ She pressed her lips together. ‘I feel like it’s a part of me.
Like I need the rest. I want it to be me, in the strangest way, even though it’s dangerous.
Music like that—’ She closed her eyes for a moment.
‘It’s more exquisite than anything I’ve ever … ’
‘I know,’ Bells said. ‘I felt it, and I wasn’t the one making it.’
‘But sometimes wanting is dangerous.’
That, Bells knew just looking at Nicole and Kyan, Dylan and Callum.
She sighed and wished she could sleep like a normal person.
‘Hey.’ Remi turned to face her, eyes lit and her tone lighter. ‘Did I ever tell you about …’
She began to share tales of glades of mystical creatures, ones humans might assume were Fae, but were all manner of more specific and strange beings.
Lure-creatures that lived in the sultry nooks of the world and only came out at dawn and dusks, or summer evenings when sun beams roamed through forests.
That called to you in the moments before you fell asleep in a field of flowers, or echoed when you felt the pleasant buzzing heat of alcohol.
Shimmer-winged and lovely-eyed. Petal-soft and Siren-voiced.
Bells wanted to engage, even as she scrambled to think of something insightful or clever to say. But she had no idea what to add. Her brain felt muzzy, her eyes burning and heavy, the sheets between them silky and wide as a wine-dark sea.
‘Sleep, Bells,’ Remi eventually said softly, a fond smile in her eyes. As Remi sang a soft strain of one of her lullabies, sleep pulled through Bells’ limbs. She knew she wouldn’t See death again tonight with her cheek at Remi’s warm, perfumed shoulder.
But she hadn’t mentioned that the death song hadn’t quite left her, either. Perhaps death had latched onto her when she’d done the ritual in Estwood, perhaps the night her mother was killed. Or perhaps it had always been there, thanks to her father’s dark lineage.
Badb, if you can hear me, Bells thought as her eyes dragged closed, show me how to keep them safe. If I could see the future just once before my powers settle, please let me …
A vision threatened, but she was too far gone to See it all, merely glimpsed white walls, an arc of blood, a terrible scream.
And a deep thing inside her that told her the world was ending, and she had to—