Chapter 57 Evera
EVERA
The thumping of my racing heart was nearly painful against my ribs.
Calix was gone. He’d disappeared into the darkness as if it had swallowed him. And while I knew this to be irrational, that he was just out of my reach somewhere within the room, I could not bring myself to listen to the voice of reason.
“I can’t do this,” I said, breath rushing from my lungs, tears welling. I could not stand back and do nothing.
Torch in hand, I rushed past Neirin and into the damp, cold room. A hand reached for my cloak but missed. The light came with me, illuminating the low ceiling and Calix, who stood just in front of me.
“Evera.” Calix’s chest puffed as he sucked in a breath.
Boot steps sounded behind me, then Neirin’s arms were around me. As if he could shelter me somehow, shield me with his body. But there was no danger here. Nothing to shelter me from. It was nothing more than intuition, and perhaps a foolhardy one at that, but it was simply as if all fear fell away.
“It’s alright,” I coaxed Neirin, using my free hand to work at his arms. He clenched me tight, his face buried in my neck, raw, unfiltered panic coursing through the bond.
“Neirin.” I squirmed in his grasp, and reluctantly, he released me.
I caught the glint of tears forming in his eyes as I looked back at him before finding my courage and moving toward the back of the room.
The pungent scent of death came on a wave, and I resisted the bile rising in my throat.
The stench of urine and sweat nearly outweighed the scent, but it did not completely conceal it.
Swallowing the sour taste in my mouth, I took another step, letting the light of the torch fall upon the scene before me.
We were too late.
Bodies lined the wall, all sitting, most leaning on each other.
The oldest could have been no more than three and ten, the youngest—gods, younger than Calix.
I fell to my knees, and the torch flickered as it hit the floor, sending the room into darkness for a moment before relighting.
Distantly, I was aware of Neirin behind me picking it up.
Before me, a boy with sandy-blond hair lay with his cheek against a child slightly older.
The boy’s cheeks were pale, gray-hued, where they should have held the rosy pink of youth.
He was so young.
Calix rushed past me to work at the metal chains. Tears filled my eyes. “Calix, stop,” I rasped. “They’re dead. All of them. We’re too late.”
Neirin’s hand came to my shoulder, but I brushed it off roughly. Anger and grief coursed through me.
“Evera,” Calix called to me, voice desperate.
I scrunched my nose, bitterness rising to my throat as I readied to snap at him again.
In a time when he needed comfort most, I was useless to him.
But the suffering that had happened here, the failure on my part to do anything, the knowledge that there was nothing I could do now but hate myself …
These children, had they accidentally killed each other when they lost their ability to control themselves?
Or had they simply died of dehydration, forgotten by Astraea in her own selfishness as she locked herself away?
Someone coughed, a rasp.
“Evera, help him,” Calix pleaded, now pulling at my hand. When had he come to my side? “Seros, he needs help.”
“Is his magic stable?” Neirin asked, his hand firm on my shoulder now.
“He’s too weak, I think, to be of any danger.”
“Are you positive?”
“No, I—” Calix swallowed his words.
He’s still alive. I can help him. I have to.
Brushing Neirin off again, I went to where Calix had found the boy who was still alive only moments ago. Head resting back against the stone wall with two younger children, days gone if not more, resting against his sides, the older boy fluttered his eyes and closed them again.
“Seros,” I spoke the name Calix had used, hoping it would stir the boy. “The tea,” I called over my shoulder when I got no response. “And my bag,” I added as an afterthought. “It’s in the smaller basket, the one I carried.”
Footsteps pattered on the floor, and I checked the boy for a pulse while I waited. It was faint, but there. I carefully pinched the skin on his arm, testing for signs of dehydration. Minor, perhaps.
“Your bag,” Calix said, dropping it beside me as he knelt, waterskin in hand. He brought it to Seros’s lips, and I helped, raising the boy’s chin.
“Just a little,” I instructed Calix. I ran my thumb over the boy’s throat, coaxing him to swallow. When he did, I prompted Calix to give him more. After three more drinks, we both sat back on our heels, waiting.
The boy whimpered, his lip pouting. I released my breath. It was a sign he was coming around, at least. The tea would work. It had to. Though I didn’t understand how such things worked, Neirin and Calix had been certain in this.
“Stay with him,” I said, taking a roll of bread from my bag and handing it to Calix. “When he comes around, encourage him to drink more. If he is hungry, he can eat, but he does so slowly. He will need his strength.”
“What of the chains?” Calix asked.
“The Queen will have the key,” Neirin said, using his torch to light another on the wall. Shadows hardened as more of the horror around us came into view.
I swallowed and placed my hand on Calix’s shoulder. For a moment, he held my gaze, then he turned his attention back to Seros, speaking quiet encouragements and offering the waterskin once again.
Leaving them, I went to Neirin, bile in the back of my throat. Grateful, admittedly, to turn my back to the wall of death if only for a moment.
The small flame of Neirin’s torch flickered. He knelt before a cage of rough iron bars. Crouching beside him, I balanced on my heels. The top of the enclosure came to eye level, and the width of it was no more than that of my forearm. Scarcely large enough to hold a dog.
“My cage,” Neirin said under his breath. “The metal cuffs could not contain me, not when I shifted.”
Bitterness rose in my throat, and I sucked my lips in. A hollow pain ached in my chest. Reaching out, I ran my fingers over the bars, which were rusted slightly and stained with blood.
“I bleed when I shift,” Neirin explained. “Or at least I always used to. Before.” He flexed his fist and stood. “It’s in the past.” His voice grated, hollow, like the ghost of a memory.
I stood. “What she’s doing, Neirin, it’s not in the past.” I gestured to the back wall. “It may be over for you, but what is to stop the Queen from continuing this …” I swallowed the lump in my throat, unable to finish the sentence.
Neirin started to respond, but his eyes caught something over my left shoulder.
I turned to find a mirror propped against the stone wall.
It spanned floor to ceiling, framed with elegantly carved filigree.
I made a step toward it and felt the brush of Neirin’s hand on my arm, but he retracted his touch, and I left his side.
A dusting of dirt coated the reflective surface, making my image appear faded.
It had been some time since I’d seen my reflection, and for a moment I studied myself and tried to recall what Mother looked like.
More like Aureus, I thought, but the memories were hazy.
I was a mess, hair tangled and frizzed, skirts stained by dirt.
My gaze fell, and I drew my brows inward. Roughly three feet up from the ground, the mirror was shattered in several places: Each branching from a singular point of impact. Crimson stained the broken shards.
Neirin joined me before the mirror. In his black leather uniform, he was the same man I’d shared a tryst with the night of the festival.
A man of power, of strength. He was a concept, the idea of a man I’d concocted in my mind to avoid closeness, to fashion a night of choices for myself, a night of obscurity and freedom.
Yet the way his jaw hardened and his fists tightened spoke of his pain, his depth.
When I beheld him now, I no longer viewed him as that man but as the one I’d come to love.
Complex, hurting, frustrating at times, but gods, perfect too, in every way.
Even in his faults, in his weaknesses. In everything that made him who he was.
With a snarl, Neirin struck the mirror with a curled fist, and I sucked in a breath, shocked by his aggression and the suddenness of it.
The glass broke and shattered with a sound of crinkling sharpness.
Several shards fell to the ground, and when Neirin withdrew his hand, my breath left me.
The impact had left fresh blood from his knuckles.
A single drip collected and sank through the dust on the surface of the mirror.
He twitched in a seemingly unnatural way.
It sent a shiver of ice down my spine. Neirin gasped for breath, and eyes intent on his own reflection, he began to shift.
It was nothing like what I’d seen before.
Lacking was any fluidity, elegance, or air of awe.
This was the fuel of nightmares, the whisper of demons speaking on the wind. A middle shift.
His form was entirely that of a man, close-fitted in his uniform.
Yet from his tousled silver hair, the ears of a beast unfurled and pinned back.
A horrid cracking echoed from him, bouncing off the walls of the stone room.
Calix’s whispering to his companion hushed, and the room took on a deadly silence.
Neirin wheezed, the sound a hushed exhalation of pain.
The structure of his face elongated, no longer that of a man’s, but not quite that of a creature’s either.
It was something in between, something broken and all wrong.
Fur sprouted out in patches, a mottling of silver and dark gray.
A sound came from him, nearly a whimper, restrained and laden with distress.
Despite the pounding in my heart, I stepped to him and placed a hand on his arm. He turned to me, eyes sharp, and snarled. This half-shifted form was even more terrifying face-to-face.
Gods, had the Queen made him stand before his reflection as a boy and witness this? Of course, he would believe her when she told him he was a monster. But this wasn’t him. This was some forged fragmentation of his turmoil and inner anguish.
“Neirin.” I raised my hand to cup his face, feeling the patches of fur and the disjointed bone structure beneath my touch. His eyes, though they bore distrust, were still those of the man I loved. Fear and pain trickled through our bond, and his distress poured over all else.
“Look at me,” I urged, and coaxed him to turn from the mirror. His body heaving with ragged breaths, Neirin locked his gaze on me. “You are not a monster.”
A muscle twitched at his temple, the only response to my words.
I drew a breath. “You are my defender, my protector. You are the clueless, hopeless fool of a romantic that says all the wrong things yet continues to try. And when you say the right things, they’re perfect.
You’re the only man I’ve ever given my heart to or fallen asleep beside.
And when I wake to your warmth, it fills me with peace and belonging. ”
Neirin let out a breath, and the panic through our bond tempered. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and the elongated half-snout he bore came nearly to my nose when he tilted his head down to me. But I wasn’t afraid of him, even in this half-form.
“You’re my heart and my soul, my home. I love you, Neirin. In all your forms, even in this one.”
His body relaxed, and the mottling of fur withdrew.
He lowered his snout to my neck with hesitant uncertainty and breathed in my scent.
I held him and ran my fingers through his hair, stroking along one of his shifted ears, which was so incredibly soft to the touch.
I comforted him with gentle words, and when he wrapped my waist and pulled me closer, breathing a sigh, the sting of threatening tears returned.
His body trembled, and he buried his face against me. The tip of his nose on my jawline felt familiar again, pointed and smooth. “I killed my brother.” He swallowed. “The monster, the fox, he killed Thatcher.”
It was what he’d feared to tell me before.
“Neirin, listen to me.” I pulled back and held his gaze.
“We all have monsters within us, the memories of unspeakable things we have done. But we cannot let these things control us forever. I am not afraid of your monsters. I know it was not done in malice. Your fox is good, I see it in his eyes. In your eyes.”
Neirin let his forehead fall to mine. At the back wall, Seros rasped, then coughed, and Calix returned to his quiet speaking.
My thoughts returned to Ruairc. He’d died to protect me, and in that sense, his death was on my hands.
But he would not want me to linger on that.
He would want me to embrace the broken parts of myself and move forward.
And that was what Neirin and I would do together.
“If you are broken,” I told him, “then I will be the piece that makes you whole. Together—” I took his hands in mine.
“Together, we will put an end to what is happening here, and then together we will heal from our wounds. It is our brokenness that made us who we are, that formed us, and it will make us stronger too.”
When Neirin spoke, his voice was low, heavy with the weight of my words, or perhaps the weight of what lay before us.
“We will ask Nyana to have one of her girls set morning tea for Harlan in the gardens. I will confront him, make him see the truth for what it is, and hope that he holds some faith in me yet. He will be able to retrieve Astraea’s key to free the boy from his chains.
No more hiding. No more running or working in the shadows. ”
I nodded against his forehead and squeezed his hands to show my support.
“Calix,” he said, “stay with your friend. Help him recover his strength. Evera and I will return with the key.”
A blanket of what-ifs hung over us, but none of us addressed it. It was time to face things head-on and let fate guide us—or destroy us—together.