39. Everett
Everett
FIVE YEARS AGO
Those golden eyes swallowed me whole, every single time.
We’d been talking for hours about anything and everything.
It was like the last two years had been one giant strand of continuous conversation, broken up by sleep or Mortep pulling one of us to the laboratory.
Her bright eyes shined back at me, the edges crinkling in a smile.
We had just finished ranking our favorite animals by which ones we’d rather have as a partner in a fight.
She insisted a dragon was her top contender, while I argued they didn’t even exist. I picked a shark.
I paused, sinking into the sound of her fading laughter. “You never told me, you know,” I said, facing the wall. I liked to pretend I could see her looking back at me. “Where you got your eyes from.”
“Well, I was kind of born with them.”
I heard the smirk in her voice. That smart mouth.
I thought about it far too much. An onslaught of images flooded me as my fingers tightened on the small stone in my hand.
I flicked it against the wall and watched it roll back to me.
I usually tried not to give in to the daydreams, not when they only heightened the yearning of not being able to touch her.
But sometimes when she laughed, that breathy sound filtered through the hole and skated up my neck. I imagined soft lips skimming down my collar bone, with the scent of—actually, I wasn’t sure what she smelled like. Maybe something sweet. Or smoky.
“Swift?”
I jerked back and cleared my throat. “Sorry. Did you say something?”
She chuckled again, and I forced myself to listen this time. “I said, Mama always told me she thought something was wrong when I was born. The midwife had never seen an eye color like it. I was just different.”
“There’s nothing wrong with different.”
She let out a small laugh. “You have no idea, Swift.”
I leaned forward to get closer to the hole.
There were times when I felt like I knew her better than myself, then other times when she seemed so mysterious.
Whenever we got close to the subject of her past, she would go quiet.
I never pushed it—Mortep already forced himself into her mind; she didn’t need me doing it, too.
But I loved her. I wanted to know all of her, beyond the little inflections in her voice, the shadows of her eyes, the dry humor and fierce protectiveness.
Maybe she needed help getting past those walls.
“Play a game with me, Songbird,” I said on a whim.
“What game?” she asked.
“One my father and I used to play to pass time on the fishing boat. Two truths and one lie.”
There was shuffling on the other side of the wall. “Okay. How do you play?”
“I’ll tell you three things about me, but one of them is a lie. You have to figure out which one.”
“And what do I get when I win?” she teased.
A heated thrill swept across my skin. “What do you want?”
She paused. “Nothing this cell can give me.”
My throat tightened. Fates, that was the truth. “What do you say? Want to play anyway?”
Her visible eye flashed back at me. “You first.”
I took my time, twisting my lips in thought. “Alright. Let’s see. Three things about me…I once rode on the back of a shark, I had a dog named Starfish, and I’m allergic to pears.”
She snorted. “Too easy. You told me once that you had pear and vanilla cake for your birthday, so you can’t be allergic to it. That’s the lie.”
I grinned. “Final answer?”
“Well, am I right?”
“Of course, you’re right. I need to stop telling you everything.”
She laughed, then asked, “Did you really ride on the back of a shark?”
“Yep. There were a lot of shark sightings in the late summers. Our fishing net got wrapped around one’s nose once.
I tried to free it, but the net broke when I grabbed it, and the shark took off through the water, dragging me with it.
” I chuckled at the memory. “Scared my father to death. Got about a quarter of a mile before I finally let go and swam back to the boat.”
She snorted. “My Swift, fearless shark tamer.”
My Swift. Warmth spread through my chest. “Your turn.”
“Okay, let me think,” she said. There was a faint clinking sound, as if she were tapping her nails against the stone. “I used to eat a raw egg every morning, my older brother let me try whiskey when I was thirteen, and…” Her voice sounded closer. “I have a birthmark. Below my collarbone.”
I hummed. “Those are good.” Now all I could think about was that birthmark. “Raw eggs and whiskey. You do have quite the appetite.”
“You think those are the truths?”
“I think,” I pressed my hand against the stone, “that I have no proof of this birthmark.”
“Do you want to see it?”
My forehead fell to the wall, and I let out a soft grunt. “Songbird, you’re killing me.”
There was that laugh again. “It’s just a game, Swift.”
Just a game.
I dragged my head down so my eye was flush with the hole. “Prove it.”
She was so close, all I could see was her slender neck. Her hand came up and ran along the collar of her raggedy shirt. It lingered at the edge, fingers curling slowly. My heart was already racing from that simple motion. What was she doing to me?
Fingers pulled at the fabric, lower, lower, lower, exposing porcelain skin little by little.
There was a smattering of freckles at her collarbone, and a small dimple at the base of her neck.
I soaked it all in, memorizing every inch of her I could—always fragments, never the full thing, but it was enough.
I would take any piece of her I could get.
Her fingers stopped moving when the shirt reached just below her collarbone. I watched, transfixed, as she circled a mark in the shape of a flower on her skin. “Believe me now?”
I swallowed. Hard. “It looks like a—a water lily,” I rasped.
It was like the ones Mother would collect by the river near our house, with soft petals layered around the center.
They were her favorite flower. This memory marked on Songbird’s skin made my throat constrict.
My fingers itched to trace a path down her neck and to the flower.
To feel her beneath me, alive and warm and safe outside these Fates-forsaken cells.
“It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful,” I said. The moment melted around us as she pulled her shirt back up. I leaned away from the hole. “Which was the lie?”
“The raw eggs. I hate eggs.”
I laughed. “So your brother snuck you whiskey?”
“Yep.” She popped the ‘p’ sound. “He said it was to celebrate. It was right after I conjured my first shadows, and…” She went quiet.
My eyebrows shot into my forehead. We were encroaching on territory she usually backed away from. I knew based on the attention Mortep gave her that she was powerful, I just didn’t know how powerful. “Shadows? I thought you were a bird Shifter.”
Silence. She sighed before she finally said, “I’m a lot of things, Swift.”
“What does that mean?”
“Look, I—I haven’t told you everything. About the real reason they put me in here.”
I paused. “I figured. But I’d never push you about it,” I said softly. “I knew you’d tell me when you were ready.”
“It’s not because I don’t trust you.” Her voice was small, and it immediately summoned my protective instincts. “But like you said the day we met, sometimes it’s better if things just aren’t…real. If I don’t talk about it, I can forget why they took me. I can forget what they want from me.”
“Whatever it is, it would never make me think differently of you,” I said. “You’re always safe with me.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I’m not a—a normal Veridian, Swift. I’m different.”
I leaned back and rested my head against the wall. “Different, how?”
“You’re right, I’m a bird Shifter,” she started. “And a Shadow Wielder. But I’m also a Lightbender. And…” She cleared her throat. “I can cast illusions.”
My mouth fell open as I counted each one. Four magic types? That wasn’t just unheard of, it was impossible. To wield not just one, but four magics of our empire… “How is that possible?” I breathed out.
“I don’t know. The lightbending happened first, when I was eleven. Then I shifted. When the shadows came, Scarven got more interested.” She paused. “I cast an illusion right before they locked me up. I was trying to get away from a guard who was holding me down. It just—it happened so fast.”
I tried to imagine how terrified she must have been to go through this so young, and then to be locked up for it. “That’s why they took you. All the tests Mortep has been running, it’s because of your magic, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “He thinks I have the other two inside of me. He’s spent so long trying to force them out.
But I’m scared, Swift, and not just because of his tests.
I’m scared because he’s right.” There was a shifting sound.
“I can feel them. The other two magics. He doesn’t know it, but a while ago, I chipped off a small piece of these cuffs, and I put it under my tongue every time he comes. It keeps my magic from manifesting.”
I sucked in a breath. “That must be—”
“Uncomfortable? Yeah.” She exhaled. “But I don’t want him to get it. And maybe a part of me thinks if I hold it off long enough, it won’t come true. I don’t want this magic. I shouldn’t even exist. What kind of a monster does that make me? What even am I?”
Her voice cracked, and I pressed my hand harder against the wall. I could tell she’d been holding on to these thoughts for a while. I hated that they’d been sitting in her head, growing worse and worse.
“You are not a monster, Songbird,” I insisted. “Your magic doesn’t define you. You were born special, that’s all. That’s not the important part.”
“What’s the important part?”
“Who you are as a person. What’s inside your heart.
If anyone’s the monster, it’s Mortep and Scarven.
You’re nothing like them.” I got to my knees and my forehead fell to the wall again, just above the hole.
“You’re fierce and protective and loyal, and even though you’ve got a sharp tongue, I know how compassionate you are.
You—you’re so beautiful, Songbird. You could never be a monster. ”
“Beautiful?” She let out a quiet scoff. “You’ve never even seen me.”
“I don’t need to see you to know who you are.” I closed my eyes. “I don’t need to see you to know that I love you so—”
“My, my. Isn’t this a touching moment,” a slimy voice crooned from her side of the wall.
My muscles instantly locked. I shoved toward the front of my cell as far as my chains would allow. “Get away from her,” I snarled into the hallway.
“I’ve waited patiently, little bird,” Mortep said. Her cell door groaned open, then shut with a reverberating clang. “And you’ve been tricking me this entire time. Dampening your own magic? It’s clever, I must admit.”
“Are you spying on me?” she spat.
“A simple sound magnifying spell. Privacy is a luxury people like you don’t get.”
I pressed my back against the wall and closed my eyes, straining to hear everything. The scrape of his footsteps, the way her controlled breaths shifted to sharp and sudden inhales. Mortep muttered something under his breath.
Then she screamed.
“No!” I lunged toward my cell door. The chain at my ankle ripped me back, and I slammed into the ground, palms splitting on the stone. But I didn’t feel it. I hauled myself up and threw my weight forward again, but the chains wouldn’t let me go far.
Her screams filled the cells. Heavy, billowing shadows appeared in the corridor.
Lightning crackled inside of it, like a storm over the sea, and it all came from her cell.
The magic in the air was so thick, I could taste it—sharp, electric, and raw.
Whatever Mortep had done, it opened something in her power.
I scrambled back to the hole and pushed my eye against it, pulse hammering. I could hardly see anything. A figure was slumped on the ground, with Mortep’s familiar frame hovering over her.
My stomach dropped. Why wasn’t she moving?
Something sharp gleamed in Mortep’s grip. I watched his shape crouch toward her, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. There was nothing I could do. There was never anything I could do. Two years of this and I still hadn't learned how to make peace with that fact.
Then her hand shot out and wrapped around his wrist.
She wrenched him sideways, and they both disappeared from my field of vision.
I could only hear bits and pieces—the slap of a body on the ground, Mortep’s grunt, Songbird’s ragged breaths.
Shouts rang out as guards ran toward us.
I kept my eye at the hole, desperate to know what was going on.
Every scream, every bang, every crackle of magic made me jump.
I just needed to know she was alright. I just needed—
Suddenly, there was silence. Everything stopped. I couldn’t hear anything, and that was almost worse. I listened for her breath, her cries, her voice, something to tell me she was still alive.
“Songbird?” I whispered. “Songbird, tell me you’re—”
More shouts erupted. Four guards in the hallway stumbled backward past my cell bars, knocked off their feet by something I couldn’t see.
Bright orange and gold flames burst into the corridor, and I had to shield my eyes with my arm. Heat washed over me through the bars. A grinding sound like metal on metal grated my ears.
And then a figure appeared out of thin air directly in front of my cell.
Cloaked in flames, a silhouette of golden wings rose against the fire, blonde hair whipping around her face in a frenzy of her own magic. It was too bright to see her clearly, but I would know her in any lifetime.
Songbird.
She unlocked her striding magic. She had gotten free of her chains and was standing right in front of me in a burning ring of fire.
She was the fire. And she was the most extraordinary thing I had ever seen.
“Let’s get out of here, Swift,” she said from the swath of magic. My heart leaped, and I reached for her through the bars.
But the second her hand met mine, another one came out of the darkness behind her and plunged a needle into her neck.