62. Everett
Everett
My eyes slowly fluttered open, taking in the dim light through a blurry gaze.
My head felt like it had been split open with a shovel.
I lay on my side with my cheek in the dirt and my hands tied behind my back.
I blinked to try and clear my eyes, but the fuzziness wouldn’t go away.
It was as if there was a film over my eyes, and I couldn’t see beyond faint light and obscure shapes.
“...you have to bring him here?” a whispered voice said in the distance.
“Where else was I supposed to take him?” an older man said roughly. “He has seen the catacombs. Do you understand what this means?”
“Of course we do, Arcadia, but perhaps you reacted rashly. He cannot—”
“Hush, both of you. He’s awake,” Julius’s voice said. A silence fell over the space, and the outline of a figure moved into my line of sight.
Vines sprouted from the ground and wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me upright into a sitting position. I squinted, but I could only see the vague forms of three people in front of me.
“Hello, Everett,” the one in the middle said in Arcadia’s voice. “We’re sorry to have to bring you here.”
“Where am I?” I snarled. “What did you do to my eyes?”
“A temporary spell to dampen your magic. A precaution, nothing more,” Arcadia said calmly. “Tell me, Everett, what did you see last night?”
I swallowed. I still didn’t know what I’d stumbled upon in his mind, but admittance of any kind would put all of us at risk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He tsked. “I know you made an appearance in my dreams, young man. How you were able to overpower my defenses, I don’t know, but I saw your likeness.
” He was before me faster than I thought the elderly man could move.
He crouched to the ground, close enough now that I could make out the long, white beard. “How long have you been spying on us?”
“I wasn’t spying,” I spat. “I was sleeping. Sometimes dreams call to me, and I can’t help which ones I fall into.
I left before I saw anything important.” The lie was bitter on my tongue, and I sensed he could taste it, too.
The image of those bodies—the cracks, the burns, the charring—came back in a dizzying rush.
“Oh, Everett.” He sighed, then backed away. “I wish it had not come to this.”
“What did you do to Vera?” I thrashed against the rope binding my hands. “Why wouldn’t she wake up?”
“She will be fine,” Maeve said. Her voice came from the right. “We would never harm our Lightbringer.”
I tried to rise to my feet, but the vines around my shoulders kept me down. “Then what am I doing here?”
They paused. Everything was fuzzy. I desperately needed to see them, to understand what was happening. But the dread pressing in on me was answer enough.
“He has seen too much,” Julius muttered. “There is no other recourse.”
“But Vera will be suspicious,” Maeve countered.
“Not if we tell her it was the Fates.” Arcadia’s voice was hurried. “She believes they’re determined to stop her. She will be furious to learn they killed her lover.”
I jerked against my restraints again. “She’s going to figure out you’re lying,” I snapped. “Vera’s smarter than that.”
“Perhaps,” Arcadia said. “But we have ways of convincing her.” He suddenly clenched my arm, and my eyes rolled back into my head as an illusion slammed into me.
“We will tell her how the Fates plucked you from your bed, eager to teach her a lesson.” As Arcadia spoke, I saw an image of myself being torn from my room by shadowed hands.
The illusion was startlingly real—I felt the coldness, the fright, the way my face looked slack in sleep before it contorted in terror.
It was a perfect rendering of me, down to the scar on my eye and the tip of black wings inked on my chest.
“We will tell her how we sensed the disturbance and came running.” The vision shifted into the palace corridors.
The three High Elders sprinted, faces etched with conviction.
“We fought to reach you. We found you and risked our lives to rescue you from their clutches.” Wavering again, I saw the three Elders standing over my form, magic blazing around them in a maelstrom as invisible forces tore at me.
Maeve’s face was streaked with sweat and dirt.
Julius bled from a wound in the temple that began to heal itself.
Arcadia shielded my body with his own, arms thrown wide.
It was all so real, so visceral, that I almost believed it myself.
“But in the end, we were too late,” Arcadia finished solemnly. The illusion of the three of them mourning over my broken body shimmered in my mind, their hands resting on my chest in sorrow. Then it vanished like smoke, and there was only Arcadia’s blurry white beard inches from my face.
I gritted my teeth as reality came back to me. “She’ll learn the truth eventually. And when she does, she’ll never give you what you want.”
“I assure you, she will. All she needs is the proper motivation,” Arcadia said. I felt his robes swish at my knees as he spun around. “Prepare him for the ritual.”
I struggled against my restraints, panic whipping through me. Two hazy forms converged, and I let out a bellow of rage as shadows plunged down my throat, and the world went dark.