Chapter Fourteen #3
“King Silas offered to save the little prince if your brother agreed to help us breach the barrier and retrieve the treasure.”
It felt like I’d been punched in the gut with an iron fist. King Eidolon had betrayed my dad… to help Sawyer? Not out of jealousy for me having the saint’s power or anger over the broken treaty with Haran. He’d done it to save his son.
“No one needs to die here, tonight, Elias.” Not-Stryder nodded to the other mercenaries around him. They started closing around my dad. “Hand the child over to us, and you and your pretty lass can go on with your lives.”
“You’re not taking my boy,” my dad spat at them, sword at the ready. “My brother chose to save his son as I’m saving mine.”
“We have no intention on hurting the boy,” the mercenary responded. “I have two sons of my own, you see, and give you my word that he will be cared for. His blood is far too valuable to be spilled so carelessly.”
“Cynthia,” my dad rasped without looking at her. He kept his eyes on the approaching men. “I wish we could’ve had a hundred years together. But even that wouldn’t have been enough.”
A sob left her throat. “Eli, I—”
“Protect our son,” he gently cut her off, adjusting the grip on his sword. “As he grows, never let him doubt how deeply I loved him. And how I wish I could’ve seen the man he becomes.”
Tears pooled from my eyes, and my throat burned. I fell to my knees in the middle of the room, my heart full of lead.
My mom tucked the baby against her chest and ran down the hall.
The edges of the room began to pulse, like a memory about to shatter. Vision blurry, I looked up to see my dad as the five mercenaries lunged toward him.
I shut my eyes, not wanting to see anything more.
Cheep.
A nuzzle to my wrist had me glancing down. Pumpkin stared up at me with his big green eyes and rested his tiny foot on my hand.
The stormy night had faded. We were back in the clinic.
Sunlight filtered in through the window, and dust particles floated within the beams. I sat on my knees, frozen in place, my head spinning and throat tight.
“Evan,” Phantasia said, drawing my gaze up. She sat beside the cot with my men around her. All of them stared at the unconscious version of me. “You’ve seen your past and gained enlightenment but now must delve deeper. Peer into the face of the thing you fear most.”
Chills snaked down my spine.
Everything went dark. Quiet. Like someone had shut off the only light in a windowless room. Unease gripped my sternum, and I shakily exhaled. Wishing I could escape this freaking nightmare.
I felt like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, traveling among various scenes until reaching the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The most terrifying vision of all.
Within the pitch-blackness, a familiar glow appeared. The red spider lily. One sprouted up from the shadows, the only thing I could see in the dark, empty space. I stared at it, unmoving. Too scared to move. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see whatever happened next.
And I was right.
The darkness around me started to clear, like rolling black smoke. But the moment the scene came into view, I wished the darkness would have remained.
A scene of a stormy sky and a vast field of red spider lilies, their petals falling to the grass like drops of blood. Bodies appeared around those fallen petals, each flash of lightning revealing details that made me feel sick.
A body with silver hair and fluffy ears stained red. One with dark-auburn hair held together with a golden cuff. A pair of glasses with the frames busted, the man they belonged to face down and too still. The fourth body lay on his back, his chocolate brown eyes open but not seeing.
I slapped my hands over my mouth, too horrified and shocked to make a sound. The sound came all too soon, though, tearing through my throat like a wailing cry. I’d rather die a thousand deaths than see the men I loved like this.
However, the elixir had wanted me to see it. Why? Just to freaking torture me?
“Please, sweetheart.” The voice was so full of grief I barely recognized it as Maddox’s. I’d never heard him sound so broken. “This isn’t you.”
I turned toward the direction of his voice. And quickly wished I hadn’t.
Maddox was on his knees a short distance away, blood splattered across his cheeks and on the front of his armor. A sword rested in his hand, though he had it lowered to the grass, either too exhausted to wield it. Or too heartbroken to do so.
Because the one standing in front of him? Someone with golden hair and aiming a malicious smile down at him?
It was me.
“You’re wrong,” the other Evan said, grabbing Maddox by the chin. “This is who I am. Who the world made me become.”
“No,” Maddox rasped, swallowing hard. “The man I love would never… he wouldn’t…”
“I did this for you.” Evil Evan motioned to the battle-stricken field around them. “For all of us. I destroyed our enemies, Maddox. So we could finally be happy.”
“For us?” A single tear slipped from his eye and rolled down his bloodstained cheek. “Look around you, sweetheart. Look at the casualties of your war. Lake. Rowan. Callum.” Another tear. “Briar. Even your demon lord. They’re all dead. How can we be happy now?”
Ice filled my veins. With it came understanding. The elixir had shown me my deepest, darkest fear. The fear that once my powers fully awoke, I’d lose myself and become the monster standing in front of me, that I’d let anger fuel my actions, resulting in the ones I loved getting hurt.
A fear that instead of saving the world, I’d bring it to ruin.
I woke with a gasp, finding myself back in the cot inside the clinic. Greeted by the sunlight coming through the window and surrounded by the faces I loved.
“Sweetheart?” Maddox shifted closer, concern in his eyes.
One look at him did me in. I started crying. Hard. The kind of sobs that shook my entire body.
“It’s okay, Ev.” Callum appeared beside Maddox, lightly ruffling the top of my hair in his familiar way. It made me cry harder. “We’ve got you.”
As the memory of his lifeless body flashed through my head, I lunged at him, throwing my arms around his neck and crying so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t hold him close enough. Couldn’t chase away that image.
The scent of magnolia blossoms joined the fray as Briar dropped down onto the cot, wrapping his arms around me from behind. Rowan and Lake followed suit, both reaching for me.
There was so much to tell them. Things I’d learned about my parents and the true reason why King Eidolon betrayed my dad. But I couldn’t get the words out. I was too busy reveling in the fact that they were safe and not lying lifeless on a battlefield somewhere.
As Maddox started to stand, I gripped his hand tighter, an ice-cold panic squeezed my chest.
“I’m not leaving, sweetheart,” he gently said. “I’m only fetching you a glass of water.”
I shook my head and tightened the grip on his hand, silently urging him to sit back down. Just like the image of my other men’s deaths, I couldn’t shake the brokenness in Maddox’s voice as he’d stared up at the other Evan.
It was a version of me I wouldn’t become. Refused to become.
No matter what.