Chapter 6 Rhiannon #2
The post-woman stopped, her eyes flickering to a spot just past me. “No, Mrs. Necroline. They won’t be in until next week.”
Mrs. Necroline. I glanced at Eryx, who nodded once. He’d caught that too. The skin on my arms prickled with a sudden chill. I shivered, thinking of the spirit in corpse garb. Could that have been Cassandra? Was she dead? That didn’t matter right now. We needed to find out how this worked.
“Can you see me?” I asked on a whim, despite the fact that she’d addressed my question. Her eyes flickered to mine, and then she was gone. Simply not there any longer. I glanced at Eryx, who shook his head. He had no answers for me. “Best not to address anyone directly, then?”
He held out an arm for me. “I think not.”
As we stepped out onto the street, the mail carrier approached again.
This time, her hair was pulled into a severe bun, her shoes a slightly newer style than the ones she’d worn previously.
There were laugh lines around her eyes that had not been there before.
She nodded briefly to us, but again, it was as though she hardly saw us.
Eryx led me onto the street. It was true, we stood where the residential section of Eighth Ave began, a block away from the old Delicia’s. The air was neither warm nor cold. It wasn’t like the garden; this was something else. Like there was no weather at all.
No breeze, though the trees that lined the sidewalk all moved.
No warmth from the sun that finally peeked out of the stormy green haze.
No whiff of petrichor from the plants. Nothing smelled of anything, nor felt like anything.
The disconnect between senses disconcerted me almost more than the garden had.
We walked for half a block without encountering another person.
The sidewalks should have been bustling, but they were not.
We passed a haberdashery I remembered from a period long before this one. I stopped in front of it, watching as a salesperson inside showed a lovely straw hat… to no one. Eryx froze next to me, the bulk of his muscles clenched tight.
The next shop was a bookstore. No one was inside, but the books moved on their own.
A cobbler was next, a shop from a century before Cassandra Necroline’s time in Orphium.
It looked as though it had been burned. I glanced at Eryx.
I knew the story of how his parents died.
Hundreds of years ago, the radical anti-parapsych sect known as the Chiorics had burned their parents’ shop to the ground, killing the Necroline brothers’ parents and their closest family friend.
What did Eryx see when he looked into the burned-out shop?
Did he think of his parents? Or was he thinking of the time twenty years ago when he and Ares had given the order to burn our house down, so gravely injuring Sera that she was barely recovered, even now?
I wasn’t going to ask him, and he offered nothing, but his eyes were sad, if guarded.
We reached Delicia’s, which was a pastel dreamland just as I remembered it, though no one worked the counter, nor were there any customers. There was, however, music.
The song playing on the old transistor radio behind the counter would have been old when Delicia’s was new.
The song had been meant to be playful at the time it was written, about a man who considered himself royalty and the woman he wanted to possess.
As I stood there, listening to the lyrics, they sounded sinister, though the song had not been altered, as far as I could tell. Perhaps I was simply on edge.
Eryx stared at the pastries in the case with longing, apparently not as affected by the music as I was. “Are they real?”
I had to try not to let this place get to me. With a deep breath, I reached back and touched my sword, expecting it to be like the refrigerator at home, empty. But nothing changed. The pastries were real enough.
I didn’t have to understand it; I just wanted to eat. I skirted behind the counter. “Which ones do you want?”
Eryx smiled. “I’d love one of those big buttery croissants, and some of that brie.”
He peeked around the counter as I pulled pastries out of the glass case.
The vintage espresso machine was complicated.
I didn’t know how to use it. But Eryx got right to work, and in moments he had the machine purring under his fingers.
His hands were beautiful, his large, deft fingers moving with precision and ease.
A weak beam of summer sunlight cut through the green haze outside, and bathed him in otherworldly golden light. Every movement he made was pure, graceful precision. If I begged him to touch me, what could he make me feel? A flush of heat up the back of my neck nearly made me dizzy.
To stop myself from thinking about what other uses I could find for Eryx’s fingers, I piled food onto plates, then cautiously placed a cheese puff in my mouth. It did not turn to ash, nor did it taste stale or rotten. It was perfectly soft and delightfully cheesy. I moaned softly as I swallowed.
Eryx glanced at me, worry practically living in his furrowed brow. “All right?”
“Fucking heavenly,” I replied, licking my lips. “I was so hungry.”
He watched me closely, his eyes tracing the place my tongue had touched my lips.
The way he looked at me was calm, confident, as though he was perfectly fine with me knowing he was watching me.
Slowly, he stepped forward, his eyes still on my mouth, and plucked a small eclair off my plate and popped it into his.
As he chewed, his eyes met mine. “Thank the Saints this is real.”
The way he looked at me sent all thoughts out of my head.
Before I could think of an answer, he turned away and was steaming milk he found in the icebox.
Questions about how this illusion could work raced through my mind.
There were no true mages outside of the island that the rest of the Maere and I grew up on.
Not anymore. Not after my mother drew the mists in.
Or at least that’s what I’d thought for myriad years. Eryx picked up our mugs. “Lattes are ready.”
I nodded, carrying our plates to the sky-blue laminate tables that lined the back wall of the bakery.
The chairs were upholstered in a plush aquamarine velvet and a blush gingham wallpaper gave the bakery a soft glow that was eerie in the quiet nothingness of the day; the radio had stopped playing music.
The coffee steamed and smelled real enough, and that broke through the unnaturalness of the rest of the atmosphere.
With food and coffee in front of me, I was ravenous.
Apparently, Eryx was too, because neither of us spoke as we tucked into our food.
Neither of us had to eat the way mortals did; parapsychs could go weeks without eating, and technically, I could forego food altogether and not die.
But it wasn’t a comfortable feeling. Our bodies were still human, despite our immortality.
As such, they craved food, sleep, sustenance of all kinds.
I slowed down, not wanting to be sick from eating too fast. Eryx sensed my purpose and did the same, leaning back in the booth across from me.
He took a napkin from the white enamel dispenser on the table and wiped a bit of foam from his upper lip.
He did it slowly, watching me eat as though it were the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.
When he spoke, his voice was quiet, almost as though he was afraid someone might hear. “This reeks of magic.”
I nodded. “It does.”
A long silence stretched between us. It might have been uncomfortable for someone else, but I liked it when people took their time to think about what they wanted to say, rather than filling space with empty words.
And now that I’d had something to eat, I could appreciate that Eryx wasn’t a chatter.
Not that he was silent as a rule. He talked plenty when he had something to say.
In that way, we were very similar. It’s why I was all right with him coming with me to Oleander Cottage. He was an excellent clairsentient, probably the best in the city, and he didn’t blather on unnecessarily.
And he fills out that shirt in all the best ways possible. I stared at his forearms, not registering the floral tattoos, but focusing on the musculature beneath them, my mind drifting to pleasant places.
Pleasant places I had no business imagining. I wasn’t fit for a lover of any kind, and certainly not the brother of my commanding officer and oldest friend’s partner. If Ember and I both got involved with the Necrolines it would look bad when Eryx and I returned to public life.
It might make people trust Ember less. Trust us less.
Orphium’s parapsych population needed the Maere more than ever.
And they needed our alliance with the Necroline Dynasty not to turn into a shitshow of broken romances.
Ares and Ember seemed solid, but who knew what had happened since we left.
She might have murdered him in his sleep by now, for all I knew.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
“What are you thinking about?” Eryx asked. There was a calm tenor to his voice. Not a hint of demand, just pure curiosity.
I let myself smile all the way. For the first time in a long time, the expression warmed me all the way through. It wasn’t half-fake, or fake even a bit. It was a little too easy to smile around Eryx. Dangerous.
I kept smiling. “Did you ever hear about the time that Ember murdered the Duke of Westborough in his sleep?”
Eryx smiled back at me, shaking his head slowly. “The self-proclaimed Duke of the Wastelands?”
I nodded. “It was before the Accords. He was breeding unicorns.” Eryx’s nose wrinkled in disgust. I nodded, agreeing with the sentiment.
“They were wretched, stinky things. Sera set them all free.” I let my eyes roll a little, though I kept smiling.
“Lara helped her while Max lectured them both about the dangers of interfering with experiments gone wrong.”
Now Eryx snickered. “Sera’s a bit of a bleeding heart, isn’t she?”
“Pure starshine, that one,” I agreed. “Anyway, while they were doing that, Ember seduced the Duke.” I paused. “He was quite handsome.”
“But evil, I assume,” Eryx added.
I nodded vigorously, the waves of my hair falling in my face before I pushed them back.
“Oh, yes. No one spends that much time with unicorns and is anything but evil.” I shuddered at the thought of the terrible creatures that roamed the Wastelands between the Three Cities in roving, murderous herds.
“Anyway, she seduced him and killed him in his sleep. I was supposed to do it, but she said she couldn’t stand the sound of him snoring another moment. ”
Eryx let out a loud laugh. “Ember Verona is quite a character.”
I nodded, my heart softening at the memory of my sistren. We’d been together for so long. Had so many memories. So many stories. And once, I’d reveled in them.
Now all my memories were tainted with the knowledge that my own mother had thought me a burden to my cohort.
So unqualified to be here that she and the Admiral orchestrated a massively complex plan to steal the Orphium Maere’s swords, leaving us vulnerable and looked down upon for years so we could prove ourselves.
So I could prove myself—my sistren punished along with me. Shame filled me to the brim. My fork clattered to the table, emotion overcoming me. A hot tear slipped down my cheek. Every instinct in me told me to cast my eyes downward, to get myself under control.
But Eryx Necroline held my gaze. He did not look away. The mirth he’d given me so freely a moment before was gone with both our laughter, his face redrawn in hard, serious lines. “Are you thinking of your mother?”
I nodded, another tear falling. I would not look down, but neither could I speak.
“What made you think of her?”
“Every story I have is fouled by her deceit,” I choked out.
It was strange to tell someone something so honest. Stranger still was having been asked.
Ember and the others rarely asked what or how I was feeling or thinking.
It wasn’t their fault, not really. I’d discouraged such things for the majority of our relationship, not wanting to burden them unnecessarily with my thoughts.
But now I wanted to talk, and it seemed Eryx wanted to listen. “Every moment that I’ve cherished between the Maere… now I wonder… were they all resentful of me being there the whole time?”
Eryx’s eyes narrowed, but only slightly. “Have you asked them?”
I shook my head, finally averting my eyes as I took a shuddering breath.
“No. I can’t bear to hear the answer. I thought I had done enough before we came here.
I thought the entire island believed I was qualified.
But if she had to go to such lengths to force us all to prove ourselves…
” I trailed off. The rest of the sentence was too horrible to think about, let alone say aloud.
“Maybe none of them ever wanted you,” he finished for me. “Maybe they’ve spent every day of the past three million years hating your guts.” He said it in a matter-of-fact way, not taunting, not sarcastic, just completely neutral, like he could read my mind.
“Am I so transparent?” I asked.
Slowly, he shook his head. “No. But it’s easy to recognize those feelings in others when they live inside you.”
I lifted my eyes back to his. “Why would you ever feel that way? Everyone loves you.”