Chapter 18
RHIANNON
It was just a feeling. A gut feeling, to be sure, but a feeling nonetheless.
I’d spent so many years denying my instincts, insisting instead on hard evidence because I never felt as though I could wholly trust myself.
But my instincts were evidence unto themselves.
When I went against them, I was usually wrong.
When the evidence supported them, and I went with them, I was right.
Learning to trust myself again was part of the reason I’d come here. Even so, saying out loud that it was “just instinct” wasn’t attractive. I liked to be able to explain myself clearly to others. Luckily, an answer came to me fairly easily. It was, after all, right there for the taking.
“In my view,” I said softly, feeling both unsure and confident of my words and my instinct simultaneously, “understanding why we are here and why Cassandra took the key to begin with is the first task.”
There was the slightest of tremors, and then a noise that rang from within me, so loud my ears felt as though they might bleed.
Something in the magic that held the house together cracked open.
And in the pain of the moment, I realized what had been bothering me all morning.
Eryx had been trying to tell me something.
Trying to tell me something the house wouldn’t let him.
Information that would have let the two of us better understand what was happening here. Information that would let us out of this trap. I clapped my hands over my ears, knowing it wouldn’t help. The noise wasn’t a real sound.
There was no time to react. No time to cling to Eryx, or hold onto something in Magnus’ office. It all fell away. We were hurtled out of the house and into the garden, like a video tape on fast-forward. Nausea nearly pushed me to the grass, bowling me over.
Eryx’s voice cut through my confusion. “There are consequences for your actions, Cassandra.”
My heart raced wildly, my head spinning as a cold sweat broke out over my skin. He didn’t sound like himself at all. He didn’t sound like my Eryx. A voice within me—not the voice I’d come to know as my own, but Cassandra’s—said, Please watch. Please see.
Perhaps she spoke the words inside Eryx’s head as well, because he did not intervene.
Against all baser instincts, I released my hold on my body and gave into the vision, remembering that we’d likened this massive illusion to a finger trap.
If I pulled too hard, it would just tighten. Hard as it was to let go—I had to.
All right, I responded. Show us what happened here.
My mouth moved, my voice working out of my control now. “You know.”
Eryx’s eyes narrowed. “I have known for months that you were plotting something. I just didn’t think you’d be quite so vicious.”
I laughed, sinking further into the vision even as I struggled against it, some base instinct in me knowing what had happened here.
Cassandra hadn’t died in Aradios.
She hadn’t even gone to Aradios.
She’d died in the garden.
Yes, the mournful voice in my head responded.
Let us out of here, my mind’s voice snarled back.
“Where is it?” Eryx growled. “What have you done with it?”
I smiled, knowing how much it would infuriate him. No, I did not. Cassandra had smiled at Magnus. “I gave it to Lourdes. She’ll know just what to do with it, and with everything I’ve told her.”
Infuriated as I was that she was using us as puppets, I understood her desperation. She needed some way to make us understand how she had felt. Was Magnus the one keeping us all here? The only way to find out was to try to talk to her. To try to get her to let us help her untangle these old knots.
You were lying, I spoke inwardly to Cassandra, trying to stay calm. The key was in your desk.
It was the only way, she replied.
To save yourself? I asked.
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. I felt it, just as she had felt it. She’d known nothing could save her, and so she chose to protect her secret. To save something else instead. Something she cared about more than anything else.
But what was it?
Eryx stepped forward, fury in his eyes. Panic flooded me for an instant, countered immediately with the refrain that came from my deepest knowing: It wasn’t him. It wasn’t him. “What did you tell that bitch about me?”
His words broke any illusion I had that Eryx was involved in this in any way. He would never speak to me like this. Never.
Eryx was nothing like Magnus. He might have been a monster. We both were. But this was what evil looked like. That wasn’t Eryx at all. It was only Magnus.
Inside my head, I made one last, desperate bid to Cassandra. Eryx is a good man. He was hurt by Magnus. Not to the same degree that you were, but you cannot force him to hurt me. You will ruin him.
She didn’t answer me. I had to keep trying. If this played out the way I feared it would, Eryx would never forgive himself. He couldn’t actually kill me, but he would never let himself be near me again if she forced us to play these roles. It would shatter the man I knew.
Please do not ruin him, Cassandra, I pleaded. I need him as he is.
Still, she did not answer. The scene was stuck, almost as if someone had pressed “pause” on a remote control. She wasn’t answering me, but she was listening.
I had to keep trying. Please, Cassandra. Don’t damn me to an eternity of loving a man who can no longer love me in return.
As the words formed, I knew they were true. I loved Eryx Necroline now in a way that was fragile and new, but would someday be gloriously strong. The possibility of eternity spilled out ahead of me in a way I’d never experienced.
I never thought of the future, because before coming here, all I’d expected was more pain. More endless suffering. But beginning to love him had given me hope. It had opened more than just my heart. It opened up the possibility for the one thing I never dared imagine for myself: a happy future.
Eryx’s face changed, and I was thrown out of the vision. Incorporeal as a ghost, I watched now from the outside. A slight movement in my peripheral vision put me on alert.
It was just Eryx. He stood next to me now, just as insubstantial as I was, but no longer inside Magnus.
No longer in danger. Relief flooded through me, and I nearly fell to the ground with the magnitude of it.
I had not known until this moment how much I needed him.
How much I needed for us to have a chance at that happy future.
And now I had it.
I reached for his incorporeal hand, which flexed towards me. My eyes filled with tears as his diaphanous fingers, somewhat impossibly, closed around mine. My heart beat erratically as I forced myself to turn back to Cassandra and Magnus.
“I told her what you do to me. How you treat me,” Cassandra lied.
I wanted to close my eyes. More than anything I wanted to disappear.
To not see this. But I simply squeezed Eryx’s hand tighter, moving closer to him, my cheek resting against the steady bulk of his shoulder.
It defied logic that we could be incorporeal and touch, but I didn’t have time to question it.
“How I treat you?” Magnus sneered, towering over Cassandra. “How I saved you from a life of infamy?”
“How you hurt me,” she replied, straightening her spine. “The way you ignore my visions. The way I was sold to you.”
He grabbed her arm first, pulling her towards him.
His other hand closed around her throat.
Cassandra didn’t so much as struggle. Even then, she’d felt the futility of it all.
The fact that struggling would only make things worse, trap her for longer.
I covered my mouth with my free hand, stifling the sob that bubbled from my throat as I understood why the illusion felt like a finger trap.
That was how she’d felt. Her struggle was her true demise.
Death had been her only way out.
This was the only end, she answered in both our heads. I saw it the day I was sent to him. I tried to warn my family. No one cared to hear what I had to say.
Eryx’s hand tightened around mine. He pulled me closer, tucking me into his body, as Magnus’ hands tightened around her throat. My chin quivered. I was the picture of calm when I took a life. Clean, quick, quiet. That was my way. This was cruel—what I always tried to avoid.
Cassandra smiled again. “You will never get the key back, Magnus,” she whispered, her voice hoarse as he slowly crushed her beneath his fingers. “Lourdes will never...”
Her body spasmed then, an involuntary response to him cutting off her airway. But she still did not struggle away from him. Not purposely. Cassandra Necroline had made her peace with Tanith, and the goddess’ gift had been this horrible death.
Eryx had averted his eyes, and I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Something in me needed to witness her passing. I let go of Eryx and stepped forward.
I couldn’t stop this. It had already happened.
Even so, I couldn’t let her die alone, even in a vision.
When Magnus dropped Cassandra to the ground, the light had almost gone out of her eyes, but still her body fought for life.
I lay belly-down on the ground next to her, slipping my incorporeal hand into hers as Magnus crouched to the ground to finish the job.
Her head lolled to one side, her eyes meeting mine.
Can you see me? I asked.
Yes, she replied, and I knew only I could hear her.
I am here. I won’t leave. You are not alone.
A tear rolled down her pale cheek as his hands closed around her throat, a faint smile on her lips as he stole the last of her breath. Her face flickered in my mind, the woman I saw replaced with a face that looked eerily like my own before flickering back.
Thank you, she replied as my mind struggled to comprehend. Thank you.
My eyes fell closed. A murmur behind me caught my attention. Eryx. It was only Eryx. “She needs to see it again, Cassandra. I need her to see what you showed me.”