48. Chug It
Chug It
ONE
“You understand what it is that I’m giving you?” the low, growling voice asks from behind the desk as he slides the small potion bottle across it.
When the Beast of Boston requested our presence at his dark, foreboding brownstone castle, we thought for sure it was an invitation to our own slaughter.
The last time we saw Dominic Blackthorn, scary shifter and reigning crime lord over Boston, it was at Carolee’s funeral. The day was hot, humid, and drizzly, adding another layer of misery to an already miserable gathering around the gravesite.
Our gazes connected as his Isabelle buried her face in his chest, shoulders silently shaking with sobs, while Chip held their baby next to them, stone-faced and ashen.
In that moment, I had been sure the large, scowling man nearly bursting out of his suit was plotting my gruesome death. The squeeze of Snow’s hand was the only thing that carried us through a funeral I felt I had no right to attend.
The sickly churn of guilt was near lethal, and it took everything in me not to speed away like the wind.
After facing that memorial, the others seemed to regard me with new respect for facing things head-on, but Two had been adamant ever since that the scary, hulking crime lord was plotting something.
Likely my demise.
“You...” I say to the man across the desk hesitantly. “You’re saying this is a petal that can...” I can’t finish the words. My hands turn leaden where they rest in my lap.
What’s a petal again? Four asks, his attention unerringly focused on the potion bottle filled with liquid black as night.
It’s like a cure, Six explains. Blackthorn notoriously deals in hexes, or what are called thorns, but he never makes a thorn he can’t provide a petal for.
But we weren’t hexed, Three points out worriedly. Maybe it’s straight-up poison. Or a new thorn?
Not that we don’t deserve it, Two snorts.
“It’s a petal that can reunite all your parts,” Dominic says, interrupting our internal agitation.
“But we weren’t hexed,” I say, echoing Three’s point.
Dominic takes a slow, steady inhale and exhale, never blinking as he regards me. It is truly like being in the presence of a predator thinly wrapped in a man’s skin. I half expect him to burst out of it at any moment, claws ready to rip me to shreds.
“From the research found in your mother’s records,” he says, continuing to act like he’s just a human man, “your mother used a mixture of methods. I think you already appreciate the irony of her using magic to eradicate magic.”
I close my eyes tight against another white-hot solar flare of guilt.
Mother wanted to use Ariel, and absolutely would have used Red. Who knows how many other mages or fae my mother used and abused in her relentless pursuit to cleanse the city of magic-kind? I don’t think any of us seven could really stomach the answer at this point.
But here we are, sitting in front of someone offering a cure to pull us all back together so we can be one.
Despite our hands being heavy, unable to move, our fingertips twitch. Still, we don’t reach out and grab the potion.
“Why are you doing this for us?” I ask the Beast of Boston, my tongue suddenly too thick in my own mouth.
His eyes flash green as they glance at the potion on the table. “Let’s say I am intimately familiar with the exquisite torture of being split.”
I wait a beat, but he doesn’t expand.
Maybe something to ask Snow about later...
Less than five minutes later, I’m hurrying down the street back to Snow and Ariel’s apartment, my fingers wrapped tightly around the tiny bottle in my pocket. Though I guess it’s our apartment now too since we moved in, promising to always knock extra loud before entering anyroom.
We’re going to do it, right? Five asks hopefully. We’re going to be one again?
Maybe we don’t, Six says. We’ve found a kind of harmony between all seven of us. Why do we need to go and change things now?
Because we’re really all the same person, Three points out.
Because it’s what we’ve always wanted, Two says, but I can tell he’s unconvinced.
I want to answer, but I can’t. I can’t form a thought. My mind is racing too quickly, my heart pounding a staccato beat against the inside of my ribcage.
Do you think it will feel like dying? Four asks, unusually somber.
I stop abruptly, my hand hovering over the doorknob to Snow’s apartment.
Faefucks.
Will it?
Will we feel...will I feel whole again?
Or will it feel like killing off parts of ourself?
We haven’t been unified in so long I don’t remember what it feels like, Two says.
I do, Three says with airy hopefulness. I dream of it. I remember.
What did it feel like? Six asks.
I open the door before Three can answer, my heart beating too fast again.
Snow looks up from the couch where she is watching a Hex Island rerun. I only know it’s a rerun because she’s made me catch up on all eleven seasons. We are all split on how we feel about that stupid yet somehow addicting reality drama.
The afternoon sunshine spills in through the gauzy curtains onto Snow, illuminating the pure white strands of hair that have fallen from the messy bun held up by a clip. She’s cozy and soft in her sweatpants and tank top.
The light surrounds her like a halo and, yet again, I think there’s absolutely nothing icy about her despite her name and features.
The grin that springs to her lips matches the sparkle in her eye.
The one she has for us.
Only us.
I close the space quickly and lean down, cupping her face in one hand so I can tilt her lips up to the perfect angle. I kiss her deep and long, parting her lips with my tongue so I can taste her.
It’s instantly drugging, but I can’t decide if she’s calmed or quickened the pace of my heart. My blood rushes hotter through me.
The cacophony inside me slowly but surely changes focus until all seven of us have grounded in the woman who keeps us together, keeps us sane, and makes us better men.
In that kiss, I find the refuge I need.
No matter what happens, she’ll be there.
It will be okay.
When I finally pull away, her lips are puffy, eyes glazed over.
“Whoa,” she breathes. “Hello to you too.”
“Is Ariel here?” I ask with a quick glance around.
“Nope,” she says, popping her p before moving to pull her shirt over her head.
I still her movements before she gets the tank past her belly button.
Her expression wrinkles in confusion. She thinks I’m rejecting her.
I caress her cheek with my thumb, kissing her softly. “As much as I’d love to plow you so deep and hard we leave a permanent mark in this couch right now, I need to tell you something.”
“Okay,” she says, straightening her clothes.
Five minutes later, we sit next to each other in electric silence after I’ve told her everything. The television is muted, but the colorful tropical pictures are still moving inappropriately in the background.
The small potion bottle with the petal in it sits on the coffee table.
I barely let myself look at it before, but now I can see that what I thought was black is more like an impossibly dark blue, tiny sparks popping inside it like bubbles rising through champagne.
Like a dark night of exploding stars, Three muses.
“What should we do?” I finally ask Snow.
She is also staring at the bottle. “What do you guys want to do?”
Our heart stutters, still never getting used to how she addresses us as individuals.
“We are undecided,” I say, leaning forward and clasping my hands tightly. “Two and Six are averse to change, while Three and Five seem optimistic that it would be for the best. Four is scared of dying.”
The last part is hard to get out, nearly catching in my throat, because I share his reservations.
My hands release, then clasp each other so hard this time my knuckles whiten.
“Oh, One.” Snow’s tone is scored with deep empathy as she turns to face me, hearing the thing I won’t admit out loud. “That must be so fucking scary.”
She wraps her arms around me and pulls me to her. I’m stiff in her embrace, unable to reciprocate. Frozen. Frozen in fear.
She doesn’t try to tell me Four and I are wrong. She doesn’t tell me not to think like that. She simply holds me until I soften in her arms, my fingers finding her spine to pull her closer into me until I’m breathing deep and steady again.
“You know I love you, all of you, no matter what you choose, right?” she whispers.
“What if I change?” I whisper back. “What if we are different when we are...whole?”
What if you don’t like us anymore? What if you can’t love us like that?
Snow pulls back a fraction but doesn’t let me go.
“Then I’ll find even more new things to love about you.”
She brushes the curls away from my forehead in a soothing gesture. I close my eyes, leaning into the soft tingling her fingertips leave in their wake, finally feeling my heartbeat calm.
“And you don’t have to decide today—”
“We do,” I say sharply as I stiffen. “The pressure is pressing against the inside of our bones, our brain. We can’t...we can’t walk around with uncertainty like this.”
I didn’t realize it until I reacted to her suggestion.
But it’s true.
We are divided on so many things. We don’t want this mega life-altering decision hanging between us, haunting us, tearing us apart night and day.
“Okay.” She nods with a reassuring smile, brushing through my hair again until my shoulders relax. “Today. Now. You guys can figure this out.”
“How?” I ask, almost desperate for her to just tell us what to do.
She chews on the inside of her cheek for a moment.
“I’m not exactly the reigning beacon of wisdom, this one time when Ariel got super philosophical after too much wine she started talking about how we basically die a million tiny deaths in one lifetime. Every time something changes us enough, some version of us doesn’t come with us.”
My stomach tightens.
“And it seems to me like you’ve done that plenty recently. I’ve watched you grow and shed parts of yourself that didn’t fit anymore, even when letting them go hurt like hell.”
“You mean my mother,” I say flatly.
“I was trying to be delicate, but fuck yeah.” She nods earnestly.
Mother.