Chapter 15 Mayhem
Mayhem
“Did it work?” Brynn asks after a spell, with that same bored tone, still clutching my hand from across the table.
In irritation, I jerk back and shoot him a shouldn’t you fucking know glare—and that’s when I feel it.
The smallest jolt of electricity travels from his fingertips up my now freed hand.
A warm static wraps its way around my wrist like an invisible cuff.
I stare at my forearm in fascination, then at him.
He eyes his own wrist dubiously, like it doesn’t belong to his body. He flexes his fingers.
“Odd,” Brynn says, rubbing his own wrist with the opposite hand.
Much like commanding his true name, I wonder if he thought himself too mortal to ever strike a deal successfully. He had said he’d never brokered one before, but I assumed he’d at least been involved in one. Judging by his apparent wonder, it is clear: this is completely foreign to both of us.
“You’ve never been part of a bargain at all then?”
“Most Sanc don’t want to make a deal with me,” he replies in a low tone. As though realizing he spoke aloud, his startled gaze flickers to mine. “You know, rumored dimiblood.”
“No one has ever just asked you if you’re a dimiblood? You can’t lie. They believe the rumor without any confirmation?” I ask, skeptical now.
“It’s extremely taboo to ‘just ask’ a fae if they’re a dimi.
Most wouldn’t dare.” The grimace on his face tells me there’s more to this, but I shouldn’t push.
And I don’t. Instead, I take a hefty swig of faeplum ale to combat the anxiety brewing in my chest. The realization that I am bound to this stranger with secrets threatens to consume me.
You have secrets, too, the unhelpful voice in my head nags.
“Do you know of a passageway back to the mortal world?” I ask, changing the subject to something else weighing on my mind.
Brynn stands and begins clearing the table. “Yes, in Royal City. Otherwise, there’s conjurers who can create them—for a pretty piece,” he says. “Didn’t you get to Mayhem through one?”
“Yes, but—wait. You can conjure a passageway? Like with magic?” I ask, surprised.
Now that I know, it makes sense. But the passageway to Mavick’s always felt so…
ancient. Permanent. The idea of conjuring one up at will feels so…
not. And the one that deposited me in the bazaar before vanishing?
I had no time to think about it then, but it too felt different.
Perhaps traveling between passageways within Sanctuary is less intense.
“I mean, I cannot. I’m no conjurer,” says Brynn, lifting me from my thoughts.
Literal. Definitely half-fae. “But yes, there are some who know how. Glo, for example.” I turn in my chair to stare at him as he leans against the kitchen counter.
His eyes fix on my exposed thigh and I cross my legs in feigned casualness.
“That day you were chasing—” I bite my tongue to refrain from addressing her as the thief, before continuing, “Glo—through Aston. Why?”
“Well,” he says, taking in my face again. A faint flicker of warmth crosses his expression at the thought of Glo. “She took something from me that day, too.”
“I suppose you won’t be sharing?” I ask, more annoyed than I should be.
“Maybe she’ll tell you herself. I sent her a message to meet us here in the morning,” he says, crossing his arms and scrutinizing my body once again. “She’ll bring you something to wear.”
On that note, and as I tire of his critical gaze, I retreat to the bathroom to rinse and wring out my soaking clothes.
This takes a while, but I do not rush as I’m unsure how to converse with this brooding version of Brynn.
He didn’t seem any happier to finalize our agreement.
Perhaps his anxiety rivals mine. Perhaps he too has second thoughts.
After wringing my clothing until my hands burn, I hang them up for good measure.
Still feeling restless, I tie back my hair and splash cold water on my face until my breathing steadies.
The weight of our bond on my wrist shifts and moves, like an invisible bracelet.
A shackle, more like. At last, I emerge to find Brynn settling himself into a makeshift bed on the couch.
“Absolutely not,” I say, and he looks up at me, cocking an eyebrow. Even in the dim light, his black horns shine with a strange iridescence. I try not to stare. I don’t dislike them. They’re lovely in a way, like Mavick’s faerie wings.
“You take my bed,” he says, the corner of his mouth threatening a smirk as I gape at him.
“I can’t sleep in your bed,” I say. “This is your place. I’ll sleep out here.”
“Please shut up and take the bed,” Brynn mutters, as if all the fight has left him. I huff at being dismissed and retreat to the bedroom. Before I can slam the door, his insufferable face reappears over the back of the couch.
“Goodnight, Thea,” he calls with a maddening smile.
“’Night, Brynn,” I croon in mock sweetness, savoring the way he involuntarily tenses at his own name on my tongue.
Sleep does not come easy tonight. Brynn’s bed is comfortable, but all I smell is him. It’s the lavender-mint soap. The sweet scent of faeplum. The smoky smell of an extinguished fire. Ugh. I toss and turn in the dark until, finally, I fall into a disturbed dream.
I am stuck in a maze of tunnels. Tunnels like the one leading to Mavick’s passageway inside Castle Gale.
I meet dead end after dead end, each with another identical passageway.
My fingers reach out, grazing the swirling void.
I am sucked forward in an instant, but instead of being deposited somewhere homey and familiar, like Mavick’s living room, I find myself in another dark tunnel, just as the last. I can do nothing but keep going, the pattern feeling infinite.
Passageway after passageway after passageway resets me, and I’m like a dog tethered to a tree—running in circles tighter and tighter.
Until the tether chokes me.
At the center is a final passageway. But it’s nothing like my passageway—Mavick’s.
It is a mirror. My own face stares at me from the boundless abyss.
There’s panic in my icy eyes, a swelling of my chest as I fail to steady the thunderous pounding of my heart.
But I am not alone. A stacked pair of black eyes blink back at me from the void.
They stand at my side. The hysteria climaxes, in the reflected nightmare-me and in my own body, and I thrash awake.
I am tangled in the sheets and slick with sweat.
Silently gasping, I slink to the floor and wedge my head between my knees in an attempt to tame my frantic breathing.
I hope I did not cry out. Brynn cannot see me like this.
Panic attacks. Alma said they were to be expected from someone who experienced what I had. Mavick, who was fortunate to never witness one, said they were the manifestation of my stubborn, mortal body fighting to catch up with my sharp, busy mind. That was a nicer way to view it, I suppose.
After some time staring at the wooden planks from between my knees, counting the medullary rays in the grain from left to right and back again, my pulse settles.
That violet-orange light shines in from the small window, catching at the edge of my vision.
My throat is so dry that all I can think about is a glass of water.
I remove Brynn’s tunic, as it sticks to me in my sweaty state, and don a fresh one from his dresser.
My gaze drifts to his small library again.
Sometime yesterday, between snooping and locking myself in for the night, Brynn must have taken the handwritten journal of cryptic symbols.
I open the door and tiptoe to the washroom.
Again, I splash cold water on my face. Drinking the water from the faucet like a house cat sounds tempting, but I’d much prefer a glass so that I can retreat to the bedroom with it.
I steel myself at the door before treading softly to the kitchen.
Thankfully, our ale glasses remain on the counter next to the sink.
I grab the closest and turn back toward the bathroom, not wanting to wake Brynn with the sound of the kitchen tap.
As I sneak between the dining table and couch, my eyes instinctively land on Brynn’s sleeping figure.
That copper light now pools through these windows, flooding his figure in a warm glow.
At some point during the night, he removed his shirt.
I watch—entranced—as the hard lines of his chest rise and fall with the steady breaths of slumber.
The scar I spotted in the tavern is about the length of my hand and runs parallel to his sternum.
Prominent veins snake up his forearms. His dark honeyed hair is a perfect mess, and his full lips pout as though he dreams of something unsavory.
It strikes me how young he seems in this state—despite his very…
sturdy-looking muscles. He’s far less intimidating with those piercing eyes closed.
But the sight of him like this makes my chest constrict in a way I do not dare explore.
Brynn shifts in his sleep, turning over and away from the light pouring in, and I dive into the washroom in one skittish movement.
Thoughtlessly, I slam the door behind me.
Fuck. If watching him sleep wasn’t enough to wake him, that racket did the trick.
I fill my empty glass with tap water and gulp it down thirstily.
Twice. I open the washroom door a minute later and slink toward the bedroom with a third refill, doing my damnedest to not glance over at—
“How’d you sleep?” Brynn calls from the couch. I pivot in time to see him stand, his back muscles flexing as he shimmies a tunic over his head. My breath catches.
“I—fine,” I stutter, straightening.