by Kate Martin
“What else was I supposed to do? I saw it all too late. I had no time.” Bri kicked at the manifested ground and began to pace. “Why didn’t I see it? I should have seen something that big. I always see what’s happening in the city, I can’t get it out of my head. So how did I miss that?”
“Can’t blame yourself for it,” Kai said.
“You still sound like Alec.”
“Alec’s pretty smart then.”
Bri huffed and scrubbed at his face with his hands. “I’m here all the time. I shouldn’t have missed it.” A terrible thought dawned on him. “What if that’s why? I missed it because I’ve been here doing other things with you. I haven’t been paying attention.”
“So it’s my fault now?”
“What? No.” That hadn’t crossed his mind. Bri released his face, letting his arms drop to his sides. “No. I didn’t mean that. I meant—I don’t know what I meant.”
“I know. You just meant to come up with a reason for it being your fault. But it’s not. You are not responsible for the whole world. You are, however, the biggest martyr I’ve ever met.”
Duly chastised, Bri hooked his hands behind his neck. “There are worse things to be.”
“There are also better things. And you know I’m right, so don’t argue.”
“Fine.” Bri agreed, but his mind continued to list ways he had failed in his vigilance.
“Are you done moping now? ‘Cause I want to try something.”
Bri let his hands fall to his sides. “Try what?”
Grinning, Kai folded his legs underneath himself and patted the ground beside him. Bri obediently sat. “I came up with a new labrynth.”
“What does it do?”
“You’ll have to tell me if I’m right, but I’ve been sensing this space beneath us. Still in the myst, but different.”
“I’ve never felt such a thing.”
“I only feel it when I touch you,” Kai said, “but I think maybe because everything is so new to me, I feel it differently. You’ve been doing this your whole life, it all feels normal to you. Just try, see if I’m right.”
Bri shook off a stray bit of myst forcing its way into his head and considered Kai’s theory. It sounded reasonable, though Bri found it hard to believe that there was any part of the myst that hadn’t assaulted him at one point or another. Intending to humor Kai, and then gently disprove him, Bri closed his eyes, set his hands firmly to the myst’s floor, and opened all his senses.
All around and above him the myst lingered, passing by with its familiar cold energy.
Beneath him, he felt a deep void. Myst, but not myst. He gasped and opened his eyes to see Kai still grinning at him.
“See? I told you so.”
“How could I have missed that?” Another thing missed? Despair and depression began to sink their long claws into him.
Kai gave him a hard shake. “Hey, stop it. This is a big place, and it’s been with you your whole life. It scared the shit out of you when you were a kid, and so you learned to keep it as far away as possible. It’s no surprise there’s a spot that’s gone unnoticed. Like I said, the only reason I saw it was because the whole thing is new to me, and even then I wasn’t sure.”
For some reason Kai’s words chased away his depressed thoughts. At first Bri started to analyze why, but then decided just to accept that he felt better and move on. “What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know.” Kai grinned, his body buzzing with energy. “Want to find out?”
Bri thought about it for a moment, but everything in him cautioned against it. And he had many years of listening to that inner voice. “It feels darker than the myst. More dangerous. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“You don’t even want to peek?”
“You’re the one who just said you understood how awful the myst is. Why would I want to chance going somewhere worse?”
Kai pouted. “You have no sense of adventure.”
“It’s self-preservation.”
“Oh yes, because ye of the self-blame are fantastic at preserving yourself. Come on, Bri. You’re not alone. I’m here. If it gets bad, I’ll break the labrynth and we’ll come right back out.”
Another probe of the space beyond told Bri it was thicker than the myst, compacted and denser than where they were now. “I still don’t think this is a good idea.”
“But you’ll do it?”
“Can you work the labrynth so we only see into it? Without actually going in?”
Kai’s fingers worked as he thought, acting out his process. “Yeah. I can do that.”
“All right then.”
“Excellent.” Kai set his fingers to the ground immediately, twisting and turning, creating lines and loops faster than Bri could watch. Curious, Bri set a hand on Kai’s arm as he worked, doing his best not to interfere with Kai’s movements so he could see the actual workings. Warm red light flared where Kai’s blood traveled into the lines, mixing with a cooler blue that flashed as the line was scribed. Through their connection, Bri could detect Kai’s intentions as they molded themselves to the labrynth. The desire to look down, to peer inside, and to explore, all coupled with an unbreakable anchor to where they were now.
“Finished,” Kai said, withdrawing his hands. “Ready?”
Bri nodded. “What do I do?”
Lacing their fingers together, Kai settled into a more comfortable position. “Same thing you always do when moving around this place. I’ll keep us from falling in, so don’t worry about that.”
A deep breath that was meant to calm, shuddered instead. Closing his eyes, Bri located that strange, dense void once more, then exhaled and let himself begin to sink. The myst around him grew distant, the wisps and tendrils becoming smaller in the distance. Blackness enveloped them, paired with a freezing cold that stung his skin. Then suddenly light returned, dim and infrequent. Bri stood, and Kai stood with him. The tendrils of myst here were not the silver and blue he was used to, but instead red and orange, like fire. The wisps, so close together their movements were restricted, battered against Bri in large clumps, filling his mind with images he could not make sense of—people and places and words that shared no common thread. He clutched his head, gasping at the lancing aches that assaulted him, and felt Kai step up behind him, supporting him. His brother’s fingers danced along his back, and the sharp stabs of pain began to lessen. Breathing, Bri refocused himself and reached out for one tendril in particular, one that seemed to glow more brightly than the others.
He saw flames and debris, heard screams and desperate cries. People rushed into the streets once the world stopped shaking. There were body parts and dust in the streets. The river nearby ran dark with ash and rubble.
Bri drew his hand back, shaking and leaning heavily on Kai as the vision left him.
“What was that?” Kai asked, his whisper more curious than terrified. With their hands still clasped, he would have seen everything just as well as Bri.
“That—that already happened. Yesterday. The temple, I was there, I saw it all. The one I told you about.” Bri twisted away from his brother, though he didn’t dare let go of his hand, seeking out other tendrils in the thickness of this place. He couldn’t avoid being touched, the strange myst was everywhere, but he concentrated hard enough to sort through the images that were forced into his mind. The ball in Callay. A spring market where a traveling caravan had entertained with exotic animals and dancing girls. The announcement of the prince’s engagement. The king’s coronation. A winter storm so bad that no one had been able to leave their homes for days.
He knew them all. They had all happened in the last few years.
Still fighting the influx of visions, Bri spun around to face Kai. “It’s the past. Things that have already happened.”
“The past? You mean this is…the myst’s trash? The images of everything that’s already been used up?”
“What other explanation could there be?”
“You’re the
expert.” Kai looked around in wonder. “I guess it has to go somewhere, right?”
Knowing Kai still saw everything, Bri worked hard at sorting through the jumble of images. It hurt, in both his head and his chest, but he did it. “The whole past is here. Can you imagine? Being able to look into the past?”
Kai laughed. “You see the future every day, yet the potential of seeing yesterday amazes you.”
“Not just yesterday, ages ago. History. Lost memories. I could see our father! Maybe mother too!” Turning quickly, Bri tugged Kai further within the darkness.
Kai tugged back. “Bri, wait.”
He didn’t listen. The temptation was too great. The chance to see his mother again, to see his father for the first time. He touched as much as he could, identifying pieces he could recognize and trying to place the time. If he could just figure out the order of the tendrils, the direction he needed to go to find his life ten years ago. The images and visions came more easily the further he went in. The pain became more bearable, ignorable. By the time he captured a glimpse of the caravan that had raised him, his mind inundated with faces that had once haunted his dreams, he was too numb for them to affect him.
This was his childhood. His mother would be there, with her soft brown hair, streaked with silver despite her youth, and warm grey eyes. He felt tears on his cheeks.
“Bri!”
Everything was gone in an instant, and the pain the loss brought was ten times worse than anything the myst had done to him. Kai sat, half sprawled on the ground beside him, their hands unclasped, the labrynth destroyed, the lines scattered by a swiped hand. Bri clutched the cool ground of the myst, pressing his cheek to it for a moment while he caught his breath and reassembled his mind. The familiar feel of the future nudged at him, seeking entrance. The images were so different from those of the past…he had seen his mother’s tent, he knew he had.
“Why did you do that?” He lunged at Kai, grabbing at him. “I was so close! Why?”
Kai batted his hands away, then took his wrists, holding him still. “You were going too far. I was going to lose the anchor of the labrynth. Another step and you would have been lost.”
“She was right there!”
“She wasn’t! Bri, think about it. You aren’t seen in the myst. I’m not seen in the myst. What makes you think our parents would be seen? Our father, maybe. But not our mother. She wasn’t a witch.”
“All humans are in the myst.”
“Who said our mother was human?”
— CHAPTER THIRTY —
Bri sat on the floor of his room, picking at the soft carpet. He rested his head against the edge of his bed, thinking, despite the massive headache that threatened to split his skull. Everything he had seen—the past, the future, Kai’s labrynths—life was far more complicated than he had ever anticipated.
Who said our mother was human?
The words replayed in his mind over and over again. When the shock had worn away enough for Bri to speak again, he had questioned Kai on the matter, but his brother had little in the way of answers.
“It just wouldn’t make sense,” Kai had said. “Humans don’t give birth to things like us.” After that, Kai had been called away and Bri had been left alone with the myst and a promise from his brother that they would figure it out. Together.
But if their mother hadn’t been human, then what was she? Bri could remember her long pale blond hair and soft grey eyes. She had certainly looked human. What did it take to create beings such as himself and Kai? Was it the reason Haven hunted him? As far as he knew—as far as Carma knew, and she was as old as time itself—there had never been anything quite like him before. Yet Haven did not hunt Kai. He had asked his brother if the seraph had ever come after him. Kai had simply shaken his head and shrugged. “I’m just a witch,” he had said. “A very talented witch, but just a witch. There are plenty of others like me. You—you’re one of a kind.”
A curse if Bri had ever heard one. Being the only one caused nothing but problems, unexplained abilities, with no one to instruct him in how to control them. With Kai, he felt stronger, more capable. More so than even with Dorothea helping him along the way. Kai’s labrynths seemed organically in tune with his body and power, and it had taken Kai no time at all to learn how to lessen the pain he felt while he traveled through the myst. Perhaps this was something closer to what being whole felt like. Being normal. Kai was so irrevocably a part of him, a piece of himself he had somehow always known was missing.
Still, he could tell no one. Kai continued to deem it unsafe. It wasn’t fair. Kai had done so much for him, helped him, yet Bri could do nothing to return the favor but stay quiet. I will pay you back, brother. Somehow, someday, I’ll find a way.
The silent promise made him feel only marginally better.
A knock on the door sent stabs of pain through his already aching head. Pressing his fingers to his temples to ease the throbbing, he bade entrance.
One of the house maids, a young girl who went by Corynn, entered. She was often sent to find Bri when the occasion arose, on account of her being so unambitious in life that her future was quite benign and therefore caused Bri little grief. “Master Bri, there is someone here to see you.”
At first Bri didn’t know how to respond. No one ever called on him. The thought was…unimaginable. “To see me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure, sir.”
As his mind raced curiously about the notion, his headache worsened when those thoughts turned dark. No one came to call on him. And if someone had…what if it’s one of the seraph? “Does anyone else know? That someone is here, I mean.”
“I believe Miss Picadilly is currently entertaining her.”
“Her?”
“Yes, sir.” Corynn smiled and her eyes took on a mischievous twinkle. “A lovely young lady, come all the way from the city. Quite properly dressed, and beautiful golden hair all curled.”
Bri dragged himself off the floor and out into the hall in record time. His head throbbed harder with each step down the long staircase, but the possibility of what lay ahead far outweighed the discomfort. At the last landing before the final set of stairs, Bri stopped and peered around the corner, just able to see into the library where visitors were told to wait. Picadilly was nowhere to be seen, but just at the edge of the visible portion of the room, Bri saw a brilliant blue dress, the hem coming just below her knees, white stockings and polished white shoes, and familiar blonde hair.
Ella. Oh gods, what is she doing here? How did she know where I live? Oh, don’t be stupid, Bri, everyone knows where the Dusombré’s live. Breathe, breathe. Oh, gods, what am I supposed to say?
“What’s wrong with you?” A wrinkled and sleepy looking Alec descended the stairs. For a moment Bri wondered why he hadn’t gotten changed before sleeping, but the thought was quickly swallowed up by his panic over the green eyes that waited for him only a few steps away.
“N-nothing’s wrong with me. Why would something be wrong with me?”
“Aside from the fact that you’re clutching the rail like it’s the only thing between you and a fiery death? Gee, I can’t imagine.” The voices coming from the library drew Alec’s attention a moment. “Who’s here?”
“No one.” Bri said it too quickly for it to be true.
“Honestly, Bri.”
A sigh. “Ella.”
“Ella?”
“That girl.”
“What girl?”
“The one from the ball. The one from the temple!” Bri hushed himself when he realized his voice had risen too high, sparing a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure he hadn’t been heard.
It took Alec’s sleepy mind a moment to puzzle it all out. “The girl from—Oh. That girl.” He grinned and rubbed at his head, which seemed to further wake him. “What are you doing on the stairs then?”
“I can’t go down there!”
Alec laughed. “Oh, this is to
o much fun. Come on.” He grabbed Bri by the wrist and pulled him down the last of the stairs.
Bri resisted at first but followed in the interest of not tumbling down the stairs and landing in a completely undignified way. “Alec, stop! No!”
Alec shushed him and came to a stop once they reached the foyer. “You stop it. We’re close enough to be heard.” He kept his voice low. “Stand up straight and walk in there. You don’t want to look like a child, now do you?”
Bri mustered up the best glare he owned. By the amusement on Alec’s face, it wasn’t effective. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. In you go.”
One well-placed shove and Bri was in the library, hands fidgeting with nervous energy, and bright green eyes looking straight at him.
Picadilly regarded him coolly from her place beside the open window. “There you are. We weren’t sure you were coming.”
“Well, I-I mean, I was—”
Pica waved him off. “No matter. You must know Lady Ella. She says she has something she wishes to discuss with you.”
Ella smiled and gave a small curtsey. “I’m so glad to see you again.”
Bri’s tongue was completely tied in knots. Luckily, his awkward stammers and silence didn’t seem to deter Ella. “I was hoping we could talk somewhere privately,” she said.
Her maid, who had until then gone unnoticed, cleared her throat loudly.
Pursing her lips in distaste, Ella flicked her gaze to her maid, then back to Bri. “As privately as can be expected, of course.”
“I think I have a solution to that,” Alec said, stepping forward. “It’s a lovely day today. You can take a walk out back. The grounds are quite open and Pica, your maid, and I will be able to chaperone from afar.”
Ella beamed a broad smile at the idea, and suddenly Bri felt heat in his cheeks and the distinct desire to make her smile like that for him—not Alec. “That sounds perfect. Don’t you think so, Melody?”
“Of course, miss.” Though the maid was in agreement, her tone was tired and worried.
“Well, that’s settled then.” Alec elbowed Bri in the back. “Escort the young lady outside.”