“Yes,” I say, but he’s still talking as he weaves around the doctors to get closer to me.
“Let the doctors ensure your vitals are good because there is much to do. The revolution has begun, all thanks to your sacrifice.” He doesn’t stop to ask me how I feel. Doesn’t care to know if I’m okay.
Jaxen tenses beside me as the doctors close in on me like vultures, lifting sheets and tugging on equipment. Sticking things to my face and checking the machines for the readings. A flurry of noise and commotion breaks through the quiet calm we were just in, like a stampede in the middle of the night.
I am a slave to a circus I never wanted to join.
“You did everything and more, Faye. You came back from the dead. You destroyed that machine, and you still lived,” Mack continues, the excitement in his voice wrapping around my throat like hands. “Seamus didn’t think it was possible. But not me… I knew you had it in you.” He points his finger at me. “I knew you had the spirit of a good hunter. And now it’s time.”
“Time?” My mind feels like it’s done one too many rounds on a merry-go-round.
“Yes,” he says, his smile gleaming like the sharp edge of a knife. “It’s time you meet the remaining four who created this Coven.”
I DON’T TRUST THE COLOR white anymore.
It’s been a solid hour since the doctors began their testing after the nurse healed me with just enough with magic, and here I stand before them, in a gown that doesn’t cover my backside and a cold sweat lining my forehead and the insides of my palms.
“She’s on her feet. That’s a good sign, right?” Mack asks the doctors after they’ve instructed me to walk back and forth across the room.
I do so without a single grimace, even though my bones and tendons rattle against each other like rusted chains in a motor trying to run. Digging my fingernails into the meaty flesh of my palms, I try to keep myself under control and present, but their faces blur as the white of the walls closes in on me, choking off my ability to think straight.
It’s happening again.
My stomach twists and swoops, and I have to suck in a deep breath of air to keep the memories from attacking my sanity. White has always been there. In Clara’s clothes and on the walls of this institution we’ve dedicated our lives to. On the flag that flies proudly for our Coven, and in the whites of her eyes as her life drained beneath my fingertips.
It’s the color of my gown, this room, and my… my skin. This skin that has greedily and easily taken life. These hands that still have life to take. That want to take the lives of those who aren’t supposed to walk this earth.
My heart frantically beats against the cage of my chest. When did I become the one who determines who gets to live and die? When did I accept this change?
I brace the edge of my bed and press my palm against my chest, counting the rapid beats of my heart as my stomach clenches like a fist. You’re fine, I tell myself, but I feel funny… dizzy and heavy.
I’m a murderer. A vessel they’ll continue to use until there’s nothing left.
“Faye?” Jaxen says.
One of the doctors, an elderly woman with white hair piled like a snowball on the crown of her head, looks up from her tablet to the machine tracking my vitals. “I don’t like how her blood pressure looks.” She glances over at me as she says this, her astute, silver eyes cutting through me. “She looks feverish.”
“I’m fine,” I lie, grateful my voice doesn’t waver.
The other doctor, a younger man with dark brown hair cleanly combed to the side, looks over his glasses at me, appraising, and I can see that I’m just another number in his orbed brown eyes. An interesting number, but a number nonetheless. “Do you feel up to walking?”
I look down at my feet, and then back up at him. “I’m still standing.”
I feel Jaxen observing me from the corner. Even though we’re no longer connected, he still knows me inside and out. I train my eyes on the doctors, not wanting to look back at him and see whose side he’s on.
“See!” Mack says in an exhilarated rush. “She says she’s fine. She looks…” He pauses, head tilting to the side as he looks me up and down. “Well…” He shakes off whatever he was originally going to say. “Never mind how she looks. She says she’s fine and we have much to do. Can you approve her?”
“Approve me?”
Mack cuts his gaze back to me. “The Divine need these fine doctors here to approve your condition in order for you to leave this room. They want you in optimal shape before we meet them. We have dire matters to discuss. The world isn’t exactly a cup of sunshine now that Mourdyn and Bael have been reunited.”
He pauses for a breath, more unwound than I’ve ever seen him. Like he’s cracked in half, the yolk of his sanity spilling out around my feet.
“You’re up for it, right?” His eyebrows are pulled high by strings of hope. His eyes are nearly pulsing with yearning for me to say the right thing. For me to kick this ball into motion.
I take a deep breath and clear my head so the right words can surface. “I want to meet the Divine. I’m ready, even if my body might not be.” I say it flawlessly, but what I really wanted to say was, I want this to be over so I can find peace even though, deep down, peace feels like the Holy Grail.
Mouse, you need to rest, Weldon says in my mind with a gentle nudge. You can barely keep yourself upright. You’ve been through the ringer. Don’t let my pompous ass of a brother persuade you into anything you’re not up for.
Do you not understand the word privacy? I retort, mentally shoving him. Wishing everyone would stop telling me what was best for me.
An echo of his dark chuckle follows. Sure I do. But that’s beside the point. I can feel your pain right now. It’s like a thorn in my side. You need to rest a little more. The apocalypse can wait another day.
Thanks, but I’m fine. Really. I shut the mental door on him and give my full attention back to the doctors.
“Well, I suppose if she says she’s up for it, and her vitals remain strong, then we can approve her,” the snow-haired woman says, though she doesn’t sound thrilled at the prospect.
Mack claps his hands together, his grin obscenely wide.
The other doctor clears his throat, dampening the moment. He looks to the woman and says, “But there’s one last thing we need to check.”
She looks down at her clipboard as if she’s missed something before glancing back up at him.
“Your magic. We need to ensure it’s at full strength,” the doctor continues, watching me as if waiting to find any telling ticks that might give my scrambling thoughts away.
That was the old Faye Middleton. Nervous and squirmy.
I hate that I catch the hesitancy in Mack’s gaze. The fear that puts a tremble into his smile and plants a seed of doubt in the back of my head.
The doctor with glasses smiles. His large white teeth gleam at me, and I can’t help but think about sharp canines sinking into my flesh. “No one has ever been through a situation such as this before. To return from death after a machine took such a large amount of power from you… I’d honestly be surprised if you had any magic left at all.”
I’m left speechless. I stumble inside my own mind for some form of retort, but there’s nothing but vines of doubt growing rapidly, latching onto any reasons I come up with.
The snow-haired woman straightens her stature, chin in the air as she presses her clipboard against her chest and waits alongside the other doctor. Mack stares at me, eyes pulsing with words I can’t make out.
Dance, monkey, I think to myself.
Mack watches me intensely. Suddenly, I’m not so sure of myself. Ever since I woke up, I’ve felt different… weaker than before.
“Whenever you’re ready,” the doctor says, eyes darting between the machine I’m hooked up to and my face.
I force myself to breathe and try for something easy—volation.
Jaxen leans forward, watching me just as closely as everyone else. I
open my palm, waiting for the blue, electric energy to make its way down my arm, but nothing happens. I can’t help but fixate on their pens scribbling furiously against their clipboards and wonder what they’re writing.
Defect. Defect. Defect.
Come on, Faye. My face pulls into a scowl as I shake it off and try again, putting all my energy into a task that should be second nature. I look up at them, their faces moving in and out like a mirror in a funhouse, and say, “Let me try again.”
They wait, pens pressed heavily against their boards like knives waiting to sink through my heart.
Again, nothing.
The vines—I feel them wrapping around my brain, constricting my ability to think straight. My magic… it’s gone. I can’t feel it… can’t feel its connection to the earth, and I imagine myself being wrapped up in their deadly grasp, pulled deep into the earth where I belong. Where I should be right now.
Not here. Not alive. Not without my mother.
Mack shifts his stance. “Try… try your magic, Faye.”
I shake my head, trying not to panic, but my fingers are shaking and I suddenly feel like my skin is on fire. All I want to do is lay back down, go to sleep, and try to wake up again as a different me. A me less broken. Less used up.
“It’s normal to falter in the beginning,” the lady adds with a small smile, but the friendliness in her tone has disappeared along with my powers. I am just another number now. Another statistical defect.
“Try to move this,” the other doctor says, laying his pen down on the bed. It gleams under the fluorescent lighting.
Don’t screw this up. My heart is sinking into my stomach. I know they’re counting on me, but it’s already done. Over. My power is gone, given to a machine and to a man I have yet to meet.
“Give it a try, Faye,” Mack says, his voice like a light shove forward.
I nod and put my intent into doing what he says, but I don’t feel anything. No power. Just… exhaustion.
Move, I tell the pen, staring so intently at it that my eyes begin to water.
It doesn’t do anything.
My stomach drops to the floor. My heart crumbles into pieces as I beg the pen to move. To give even a slight shudder, but nothing happens.
I hear the lady’s pen scribbling against paper and let out a huge exhale as my head finds my hands.
“There! It moved!” Mack says, pointing to the pen.
It barely moved, if at all. “That’s either your wishing it did, or because I let out a huge breath. It wasn’t because of me. I don’t have anything left in me,” I admit, nearly falling to sit on the edge of the bed. “The Exanimator took it, Mack.”
I can’t bring myself to look at Jaxen. What will he think?
“It may be fatigue,” the lady says as she reaches for the wires hooking me to the machine. She begins removing them. “We can’t rule it out completely.”
I stare at the tiny flecks of black inside the marbled floors and wish I could just disappear back to my room where I was safe. Where I didn’t have to live a life full of regret and disappointment anymore.
“Do you still wish to be approved?” the other doctor asks. He doesn’t look at me this time, as if I’ve let him down as well.
“Yes,” I say, because I don’t want to be in this room anymore, drowning in a sea of white.
“It seems you have your way again, Maddock. Congratulations,” the doctor says, slapping a piece of paper against Mack’s chest before he exits the room.
The lady finishes pulling off the last wire, and then steps back. “If you feel anything at all that isn’t normal, please return to my office. Other than that, you’re cleared to leave.”
I nod, and then she leaves.
It takes Mack a second to find his voice. He’s staring at the ground as if he can’t make sense of what just happened, and it feels like jabs to my heart. “Things have changed while you’ve been asleep. You’ll need to prepare yourself.” He clears his throat, the sound somewhat painful. “I’ll… I’ll give you a little bit to freshen up. You can head back to your house, and I’ll contact you as soon as the meeting is set up.” He leaves without looking at me.
“It seems my biggest fear has finally come true,” I say as the tears blurring my vision begin to clear like clouds parting. As the vines around me dissolve under the sun of my realization.
“What do you mean?” Jaxen asks, finding his way over to me.
I take his hand in mine and look up at him, nearly choking on the laughter bubbling, clawing its way up my throat. “I’m… I’m finally a defect.”
“ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE READY to go?” Jaxen asks as I slide my arms through the sleeves of my black leather jacket. It feels good to be back in my uniform, even if what’s on the inside no longer pertains to the Night Watchmen world.
I skate my hand over the Watchman symbol, feeling a sense of calm sweep over me. “Yeah. The nurse did a good job. I feel just about brand new.” I look around at the machines in the room, perched like robotic monsters waiting to tether me back up, and then shift back to Jaxen amid a shiver. “And, besides, I want to get the hell out of this room. We’ve been stuffed in here for far too long.”
I turn for the door, but he takes my hand and pulls me back to him. And then, with a cunning smile, he pulls an apple from his pocket and tosses it to me.
The world stops, I think, as I catch it, and then his gaze locks on mine.
He nods ever so slightly, confirming what I’m thinking. “You once told me that in Ancient Greece, tossing an apple was supposedly considered the same thing as offering a marriage proposal.”
The beeps and clicks of the machines fade away into nothing. He takes a step toward me as my heart flaps its wings, sending a solar flare of heat to my face. His breath is so close, his lips even closer, and my mind fills with fuzz.
“I love you, Faye.”
I fall into the deep green of his eyes.
“And I know this is hardly the place to say this, but after everything we’ve been through, if I’ve learned anything, it’s that time is our biggest enemy. I won’t waste another second waiting for perfect moments, because perfect moments can be found even in a place like this. You’re my perfect moment, Faye, and I just… I need you to know this.” He moves my hand over his rapidly beating heart, and I pray I don’t float away from here. “When we walk out these doors, there’s no telling what will happen next,” he continues. “We don’t know what the Divine will ask from either one of us, and I just… I don’t ever want to feel like I won’t have a second shot to tell you everything that’s in here.” He lightly squeezes my hand against his chest, his gaze growing serious. “You are my everything. When this is all over, Faye Middleton, it’s you that I want to make a home with. It’s you that I want to have a real future with.”
A flurry of butterflies whirl around my chest, released from the cage of my heart. “Jaxen, I feel the same—”
“You don’t have to say anything,” he says, cutting me off with a small smile. “I know how you feel. And I’ve never been more sure about anything or anyone in my life. You’re mine and I am yours, and I just want it to be said out loud before we leave this sanctuary and head back into hell. I’m going to marry you, Faye.” His smile widens, releasing some of the intensity of his admittance. After a short moment, he laughs and asks, “Have I stunned you into silence?”
“No,” I say quickly, trying to calm the butterflies loose inside me. “You said it all perfectly. There’s nothing I want more than a quiet, peaceful future with you.”
“With our luck, I doubt it will be quiet or peaceful.”
We laugh.
“But we’ll have each other,” I add, allowing myself to think of this future we’ve dreamed up. Throwing pennies into the wishing well of my mind in hopes that one day this will come true.
WE MAKE OUR WAY OUT of the hospital, snaking through the endless hallways and rooms filled with injured Elites and Primevals. I try to keep my eyes forward, trained to
ward the exit sign, but I can’t help but overhear nurses and doctors talking about raids gone wrong and the staggering number of injuries stacking up as the days press on. An unsettling feeling slithers up my spine.
How much have I missed?
There’s an unease in the air, thick and obstructive, forcing us to pay attention. To pull our heads from the sand and take notice of the little things… like how the news is broadcasting the disappearance of witches, listing their names in a cadent sequence. Or how the faces of the leaders of the Darkyn Coven have been plastered on posters with warnings and hotline numbers to be contacted if spotted.
It feels like I left the world whole and came back to a million shattered pieces.
It can’t come fast enough when the exit doors slide open. Fresh afternoon air wraps its arms around me and pulls me into the street underneath the sunlight. I turn my face up to its warmth, eyes adjusting to the brilliance of the natural light. It’s been too long stuck under fluorescent bulbs and boxed within compressed air.
The city square is packed with citizens lined up in neat rows, kneeling in front of the crumpled statues of the Divine. Flowers, flags, and multi-colored bags of herbs have been placed at what’s left of their feet. It seems their return has sparked something in the people. Brought back the need to worship something other than themselves. Something greater than the vanity found in a mirror.
The air smells brighter… if that’s even possible. Lighter maybe. Alive with the scent of spices and humans, and the crisp scent of fall. The streets have been cleaned, the hedges pruned and trees trimmed. The boarded windows are now open, a smattering of noise and music careening through the streets. Colors burst at every angle, every turn, lifting and pushing out the shadows that the return of Mourdyn has brought.
The city has stretched its paws and yawned itself awake again.
Packs of Elites in tight formations march toward the city’s exit, armed with guns and determination. It’s then I notice the barricade of tables lined near the entrance to the city, enclosed in a wall of magic. People are lined up behind the tables, getting badges and entering the city in numbers my eyes can’t keep up with.
Evermore (The Night Watchmen Series Book 5) Page 2