“I don’t want to talk about it,” I finally added.
Ezra put his hand on my shoulder. “My family was attacked when I was small. I was taken as a slave.” He met my gaze. “I killed my slaver and came to Edinburgh a free man, only to find a different side of horror. People make terrible choices, or worse, don’t get a choice at all.”
My heart cracked. He was too close to what happened to me. The spots pulsed painfully, and the last face I saw in each delusion flashed across my memory. Instead of denying their existence, I let myself hurt.
Ezra slid his hand down my side and pulled me close.
I wrapped my arms around his middle. “My life wasn’t like this before.”
Ezra rubbed my shoulder. “Mine wasn’t either.”
“I still don’t want it to be real.” I squeezed whatever material was under my hands. “It might not be. Every time it got too bad, I’d black out and wake up somewhere else.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I keep waiting for another blackout.”
Ezra pried my face away from his side so he could capture my gaze. “I don’t want you to black out. If you go into town, thatwillhappen.” His plum-purple gaze bore into me. Concern I didn’t understand swirled in their depths.
Concern he shouldn’t have after only a few days. We never talked about my blackouts. He didn’t know what they were, yet going intotown would cause one? Suspicion bloomed to life in my chest, slicing through the sweet trust his words filled me with. Ezra barely knew me. I should be a nobody, a random trainee.
“Did you open up to scare me into staying in the castle walls?” I asked quietly.
“No.” Ezra reached for me again.
I stood. “You’re second-in-command of this entire place. Your staff is trying to pick my friends for me.” I balled my fists. “The first man I met in scenario one invited me into his home. He fed me and took care of me while I tried to figure out what was going on. Everything he said was nice. He justified my every emotion. I could do no wrong.” A tear slipped down my cheek. That first week had been so confusing, but the old man with fairy lights in his hair had made me feel loved, no matter how bad it got. “He picked every word so I would trust him. And it worked.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and let his betrayal run through me again. I’d been a trusting idiot. Too afraid to leave the cave I’d woken up in and too broken to understand the difference between caring and manipulation.
I opened my eyes. “He had two sons who helped me with every task. I woke up one night with them on either side of my bed and the old man blocking the only exit.” Angry tears fell down my face. “I trusted him, and he watched as his sons tried to rape me.” I scrubbed my face. “He gave them fucking directions.”
My anger blotted out the ache in my lower back. The little Pagen community had duped me just as thoroughly, and by the time the man with gold teeth and coal black hair found me, I’d been so sick and injured, I couldn’t have defended myself if I wanted to.
I didn’t know if this was real or not, but I would not make the same mistake again. Trust was earned.
Ezra stood and reached for me, and I stumbled back, my hands out. “Don’t. I don’t want your help or your sympathy.” I straightened my back. “I need to go into town.”
Ezra clenched his fists. “You will not get past a single guard. I will not see you hurt.”
I took a slow breath. “They called you this morning, didn’t they?”
Ezra nodded. “They saw you wandering and let me know. My enforcers are loyal.” His shoulders dropped. “I only want you safe.”
Councilor Morgen’s words flooded me. “For when the Architect wakes up?” I crossed my arms over my chest.
Ezra nodded. “And more. But yes.”
I stepped back and turned. My stomach twisted. On some level, by talking about scenario one, I’d finally admitted what happened to me might not have been a nightmare.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Ezra. The powerful commander who happened to befriend me. No. It was too coincidental, all of it. And now I wasn’t sure what was worse: all of this was a setup by Miss Q to get me to embrace my magic, or that I’d woken up in a dystopian future and, once again, I’d trusted a man whose only goal was to use me.
Led filled every heavy step as I walked away. Despite myself, I paused to look back. Ezra’s plum-purple gaze watched me. His usual stoic face was white as a sheet, and his eyes swirled unhappily. Guilt and anger flushed my stomach, but I shouldn’t be feeling either. I turned, angling for the library and my work-study.
Because this might not be a series of delusions, this could be real. And if it was, I needed to do more than exist until I woke up.
Instead of continuing what was now a futile search for Moose, I hauled my ass to the library and did some old-fashioned digging. Every book I found, every detail in the fabric of my chair, as well as the smell of dusty paper, now fed my growing belief that this wasn’t all in my mind.
I didn’t know exactly what that meant or how I came to be here. Was this a different world? A different dimension? Or was this the future where society collapsed under the loss of technology?
Occam's razor suggests that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. What was simpler, me waking up in the future? Or was I still lying on Doctor Oz’s table?
I leaned back in the faded striped wing-back chair.
