“She’s this way,” he said. “I’m sure.” Then he pulled Calamity after him, gesturing to himself until she transferred the light from the brazier to his cloak. The library plunged into darkness behind him as he started down the stairs, forcing the others to follow, though not without grumbles. Nephrine moved faster than they did, but this was her home, after all.
“Yorick,” Calamity whispered as she followed close behind him, “we need to talk about the book later.”
“It wasn’t me,” he said. “I tried to fight her, I swear.”
“I know you did,” she replied instantly, and Yorick felt a pang of gratitude for her trust. “But we don’t knowhowshe was controlling you. And that could be a problem.”
“We’ll have to worry about that later,” he said. “Eden’sdown there, and it’s all my fault. I’ll never forgive myself if something happens to her.”
The staircase wound down into the earth, deep enough that the cold, damp air chilled their bones, and their ears began to pop. Yorick’s spell ended after ten minutes, and as desperate as he was to keep sight of Eden, he didn’t know what they were walking into, and he needed to save his magic. Without their armour and weapons, without his lute, they’d need it. And besides, they’d yet to encounter any branches or junctions. Just the one winding staircase the whole way. So there was only one way they could have gone. Yorick only hoped there was another way up; he didn’t relish the idea of ascending all these stairs later. Though he supposed he’d be lucky to get to do so, given that he was charging unarmed into a confrontation with a member of The Twelve.
A few minutes after the spell ended, Yorick slowed and motioned for the others to do the same. Calamity dropped the spell illuminating his cloak, and they stopped in the darkness to listen.
Well, near darkness; there was a strange glow emanating from just around the next bend, and as they stopped, Yorick could hear chanting up ahead.Wonderful,Yorick thought.Just what we need.At least the diadem was likely to be there, he supposed.
The party conferred for a long moment, but there wasn’t much to be agreed. They had no idea what they were walking into, and they had no weapons. Hell, only three of them had any magic. All they could do was creep forward, hoping beyond hope that there was something– anything– they could do.
They finally came to a landing at the bottom of the stairs, just in front of a large ornate door, the eerie purple light filtering out around it, with a twelve-pointed star carved into it. The same star symbol that had enraged him so much months ago. It was time to end this.
He knew it was reckless; he’d chastised Eden for doing just this only the day before. But there was no more strategising to be done, and every moment he didn’t act was a moment she was in danger. So he pressed the door open and walked forward.
It took his eyes a moment to adjust; there was a bright purple light in the centre of the chamber he’d entered. He looked across the room instead as he blinked, and as he did, his eyes focused on Eden. She was chained to the wall there, her glittering dress torn where she’d clearly been searched. Her eyes met his, and there was just a flicker of relief before her face collapsed into agony.
Yorick held her gaze and reached out to her with his magic, forming a telepathic bond between them. It was probably a reckless use of magic, but he couldn’t stand seeing her so powerless.
It’s okay,he said to her in his mind.You’re okay.
None of us are okay,she thought back.They’ve already started the ritual.
Sure enough, when Yorick looked at the centre of the room, there was Nephrine. She stood on a tall dais surrounded by hooded figures, the source of the chanting, one of whom held the book Yorick had hand-delivered just minutes before. In one hand she held aloft Eden’s star crystal, which was catching the light from a skylight above. Only that didn’t make sense; they were hundreds of feet underground. It wasn’t a skylight, it was a crystal of some sort, powering what Nephrine held in her other hand.
The diadem.
Chapter31
Phil
Every time I thought I was at the end of my rope, it just kept going, like an amateur magician’s crappy handkerchief bit.
I knew I’d become the worst version of myself with Amy, telling her she was being childish for responding in a perfectly normal way, but I couldn’t help it. If I wasn’t actively pushing her away, I would start reaching for her, and I couldn’t afford that. If I had to hate myself but keep her safe from the spiral of shit my life was turning into, then so be it.
I practically sprinted home after D&D. It was the first time I’d left Ethel since the fall– I’d even slept on her floor the first couple of nights so I’d know if she got up in the night– and even then I’d only left because Anil had practically forced me to.
I didn’t see Anil for a while after that. I had plenty to worry about at home. Or, well, increasinglyoutof the house, as in a flurry of worry I’d signed Ethel up for every single thing I could find locally that was mentioned on a list of ideas Anil sent me. Apparently, keeping her active– more active than I’d been managing– was an important part of her cognitive health, especially with her reduced mobility whilst her back was healing.
The next couple of weeks were incredibly regimented but somehow still passed in a blur. Every day I would get her up at five-thirty as usual, make us both tea and breakfast, and then get a couple of hours of work in whilst she watched TV or sat in the garden. Then we would take the bus to the arts centre, packed lunch in hand, and I’d do more work whilst Ethel participated in (or sometimes just watched) whatever they had on. She’d always loved the actual art classes, but they also had bingo, cross stitch, and ballroom dancing. She insisted she would just watch the latter, but I looked up from my computer at one point to see a volunteer spinning her around the dance floor in her wheelchair.
We’d then get back on the bus to the hospital, where most of her appointments were. Every journey time had to be doubled just in case, because the local buses were terrible about keeping their wheelchair ramps functional, and more than once we relied on there being someone able-bodied who could help Ethel on and off the bus whilst I lifted her wheelchair in and out. Then we’d eat lunch by a fountain Ethel loved around the corner from the hospital before her afternoon appointments.
We had something every weekday now– physio on Tuesday and Thursday hadn’t changed, but we now had an occupational and speech therapy referral for Monday, and her water aerobics on Wednesday, and I had decided to pay out of pocket for cognitive stimulation therapy on Friday. I still wasn’t sure how I was going to afford all of it, but I had to throw everything at the wall and just blindly hope it would all add up to being helpful.
I let myself go down rabbit holes I never had before since her diagnosis: food for cognitive health, playing soothing music in the house any time the TV wasn’t on, and even resorting to charging the crystals on the windowsill. I wasn’t taking any chances.
Another thing I wouldn’t let myself sacrifice under any circumstances was cooking Ethel a nice dinner every day. I’d always tried to cook her favourites– Patricia’s lasagna recipe, tuna pasta bake, toad in the hole– but now I’d switched to brain-healthy options like grilled salmon with quinoa and kale, even if it hurt my soul to eat like a gym bro. She complained once or twice that she wanted an old favourite, but I brushed it off.As far as she knows, I told myself more than once,we had lasagna yesterday.
And she was fading, quickly. I knew from experience that falls could escalate things, but it was startling to me how much she seemed to change in the space of a few days even. She could still mostly have a conversation, but she rarely initiated them. She wasn’t angry or oppositional– at least most of the time– but her warmth had noticeably dissipated. It was like she’d gone from being a main character to an NPC, with an increasingly limited dialogue menu. But I couldn’t let myself be sad about that, because every time I looked at her and missed the old Ethel, I felt guilty for not appreciating the grandmother I still had sitting in front of me.
Ethel’s evening TV time became shorter and shorter– our full days were tiring her out, and the sun was setting earlier, too, so her bedtime moved ever forward. But that worked out nicely for me, because then I had the rest of the evenings to clean up after us, plan the following day, and deep dive into whatever tiny throwaway comment a doctor or therapist or volunteer had made that day that had burrowed into my brain. If I had time, I’d do more work after that until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore, and then I’d go to sleep and do it all again. I left her for D&D and nothing more.
