His senses opened up when he closed his eyes: all the details and echoes of a city at night, for once feeling less like a threat and more like the reassuring normality of a world that didn’t know about gods and monsters and myth. That carried on. There was laughter and lovers, the strain of police sirens and music. The casual reality they were aiming to protect.
Sitting beside Callum in the night, the tight fist of uncertainty around his throat began to relax.
When he opened his eyes, Callum was watching him – the energy between them taut and thrilling.
‘How did you know?’ Dylan asked.
The evening sang in the long moments of silence that followed.
‘Let’s just say it’s not my first dalliance with a Demon.’
Dylan wouldn’t have left it if he wasn’t so exhausted. So, he didn’t press, even though disappointment saturated him at the vague answer.
Then Callum spoke once more. Offering, finally. And Dylan knew it was a truth, from the way pain rang in every word.
‘They took my family from me,’ Callum said.
A crush of grief tightened Dylan’s chest. ‘Are they …’
Alive? Dead? He didn’t want to say the words. Knew how much easier it was to avoid them.
‘I don’t know,’ Callum said quietly.
The shared moment of unfiltered truth and connection threaded something recklessly hopeful in Dylan’s chest. It almost made him get up and run. Almost made him want to reach out and touch the enigmatic immortal opposite, as if he might actually be reachable.
Instead, Dylan stayed and allowed that feeling to sear and sear.
‘How about this?’ he said, his words echoing those Callum had spoken in the Speakeasy. ‘When we’ve dealt with the Wake and unbound you from the oath, I’ll help you find out.’
He couldn’t promise the death and revenge Callum had promised him. He didn’t have the skillset of an ancient warrior. But he could promise to be there for the search, or there in the grief.
Callum stared at Dylan’s mouth for a too-long moment, and when his eyes met Dylan’s, they were so devastatingly unguarded, Dylan’s heart gave a painful lurch.
‘Deal.’
Bells
LYING ON THE SILKY THROW ON THE HOTEL’SBED, BELLSread the next passage in her mother’s bestiary on the Seers’ High Council.
Chosen for the scope of their power, accuracy of their visions, and mental fortitude, the Council contains five High Seers. An ‘Angel of Death’ (Death Seer), Seers of the future, present, and past, as well as the rare Prophetess, who Sees all three aspects of ‘time’.
Bells skimmed, looking for the section accompanied by a sketch of the John Collier painting,Priestess Of Delphi.
PYTHIA’S POISON:the highly confidential and almost legendary process by which a High Seer will lose their sanity if they change fate more than once. Changing the outcome of a vision is an ability only the most powerful Seers can use, as the attempt has shredded the minds of lesser ones. Many destinies can be changed by action instead of a High Seer’s one chance at intervention.
A High Seer is granted one opportunity to do so, as a Seer’s powers are gifted by the Morrígan sister Badb, and while she is the Goddess of Fate and War, Madness is also her dark domain. While a High Seer may survive the process, once is risky enough, and if it doesn’t cause outright death, it can begin their decline.
The starkest symptom of the Pythia’s Poison – beside the insomnia or nightmares, sweats, and inability to determine what is real or not – is the Seer scenting brimstone no one else can. This may be due to the chemical changes in a brain that is beginning to shut down. Its name is derived from the Pythia of Greece, as she was deemed by some human scholars to be inhaling natural gases from the mountain, not – by their human understanding – truly Seeing the future.
Bells pushed the bestiary aside, leaving it open on a wicked-looking illustration of a female figure holding a scythe and pulled back over the cracked and faded tome of Seer history. This was the book she’d found the Badb ritual in back in Estwood. Perhaps there was another one in here she could use to—
‘Hey.’
Bells jumped, twisting around to find Remi in the doorway of the suite’s bedroom. ‘Oh,’ Bells gasped, trying to calm her racing heart. ‘Hi.’
‘I wanted to check on you. You okay?’
Everyone had gone, either to sleep or to try to grapple with the news. But Bells wasn’t able to sleep even when she wanted to. She touched the Tène, back in its comforting coil around her wrist.
