Page 18 of Can you take it?

“My apologies, sir. Do you happen to have an ice pick on you by chance?” I offered a hand to the sleepy-looking man, noticing he had one brown eye and one blue. It was striking.

“Get away from there,” called Walter, sounding like a tired father.

“You are as stupid as you look like you should be,” Eletha snapped, suddenly at my side. She proceeded to shove me away from the door, which was bolted with a domineering horizontal bar, and the man lying under a moth-eaten coat. “How many times must I tell you to sleep somewhere else, Bexley? Why do you insist on being in my way every day? Worthless man,” she hissed at him.

He slumped farther under his coat, seemingly too drunk to focus on the terrifying Shepherd.

“This is why everyone thinks you’re a bitch,” Walter mumbled under his breath. Unfortunately for him, we were all shifters with infallible hearing.

“And that right there is why I tell everyone you’re a little bitch,” she yelled across the hall. “Oh, he’s my friend, he’s my friend,” she mocked. “If you’ve got his back so hard, then why are you about to let him skip his little ass into the tiers, hmm?”

“The tiers?” I repeated.

“Dumb fuck,” she mumbled under her breath, but again, we could all hear. Not that she would have cared. She raised a pointed finger to the words inlaid in the iron circle on the door.

The Ten Tiers of Tartarus

“Someone really likes Ts and getting spit in the eye around here,” I grumbled, letting her guide me away.

“I do have his back, and I wasn’t about to let him skip into the tiers, for stars’ sake. It’s locked,” Walter said.

“I don’t really think I skip,” I interjected. I didn’t think—I knew. Skipping was for happy, frolicking fae that weren’t dead and wishing to be more dead so they didn’t have to listen to the grating sound of banshees in love yelling at one another. No, I was definitely not skipping. “If I opened that door, would it kill me? How far of a drop to the tenth tier?” I asked flatly.

The cacophony of squabbling stopped.

“You wouldn’t make it to the tenth tier,” Walter said. “Don’t let Kaohs and his talk of passing through and getting to the Elysian Fields get into your head. Only a handful have ever made it out. With the help of the Fates, it literally customizes itself to what would test you the most.”

“Yeah, he’s right. Dad just likes to watch the entertainment of the tiers. No one makes it out without being super fucked-up afterward. Right, Bexley?” Eletha nodded at the drunk man as Walter nodded in agreement. Both Walter and Eletha, apparently finding common ground around my being a skipping dumb fuck, guided me away from the door as though I might accidentally scamper through the massive iron hatch.

“And you won’t really die. You’re already dead,” Walter reasoned.

“But you’ll wish you were,” Eletha added. “And you’d be trapped and lose your memento, vanishing as if you never existed, which if you ask me, is far worse than any death.”

Chapter 6

CALY

I could feel him. I could feel Eli.” I had run to the dungeon knowing Mendax had planned on training his new commander and would be there. At the sight of me, I saw Mendax’s face stiffen in alarm.

“I’m okay,” I said as soon as I saw him.

One of the guards rushed to meet me at the bottom of the stairs, attempting to help. “Stop,” Mendax commanded in a low growl. “Take a single tread closer to her and you will be left to decompose in the nearest cell.”

“Calm down. He was just trying to help.” I nodded my thanks to the guard as I ran past him. Thankfully he had been a part of Mendax’s army for long enough to have listened to his warning knowing that he was quite serious.

Every time I came to the dungeons of the Unseelie castle, I was struck with a weird sense of nostalgia. So many things that had changed the course of my life had happened in these cells. But it also had a tendency to bring about other feelings—much less empowering feelings that generally involved my overthinking or thinking about Walter. Aside from Eli, Walter was the first person who had tried to help me—something I’d never experienced before. He changed the course of my life in so many ways and I never got to thank him for it. So many people had died who shouldn’t have.

I ran toward my husband. It still felt funny to call him that. Granted, it had only been a few months, but it also felt solid and positive—two things I never thought I would live to experience. We had our marriage ceremony a few weeks after our return from Moirai. Mendax had wanted to do it immediately, but I had been so devastated after losing Eli that I could barely function for a while. Right after the wedding ceremony, I found out I was pregnant when the vampire moths kept appearing and following me. It took me a few more weeks to come to terms with that realization. I had never wanted children nor a husband. I thought about revenge and making my mom and sister proud—it had consumed me.

When Eli died, he said that he wanted me to live the life I never got to. At the time, his words hadn’t even made sense to me…until we found out about the baby. That’s when I began to realize all of the things I hadn’t thought about because I hadn’t planned on being alive after I killed my father. There was an entire world at my fingertips I’d never even considered. Every day I experienced something different and unique with an appreciation I could have never had if it were not for Eli.

“What are you doing here? What do you mean you could feel Eli?” Mendax’s blue eyes darted over my face, searching for answers in a mix of concern and rage. His eyes shot to his new commander, and he let out a wisp of smoke in warning.

I was trying my best to be patient with his overbearing protectiveness since finding out about the baby, but if he didn’t chill out, I was going to lock him in a cell. Honestly, with these hormones and vomiting constantly, a little prison revenge didn’t sound half bad.

“I had a dream, and Adrianna and Eli were in it.” I couldn’t get the words out fast enough.

“Okay,” he said, beginning to relax.