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Akoni cursed in draconic as he spun back around to face me.
“We’re still your consorts,” Auryn said. “And we still love you. None of us want to be sundered. We take some responsibility in this, because we know what you’ve been through, and we should have told younosooner.”
“Don’t infantilize me,” I whispered.
Auryn glossed over what I said. “We have to face the very real possibility you have been compromised, and none of us would know it until it was too late. Dekka’s magic can’t help us. Your soul is sacred, and even a Chaos dragon can’t compromise a soul. It’s your mind that we’re worried about.”
Right. Right thefuckback where I’d started. Except now, instead of it being my family worried about my mental state, it was my consorts. “What about Mayriel? She could sense if my order has been altered, couldn’t she?”
Keon negated this instantly. “We can’t take that risk. For the same reason you told me I had no right to gamble everyone’s life by trying to ride out the coming cataclysm.”
I failed at swallowing the lump in my throat.
“We’ve gambled enough. It’s time to walk away from the table.” Auryn’s tone was as kind as it could be, delivering news of stone and hot ash.
Keon reached forward and put his hands on my knees. His voice choked in his throat. He coughed a few times, wheezed, and a tear slid down his cheek. “It’s over, Helena. It’s over.”
Human civilization is doomed.
…and it’s my fault.
Twenty-Seven
I’d known since the moment I’d woken up in that prison cell with Auryn that my Lemurian adventure was probably going to end very badly. And everything that had happened from then had more or less confirmed and reinforced that, no matter how many minor successes or battles I’d had along the way.
I’d never changed what I’d set out to change. Everything still marched along towards the end of modern human civilization in an orderly fashion.
All that had been done was simply close off possibilities. Now the cosmos had even taken away my magic (which it had given me!) and put it on a shelf.
There, it seemed to say, you’ve played with it enough, let’s just put that away for now and go do something else.
Auryn leaned over me on the bed. I stared out the long, oblong window that gave a view of the stone wall of West’s cavern border. Profusions of greenery dotted with pale flowers dangled over the ledges, along with ferns and green vines.
“Helena,” he said.
“I’m awake.” Maybe it was time to move to a different location in the roost. Get a different view. Feel like I’d accomplished something without fucking anything up. It wasn’t like my brain was full of wonderful new insights about Chaos dragons or Chaos magic. Attempts to poke my brain to see if it contained Gate schematics, teleportation advice, or anything else? Useless.
I’d played cosmic food roulette and lost.
“You need to eat something besides scavenging fruit from the bowl downstairs.”
Speaking of food roulette. But Ilikedstrawberries. I especially liked whatever was in that bowl because it meant I didn’t have to go out. And I didnotwant to go out. I wanted to stay in my roost, away from as many other people as possible, and hold my breath until whatever happened next happened.
“But Ilikestrawberries,” I said.
“But you also like eels, and eel season is only once a year.”
“I’m good with missing it this year.”
“We aren’t, and we’re waiting for you. We know you’re hurting.We know. But if Lemuria finds out you consumedanythingin that portal, no matter what it was, you will be in terrible danger. You would be sacrificed to everyone’s fear.”
I knew all this, but it didn’t make me feel better. “Itwasa grimoire. And I’m not under the Queen’s influence. Please,pleasebelieve me.”
He lowered himself further. “Iwantto. We all do.”
But not today.
And if I were them, I wouldn’t believe me either. I didn’t love them because they lacked critical thinking skills. My argument?Just trust me, bro. Their argument? A point-by-point presentation telling me why they should not, in fact, trust me. And here I was trying to arguewhyI hadn’t gotten ripped off when I’d bought a shitty timeshare.
