Page 144 of Endless Terrors
I studied him for a moment. Nym looked even thinner than usual, and his movements seemed slower. Faeries didn’t need to eat, technically, but it did make them stronger. How long had it been since he’d eaten? Or was I seeing another effect—another consequence—of the Court bond? Guilt swelled in my throat.
When Nym didn’t say anything, I moved toward the bed. I hesitated before sinking down beside him, the soft mattress dipping with my weight. Silence resettled like gently-falling snow, covering everything. I squinted at the fading sky and listened to the sound of Nym’s charcoal scratching across paper. The sun was nearly gone. It had been an entire day, I thought. I’d survived one day without Finn existing on this planet.
No. I couldn’t think about that right now.
I turned to Nym desperately. But whatever I’d been about to say faded on my tongue as I caught sight of the wall behind him. My wide eyes darted around, taking it all in.
The drawings had multiplied while I’d been gone.
For the past few months, almost every time I’d seen one of Nym’s pieces, I’d dismissed it. They were nonsensical. A random blend of shading and lines. But all this time, they’d been part of a larger drawing. A big picture. Nym had been creating a mural, or a timeline. He couldn’t use his voice, so he’d told his story the only way he knew how.
It began with Persephone. She was as beautiful as the painting I’d seen, her hair long and bright, her eyes dark and imploring. She stood in front of Nym, clasping his hands. Lucifer’s voice echoed through my memory. She befriended a Time Walker. A faerie called Nym. She was so desperate for answers—for a way back to me—that she broke his mind with her requests.
But even after Persephone’s part ended, there were more drawings. Many more. Nym must’ve done some traveling of his own, or he’d gone at Collith’s request, because the rest were about me. In one scene, I was sitting on my throne in the Unseelie Court. That twisted, eerie crown rested on my head. When I thought about that day, every detail was still vivid. There was one detail, though, I didn’t remember.
There were two Nyms.
One stood in the crowd, peering up at me, and the other hid behind a pillar. He watched my coronation from the shadows. I knew he’d go back and tell Collith about what he’d seen, and create a domino effect of events that started with a mating ceremony in the woods to now. Here. Grieving in this bedroom, staring at a wall covered with the past … and the future.
The final image was familiar, since another version of it hung in my bedroom. It was me, wearing full armor and holding a sword. A supernatural army stood at my back. Future Fortuna glared at something in the distance, and I didn’t need to be a witch or a time traveler to know who I was looking at.
Nym must’ve seen these moments. He must’ve been there. And if he could see these moments, he could probably change them.
An idea flared in my mind like a firework.
My hand was a fist in the blanket. It was the only outward indication of the tension trembling in my stomach. The rest of me still felt numb, or dead, as if Finn had taken something with him when he left. A part of my soul, probably. Maybe that’s why I didn’t even think about it.
I looked at Nym and said, “I need you to go back in time. I need you to save Finn.”
The faerie didn’t pause in his drawing. His expression didn’t even change. His bony elbow went around and around, and the fringe of his dark lashes cast a shadow on his cheek as he kept his focus downward. “I have one more journey to make. It’s not time yet,” he said. His tone was dismissive.
“I don’t know what that means, Nym. I know it’s asking a lot, I have no right, but we can’t survive this. We can’t survive losing Finn. We have to fix it.” As I uttered the words, I knew I was repeating the same mistakes. Doing exactly to Nym what I had done to Cyrus.
Finally looking up from his paper, the faerie patted my hand soothingly. He didn’t know that I had given up on hope or that it felt like my heart had been carved out with a dull spoon. “The end of one thing is always the beginning of something else, my lady,” Nym said.
I pulled my hand away. I didn’t want comfort or vague platitudes. I wanted Finn.
Swallowing the sharp words lodged in my throat, I looked at all those drawings again. Now that I knew the truth, it was all I could see. Heilel. Persephone. Me. All of us bound together by time and pain and magic. It made me wonder whether free will existed at all, or if we were all on a set path there was no deviating from.
“Forget it,” I said finally, getting to my feet.
Nym’s eyebrows drew together, and now he seemed perturbed. “My lady—”
“Never mind, Nym.” I bent and kissed his cheek. “Really. No one else should get hurt. I’m just not thinking straight.”
Moving with purpose now, I stood and went over to the door. This time, Nym didn’t go back to his drawing. I felt his eyes on me until I stepped out of sight. He’d sensed, no doubt, that I was lying through my teeth.
The truth was I was thinking very clearly.
I was thinking clearly enough to move as silently as I could through the loft, using the skills I’d picked up from spending so much time with werewolves and faeries. I was thinking clearly enough to lift a coat off one of the hooks, and open the door so carefully that none of the supernatural creatures in the living room woke. I was thinking clearly enough to remember the way down the stairs and outside without turning on a single light.
And I was thinking clearly enough to know exactly how I’d find Lucifer.
I couldn’t drive, though. Turning on an engine would wake up the entire house. Halfway down the driveway, I turned left and picked my way over frozen clumps of tall grass. There was a crossroads one mile south, on the other side of the woods. It was more public than I’d like, but I didn’t want to return to the other one, anyway. My skin crawled at the thought.
“Where are you going?”
His voice was calm, but a sense of tension had disturbed the peaceful stillness.
