Chapter Thirty-One

I sat under the starlit night, smoking a cigarette while Finn and Milo bickered over constellations.

“That’s Orion.” Finn pointed. “Which you’d know if you even remotely paid attention in Guides to Channeling.”

Milo tsked. “Pointless class. All she does is focus on cosmic channeling, anyway. I don’t have a cosmic branch, so what’s it really matter if I know the stars or not?”

“Cosmic branches burn brightest when drawing magic from the stars, but all witches can access it.” Finn gestured, practically ready to read off his essay on the topic. Christ, he loved his essays. “Just like all witches can channel from nature, from the astral plane, from—”

“Again, all things you’d know if you actually paid attention in class,” my younger self interjected, then blew smoke in his direction. A taunting act because at sixteen, I still hadn’t sorted out how I felt for either of them aside from how happy they made me, which at the time, I found incredibly frustrating.

“I do pay attention; I just don’t see why I need to know where my channeling comes from. It doesn’t stop me from maintaining the highest root proficiency.”

Ugh, Milo had that smug smile, not the one where he had mastered being cocky and sincere all at once, which people fucking loved. That expression would take him a few more years. But he couldn’t help but be a braggart, given his second-year ranking shot up much higher than Finn’s or mine.

“It is important,” Finn said with his lecturing face because while he always dreamt of being an enchanter, his heart was happiest teaching others, helping them improve, and guiding them.

That might’ve influenced my choice to go into education. Not at the time, though. I wasn’t sure it ever really dawned on me until now. I do think I gleaned the purpose of my subconscious throwing this particular memory at me, though.

I always dreamed about my past, reliving joys and regrets in equal measure. After gaining closure on Finn’s loss, I finally stopped looking at memories of him through that lens of regret, so it helped me realize that maybe my mind was reminding me of certain moments for different reasons. Teaching. I’d slacked off lately, letting my students grieve, prepare for the holiday, and sink into a bit of my own sadness. But when the break ended, I needed to be ready to offer my students normalcy, even if the semester was coming to an end soon and another, longer winter break was a month away. Christ, this year was flying by.

“What do you think, Dorian?” Milo asked, perfect blue puppy-dog eyes at the ready to guilt me into siding with him, which worked if I remembered correctly.

“Stop fussing,” I said, only it wasn’t me who said it. Not the me in this memory, in this dream, but another version, who was almost as young, wrapped in his gothic ensemble. He plopped onto the end of a hospital bed where Finn lay.

What? I’d never visited Finn in the hospital. That never happened. Yet, in the corner of my eye, this new memory unraveled. Was I having some strange dream alteration? The last time my dreams went off script to my memories, it was the part of Finn deep in my subconscious warning me about the void vision.

“If you don’t behave, you won’t heal properly, and then you really will be in this bed forever.”

Finn huffed. “Feels like I’ve been in this room for months.”

“It’s been two days. Dramatic much.” The me in the hospital room frowned, fighting a smile, the same way I always did when with Finn or Milo.

My head cocked, making it impossible to see the hospital bed, to see the Finn and Dorian of that memory…moment…whatever it was. Instead, my eyes remained on Milo and Finn, shooting them a very dower and judgy expression. It seemed I couldn’t deviate from the script of my dream.

“You’ll tell me what I want, demon.” Tar splattered between Milo and Finn as a new scene was unveiled before me.

I stood a few feet from myself, the younger version, as he walked in circles around a man shackled and on his knees. Only this wasn’t me. I’d never done this, never lived this. Everything about this image was wrong and foreign.

“You’re gonna have to do so much better than that, puppet.”

I ground my teeth in disdain for the man’s words.

No, not a man. The foulness in his gaze, the rot oozing from his hacked open flesh, and the wisps fluttering around to illuminate the dank dungeon—this was a devil. My chest tightened. I only ever knew one devil. The chimera. What the fuck was going on?

Tar erupted everywhere, erasing my dream and dropping me in pure, isolating darkness.

“Such a reversal of fortunes.” The chimera’s voice echoed in the dark. His hand reached out, delicately running his fingers along the person bound in shadows. “Would you like to know what I’ve got planned for Dorian?”

His fingers turned into talons; the first cut was shallow, but it dug deep into my core. Suddenly, every moment of torture he reveled in against me carried the weight of a new memory.

Slash. This wasn’t me. Cut. It was me. Hack. A manifestation. What? Ripping through my hollow insides, I found every single thing the sentient extension of my magic withheld for nearly a year.

A year?

Severing the connection to my mind, my magic, my ability to summon new manifestations. Stealing Finn away. Saving the chimera. Skirting Milo’s vision.

So much unraveled around my mind, flying by in a blur before I could fully comprehend a single image, yet each memory clung to me like I’d lived this second life.

I saw every moment of Finn’s time confined by the chimera, memories my manifestation had hidden in a ploy to offer the man I loved a spark of life, a new life, a second chance in this world. I saw every argument with the chimera, the torment my manifestation dealt out on the demon, and what he endured once the demon bound him. I saw every person my manifestation hid inside, the memories of their daily lives, the lies he painted in their minds, the deceptions he weaved to obtain his goals, the manipulation meant to control Theodore Whitlock, and everything else that led up to the events of unleashing the chimera back into the world where he slaughtered Jamie Novak.

The searing agony of every memory pushed me deeper into the depths of my mind, buried under revelations.

And when I finally took a breath, escaped my slumbering mind, my bedroom vanished before my eyes as a hundred thousand visions paraded my sight at once. Every single potential future Milo spent years learning to control, cultivating and mastering, hit me simultaneously in a sea of carnage.

Everything looped round and round in my mind, stunning me and making it impossible to see anything other than these futures. Death. Romance. Mundane days. Smiles. Tears. Blood. Pain. Lust. Love. Confession. Concealment. Happiness. Nothing. Nothing. Everything! I couldn’t discern one image, one word, one potential from the next. It all muddled together in a splotchy abstract.

Lips pressed to mine, beautiful and distracting and pulling me from a hundred thousand futures that sought to consume my mind until the end of all times. Every timeline, every potential vision held what felt like an entirely different world of events. But it vanished, and all that remained was Milo’s kiss, standing in the rain.

The day our magics synced so perfectly, I glimpsed a void vision that put me on the path of saving my student, all my students, and brought me closer to Milo after so many years lost in grief. Had I really seen everything in Milo’s mind during that kiss? Had my manifestation really managed to contain all those future images without shattering? I couldn’t breathe while lost in the loop of Milo’s futures hitting my magic, yet that piece of me, that dark and broken piece, plotted and conspired and wrought so much destruction.

I lay on the floor of my bedroom, absorbing the reality of what I had caused. A manifestation was nothing more than an extension of myself. This one clearly held all my narcissism and self-loathing—a lethal combination—but he was still me.

“What did I do?” I buried my face into my arms and sobbed.