EMRYS

FOR ONCE, THE DARKNESS brought comfort.

Emrys had been outside for hours, watching its webs suffocate the evening sky until shadows drowned the world once more. Leaning his head back on the tree he sat against, his eyes fixated on the overhanging Corruption. The intricacy of its webs were far from visible to the average human's vision, but he took in every complex detail as if the light had never waned. It was almost hypnotizing.

Then again, the daze he felt while glancing at the sky was likely from the items he held close. After the day's events, nothing felt better than the bottle of Nectar in his lap and the half-smoked blunt between his fingers. They promised relief once he reached an inebriated state, brain lost somewhere between reality and bliss, but their assurance had been in vain. Memories continued to weigh his mind with muddled and confusing flashes.

Light filtered from the tavern in a growing stream. Emrys blinked as his eyes adjusted to the sudden change, a grayscale world now washed in oranges and yellows from the interior firelight.

"I wondered where you went." Mystia closed the back door of the tavern and sucked the color from their world once more. Finally back in her natural form, her crimson eyes lingered on the Nectar in his lap. "Noticed I was missing a bottle of Glowing Hell. I figured you must have scampered off with it."

Emrys took a long swig before tucking the bottle between his knees and chest. "I just needed time to think... but you already knew that."

Pushing away from the door, Mystia approached quietly and sat with her back against the tree across from his own. She studied him carefully, scrutiny unwavering as she took in every detail: from his nervous fingers tapping the neck of his bottle to the pulsating emotional aura he was sure to be lit up with.

None of it slipped by her. It never did.

"How are you feeling?"

Emrys shrugged in an almost robotic response. He knew it wouldn't please his friend, but there were no words to describe exactly how he felt.

Mystia held out a hand. "Let me see the damage."

Despite every part of him that wanted to resist, he swallowed his pride and offered his arm. With a light touch, she pushed back the sleeve of his flannel jacket. Back in his Phoenix form, there was no hiding the gray skin that had spread from his wrist nearly up to his elbow.

A quiet sigh left Mystia's lips as she ran her fingers across his forearm, sweeping over the rough texture. "What I wouldn't give for a spell to reverse this."

"There isn't one."

Emrys pulled his arm back to bring the herbal roll to his lips. It was hard to resist letting out a string of foul language when his trembling fingers nearly dropped the object.

"Don't say that." Mystia eyed him as he steadied himself long enough to take a drag. "We can always find something—"

"There isn't enough time. I can feel it, Myst. No matter what I do, or how much power I conserve, this damn curse is going to kill me." He ashed his cigarette in the grass, trying to ignore the weight of his words. "We just need to accept it."

Mystia lowered her gaze to the ashes glowing dim at her friend's side. When she drew her quivering lower lip between her teeth, a lump formed in Emrys' throat—a solid, impenetrable mass that reminded him just how much the aftermath would break one of his dearest friends.

Collecting herself with a deep breath, Mystia released the hold on her lip. "Then, I'll find a way to bring you back in far less than a thousand years. I won't rest until I do."

"I'd like to think you'll be better off when I'm dead."

Mystia stared at him, mouth forming a retort that never escaped.

Emrys knew by the way her throat visibly constricted that his words weren't foreign to her. She'd heard them before, buried deep in his thoughts, echoing in a repeated drone that followed his every step—but the gutted look in her eyes told him she'd never expected him to speak them aloud.

Grass rustled beneath her legs as she slid closer until she came inches away, his knees providing the only barrier between them. She placed a gentle hand atop his knee and tapped her fingers against the black denim.

"I don't."

"Why? I couldn't save Thana. I couldn't keep the Corrupted contained on Earth. Bobbi lost her entire life's work... and the common denominator?" He pointed the neck of his bottle toward himself. "Now Eva's possessed by gods-know-what. I brought her here to protect her and find answers, but I've just put everyone in harm's way. We're no closer to a damn solution for anything."

Mystia continued drumming against his knee, the movements rhythmic and—if he didn't know better—nervous. The pain was evident in her eyes as she absorbed his words.

"And even if you do find a way," he said, "what if I don't come back the same?"

Mystia tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

"I don't remember anything from my past lives. I don't even know who I was. What if you bring me back and I'm... some kind of monster?"

"I'd like to believe you'll always be the same man."

Emrys fiddled with his bottle, tracing absent-minded patterns on the glass as her words drifted in one ear and out the other. The fog in his brain made it easy to tune out the world around him, despite also making it harder to push away the thoughts that haunted him.

As he lifted the drink to his lips once more, a small hand pulled it away.

"As fun as last night was," said Mystia, "this isn't a habit you need. It may numb the pain, but it won't take it away. Only delays it." She pointed a long finger at the smoldering ash that flitted from his cigarette. "Those herbal rolls, too."

Emrys slumped back against the tree as she took a swig from his stolen bottle. While he wanted to argue her point, he broke off the end of his roll and discarded it in the grass. It wasn't worth the fight, yet he still stared longingly at the glowing embers on the ground. He'd only wanted something to help him forget the day's events. A quick fix for the guilt eating him alive. A way to push Eva's blackened eyes from his memory.

"She's doing fine now, love."

While he found himself unable to believe her, he nodded anyway.

"Whatever had a hold of her earlier is gone... at least for now." She resumed her gentle tapping against his knee. "There's a guilt in her eyes that can't be faked. I don't think she understands what happened any more than we do."

"Do you think Faeran could be right?" he asked. "That the Darkness latched onto her somehow?"

"I don't know. The best we can do is keep her awake, especially if her visions have this kind of effect on others." She brushed her fingertips across the graying skin on his arm. "Whatever we're dealing with is smart. It impersonated Thana in Eva's dreams and had us all questioning her death. But I can't think of anyone who would know the two of them were ever linked."

"That makes it worse."

Blinking in surprise at Emrys' interruption, Mystia cocked her head to the side.

"If whatever is doing this is impersonating Thana and anyone outside of us suspects it's her..." Emrys swallowed hard. "Her reputation was obliterated by the Guild after her death. I don't want anything else tarnishing her memory."

"You saw the vision," she said. "Was Thana part of this one? Would Faeran have any reason to suspect her?"

"Everything I told you about the scenery, the Darkness... that's all I saw."

She nodded, staring down into her bottle while she swirled the liquid in slow motions. The distance never faded from her gaze, leaving her eyes hollow. Emrys swore he saw the slightest glisten along her waterline.

"I'm sorry."

Mystia looked up with an inquisitive stare. "And what do you have to be sorry for?"

"Faeran. I know how much he means to you... and now this. I'm surprised he hasn't sent the Guild out here yet to investigate."

"He won't," she assured him. "The spell I cast took care of his candle injuries and put a fog over his memory. It isn't a strong spell, but as long as he doesn't see your faces, he won't recall anything. Far as he knows, he lost a day smoking too many rolls."

"What if he sees you?"

A weak smile tugged her lips. "I have to play it safe as well, I suppose."

The half-hearted expression didn't fool him. She was heartbroken. But even heartbreak didn't stop her from stroking his arm reassuringly.

"You need to get some rest, love," she said, her voice as soft as the breeze that ruffled her navy hair. "I know it's hard, but you need to take care of yourself now more than ever."

Emrys brought his hand to meet hers atop his knee. After giving it a light pat, he stood on wobbly legs. Going inside wouldn't make him rest, but it would lead him out of an unwanted conversation, and that was all that mattered.

Standing, however, was the hardest part. His legs wanted to give out once he straightened them, as if his taller form had spent another few hours inside Sylvan. Even once he brought himself upright, he winced at the sharp pain along his ribcage. While Mystia had only been trying to wake him up, a shoulder shake would have sufficed.

Emrys dropped his glance down to the woman at his feet, who concealed a smirk behind her bottle. "Why the hell did you throw a candle at me?"

"It was the only thing harder than your skull."

"You were aiming for my skull?"

"Yes," she said, "but your chest proved a much larger target."

With her signature shit-eating grin, Mystia snatched a discarded cork from the ground and popped it back onto her bottle. Emrys shook his head, forcing his legs to move him back toward the tavern.

"Wait."

He'd only made it a few steps before her voice made him pause once more. Emrys craned his neck to find her studying him again, no doubt searching his mind for answers to a question not yet asked.

"You said you were surprised the Guild hadn't hunted us down here."

Emrys shrugged. "I figured Faeran would send them."

"And you still chose to sit out here for a smoke?"

A shiver plagued Emrys' body, though he wasn't sure if it was from the nippy breeze or Mystia's piercing stare.

"Emrys..." She set the bottle at her side. "I'm worried about you. I don't want you putting yourself in harm's way."

"I'm fine."

"You're not, love. I think you forget just how much I see inside that pretty little noggin of yours."

Emrys averted his gaze. He hated how much she knew; he despised how easily she could see through his well-constructed walls, down into the deepest portions of his soul where no amount of radiant magic could bomb holes through the shadows. While he understood her burning curiosity for a peek into the minds of those she couldn't read by glance alone, his personal demons did not appreciate her invading their whispers.

"You are far from fine," muttered Mystia. "And I'll be damned if I won't spend every resource trying to remedy it."

It took great restraint not to laugh mockingly. No amount of magical substances, intoxicating or healing, could patch the holes left by his own mistakes.

"Stop it." Mystia's eyes glistened, hollow and filled with hurt deeper than his own. It almost drained him faster than his curse. "Listen to me... Emrys, you are stronger than your darkness."

"Maybe I don't want to be."

Swallowing back the embarrassment, Emrys turned without another word—or even so much as a glance in her direction. Mystia never showed emotion. Seeing it written in bold across her face was more than he could handle.

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