Chapter 6: The Real Me - The Shadow of a Vicious King

POV: MAX

I sit cross-legged under the ladder, my sketchbook balanced on my knees, and glance up at the opened trapdoor. “I’m ready. Describe that first rune.”

“It’s a circle divided by a line that swirls out in spirals at about one and seven o’clock,” E explains.

The piece of charcoal flies across the page, his rigorous description allowing me to make quick work of it. “Like this?” I angle the drawing toward the attic.

“Exactly like that.”

I flip the page. “Next one.”

“The next one is a ‘K’ reflected backward with a diaeresis on top.”

My nose wrinkles. “A what?”

“You know those double dots used in French words like Zoë, Chloë, or Noël.”

“Got it.”

Damn, my ghost is well-read.

His voice is smooth and heavy, like velvet sliding over skin, but sharp and clear in a way that makes the air tremble around it.

The hairs at the back of my neck are still prickling from the séance, and I rub the space behind my ear, trying to disperse the warmth gathered there. No matter what I do, the pins-and-needles sensation in my fingers won’t relent.

I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to cast a successful spell.

Blood magic pumped me full of endorphins. I feel elated. Weightless. My pulse thuds as I force my breathing to slow.

Not only did my spell work, but for a few seconds, we touched.

His skin was softer than expected, and so warm… They say touching death is like touching the heart of a glacier, but I disagree. It’s more like reaching into fire. I didn’t dare test how long it would last, for fear of watching my hand spontaneously combust.

But what intrigues me even more is how I knew to reach for his hand when I couldn’t even see it.

I clear my throat, forcing my attention back to the task at hand. “Next one?”

“It’s an S-shaped, wiggly vertical thing with a looped tail, but with an angry unibrow forming a sort of cross in the middle.”

The corners of my lips twitch. “An angry unibrow?”

“Yes, like a thick, evil brow with coarse hair.”

I bite back a grin and sketch it out, then tilt the page to show him. The exaggerated curve of the cartoonish drawing makes me snort. “Spot on?”

“Mm, close enough,” he confirms, and I flip again.

“The next one looks like a flattened frog face with whiskers and a cravat.”

My head jerks up. “Are you toying with me?”

“I’m only describing the runes,” he says, voice perfectly level, the picture of sincerity.

“A frog face,” I say slowly. “With whiskers and a cravat.”

“Yes.”

I stare at the page. Then at the empty space where he is. “That’s not a thing.”

“I’m being interpretive.”

I squint, waiting for any crack. Any tell.

“You’re totally fucking with me,” I say at last.

There’s a pause just long enough to make me doubt myself.

“I…might be,” he finally admits. “But that’s on you for making fun of my rather genius descriptions.”

I press a hand over my mouth, shoulders shaking with laughter. Och, it’s been a day. Between the high from the spell, the shock of his touch, and the heat still thrumming in my chest, the weight of it all finally topples me over.

A giggle slips out, the first of many.

“What am I missing?” he asks softly.

“Nothing,” I wheeze. “I’m just skipping surgeries I trained months for to play Pictionary with a ghost so I can break into a witch’s attic while monsters circle my house.”

“When you say it like that…” E trails off, his masculine laughter filling the room.

Lady pads over to investigate my folly, rises on her hind legs with a soft meow, and taps my cheek once with deliberate judgment.

“Even the cat thinks I’ve lost it,” I mutter, laughing harder. Tears slip free as I press the heels of my hands to my eyes, trying and failing to pull myself together.

I scoop Lady into my arms, and the restlessness I’ve been carrying since morning finally loosens its grip, replaced by a quiet acceptance.

“Wow,” I exhale. “I really needed that laugh.”

Lady slips from my embrace, her yellow eyes fixed on a point just past my shoulder. Her tail sways slowly as she stares at my ghost, utterly focused.

A flare of curiosity and envy squeezes my gut.

“She can see you,” I say.

“Yes, I think so, but she hasn’t decided yet whether I belong in her house or not.”

Lady’s fur ripples in strange patterns as she circles his invisible legs, brushing against the distortion of his presence as if testing its boundaries. She doesn’t hiss or retreat. She leans in, confident and unafraid, acknowledging him in the quiet way cats do.

“I begged Mabel for a cat,” I say softly. “Her full name is Lady Dowager Countess of Grantham. We call her Lady for short.”

“Dame Maggie Smith is a legend,” he says, admiration threading his voice.

“Do ghosts watch TV as a rule, or…” I tease.

He chuckles. “I’ll be honest. For years, that’s all I ever did.”

Shite. I don’t have to imagine what it’s like to be trapped in this house, unable to go outside—I’ve lived that. My first year in this world, I only had Mabel, Nick, Lady, and the gardens. But I could touch things. I could eat, and draw, and play. I can’t fathom what it feels like to wander these halls with no one to talk to and nothing to do for decades. That kind of loneliness must chip away at you, piece by piece.

I untie my bun and comb my fingers through my hair. “How many more are there?”

“Three on this side, about seven others on the back wall and ceiling.”

I stretch gingerly. “Alright, let’s draw a couple more, but after that, I need to eat.”

My legs are a little stiff from sitting cross-legged on the cold floor when we descend to the kitchen. The stairs creak under my weight, E following behind me without a sound.

I gather a few items from the fridge: carrots, potatoes, a bit of smoked haddock, and an onion that’s starting to sprout but will do fine. Between what I bought for Devi and what Mabel already had, I have enough food for a couple of weeks. I could probably last a month if I stretched it out.

What a scary thought.

It brings me back to my childhood, to those long winters spent in one small cabin or another. A bag of potatoes or a pint of flour could always be stretched further and further in the name of safety and carefulness, as mother waited for the right day to visit the market. But stretching one day’s worth of food into four wasn’t as gruesome for us as waiting in the warded pantry on market day, never knowing for sure whether she would come back or not.

Goosebumps ripple along my arms as the coarse skin of the store-bought carrots scrapes my palms. The last slant of pale autumn light slips off the neighboring rooftops while I peel, the sun sinking early this time of year. I flick on the overhead light, and a warm, golden glow spills across the island.

“Why did you study medicine?” E asks, hovering closer.

“At first, I chose it because I thought it was precise and predictable, and I wanted to help people. But medicine is no exact science, I’ll tell you that. I’ve never been afraid of blood, so becoming a surgeon made sense. The feeling of cutting out something rotten from someone and bringing them back to health again—there’s nothing quite like it.”

“Do you ever use magic to help your patients?”

I shake my head, peeling the potatoes as we talk. “I try to keep my lives separate. I have used my healing poultice on a few nasty wounds over the years, but not often enough to arouse suspicion. College wasn’t a given, but I wanted to be more than a quirky orphan with the power to burst lightbulbs and grow rare plants.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re also an artist. I saw your bedroom, your sketchbook—you’re talented.”

I laugh, short and low. “Thank you. I used to love to paint.” My gaze darts to the space he occupies. “What about you? Do you remember anything else about your life?”

“Not really. I get inklings of what I used to love…or hate. Sometimes, I’ll say a word I can’t make sense of.”

I arch a brow. “Like what?”

“I can’t think of a good example, but I’ll tell you when it happens.”

I fill the ensuing silence with little details about my job, my flat, the neighbors who argue across the hall every Sunday morning, the cat that isn’t mine but still sneaks into my kitchen window. I stir the chowder slowly, the scent of butter and fish rising in soft clouds.

Outside, the sun slips under the horizon. Mist gathers over the lawn and rolls closer in a nefarious tide, soft and silver, curling through the iron gates and garden hedges. It rises up, up, up, until it obscures the windows, the milky veil opaque enough to blur the world beyond.

The faceless men are back. I feel the insidious weight of their presence at the back of my skull, like a slow needle prodded and pushed under my scalp. Maybe I could have snuck out during the day, but would the mist come for me at nightfall? Is it only pretending to go away after sunrise to lull me into a false sense of safety? I can’t go home, not until these monsters leave. All the effort I’ve poured into my new life can’t make up for the fact that creatures from another plane are prowling outside my door. There’s no law enforcement for that kind of thing. No way out. I might have turned my back on my heritage, on Faerie, but blood isn’t something you can run away from.

The realization settles in like a stone dropped into a quiet pond. I don’t say the words aloud, but it’s there in the way my shoulders square, in the way my hand tightens around the spoon.

“Those fuckers are back,” E mutters.

I nod, my voice steady when I finally speak. “I’m not taking the chance to go home. Not if it means they might follow me there.” I ladle soup into a bowl, steam rising. “Do you need sustenance at all?”

Logic dictates no, but I’m no expert on ghosts.

“I don’t eat. Sometimes I fade away and disappear for days—or even months—on end.”

My throat itches painfully. “And where do you go, then?”

“I don’t know. I assume it’s the black void that comes next.”

My heart sinks at the quiet acceptance in his voice. “No bright light at the end of a tunnel?”

“No light. Not for me,” he answers with certainty.

It feels like we’re in our own little pocket of the world, sealed off. I finish my meal quickly, self-conscious about eating in front of someone who can’t. When I’m done, I rinse the bowl and wipe the counter until the kitchen gleams with that clean, lived-in order that brings me peace. Then I move to the living room.

The sofa creaks softly under my weight as I settle with my sketchbook on my knees. Lady jumps up beside me and curls into a perfect spiral, her steady purring filling the silence.

The tip of my charcoal moves almost on its own. Lines begin to take shape. A jaw, clean and defined. The faint shadow beneath high cheekbones. The delicate curve of lips caught between serenity and defiance. I smudge and blur, deepening the contrast around the hollow of the neck and the slope of the nose.

The man’s hair falls in loose, layered strands, captured with quick, uneven strokes. The eyes come last, almost too alive for the page, but there’s a stillness in them that unsettles me.

After a while, E jolts me out of my reverie. “Is that your guy?” he asks, his voice farther away than it was—guarded, even.

I blink and examine the portrait, the strong planes of the face, the wavy hair that falls past his suspiciously pointed ears… “No.”

“Who is he, then?”

I trace the handsome, impossible features. I have no clue who it’s supposed to be. A chill runs down my spine. I tear off the page, crumple it, and toss it into the trash. “No one in particular.”

“What’s he like—your fiancé? How did you two meet?” E asks.

“Oh, we met three months ago, at work. He’s an architect, and the hospital hired him to renovate the surgical suites. He asked me to go to dinner, and we fell in love.”

“That’s…nice.”

There’s an awkward pause. I feel like I’m rubbing in the fact that I’m alive and he’s not.

“Mabel thinks I’m being naïve—that it must have been an archer who matched us up. A Spring Fae. She doesn’t believe it’s true love.” My voice sounds thin and brittle at the admission.

Mabel’s never been shy about her opinions. If something bad happened to her, our last conversation would have been an argument about why I shouldn’t marry a mortal.

When I met Lachlan, I fell for him instantly and denied Mabel’s claims that I had been manipulated by an archer. Mostly, I was grateful that someone like him—so well-mannered, blue-blooded, successful, and handsome—would look twice at me. I wanted to start a family, to have somewhere to belong that didn’t include the threat of impending death and destruction, to be free from the life of hide-and-seek witches wrestle with. I wanted out, but now, I’m not sure there is an out.

And judging by Devi’s gaze when I told her about the wedding, I probably am the foolish young woman Kerri and Mabel thought I was. Oh, Devi held her tongue when I told her about Lachlan, but I could see the pity on her face. The doubts.

She all but confirmed it wasn’t going to last.

“Who does Mabel want you to marry? A male witch?” E asks in jest.

A bitter giggle scrapes my throat. “Male witches don’t really exist. I think Mabs would be happier if I stayed single for the rest of time. She didn’t have such good marriages.”

“Where does your brother fit in, if male witches don’t exist?” he asks. “Is he adopted?”

I nod. “Oh, Nickolas is a bit of an anomaly. My mother had twins⁠—”

The moment the words leave my mouth, regret follows. I shouldn’t have said that, shouldn’t have spoken so freely about Nick. I need to be more careful going forward, or I’ll end up babbling away every family secret.

“Witches only have girls when they give birth in the Red Forest, and any males born outside of it don’t have any power,” I add quickly.

He doesn’t need to know my brother was the only male born in the Red Forest in…ever.

“And your father?”

I wave dismissively, eager to change the subject. “We have no idea who he is.”

My phone buzzes, providing a welcome distraction, and I pull it out of my pocket. The image that appears on the screen is a rather risqué photo of my fiancé in his hotel bed.

“Shite.” My spine stiffens, and I press the phone to my chest. “I need a moment alone. Wait for me upstairs, alright? I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”

“As you wish.”

There’s a dark undertone in that agreement I don’t care to dwell on. I toy with my cuff earring, waiting for E’s bite of power to fade, then clear my throat and dial Lachlan’s number.

“Hey, gorgeous. I miss you like crazy.”

I press my lips together, summoning the courage to spin yet another lie. “Me, too. Mabel’s doing well, but she’s going to need full-time care for the next few days—maybe longer. I think I should stay with her over the weekend.”

“But we have a wedding to plan.” His voice goes quiet. Distant.

He’s angry.

“I know. It blows, but most of the planning is already done,” I say quickly. “Next week, everything will go back to normal.”

I hear the falsehood in my own delusions, but I can’t bring myself to postpone the wedding, not yet. There might still be time to find a way out, a solution. Mabel might still come home and take care of the monsters.

But even then…

How can you marry Lachlan when he has no idea who you truly are? When you know he would never believe the truth? my inner critic asks. This relationship was doomed from the start.

It’s not like I haven’t had doubts before now, but it’s the first time I’ve actually listened to that voice. The first time I wonder if I’m even allowed to drag this beautiful man and his perfectly normal family into my fucked-up world.

“Mother had to pull strings to get our choreographer. You missing last night’s rehearsal already piqued her enough. Imagine what she’ll say when I tell her the bride will be MIA for the weekend. Do you want to give her a heart attack? Can’t we just hire a nurse?”

“I told you, Mabel is a very private person. She hates strangers.”

“What about me, Max? My boss invited us over to his house for dinner on Friday. It won’t make sense for my fiancée not to be there. Let me hire a nurse for the night. Mabel won’t know the difference.”

My mouth opens and closes as I struggle to find an angle he won’t argue against. “She took me in when nobody wanted me. I owe her this.”

“You’re a grown adult, and she’s holding you back from the life you ought to live. You don’t owe her anything.”

We argue back and forth for a while, enough for a languid ache to take hold of my heart, and tears glaze my eyes. I’ve been working so hard to prove to the world that our romance could work, and I let many things slide, mainly his disdain for my foster family.

It’s probably my own fault.

Most of my lies have described Mabel as an eccentric old hermit. I might have overdone it and painted her in such a poor light that he can’t understand how I feel. But no matter what I said to excuse her quirks, she’s still family. If she were truly sick, there’d be no question of hiring a nurse. I summon the righteous anger I need to deny his suggestion, but guilt gnaws at me.

We’re fighting over a make-believe story, a band-aid I put over a leaking, bloody mess of a situation.

But what other choice do I have?

You could tell him the truth, my conscience whispers.

My eyes screw shut. I could tell him the truth about me, my family, my blood. But I can’t pretend not to know how that would end. If I told Lachlan about monsters, ghosts, and Fae, he’d never look at me the same again. And he wouldn’t want to marry me anymore.