Page 44 of Acolyte (Tempris #2)

-An excerpt from the Essential Fey Survival Guide

There was a black suit spread out on the bed, freshly pressed and waiting.

Skye wasn’t sure how long he had been staring at it.

They had finally cleared out the tunnels, and the first thing he had done when he had been released was shower. The water had been hot and strong, and he had stood there in a daze, watching as the grime of the past week spiraled down the drain, streaks of black against the white porcelain.

But now that he was clean, standing with a towel around his waist in his darkened bedroom on the top floor of the Castaros’ townhouse, there was that suit to deal with.

Sarina must have laid it out while he was in the washroom.

Or maybe he just hadn’t noticed it when he trudged past the first time, peeling off his armor as he went.

It was black. The shirt, the pants, the coat… Mourning colors.

Because Taly was gone. Dead.

And even though they were living in a world gone mad, fighting an enemy that had no name and no face, there were still customs that needed to be observed.

The family would dress in black, and the curtains would remain drawn—not because the dead demanded it but because the living needed something to give order to their pain.

Some sort of structure on which to mount their suffering so that they could move forward.

So that they could forget.

Skye let the towel drop. He almost reached for the shirt—then stopped.

If what you need is proof, I can offer that.

He shook his head at the memory. He hadn’t gone to the tavern, if only because going would feed into the illusion.

Everything he had seen and heard down in those tunnels—it wasn’t real.

He knew that. Just like he knew that if he put on those clothes, those colors, it would be admitting an end.

It would be the start of a goodbye he’d never wanted to say, and was he really ready for that?

If there was even a whisper of a chance, no matter how impossible it might seem, why wouldn’t he grab it?

Turning to the dresser set against the far wall, Skye pulled out a white shirt and navy slacks. He found an overcoat in the closet—gray, not black; anything but black—and after splashing some cold water on his face he decided that, yes, he was really going to do this.

He was going to follow a hallucination to an empty room at a tavern the same way he had followed a dream into an airtram tunnel. He needed to because if he didn’t, he would always wonder. He would never be able to move on.

And so, Skye slipped down the stairs and through the darkened house, avoiding the pockets of light and the sound of voices as he went to confirm his madness.

It was easy to find, even in the dark.

The tavern was in the worst part of town, made more terrible by recent events.

There were two stories, the first a shitty bar that served equally shitty ale.

Skye dodged a few patrons that came lurching through the main doors, stepping over piles of vomit and Shards knew what else.

He was headed for the second story, to a curved walkway with three doors that led to single-room apartments.

At the end of the row was a door that had been painted blue and padlocked shut, though the lock came away easily when Skye channeled his aether and gave a tug.

The floor creaked as he entered the drafty little room, cramped despite the lack of furniture.

He’d never been inside, though he’d always known exactly how to find it.

Ivain and Sarina had kept close tabs on Taly after she left the manor, even going so far as to secure her with permanent lodging when she couldn’t find anyone willing to rent to a human.

Indirectly, of course. Skye doubted that Taly knew that her room had been bought and paid for with Castaro gold, only that Sarina had gotten word of a tavern in Ryme that had recently relaxed their policy on mortals for unknown reasons.

Skye took another step, closing the door behind him.

There were stacks of old books scattered about, all stained and waterlogged; the only real piece of furniture was an old wooden bed stuffed into the corner.

The windows and doors had been covered with threadbare sheets, and when he flicked the switch for the overhead fire lamp, it sputtered, giving barely any light.

Still, despite the ramshackle appearance, the space was immaculately clean, the blankets all folded neatly on the end of the bed. Every stack of books he passed had been arranged in alphabetical order, and there were snowdrops drying by the window.

Skye almost smiled. Taly had lived here. Even though Sarina had cleared out nearly all her possessions, even though her scent had faded, he knew it to be true.

He resisted the urge to poke around, to see which books had been read and dogeared, her favorite passages noted in the margins, aiming for the bed. That’s where his hallucination had told him to look, so, grabbing the bed by the frame, he lifted it easily, pulling it away from the wall.

The floor was, unsurprisingly, free of dust. Leave it to Taly to clean beneath the bed. It was probably how she had figured out there was a loose board to begin with .

“Well,” he said to the silence, “you’re here now. Let’s get this over with.”

Skye’s stomach was in knots as he fell to his knees and began testing each board, starting from the corner and working his way out.

Halfway down the length of where the bed had stood, he began to feel sick.

He really had been hallucinating. The woman in the tunnels, the dream—none of it was real, and he’d just broken into an apartment in the middle of the night, following his grief and that stupid thread that was still tugging at him incessantly—

A board lifted.

Holding his breath, he gave the end another tap, ratcheting it up far enough to slip his fingers underneath. The space below was less than a handspan deep, three times as wide, and inside he found—

“Diaries.”

Taly’s diaries. Ten in total. The dates were all marked with red ink on the spines.

Hands shaking, Skye pulled each book from the hidden cache, stacking them on the floor beside where he knelt.

There were bits of ribbon and old glamographs stuffed between the pages, and beneath the row of books, he found a small bag of gold as well a wooden box filled with more pictures, ticket stubs, and other seemingly inconsequential trinkets and mementos he hadn’t known she’d kept.

It was everything she hadn’t wanted anyone to find. The things she would’ve been most devastated to lose if someone had forced their way in and stolen what few possessions she had to call her own .

Skye closed the box with the reverence it deserved, running a hand over the lid.

He had a choice to make now. He could figure out a way to explain this, come up with something sane and rational, or…

he could just believe. He could take the evidence at face value, accept that the world was full of impossible things, and allow himself to trust in the one person he should’ve known never to doubt.

Skye found his feet.

A choice. That’s all it was.

So, aiming for the door, he chose.

He chose to go downstairs and buy an old canvas bag from the kitchen. He chose to go back to that room and pack up the diaries, the box, and that little bag of gold.

The dream had been real. He chose to believe that.

He chose to accept the impossibility of that woman and the hope she had given him.

He wasn’t going to give up. Not yet. Not ever.

That’s the choice he made.

Skye pulled the door shut as he left, attempting to fix the lock as best he could. But he didn’t turn towards the townhouse. There was still one more thing he needed to find before he was done with this place.

Beneath the stairs, there was a gap between the ground and the building’s foundation. Pulling a mealy carrot he’d bought along with the canvas sack, he crouched, holding it towards the gap.

Moments later, a quivering pink nose emerged, followed by a mangy ball of white fluff speckled with bits of tan. A rabbit. Its eyes were ringed with black, and it limped slightly. There was a scar on its back leg devoid of fur .

Skye sighed as the rabbit began to nibble on the end of the carrot.

It was obviously used to being fed. “Marshmallow, I presume.” The prize from Taly’s first and only attempt at hunting.

She had always had a soft spot for animals, so it came as no surprise that she hadn’t been able to kill a rabbit, not even when she was starving.

With a sigh, he grabbed the rabbit by the scruff. It struggled and squealed, calming slightly when he pressed it close to his body.

“C’mon,” he said as he turned for home. “Taly will have a fit if she comes back only to find out you got turned into stew.”

The rabbit looked up at him, wriggling its nose. He could only assume that meant “thank you.”