Everlost (The Night Watchmen Series Book 3)

by Candace Knoebel

  I pull the curtains open, letting the morning light in. “We’ll go back, Katie. I swear. We just have to figure a few things out first.” I sit across from her, crossing my legs in front of me. “You’ll see. Weldon’s a great asset. He’s an awesome partner. And Gavin and Jaxen are good with formulating plans. And Cassie and Jezi are stellar Witches. They’ll help us. We’ll get everyone back.”

  “You sound so sure. Clara’s a monster, and she has so many under her command now.” She sniffs and looks up at me. I don’t know how I can feel like I’m staring at a stranger who looks and sounds like the girl I grew up with. There’s a hardness in her eyes that wasn’t there the last time I saw her, so many months ago. There are memories and stories, and so many unshared secrets between us. It feels so heavy.

  I smile at her. She smiles back. Neither smile reaches our eyes.

  ‘It’s not going to be easy,” I say, “but that’s not going to stop us.”

  It goes quiet, and I count the seconds while my brain scrambles for something to say. Anything. The right thing, but she’s staring at me like I’m an outsider. Like this is the first time we’ve met, and we know absolutely nothing about each other. And maybe we don’t. At least, not anymore.

  I almost jump when she finally speaks.

  “My father told me you were doing good.” Her words barely lift over the sound of the ceiling fan twirling above us.

  My forehead scrunches.

  “He said he saw you a while ago. That you were training and coming into your own. He said… he said you were powerful.”

  I don’t like the way my body heats up. The way I feel almost embarrassed to admit what I’ve finally come to accept. How I feel like I’m sitting in front of someone I don’t know, having to explain who I am and what I can do.

  “There’s so much that has happened. So much I wanted to tell you,” she says, almost as if she’s borrowing the words straight from my mouth. But it’s her next words that freeze my heart in place. “I hated you. For a long time.”

  I’m stunned silent. Shot in the heart by her admittance. Gutted by her careless words that cut deeper than any blade could.

  And she doesn’t stop there.

  “I hated that you were off in Ethryeal City, living this grand life, while I was stuck at the Academy, duking it out with all the other novices and praying the Darkyns didn’t attack us again. Praying that by some miracle, their attacks wouldn’t finally be enough to break down the magical barricade. And praying that my parents wouldn’t be one of the many affinity partners killed while trying to stop them.”

  My body is as stiff as a metal pole. “My life wasn’t grand,” I sputter, gaping at her as the burners in my cheek flip on high. “It was anything but grand, Katie. And I did everything I could, I’m still doing everything I can, to see an end to the Darkyns.”

  “Still,” she says carelessly, her gaze dropping to the floor. “You got out. And you did it without me.”

  I look out the window as my pulse beats through my ears. As my thoughts scrabble through shock, anger, and betrayal. Words… they’re rushing up my throat like acid. They’re stomping against my tongue like tiny soldiers, ready for battle. But my lips remain shut. They remain loyal to my heart, even though my mind is pushing hard to fight back.

  “I did what I was forced to do, Katie. I had no choice.” She looks back out the window and, still, I press on. “You really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then tell me,” she says hotly, glaring at me. “Tell me why you so quickly forgot about our promise to each other? About remaining friends?”

  Swallowing thickly, I try to keep my temper in check. I close my eyes as I search for strength. Images of everything that has happened pass through my mind like a ghost train. Pain that I’ve tried to ignore surfaces.

  “That nightmare you’re worried about. About being attacked by Darkyns. About your parents being taken… maybe even killed,” I say through my teeth. “I’ve lived it, Katie… am still living it. The Darkyns attacked us when I was forced to find and put together the Dagger of Retribution. I barely made it out of that situation alive. Bael tried to take me with him to the Underground, but Weldon was able to save me. And then we were summoned to Ethryeal City, where I was experimented on and tortured by Clara. When I was released from her, I found out that she had something to do with my parents’ disappearance. Apparently, they had found out about her dealing with the Darkyns, and Clara had to cover her tracks. I tried to take her down, but once again, I was forced to break the Holy Seal and she was released. After that, we barely made it out of that courtroom with our heads.

  “Jaxen and the rest have been banished to the Underground. They can never return. And me, I was sentenced to the Correctional Facility. And I still have more to do. I still have so much left to go through, because my parents are still out there, maybe dead… maybe alive, and our people are dying left and right while Clara destroys this Coven from the inside out. If you think that’s glamorous, well, then…” I break off. Pace across the room.

  I’m so mad and upset, and I feel so used and so misunderstood. I feel betrayed by her. Betrayed by the fact that she thinks I actually wanted any of this. I feel like I’m standing in front of a jury. Like I’m defending my honor. Not like how I’m supposed to feel. Not open, honest, and without shame.

  Not like she’s my best friend.

  “Faye, I’m sorry,” she says, her voice faltering. “This is all just so… so not how I pictured our life panning out at this age. And I’ve missed you. So much it hurts. I feel so… so disconnected from you.”

  I suck in a deep breath, wishing it would cleanse the disappointment from my system. “I do too,” I admit. “It sucks.”

  She pulls her legs back in and turns to the window as silence creeps in between us. I sit on the edge of the bed. Stare at the door, wishing I knew how to go back. How to make our friendship what it once was.

  But people change. Things happen to us and we change, and if you aren’t moving at the same pace, then sometimes, those friends can be left behind. Sometimes, there’s no way to go back. Because life isn’t an hourglass you can just flip over when time runs out. It’s constantly moving. Constantly turning.

  And I don’t know if I can find my way back to her.

  A knock sounds on the door, and then Jaxen pokes his head in. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  I look over at Katie, who’s still staring out the window, and then quickly make my way across the room. After shutting the door behind me, he pulls me back against the wall. He’s pulling at his ear, his face as pale as a ghost.

  “Everything going okay?” he asks me, shifting in his stance. He looks somewhat uncomfortable, restless even. Or maybe just anxious.

  “As okay as they can be,” I say, watching his movements with narrowed eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  His gaze stops ping-ponging around me and locks on mine. He pulls in a deep breath, and then slowly releases it. “My uh—my mom is coming. Like right now. When you were gone, Gavin ran into her outside and agreed for her to come by tonight to explain everything that had happened.”

  Oh.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, running my hand down his arm.

  His eyebrows bunch together. He rubs his fingers across his forehead as if the very motion itself will dispel all the pent-up emotions he has stored within his steel walls. “Honestly? I don’t know. I’m a little bit of everything right now, and I’m trying to do what Gavin told me, which is to take it one second at a time and hear her out. Give her a shot.”

  “That’s good advice,” I say quietly.

  He looks down at me. “Yeah, maybe for someone who’s in better control of their emotions.”

  “You are in control.”

  He shrugs dismissively. “I see it as… the worst that can happen is I don’t forgive her. At least then, I won’t have to forgive myself for never giving her a chance. Right?”

  He’s looking at me with eyebrows raised. Wa
iting for me to tell him how to get through this. To give him strength. It’s a strange feeling. A good strange to be needed this way… by him.

  I kiss his cheek. His lips. Wait for that moment when his body relaxes, and then my soul smiles, knowing that with me, he is safe. With me, he can be more than he thinks he is, because he sees it reflecting in my gaze. “It sounds to me like you already have a pretty good handle on it.”

  He sighs. “I guess we’ll find out.” He glances at the door to our room. “Jezi agreed to move downstairs so Katie can have this room.” He’s pointing to the room next to ours. “I figured she’d want to stay close to you, especially since she doesn’t really know any of us.”

  I drop my gaze and try to swallow past the bed of rocks lodged in my throat. “I’m not so sure I really know her anymore either.”

  He pulls me into a hug, and it takes all my strength to keep from crying. To keep from spilling out just how far away I feel from the one person I used to tell all my deepest, darkest secrets to. It’s like realizing the world is round after I told everyone it was flat. Like being stuck in a freezing cold room with no way out. It’s paralyzing. Earth shattering.

  “This wasn’t how I imagined our reunion would be. There’s so much that happened… so much that she doesn’t understand. So much that I don’t understand about her. How can I look at her and feel like I’m home, but also like I’m standing in the presence of a stranger all at the same time?”

  He runs his hands over the back of my head, holding me close. “She’s just in shock right now. Her partner was left behind. Give it some time.”

  I pull back to look at him, closing my eyes when he presses his lips against mine. Just as much as I root him, he roots me. We keep each other from falling, slipping, diving into a world neither of us wants to be in.

  “They have more than just Chett. They have her parents too. She said they have everyone involved with the rebellion.”

  His entire body tenses up like a board of wood. “Mack.” He opens the door, and Katie jolts upright out of her seat. “Do they have Mack too?”

  Her face falls, and every painful emotion you can feel buries the green in his eyes. None of us left Ethryeal City on good terms with Mack, mostly because of his own doings, but that still doesn’t change the fact that he was Jaxen’s Elder. He was a large part of Jaxen’s life for a very long time, almost like a father.

  And Clara knew it.

  “I should have known. I have to tell Weldon.” He turns and heads out of the room, rushing down the stairs.

  I’m a million different emotions, floating out of reach. Floating far away.

  “Jezi’s moving her things out of the room next to this one. You can sleep there for now,” I say to Katie, turning for the door. “Do you need or want anything?”

  She’s holding her arm pinned to her side. “To start over,” she says, tears in her voice. “We got off on the wrong foot.”

  My arms and legs feel like thousand-pound weights. My brain feels like it’s been ran over by a freight truck filled with every horror I’ve ever dreaded.

  “It’s okay,” I say with a fading smile. “You’re going through a lot. I’m here for you, Katie. Swear.”

  She wipes at her nose. “Thanks.”

  “Do you want to be introduced to everyone?”

  “Not just yet. I’d like to get a shower maybe. Change?”

  I palm my forehead. “Of course. Sorry. You can use my shower. Soap and everything is in there.” I point to the closet. “I’ve manifested a few outfits, so feel free to scavenge through.”

  “Thanks,” she says with a half smile.

  I nod and head out of the room in search of Jaxen, trying to leave the confusion and awkward feelings behind. But I’ve never been good at lying to myself. Not about what I feel. I feel it all too much, and I swallow it down and let it burrow into my soul as I push through the kitchen door and find Weldon shoving his way out the back door, cursing loudly.

  “This is seven levels of fucked up,” Gavin says, nostrils flaring. “She has them all. I know she does.”

  “All who?” I ask, moving to sit next to Jaxen at the table where the map is still stretched out.

  “Everyone who freaking matters, that’s who,” he answers, plunging his hands through his hair. “Jonathon, Mack, Seamus, all of them!”

  “We have to go back,” Jezi says, rubbing her temples. “We have no choice now.”

  “We can’t go back,” Cassie says.

  “We need more men. More fighters,” Gavin says. He slams his fists against the head of the kitchen table. “Damn it! You know damn well there will be an army waiting for us if we go back. We’re not just fighting the Darkyns anymore.”

  Jezi’s head falls. Jaxen stands rigid, legs planted wide as he stares at the table, cracking his knuckles.

  “This shit storm just hit an all new high,” Gavin says, eyes tight, “even for me.”

  While everyone banters back and forth, my eyes center on Weldon on the back porch. He’s pacing back and forth, talking to himself. His thoughts are somewhere else, miles and miles from where we are. Probably locked away, just like his brother.

  Ages pass as I feel the little bit of hope I had clung to slip away.

  When Weldon finally storms back through the kitchen door, the entire room stops mid-sentence. He walks up to the table. Presses his palms against it. His head is bowed, his eyes clenched shut. “I can link with him. We’ve always been able to, even sometimes when we were in the Underground. It’s a twin thing.”

  “You sure?” Gavin asks subtly.

  Weldon looks up, his face a torturous mix of emotions that I can barely stand to look at. “He’s my brother,” he says, his voice cracking in half.

  And with that, he pushes off the table and heads back out the back door, out into the dimming sky.

  Silence follows his exit. No one knows what to say anymore. Gavin falls back down into his chair. Jezi heads over to the sink where the window is, messing with the dishes while her gaze scans after him. Jaxen takes a seat next to me and starts chewing on his nails.

  It remains like this for a few minutes. Heavy. Grim. Our loud thoughts are the only thing filling this room, until Jezi drops a plate in the sink, the loud, ceramic smack cutting through the silence.

  Cassie looks over at her. “Something is in the air, but I can’t put my finger on it. An energy I’ve sensed before.”

  Jezi turns and looks at Jaxen. “I hate to break up this joyous moment, but we need to focus on the matter at hand,” she says.

  “Which one?” Gavin says with a shaky laugh. “Take your pick.”

  “Your mother,” she says bluntly. “She’s here.”

  Both Jaxen and Gavin look up at her. “Here?” Gavin says. “Like here here?”

  “Yes. Like right outside the front door.”

  ISN’T IT WEIRD HOW YOU can wake up with a plan about how your day will go, and then, little by little, the universe decides to remind you that you can plan all you want, but there are forces much larger than us, with entirely different plans than what we had in store for ourselves.

  Because it keeps happening to me, over and over, and my patience is wearing thin.

  All I can think is that the universe must get a good laugh watching us as we scramble to find our balance after it delivers earthquake after earthquake. Despair after despair. Crippling our bones until we’re stripped bare and left digging through the sandbox, searching for the millions of pieces of ourselves that seem to slip into its own Bermuda Triangle.

  And maybe that is what’s so good about the future. So promising about the one thing we cannot predict. Not knowing what’s in store makes it easier to breathe in and breathe out. Being blind to what’s coming in some way shields us from living day in and day out in total and complete fear. It makes every moment that much more precious. That much more valuable.

  Gavin looks up at Jaxen, who’s looking back at him, mildly horrified. Slightly scared.

  His
face is so pale that it’s almost transparent, and his heart is practically beating out of his chest. I want to reach for him, but my hands have gone numb. The room, it’s suddenly so cold.

  No one knows what to say. We all knew this was coming… but now that it’s here, I don’t think any of us quite know how to feel.

  Gavin is the first to make a move. I wouldn’t expect less from him. In a way, he’s always been like a leader to us. An anchor we would drift away without.

  He unfolds his hand, placing a fist against his palm, and lifts an eyebrow in Jaxen’s direction. “You win, I get the door. I win, you get the door,” he says, trying to make light of the situation, though the humor is devoid in his voice. He’s guiding Jaxen. Walking him through this monumental moment.

  They both look at each other like the world is splitting open right in front of them, but they have all the strength in the world to withstand the fall because, together, they will make it through.

  I half expect Jaxen to curse at him for making a joke out of something that’s clearly eating him alive, but he doesn’t. And that’s the beauty of their relationship. It isn’t for me to know how Jaxen will respond. How Gavin should or shouldn’t treat him, because they know each other deeper than most of us know ourselves.

  Jaxen inhales and holds his hands out and, on three, they play their sacred, misunderstood game of rock, paper, scissors.

  Gavin has a rock.

  Jaxen has scissors.

  Jaxen curses under his breath against Gavin’s taunting laughter, and then smoothes his hair back. He tugs on the hem of his shirt. Swallows down the need to back out. He looks down at me, steel in his eyes, and then heads out of the kitchen with purpose in his steps. I follow behind him, just as curious and nervous. Time seems to slow and speed up as he approaches the door.

  He doesn’t wait for the rest as they file out of the kitchen behind us. When he reaches for the door handle, his hand hovers over it. A million emotions settle in his features. With a deep breath, he twists the handle and the door swings open.

  The hairs on my arms rise as warning signals flare up inside me.