The Immortal Quintet monsters look precisely the same as ever, but I can’t stop staring at this frightened version of Crypt. I didn’t know him at his age. He can’t be older than six. Although it’s difficult to see the bruises through the swirling light and dark markings on his skin, I notice them gradually healing.
“What is it this time?” Hearst demands, checking his watch as if bored.
“This filthy littlemongrel!”the hysterical vampyr wails. “Just look at him! More and more, elite legacies are growing curious and keep asking to meet this little bastard. Do you have anyidea how humiliating it is that he even exists? What did I do to deserve this? Me, raising this pathetic mistake, all because you are a filthy fuckingdegenerate!”
She hurls a vase at Somnus with vampyr speed. He doesn’t dodge it in time and curses when it breaks against his forehead, sending him stumbling. I find it odd that he doesn’t trip over the glowing rabbits hopping around on the floor behind him, but again, that’s likely something my mind is adding to this dark memory.
“Look what we’re stuck with, all because of your wandering manhood!” Natalya scowls and paces before whirling, baring her fangs as her blue eyes glow. “We should have killed off the entire Crane bloodline for not taking up with your idea to pretend he was simply a surprise child of theirs. He looked like them enough—it would have worked. How dare those ingrates refuse to take this knave in!”
In her fit of temper, the vampyr turns and kicks Crypt in the side. I flinch, nausea curling up my throat when I hear a crack, but the young incubus barely reacts. He remains curled up as if he’s been through this enough times to know this is the safest course of action.
But Natalya’s words stick in my mad head, revolving over and over. The Immortal Quintet wanted my family to take in Crypt to cover Somnus’s scandal? I never heard of this.
It would have changed everything. His childhood. Mine.
In this bizarre other scenario, perhaps we would have even become something like brothers.
I would never have allowed that inferior little scoundrel to corrupt you, my father’s voice snarls inside my head.
Ringing floods my ears, and darkness threatens the edges of my vision. I quickly grasp Maven’s blood amulet around my throat. It helps stave off the wave of lunacy until I can hear again.
“Of course, they wouldn’t take him!” Somnus spits as his bleeding head begins to heal. His tail whips back and forth angrily as he gestures at Crypt. “Take another look at him, you blathering bitch. He’s thesteward. He’s half monster and will grow to look more like me. Everyone would figure out the bastard sooner or later, so of course no one wants anything to do with him!”
Natalya hisses and picks up a picture frame, ready to throw that next, but Melvolin uses magic to flick it out of her hands, glowering at everyone in the room. “We’ll be late for our meeting with the Legacy Council. Quit your whinging, Natalya, and let us leave.”
The vampyr is still livid about whatever set her off, but she finally storms from the room. Somnus and Hearst are right behind her, leaving me to watch this young Crypt as he waits for several long moments before uncurling and sitting up.
His purple gaze moves to me, but he says nothing.
Look at that pathetic waste of life,someone snickers inside my head.
“Shut up,” I mutter in fae at the nasty voice.
This isn’t the version of Crypt I’m supposed to speak with. I know that, but gods above, this little boy looks hollow. Surelysomeonein his past was there for him in cruel moments like this?
I move on, but the more of Crypt’s memories I pass through, the more my disgust with his upbringing grows. My own childhood was no luxury, but at least my paranoid parents were proud of me. At least the Garnet Wizard took a liking to me later on, in his own eccentric way.
Crypt had no one, until he had our quintet.
But then I stumble into a scene even darker than the last. It’s not one of his own memories—this is a dream he’s observed in the past. I can see Crypt as he is now, standing off to the sidewith a stricken expression as bloodcurdling screams cut through his subconscious.
Maven’sscreams.
My heart pounds as I realize this is one of her nightmares. My keeper is a teenager here, her wrists and ankles bound tightly to a rudimentary laboratory table as gray-draped necromancers surround her. They’re chanting, performing some dark ritual on her as they jam dozens of glowing needles deeply into her skin.
What a lovely sound,demons in my head snicker.
My young keeper can’t stop screaming from the agony of whatever they’re putting her through. They pay her suffering no mind as they continue the experiment, as if she’s just athing.
Repulsion and encroaching insanity choke me as I quickly leave the scene, unable to bear the sound of Maven’s pain anymore. More and more of Crypt’s memories are becoming like this—torturous scenes of Maven’s past, blips of his time hunting predators, hundreds of vague nightmares he’s fed on over the years.
Finally, I come to a stop inside our quintet’s old apartment at Everbound University. There is something more viscous about this memory. I must be getting closer to the version of Crypt I’m looking for.
He and Maven are sitting on the bed in her room as she tends to severe wounds on the incubus. This appears to be a private moment shared between them that I have no interest in eavesdropping on. I turn to walk to the next part of Crypt’s subconscious, but halt when I catch Maven’s words.
"I heard you also killed Silas's parents' keeper. And his uncle."
"Technically, they killed themselves. I only planted the seed in their minds. Constantly.”
