The shift was immediate. The darkness returned.
“That’s... it? That’s all I have to do?” Jesstin asked the nothingness and was disappointed when no response came. “You call these trials?”
He bowed over, cackling over his knees.
He was so much lighter after confronting Mathias. Next time he passed Sestinn in public, he’d know if his newfound courage was real or delusion, but he didn’t care. He’d barely stepped into that cursed mirror and already he was almost done. Only one trial remained, and if the pattern held, he’d see Elloven before lightrise became illumina.
Jesstin was still laughing when the shaking started. There was a tempo to it, a low, building line of energy compelling his fingers, toes, arms, legs—all of him—right up to his chin and the bottoms of his ears. His teeth clacked when he tried to mutter a the hell is this, which never came. The longer the crazed shrill of his laughter reverberated, the less he recognized the sound.
Salty tears ran over his lips and landed on his tongue. Where had those come from? He wasn’t sad. He wasn’t... wasn’t anything, except relieved the trials had been easier than he’d expected, just emotionally inconvenient. He’d forgiven Mathias and expelled his anxiety of what it meant to be an Edevane, and he was fine with both developments, maybe better for them. There was nothing left to fear now that he knew the especular’s game, so why the hell could he not stop shaking and crying like a frightened goat?
Night joined the darkness.
A smoky, earthy perfume churned through the fairway of Plumgarden. The sleepy hamlet had once been an important stop along the roads between Oldcastle and Riverchapel, but its relevance withered when it became associated with the exiled Edevanes. Vital commercial contracts had been canceled by Theocratin or Mathias, trade routes remapped. Now, it was only the several dozen denizens, too stubborn to leave, who tended the half-overgrown lands at the base of the hill leading to the keep.
A lone figure walked the road ahead, his cloak pulled tight around his face as he moved along the shadows of the outer perimeter.
He would recognize that gait even in a crowd of hundreds.
Gennady.
The only time Jesstin had been to Plumgarden was the night he’d followed Gennady after months of trying to figure out why he’d been acting so strangely. Dipping out from their lunches and suppers early after sitting there in silence, sometimes canceling altogether. There were days he didn’t hear from Gennady at all, and after overthinking and stressing, Jesstin would show up at Nightwood only for his friend to act oblivious.
So, after getting nowhere for weeks, Jesstin had followed him. He couldn’t have known it would end as the worst night of his life, but he had known something was wrong—deeply, terribly wrong—and the especular wanted him to relive it.
Jesstin jogged to catch up when he fell behind, though he knew the way; the tiny flat above the boarded-up seamstress shop between Plumgarden and Riverchapel was branded so deeply in his memories, not even Mathias’s machinations could have expelled it.
“Hey!” he called, testing the boundaries of the scenario. The village was eerily silent, and Gennady didn’t hear him, confirming he was an observer. For now. He still recalled every excruciating second of that night, but the especular had a reason for bringing him here, and there was only one way to discover why.
It had taken an hour to follow Gennady there, but in this version, Jesstin blinked and was standing in the road outside the fated shop.
As before, he waited for Gennady to climb the steep stairwell, but instead of hesitating, he followed right away. The door was ajar, but this time he knew what was on the other side.
The door bounced off the wall when he threw it wide, nearly hitting Gennady. But Gennady was already on his knees, wailing silently beside the bleeding body of the poor girl he’d murdered. Once again, Jesstin had missed the act itself.
“Please, no, not this. I promised you. Why couldn’t you believe me? We were so close, Bel.” Gennady sobbed into the dying girl’s hair. She flagged in his arms like a cloth doll. He lifted her, but the foamy blood gurgling from her mouth made him hesitate. “No, Bellessa. Oh, why, why, why...”
Something was off. Something was different this time. Gennady had said none of that before.
Time rewound, distorting, fragments of moments tumbling around in a mind that couldn’t catch up fast enough.
When it stopped, Jesstin was standing in a pasture. The murky horizon was nothing but grass and beasts on all sides, but he could just make out Gennady in between two grazing horses. He moved in a fast crouch, his clothing too dark to reflect moonlight.
Gennady scaled a fence and landed on the other side. Jesstin tried to walk through the wooden slabs, but they were solid even if he was not. He scanned for quick-footed Gennady and spotted him ahead, approaching a cellar door on the far side of a sizable manor house.
It was no ordinary farmer’s home. It had long, high windowpanes beset in metal frames, was almost as broad as a village block, and rose tall enough to be called a keep. He didn’t think he’d been there before, but most things looked different in the dark.
It certainly wasn’t part of the same memory.
Gennady moved sideways, hawk-eyed as he tapped a pattern against the small door. He stepped back and warmed his hands at his mouth as he marched in place.
A woman emerged moments later. Jesstin didn’t recognize her, but from the flour spackled all over her apron, he guessed she worked in a kitchen. Eyes furtive and arms drawn in, she embodied the same restless energy streaming off Gennady.
“I told you, it’s too soon,” she said in a harsh whisper. “They’re starting to notice. A couple of girls escaping is one thing, but twelve?”
“Every day we wait is too late for someone, and you know it.” Gennady conducted another paranoid sweep of the area. He paced in place. “Two of them died this month alone after childbed fever. How many are with child now, Gertrude?”
Gertrude crushed her expression tight and sighed. “Three, maybe four. We’ll know soon.”
