Feargus

  Stepping into the auditorium back at the theatre, there were bodies strewn across the floor. Riz was with Markus and Bells, Rhydian and Evelyn were together, Adeline was near Maryse and Michael, Jakob was curled up in a corner alone, Alexander was missing, and Sebastian and Everleigh sat on the stage, their legs dangling off the edge.

  If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought they were all dead.

  I waved, Sebastian blew me a kiss, and Everleigh stared.

  After tiptoeing my way across the auditorium, strategically past Adeline so I could admire her on the way by, I joined the pair on stage.

  “Where were you,” Everleigh asked.

  Before answering that question, I needed more information. “Are they drunk sleeping or—?”

  Everleigh shook her head.

  That’s what I was hoping for seeing as they wouldn’t be able to hear us if they were in an empathic sleep. “In that case,” I said, “I was helping Zack bring Strauss and Rhian to his place. Did Adeline tell you where they’d gone?”

  They both nodded.

  “And why didn’t he join us?” Sebastian asked.

  “Mate, would you really have wanted him to?”

  Sebastian shrugged. “There’s no sense delaying the inevitable for much longer.”

  I could have told him that’s almost exactly what Zack said, but I had an inkling that would irritate Sebastian more than reassure him, so I kept it to myself. “Listen, Seb,” I said, “there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  Between us, Everleigh side-glanced us each in turn.

  “Why do I feel nervous?” Sebastian asked.

  I started to reply, but Everleigh interrupted saying she had to go check on the horses outside. It was sweet of her to give us privacy, especially because I didn’t know if Sebastian would want me to talk about Florea in front of Everleigh. I wasn’t sure what she knew about their history, and I hadn’t had the chance to tell her about what happened to me.

  She left, and I scooted closer to Sebastian where he put his arm around my shoulder, and I put my arm around his waist.

  “So, what is it?” he asked. “Is it something to do with Zacharias?”

  “Sort of,” I said, rubbing my beard while I considered where to start. “How would you like it? Slow and careful, or hard and fast?”

  “Give it to me like you mean it, Feargus Finlay.”

  I grinned, happy to have my partner in innuendo back in play. I just wished I had better news for him. “All right, look, mate: I slept with your ex-boyfriend, and then he kidnapped me and threatened to trap me in an ice block along with the dozens of other lads he’d previously trapped in ice blocks. Zack saved my life.”

  Sebastian was as naturally pale as I reckoned a person could get, and yet, he seemed to grow whiter by the second. “How dreadful…”

  I nodded slowly. “Aye, so now Zack is waiting to see what you want to do with him.”

  “I see,” Sebastian answered. “Well, I have plenty of ex-boyfriends. To whom are you referring?”

  I didn’t doubt he had plenty of ex-boyfriends, but how many would have been in pre-Divide Amalia and still not dead over eight hundred years later? I reckoned he knew all too well to whom I was referring, and either he was stalling while he sorted his thoughts on the matter, or he needed to hear it out loud to make it true. Maybe both.

  “Florea Calancea,” I said.

  Sebastian closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and pulled a pained breath through his nose. After a moment, he asked simply, “Where?”

  “In the basement of his flower shop in Jaska.”

  Sebastian shook his head. “And why haven't you asked Zacharias to destroy him, Feargus Finlay? Because what he’s done to you—and to those others—is unacceptable.”

  “We wanted to leave it up to you. And to be honest, mate, I feel a bit sorry for him.”

  “That’s absurd,” Sebastian remarked. “But I can hardly blame you when obviously you’ve been spending too much time with my brother.”

  That stung a bit, I won’t lie. “Do you want to see him?”

  “Zacharias?”

  I shot Sebastian a pointed look. “Florea.”

  Sebastian sighed deeply. “When?”

  “We could go now. And I don’t know what she knows, but we might want to bring Everleigh with us in case things get out of hand.”

  “As far as I know, she has no idea.”

  I shrugged, laying my head against his shoulder. “Up to you again, then.”

  Sebastian shook his head. “Fine, let’s all go.”

  I was about to hop down from the stage when it hit me. “Wait, can you wake Adeline up?”

  Sebastian snapped his fingers, and after ten, twelve, seventeen seconds, Adeline lifted her head from the floor and looked around. When she spotted us, she stumbled awkwardly over to the stage, seemingly forgetting she was still in a form-fitting gown. She then looked around at the others still sleeping.

  “How long have we been asleep?” she asked.

  “A few hours,” Sebastian answered.

  Adeline nodded thoughtfully. “I wasn’t making any strange noises, was I?”

  “Why would you be?” I wondered.

  “Because I was having a naughty dream.”

  I laughed and pulled her in for a kiss.

  Beside me, Sebastian seemed lost in thought, but he still managed a dazzling smile.

  What. A. Fox.

  “We’re going to see Florea,” I told Adeline, “and we’re taking Everleigh with us for safety. When everyone else wakes up, could you tell them she asked for our help with something vague and gloomy?”

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  “But of course!” Addie agreed. “I’d be delighted. Though I must admit I’ve missed you.”

  I’d missed her so much, too, mates, so I told her, and then I asked, “Would you like Sebastian to put you back to sleep so you can dream naughtily some more?”

  Addie flashed her dimples. “Yes, please.”

  Before leaving the auditorium, Sebastian woke Jakob and asked him to look after everyone else while they were sleeping, and to wake them up when or if he felt like it. Outside the theatre on the main grounds, we met up with Everleigh. She wanted to know where we were going, “Obviously,” so Sebastian roped her in.

  “In his mortality, Florea Calancea was the most wonderful man I’d ever known,” Sebastian explained. “I was never one for settling down, my friends, but he was a stabilizing force, and he never tried to change me. He felt deeply about everything, and sought to bring colour to every facet of life with his flowers. Zacharias adored him furthermore, and Zacharias hated most of the men I brought home. But he did the unforgivable when he toyed with my brother’s emotions, and I was so angry—angry with them both. Until in time, I realized something.”

  Everleigh and I split a side-glance.

  “I realized,” Sebastian continued, “that if I could have given up my immortality to meet him in mortality, I would have. All he wanted was to live together and die together, and I wanted the same. I was still furious, my friends, but I became more open to understanding. We tried to make it work, but he was never the same. He was—”

  As you know, Florea came back with heightened emotions, but also fragmented, and he wasn’t able to feel more than one thing at a time any longer. Fits of rage, bouts of impulsive joy, all at the drop of a hat. Sebastian couldn’t handle the instability anymore, and rightfully so I reckoned, so they broke up again. The Divide happened not long afterward, and Sebastian left for the newly formed territory of Delphia, never seeing Florea again.

  I then added what I knew: that Florea’s collection was comprised of a sample of lads that made him feel a certain way, because when he looked at them all together, it reminded him of the thousand ways Sebastian once made him feel.

  “That explains why I haven’t been getting my flowers,” Everleigh lamented. “But why didn’t you tell me what happened.” She looked from Sebastian toward me. “I’d have ended him. I wouldn’t have kidnapped you after just being kidnapped.”

  “I’ve had a lot going on, mate.”

  Sebastian just shook his head, but I could tell by the look on his face he was conflicted, and as much as he complained about doing it, we all three ran to Jaska.

  We stood outside in the snow for just under four minutes, peering up at the crooked sign above the flower shop.

  “Are you sure you want to do this,” Everleigh asked.

  “No,” Sebastian answered. “But I must, so I shall. Are we ready?”

  “I guess,” Everleigh answered.

  “Aye,” I said. “We’ve got you.”

  Everleigh nodded.

  Sebastian glanced between us both, and with a deep breath in and out, he straightened his tie and adjusted his jacket. Everleigh unlocked the door with her mind.

  Taking a moment to orient himself around the flower shop, Everleigh and I held at Sebastian’s back. When he spotted the stairs down to the cellar, he motioned us along.

  Everleigh and I followed him down, and this time, Sebastian unlocked the lock with his mind—snapping his fingers. I’d already warned them what to expect: dead flowers littered everywhere, having been melted out of their ice blocks. Zacharias already handled the frozen lads, and though I still wasn’t sure what he’d done with them, I trusted he’d done the best he could. All alone in the cellar, Florea Calancea was encased, his eyes wide open.

  He could still see, though it’d be quite blurry through the ice which was also frosted over.

  “My, my,” Sebastian mused. “Look what the Law has litigated.”

  Everleigh and I split a side-glance again.

  Stepping forward, Sebastian faced Florea, and Everleigh and I took point on either side of our friend. He blew out once, quickly, through his lips, and the frost defogged.

  Sebastian stepped closer. “My friends, I wonder which one we’d get if we defrosted our frozen foe: the enraged one?” He looked to me and tapped the ice in front of Florea’s face. “The elated one?” He looked to Everleigh and tapped again. “Well, either way. Something tells me it wouldn’t be the remorseful one.”

  “No, mate, probably not,” I agreed.

  Everleigh stared.

  After another short bit of consideration, Sebastian took a few steps backward, gesturing forward. “Melt him, please, Night-blossom.”

  Everleigh sighed, but it wasn’t long before the ice around Florea melted—and not just melted, whatever water the ice block was frozen from, evaporated into the air. It filled the room with a misty fog, which I reckoned was better than a small flood.

  Sebastian snapped his fingers and lit the sconces around the room.

  This was the first time seeing Florea since Zack had rescued me from the cellar—I mean, really seeing Florea, not all obfuscated by ice. He was wet, his hair matted to his face. His beard still looked good, but his mustache had lost its flair.

  But most importantly: he wasn’t speaking, and he wasn’t moving.

  Ten, fifteen, nineteen seconds. “This is ridiculous.” Sebastian rolled his eyes and stepped forward again. He flicked Florea in the forehead. “Tell my brother to release you.”

  Sebastian stepped backward again.

  Florea blinked.

  I shifted from foot to foot, avoiding eye contact while trying not to look like I was avoiding eye contact. The man had turned my whole life upside down. For better—in helping me realize I was in love with V, and for worse—for obvious reasons. I was also a bit worried he hadn’t eaten in a while, and he’d be looking at me as a snack. He had to have been feeling quite drained. Meanwhile, Everleigh stared.

  Whatever Zack had done to Florea, or hadn’t done in this case, made it so he couldn’t move anything below the neck. Good thing, because as soon as he was able to move his face, he snarled.

  “All of this and you’re not even dead?” Florea burst out laughing—three, four, five seconds, but it wasn’t warm and fuzzy, it was thick and mocking. “But why am I not surprised? And then you have the nerve to come into my shop with your self-righteous bullshit and your asshole friends. Word of the wise, he’ll only abandon you both, too.”

  “Ah,” Sebastian gestured, looking between me and Everleigh. “The spiteful one. It's been so long.”

  Florea eyeballed me. “You’re much cuter when you’re quiet,” he said, redirecting his attention from me to Sebastian. “I should have preserved him while I had the chance, because all he gave me was a terrible headache and a great f—“

  I swallowed my throat while Sebastian swiped his hand forward, striking a slice across Florea’s cheek with an air blade.

  Florea laughed again while the blood dripped into his beard.

  “Do you want me to make him behave,” Everleigh asked.

  “No,” Sebastian said, but he tilted his head and paused in thought. “But wait—“ he turned to face Everleigh. “Gloom-flower, can you fix it? The fragmentation.”

  Everleigh peered around Sebastian to me, and then looked back up to her adopted father. She didn’t have an answer straightaway, but she stepped forward, and for just under a minute, she scrutinized Florea while he scrutinized her.

  “Sebastian always had a soft spot for the freaks,” he said.

  Everleigh stared. “Aye, I’m a freak, and you’re boring. What’s your point,” she answered, spinning on her heel. She regarded me a moment, and then Sebastian. “I can’t fix him.”

  Somehow, I didn’t believe her. Matilda had full confidence in her, and she’d been a competent enough empath to reverse my food-related problem. Unless it just wasn’t possible—

  “Is it possible?” Sebastian asked.

  “He’s really broken, but maybe.” Everleigh shrugged. “I’m not totally sure we should, but if I can’t do it, there’s only one person I know of who could.”

  Florea watched us, smirking. Whatever Zack had done to him—was doing to him—must have been preventing him from using his powers, which made sense, otherwise he’d have been able to break himself out of that block of ice, wouldn’t he?

  “Avis,” Sebastian concluded. “Avis could fix it.”

  “Avis Adler,” Florea reminisced. “How is that lunatic doing? Actually—I don’t really care. What makes you think I want to be fixed?”

  “What makes you think you’d have a choice?” Sebastian returned before looking to Everleigh. “Dusk-petal, please freeze him again.”

  Mates, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the direction the conversation was taking. Aye, I did feel sorry for Florea, but I wasn’t sure fixing him was the answer either. That seemed too easy, didn’t? It didn’t feel fair. And Sebastian was still so angry—why would he suddenly want to help him? I looked to my friend, and he must have seen something in my eyes—fear, worry, frustration, I don’t know—because he stepped over to me and took my hands.

  “This isn’t a restoration plan, Feargus Finlay.”

  The mist around the room gathered around Florea, swirling at his feet.

  He won’t get absolution—not from me,” Sebastian continued.

  The temperature in the cellar dropped, and the mist rose and snaked around the Florist.

  Sebastian let go of one of my hands, turned around, and together we watched the ice form.

  “For absolution is not what he deserves,” he said.

  From toe to head, the ice cracked at every inch until Florea was fully encased.

  “We will fix him so that he feels a thousand ways again—the thousand ways in which he made a thousand terrified young men feel. The thousand ways in which he failed my brother. The thousand ways in which he became a monster. We will fix Florea Calancea not for absolution, my friends, but for the reckoning.”