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Adaine had more reason than most to hate mind-control magic.
When Riz told them that Fabian had cast Suggestion on him even after they’d all sworn never to use that magic on each other…
Adaine didn’t care how hurt or angry Fabian had been; there was no excuse he could give to justify him casting Suggestion on their friend.
Fabian disappearing right after was probably best for him and for Kristen’s diamond stash; Adaine might have killed him for it if she’d been given the chance.
The fact that he’d fucked off to Leviathan for more partying after he’d broken their trust was just icing on the shitty cake that was his behavior for the last half of senior year.
Grief was a terrible thing, but it wasn’t an excuse to blow off your friends or mind control them.
‘Fabian Aramais Seacaster, you shit-fucking asshole, how fucking dare you? You tried to MIND CONTROL Riz? What the fuck is wrong with you?! Get back here and apologize!’
Usually, when Adaine cast Sending, she felt the message go through, followed by a tingling sensation while she waited for a response.
The snapping, electric jolt of the spell bouncing back at her was new. It felt like a rubber band had snapped right in her face.
It was nothing like the few times she’d gotten no reply, the spell fading into nothingness. Her magic snapping back and hurting her could mean only one thing.
Fabian was blocking her somehow.
Still furious with him over his treatment of Riz, she decided that if she couldn’t tell him how pissed she was over Sending, she’d just have to do it in person.
Shoving papers off to one side of her desk, she turned to regard her Scrying mirror. Aelwyn had given it to her as a belated birthday gift; that she’d been able to afford it should have been the first clue in junior year that Aelwyn wasn’t making ends meet with her teaching job alone. It was beautiful work, with gold, green, and blue scrolling around a large, clear circle of pure silver. Pulling it closer, Adaine closed her eyes, focusing on Fabian’s likeness.
A moment later, she jolted backward, her head pounding with pain. Fabian had evaded her Scry, too!
That bastard. He must have been using some sort of nondetection artifact to avoid the consequences of his actions. Coward.
Fine. If Fabian didn’t want to talk, Adaine wouldn’t speak.
If he was going to be a dick, he could come to them to apologize. She wouldn’t be dragging him back anytime soon, that was for sure.
~ Day One ~
Fabian’s first hint that something might be wrong was the blinding headache that greeted him as he woke up. He never got hangovers.
The second, third, and fourth hints came as his mind fluttered up from slumber: he couldn’t see, he was tied up, and he couldn’t move because he was stuffed into a box.
Those realizations jolted him awake immediately.
Fuck.
He tested the ropes around his hands and found them just tight enough to fully immobilize him without cutting off his circulation. Whoever had done this was either very practiced at bondage or they’d kidnapped people before.
Scouring his mind, he tried to remember what had happened…
Wait.
Crayde.
Double fuck.
He’d followed the wrong person to get his rocks off and gotten himself into a disaster instead.
He really did follow in his parents' footsteps. His father had a half-dozen tales that started just like this. They all involved daring escapes and copious bloodshed; Fabian just had to do the same.
It would be much easier if Crayde hadn’t done such a good job tying him up. Not only was he bound at his hands, feet, and knees, but the knots and any slack the rope might have had were outside the crate.
Before he could discern much more than that, the container he was in opened with a loud crack, letting blindingly bright light into his eye and obscuring whoever stood above him. The person hit him with a spell almost immediately, and Fabian slumped as he felt the energy drain from his body. His mouth was parched, and he felt worse than he ever had after a long practice in the summer heat. He held back a gag as his dry tongue rubbed against the back of his throat.
It was a wasted effort. A toxic, dense fog flooded the room, the stench so terrible that Fabian immediately retched, losing what little was in his stomach. It felt like the stink lingered for hours, though Fabian knew it was likely only a few minutes. His stomach muscles ached by the time the room cleared, and he could see his captors again.
Sure enough, Leighton Crayde stood over him, someone else obscured behind him.
“What do you want,” Fabian asked. He tried to spit at Crayde’s boots, but his throat was too dry to manage it, forcing out a wheezing cough instead.
“Oh, this isn’t really about what I want, lad,” the man told him, leering at Fabian with a calculating sparkle in his eyes. “It’s more about what other people want bad enough to pay for it.”
Fabian suppressed a shudder. It wasn’t just a kidnapping, then. This man intended to keep Fabian captive.
All the more reason to escape quickly.
“It’s a shame that gold around your neck’s part of your skin, kid,” Crayde said, stepping closer and grabbing Fabian’s chin. His grip was slimy from all of the retching Fabian had just done. “It’d make for a damned fine collar, otherwise.”
“Like hell I’d let you collar me,” Fabian snarled.
Crayde snorted. “Like hell I’d give you a choice, boy.”
Fabian slipped his chin from Crayde’s hand and bit him as hard as he could. Blood flooded his mouth as he felt something snap under the force of his jaw. Crayde howled and shoved him back so that Fabian slammed his head back against his crate, dazing him as the first digit of Crayde’s thumb fell from his mouth.
His mouth was so dry from the spell earlier that the blood almost felt good as it slid down his throat. Fabian barely held back another retch.
“Fuck!” Crayde swore, kicking his foot hard into Fabian’s stomach. Fabian gasped, winded, while Crayde swore a blue streak above him.
Just as he was gathering himself to attempt another attack, a voice Fabian had heard in his nightmares since spring break of sophomore year echoed from behind Crayde.
“That’ll be enough o’ that,” Chungledown Bim said, stepping into the light. Fabian felt the blood drain from his face. “Why don’t ye’ take a minute while yer’ betters speak, eh?”
Fabian scoffed as well as his bone-dry throat would let him. “In no world are the two of you—”
Suddenly, Fabian wasn’t there anymore.
He hurtled down, down, through the sea beneath their ship, squirming and squelching through the bottom of the ocean mud. His skin peeled away as he was pulled through solid earth, his muscles cooking in the heat of magma rising from the core. Just as he was sure there was nothing left of him to destroy, he broke through some kind of barrier, hurtling through a burning sky with all the Nine Hells below him.
He crashed into a tower of wailing, screaming souls, their spectral bodies bursting apart into blood and viscera as he hit them, again and again until he was covered in it, swimming in a sea of entrails. He broke free only to rocket through room after room of every torture implement he’d ever heard of and more being used on the souls of the damned. He watched as hellhounds tore a woman apart, as a man burned alive, as another was squeezed into pieces by a giant constrictor.
Just when he thought he couldn’t stand to see another atrocity, it stopped suddenly, leaving him gasping for air as he dangled above a flesh-meltingly hot fire. He’d just opened his mouth to scream before he was yanked backward through the same horrors once again.
He was violently pulled back into his crate, naked and shaking. Ropes no longer restrained him, but he’d never felt so weak in his life; his mind echoed with the screaming of the Hells, and though his body was uninjured, he could still feel his skin burning and flaking off him.
Before he could get his bearings, a powerful wall of magic hit him, and chains snaked around his limbs, weighing him down onto the floor.
“Now then, boy,” Chungledown Bim said, stepping into the room where Fabian lay prone on the floor. Magic laced around his voice, giving Fabian no choice but to obey his following command.
“Open.”
~ * ~
“He doesn’t want to see you,” Mazey told Riz, sending a bolt straight through his heart.
Riz had waited three days for Fabian to come back on his own. Once that time was up, he beelined for Bastion City, knowing it was the second most frequent place Fabian spent his time.
He’d thrown all his friend’s advice to the wind, picking the lock on Fabian’s fancy penthouse apartment only to find the place in pristine condition, fresh flowers on the tables, with sparkling water and a charcuterie board cooling in the fridge—but no Fabian to be found.
A note on the table by the entry said: ”Cleaning and restocking to continue until Mr. Seacaster’s return,” with no detail on when that might be or where Fabian was if not there.
Having found nothing useful at Fabian’s apartment, Riz headed to the only person he knew who might have seen Fabian after the catastrophe in Riz’s office.
“You’ve seen him, then?” Riz asked desperately.
“A few days ago, yeah. He was really clear that he didn’t want to talk to you or any of the Bad Kids.”
“I get that, Mazey, really—”
“Do you?” Mazey asked him. “Because it seems like if you got it, you’d respect his wishes and give him privacy.”
Riz winced with his whole body. “He told you what happened, then? What I did?”
“No,” she replied. “All he told me was that you and the rest of your party would be looking for him and that he wasn’t ready to talk to you yet. What did you do?”
“Wait, no,” Riz said, tail practically vibrating behind him. “He said ‘yet’? He told you he wasn’t ready to talk to us ‘yet’?”
“He did, and I’m not saying anything else until you tell me what happened. He was so upset, Riz; I’ve never seen him that bad.”
“I know, Mazey, okay?! I know he’s upset; I was there!”
“There for what , Riz? You’re both my friends, but I don’t appreciate being put between you like this. Tell me what happened!”
“Fine!” Riz nearly shouted, trying to keep his breathing even. Retelling how badly he’d screwed up his friendship with Fabian was the last thing he wanted, but he’d do anything at this point to get some news about where Fabian might have gone. “He’s been acting off since the beginning of the year, so I’ve been keeping track of where he’s been going in case he gets in trouble. He’s been doing all kinds of risky stuff, but he got hurt recently, so I pulled all of my evidence together to show the Bad Kids so we could come up with a plan for how to help him.”
“That’s really fucked up, Riz,” Mazey told him, her eyes wide.
“I get it! I violated his privacy by showing that stuff to everyone! I thought I kept it unspecific enough, but apparently, I was wrong!”
“Riz…” Mazey said, eying him. “You do know that’s not the only problem, right?”
“What do you mean?” Riz asked, exasperated. “Fabian saw the Bad Kids seeing all that stuff, and he disappeared! He was obviously mad about it, or else he wouldn’t have left!”
“Riz,” Mazey said again, gesturing toward one of the benches lining the sidewalks on her school’s campus. “It’s not just that you shared everything with other people. You basically stalked him as he was doing things he didn’t want you to know about.”
“That’s just basic information gathering, Mazey.”
“Is Fabian one of your cases, Riz?”
“Obviously! He’s missing , Mazey!”
“Okay,” she said, sitting up straight and dusting off her legs. “First off, he isn’t missing; he told me where he was going—”
“Where?”
“After we talk about this. Secondly, Riz, you were following Fabian before he stormed off on you; he wasn’t a case then, was he?”
“Well, no,” Riz said, hesitating. “He’s my friend; I just needed to know where he was.”
“That’s called stalking , Riz, and it’s fucking creepy. People have the right to do things their friends don’t know about.”
“But how am I supposed to protect him if I don’t know where he’s going?”
“You can’t always be there to protect the people you love, Riz,” Mazey told him, looking an odd combination of comforting and stern. “It’s not just that, either. Sometimes, the people you care about don’t want your protection.”
“He needs it, though! He’s already gotten hurt once; what if it happens again?!”
“Then you help him through the consequences if he asks. He has a right to refuse your help, Riz, even if you think he needs it.”
Riz bit back the need to retort. His actions had gotten him into this mess; he should at least hear Mazey out on what he’d done wrong.
“I just… don’t want to see him hurt.”
“I get that, Riz. Do you think I want to see him hurt?”
“No,” Riz admitted quietly, tail drooping. “I know you don’t.”
“Sometimes the people we love make bad decisions, Riz.” Mazey looked wise beyond her years but so, so tired. “We just have to be there for them when the consequences come.”
“I hate that. I hate the worrying.”
“Yeah,” Mazey sighed. “I get that, for sure.” She picked at a loose string on her jacket, staring off into the trees. “You don’t need to worry too much right now, at least. Fabian said he was heading to Leviathan to stay with Cathilda for a while.”
“Really?” Riz asked, perking up. “That’s where he is?”
Mazey smiled, clearly amused at Riz’s mood taking a one-eighty as she relayed that information. “Yes,” she said. “He wanted to make sure someone knew where he’d be because he knew you’d lose your mind if he didn’t.”
“Thank gods. He probably wasn’t wrong.”
“He definitely wasn’t, Riz. He knows you well.”
Riz grinned. “Of course he does; we’re best friends!”
“Yeah,” Mazey said, giving him a knowing look. “With that in mind, you should probably give him his space, Riz. You know where he is, so you don’t need to worry about that anymore, but he was really hurt. If you want to stay best friends, I’d suggest you give him time.”
Riz wilted. Mazey was probably right, but that didn’t make her words easier to hear. The last thing he wanted to do was spend his last summer of complete freedom without Fabian at his side.
Still, if that was what Fabian needed, he’d do it.
Riz missed him already.
~ Day Six ~
When his father died at the end of freshman year, Fabian had started growing his hair into dreadlocks. He’d wanted to honor that part of his heritage and something else to remind him that even without his father, he was still Fabian Aramais Seacaster, son of Bill Seacaster.
Now, as yet another asshole used his locs like a leash, Fabian vowed that he’d shave them off the second he escaped. Heritage or not, he’d never wear his hair like this again.
Fabian glared as best as he could with only one eye, his mouth pried open by a gag. All it earned him was a chuckle and a slap to the face as the pirate continued assaulting him.
He tried not to let the commentary get to him, but Chungledown seemed to be an expert at choosing rapists and torturers who loved to run their mouths. As if it wasn’t bad enough to be assaulted, violated, and terrorized day and night, he had to listen to a constant stream of insults, degradation, and humiliation as well.
Fabian had no idea how long it had been. Bim’s eternal starvation spell meant he’d been aching from the second he’d woken in chains, and it wasn’t like his dungeon setup had any windows to help him keep track of the time. He didn’t sleep so much as he passed in and out of consciousness, never able to tell when the next round of suffering would begin or whether it would end before the next time he passed out.
He tried not to think about what his ‘clients’ might be doing to his body when he was unconscious; it couldn’t be worse than what they did when he was awake, could it?
The not knowing haunted him.
Fabian closed his eye, nearly sagging into the pirate’s grip. They’d been at this for hours. Would today be one of the rare days he’d be allowed to pass out without something terrible happening to him?
The pirate abruptly shoved him away, knocking him to the floor. The impact hurt , irritating existing wounds and bruises and rattling all the way into his bones. Fabian knew how to care for himself at sea, so scurvy had never been an issue before Chungledown’s barrage of curses took effect, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t recognize the characteristic bone pain for what it was.
His father had drilled Fabian on how to prevent malnutrition from the moment he could eat solid foods; he’d never have tolerated Fabian getting into a situation where scurvy was possible.
“Heh, if only your father could see you now,” whoever-the-fuck said, echoing Fabian’s thoughts.
His papa would be so ashamed of him. Not only was he a prisoner, subject to the worst humiliations Chungledown and his endless parade of degenerates (even among pirates, which was saying something) could imagine, and not only had he failed to fight his way out in the interminable time he’d been locked away, but here he was, on his hands and knees on the floor in front of his assailant, dying of a disease so preventable only idiots contracted it.
Could that be why Chungledown’s magic hadn’t run dry? Maybe Bill knew what was happening and believed that Fabian’s inability to stop it proved he deserved it.
Fabian didn’t know what was worse: that he couldn’t completely dismiss that as a real possibility or that he was feeling more and more like this was Bill’s fault, so it didn’t matter what he would think about Fabian either way.
Aside from Chungledown, almost every person who’d hurt him had made it a point to emphasize that it wasn’t about him. It was about sticking it to his father. Fabian himself was irrelevant; his only use was as a vessel for hatred directed at the man who’d raised him.
In a twisted way, it made Fabian almost grateful when it was Chungledown’s turn to make him miserable. At least his grudge was about Fabian himself.
He couldn’t describe how much he hated that there was any bright side to a psychotic gnome shitting in his mouth. As if it weren’t hellish enough that the starvation spell made him crave it, even as it was the most disgusting thing he’d ever experienced. The hunger effect meant that his body was piteously grateful for everything that hit his tongue, and the instinctual satisfaction, the gratefulness, made Fabian’s stomach turn more than anything else.
How much further could he fall?
~ * ~
Sentient trafficking was a dirty business. They could be covered in anything from blood, sweat, or worse, depending on what the product was meant to do.
They were almost always streaked with tears.
Still, it paid to keep them somewhat tidy, especially when their looks were part of their allure. Prestidigitation was the usual solution, but Leighton had always thought there was something to be said for a more physical approach.
Someone always had to clean up after Bim had taken his turn with the Seacaster kid. There was something truly wrong with that man both in his mind and bowels.
Walking into the kid’s cell was like walking into a decades-old outhouse that had never been cleaned. It was utterly foul. Leighton cast Prestidigitation on the room to eliminate most of the stench, but that left the kid.
Seacaster was on his hands and knees, vomiting up what looked like his entire digestive tract (and half of Bim’s). Leighton smirked, setting one bucket onto the floor just outside the cell, hefting the other higher with both hands.
The kid’s shriek when the scalding mix of soap and water hit his back was deeply satisfying.
“Get yerself together,” Leighton told him. Seacaster flinched when Leighton tossed a roughly bristled brush at his head. “Scrub yerself down; I don’t have all day.”
Impressively, Seacaster managed to lift his head to glare. “If it’s so important to you,” the kid said between retches, “why don’t you come over here and do it yourself?”
“Oh,” Leighton replied, leering. “You ain’t tired of strangers touching you yet?”
For someone with only one eye, Leighton had to give it to the kid; he had one hell of an impressive glare. “Go to hell,” Seacaster said, managing to gather enough saliva to spit at Leighton’s boots.
“Well, now,” Leighton said, smirking. “That ain’t happening anytime soon. Why? You wanna go down, let yer daddy see what’s become of his ‘darling boy?’”
He may have had a good glare, but the kid’s poker face was garbage. Leighton could have seen the kid’s despair at a hundred paces.
“That’s what I thought,” Leighton said, smirk widening. “Now then, are you gonna scrub, or am I gonna have to get someone in here to blast this mess off you?”
The satisfaction as the kid begrudgingly followed his orders was sweeter than any dessert.
He loved watching them break.
~ Day Fifteen ~
Fabian was dying.
Oh, he knew his body couldn’t fail in this place. After Fabian's last desperate attempt to harm his captors and escape, Bim had explained the intricacies of the Imprisonment spell in great detail. Some part of him would exist here forever, an endlessly empty vessel for hatred, pain, and suffering, but he knew he wouldn’t have to be there for much longer.
What did it mean for the afterlife if someone’s mind and spirit gave out but the body continued on?
It probably meant he would never get an afterlife. At one point, Fabian would have believed that his father would come looking for him if his soul never showed up to terrorize the Nine Hells with him. Still, after so long at the mercy of a man empowered entirely, exclusively by Bill Seacaster, Fabian knew he didn’t matter anymore.
Had he ever?
To the extent that he could look forward to anything, now, he longed for the utter oblivion he knew was coming for him. He wouldn’t be able to leave his body behind, but with his mind fractured into dust, it wouldn’t matter anymore. He was so close, he could feel it.
It was only a matter of time.
~ * ~
To say that Adaine could hold a grudge was like saying water was wet. She’d spent most of her life suffering under a cruel family and unable to do anything about it; the anger just accumulated for years, building up without an outlet. She’d had temper flares, of course, and gotten in trouble for them, but she’d never really expressed the anger that simmered under her skin while she lived in the oppressive environment of the Fallinese diplomatic estate in Elmville.
Even now that she was free of them, with a wonderful father who encouraged her to express her feelings, Adaine held on to her anger. She knew it wasn’t healthy, and she certainly expressed it more frequently than she had before leaving her awful parents, but even when she tried to ‘let it out,’ some stayed, making its home in her bones and cropping up every time the object of her ire crossed her path.
Luckily for him, Fabian hadn’t come anywhere near her after he’d cast Suggestion on Riz and then run off rather than face his actions like the adult he theoretically was.
To Adaine, that was a violation of Riz’s personhood, and she wasn’t sure how to forgive it.
Of course, that meant that when Riz practically begged her to find Fabian, so he would know where the idiot had gone, it put her in an awkward position.
“C’mon, Adaine, it’s been weeks,” Riz said, his eyes wide and pleading. “He’s had time to cool off, I just need to know if he’s ready for me to apologize yet.”
“You shouldn’t be the one apologizing!” Adaine burst out. She was pacing the length of their Bastion City apartment. They’d chosen to sign their lease early so they’d be able to get settled before they both started working and taking classes, but that meant a lot of time spent bouncing between Elmville and the city, trying to get their various ducks in a row.
They were already beyond stressed, and Fabian’s disappearance had thrown a wrench into the works. The last thing Adaine wanted to do was spend her limited time and energy tracking down someone trying to ignore his problems by drinking and fucking his way through Leviathan.
“I don’t care how angry he was,” Adaine continued. “He broke our trust!”
“We… I did the same to him, Adaine,” Riz said. She’d never seen him look so subdued.
She hated it.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right, Riz,” Adaine growled. “You hurt him, sure, but that doesn’t make it okay that he mind-controlled you!
“Maybe so, Adaine, but he’s missing !” Riz couldn’t keep the hiss out of his voice.
“Mazey said he was on Leviathan with Cathilda. She’s more capable of keeping him under control than anyone else we know.”
“Mazey said he was heading to Leviathan; we don’t know if he made it there.”
“I’m sure he can manage to get to the giant pirate city without help, Riz,” Adaine replied.
“You don’t know , though, do you?”
“I don’t need to know exactly where he is at all times, Riz! I’m not his babysitter!”
“Neither am I, but I am worried.”
Adaine let out an explosive sigh. Continuing the argument would lead them in circles and make it more likely that one would say something they’d regret.
“Look, the last time I tried to talk to Fabian, the message bounced; he must have gotten something to block magical communication. It’s pretty clear he doesn’t want to talk to any of us.”
Riz stared, momentarily silenced. It didn’t last for more than a few seconds, but his surprise at how far out of his way Fabian had gone to avoid them was still apparent.
“What if you messaged Cathilda instead,” he suggested.
“I could do that, I guess,” Adaine conceded. “What should I say?”
“Just ask her if Fabian’s arrived yet and if he might be ready to talk to us.”
“Alright. Just give me a moment…”
‘ Cathilda, this is Adaine. Could you tell me if Fabian has arrived yet and if he’s ready to talk? He owes some of us explanations.’
“Nice,” Riz said, complementing her choice of words. They settled in to wait for Cathilda’s reply.
It came almost immediately, Cathilda’s lilting voice apparent over the connection.
‘I’m afraid I couldn’t say, dearie. I haven’t seen Fabian since I left for Leviathan. What’s happened? Is everything alright?’
That was weird… It had been several weeks since Mazey told Riz about Fabian’s plans to stay with Cathilda for a while.
‘I’m not sure, ’ Adine replied. ‘He told Mazey weeks ago he would go to you. We figured time with you might make him feel reasonable again.’
Riz glared at her for her wording, but he didn’t have time to say anything before Cathilda replied again.
‘You haven’t heard from him in weeks? Adaine, can you Scry on him so we know where he is, at least?’
Scrying wasn’t the simplest of spells, but Adaine was concerned at this point, too. She’d have to teleport back to Elmville first; she hadn’t moved her Scrying mirror to the new apartment yet. Neither she nor Riz planned to fully move in until closer to the start of Bastion City University’s academic calendar.
‘I can’t right away, but I’ll head back to Elmville now. I’ll message as soon as I’ve Seen something; should be less than thirty minutes.’
“What’s going on?” Riz mouthed at her silently.
“One second,” she mouthed, still waiting for Cathilda’s reply.
‘See that you do,’ Cathilda said shortly. ‘If he’s gone missing, I’ll need to start looking for him immediately.’
Adaine almost replied to let Cathilda know they’d all be searching for Fabian if he was missing but decided at the last second to hold on to the spell to conserve the magic in case she needed it.
“Riz, can you teleport back to Elmville right now?”
“Absolutely,” he replied, his eyes wide. With no more warning than that, Adaine grabbed his hand and—
—they appeared in her bedroom in Mordred Manor with a faint ‘pop.’
Adaine moved to her desk, pushing some papers and knickknacks off the top to get to her Scrying mirror, which was lying face up under a stack of books. Moving the books to the floor, Adaine settled into her seat, closing her eyes to start her Scrying.
Almost immediately, she rocked backward with the force of a rebounded Scry. Her head pounded as her eyes and nose started to run. Adaine grabbed blindly for a tissue, not surprised at all when she felt Riz take her hand and place a hand-stitched handkerchief against her palm. She pressed the fabric against her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose to stem the pain, when suddenly—
—she wasn’t there anymore. She was a fly on the wall, watching as someone—watching as Fabian was held down and raped by a much larger man covered in poorly-done tattoos. Adaine watched in horror as her friend suffered, barely processing what she was seeing. Fabian was filthy, hair and skin coated in blood and dirt, and paler than she’d ever seen him.
The thing that scared her most of all, beyond his condition and what was happening to him, was that he wasn’t fighting . Fabian was a fierce fighter and protector; he would never stand for anyone, himself especially, being treated poorly, but there he was, his body moving limply as he was assaulted. She would have guessed he was unconscious had it not been for his single eye, open and focused on her but utterly empty of Fabian’s characteristic fire.
She stared into his eye, seeing as a hint of recognition, of hope fluttered through it, when—
Just as abruptly as the vision began, it ended.
Adaine barely made it to her trash bin before she was violently ill.