I knew it could be worse out of any prisons I had seen on TV or in books. Heck, even compared to Wyatt's old one, I had it good. I had a luxurious bathroom and plenty of clothing to try on and have fun in. I even had access to my space, where I had caches of food and books. That was the bright side, but it was time to face the reality of my situation.
Intense rage I've never felt before pulsed in my veins, stoking me into a burning wrath. Whenever I slipped away, Rex responded by tying me down to him even more. My freedom was entirely stripped from me this time, and it was impossible to ignore the inhumane action. It didn't matter how nice the confinement was. How was he and Adam the same person?
"I don't even have a place to sleep!" I shouted with bitter rage at the ceiling. As if to help me, I watched in despair and scorn as the room grew a new door again. I opened it with thin lips, fighting to disapprove of the latest addition.
I now have a bedroom.
The closet was rose-themed, the bathroom was lemon, and my bedroom was all forest. I should be mad, but I could feel my bitterness fade at the sheer magnificence of it. Fuck I was truly stuck in this magical prison. What was a walk-in closet had been turned into a hideaway home.
Once again, I had no way of tracking time. This time, it was tortuous instead of freeing. I handled myself rather well in the first few hundred hours. But as time passed, my occasional talking to myself resembled the ramblings of a mad woman.
I did all I could when it came to decorating my new home. I set up even more plants and pots until they dotted every available space. Which had grown even more. I complained and gained a kitchen resembling Mr. Dickham's, a library that attempted to rival my familial one, and a home theater that played nothing but suspicious romances where a woman moved on from a past love.
Rex had tried to pop in more than once, but each time, I attacked him, and he left shortly after.
He tried to say it was safer for me in this little space given the danger Gavin posed. Honestly, Rex was the most dangerous person to me. Gavin couldn't do shit compared to the pain and anguish that Rex had.
I wanted to leave this world more than ever, and for the first time since I arrived, I didn't want to return to Adam. How could I look at him the same? Rex was Adam, and Adam was Rex. This darkness that was clearly present in Rex had to lurk in Adam. If I didn't love Adam anymore, would he do this to me? I feared the answer more than I feared, never leaving the closet.
How had I missed that spark of madness? Maybe the difference was…I stopped myself from softening towards either of them. No matter their past, this was too much. I was trapped pregnant with a baby that was used as a literal weapon to stop me from leaving him. If I ever got to the point where I overlooked that, how could I overlook the secrets Adam kept. Why hadn't he warned me about this? Adam hadn't told me jack shit about how bonkers his past self was. And that wasn't including the lies he kept from me himself. Why didn't Adam trust me?
Who was this man I had fallen in love with? Why would he do this to me if he loved me? I couldn't find the answers, and anytime I saw Rex, white-hot rage filled me, and I always wound up attacking him, so he never stayed for long.
Time alone grants introspection. It's not often the most pleasant of things to be left with no one but your own brain. I didn't have music, and books were hard to dig into. It was hard to forget about my current state when every second I spent here was burning at my skin like an itchy sore.
So that's how I ended up turning on myself like clockwork. All my past failures paraded before my mind and won in their attempt to shame me. I even started to break down my attempts to leave this world before I realized they were half-hearted. There was a twinge of my madness to them, so it was no wonder none worked. I never slowed down to figure out how to truly go.
There had to be a way to travel in this conduit so that I could keep my baby but ditch the insane Rex in the process.
I didn't want to go back to Adam. It burned at me to break my word to him, but Adam's flimsy tower of secrets was too painful. He clearly didn't trust me, and I could no longer trust him after everything. It was such a small comfort that I warned him several times that if he kept on like this, he would lose me. And he had. I was ready to leave it all behind.
It was time to leave this world and return home, no matter the cost.
The first thing I did was make a list. It had been a long time since I sat down to write out options, plans, and the steps I needed to achieve them. It felt good to get started. I needed to document every single failure and create possible tweaks from them.
I made forty-eight unique plans, and all of them failed. I tried using blood, literary, and even the broken pieces of the quill to do something, but nothing worked.
I even cried out to Mordecai, but not even a damn flaming bug popped out. It shouldn't surprise me Rex had me wholly isolated from the world in this damn box.
I lay under the bed eating lemon tarts as I wallowed in despair.
"I want power," I said mournfully with a full mouth. I didn't care if crumbs spilled on the ground. This place just magically cleaned itself, so it didn't matter.
Nothing mattered.
The baby wiggled in my tummy, and I closed my eyes. "You matter." That was true. Your father might be a dick, but at least I have you.
"We're not completely alone, though you wouldn't know it from where we live. Once we return to the Library, you can meet your great grandma and uncle…"
Wait, could I call Gus for help? It was shameful, sure, but it had to be better than this.
It was worth a shot, though, right?
I rolled out from under the bed and booked it to the library. I pulled out paper, and after some ripping, tearing, and blood spilled in the right places, I tried for a lost witch spell.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
I'm a lost witch! Come find me. I pleaded with Gus mentally before speaking the necessary words in three different dead languages. This was a spell I knew far too well. It was the first spell I had attempted as a kid. And it was how I learned that the dead couldn't respond. My mother and father were never coming back as they didn't have flesh and blood to call upon.
The symbol I had cut into my hand wasn't the only wound burning with pain. I bit my lip and ignored both symptoms to finish speaking.
When I was done speaking, I waited with bated breath for something to happen, but nothing did. All of a sudden, too many things happened at once. The room began to shake, and I was forcibly ripped out of the home space.
It wasn't because Gus had heard my cry and rescued me. It wasn't because my grandmother had either.
It was due to Wyatt, of all people. He looked like he'd just run a marathon. I came popping out of the hideaway home towards him. The last time I ran headfirst into the arms of a man, he trapped me. My feet screeched to a halt before my head tilted as I stared at his palm.
My spell had called for a relative, and I found one. "Help me get away from here!" I reached for Wyatt, fearful that he would ask a ton of questions or do anything that could delay and speed up when Rex popped in.
Wyatt did whisk me away. Wind wrapped around the two of us, taking us to a place I'd never been.
I grabbed his palm the first chance I had and examined the symbol that had been cut into it. I showed him mine and narrowed my eyes on him. "This is a spell for finding lost family members to bring them together."
"I cut that myself just…"
I cut him off, "No more lies, Wyatt. Who are you?" Could he be Gus using a conduit? No way Gus couldn't act like Wyatt if he wanted to. Who was this man? He wasn't Mordecai, and he couldn't be Acuzio. Who the fuck was Wyatt?
"I'm your cousin," Wyatt said with a shrug as he plopped down on the ground with a heavy sigh. "I expected you would figure it out sooner, but you're really slow, Gwendolyn."
"You couldn't be from Mordecai's line," I said firmly. There was no way he could be because our family traced the ancestry very well. We had to keep the family together to hide well. One witch with the blood running around out and about could lead anyone to the rest.
A shit-eating grin spread across his cheeks before it faded away. "I'm too tired to pretend with you, Wendy. I've been trying to track you for over a month now. You're right. I'm not related to you through Mordecai."
"Wait…You must be part of Acuzio's line?" I said with wonder. "Our aunt only has one descendant left," Mordecai told me. Wait, if you're related to Acuzio…you weren't around when he was, were you? And Mordecai made a deal with you for a reason and…" My words became a jumbled mess as things clicked into place.
"Uh-huh." He said, drawing out the last syllable. Wyatt then grabbed my hand and smacked it with his own. Our touching flesh emitted a strange pulse, and the cuts disappeared on our hands.
"Now the spell is complete." He said before laying down and visibly relaxing.
"Why are you in this world?" I asked him. It didn't make sense for someone like him to be here.
"My mother stowed me away in this world to keep me safe," Wyatt said. “I’m the youngest son of Acuzio.”
I hiccupped at that info drop. "Wait, so you're a dragon?"
Wyatt lazily opened an eye to stare at me. "Do you really need to ask that?"
"Then give me one of your scales," I said, clasping my hands to beg. "Your father brought me to this time during the second timeline, and maybe yours will help me escape."
"It won't work. Do you think I'd still be in this cursed dump if it did?" Wyatt said.
"What use are you as a dragon if you can't break out of this world?!"
"Says the witch, related to a goddess who can't use her literary magic to escape a book."
I made a face at him, and he made a matching one back.
"So we're both failures," I said with a huff.
"One and the same," Wyatt said with a crooked grin.
I plopped on the ground next to him. "I keep wondering how things got this way, and I don't know. Everything got so out of hand. I had no idea when I started this journey it would become like this."
"It could be worse," Wyatt said, and I side-eyed him at that remark.
"Well, no shit Sherlock but at least we can be failures together. And no one has to know."
"I know." An all too familiar voice came into the picture, and I came face to face with Gavin.
I was so burnt out mentally and emotionally that I barely reacted when I saw him. I sat up and smiled at the dramatic goof.
"Who is this?" Wyatt said as he eyed Gavin.
"Wyatt, this is Gavin, Gavin, this is Wyatt," I said as I gestured to each man during the introduction.
"Hold on now, when did I say my name is Gavin. It's not." Gavin said with prim annoyance.
"Nice to meet you, Gavin," Wyatt said with a full grin.
"I just told you my name is not…"
"What are you doing here, Gavin?" I said, cutting him off and pretending I didn't see his rage shaking his body.
Gavin gave up on the name a bit too fast. I was hoping he'd shout his actual name in a fit of reckless abandon, but he seemed to catch himself and gather himself up into a neat appearance.
"I'm here to send you on your way," Gavin said, tugging on his lapels eagerly. "I have a whole presentation on how your appearance in this world has disrupted things. I think you'll agree that without you, it will set itself right and…
"I'm in," I said, standing up and dusting myself free of dirt and leaves.
"It won't take long, just a few…wait, did you say you were in?" Gavin stopped talking, and his words trailed off. "I haven't even told you my pitch."
"I don't want to stay." I said, "But I want to keep my baby. Someone as powerful as you can figure out a way to send me away with this body, right?" I said, lifting a brow in challenge.
"Why, I suppose I could…" Gavin started muttering calculations in a language I couldn't understand, so I sighed and looked down at Wyatt.
He had on an impassive mask that gave away nothing. What was more astonishing was what he was holding. The egg I had been searching for. Wyatt did have it all along.
I reached for it, and he handed it over with ease. Nothing happened, of course. Nothing ever went as I expected, though as I held the egg, I wasn't quite sure what I had expected to happen. Surely something was going to…but nothing did.
"Of course," I muttered as acid rose from my gut. Whatever hope I had tried not to attach to this one random thing Mordecai had given me took my last ounce of strength.
Mordecai had said it was unique and not to eat it. But he had also abandoned me like everyone else had in my life. He even noted and acknowledged these cruelties, but like everyone else, he left me to die.
All I had wanted all this time was someone I could trust and rely on entirely. Each time I thought I had been granted such a person, the rug was mercilessly shredded before my eyes.
"Fuck this," I said as hot tears spilled down my cheeks. I shoved the egg into my mouth and swallowed it.
I assumed, like before, nothing would happen. I should learn to stop making assumptions. The opposite seemed to always come true.
Because I watched with horror as my body fell to the ground. Wyatt caught me, but I couldn't thank him, as my soul had literally left my body. He was staring down at my unresponsive body with a hooded look in his eyes.
The egg killed me. I thought as I floated above everything. I was dead. Or was this what my grandma experienced when she left her conduit? I looked at my arms and saw they were see-through like a ghost.
But they were my arms, not Wendy's. I made a face, "Now what…" I said, conflicted about what to do.
I spotted a blob out of the corner of my eye, and it was carrying a lantern. Inside the lantern was one of Mordecai's flaming spores. I followed the blob with the lantern before figuring out if I was floating or walking. It was strangely hypnotic and impossible to look away.
And that was how I accidentally marched my way into the afterlife.
I soon found out it was a lobby with rows of souls waiting to be sorted. And it was run by the blobs that looked like the one I was still following.
The blob led me all the way to an office, and upon reaching it, the door swung wide open, and there sat Mordecai at a desk with a nameplate that stated, "The Keeper."
"You ate the egg, huh," Mordecai said with a dark chuckle.