Chapter 18

Icarus blinked and the first thing he felt was too hot. The gas heat of a furnace warmed through his shirt, making a fine mist of sweat shimmer along his exposed forearms. He wasn’t wearing his vest anymore, nor his coat. He looked around, head full of fog, and it took a moment to realize he was standing in Maren’s office. 

He looked down at his hands and turned them over as if examining palms that belonged to someone else. When did he leave his father’s? Why couldn’t he remember the walk?

“Icarus?” Maren was quiet, but he could hear the guard.

He snapped his head up and stared at her. She was holding a pencil and hovering over a sheaf of papers, the two accursed notes set off to the side. He disliked the way she looked at him, so shielded and masked it was like looking at a stranger. 

She raised her brows a fraction, “Icarus, are you alright?”

He swallowed and discovered his throat was so dry it hurt to speak, “I’m… yes. Fine. Just… how long have… what was I saying?”

A shadow flickered across her face and vanished in an instant, “You were telling me about the Veil and how the blood of a demon-possessed appears to grant immunity to a… pilgrim journeying through.”

Something in his mouth tasted wrong at the phrasing and he conjured his last memories, but his mind went blank while putting on his coat. He groaned against the faint, familiar headache settling into his temples and pressed a knuckle into them to ease the pain. 

“That fucking bottle,” he sighed. “Sorry, Mare. I think I drank too much old fire and blacked out. Damn. Must’ve been stronger than I thought.”

She studied him dispassionately and sat straighter, “How’s the head wound?”

He shrugged and ran a hand through his hair, “Not as bad as I thought, but apparently still making trouble for me when I drink.”

“Mm,” she didn’t sound convinced, but she also wasn’t the one nursing a head wound. 

“It’s a lot to take in, when your father’s apparently a murderous mad priest,” he gave her a lopsided smile meant to reassure her. If it had any effect, she didn’t show it. 

She adjusted her papers and set down her pencil with the elevated precision she usually reserved for clients. His stomach twisted, he wanted to be sick or scream or anything other than face down Maren at her most professional.

“Are you feeling alright?” She threaded her fingers together atop her desk. 

He wanted to be out from under her magnifying glass, “Fine. Just a bit… disoriented, I suppose.”

“Disoriented how?”

His arms folded tight across his chest as if it could keep her out, “I don’t know, I shot a demon in the face and got hurled into a rock pillar for the trouble, then had the utter shite kicked out of me by a pair of very gifted warrior priests and I’m fairly sure a Cardinal punched me at one point. What’s the best way to describe that disorientation?”

“Nothing else?” She was unmoved by his tirade, but she made no move to scratch anything down either. At least if she wasn’t taking notes he could tell himself it was nothing.

“No,” he shook his head despite the way it made the room spin, took a deep breath, and let his arms fall, “Look, truth be told I haven’t really slept since the whole excommunication debacle and this has all just compounded into something terrible. I’ve been drinking with a head wound and I need a proper night’s rest.”

She rose with slow calculation and rapped her knuckles once against the wood. Giving him her most assuring smile—which was none—she nodded, “Right. Well. We’ll continue this in the morning, then. Go home and get some rest, let’s see if you feel more yourself after, yes?”

His shoulders slumped in relief, “Agreed. Let me sleep it off and then we can worry if it doesn’t help.”

He turned and made for the exit, crossing his fingers he had hung his coat on its usual hook.

“Icarus,” Maren stopped him and he turned. “No drinking. Straight home. Understand?”

He lifted a hand and bid her a silent good evening before making his way downstairs. There was a small spark of victory in his gut when he saw his familiar coat on its familiar hook. It was all nothing, just a bad confluence of his worst habits coalescing all at once. Nothing to worry about. 

He shrugged it on, opened the door, and stepped out into the frigid Dublin evening. 

**

Icarus made his way to his flat with the focus of a bloodhound determined to remember every cobble and door and lamp that swung even remotely off kilter. He recited the colors of each facade, the types of cats dancing in alleys, the number of voices he caught mid-argument or drunken debate. It was the most focused, most painfully uneventful walk home he had ever endured. He jogged up the stairs and counted as he went, mimicked the sound of his lock uncatching, and bid his flat a good evening—all of it in hopes he would sear every step of his journey home into his mind. 

His flat wasn’t as bare as his father’s room had been. This space was his, no morose childhood memories to weigh down the walls and furnishings. He liked its shabby charm and warm lived-in walls in their dark wainscotting and emerald wallpaper. The sconces flared to life with the flick of a switch—he was never one to use the larger overhead lamps—and he slumped down onto the well-loved burgundy sofa he’d haggled away an afternoon for.

Stacks of papers and books lined most of the surfaces, his instinct to bring his work home with him the only thing he seemed to share with his father. He had never been more grateful to have less in common with the man. 

Icarus fell back onto the overstuffed cushions and stretched his legs out long. He threw an arm over his eyes and took a deep breath to clear out the days’ thoughts from his mind. All of it needed to melt away, disappear into the background and let him find some solace in sleep. If he didn’t find it tonight, it would force its way into his life some other way. Possibly at the most inconvenient time it could find to accommodate him. 

His chest rose and fell in even, slow breaths. The familiar tug and tumble sensation of a falling dream crept into the edges of his awareness. Icarus hated falling dreams, but there was never anything he could do to stop them when he felt them coming. 

His body jolted and he sat upright. 

His flat was gone. Around him rose the grey-green tall grass of a field at night. Overhead, a starless sky lit by the pale white light of a full moon facing the wrong direction, somehow too close and too far at the same time. His heart sank. This was wrong. It looked like his Eidolon dreams, but in a way he had never seen it before. It was always daylight, always full of life and sound and color. 

This version felt silent—not dead, but caught in an in-between space. He tipped forward and eased himself to his feet, brushing grass and dirt off his legs. Around him rose the canyon he knew, its waterfall frozen in space mid thunder. When he squinted, he realized it was moving, but making no sound as the blue-black water spilled down into the crevice below. 

He turned and scanned the black-on-navy skyline. His gaze wandered the long, jagged line of the nameless mountain ridge sprouting directly across from the canyon. It was nearer to him than he remembered, or had it never been far? He couldn’t recall. In front of it, a new shape twisted and tangled in a gnarled mess of darkness he did not recognize. Icarus walked towards it, compelled by some unseen force to approach. 

A large boulder played host to a figure he couldn’t place, loomed over by the shadow of what he thought was a hawthorn tree. He saw that sometimes in his visions, blinking in and out as the fae realm sought fit to include it when he arrived. Now, it was a shadow of itself, none of its features taking any discernable shape or color.

The figure straightened and extended a hand to him. The closer Icarus got, the better he saw it, until he was standing before a monster that should have terrified him. In this dream state, however, he had the strong feeling he could not be harmed. 

It was as gnarled as the tree, limbs too long and spine too stretched. Tall, a rag of white hair that came in thin bursts from atop its patchy head long past its shoulders and parting around curling black horns. Green-inked patterns swirled in brownish-grey skin possessing no muscle he could make out. It leaned down to see him better through opaque, blackened eyes and a thin-lipped smile. It wore a half cloak, tattered and torn, and even in the dark Icarus knew it was a rich red. From under its half cloak came the rustle of leather and a rush of cool night air. A clawed, leathery wing arced up overhead towards the night sky. 

For all its unnatural features, its smile was broad and warm. It raised a long-fingered hand in a gesture of welcome, “At last. Good evening.”

“Evening,” Icarus nodded back and looked around. “What is this place?”

It cocked its head and spoke in a deep, soothing baritone, “Do you not recognize your own mind?”

He shook his head, “I do, but… why is it night?”

The creature’s smile split and he caught the shine of fangs, “There are three and thus we are three. Three worlds, three faces, three places. You have your world of man, of fae, and… of me, shall we say.”

“Why am I here?” He would parse the riddle later. If he was on borrowed time, he needed to be smart with his questions. 

It rested its arms on knobby overlong knees and leaned closer to him, “Because you are being called, my young prince.”

“Why do you all keep calling me that?” He frowned, he hated the epithet with an unreasonable passion. 

“Because this is what you are,” it lifted a hand and touched a nail tip to his chest. “But this is not my place to tell you secrets which are not mine to keep. Ask a better question.”

“Who are you?”

It nodded its approval and motioned to itself, “I am a messenger of sorts. An ambassador. One who is sent to ask of you a favor.”

He took a half step back, “I don’t understand. Explain.”

It sighed and straightened, back cracking in a way that sounded more break than pop. It rose to its feet and he realized the full, towering height of the winged dream-creature, “The blood of my people is being spilled at the hands of yours. There are lies upon lies being poured into your world, a twisting and knotting of things that bring great risk to us all. You are needed, young prince, to untangle these things. You are needed to save a peoples of whom you are not.”

“Why me?” He swept his arm out wide and raised his voice to a shout, “Why not any other person? Why not one of you? I didn’t ask for this! I don’t want this Church and these dreams and whatever the fuck is happening with these blackouts. I don’t want any of it!”

It made a sympathetic sound and bobbed its head, “And yet you are the only one who can help. Will you help us? Will you stop a war that is coming with the certainty of dawn and aid us in saving the three which may never be one?”

Icarus turned on his heel and paced, hands tangling in his hair, tearing at it until his scalp stung. All of this cryptic nonsense, none of these things could speak plainly even in a dream. He roared and shook his head, jamming a finger at the creature. 

“What if I say no? What if I say no and I leave all of this bullshit behind me?”

Its expression turned sad, wistful, “Then doom is spelled for us all. I have been giving what I can with the time we have left, prince. Help us and I will aid you by clearing the way.”

Icarus ran a hand over his face and turned towards the darkened ridge leering at him from the unmoving night. He stared a little longer, a little more unfocused. Something was standing along the back of the jagged mountains. 

Silhouetted by the bulbous, ivory light of the too-close-too-far moon, was a hunched and hooded form seated on a horse—the skeleton of a horse? He could see light between ribs and the haggard remnants of old flesh mostly rotted away. Bone sockets glowed with angry red fire when the horse tossed a maneless head. The figure’s face was on him, he could sense it in the way a rabbit senses the hunger of a fox. Two pinpricks of silver glowed in eerie discordance with the soft white moon as it watched him from the dark.

A leathery finger curled under his chin and pulled Icarus's attention back to the conversation at hand, “We do not have long, the Dark Horseman will call upon his master and she will cast me from this place. Your answer, young Icarus.”

Doom. Veils and blood. Demons. Gates. A history that wasn’t a history at all. Three realms all fighting for something he couldn’t understand. Now a dream in this inversion of a place he thought he knew. It wasn’t a real question at all. 

“Fine. I accept.”

“Then I will help you find the crossroads that holds your father. You will encounter his jailer and your friend must face what she fears most if you are to break the machinations of a mad priest and a madder arbiter of death,” the creature spoke with urgency, glancing to the empty ridge where the skeletal horseman once stood. “The Morrigan is coming, it is she who damns us all. Remember. These are her hands in these attempts at undoing what has already been done.”

“The Morrigan? What-?”

It hissed at him and raised its hand. The palm against his chest was so large, its clawed fingers spread over both shoulders, “I will guide you if you trust me with your fear, young prince. You must go.”

“Why are you trying to help me?”

It hesitated, surprising him with a light tap of talon on his cheek, “Because nothing is as you believe it to be. And a favor was done for which I attempt to repay. Now. Wake up.”

It pushed.

Icarus fell backwards. Falling through darkness, through air, through impossible nothing and everything. The world melted away in streaks of black and gray and ivory, paint on a canvas left in the rain. 

**

He surfaced from the dream with a gasp and tumbled back in an effort to scramble away in his panic. Earth cold and hard with frost crunched under his hand, the moon above offered paltry diffuse slivers of light. He fought for air, to orient himself, darting around and taking in his surroundings. No sofa, no emerald walls, no comfortable stacks of too much work on every surface. 

He stared ahead of him for a moment before making himself look up. Horror overtook him and he let out a cry of despair. He knew exactly where he was. Icarus raised his hands and stared at the dirt-caked palms, the torn and bleeding beds of his nails, the mud-blackened skin of his fingertips. 

He was in the graveyard at the Church of Saint Lazriel. He was digging right where they had buried the head of a man possessed by an abhartach. And he had no memory of how he got here.

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Dark, grisly, and difficult to put down. The Secrets That They Keep follows Alyx Beck, a high profile escort, through her day to day and how she comes to realize the life she 'chose' wasn't actually a choice. Check content warnings as there are several graphic depictions, traffiking, and violence. This novel made me think of what Epstein Island might have been like for these women. It was a compelling read that brought some visceral emotional reactions.