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I reach for the whisky bottle again, hand shaking, and this time don’t bother pouring it into the glass. I just take a deep swig and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Shit.” I shake my head and force myself to turn back to face them.
“Garratt! Open up!” A fist on the door. It makes me jump and sends shivers of fear skittering down my spine.
I see his eyes. I see his wings. I feel the shift in the air. Not just the air. The universe. The cosmos.
In that moment, as Finn rose into the air and his wings became thick, black harbingers of death, I knew this was what I’d always feared.
Even though I didn’t realise it.
The catastrophe our ancestors talked about, and the secrets they kept guarded in the library, and the centuries they spent trying to carefully manage the peace of our kingdom... This is it.
This is the moment that was always coming and yet never foretold.
Not out loud.
Because if it had been . . . I would never have . . .
I lose my grasp on the whisky bottle and it falls to the floor. It splinters into several thick shards, and the smell of alcohol fills the air.
“Garratt! If you don’t open the door we’ll come in through the bloody window! What are you playing at?” More fists, more noise.
I am staring at the whisky, watching it soak into the cracks between the tiles.
The edges of my vision have blurred. I can’t think straight. I have never felt fear before. Not like this.
Perhaps I have.
When I looked into my wife’s face when she told me she was expecting a baby, and when she got sick, and when she died, and when the baby died with her, and I was left alone.
I drop to the floor.
I can’t breathe. I can’t see. I can’t breathe.
“For fuck’s sake, Elodie, help him,” Pria barks.
In the periphery of my blurred vision, I see Pria march over to the door and fling it open. A shaft of light strikes across the dark flagstone floor. I shield my eyes. I still can’t breathe. I am on the floor in front of the bar, knees drawn up to my chest, behaving like a terrified child, and I can’t do anything to snap myself out of it because all I can see is the eyes.
The red, blinking eyes of the demon that will destroy us all.
“Fuck off!” Pria yells at the customers who are waiting to be let in.
“You can’t tell us to fuck off, this isn’t your place—” someone starts to argue with her.
She slams her foot into the floor and flashes her guard’s badge. “Lord Eldrion has ordered this place to be shut down. If the courtyard isn’t clear by the time he gets here, I don’t want to know what happens next. Do you?”
There’s a simmering pause. They know she’s lying, but the threat of Eldrion is still enough to make them scurry away silently, lips pressed tightly together, thoughts locked inside instead of spoken aloud.
Elodie kneels in front of me and puts her hands on my shoulders. “Garratt... are you all right?” she asks.
I try to focus on her face. She is pale, and her complexion is clammy. She looks terrified. But clearly she doesn’t feel it. Not the way I do.
“Of course, he’s not all right.” Pria tuts and strides over to the bar. She walks behind it, rummages, then returns with a paper bag full of peanuts. She empties it onto the floor, then shoves the bag into my hand. “Breathe into this. Slowly.”
“Can I have one?” Elodie asks, pressing her palm to her chest.
Pria rolls her eyes. “No.”
