Page 61 of Can you take it?

I ran my hands through my hair, feeling frazzled. “So what does that make you?”

He shrugged, taking another long swig of his drink. With each word about his past, I noticed his intake of alcohol increased.

“So you just keep doing the same cycle again and again?” I asked. “Get drunk in Eromreven and sleep on the floor like a nobody?”

“I am a nobody,” he mumbled.

As much as I hated to admit it, I could empathize with him. Without my powers and the comfort of Seelie, I wasn’t feeling much like myself.

“Then what? What’s the point? Why go through the tiers just to return again?”

He was out of his chair in an instant, looming over me with lightning-red veins in his eyes. His hand widened in front of my throat. “I should kill you right here,” he said, voice low and menacing. “I should end it all for you. And you know why?” “Why’s that?” I asked him as I told myself to remain calm and not give him a reaction even though adrenaline coursed through my body, begging me to fight back. “Because I see a lot of myself in you,” he rasped. Okay—offensive and it also made no sense.

“So you want to kill me because I remind you of you?” I asked.

His hand trembled in front of my throat before he sat back down, cooling off as quickly as his anger had flared. “You should thank me,” he muttered. “I’d be doing you a favor.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Eromreven isn’t for people like us,” he said. “People like us,” I repeated.

He shot me a look. “People that want to help and aren’t pure evil.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Do you think Eletha and Anna are pure evil?”

“Eletha, possibly. Anna, no. But she’s one of us too.” “What do you mean, one of us?”

“Did that man hit you in the head?” he snapped. “She’s good. She’s a good person. She doesn’t have evil, spite, and malice flowing through her veins, dictating every move she makes. You’re stupid not to let her take over Tartarus,” he said through gritted teeth. “She could change it for the better. Anna’s filled with compassion and kindness but is strong enough to enforce.”

I rolled my eyes and took a sip from the drink in front of me. “Oh yes, so much good to be done in Tartarus,” I said sarcastically. When I looked back, he was glaring at me, and he didn’t seem as drunk as I had originally thought.

“I think your problem is you pick shallow battles, like bar fights and getting kittens out of old fae’s trees,” he said, taking another drink. “The big battles frighten you.”

“And what big battle is it that you speak of specifically?” I asked, slightly offended. I’d never turned down a fight in my life and had been in several large battles. I had the scars on my body to prove it.

“The battle within yourself,” he said.

I stared blankly at the philosopher. “Don’t you think, if you’re going to talk like that, you should have a scraggly white beard and a staff? Perhaps guard bridges from foot traffic or something?”

“Whatever, let’s get this over with,” he said, chugging the rest of the liquid from the bottle and standing. The bottles clanked loudly in his pockets as he rose.

We walked out of the tavern, and even though my gut told me to stay quiet and not anger the philosopher drunk with the deadly touch, I couldn’t help myself. “How come your powers still work here when no one else’s do?”

He let out a heavy sigh, obviously wishing I would shut up. He wasn’t alone in wishing that. “Because I’m not one of you. I’m not fae. I’m from the human realm. The laws don’t apply to me the same way.”

“Then why do you keep coming through the tiers? Why don’t you leave when you get to the tenth tier?” I asked. He was one of the most confusing people I’d met in a long time.

His voice trembled as he stopped, and there was a glimmer of tears being held in his eyes. “And where would I go?” he asked. “Where would I go? Back to the human realm? Look at me, they don’t want me. I can’t get into the Elysian Fields—I’m not pure enough. So I go back to Eromreven.”

“To drink your life away?” I said, and he started walking again. “How many times have you been through the tiers?”

“Enough,” he replied.

“But how do you know where we’re going or what we’re doing if the tiers are different for everyone?”

He stopped and turned to me, his face flushed with frustration and alcohol. “Because, as I’ve told you, I’m not faerie. These tiers were built specifically for you. Things you should be able to see right in front of your face, you can’t. That’s how it was designed—to trick you, to keep you here, but not me.”

We kept walking. “Don’t you want better for yourself?” I asked.