Wings

Wet sand clung to Merrin’s feet as he paced up the beach, the tide was finally on its way out and he could enjoy the solitude of the waves without slicing his feet on the untumbled pebbles lining the beach. He’d been watching the water gradually retreat from his window, the water eating away at whatever crates remained on the shore. Zane was asleep for once, all bundled up in furs on the sofa as the fire dwindled to ash in the hearth.

He was warm, safe, and still had half a glass of gin if he fancied it. But it was enough for Merrin to leave him where he was, perhaps he would be awake by the time Merrin got back and he would ask for an explanation for his absence so late at night. It wasn’t like Merrin had work, he would likely have more in the future, but right now there was nothing. Nothing to fill his days or his nights, nothing to line his pockets either.

Just a whole lot of sitting around, tinkering with various bits and pieces around the Clocktower, and trying to ignore the voice inside his head. A voice that, despite his best efforts to tune it out, was becoming far more difficult to avoid. Merrin couldn’t really remember when it started, but it was nights like this that it was becoming that much harder to ignore.

The moons above him were nearly aligned, though only two were full. The largest of the three, Idrimos, had been full just a few days prior, and was steadily decreasing. Since then, the voice had become gradually louder.

It started small, a tune hummed in the otherwise silent room, a perfect melody that had genuinely made Merrin believe he was going insane. The haunting music would become just another thing dancing around his head, distracting him from anything and everything he was trying to do. But then it grew. A whisper in the dead of night, a voice entirely unfamiliar to him. Deep and tainted with an accent that lay somewhere between the aristocracy and the stars themselves.

It would call to him, say his name as if it were testing the way it rolled off the tongue. He’d heard it do so before, back when he couldn’t do anything but exist in his skin, his thoughts trapped somewhere in his chest and would never reach his lips. Then it moved on, trying to coax Merrin to respond to the questions posed. They never made much sense, and Merrin would never respond.

That’s how the fae worked, or at least that was what his mother had told him. Sometimes those voices were the Gods playing tricks, Caxulla’s teasing when His immortal life grew too dull. Sometimes it was just an unseen entity trying to lure him into the depths of the woods for a reason he wanted to ignore.

This wasn’t that. Or at least he didn’t think it was.

Even now, when there was no one else around and all he should have been hearing was the waves, the voice was there. Deep in the back of his head, buried under the depths of his inner-most thoughts as it began to make itself known.

‘A lovely night, don’t you think?’ it asked, sultry and sweet.

Merrin had heard those exact words before, on a night much akin to this one, in the same tone as those girls who would run their perfectly filed nails across his arms at the bar. Fingers pressing against the muscle and eyes shining as they moved close enough that all Merrin could smell was their perfume.

But this scent was different, it wasn’t the typical florals and sugar-sweet notes of the perfumes made from ground up petals and whatever oils they had available. It also wasn’t the kind that hung thick in the air of the western side of town, all exotic and made his throat itch. This was the sort that lingered in the libraries and museums lost to time, shrouded deep within the manors half-buried in the heavy snowfalls of midwinter. Expensive liquor, forest berries, aged parchment.

‘And to think, you’re out here all by yourself.’ Another phrase word for word, replaying a memory that was hidden behind too much ale and a red-lipped smile. ‘I could help with that.’

‘Leave me alone,’ Merrin said outloud and stood in the shallow waves as they lapped against his ankles.

‘Somehow I doubt that will be possible even if we both wanted that,’ the voice said and Merrin felt a chill run across his back, a cold ghost of fingers across his shoulderblades. ‘Just as much as you seem to hate hearing me, I despise hearing you and your incessant, meaningless thoughts. You seem to lack the ability to think about anything of remote interest, not even the most meagre gossip. I bet your brother has some incredible thoughts in that mind of his, I bet he hears the most astounding tattle in the west. And yet you barely leave that dreadful tower you call a house.’

‘What the fuck do you want?’ Merrin asked, looking out to the ocean as if it could respond.

‘What do I want?’ the voice asked and the air dropped a few degrees. ‘I think you should really be asking what you want, because right now it is as though you want nothing in life. You mope around and mourn the abysmal life you had when you know you could have so much more.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Is it not obvious? I am within your mind, stuck in your psyche with nothing to alleviate the boredom but you.’ The air in front of Merrin became hazy, a purple light flickering above the salted waves.

Merrin blinked, hoping that it was just a trick of the light, but with every close of his eyes, the haze became sharper. A form began to emerge, two branching wings spreading out wide enough to close off everything else in Merrin’s vision. The purple light condensed before him, and an orb of shining amethyst that hummed in the night. Darkness swirled around it, a body beginning to form, long limbs and a thin, exposed waist.

His eyes drank up the details as they appeared, before the face formed just a breath away from him. Sharp features and black eyes looking into his own, and Merrin forgot how to speak.

‘Hello, Merrin.’