Page 19 of Zero Happily Ever Afters

“Exactly. Her illusion can’t be broken because it isn’t an illusion. She is actually drawing in an ocean’s worth of water hidden in the cosmic realm, dancing between stars or some bullshit.” Wadsworth sucked a deep inhale of his cigarette, burning the last third down to the filter before he flicked the butt from his lips with his tongue. “The point is, there’s no way around the threat she brings, which is why we need to find and neutralize her immediately.”

“Agreed.” Milo nodded.

“So, let’s get you started on tracking her trail so I can kill the bitch.” Enchanter Wadsworth patted Milo’s back, ushering him to a room.

“Detain her,” Gladiatrix said with crossed arms.

“Fucking witches of this generation.” Wadsworth groaned and grumbled, muttering profanities under his breath. “So soft, all of ‘em. You’re not like that, are you, Enchanter Evergrand?”

“Evergreen,” Milo corrected, utterly baffled to hear his name mispronounced.

“That’s what I said.” Wadsworth shook his head, legitimately offended at the correction when, in his old, ragged head, he knew he was right.

I huffed but released the annoyance because Milo had the cutest, most ridiculous, embarrassed expression, honestly believing he’d misheard Wadsworth. He hadn’t. But I wasn’t sure Milo, the great Enchanter Evergreen, had ever experienced being a nobody among celebrities.

Enchanter Wadsworth led them through the house to a bedroom where a home nurse stayed on standby with a group of medical staff all stationed, remaining vigilant if their services were necessary. I didn’t require Wadsworth’s quick explanation to piece together that they were Global Guild officials since the organization obviously wanted to remain in full control of the situation, including how it unfolded publicly. Plus, each medic had the fancy golden GG emblems embroidered on their uniform.

“How’d he survive?” Milo asked; the nagging question lingered in my head, too.

“His branch,” Gladiatrix said. “He possesses some type of warding magic. When Oceanic Collapse activated, he triggered a seal or barrier to stop the water from reaching him. That’s the most our psychics have been able to discern.”

I saw it unfold in her mind, the explanation from the guild psychics who’d recently checked over the town. Everyone had water raging through their inner cores, minds shattered to nothingness, but somehow Benjamin’s magic protected him from drowning, but it also kept him from waking. A team of telepaths had delved into Benjamin’s mind, yet here he still lay locked in his own head, shielded and trapped by his own magic. How horrible.

“Why not bring him to a hospital?” Milo asked.

“We have the best of the best,” Wadsworth said, visibly annoyed. “Hell, I’m one of them. Kid’s got all he needs. Relocating him might impact the magic, and we wouldn’t want to hinder our clairvoyant’s chances of pinpointing our target.”

Milo approached Benjamin Oxland, who lay in his bed attached to several monitors, all reading stable vital signs. There was nothing stable about him, though. Even with most of my psychic energy directed toward Milo, attached to his mind, I could feel those around me, and a war raged inside this boy’s head. His fair complexion had gone ghostly in comparison to the file photo Milo had seen.

“All right.” Milo cleared his throat, taking a seat on the bed next to Benjamin and searching through the child’s potential futures while searching for threads of people he’d interacted with.

There’d be dozens, hundreds possibly, but Milo knew how to differentiate between familiar threads of fate and those wedged in momentarily. If The True Witch had any trace of her presence lingering in the magic of her victim that’d survived, Enchanter Evergreen would notice.

Unfortunately, before he saw anything tied to The True Witch, Milo grimaced at the futures lain ahead for the young boy. Pathways broke off, potentials fizzled away, and in every direction Milo stared, all he saw were the white walls of a barrenhospital room. Milo searched through the decaying threads surrounding Benjamin’s future. They weren’t withered pathways like those that belonged to people with no future, but rather, the shimmer and light didn’t radiate as brightly as once before. Well, as brightly as Milo had imagined those futures must’ve lit up before being attacked. Now, the potential possibilities were like wet concrete thrown carelessly, splattering and seeping into everything. Potential fates that soaked into every other possibility, futures that led nowhere except to a single, silent white room where the boy’s thoughts no longer stirred.

Milo saw the dying embers of other futures, but the gravel bled over them, hardening until only one fate became prophesized for this kid.

“He’s gonna stay trapped like this?” Milo stepped back, quelling his clairvoyance because the endless loop of life lost in a hospital bed after the horrors this kid survived seemed the cruelest twist of the blade from the universe.

“We’ve got some psychics on it.” Enchanter Wadsworth waved a hand, blowing smoke at Milo from his newly lit cigarette. “Focus less on him and more on the witch that struck him down.”

Milo bit back a comment because he was a psychic, the one they had on it. And he didn’t need to be a telepath to grasp Enchanter Wadsworth only had one priority. The rogue witch he hunted.

“Are you gonna find her fate still looped around his?” he asked, already too impatient to pretend he cared about the kid locked inside his own head.

For a healer, Milo expected Enchanter Wadsworth to show more compassion. He expected someone with the rejuvenation branch to aim for saving a life, finding any means to heal, to help. But that wasn’t Enchanter Wadsworth. Sure, Carter had stretched the limits of his vitality magic, even circumventing itsability to save my life, but if it had been a psychic injury versus a slashed throat… Well, there were many ailments even the best healers couldn’t fix.

Milo’s expression soured. Every nice thought he held for Enchanter Wadsworth crumbled to ashes, and suddenly, the idolizing transformed into a beast of unspoken words Milo wanted to hurl at the son of a bitch who hadn’t even remotely lived up to his expectations.

“I know it’s cruel,” Gladiatrix said, a calm evenness to her tone. “It seems heartless. But the trail won’t last. You can only glimpse potential futures connected by separated layers of interaction for so long, right?”

Yes. Milo nodded, unable to form the word to answer. Already, he tugged at the black thread weaved around the boy’s mind. It shimmered and sparkled. And unlike every other thread surrounding the boy, it remained intact. All the other future threads had withered and turned a sour gray. They weren’t lost entirely to Milo’s sight, but he couldn’t glean the potential futures from those gray strings since the lives they were once connected to had died. Every single person in Benjamin’s life had died.

“We need your help, your expertise, to find The True Witch,” Gladiatrix said with deep kindness and compassion. “She’s never made an error such as this. There’s never been a survivor to question, to observe. We need your branch to track her down.”

“I understand.” But Milo didn’t see the boy as a survivor. He saw him as the victim who suffered the most, left trapped inside his own head with warding walls to keep him safe from drowning in his thoughts but unable to ever leave the deep recesses of his inner core.

“Good,” Enchanter Wadsworth muttered. “We don’t have time to cry over one victim when we’re trying to prevent thousands more.”

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