“Yes. Dodos are in several of them. Until the arrival of humans, they were at the top of the food chain. No predators.” Giulia keeps walking, a hand to the cages, guiding herself. Even without the hand, it’s impressive how well she knows the place. She must have walked these corridors countless times. “The only threads they’re not present are in the ones the Mauritius Islands do not exist, for one geological incident or another.”
This whole timeline thing is too much for my head. How many people know of this? Is this common knowledge to witches? The study of multiple universes promises a headache I don’t think I can handle. There’s already too much on my plate.
“This is one of my favorites.” Giulia’s voice calls my attention back to her. She stands in front of another cage, its ground made in such a way it looks like a river, all blue and dark and deep. Amazing work. Then I lift my eyes and my jaw drops.
“What is that?” I breathe out, and Ren ends the space between us, his arm brushing mine. I look up at him, but he shakes his head, eyes wide in disbelief.
The creature has the upper half of a beautiful black horse, its eyes so deep and so fiery I could swear it’s alive. The way it’s been stuffed left a front leg ready to pounce, and I would certainly get out of its path. On the other hand, I don’t think he’d be able to follow me long.
His lower half is that of a sea monster of stories. Tail covered in slick, bright black scales, it curls away from its body as if the creature was jumping out of a river, ready to attack. It’s marvelous and frightening at the same time.
Giulia reaches out and touches its snout with a fondness across her face. “A kelpie. His name was Fergus, and he was quite a charmer. Met him during my time in Scotland.” She sighs, then presses her lips together. “Fergus knew of my situation with immortality, and the curse. This was the one way we found of keeping him with me forever.”
I gape at the way she strokes the snout until her arms fall away. God, I shouldn’t ask. Shouldn’t ask, because I’m afraid of the answer. “So... How exactly did it work?”
She shoots me an empty look over her shoulder. “What?”
“Between you and Fergus.” Thekelpie. It might have been, of course, an asexual relationship. A platonic one, even. Do kelpies even talk?
Giulia breaks into laughter. “Kelpies are shapeshifters, Shadow Mage. He could turn into a man.”
Relief washes over me, for no reason at all. From the way Ren’s shoulders drop, he must feel the same. I chuckle, pretending I didn’t accuse her of zoophilia in my head. “Oh. Good for you.”
“They weren’t mates, though,” Alicia says from the rear of our group. “We’re her mates. This one was just a slip.”
Giulia laughs and keeps walking. “The problem with meeting your mates later in life. They can be quite jealous of the ones who came before.”
My heart wrenches just thinking of anyone loving these men before me, even when they obviously did. Maybe not Ren, because of his lonely upbringing, or Tristan with being raised by the Collector. Apollo and Don definitely, though. Don is four hundred years old, and if I were immortal and unbound to anyone, I would sure as hell fuck a lot.
I’d rather not think about it.
“Good thing Cassandra had no partners before us,” Apollo says, and I look over my shoulder at him with an arched brow. He smiles.
I open my mouth to tell him the truth — did he really think I was a virgin? Was I that bad at fucking? Even though I’m no expert, I had my previous flings, and I never tried to pretend I was a coy, pure girl waiting for her deflowering.
Giulia slips her arm through the crook of mine, craning her neck to approach my ear. “Let him believe whatever he wants.” And she chuckles, a vivacious sound that makes me like her company even more. I smile back, holding her arm against mine, the magic thrumming between the two of us.
I’ve never had friends, much less female ones. Cross my fingers and hope I can actually keep this one, with all the whirlwinds of my life.
She takes us around more creatures from the deep crannies of imagination. Beautiful and scary, bright purple and oranges. Some are extinct in nature, others thrive, but all are unique specimens, like an albino wolf shifter that gave his body to her. It’s good to know these were gifts, not taken against their owner’s will. It makes it feel less like a zoo and more like a place for remembrance.
This menagerie is much better than the last one I knew.
The room ends in a white wall with one large circular staircase rising into the ceiling. Giulia invites us up, her fingers dancing on the handrail like she’s playing a tune. Maybe she is. Maybe, in one of the universes she observes, she’s listening to someone playing a song. We make into the very roof of the house, a place even more singular than the rest of it.
Here are the plants we saw when we arrived from the outside. Trees, pines, ferns. Green takes the place, more than in the menagerie below. Flowers of all colors and bushes of all kinds create an unharmonious setting, like an abstract picture you squint and cock your head at to understand. Benches break the greenery here and there, some made of marble, others of stone and wood. There’s no order here, no intent. Just beauty. I peek over my shoulder at my men, all gawking. Donatello has draped his jacket over his head, protecting his face from the sunlight, keeping to the shadows.
“This is my favorite place,” says Giulia, leading us to the very edge of the roof and planting a hand down on the rail. “In very few threads, this changes.”
“You always love plants?” I ask, reaching out to run my fingers through the heart-shaped leaf of one.
She nods. “Yes. Very much. They’re beautiful and powerful, each with their own set of skills.” And by the way she smiles as she looks off at the horizon, I know she’s away. She’s not seeing us any longer. Well, hearing.
“It’s a bit chaotic, is it not?” Donatello says softly, and I feel him behind me before I see him. Not his warmth, because he lacks that. It’s just his presence. The comfortable way I feel when I’m close to him. The way my body reacts to his.
“Chaos is beauty,” Giulia replies, her gaze still in the distance, and I’m not even sure she’s talking to us. Her words do stick, though.
Chaos is beauty. Even when I learned always to seek order. When the entire world always searches for order like it’s the single most important thing. Chaos. Why does chaos feel like something I can relate to?