10   the devil in the details

Circe King calls at midnight. A shrill cry emits from Mercy's phone amongst the tense, fading peace of Monmouth Manufacturing. The BMW is in park, resting in its rightful place out the front of the building, wheels still glued with the presence of the fairgrounds. Mercy is shrouded in darkness. She's a cocoon, a caterpillar nestled within the safety of her sheets. Ronan stands by the pool table, and Gansey lies on the floor by his crumpled, beloved Henrietta. He's only just begun to fix the pieces. Her phone rings again. It's a loud, survivalist feeling that kicks in. Her thumb moves to the accept button but Mercy wants to do nothing but reject the call.

          "Mama?" It slips out. Mercy hasn't called her mother anything close to something warm since she was 14 years old. But she's exhausted. "What's wrong?"

          "There's shadows. Horrid fucking shadows in your room."

Mercy shifts, confused. Circe King has always been familiar with the shadows, why is she complaining now? "What do you mean? There's always shadows, Mama."

          "No, you stupid girl." Circe snaps. "There's shadows."

This changes nothing for Mercy. She repeats, "There's always shadows."

          "Your room is shrouded in them," Circe says. "It's blocking my dreaming. Too many in the forest. Too many in the heart." She isn't making much sense, babbling without reason. "They're gone, you know. All gone. I can't see them anymore."

          "Who, Mama?" Mercy asks. "I don't know what you mean. You were supposed to stop dreaming."

          "You can't just stop dreaming, Mercy." Circe answers. "I'm always dreaming."

Mercy frowns. It's panic rising in the pit of her chest. Circe is never reasonable in this state.

          "But they're gone, you see." She continues. "I can't dream without them. No. All my work would go wrong. Could you dream it for me, girl? Could you?"

          "No." Mercy says shortly. "I'm not dreaming anything for you."

Everything that a King dreams is made of a repercussion. They're a line of broken people, after all. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When Glendower's advisor tried to take his power for themselves, they were cursed. When Circe King dreams, it's always poison. And when Mercy King dares to dip into her pool of power, the same occurs. That's what happens when you overindulge in your abilities as a King woman. Reality has never been kind to them. Mercy sucks in a breath, waiting for a response. The quiet is harsh, electric with unresolved tension. One wrong move around Circe King and she bites. She was raised to be a monster, and she taught Mercy the same.

          "You stupid girl," Circe cries, a screech loud enough to ring through the speakers and into the broken air. "You're so selfish. Think of what you could be doing for me. Who else is going to fix this family while you spend all your time running from yourself? You stupid, stupid girl."

Iron-clad in exhaustion, Mercy is frozen, staring at the screen of her phone with an open mouth. Ronan is a flash from the pool table. She lets him snatch the her phone from her shaking hand and cut off Circe King's piercing cry. Without a word he throws the phone onto her lap, and Mercy wraps her cold fingers around it.

Circe King is finally quiet.

Mercy releases a breath that she didn't realise she was holding. There's a darkness in the corner of her eye. Shifting behind Gansey, Illusion appears from the shadows, and they smile.

Mercy doesn't remember falling asleep.

It's quiet. Her dream paints a confusing picture: like Gaea had pulled the fairgrounds from the rightful place and untipped the balance, setting the dust and bone into the forest of her dreams. The rock still sits in the middle of the clearing, Illusion's handkerchief resting on it's stop. Surrounding her, the browning grass is littered with glass shards and broken memories. She steps through it carefully. The flames of Mallory's car flicker underneath the moonlight. Mercy glides towards it, red dress pooling at her bare feet. As she steps, the sound resonates, echoing. It lingers, Doc Martens against the floors of St. Agnes and cracking stone. But there's nothing beneath her feet. Just grass and glass bottles. Mallory's body is crooked in the near distance. She sucks in a breath, something compelling her forward. 

Mercy comes to a stop in front of Mallory, dirt sinking into her dress as she kneels on the dying grass. It's cold against the fabric and her scars. Blue's laughter echoes through invisible speakers, Gansey's following Ronan's gruff snort. Noah's giggle, faint and subtle in the background.

          "They aren't sustainable," they say.

          "Neither am I." Mercy answers, tiredly.

Illusion considers her. "You could be."

          "I made my choice." Mercy's nearing a crossroads where her two reality's meet. She has no hand, no advantages in this decision, just an unequal chance of life and death. She doesn't matter anymore. There's greater things. "You should respect that."

          "Your family has been persevering for generations, Little Spider." They step closer, mouth bending to her ear. "This continued state now lays on your shoulders."

The hair raises on her arms, pressing her palms to the grass and leans her weight on them. She's pensive, exhaustedly so. "You have my mother. You don't even need me."

          "But you," they say in her right ear, "Little Spider, are far more powerful than anyone in your past." Illusion shifts, their breath against her left ear. "If you just let yourself go, you could be even more."

Mercy's chest burns, sternum aching beneath her skin. A flicker of temptation alights: a flame bright within the confines of her cracking chest, the bones breaking and walls concaving. She's had a taste before, last summer a flash of adrenaline. It's a drug, to be told you're special. It's an addiction, to be told you're something rather than nothing but the shell of a broken girl. Mercy rises, pulling a golden locket from around Mallory's neck. She claps it tightly, fiddling with it's chain and pressing her fingers into the smooth surface. It's familiar. Home.

But she can't take it.

Against every screaming piece of her patched-up heart, Mercy leaves it behind. She rests it on Mallory's broken body and steps out of the fairgrounds. She leaves it all behind. 

Mercy King wakes up alone. She looks around. There's pieces of her in Monmouth Manufacturing now—a stray skirt on an Aglionby Swim Team duffle and lipstick stains on white napkins. There's a small mirror propped up against Gansey's desk, hers and fractured. How Mercy looks at herself in it's broken pieces, they don't know. But the mirror remains propped against the desk, jagged and unafraid of it's reflections. These things that make her human. But a piece of Monmouth is leaving that morning, and Mercy watches like a stranger from the apartment's windows, godlike underneath the morning sun. Her expression is pinched, red-hair reflecting a halo around her head. She watches over her people: outside, Ronan sprawled out on the roof of the BMW, blowing a kiss to the skies where Gansey and Adam are carried in the careful bowels of his sister's piloting skills. They are mine, something in her howls protectively, and the time I have left is theirs.

Mercy feels their presence behind her before they speak. She is exhausted, bones heavy and eyelids laden with lead. The previous night was riddled with nightmares: Mallory's contorted body laid flat against the rock in her clearing, barking laughter and distant fires. Mercy woke up sweating. She woke up screaming. Now, she stands tall, limbs stretched out and proud. She will not be broken by fabrications. Underneath the morning light, Illusion looks over her shoulder—a pair of Kings.

Mercy regrets leaving her headphones on her mattress. Ronan shifts on the roof of the BMW. She can hear him as he disappears into the confines of Monmouth, allowing herself to step away from the windowsill and return with a cup of coffee, steam curling and pooling around her palm. It's hot, burning the roof of her mouth.

Mercy sips quietly, and Ronan returns to the Camaro, a pair of keys glinting in the sunlight. He's the most hesitant that she's ever seen him. Ronan runs a hand over the rear panel, pressing his skin into the hot metal. Mercy frowns. Gansey's one rule is to not touch the Camaro. But she makes no move to stop him. This is Ronan's decision. July pulls at Mercy's pores, sweat slick on her back, moist underneath the fabric of her black summer dress. He seems to pause, stuck half-way between a dream and a memory. Mercy takes another sip of her coffee. It's beginning to cool underneath her tongue. Ronan moves to the door. The keys glint again as he slides them into the lock. He turns it, and it pops. Ronan smiles, something wide and dangerous like there's nobody to see it and it's consequences.

But Mercy is watching. Quietly, she eyes him like a hawk, dangerous in the sun and a devil hovering over her shoulder. He sinks into the passenger seat, the vinyl contorting to his foreign body shape. Mercy's frown deepens. She hoped that he'd choose better. Her close eye shifts as her phone buzzes in the confines of her pocket. She slips it out, turning it in the palm of her hand with careful fingers.

KAVINSKY: there's something waiting for u. u just need to take it
[ ATTACHED IMAGE: #1 ]

Blonde frays the edges of the photo and Mercy's stomach plummets. She doesn't see Ronan pull out his phone at the same time.