22   this is what it means to be a king / the fine print

It is easy to ignore a call to arms when you're familiar with the number. Mercy feels no remorse as she hits the red decline button, but Calla is equally as unremorseful, filling the teenager's message box with a plethora of colourfully worded voicemails through 300 Fox Way's home number.

Ignoring Calla once again, Mercy shoves her phone in the back pocket of her jeans, pressing her fingers into the skin of her moistly slick temples. Steam rises and falls around her, streaking the mirror and curling around the redness of her fallen halo of curls like horns. A collection of pills rests in the sink in front of her, tiny rivers of disassociation all culminating into one ocean of an inevitable choice. Removing her fingers from her temples, Mercy grips the sink's edge in whitening hands, gnawing at her lips. Berlin looms behind her, perfectly free of any source of water that drips from the bathroom. She's never safe. Especially underneath the damp darkness that casts over Henrietta via the night sky's blanket of cloud-covered stars.

          "Just try one," they say. "There's no harm."

          "There is always harm," replies Mercy. "It's a by-product of your existence."

Berlin turns their nose up at her.

Somebody bangs on the bathroom door.

          "King," Ronan says. "Hurry the fuck up."

Mercy doesn't answer verbally, delivering a swift kick to the door in return. She hurries, expertly twisting her strands of red hair into Dutch braids and crowds the rainbow pills back into their white bottle, shoving them into the safety of her jumper pocket. It's less than five minutes before she's back out into the openness of Monmouth Manufacturing. seated on the floor next to Gansey and his model of the town. Glue rests in the space between them, a small tube that she toes towards him whenever needed and then pushes away from his work area as Gansey attempts to keep his anxious hands busy.

          "I mean this in the kindest possible way," Malory says, reclining in Gansey's desk chair, "but you cannot make tea for love or money."

Gansey frowns. "I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. It seems like a straightforward process."

          "Not enough milk, not enough brewing time and you don't pour the water directly on the bag." Mercy pipes up, curling her fingers around her own mug. Her emerald eyes are tired, lazily focused on Gansey beside her.

          "If I wasn't terrified to spend time in that bathroom you call a kitchen I would advise you," Malory says. "But I'm afraid that one day I will enter that room and never come out."

Mercy nudges Gansey the tube of glue. He picks it up with nimble fingers and fixes a tiny staircase, looking up at the Dog watching him judgmentally. Gansey looks back at the stairs. They're slightly crooked. He straightens them, and Mercy swipes back the glue, pushing into its body and feeling it move in the tube.

          "Better?" Gansey asks.

Mercy hums.

          "Don't mind him," Malory replies. "He's highly strung. I'm bemused, Gansey, by the lack of thought you've put into the action of sending Glendower to sleep for six hundred years."

Mercy purses her lips, shifting uncomfortably and hiding behind her mug.

          "I've put thought into it," Gansey says. "Well. Conjecture. I have no way of proving or disproving theories. And even though it's interesting, it's ultimately irrelevant."

          "I disagree, from the point of a scholar, as should you."

          "Oh, should I?"

          "By your own assumption, Glendower travelled here via ley line. A perfectly straight line across the sea, not an easy thing to accomplish. Quite a lot of fuss to undergo to hide a prince. Why not hide him on a Welsh line?"

          "The English would not have rested until they found him," Gansey says. "Wales is too small for a secret like that."

          "So is Henrietta." Mercy murmurs.

          "Is Wales? You and I walked Wales. Tell me there are not places in those mountains that would have hid him." Malory says. 

Gansey's mouth remains closed.

          "So why sail three thousand miles on a one-way trip to a new world where no one can make a decent cup of tea?" Malory pulls himself up, clumsily moving towards the pool table of maps. Gansey follows, Mercy close behind, peaking over his shoulder. "Why would one undertake the nearly impossible task of sailing a perfectly straight line across this sea?"

Ganey cannot answer.

          "The ley lines, the corpse roads, the death roads, Doodwegen if you believe the Dutch, but who does, this is how we used to carry our dead," Malory says. "Coffin-bearers travelled along the funeral roads in order to keep the souls intact. To take a crooked path was to unseat the soul and create a haunting, or worse. So when they travelled in a straight line with Glendower, it was because he was to be handled like the dead." 

          "So he was already sleeping when they left," Gansey vocalises. "They were keeping his soul with his body."

Mercy grips her mug harder.

          "Precisely. And now that I am here, now that I have seen your line -- I believe they sailed all this way because they were looking for this place." Malory taps on the map.

          "Virginia?"

          "Cabeswater," Mercy answers. "Coedwig."

Her answer hangs heavy within the space of the room, a tense and pregnant pause.

          "If not Cabeswater itself, then a place like it," Malory continues. "They may have merely followed energy readings until they could find a place with enough force to maintain a soul in stasis for hundreds of years. Or at least for longer than his attendants thought they themselves would live."

Malory looks at Mercy. She presses her chin to her chest, staring into the small space of her tea-filled mug and gnaws at her bottom lip.

Gansey's expression is riddled with consideration. "The psychics said there are three sleepers. Not just Glendower, but two others. I suppose what you're saying would explain why there might be others here, too. Not necessarily because no one has tried to put anyone else to sleep elsewhere, but because it has failed anywhere but here."

          "And a Guardian."

          "A Guardian?" Gansey looks at Malory with confusion.

The old man is still focused on Mercy.

          "You have three sleepers," he says. "And a Guardian."

Mercy places her mug on the pool table, creating a ring of brown on a spare map. She crosses her arms, leaning against the table.

          "Don't you think it's finally time to tell the truth, Miss King." Malory asks.

Levelling him with a narrowed gaze, Mercy purses her lips. "I don't know the whole truth."

          "An omission is still a lie."

          "Mercy?" Gansey probes.

          "What I said to Adam is true." Mercy answers. "Carys King was an advisor for Glendower. My family has been here a very long time, but she didn't stay willingly. She did something. I don't know what, but ever since then the Dreamer's of the King line have been cursed. Most things we create or pull from our dreams are twisted. Pots kill plants. Fireworks would be exponentially more dangerous. Clothes don't fit right. You get the idea." Mercy thumbs her locket. "This is passed down from King to King and it holds back some of the darkness while it can ... But now that my mother's dead, it's not going to do me much good."

Mercy leaves out the details of Berlin. They aren't her friend's issue—pressed suit, sharp smile and growing shadows. They are Mercy's issue alone. She picks her mug back up, taking a sip of her nearly cool tea and makes a face.

          "But since whatever happened, King's have been in charge of maintaining Henrietta's safe status." She continues, looking at Gansey. "Circe knew about you the moment you set foot in the town. I knew about you. Clearly, she underestimated you and deemed you as no sort of trouble. But you lot have been nothing but a pain in my ass."

Gansey smiles, slight and warm with the slightest laugh.

          "I'm off to bed." Malory interrupts. "Are we exploring tomorrow, or may I drive to that other Virginia again for some more cartography?"

          "Other?" Mercy says, confused.

          "West Virginia." Gansey replies. "I think we should be able to come with you after class."

          "Excellent."

Malory leaves his cup of tea on the pool table, and Mercy puts her mug back down beside it, clearing her throat.

          "Gansey."

Gansey hums.

           "Be careful, okay." Mercy says. "There is something that will want to stop you, and I think it's beyond my control."

Breathing in, Gansey looks at her with furrowed brows. He puts a hand on Mercy's shoulder. "We'll be fine."

Mercy nods, wanting to believe him but a flicker of shadows in the corner of her eye makes her stomach sink. She squeezes his wrist once, leaving him and Noah alone to go to bed.

But she doesn't sleep a wink, the pill bottle still heavy in her pocket.