by KJ Baker
“Taviel!”
Blood dripped onto the floor as I stalked towards the man. Pain lashed at me from a hundred different places and a detached part of me wondered if I was bleeding to death, but I pushed that concern aside.
“Get away from her,” I hissed. “Get away from her or—”
A wave of power blasted me across the room. I slammed into the wall with enough force to crack the stones and fell to the floor, stunned. My vision swung in and out of focus and I realized I was lying by one of the large open windows. A heartbeat to the left and I’d have been thrown right through it. I heard footsteps approaching. A pair of shiny black boots came to stand in front of my face.
“You just don’t know when you’re beaten do you, Raven?” Taviel hissed. “Give it up. You’ve lost.”
I struggled, fighting back the darkness that wanted to pull me under. Summoning the last shreds of my magic, I hammered my fist into the floor. The marble bucked, sending Taviel sprawling onto his back. I dug my blade into the floor and used it to lever myself to my feet.
Taviel’s hand whipped out and a throwing star suddenly embedded itself in my shoulder. Pain ripped through me, my arm went numb, and my blade dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers.
I yanked out the piece of pointed bronze and dropped it to the floor with a clink. It was getting hard to see straight. I blinked to clear my vision, raising my remaining blade as Taviel stalked towards me.
“I’m going to enjoy killing you,” he growled. “Give my greetings to our kin in the Twilight Lands, won’t you?”
“You can give that greeting yourself,” I snarled. “When I send you there.”
He lunged at me and I was a fraction slower than I should have been. I brought my blade up just in time to block the downward stroke of his sword but only just. He pivoted away from me, lightning fast, ripping his blade across my bicep. My fingers opened involuntarily and my one remaining weapon clanged to the floor next to Taviel’s throwing star.
“Raven!” Asha screamed.
“Stay back!” I yelled at her. “Don’t come any closer!”
She ignored my command and dashed in my direction. But the human man—the simulacrum—had regained consciousness and he threw himself into her path, grabbed her around the waist and dragged her back. She struggled in his grip.
“Let me go!”
“You heard what he said!” the simulacrum replied. “You will only get yourself hurt!”
She twisted and wriggled, fighting like a wildcat, but the simulacrum had surprising strength and held her fast.
I forced my attention back to Taviel.
“So here we are,” he crooned. “And in the final reckoning you were found wanting, King of Shadow. For a while I really did begin to wonder whether you might be stronger than me. I thought your bond to the mortal would prove too much. I’m very pleased to have been proven wrong.” His lips curled in a sneer. “Look at you. You’re no better than the weak mortals you have such affection for. You can’t even defend yourself.”
It was true. I was spent. Utterly spent. My magic was gone, too much lost in the effort to break the Spire’s wards. Too much leached away through the blood that coated my body, from the dozens of wounds that punctured my flesh. My limbs, the muscles so expertly sliced by Taviel’s blade, would not respond. I was helpless.
I met his gaze, refusing to be cowed, but addressed my words to the simulacrum. “If you have any affection for Asha at all, any shred of decency within you, get her out of here. Get her back to the mortal realm somehow.”
“Don’t move!” Taviel growled at the simulacrum. “Nobody is going anywhere.”
He turned his attention back to me. “The bond you share with her, will it follow you to the Twilight Lands? Or will it snap completely when you die? So many questions. So many experiments. It will be interesting finding out.”
He raised his blade over my head, its smooth surface glinting in the light. I did not look away. I had always known I would die in battle. So be it.
“No!” Asha screamed. “Raven! Fight!”
She closed her eyes, her hands curling into fists, and the bond snapped taut between us. Vitality surged through it. Strength surged through it. Power surged through it.
Straight into me.
I gasped as it burst through my veins like a drug, sweeping away my weakness, healing my injuries, filling my body with a heady, almost overwhelming power. I looked at Asha and saw that her face had gone pale, shadows beneath her eyes. Then she sagged in the simulacrum’s grip, unconscious.
What had she done? She had given me her strength. Her life-force. She had given me everything.
I could not waste it.
With a roar, I surged to my feet, knocked Taviel’s blade from his grip with a savage blow, then grabbed him by the throat. His eyes widened with shock and rage as I bodily lifted him from his feet. His hands beat ineffectually at my arm, trying to dislodge my grip, his magic battered against me, as weak as butterfly wings.
I blazed with power. With Asha’s life-force. With our bond. I was invincible.
“Let me go!” Taviel gasped. “Please!”
“Call off the Unseelie army and I will let you live to stand trial before the Spire.”
His eyes were bulging in his face but he managed a weak nod. I dropped him and he collapsed to the floor, gasping. He reached into his robe, eyes fixed on me, and pulled out a small glass vial, which he smashed on the floor. A cloud of silver smoke hung in the air for a moment before swirling out of the open window. From far away I heard the distant sounding of horns.
“It’s done.”
I turned away, to where Asha lay unconscious in the simulacrum’s arms.
“Arion!” the human shouted suddenly.
I spun as Taviel’s dagger came lunging for my back. I dodged the clumsy blow, spun, and landed a roundhouse kick into his stomach hard enough to send him staggering back into the wall.
Except there was no wall. Only a hole, gaping out onto nothingness—one of the open windows.
Taviel teetered to the edge, his arms pin-wheeling, horrified realization flooding his eyes.
Then he fell. His scream disappeared into the abyss with him.
I watched him fall for a second, a black dot that grew smaller and smaller, then drew a shaky breath and went to my knees at Asha’s side. I lifted her from the simulacrum’s arms and held her gently. Her breathing was shallow and fast, her skin pale, hair plastered to her forehead with sweat.
“Save her,” the simulacrum said in a pleading voice. “Please. She’s my friend.”
I saw no injuries. She was whole but...empty. She had given everything to me. Her life-force still zinged through my blood.
“Oh, Asha,” I whispered, cradling her head. “What have you done?”
I groped for the bond and found it flickering between us, weak and fading.
She was slipping away from me no matter how strongly I tried to hold on.
Asha! I screamed in the silence of my mind. Come back to me!
Just as she had done for me, I transferred my strength into the bond, sending it to Asha, pouring it into her body. But it made no difference. The essence of Asha, the thing that made her who she was, was no longer there. It had already gone and what lay before me was only an empty vessel.
Fear swallowed me, so deep and visceral that it left me gasping. No. No. No.
Asha.
She had gone where I could not follow. She had gone to—
A memory flared. Asha standing before an open doorway through which voices called to her. It was a place I’d seen before. It was a place Asha had seen before.
The Twilight Land.
Calling on the same magic I’d commanded to transport myself into the Spire, I folded reality in on itself, sought the tiny spaces between the fabric of the world. Searching, searching...
There.
A faint thread led from Asha’s body to...somewhere. I followed it. The Spire fell away and I was suddenly stan
ding in a vast hall. Behind me, it stretched away into darkness, into infinity. But before me rose a wall into which had been set a wide, high door. It stood open and beyond it I caught a glimpse of a green land under silver moonlight. Voices spoke from beyond, so many voices I couldn’t make out individuals, the sound coalescing into a hiss that sounded like the waves of the sea breaking on a beach.
And before that open door stood Asha.
She was poised on the threshold. One step was all it would take...
“Asha!”
She turned, her expression full of joy. “Raven? Do you hear it? Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Hear it? Hear what?”
“The music. Such beautiful music.”
I swallowed. “Asha, step away from the door. Come back with me.”
I held out my hand but she didn’t take it. Instead, she turned away, gazing rapturously at the land beyond. My heart stuttered in my chest. I forgot to breathe.
“Asha?”
“She cannot hear you,” said another voice. It spoke from beyond the door. “The music calls to her now. Calls her home.”
“No,” I growled. “I will not lose her. She’s going to live.”
“She has made her choice,” the voice said and I thought I detected a hint of compassion in it. “She chose death to save you. You cannot unmake that decision.”
“To the abyss with that!” I snarled. “I am the king of the Shadow Court!”
“You think that holds any sway here?” the voice said with a soft laugh. “All are equal before the Gate. All are one in the twilight.”
“Then take me instead,” I said, a pleading note creeping into my voice. “Please. Save her.”
“I do not have the power for such a thing. Her life-force is spent. The tether that anchors her to the world is gone. She is human and the candle flame of her life gutters.”
She is human. There was something in that. Something that I couldn’t quite tease out of my tangled thoughts. She is human. Mortal.
But I was not.
And then I knew what I had to do.
I ran towards the doorway. Every instinct in me screamed in protest. I was alive and had no business here at the threshold of death. But I ran anyway, ran with all my strength. I slammed into Asha just as she was about to take that irrevocable step, wrapped my arms tight around her, taking us both crashing to the ground on the precipice.
“I sacrifice my immortality!” I yelled, knowing my voice carried through into the Twilight Land, knowing that any bargain struck here would bind me body and soul. “I bequeath it to her! You hear me, damn you! I bequeath it to her!”
For a moment there was nothing but silence and the thundering of my own heart. Then the voice spoke again.
“Your bargain is accepted, Arion of Shadow.” I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I heard approval in that voice.
Then, so suddenly that I felt the shock waves rocket through my body, the door to the Twilight Land slammed shut and darkness enveloped me.
I opened my eyes to sunlight streaming through the open windows of the Spire. I looked down at Asha lying in my arms. Her eyelids fluttered and then blinked open. Her gaze focussed on me, clear and bright.
“Asha?”
She reached up and cupped my cheek. “Raven? You came for me.” She struggled into a sitting position and flung her arms around me, burying her face in my shoulder.
I enfolded her in my arms, such relief flooding my body that for a time I lost myself in the feel of her, the smell of her, the fact that she lived and breathed and was right here. My mate.
She pushed me to arm’s length, looking me up and down. Her eyes were huge and round. “I remember it all. Oh, Raven. What have you done?”
I cupped her face in my hands. “Nothing that I wouldn’t do again in a heartbeat if it meant saving your life. I could never face eternity without you. I will live a mortal life span now, we both will, but I will live every moment of that life with you by my side.” I cocked my head as a new and interesting thought struck me. “We’ll grow old together.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “Grow old together. That sounds good to me.”
Then, despite the Simulacrum watching on, she kissed me hard enough and deep enough to remind me of what I’d been missing.
Chapter 13
ASHA
“Who comes before us to be recognized?” intoned Rillana’s voice.
“That’s you,” Ffion whispered, elbowing me in the ribs.
I cleared my throat and stepped out of the crowd of Fae assembled in the High Chamber of the Spire and walked up the three red-carpeted steps that led up to the dais.
“I, Asha Grant, come before you,” I said in a clear, strident voice. Raven and Ffion had drilled me for this moment so much that I practically dreamt about it. I wasn’t about to forget the words now.
Two thrones sat on the dais but only one of them was occupied. Raven looked resplendent in his dark velvet tunic, the mantle of the Shadow Court around his shoulders and the crown of silver resting lightly on his night-black hair. It was the first time I’d seen him wear the crown. It suited him. His eyes flicked to mine and a wicked smile curled the corner of his mouth.
I looked away, determined that he wouldn’t distract me.
As I reached her, Rillana took my hand, guiding me up the steps until I stood on the second highest. She turned to face the crowd and I was glad I had my back to them. Thousands of Fae were gathered into the High Chamber to watch the ceremony and I knew thousands more were gathered in the streets outside. This ceremony wasn’t just for me, it was for all the Fae people, a symbol of a new beginning for all of them.
Three weeks had passed since we’d defeated Taviel and ended the war. In that time life had returned to the Spire and although there was still much to be done, wounds were starting—tentatively—to heal. The fact that the rulers of the Court of Earth and the Court of Stars, two Unseelie courts, were standing next to Telia Rowan of the Court of Rain, was testament to Raven and Rillana’s hard work in trying to bring a lasting peace to the Summerlands.
I glanced behind me. Ffion, Hawk and Samuel were standing in the front row and they smiled at me encouragingly. Samuel gave me a thumbs up.
I took a deep breath and faced the Spire.
“Do you, Asha Grant, swear to uphold the laws of your people, to be a beacon in the darkness and to serve with your last breath?” Rillana intoned, her voice magically enhanced so it carried not only to the people in the hall but also to all those crowding the streets outside.
“Yes, I Asha Grant, do swear to uphold the laws of my people, to be a beacon in the darkness and to serve with my last breath.” The words, which once would have been unthinkable, came easily now. They tripped off my tongue as though they were meant to. Now, finally, after all that had happened, I was ready.
Rillana smiled. She turned to Raven who rose smoothly from his throne and placed a second silver crown in her hand, the twin to his own.
“Then I crown you Asha Storm, Queen of the Shadow Court. Rise, Queen Asha, and take your throne.” She placed the crown on my head. I was surprised to find it weighed barely anything at all.
Raven took my hand and raised me to my feet. His hand holding mine tightly, he guided me to the throne next to his. I turned, smoothed out the skirts of my coronation dress, and lowered myself carefully onto the throne.
Raven gave me a beaming smile then turned and faced the crowd. “I give you Asha Storm!” he shouted. “My mate and your queen!”
The thunderous applause was loud enough to bring the ceiling down. This was all crazy, of course. Me, a queen? Utterly crazy. Only a few months ago I had been plain old Asha Grant, owner of a run-down antiques shop, nerd extraordinaire who liked nothing better than rummaging through second-hand bookshops and watching reruns of old cartoons.
Now I was a queen. A queen.
I still couldn’t get my head around that. I doubted I ever would.
And not only that, I was a queen of the
Fae, a people I hadn’t even known existed until a few months ago.
Yes, it was crazy.
I turned and looked at Raven. He smiled at me and it was so dazzling that it felt like the sun had come out on a cloudy day. My stomach flipped over. My mate. My love. My life.
And suddenly it didn’t seem so crazy. This was where I was meant to be, by this man’s side. I’d been running towards him my whole life, even if I hadn’t realized it.
“Well?” he said. “What is my queen’s first command?”
I climbed to my feet and clapped my hands together. “Right!” I shouted. “Shall we get this party started?”
It was my coronation and I planned on having a cracking good time.
RAVEN
“There’s no sign of her,” Hawk said as we stood together at the side of the ballroom.
The celebration of Asha’s coronation was in full swing. It had started off a little awkward, especially since Rillana had insisted on inviting the leaders of the Unseelie in an attempt to mend broken bridges. They had remained apart—and still did to a certain extent—but at least they were here, eating our food, drinking our wine, chatting to the few who attempted to make conversation with them.
It was a start.
I fixed my attention on my brother. As always, Hawk appeared relaxed. He had his ankles crossed as he leaned against the wall, sipping from a large glass of red wine. But as always, I knew this was deceptive. His eyes flicked over the gathering. He didn’t like the Unseelie’s presence here any more than I did. Fates help me, I still wanted to tear their throats out for what they had done to my people, to my mate, but I knew Asha and Rillana were right. We had to have peace.
Which brought us to our current conversation.
“You’re sure?” I asked. “She has to be somewhere. She can’t just disappear. Is one of the Unseelie Courts harboring her?”
He shook his head. “They say not and I believe them. I don’t think any of them would dare risk harboring Felena Sand. Not with the peace so fragile. Not with knowing what we would do to them if we found out.”
