by Sarah Piper
Twenty-Five
EMILIO
Blackmoon Bay had been many things to me. An escape when I had nowhere else to go. A refuge and a haven. The home I’d made, the community I’d served and protected.
Then, later, it became the place where I’d connected with the guys. Through Ronan, I’d met Asher and Darius, and finally, Gray. Years later, I’d come back into her life there following the murder of her best friend.
Blackmoon Bay was the place where I’d fallen in love. Where I’d begun my family.
And now, our home was nearly in ruins.
Luna’s Café. Illuminae. The historic buildings that housed the police precinct and other government offices. The harbor. Johnny’s Seaside Pizza. Bloodstone Park. Every neighborhood and every location, every home, every street corner bore the mark of Orendiel’s dark army.
According to Kallayna, it wasn’t the result of the coordinated, full-scale attack we’d been expecting—the one Gray and her sisters had learned about during their blood spell.
No, this destruction was born of the resistance.
Somehow, the witches remaining in the Bay had hooked up with the few remaining supernaturals who hadn’t fallen prey to Darkwinter’s mind games, and together they’d executed one hell of a sneak attack, stealthily killing several hunters and a handful of fae knights, saving a few additional witches who’d been captured and imprisoned by Phillip Reese.
But Phillip did not take the attack lightly. He retaliated immediately, sending in his armies, decimating anyone who even looked like he or she may be sympathetic to the witches’ cause.
Jael told us that the hunters and fae had swept through the city like wildfire, slashing and burning, putting down the resistance with a show of force like nothing we’d seen before. Like nothing we’d predicted.
Jael had no idea how many survivors were left in the city overall, and whose side those survivors might be fighting on now—his sister’s message was cut short before any additional details could be shared. At this point, he wasn’t even sure Kallayna had survived the night.
But as far as I was concerned, even if there was just one soul, one heartbeat, one being still clinging to life and hope in our city, we would find them. We would protect them. We would help them rebuild.
Gray wouldn’t have it any other way. None of us would.
Not long after Jael’s visit, I found her on the upper balcony of the lodge, looking out across the winter-ravaged sea. The twisted fae magic had altered the climate conditions again, and waves of solid ice rose high above the shore, only to shatter and crash back down in a rain of glass.
Again.
Again.
Again.
By sight and by sound, it was as terrifying as it was beautiful.
I approached her slowly, not wanting to disturb her from whatever thoughts had taken up residence in her mind. Her face was turned down, her eyes focused on a Tarot card in her hand. After a beat, I cleared my throat to let her know I was near, but she didn’t move at first.
Then, with a deep sigh, she finally tucked the card into her back pocket and turned to me, offering a sad smile.
“Can’t sleep?” I asked, then shook my head, realizing my mistake. Gray slept during the daylight hours now, if she slept at all. “Sorry. Still getting used to your new routines.”
“Me too.” She leaned into my embrace, tilting her face up to meet my eyes. “I still climb into bed at the same time every night, only to remember I’m supposed to sleep during the day now.”
“You always were a night owl, though,” I said, brushing my lips across her forehead. “So it shouldn’t be too much of a hardship.”
She smiled again, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “No brownies tonight, huh?”
I raised my hands in surrender. “It’s not my fault—I swear. We’re out of chocolate, if you can believe that.”
“House full of witches? Yeah, I believe it.”
“I brought you something else, though.”
A gust of icy wind lashed us both, blowing her hair into her face. She swept her loose curls back, gathering them together at the base of her neck.
Steadying myself for any number of possible reactions, I retrieved the envelope from my shirt pocket, opening it up and tipping the contents into my hand. “This belongs to you, mi querida.”
Gray gasped at the sight of it, her eyes glistening with tears.
“Elena was able to retrieve it from the station,” I explained. “They’ve closed the case on the Landes murder, naming Jonathan as the primary suspect, officially believed deceased.”
She reached for my hand, slowly closing her fingers around the crescent-moon amulet.
“Thank you,” she whispered, pressing her hand to her chest.
“Would you like me to put it on you?”
She nodded, handing it back so I could fasten the delicate chain around her neck. The crescent moon came to rest just beneath her collarbone, glowing faintly against her skin.
I smiled. “It seems Calla is still with you.”
“Always,” she whispered, fishing the Tarot card from her back pocket. “I asked for a message just before I came out here. Some sign that we’d be okay, that we were on the right path.”
She turned the card so I could see it. It was the High Priestess, a woman dressed in blue robes, surrounded by tiny butterflies.
“This card always shows up when I’m thinking of my mother. My real mother,” she amended. “Calla.”
“I remember it from the night we dug up your book of shadows,” I said. “It slipped out when you opened it for the first time.”
Gray nodded, her smile softening. “I don’t see or hear her like I do with Sophie sometimes, but I sense her in other ways. Namely through the card. Sometimes I’ll dream of her, though, and then I wake up and smell her perfume.”
“I sense my parents, too. More lately, since Elena and I have started to reconnect.” I tucked her hair behind her ear, my hand lingering on her cheek. I had Gray to thank for bringing my sister back into my life. It was just one more thing I loved about her, one more thing that made my heart feel full every time I looked into her eyes.
“I love your sister,” she said. “She doesn’t take any shit from you.”
“She loves you, too.” I pulled her close again, inhaling her scent, her familiar sweetness mixed with the salty tang of the crisp ocean air. In my mind, an image danced through unbidden—my sister, crying tears of joy, helping Gray make adjustments to her wedding dress.
The image was so startling I nearly gasped, but it felt comfortable, too. Inevitable. The thought warmed me.
“Do you think they’re really with us?” she asked. “Watching over us or something like that? Or is it just wishful thinking?”
“I don’t know, Gray.” I sighed, pressing my lips to the top of her head. “That sounds like a question for Spooky.”
Gray laughed, but it trailed off quickly, and she pulled out of my embrace to look into my eyes once more. The amulet around her neck still gave off a subtle white light.
“We have to send Reva in tomorrow night to see if there are survivors,” she said. “For all we know, Trinity is still planning the full-on attack. I don’t want to wait another day.”
I nodded, totally in agreement. “She’s ready for it, Gray. Liam’s been working hard with her.”
“Oh, she’s totally ready. I just…” She sighed, looking out again over the white sea. “I guess I just wanted her to have a shot at normal. The shot the rest of us never got.”
“She will, Gray. You’ve given her that.”
“Letting her be our eyes and ears on this… We have no idea what she’ll see once she gets in. But I do know that whatever it is, Emilio, she’ll never be able to un-see.”
Gray was right, and there was nothing I could say to ease her mind.
“When this is over,” she continued, “I was hoping she might want to live with us. I mean, if you’re all cool with that. I just thought…�
� She trailed off, finally turning to meet my gaze again. Her eyes were full of love. Hope, however fragile in this moment, the relative calm before the storm.
“Gray, there’s no question, querida. Reva is family. Everyone here is family, and we take care of each other.”
This got a smile—a real one—and she drew me close again. “Yeah, but just so we’re clear? Not everyone here gets an open invitation to our house.”
“Our house,” I echoed. “I like the sound of that.”
“Do you think it will happen?”
The wind kicked up again, bringing with it a wet, icy blast of slush, coating us both. But neither of us flinched, and I held her gaze, my heart pounding fiercely, the words fighting their way out against the onslaught of weather.
“I love you so much it scares me,” I said.
“I’d tell you not to be afraid, but I feel the same way.” She shivered in my arms, then laughed. “In a good way.”
“In the best way.” I dipped my head to kiss her, sighing against her lips. “I know you usually sleep during the daylight hours, but I was wondering if you might do your favorite wolf shifter a favor tonight?”
“What are you asking me, wolf?”
“Come to bed with me. Just the two of us tonight.”
Wearing matching conspiratorial smiles, we snuck back into the lodge and found a small, windowless bedroom currently being used to store dried herbs and a few other bulk supplies. It wasn’t pretty, but it was warm and quiet, tucked away from the main bedrooms, unlikely to be disturbed or even noticed.
As surreptitiously as I could, I retrieved a couple of extra blankets from the other bedroom closets, then returned to roll out a makeshift mattress for us.
We stripped out of our wet clothes, and there in the quiet darkness of our secret room, I made love to her, soft and slow, savoring each tender touch and kiss, each smile and sigh.
We spent the next few hours talking about our dreams, about the future, about what our someday house would look like. She told me about the herb garden she wanted to plant, and I told her about all the different recipes I wanted to try, and on and on we chatted, until one by one, the others found their way into our little hovel.
Asher first, who could always sense whenever someone in the vicinity was getting intimate. He curled up on the other side of Gray, nuzzling the back of her neck.
The three of us had just gotten comfortable when Darius appeared, staking out a patch of blanket behind me.
Liam and Ronan came in last, neither saying a word. Like the others, they simply found their place among us. Their place in our family.
There, in that tiny windowless room on our last night before our military operation began in earnest.
It felt right. It felt familiar. It felt real. And I allowed myself to hope, for the briefest moment, that it would be. That when all of this was done, we’d find that house Gray and I had painted in our minds, and the six of us—seven, if Reva accepted Gray’s invitation—would make it our own.
As the others slowly dropped off to sleep, I forced myself to stay awake, wanting to watch over them, especially Gray.
She may have been a powerful vampire, a prophesied witch, heir to an ancient fae legacy that she and her sisters were still struggling to accept. But there in my arms, her eyes closed, her lips red and puffy from my kisses, she was just a woman. The woman I’d fallen madly in love with. The one who’d made me believe—no, who’d made me know—that as long as we all held on to one another, as long as our family stuck together, we’d find a way through this darkness.
“We will survive this,” I whispered into her hair, a promise for us all as I finally drifted off to sleep.
Twenty-Six
LIAM
More than anything, I wished I could take Reva’s place. Or Gray’s, or Haley’s, or any one of the witches gearing up to invade Blackmoon Bay in the coming hours.
But I was human now. My strengths, my magics came in other forms. An encouraging smile, a hug, a touch. Information passed on from one generation to the next. A whispered promise against the bare flesh of the woman who’d made me remember what it meant to be human. To love, completely and with abandon.
To believe in something greater than one’s own ends.
“I’m worried about her,” Gray said now, doing a final check of the potions Verona had issued her. It was the night after the six of us had fallen asleep together, and now she and I were alone in the kitchen, the others doing final weapons checks and strategic planning and many other things that had to be fast-tracked as a result of the riots in the Bay and our now-shortened attack timeline.
Though none of us had dared to move from the peaceful serenity of that room until well after sunset this evening, we all knew ours had been a momentary peace. A bubble made of moonglass, destined to shatter at the first onset of our reality.
That reality was now upon us. In thirty minutes, Reva would be traveling amongst the shadows of Blackmoon Bay, searching for survivors. Searching for a way in. After that, the rest of us would make our move together, hoping that by sheer number and combined magics, we might overpower their fae cloaking spells—as well as the armies themselves.
Many of us would not survive to see the sunrise of another day.
“I know she’s powerful,” Gray continued, “and determined, and probably braver than any of us.” Her smile softened. “But she’s still just a kid. A witch who would do anything to protect us, not even realizing she was putting her own life at risk.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “I think it’s fair to say we’ve all done just that, and we’ll all continue to do just that, as often and for as long as any of our loved ones are in danger. To expect anything less from Reva is frankly a bit naive.”
Gray smiled softly. “Touché, Liam.”
“And there’s something else you need to know about Reva,” I said. For the past few days, I’d grappled with the best way to reveal this information, but now seemed as good a time as any other. “Reva is not just a kid, as you say. She is a Shadowborn, Gray. Like you.”
I watched her eyes, certain that through them I could read the thoughts dancing in her mind, all the little moments replaying, all the puzzle pieces about Reva that were now adding up to the complete whole.
“She will likely come into her full powers in the next year or so,” I explained, “simply because she’s been nurturing her connection with magic for years.”
“Reva,” she whispered, then nodded, the final pieces clicking into place. Her eyes twinkled with something that looked an awful lot like pride.
“So what does this mean for her?” she asked. “Who will train her now that you’re no longer Death?”
“I must train her still,” I said. “To the extent that my human limitations allow, anyway. I may not be able to travel with her to the Shadowrealm or interact with the remaining soul ferriers, but there is a great deal of knowledge I shall endeavor to impart upon her. And none of us truly knows what her unique powers will be, nor what her role will be in the absence of Death, where souls cannot readily pass on through the realm as they once might have.”
“Does she know?” Gray asked.
“I haven’t discussed it with her yet, no. I’ve yet to find an appropriate time, and I don’t want her to be overly concerned about her future, particularly now, when she needs to focus on getting into and out of Blackmoon Bay undetected. As you might recall, learning that you have the power to influence death and manipulate soul energy is not always an easy thing to process and accept.”
A smile curved her lips. “You mean, I wasn’t all in with your whacky theories from the start?”
“If by ‘all in’ you mean refusing my many invitations at every turn, causing trouble wherever you went, and generally upheaving the universal order, then yes. Of course you were all in, Gray.”
Gray laughed in earnest, but before she could ask any more questions, Reva entered the kitchen, her mouth set in a grim line, her shoulders squared.
“When am I going in?” she asked.
Gray closed her eyes, cursing under her breath. But then she, too, squared her shoulders, and by the time she turned to face Reva, her eyes were once again shining with pride.
“You ready?” she asked.
Reva gave her a thumbs-up.
“Come here,” Gray said. “There’s something I need to give you first.”
Reva did as she asked, and Gray unclasped the amulet from around her neck, fastening it around Reva’s instead. She pressed her fingers against the crescent moon and whispered a protective spell that made the charm glow brightly.
“Reva, I know you can do this,” Gray said, once the amulet had dimmed again. “I wouldn’t send you in there otherwise. But there’s no shame in retreating. The goal of connecting with any remaining Bay witches and sussing out the situation? That’s our second priority tonight. You are our first. The minute you feel scared or uncomfortable, the minute you get even the slightest vibe that something isn’t right, you pull back. Got it?”
“I will. I promise.”
Reva turned her bright eyes my way, and I put my hands on her shoulders, kneeling down before her, again wishing I could protect her with magic or sheer force of will.
But all I had now were words, and I offered them freely.
“Remember everything we talked about,” I told her. “The shadows are your domain. You are not bound by physical constraints, by the natural laws of the universe. But while your astral body cannot be harmed in the way that your physical body can, fae magic is treacherous, and could very easily sever the cord that connects the two. You must avoid Darkwinter at all costs—their traps, their servants, their spies. You must keep to the shadows and avoid being seen by anyone but the witches and known allies.”
“I remember,” she said. “I won’t let you down. Either of you.”
