by Lexi Blake
I sent a small prayer to the universe to keep him safe. And Kelsey. They were out there, and Erna’s flames were merciless.
What would I do if my dad died because he’d been close to me? If I’d had a hand in killing Kelsey? They’d come with me, to protect me. Did I deserve any protection at this moment?
“Summer, you can stop this.” Marcus stood in front of me, though Dean’s shield seemed to be holding. “You can stop it with a thought.”
The charm around my neck seemed to pulse as though reminding me that I’d done this once. I’d burned down the world. Those flames…hadn’t I been waiting for those flames to find me for almost ten years? Hadn’t I always known that I should go out in those flames?
The world around me seemed to recede. What had I been thinking? I’d known what I should have done the moment I met the male standing in front of me. Marcus was trying to protect me, but I’d been the one who dragged him into danger. He was going to lose the rest of his long life because he’d mistakenly thought I was worth loving. He hadn’t been there to see the damage I’d left behind. He hadn’t seen my charred and wrecked home. If he had, he would think differently about me.
I had a decision to make, but in the end there was really only one way to go. I needed to give myself up and pray they would let everyone else go. It was time to stop running. Fighting Turi’s army and Erna’s magic would only get everyone killed. I’d had a good run, but this was the end of the road. It was time to face my own personal truth.
The roaring in my ears ceased and I realized the flames had stopped. I was once again facing charred earth and the scent of death, ash flying around like gray snow blanketing the air.
The wall my Fae father had built was nothing but razed earth now, and Erna floated above it. Why had I not seen her power?
Was it because it had come from me? I thought about what Marcus had said, but I didn’t feel the charm drop from my neck. It was still firmly planted there. If I had any access to my magic, I couldn’t feel it.
Because you screw it up. Because you hurt the ones you love. Because you’re not normal or loveable. Don’t you remember how the people in your tribe gave you a wide berth? They didn’t want their children to play with you. They weren’t mean, but they knew something was wrong with you.
Marcus doesn’t think anything is wrong with me. Marcus loves me. My parents love me.
Haweigh loved me.
The argument in my head was interrupted by a deep voice.
“Summer of the Gentle Winds, I told you I would have you.” Turi sat on the largest of the steeds. The horses on his plane were bred for battle. They were as large as Fae horses but trained to bite and kick their opponents. Or impale them on the spikes in their armor. Turi dismounted with the grace of one who spent a lifetime in the saddle.
“Don’t bother using your mental powers.” Erna had changed into trousers and a tunic, her hair down in waves for once. She looked younger than she normally did and far more focused. Her eyes seemed to burn through me. “I can feel you trying to get into my brain, vampire. It won’t work. My shields are too strong, and I’ve placed a spell on the general to save him, too. The way he uses the thrall stones on his soldiers makes it impossible for them to disobey him.”
“Danny seems to be okay.” My mother looked at Papa as though he could fix things. “Kelsey got to him in time.”
Papa raised a hand, but then winced and went to his knees. Mom dropped down beside him.
“It’s okay,” Papa said. “But she seems to have sapped my strength. It hurts to even try to summon my magic.”
“I won’t let you get the jump on us again,” Erna announced. Her feet hit the ground and she strode through the sea of war horses like a woman who knew no one could hurt her. “Summer, I’m through trying to talk to you. You forced my hand. Now come and take your place at the general’s side or we’ll start killing your friends. I believe I’ll begin with the vampire.”
Taggart stood in front of his wife, but that wouldn’t matter for long since the horde was already encircling us. “Which vampire do you mean? Because there are three of us here. I definitely think you should take out Adam first. He’s a mouthy asshole.”
“Fuck you, Tag. You’re the mouthiest asshole I know,” Adam replied, getting up in Taggart’s face.
Charlotte moved between them, her voice low. “I don’t think you two causing chaos is going to work this time. There are too many of them. Besides, for all we know there’s only one way out of this.” She glanced back my way, her light blue eyes reminding me of the brilliant skies of my childhood home. “Summer, please.”
I shook my head, panic threatening me. “I can’t. I’m trying.”
Marcus turned my way and reached for my hands. “Don’t try, bella. Do. Relax and take back your power. Know that you are worthy of it, that you were meant to have it. It was entrusted to you and you cannot fail.”
But he was wrong. I could fail. I’d done it before.
Panic threatened to overwhelm me. I was going to fail. No matter what I did.
A vision of Haweigh’s face right before the flames took her assaulted my mind. She’d looked to me and her eyes had widened, and then she’d held out a hand as though trying to take me with her. She’d looked so desperate in the final seconds before her death.
I could see her clearly. I could place myself in that moment. I’d been standing on one of the hills outside our village, Erna beside me. She’d whispered encouragement, told me this was the only way I’d ever be allowed to grow up and get out of my village. I’d wanted to see the world, to show everyone I could handle my magic.
I’d wanted to meet my parents so badly.
Haweigh had come running up the hill, and she’d shouted about something happening.
The ground had shaken, and I’d felt something I’d never felt before.
But I’d felt it since.
“That day,” I began, my mind racing. I wasn’t sure why it caught on that one moment except that seeing the flames sparked it again. “It was the first convergence. I thought it was something that only happened recently, but that day was the first time I felt it. You and I were on the hill and Haweigh came for me.”
Erna put her hands on her hips. “I’m not going to stand here and rehash history with you. That day set you on a path. I’ve protected you for far too long. You are the reason for the convergences, and until your power is truly contained, we will not be safe. No one will be safe.”
Turi stood beside her, a superior expression on his face. “It is as I have always said. You are the problem. The power should have been placed in my hands, as was promised to me.”
I ignored Turi and his selfish devotion to a prophecy he’d interpreted to suit himself.
Though didn’t we interpret everything? Didn’t we translate people and events through our chosen filter?
Why had Haweigh been smiling even as the ground shook beneath her? She hadn’t frowned until she’d realized I was too far from her.
Had she been upset she couldn’t haul me with her into death?
Or had I tricked my own mind and let guilt and fear smear the truth.
“Stay away from her.” Papa managed to get to his feet, my mother at his side.
Turi had moved in, and I hadn’t realized how close he’d gotten, though Marcus had eyes on him. “She’s my property, Green Man. What do you think to do about it?”
“Dev, please.” My mother’s tone let me know she understood how outnumbered we were.
The pixie who’d hidden away in my mother’s jacket danced around Erna, who swatted at her. Arwyna managed to stay just outside her reach, though I worried Erna would turn magic on her.
Magic. The pixies were attracted to Fae magic.
“Why is the pixie interested in Erna?” I asked the question to no one in particular.
“Because, my thick-headed beloved, Erna has taken your power. She’s siphoned it off,” Marcus said tightly. “And I fear if we allow her to take you int
o custody, she’ll find a way to take it permanently.”
“No,” Charlotte insisted. “She won’t.” She turned to Turi. “If the witch has told you she can take Summer’s power and act as your Day Queen, she’s lied to you. She can’t take it, but she can siphon it. She’s using the charm around Summer’s neck, and the instant Summer lets it go, she’ll have access to all her powers. Summer. Not Erna.”
“She won’t drop it because she knows what she did,” Erna countered. “She remembers the screams of her tribe as they died at her hands. Deep down, she remembers how it felt to fry them all, to smell the scent of their flesh cooking. She does not deserve the power. She does not deserve to live.”
But I didn’t remember because I’d lost focus. I didn’t remember the flames. I only remembered waking up and realizing what I’d done.
What if I hadn’t done it at all? What if the truth was something different?
Erna reached for me and when Marcus attempted to block her, he flew back a few feet, slamming into the ground.
Turi stepped in and nodded as I tried to get to Marcus. I found myself being manhandled by two guards.
A scream stopped me from fighting the hold, and I turned to see my dad running across what was left of the grass.
The world seemed to slow as the guard who’d held him drew back the throwing ax in his hand and sent it screaming through the air. I heard a sickening thud as it found a place in my dad’s back, saw the way his eyes widened, and then he fell to his knees.
“Summer.” Marcus got to his feet and there was a look of pure will on his face. I knew what he would do. He was going to try to break through Erna’s mental shields. He would try to force every one of these warriors to back down, and he would let them kill themselves if they wouldn’t.
Erna sent a bolt Marcus’s way and his body flew back toward a cluster of big, gnarled oak trees, their branches winding out as though they were embracing whatever travelers would come into their home.
Numbness settled over me when he struck a branch. His body, the body I’d loved so much, the one that comforted me and made me feel whole, was impaled on the branch. Through his chest, an arm of that tree burst out. His heart. It had pierced his heart.
He held a hand out, very much as Haweigh had done that day, and I watched as the love of my life turned to ash and floated to the forest floor. He was gone as though he’d never been here, never held me and loved me.
The world went silent though I knew everyone around me was screaming.
I’d done it. My worst fears had all come to life. I’d killed the two men in the world who’d loved me the most.
I felt rough hands on my body, but I wasn’t there anymore. I wasn’t in my body.
I stepped away from it, looking back at the scene playing out around me. My mother was screaming, trying to get to my dad. Kelsey was on the ground beside his body. A warrior had a knife to Papa’s throat, but that wasn’t why he was crying. Erna was still talking, still telling me all the reasons I didn’t deserve to live, but her mouth wasn’t moving. Yet I could hear her plainly.
It was like I was in one of the Vampire entertainments, the films they called DLs, and I’d pressed the button to slow it down.
“Is she talking to you?” a familiar voice asked. “How is she doing it? It must be a spell of some sort.”
I looked to my left and my dad stood there. I glanced over and his body was still on the ground, Kelsey trying to help him. “Are we both dead?”
“No, sweetheart,” Dad said, and I realized he wasn’t in the clothes Taggart had given us. This was my father dressed as he’d been the night I was born. He was exactly as I remembered him. “I’m not dead yet, but I will be soon. It’s odd to watch myself. God, I wish I could take this pain away from them.”
He stepped over and tried to touch my mother, but his hand passed through her.
“How are we doing this?”
“Because I’m in the in-between.” My father stared at Papa, the saddest look on his face. “I understand things here, things I won’t even remember if I come back from this. If I move on, well, if I move on I’ll have a promise to keep to my loves.”
“I’m not in the in-between.” They needed me alive. While the guards were being rough with everyone else, they were careful with me. “Can we find Marcus? Marcus can’t be dead. He can’t.”
Dad sighed and came back to my side. “Only you can make that decision. You’re here with me because we share a soul space, daughter. A piece of my soul was used to form you, and that was where she found her way in.”
“Way in?”
“Yes. It was through a weakness in me that the witch got to you, is still getting to you.” He gestured to where he lay and suddenly we were there. Kelsey was on her knees, trying to stanch the bleeding, her hands becoming red with my father’s blood. “I’m dying, and you know what’s going through my head? I’m lying there and there’s a part of me—a flawed and damaged part of me—that thinks I deserve this. That I failed and I deserve this death. It’s a voice I still hear to this day, that’s been with me since I was young. My father would get drunk and tell me I was the reason my mother died. I wasn’t, and logic tells me I wasn’t responsible for her being in the store that night. I was a child who begged his mother for a treat, and despite how late it was, she indulged me. I couldn’t have known what would happen any more than Zoey did the night I turned. Logic dictates that a toddler who can barely speak isn’t responsible for his mother being shot during a robbery, but that child inside me still hears him saying she would be alive if I’d been more thoughtful.”
“Dad,” I began.
He shook his head. “I know it feels different to you, but it’s not. And that voice, that capacity for carrying shame and guilt, came from me. I can shut that voice up most of the time because I replaced it with your mother’s voice, with Dev’s and your siblings. With yours.”
“You barely know me.”
“But you know all of me. Summer, you saw my soul. You saw it because it’s a part of you. When I was with your mother that night, you think all I wanted was a copy of her, proof that she’d loved me once? But that wasn’t what was in my heart that night. I wanted my soul to live on in you. I wanted all the good and clean parts of me to have another chance to get it right this time. I had been through so much, done so much. I didn’t think I was deserving of any kind of love.”
I proved that I could cry in this odd place between worlds. “Dad, that wasn’t true. You’re right, I did see your soul.”
His hand squeezed mine. “Then you saw yours, too. I started changing that night because of you. I thought for a long time it was because of the words you said to me that night. Because you told me I was worthy, that when my soul was put in that box you were what came out. I thought it was the words that changed me. I didn’t realize until later that it wasn’t the words at all. It was you. It was knowing you were out there in the world, this piece of me, the best piece of me. That was what changed me, made me better. Summer, all that is good in me is in you. But all my worry and guilt and fear are in there, too. It came with the soul. So I’m going to tell you what I see in you. I see me. I see your mother. I see you, my darling daughter, and you are light and love. You were born with so much love that I truly believe you can power worlds with it. There is nothing evil or cruel about you. I do not fear you. I’m happy that my last moments will be spent with you. But, Summer, if you will believe in yourself, if you have faith and take the power that was entrusted to you and you alone, none of us has to die today. None of us.”
Marcus. Marcus had turned to ash in front of me and my soul had hollowed out.
But my first thought had been I hadn’t deserved him.
Did my father deserve to die when he should have hundreds of years with my mother? Was the universe some cruel place where a balance sheet was kept, and hope and love and joy were chipped away in miserly rations?
“I await your decision.” Dad took my hand, and unlike what had ha
ppened when he’d tried to touch my mother, his palm was solid and warm in mine. “This is your choice. I can’t make it for you. But know that at one point I hated myself so much I was going to walk into the light. The only thing that held me back was my love for your mother. If you want to, you can give up this burden. You are the Day Queen. You were born to power the outer planes, and in exchange for your duties, you were given a mate, a male who will love you and who you will one day choose to fade for. But you won’t be able to leave the Summerlands. You’ll have to have faith that your magic is good, that you are the right one to use it.”
If my father had walked into the light, I wouldn’t have come to be. The Vampire Council would now rule the Earth plane. The companions wouldn’t have been freed. I didn’t know this. And yet I did. I could see my father’s history in my head, exactly like I had as a child.
I could feel the love he’d put into me, the love, the hope, the prayer that my love could light his world and force out the dark.
My head cleared for the first time in years and I could see.
There was a shadow near me, and I suddenly realized it had been with me all along. It was Erna’s form, whispering in my ear. How long had she done it? From that first moment we’d met? She’d stoked that dark place inside me that feared what I was.
Sometimes one didn’t need a thrall stone to be turned into a slave.
“I learned something when I became a parent,” my father was saying. “When you love a child, you want what is best for them. Know that if this is the end of my journey in this form, I will be waiting to see you again. We all will. Because we’re your family no matter what you do. Because my love is eternal. Long past this body, long past breath and blood, I will be your father, and I am always on your side.”
Something fell away from me in that moment when my dad explained what love really meant. I could be the reason he died and he would love me. I could bring down all the planes and he would love me.
The charm fell off my neck and into my hand, proof that I had always been my own jailer. Proof that it was time for me to take my place.
