by SM Reine
Seth doubted that the way that meat had been killed was humane.
He also doubted that the meat was bovine in origin.
Seth was more grateful than ever that Marion had been unable to walk to the paternoster for dinner, and even that Konig had stayed behind to care for her. She didn’t need to see what Arawn considered to be fancy décor. And she didn’t need to see how fixated Seth was on all that death.
Arawn shoved Seth toward the table. “Take a seat.” There were three chairs, three place settings. A dozen demons from his gang were already lounging around the room, so the place settings clearly were only for the supposed guests of honor.
Charity appeared in the far doorway, entering from another part of the tower. She looked even more shrunken and nervous than usual, which was saying a lot. In her human form, she was so much smaller than all of the burly demons, and she looked especially innocuous among the leather-clad gang in her baggy sweater.
“Charity. Are you okay?” Seth asked.
“Yes, I’m—yes, fine,” she said, eyes flicking toward Arawn. The Lord of Sheol had walked to the hooks to chat with his gang. He tossed a bottle of vodka to a demon, and they laughed raucously, shattering an empty bottle on the floor.
“Did Arawn do anything to you?” Seth asked in a lowered voice.
“That’s what’s weird. He’s being really…” Charity shrugged uncomfortably. “Nice.”
Of all the words Seth might have used to describe a demon of Arawn’s stature, “nice” wouldn’t have been among them, especially since Arawn had been threatening to take a “pound of flesh” from someone in their party. After seeing his dining room, Seth expected that threat to be literal.
It was much too easy to imagine Marion hanging from one of those hooks. He’d probably mount her on the one at the head of the room. Demons would love to have a half-angel. The only woman who could perform magecraft was an exquisitely rare prize.
The very idea of it made Seth’s blood boil, just as much as it made him salivate.
“I told you to sit,” Arawn called over to them. Seth and Charity took two of the positions at the table. The dishes were fancy china, the napkins black linen, the chairs hand-carved wood. “And now you could consider thanking me for my hospitality, if you were going to be properly grateful.”
Charity didn’t seem to hear him. She was gazing at the wall, pale-lipped and trembling.
Seth followed her gaze.
In the dim corner, barely touched by the light of the candelabra, skins had been stretched out on ropes. Someone was practicing tattoos on the skins. It looked to be common practice in Arawn’s tower, because most of the skins had old drawings etched into them.
Those definitely weren’t cow skins.
Arawn flopped into the third chair. “I appreciate that you chose to join me for dinner,” he said, kissing Charity’s knuckles.
She jerked her hand out of his grip. “Well, I was hungry.”
“I sure hope you are.”
“I’m not,” Seth said. “I only came to talk business with you, Arawn. What will it take to buy the Canope off of you? I have money.”
“So do I,” Arawn said.
“Then what do you want?” Seth asked. “Tell me. I can get you almost anything.”
“What if I told you that I want a mage girl’s essence trapped in a jar? What if that’s the whole point?”
“It’s not.”
Arawn leaned back in his chair, stroking his thumb along his mustache. “You can’t give me what I want.”
“Who can?” Seth asked. “Who’d you buy the Canope off of in the first place?”
“Look at you, starting to ask the right questions,” Arawn said. “Not real surprising, coming from Seth Wilder. Seth Wilder. Son of Lucian Wilder, brother of Abel and Cain, descendant of the first man, Adam.”
Seth kept his posture relaxed, back straight but not stiff. He still wasn’t used to running across people who knew who he was. But it wasn’t hard to learn Seth’s history, especially not since Rylie had written that autobiography. There were extensive academic papers analyzing every aspect of her life. That included her exes. Seth was, unfortunately, an open book.
“It’s funny, isn’t it? Descendant of Adam. One of the few still kicking around with His blood. You belong in Sheol as much as the Voice of God does, but you’re not suffering.” Arawn twisted the edge of his mustache, curling it around his finger. “Wonder why that is?”
“Who sold you the Canope?” Seth asked.
Arawn picked at his teeth with his long pinky fingernail. “Dunno. Bought it off the black market. Didn’t think about it all that much.”
He was lying. That much was obvious.
Staff wearing black butcher’s aprons emerged carrying lidded trays. They set one in front of each chair.
Arawn brightened at the sight of food. He leaned toward Charity again, putting his flirtatious look on as easily as though it were a mask. “I prepared a feast for you, my beautiful revenant. I think you’ll like it. Bon app?tit.” Marion would have cringed at his drawling, Southern American butchering of the French words.
The waiters whipped the lids off of the trays.
Charity had been served chunky crimson soup with lumps floating on the surface. The edge of her shallow bowl was garnished with a few teeth jutting from a curved jawbone.
She gave a tiny whimper.
Seth had to clench his fists on his chair to avoid making an equally miserable sound at the sight of his food. He’d been served something that might have been a fish once—or a rodent, it was hard to tell. Something small. Something that now writhed with maggots, chewing tunnels into its blackened, oily flesh.
Arawn grinned at their reactions. “Looks delicious, doesn’t it?” Mocking laughter rolled through the gang in the room. Arawn forked the raw meat on his plate and took a bite with gusto.
Charity pushed her bowl away. “I don’t eat that.”
“A beautiful vampire such as yourself doesn’t drink blood?”
“Generally, no,” she said curtly.
His fingers played over the back of her hand, stroking along the bones in her wrist. “You smell like blood. You’ve tasted it recently. And you tried to eat my guys when they captured you.”
Seth took the knife from his place setting and slipped it under the table when Arawn was fixated on Charity.
He studied the demon’s features, searching for a weakness.
Wouldn’t most things die if stabbed in the throat?
“If it makes you feel better, the asshole who donated blood to your dinner deserves to be eaten,” Arawn said. “She tried to poison a shipment of lethe intended for Earth. She’d have killed everyone who shot up with those drugs—harmless, innocent junkies addicted to my brand.”
Seth’s fist tightened on the hilt of the steak knife. “You make lethe?”
He’d seen too many addicts pass through his hospital. Lethe was a horrible drug. Made it so that people didn’t want to eat. They’d starve themselves and come in with organ failure, so deluded that they’d fight against anyone who tried to treat them.
“This is where lethe comes from. Sheol. We’ve got a river here that we drain, filter, inject into cubes, ship off to Earth.” Arawn’s gaze went dreamy. “Someday, I’m going to see where my product goes. Bet it’s beautiful.”
He was on the opposite side of the table from Seth. One quick motion away from getting a steak knife in his jugular.
If anyone deserved to be killed, it would have been Arawn.
Smooth fingers touched Seth’s hand under the table. When he looked up, Charity shook her head fractionally.
They were surrounded by Arawn’s gang in his tower. If Seth attacked, their chances of escape would have been poor.
But he couldn’t stop thinking about violence.
No. Not the violence, but the death that would result from it.
What had Charity told him to do when he was fixated on ugly ideas? Accept it? Get used to it?
How was he supposed to get used to wanting to kill people?
Seth dropped his knife on the table. “Can we finish this mockery of a dinner and get to the part where you duel Konig?”
“As a matter of fact, we can’t. There’s etiquette surrounding sidhe duels. Prince ErlKonig was happy to enlighten me.” Arawn took another bite of the raw meat. “Duels are done at times of day appropriate to the challengers’ court, and since ErlKonig comes from the Autumn Court, that means we roll at sundown.”
“There’s no sun in Sheol,” Charity said.
“We all live under the same sun. We duel at sundown, just like y’all would on Earth.” He set his fork down, wiped his mouth off with the napkin. Blood clung to his goatee. “Funny thing, these sidhe. The unseelie can go anywhere they want, but they stick to the darkest corners of the Middle Worlds. Wonder why that is.” He waved his hand. “Wine!”
An aproned waiter arrived with a metal carafe. Whatever he poured into Arawn’s glass was sludgy and red. Seth didn’t think that was a zinfandel.
The waiter was accompanied by another of Arawn’s gang—a woman with gnarled dreads as thick as her wrist and an extra set of bony arms hanging from her spine. “Nyx is calling on the palantír.”
Arawn’s pleasant demeanor vanished. “Will you excuse me, darling Charity?” He didn’t wait for a response before following the four-armed demon out of the room.
“What’s going on?” Charity whispered, leaning toward Seth. “Is Marion okay? Where is she?”
“She’s fine,” Seth said. “For now.”
“Is Arawn planning to do something to her?”
“Probably. I’m not sure that he’s the real threat to her safety, though.” He dropped his forehead into his hands. “When she collapsed—the way that her sickness smelled… Jesus, Charity, I didn’t think I’d be able to control myself.”
Sympathy crimped Charity’s brow. “Did you tell her?”
And let Marion think that Seth was like the demons? The monsters defacing the skins of the dead with tattoo guns?
“Do you think Marion would speak to the gods on my behalf if she knew I wanted to kill her?” Seth asked.
“But you don’t, really,” Charity said. “Thinking about it doesn’t mean you want to. Don’t underestimate her compassion. She likes you. A lot.”
Sure, Marion liked Seth right now. She might even forgive him for the monster he was becoming. But then the Canope would restore her memories, and she wouldn’t be his Marion anymore.
Charity hadn’t spoken to people like Dana McIntyre, who characterized Marion as relentlessly selfish.
“Be honest with her,” Charity said. “You’ll never be able to get control of your abilities if you’re in constant denial of them. Just talk about it.”
“I’ll talk about it with you,” Seth said.
“Right. Because I’m a revenant, so I’m even worse than you are.”
“That’s not what I said. It’s not your fault Genesis did this…thing…to you.”
“But it’s who I am,” Charity said, staring at the bowl of bloody soup. “I can’t change it. I don’t know why I hide it as much as I do.” Her hand trembled as she lifted the spoon, lifting a chunk out of the soup.
Charity sipped it. Her shoulders relaxed.
Seth sat back, leaning away from her. Charity didn’t look at him as she continued to eat.
* * *
“There,” Konig said. “Try standing up again.”
Marion pushed to her feet while her boyfriend hovered a few inches away. It was easier to get out of bed than it had been the last time. When she took a few experimental steps toward the door to her cell, she didn’t get winded at all.
Konig’s healing magic was working.
“Excellent,” she said. She was going to be able to join Seth at Arawn’s dinner after all.
But then her knees buckled. Only Konig’s swift arms kept her from falling completely.
Marion dropped onto the edge of the bed again. She swore loudly in English and in French, using every single expletive she could summon to mind. Konig watched with amusement. He only spoke one of the languages, but he clearly understood the intent.
She flung her hands into the air. “How am I supposed to retrieve the Canope if I can’t walk without becoming fatigued? I’ll have to remain here, reliant on Arawn’s potions that acclimate me to the environment—”
“Or go home and wait for others to retrieve your memories.” Konig sat beside her. “If you’re worried, I’ll stay here to attend to it myself.”
“That won’t make me less worried.” She could think of few ideas worse than leaving Konig and Seth alone together. “Regardless, I’m not some swooning princess waiting to be saved. I will get my own memories!” And she wasn’t going back to the Winter Court until she could rule it properly, with the full might of her magic.
“I hate to break it to you, but at the moment, you’re literally the definition of a swooning princess.”
“I’m a swooning steward. Give me some credit.” Marion flopped back on the bed, draped an arm over her eyes, and groaned. Inhaling that deeply made her lungs burn. “I’m going to get my memories. I will.” The more vehemently she said it, the truer it would become.
“This is all your fault,” Konig said.
“You’re so sweet,” Marion said.
“I’m not going to be sweet. There’s no point in sugarcoating the truth. You’ve screwed up, princess. You didn’t think twice about plunging into Sheol, and everything you’re suffering now is your fault.”
She peeled her hand away to glare at him. “It’s not my fault that someone sold my memories into Sheol.”
“It’s your fault you’re chasing them. Once you found out that they were in the Canope, you could have worked with me to get them,” Konig said. “Yet, instead of speaking to me, you snuck off with Seth. Again.”
This conversation.
It was the conversation that Marion least wanted to have.
“What are you suggesting?” she asked.
Konig’s fists clenched, knuckles whitening. “I’m not suggesting anything. I don’t need to suggest anything I’m not willing to say outright.”
“Then speak plainly.”
“Okay. There’s something between you and Seth. Is that plain enough for you?”
Her cheeks went hot. Marion could hardly deny Konig’s claims when she’d said the exact same thing to Seth at his house in New York. “That’s ridiculous.”
“You haven’t had sex with me in weeks. I can’t help but wonder if you’re getting it from somewhere else.”
Her jaw dropped. “You know I don’t want to have sex until my memories come back. That’s the only reason.”
“Waiting is painful to the sidhe,” Konig said. “Every day I wait to have sex, I suffer, but I do it for you. Are you waiting for me? Are you respecting my sacrifice, or are you running off to screw the doctor every time my back is turned?”
“Seth and I have a working relationship,” Marion said. “He doesn’t even like me.”
“I notice you don’t say that you don’t like him. It doesn’t matter. You don’t need words when your actions speak volumes. The way you flaunt yourself in front of him, flouting responsibility so that you can bat your eyelashes at the doctor—”
“Stop it!” Marion clawed to her feet. She stood over Konig with her chin lifted and shoulders thrown back, exuding every ounce of defiance that she could muster. “I’m not hitting on Seth and I’m not running from responsibility.”
“You didn’t attend the meeting with Jibril that you arranged.”
She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “Jibril doesn’t have the authority to cut deals. Only Leliel does, and she will never, not in a million years, agree to work with me. She wants war. She’s going to get what she wants.”
Konig surged to his feet. He slammed his fist into the wall by her head.
She flinched.
“Leliel doesn’t have
to be willing to work with us,” Konig said in an acid whisper. “Her peace treaty with my parents has very specific terms. We can force the angels to leave the Winter Court alone.”
Marion leaned hard back against the wall. The door itched inches from her left hand. “How?”
“Marry me,” Konig said. “Unite your stewardship of the Winter Court with the angels’ peace treaty with the Autumn Court. If Leliel attacks, the other angels will have grounds to remove her. Then I’ll be able to activate all of Niflheimr’s magic. I’ll be capable of best protecting my people. Our people.” His free hand raked down her body, pulling her hips flush against his.
“But—”
“We’ve talked about this before. We talked about it a lot. Nothing has changed except for Seth, and you claim that there’s nothing going on with him,” he said. “Marry me. It’s the right thing to do.”
She couldn’t breathe.
Konig’s face had become less foreign to Marion in the last weeks, working together at the summit and Winter Court. She’d never had trouble finding him attractive. They hadn’t had sex since Marion’s memory had been lost, though.
Until that moment, she’d believed Konig was fine with her reluctance.
It wasn’t about Seth. It was about the fact that Marion always felt scared and vulnerable on some level, and she didn’t feel safe with Konig. Not yet.
Did she love him? Yes, she thought so.
Would they eventually marry? She suspected they would, if things continued as they had been lately.
But now? Like this? For these reasons?
The door opened to the left. One of Arawn’s gang members entered. “It’s nightfall,” the demon said in a deep, growling voice. “You’re due in the ballroom, Prince ErlKonig.”
For a moment, he didn’t move, staring expectantly at Marion.
It wasn’t just anger in him. There was vulnerability there, too—the need to be reassured that Marion loved him, that she would be with him.
When her silence stretched too long, Konig’s expression shuttered. He gathered his arrogance around him like a suit of armor. “Then lead us to the ballroom.”
