The Castle of Spirit and Sorrow

by Steffanie Holmes

  “What about me?” Kelly piped up.

  “Or Ryan?” Flynn asked.

  “Can’t you do anything without your new boyfriend?” I shot back.

  Clara waved her hand. “Ryan doesn’t have a magical bone in his body.”

  “He changes into a fox!”

  “That’s not magic. No energy transforms place. It’s just physiology, like a butterfly unfurling its wings. Ryan and Kelly will sit this ritual out. Witches only. Everyone link hands.”

  I did as she asked. Rowan’s hand trembled in mine. I gave his fingers a squeeze. Hold it together, mate. We’ve only got this chance now because you never gave up on Corbin or Maeve.

  If we could bring Corbin back… if we could bring them all back… even Blake…

  “Our friends are now in a place where we cannot reach them with our minds. We have to trust that they will find each other in the darkness. What we need to do is create a beacon of power to light their way home. I need each of you to picture all the people in the underworld.” Clara sighed. “Even Isadora. Focus on the details of their physical form – what did Maeve’s eyes look like? How did Corbin’s hair fall over his eyes? How did being with Blake make you feel?”

  Frustrated, I thought but didn’t say.

  “You got to bring them to life in your minds, okay? Flynn, throw the artwork into the fire."

  As I watched the flames curling around the paintings and reducing them to ash, I thought of Corbin. I remembered the first time I’d met him, when he came to speak to my lawyer on my behalf. His hair hadn’t been quite as long then. I thought he’d been growing it because he liked mine. A curl fell over his left eye, and he had to keep tucking it behind his ear as he spoke. He mentioned his age – a year younger than me – but the way he held himself he seemed much older.

  The first week I lived at Briarwood was… odd. Corbin clearly had no idea how to live with someone like me. He always had his nose in a book and it made me feel stupid and I got frustrated a lot and burned things. We tiptoed around each other until one day I incinerated an old book of his and we gave each other a bollocking and then we got drunk and everything was cool.

  Then I thought of Blake, his stupid smirk and his black hair that never seemed to have a strand out of place. I thought of his newfound fondness for curry, and that flicker of emotion in the corners of his mouth when we’d shaken hands, or when he watched Maeve while she wasn’t looking.

  And Maeve… how could I ever forget what her eyes looked like? Deep hazel flecked with gold, sparkling with intelligence and mischief and kindness. Her short hair bouncing on her head. Her lips wide with laughter or curled around the end of my cock.

  With her free hand, Clara flipped back the lid of Corbin’s box. Even from as far back as I stood, I could make out blackened shapes wrapped in plastic. Corbin was in pieces. Heat flared into my fingers. This isn’t going to work.

  “Save your fire for the candles, Arthur,” Clara said sharply. I glanced down. My pants were on fire. Shite. I sat down in the grass, stifling the flames between my arse cheeks and the dirt. Beside me, Flynn burst out laughing.

  “Boys, please, if we could focus,” Andrew frowned. Fire flared in my fingers again, that he dare tell me what to do when he was the one who abandoned Corbin and refused to speak to him after Keegan’s death, he was the one who let Corbin go on believing his brother’s suicide was his fault—

  Get a hold of yourself. If I derailed this ritual, we’d lose our chance to get Corbin back, and Maeve and the others might remain trapped down there with Daigh…

  I glanced down at the bandages wrapped around my forearm, recalling the cut beneath them that split through the Norse rune tattoo Corbin had translated for me. A line of neat sutures kept the wound closed, like I was some kind of Frankenstein’s monster – a beast made of pieces of the dead.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, standing up again.

  Clara lowered the tongs into Corbin’s box and placed the stone on top. She scattered the smaller stones on the other bodies, placing one with each. She stood white taper candles around the bodies, and added some other stones. “Arthur, light the candles.”

  Grateful for a task that could siphon off some of the energy pulsing in my veins, I waved my hand and the candles flickered to life.

  "Repeat the chant along with me," Clara said. "As you do, picture a cone of white light rising up from Corbin’s chest and encompassing all the bodies. This cone will help the spirits find their way back inside their bodies and undo the mortification that’s already taken place.”

  “And it will put my son back together?” Andrew said, his voice wavering.

  “According to Isadora, it will.” Clara glanced down at the frozen face of the Soho priestess. “Whatever happens, you must keep this vision in your mind. Let us begin." She paused, then spoke, “The clay steals the clay.”

  I chanted the words along with the others, forcing the power through my hands. A noxious smell wafted across my nostrils. It reminded me of the time last year when Obelix hid a dead rat in the cellar and it took me three weeks to locate the source of the stench.

  This was a hundred dead rats. A thousand rotting rodent buggers, all being shoveled at my mouth. I stumbled on the words as the malodor closed my throat and poured tears from my eyes.

  “Don’t break the circle,” Clara screamed. “Keep chanting.”

  “The clay steals the clay. The clay steals—” I choked as my mouth crawled with rot. The reek grew form, burrowing into every pore and soaking me in horror. I mashed my lips together in an attempt to hold out the fetid decay. If I opened my mouth again, I’d drown in it.

  Keep going. I forced myself to picture that cone of power, to imagine it pulling my loved ones up from the earth. Do it for Maeve, for Corbin, for all of them.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tore my lips apart. Instead of being flooded by the unforgivable stench, I got a whiff of Maeve’s sweet perfume, and Corbin’s leathery book smell, and Blake’s crisp autumn scent.

  “I can feel them,” Clara yelled. Magic surged through my fingers as the cone of magic over us vibrated. “We’ve got them. Now, everyone, pull!”

  38

  MAEVE

  “Why did you do that?” I gaped at Aline in horror as she ascended the steps of the throne, the crown gleaming under the flickering firelight. It sat askance on her head, too large really to fit her properly. “Aren’t you making yourself into a demon?”

  “I have done this because it’s time the underworld stopped standing apart and pretending its problems didn’t reverberate across the other realms.” Aline smiled down at me. “Do not be afraid, daughter. I will draw the power I need to make change, but I will not become a creature of shadow and fear, or spirit and sorrow. I will bring so much joy to these halls that humans will find joy in death as they never had before. The same kind of joy as you have given me in death, for you reunited me with my love, and I got to see what a remarkable woman my daughter has become.”

  Smithers scurried over to kneel before her. “I will serve you forever.”

  “There will be no servants in my house.” Aline reached up to the crown and wrenched free one of the horns. She placed it in Smithers’ hand. “This is yours. Take its power and do good with it.”

  To my surprise, she turned and kicked Daigh’s outstretched hand, turning it over so his palm faced up. She dropped another– much tinier – piece of the broken crown into his fingers. His eyes widened in surprise.

  “What are you doing?” I moved to wrench that piece of bone from Daigh’s grasp, but Aline raised her hand, and an invisible force held me back.

  “More than anyone I have ever met, you have embodied true chaos,” Aline said to Daigh. “I can’t pretend that I haven’t hated the things you’ve done, especially to our daughter who you professed to love, but I cannot hate you. If you rule with me, you do so because you love me, and you obey me and the rest of my harem, do you understand? In return, I will give you a small kingdom where your chao
s can have free rein.”

  Daigh’s lips moved in a silent agreement. His fingers curled around the bone. Smithers waved a hand and a jet of water shot out, breaking off the shaft of the arrow and cleaning out the wound. Daigh crawled to his knees, and came to kneel beside Smithers, his forehead touching the ground.

  “I will obey you and love you,” he murmured. For the first time, I detected true emotion in his voice. Defeat, yes, but also affection. Was it truly possible that even a fae like Daigh was yet capable of love? “You have always been my queen.”

  “This is ludicrous.” Liah reached for her bow. “We’ve only just deprived him of his power and that witch has given it back.”

  “You can’t do this,” I cried. “He can’t have power. We’ve seen what he chooses to do with it.”

  “Daigh’s ruled by chaos, not malevolence,” Aline said. “It’s only when the emotions he learned from my dear Smithers have clouded his thinking that he has enacted his terrible crimes. You yourself said that hate is only the other side of love. Here, in this place, I can give him the love that will sustain him. It is my sacrifice to you, daughter. I will love the man you cannot, and in this way, we will keep the worlds in balance.”

  “But I don’t want any part of anything he touches influencing the world!”

  “Does not the world need his chaos? Do you remember one night at Briarwood, when we were talking about predestination, and you said the way I described it reminded you of chaos theory – that within complex and chaotic systems were underlying patterns, repition, and self-organisation. Daigh is that chaos. He’s as much a part of the world as earth, air, water, fire, and spirit.”

  I rubbed my temples. My own mother was throwing mathematical theory back in my face to justify this? I hated her for it and yet my logical mind ticked through her points and remembered that a small change in state in a deterministic nonlinear system can have a huge and unknown impact in a later state. And I knew she was right.

  I don’t understand a word you just thought, Princess. Blake said inside my head. Are you actually talking about letting her keep Daigh, and letting him keep that piece of the crown?

  “What do you think?” My mother stood and beckoned me to climb her throne. “I loved these two men once, and our love produced you. No matter how many evil things Daigh has done, I can’t forget that. Together, I believe we will be just what the underworld needs. I will take inspiration from you and have my very own harem. At least, if Isadora will join us?”

  She tossed another piece of the crown across the room. It sailed through the air before it was ensnared in Isadora’s talons.

  “I accept,” she said, sashaying toward the throne. I noticed that the first thing she did as she grasped that power in her hand was sculpt herself some new red pumps.

  Aline grinned at me, her arms wide. “Like mother, like daughter.”

  “If Daigh truly has no power without you now,” I said, “I think this could work.”

  I allowed Aline to embrace me. She held me for a long time. I tried to imprint her body on my mind. She felt so familiar, and yet completely foreign. I never knew her as a mother, but I knew now I could count her as a friend. Her lips pressed against my forehead, warm and still tingling with residual magic. “Keep a mirror with you always, so I can check in on you from time to time.” She glared at Blake and Corbin. “Just don’t put it in your bedroom. There are some things a mother doesn’t need to know.”

  “Deal,” Blake grinned.

  “Uh, guys?” Corbin held up his hand. His forearm was still solid, but his fingers had faded into black tendrils. “I think it’s time.”

  I knew the guys would find a way!

  I hopped down from the dais and ran to Blake and Corbin. They caught me in their arms and the three of us huddled together, gasping and exclaiming as the black tendrils appeared from thin air to wrap around us. Where they touched my skin, they tickled, and the tickle became an itch, and as the darkness wrapped around my torso and breasts and crept toward my chin, the itch became an all-consuming roar of pain – a thousand tiny needles all piercing me at once. I opened my mouth to scream, but the darkness filled it, stinging my tongue so that it puffed up and closed my airway.

  With the last dim light of vision, I caught Aline waving at me. “Bye bye!”

  “The dove flies the nest,” called Smithers, his voice muffled as the darkness stuffed my ears. “Fly little dove!”

  “This won’t be the last we see of each other, dear daughter,” Daigh coughed out, his rough voice turning into a dull ring as the darkness consumed me utterly.

  My eyes fluttered open.

  I lay on my back on rock hard earth. Orange fire streaked the horizon. My throat burned. Fear leapt into my chest. The world’s been irradiated. Daigh’s vision came true—

  “Maeve.” Warm arms wrapped around me, tugging me into a sitting position. A dark curtain fell across my face, obscuring the burning sky. Hot kisses trailed along my neck as a familiar smell of herbs and flour filled my nose.

  Rowan.

  “Why is the sky on fire?” I choked out, every word tearing at my raw throat.

  “It’s not on fire,” Rowan stroked my cheek. “It’s sunrise, Maeve. It’s the first day of a new world.”

  My breath caught in my throat as the brilliance of the cosmos streaked across the sky. Atmospheric molecules scattered the cool blue light, leaving us with the majestic stripes of red and orange. I drank in its beauty, more touched because it was a sunrise I’d never thought I’d see.

  “I did it,” I sighed into Rowan’s shoulder. “I scienced my way out of Hell.”

  Rowan’s rich, hearty laugh filled me with a joy so deep and rich it seemed impossible it could belong to one person. My palms itched with magic, and I sent some out into him, giving him back some of the warmth and light he’d given me.

  “Oh, Einstein, it’s you, it’s you.” Flynn planted a million slobbery kisses on my face, his eyes dancing with delight. I ran my fingers through his wavy red hair, relishing that cheeky smile I’d missed so much.

  Flynn’s head flopped to the side, and I glimpse a wide forehead, deep-set eyes as still as glaciers, and a thick, wild beard. Arthur.

  “You’re alive,” I breathed, my heart welling.

  In reply, Arthur crushed his lips to mine, his kiss leaving me gasping. There was no better way to be brought back to the world of the living.

  I broke the kiss, laughing as I wiped a strand of blond hair from his eyes. He gazed at me with awe, like he couldn’t breathe without me. My viking warrior. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I almost lost you.

  “Don’t cry,” he said gruffly, and a single tear leaked from his eye and spilled down his cheek, catching on the end of a beard hair like a tiny snowflake. “You’ll set off the whole bloody lot of us.”

  “Come here, big guy.” Blake threw his arms around Arthur’s shoulders and planted a wet kiss on his cheek. Arthur stiffened for a moment, then he put Blake’s head into a pretend headlock and rubbed his fist on his head, mussing up Blake’s perfect hair.

  “Hey!” Blake yelped, scrambling to escape Arthur’s hold.

  Warm lips grazed my cheek. I turned to meet Corbin’s gaze, and another surge of emotion opened my heart. His eyes blazed with gentle warmth, his dark hair whipped around his face, his skin was streaked with foul demon blood. I traced his cheekbone with my fingers, savouring the warmth of his skin. He’d gone to hell for all of us, and we’d brought him back. There was no love in the universe that was greater than that.

  We all fell over each other, crying and laughing and hugging and kissing, relishing the warmth of living skin. Rowan and Corbin locked lips in a kiss that seared with passion. Only when Corbin pulled back did his parents manage to elbow their way into the fray to envelop him in a fierce hug. His mother whispered a long string of words into his ears that made his whole face light up with happiness. It was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.

  “I knew you’d kick some demon arse,
big sister.” Kelly and Jane squashed me between them. I kissed them both.

  “Nice use of arse, little sister,” I teased her.

  “I know,” she beamed. “I’ve been practicing.”

  Kelly and I gazed at each other, a million unsaid things flickering through our eyes. I forgive you, and I love you being the two that mattered most. I knew that one day, when I was ready, I would tell her that I saw our parents in the Slaugh, and that it was her words that stopped me from using my magic for murder. I won’t have any more secrets.

  We fell in the grass together, laughing and talking over each other as we watched the sun pierce the sky. Flynn had his phone out and he was trying to convince the guy at the local curry house to deliver a big order of food right to the field. Blake and Arthur got into an argument about Sherlock Holmes and Arthur put Blake in another headlock. I laughed until my sides ached and my tears dried into sticky trails down my cheeks.

  Love swelled in my chest as I observed my big, messy, perfect family. My five broken boys who had faced their own demons in order to save the world and to unite us again. The people who had believed in us, even when we didn’t believe in ourselves. My sister, who had lost so much and yet kept on smiling. And behind them, the blackened walls of Briarwood, broken too, but still fighting, still working their own magic on us all.

  39

  MAEVE

  As the sun fell behind the horizon, streaking blood red light across the sky, we took up our positions around the sidhe. It was two weeks after we returned from the underworld, and Liah and I had finally finished negotiations for the treaty between humans and fae. I raised my hands and called on the elements, the words of our coven rituals now committed to memory. Magic hummed through my veins, rising like a cone through my body, spurred on by the excitement that marked today as a turning point in the future of fae/human relations.