A Fey New World: A Reverse Harem Magical Romance (The Godhunter Series Book 32)

by Amy Sumida

  “Aw, come on!” I whined.

  Chapter Eleven

  We slept in the next morning; we deserved it. The bargest had come to Earth with his mate and the female was a lot harder to catch. Not a huge surprise there but very annoying. The bitch—I'm fairly certain that's an acceptable term for a bargest female—led us on a merry chase through the cold, wet, Vermont woods before we finally managed to corner her. Even then, it took three tries for one of us to grab her. Arach was especially irritated since it had been Drake who caught her in the end.

  We checked out of the hotel and headed to the next location with another step added to our to-do list: check the area for fey animals. We performed the checks prior to closing the raths so if there were animals—and there were—we could attempt to corral them back to the rath and send through on their own. That didn't work out so well with every animal but we kept at it anyway.

  Even with the extra searching, we managed to get all of the raths closed, the areas around them cleared, and any infected places warded. I know, using the word infected makes it sound like a disease but despite what Arach had said about cause and effect, it was like a disease. Faerie had infected Earth with magic and we had no idea how to cure the planet.

  Once we were finished, we were left with a decision. At least Arach and I were. Did we go back to Faerie the normal route and miss a few days with our children, go back with our rings and get there ahead of Lugh and the others, or go to the God Realm to tell my other husbands what was happening and then use our rings to return to Faerie? In the end, we didn't choose any of those but instead went with a fourth option. Or rather, an amended option. We'd go back to Faerie via our rings, buying ourselves three more days to look into things, then when time caught up again, I would return to the God Realm with my ring or Arach and I would both trace there through the Aether—if he was still needed. We were hoping that we could stop this by then.

  “We'll send a carriage for you,” Arach promised Lugh and the others.

  “Good luck,” Lugh said. “Maybe we'll be met with the news that you've fixed everything.”

  I didn't say anything. I had hope but also doubts. More doubts than hope, to be honest. How could I not? We had no idea how to remove the faerie magic from Earth. Plus, hope and me have a sketchy past. So, I held my tongue and just nodded at Lugh before Arach and I headed home.

  The great thing about our rings was that we could pick the place we returned to. If you used a Ring of Remembrance in a single realm to journey to the past, you'd end up exactly where you started, just further back in time. But when you used them as Arach and I did, you got a bit more leeway. The magic needed further direction, which gave us the opportunity to instruct it however we wished. So, instead of returning to the End of the Road, we reformed in our bedroom inside Castle Aithinne, saving ourselves a trip. We arrived a few minutes after we had left the realm, which was a few hours after we'd left Aithinne (the kingdoms are vast and the trip to the Great Tree isn't a short one). We had beat our carriage home but our sons and Isleen would have been waiting and wondering where Arach was for the last few hours.

  Which made finding them our priority.

  We hurried downstairs—no parent likes worrying their kids—and headed outside. We were nearly to the backdoor of the castle when Arach grabbed me around the waist and pushed me up against the wall. His mouth covered mine and his hands went to the zipper of my jeans. He had them undone and his hand down my panties in seconds.

  “Arach!” I tore my mouth away from his to shout.

  Arach jerked as if I'd slapped him. His shoulders went tense and his jaw clenched. He closed his eyes and released a slow breath. When he opened his eyes again, the scales that had started to spread down his cheeks withdrew back to his temples.

  “I'm sorry, A Thaisce,” Arach whispered. “Lust hit me suddenly and I wasn't prepared. I've got it under control now.”

  “It's okay.” I zipped up my pants. “But damn, Arach, we've got to stop this.”

  “Yes, my Queen,” Isleen said as she walked up. “Things are getting... unstable. We need to determine what this is and fix it as soon as possible.”

  “Where's the wayfarer?” Arach asked. “Hasn't he arrived yet?”

  “Only a few hours have passed,” I reminded him.

  “He should be here shortly,” Isleen said.

  “Alaric helped us find all of the open paths to Faerie,” I informed Isleen as I headed out to find my sons. “There shouldn't be any more but we can send the wayfarer into the kingdom with a few Red Caps as an escort, just to make sure.”

  “I'll see to it,” Isleen offered. “The Princes are fine; I checked on them a few minutes ago. Thankfully, most of our copulating courtiers are keeping to the castle.”

  “Copulating courtiers in the castle.” I chuckled, then went sober at Isleen's grim expression. “Sorry.”

  “Vervain and I need to find the origin of all of this.” Arach waved his hand vaguely.

  “The origin?” Isleen asked.

  “We're working on a theory that all of the changes in Faerie have caused a buildup of magic that eventually exploded,” I explained. “We need to find the point of origin—the place where the magic condensed and expanded.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “I'm going to try to speak to Faerie again.” I made a face to express how much faith I had in that effort. Then I called out to my sons, “Boys, were home!”

  Rian and Brevyn waved at us from their perches atop a jungle gym, then went back to playing. So much for being missed. I grimaced; just watching the display of their endless energy made me exhausted but at least I wasn't in Roarke's position. He'd separated himself from his wife—every couple had separated—and was sprawled on the grass with his stare fixed firmly on the children. I suppose that was one way to stop thinking about sex. For the randy Cat-Sidhe, it must have been even more difficult. He glanced at me, and I saw the strain lining his face. I gave him a sympathetic smile and he blew me a raspberry.

  “Well, at least the children haven't noticed beyond thinking the adults are acting weird.” I shook my head at Roarke.

  “Let's hope they continue to be so oblivious,” Arach said.

  “Faerie?” I asked out loud. “Faerie, can you hear me?” I finally resorted to shouting in my mind, Faerie!

  What?! she shrieked back.

  “We've just got back from the Human Realm,” I said with a nod to Arach to let him know that she'd responded. “We had to close several new raths to this realm and catch some animals who had wandered through.”

  Uh-huh.

  “Are you listening?” I snapped.

  Yes, I'm listening, she huffed. What do you want, Vervain? I'm a little busy.

  “I want to know if you've noticed any magical explosions recently,” I said. “It would have happened right before you became so distracted.”

  Explosions? There have been all sorts of—

  “A release of magical energy,” I cut her off. “Something powerful.” I waited for an answer but none came. “Faerie!”

  What? Oh, yes. Magical release, her voice dropped into a purr.

  “Did one happen?” I prompted.

  Ummm... yes, I believe so.

  “Where?” I demanded.

  It was... somewhere... it was...

  “Where?!”

  You don't have to be so bitchy about it, she grumbled.

  “Damn it, Faerie! Focus! Your realm is seeping into another. We have to stop it. Now, where did you sense the release?”

  Sheesh, relax. It was, um, oh, yes! It was in the center of the Forgetful Forest.

  “At the Castle of Eight?” I asked in surprise.

  No, the castle is near the center but not the exact center. This happened at the exact center.

  “The Imleag,” Arach whispered.

  Yes, that place, Faerie confirmed distractedly.

  I hadn't realized that she'd been speaking to my husband as well but I was glad she had because I
had no idea what they were talking about.

  “The Emma lack?” I asked.

  “Imleag: im-ma-lack,” Arach repeated it, then sounded it out for me. “It's the navel of our world. It's very center. The hub of our wheel-shaped realm.”

  “Makes sense that the explosion would happen there,” I murmured. Then, to Faerie, I said, “Okay, you can go back to being a peeping Faerie.”

  Thank you, she said without any embarrassment.

  I rolled my eyes. “All right, let's go visit Faerie's belly button and see how badly it exploded.” I grimaced. “And may I never say those words again.”

  Chapter Twelve

  There was no time to waste. Arach and I disrobed and shifted into our half-dragon forms—humanoid bodies covered in dragon scales, with claw-tipped hands and feet, horns, a barb-tipped tail, and leathery wings. It was the wings we needed most. We could have gone full dragon but Arach advised against it. He wasn't sure if there would be enough room for two dragons to land in the Imleag.

  Our scales covered all of the bits that needed covering so we didn't bother with clothes, simply launched ourselves out of our bedroom window and headed over the Forgetful Forest. My dragon roared inside me and I couldn't help releasing an echo of its cry. I may not have been wearing the full dragon form she would have preferred but it was close enough to make her happy. And when Mama Dragon is happy, everyone's happy.

  Our wings beat the air as Arach and I headed across the treetops, the leafy canopy swaying not only with the breeze but also with the movements of the tree limbs that were, in turn, moved ever so slightly by the breathing trunks. Exotic birds scattered out of our path and, below us, fey creatures roamed the forest. None of them looked affected by the magic. I hadn't thought of it before, but shouldn't the animals have been feeling the mating urge as well? Perhaps it had something to do with the elements. Fey animals do have a touch of elemental magic in them, but it's far less than the amount found in faeries.

  We flew on, two Dragon-Sidhe—one the color of freshly spilled blood and the other a gleaming metallic gold—shooting across the fey sky. My dragon's joy had diminished as my urgency sank through to her. There weren't a lot of things that she considered worthy of worrying about but the Realm of Faerie was one of them. She went still inside me to allow me to focus.

  “There!” Arach shouted over the clap of our wings and the rush of the air as he pointed down into the forest.

  A clearing that would have been barely visible under normal circumstances, stood out sharply, highlighted by the glow that emanated from it. We circled down to it, pulling our wings in to drop past the stretching tree branches. I fell a little faster than I anticipated due to that maneuver and my momentum sent me down onto one knee.

  “A Thaisce?” Arach hurried over to me.

  “I'm fine,” I assured him as he helped me up. “Just not used to landing that way.”

  My stare went to the center of the clearing and his followed.

  “By the flame,” Arach whispered in wonder. “What is that?”

  “That's not the Imleag?” I asked even though I knew the answer.

  “No, the Imleag is this place—the clearing itself. I don't know what that is.”

  “If it's not the Imleag, it must be the origin point.”

  The origin of Faerie's magical explosion hovered a few feet above the ground—a cloud of light churning with energy and sparking with colors. Every color imaginable glinted inside it, shifting so often that it was impossible to catch the various shades. They sort of blended into an opalescent, golden amoeba. A stormy amoeba. Not only did it glint but it also crackled like lightning.

  I hadn't really expected to find something so... visible. I thought the Imleag itself would be, well, a rock or something like that but there was nothing tangible in the clearing to point at and say, “There is the Imleag.” If not for the glowing thing that hovered above the grass, I wouldn't have known this place was special at all. It really was just the center of the realm. I shouldn't say “just” though. It must have also been a place of power—physical landmarks or not—or the magic wouldn't have accumulated there.

  “Al said something about magical sparks,” I murmured. “But I didn't think they'd literally be sparks.”

  “If there was an explosion, why do these sparks remain?” Arach asked—his voice deeper in his half-dragon form, as if his vocal cords had shifted as well.

  “Maybe it's gathering itself for another go,” I whispered with worry.

  “Then we must stop it before it does,” Arach said simply.

  “Sure,” I huffed. Then I went on flippantly, “I'll just make a wish. Trinity Star, would you mind diffusing this magical bomb for us? Maybe you could calm the magic or send it into Faerie or whatever you think is safest. Just handle that, please.” I waved my hand and twirled my fingers as if I were the Fairy Godmother from Cinderella. “Bibbity bobbity boo!”

  Then I gasped as the Trinity Star suddenly came to life inside my chest, glowing so bright, so quickly, that I was blinded in a second. I heard Arach shout but it came from far away. I was lost to the light, suspended in space, my body left behind. My consciousness surged with the starlight, flowing into the Imleag which wasn't merely the center of the realm but also the place where magic was the strongest in Faerie.

  The Faerie Realm is forged of elements. When it was first created, there were only four kingdoms: Water, Earth, Air, and Fire. Even though it had a king, Spirit was not a kingdom but rather a mediator between kingdoms—a unifier. The pie-shaped kingdoms laid around the hub of the Forgetful Forest where Spirit bonded them by their tips. The land of each kingdom was dominated by its element but also touched the other three elements. This contact was imperative to the harmony of the realm.

  Every kingdom needed to be bordered by the other elements. To either side, there laid other kingdoms, to the center was Spirit, and at their backs was the final element in its physical form. At the far end of the Fire Kingdom laid the Tine—an immense body of water, at the back of Air stood the Mountains of Serenity, behind Water was a volcano that constantly erupts, and Earth ends in mist.

  These elements not only backed the kingdoms and fence them in but they also crossed below and above the realm, blending with each other. The Tine is fed by the ocean of the Kingdom of Water via an underground river that then cycles back through the Kingdom of Fire. The river got heated by its journey through Fire and provided hot water to our entire kingdom before crossing beneath the Forgetful Forest and the Water Kingdom to surface near the volcano at the edge of the ocean of its origin. The warmed river then flowed back into the ocean, supplying the Kingdom of Water with warm currents.

  The same sort of cycle happens with the Kingdoms of Earth and Air, though in a more subtle way. Earth cannot flow but its energy runs through the ground and the growing things, straight across the Forgetful Forest to the Mountains of Serenity that back the Kingdom of Air. Special air currents mimic the grounded energy, blowing across the forest to the Kingdom of Earth, where it collected in magical mists. And all of those elemental crossings converged there, at the Imleag.

  Then the Dark Kingdom was added.

  I saw it so clearly now, entrenched as I was within the power of the Imleag. The ring of elements at the back of the kingdoms had served as a type of ward for Faerie—a deeper, more powerful ward than the one laid by the Fey themselves. When Faerie and I had created the Dark Kingdom, we had opened that ward, creating a flow between the new element and the others. That flow was necessary, especially since the Dark Kingdom didn't directly touch Spirit. The new kingdom was like a tire fit over a rim. It would never reach the hub except through contact with the spokes. But Faerie had forgotten to close the circle beyond the Dark Kingdom after it was formed. Without that elemental protection, all of those magical sparks Al mentioned had nothing to absorb them. Nothing to neutralize them and drain the excess of power back into the elements.

  Instead, they had been drawn to the hub—to the Imleag—and
gathered into this mass of churning energy. They drew together into a chaotic cloud of pure potential. As the clouds in the sky grow heavy with moisture until they finally empty themselves with rain, this cloud grew heavy too. It condensed until it could hold no more and then it burst into magical rain. Or perhaps shrapnel would be a better description.

  I saw all of that in a second. I knew the answer in a moment. And the Trinity Star granted my wish. Even in that blissful drift, I was aware of the contrariness of my star—that it would grant a wish I made sardonically, fully expecting it not to. I should have wished sooner. You never know when that damn nine-pointed collection of magic inside me would work. It only grants wishes that don't interfere with fate. The problem is, I never know what falls into that category.