by Dean Murray
I pulled a long, silver, two-handed blade out of the hidden compartment in Jace's SUV and then turned to Bethany, who'd returned to her normal spot on my shoulder. "Do you think that one of the Seelie warriors would be willing to carry this for me? If we get jumped by some of Fenrir's buddies I'm going to wish I had this, but I don't know the first thing about making something this big disappear."
Bethany shrugged. I started to put the sword back in the compartment, but before I could finish Bethany zipped over to the leader. "My person is uneasy at the thought of running into one of our cousins without a real blade, but she's too new to have mastered the illusionary arts. I would carry it for her, but I'm not up to shifting something that heavy. Is there one of your people who would be willing to carry it for her?"
Intravil nodded a greeting, but there was something in her expression that I couldn't read. It was almost as though she'd been surprised at something Bethany had just said.
"You must be Bethany. The Lady has spoken of you—she is convinced that you're one of us, and her word has always been enough for me." She turned towards me and gave me a regal nod. "The Lady has also spoken highly of you, Selene. She said that you were instrumental in her most recent string of victories over Fenrir. If you would like, I would be more than happy to hold your weapon for you and conceal it from the eyes of the humans."
"Yes, please. I would really appreciate it."
I picked up the sword I'd laid claim to, and started towards Intravil as Jace strapped an ax and a sword crosswise across his back. Kat and Byron also got heavier blades out for themselves as I crossed the distance between Intravil and me.
I set the sheathed weapon into her hand and then looked up and met her eyes for the first time. I was completely unprepared for what I saw there. From a distance her eyes had looked like anyone else's, but they weren't—not even close.
When I'd met the Lady I'd gotten an incredible sense of age from her. Intravil had the same sense of having seen more years than I could possibly understand, but there was something else there as well. The thing that looked out from behind Intravil's eyes was inhuman in ways that the Lady hadn't been.
Bethany was like the outspoken, second sister I'd never had. She had wings and a really odd perspective on things sometimes, but for all of that, I still just thought of her as an especially tiny person. Even the Lady hadn't struck me as being so obviously other as Intravil did now.
Even as my pulse sped up and my breathing got fast and shallow, I tried to remind myself that humanity wasn't necessarily everything people tried to claim it was.
Intravil not being human didn't necessarily mean that she was bad, but as I looked up into her eyes, I got the feeling that her definition of bad wasn't the same as mine. She looked at me like I was some kind of mildly interesting insect, like I didn't merit much consideration on my own. Despite her earlier acknowledgment of my part in helping the Lady defeat Fenrir, it was only Bethany's request on my behalf that made me worthy of her assistance.
"I will take good care of your weapon, little godling, and I will return it at your request."
I followed her gaze and realized that I hadn't let go of my sword. I still had my right hand clenched around it like my life depended on it. I mustered up an apologetic smile and forced my fingers to relax, one at a time.
It was like nothing else I'd ever experienced. My subconscious seemed to have realized just how alien Intravil was even before the rest of me had, and it was convinced that the tall, beautiful redhead was a potential threat.
I nodded my thanks and started to step backwards. The polite thing would have been to turn my back on her rather than acting like she was a coiled rattlesnake, but I just couldn't bring myself to let her get behind me—not as long as she was within striking distance.
Intravil reached out and wrapped her hand around my upper arm. The gesture had such a lazy confidence to it that it took me by surprise. I tried to tell myself that I could have dodged out of range if I'd actually been trying, but I wasn't so sure that was the truth. I was amped—not as far amped up as I'd been at some points already in my life, but amped up enough that most beings would have struggled to take me by surprise like that, but Intravil was apparently quite a ways up on the food chain.
"No need to back away, godling. Stay close to me so you'll have access to your weapon if something should happen."
There was a challenge in her eyes. She would hold my weapon regardless, but this was a chance to earn some of her respect, to show that I was something other than just another bug.
I forced my breathing to slow down and stepped forward. "Okay. Just let me know if I get too close and start tripping you up."
We shook out into a long line with Intravil and me at the front, Jace at the back with a massive fairy who had skin so black that he looked like he was made out of obsidian, and everyone else in the middle with one or more fae at their sides. Jace, Byron and Kat made their weapons disappear, and then we started moving.
The trip seemed to take forever. It wasn't just me either. I saw Intravil speed up and then force herself to slow back down at least a dozen times. Even on foot, she was used to moving a lot faster than this, but while we Awakened could have probably kept up with her, there was no way that Dad and Ari would have been able to sustain a pace any faster than the one we were already maintaining.
Ari was a runner—or at least friends with runners who took her out with them often enough that she had better than average endurance—so I wasn't all that worried about her. My frequent glances back at the rest of our group confirmed that my dad was struggling. At first it wasn't as noticeable, but as the seconds slowly transformed into minutes his breathing grew more ragged.
My desire to show I wasn't actually terrified of Intravil kept me there at her side much longer than I would have stayed otherwise, but even that wasn't enough to make me turn a blind eye to my dad when his legs became so unsteady that it looked like he might collapse at any moment.
I slowed nearly to a stop as I moved to the left so that the fairy just behind us could pass me, but then Kat was at Dad's side, and a warm trickle of power washed over me as I caught the fringes of her effect. Kat grabbed Dad's upper arm and for a second I thought he was going to wave her off, but then Byron was on his other side and I felt another surge of power as the newest arrival to our pantheon amped my dad's circulatory and respiratory systems a little more.
My dad started to blush from embarrassment, but now that there were two of them bracketing him, each holding onto his arm to help support some of his weight, he seemed unwilling to make a big deal out of their help.
I turned back towards the front of our group and caught back up to Intravil within a few steps. The flawless Seelie warrior looked over at me as I regained my position at her side.
"You're father?"
"Yes, how did you know?"
She smiled at me, and there was something more to the expression than the cold indifference she'd displayed earlier.
"My gift is the ability to see such things. Your concern for him does you credit."
That was the last thing I'd expected to hear out of her and for a moment I couldn't come up with a response. "I didn't think that the fae would care about that kind of thing."
"We do. Only the most honorless of the Seelie Court would not feel some degree of respect and gratitude towards the individual who created us."
I half expected Intravil to be angry with me, but maybe there was a benefit to her not respecting me yet. As long as she didn't expect anything out of me it wasn't possible to offend her.
She gave me a chance to respond, but I didn't know what to say. In the end she just nodded to herself, seemingly satisfied with my response—or lack thereof—and snapped her fingers. I looked back just in time to see two of her people grab Ari's arms, supporting her similarly to how Kat and Byron were supporting my dad.
We ran the rest of the distance at a speed that would have been tough for even Olympic distance runners to ma
tch. I half expected the sight of us to cause bystanders to freak out, but there were surprisingly few people out and about on foot. People in cars had no real frame of reference for how fast we were going, so we made it all of the way to the nightclub that appeared to be our destination without any problem.
I didn't have to look twice at the bouncer in front of the club to realize that he was another Seelie warrior. He wasn't in armor and he didn't have any visible weapons, but he had the same perfect bone structure and tall, muscly build as the Seelie fae who were accompanying us. That was probably a good thing because Byron and my dad were the only two of us who looked old enough to make it into an establishment that served alcohol.
We were ushered into the club without any fuss, and Intravil led us through the press of barely-clothed, sweaty bodies without trying to communicate over the thumping music. A few minutes later, we found ourselves inside the suite of rooms that I was pretty sure belonged to the owner of the club.
If I hadn't seen the furnishings inside of Jace and Kat's house I would have stood there gawking at the sheer luxury of the owner's suite. The soundproofing was amazing. Out on the dance floor the music had been so loud I'd half expected my ears to start bleeding, but inside the owner's suite the heavy bass wasn't any louder than my own heartbeat.
One entire side of the main sitting room was taken up with thick, tinted windows that looked out over the club floor. They allowed us to look out over the dance floor without being observed in return. A large hot tub took up one corner of the room, but I was more interested in the black leather sofas that dominated the center of the space. I'd made it through the run, but that didn't mean I wasn't feeling tired.
Intravil looked through the windows for a second and then turned and walked to the other side of the room and placed her hand on the massive floor-to-ceiling mirror mounted on the wall. For a second nothing happened, and then the mirror rippled and turned cloudy.
"It's ready—go ahead."
I looked over at Jace. Nobody had told me what to expect, but then again that wasn't entirely a surprise. There was so much I didn't know that he and Kat had to pick and choose what bits of information took priority. Generally that meant teaching me a new effect or weapons technique.
"It's okay. The Seelie Court exists outside of what we normally consider reality. Bethany told you that she's able to shift things into an in-between place. This is like that, only it's a lot bigger and accessible to other fae."
Dad and Ari hadn't had the benefit of finding out that Bethany could make piles of cash disappear, but they seemed to mostly be keeping up with the conversation. I looked up at Bethany and she shrugged.
"I don't know how it works either—this is something you only get access to when you've got way more power than I do. Really powerful fae like the Lady can carve out some sort of pocket dimension. Even the Lady is limited in the amount of space that she can bend to her will, but some of her most powerful lieutenants have lent their strength to the task as well. Between all of them they've created a home for our people, for the Seelie fae."
"But it's not accessible from just anywhere?"
"No. Only through special portals like this."
I nodded. "Which explains the guards. You wouldn't want to have a bunch of Unseelie fae raid the court."
Intravil picked up the explanation with a shake of her head. "The guards are here for other reasons. The Seelie Court is safe from any kind of intrusion. Only the portal wardens have the ability to open up a portal to our homeland."
Her response had been polite, but I could tell that she was getting impatient with the delay. I took a deep breath and then stepped forward into the mirror. I couldn't have said what I was expecting, but what I actually felt wasn't it.
The mirror felt like walking into a warm shower. Tingles of calm energy lapped up against my skin for a moment and then I was on the other side of the portal in what I could easily believe was a separate reality from the one I'd grown up in.
I was in a marble building, like something I would have imagined if told to visualize ancient Greek architecture. There was a breathtaking beauty to the tall, fluted columns and the polished floors.
The furniture was all slender golden rods that looked much too weak to support even my weight, let alone someone as heavy as the male warriors who'd accompanied us. The white silk cushions on the furniture looked like they would be hell to keep clean, but there was no arguing with the regal feel they gave the room.
There were large swaths of silk hanging from the roof, some white, some gold. But for them, the entire building would have been open to the outside. They were all down but for one, and I walked over to that edge of the room as Bethany came through the mirror behind me and landed on my shoulder.
"It's everything that Kregor told me it would be."
I tore my eyes away from the forest before us and looked at Bethany. "You've never been here before?"
"No. Kregor is always the one to run messages between Jace and the Lady. He told me it would feel like coming home—even the first time—but I didn't quite believe him until now."
I nodded, surprised that she'd managed to capture what I was feeling so perfectly. This felt like home, which was ludicrous given how different it was from my actual home, but there was no arguing with feelings.
The rest of our party trickled through the portal over the next few seconds. I'd half expected the entire group of Seelie warriors to accompany us all of the way to our meeting with the Lady, but only Intravil stepped through the mirror before it returned to its normal state.
She looked at the seven of us for several seconds before pointing at the mirror. "I am the only one who can activate the portal. I'm the one who brought you through, so you are my responsibility until you return to your plane or the Lady assumes responsibility for you. Follow along closely behind me or you'll get lost. Don't eat or drink anything. Our food would be unpleasant for Awakened and lethal for humans."
She handed me my weapon and then turned and exited the building without looking back, and we all hurried after her. The trip through the forest outside was unnerving. Don't get me wrong, the forest was beautiful. Most forests I'd seen in Colorado were hard to walk through because there was so much underbrush. This was nothing like that.
The trees were tall and widely spaced, and the only other plants growing underneath them were flowers and grass. I didn't see any insects, which meant that this was the kind of place where you could actually lie down on the grass for a nap and not have to worry about something crawling on you while you were asleep.
The forest looked perfect, but there was something odd playing at the edge of my mind as we walked. When I'd been little I'd had a tendency to get car-sick on long drives. Mom had told me repeatedly that my needing to hurl every time we traveled was a good thing because it meant I had a more sensitive sense of balance. She claimed that I was super in tune with my body and I got sick because my mind knew that what my eyes were seeing—the landscape rushing past us—didn't match up with what my inner ear was saying.
I'd always figured that she was just trying to make me feel better, but for once I was starting to think maybe she'd been onto something. We were walking at a fairly normal pace, but I kept getting the feeling that we were moving much faster than that. Ari was looking a little green around the gills too.
"We are here. Wait in exactly this spot while I announce you."
Intravil walked away without looking back, which was unnerving given that I'd just learned that she was our only ticket back home.
It was a good thing that we arrived when we did, or I probably would have lost my last meal. I was so busy trying to regain control of my stomach that it took me a while to realize that 'here' was another marble building, this one even bigger than the one we'd just left.
There was a sense of age to it that took my breath away. It was funny. Some part of me—my soul, presumably—was hundreds, maybe even thousands of years old, but this building still made me feel like
some kind of insignificant insect. Maybe Intravil wasn't as off her rocker as I'd been thinking she was.
Intravil returned a few minutes later and led us into the building, which actually had separate rooms with real walls rather than just the large strips of fabric that I'd been able to see from the outside. The very center of the building turned out to be an enormous throne room, and the familiar figure of the Lady was waiting for us on the throne.
Somehow I'd been expecting her to look different this time. It was silly, but the first time I'd seen her had been back before I'd known that she was the most powerful Seelie warrior. Now that I knew she ruled the entire Seelie Court it only seemed fair for my perception of her to have changed—only it hadn't. She'd somehow looked regal even before I'd known who she was.
"You may all approach me."
Jace nodded and led the way. The rest of us followed in a loose clump that made it obvious we weren't entirely comfortable to be there. As we walked I took in our surroundings. The throne room was surprisingly Spartan. Then again, it didn't need much in the way of ornamentation when it had nearly two score Seelie warriors standing around the perimeter of the room.
Intravil's people had been intimidating on levels only Fenrir had ever managed previously, but this group was something else entirely. Some of the guys were pushing seven feet in height and even the girls looked like they were nearly six-six. They were all built with the hard, defined muscles of gymnasts, and they were all wearing full-plate armor that had never been made by any human hands.
Each suit of armor was unique, and each was a work of art. The metal was all colored in astonishing, eye-catching hues that were the very definition of unearthly. One of the suits was black, and even that had a hauntingly beautiful iridescent sheen in the torchlight.
I'd been to a museum back in grade school and had a chance to see real armor. At the time, I'd been impressed with the way that the ancient blacksmiths had been able to form metal into such smooth, rounded shapes. I'd been astonished, even at a young age, by the narrow seams at the joints, but these suits made those look like time-worn relics.
