When he lowered me to the floor, Eli was there in his place, though he wasn’t quite so...enthusiastic. He slung one arm around my shoulder and pulled me close while Sebastian waltzed over to give me a generous pat on the back.
All the attention was a little embarrassing, and I murmured my way to my seat before they could make any more of a fuss. Even Tess was getting teary about my return.
“Sorry I wasn’t there when you woke up,” Marcus said, leaning over when I eased into the seat beside him. He gave me a wink, and I warmed. Here he was, alive and safe and very much not underwater. “I’ve been dying to speak to you but—”
“But the old man thought you needed some space,” Jasper cut in.
Kipling smiled, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “They were all buzzing around you like pesky insects, and you needed peace and quiet. I told them to leave you be. Now, would you like some breakfast potatoes?”
My stomach growled in response, and my mouth watered. “I’d love some breakfast potatoes. And a little of everything else.”
* * *
Jasper found me on the cliffs after breakfast. The hall had brightened with laughter and noise, and everyone had begged me to recount our trip to the Blood Coven, even though Marcus had told them everything two days before. It had made me tired remembering it all. All those lives lost. All the pain and fear I’d felt.
The Queen had demanded a party to celebrate. Now, with the illusion hiding the City of Wings from the rest of the world, she and the shadow witches would remain here as well, indefinitely.
But, as happy as I was, I needed a moment to catch my breath.
Jasper strode up behind me and took a spot on my left. “Looks like you saved the day, Ro. Marcus told me all that training paid off.”
“It did,” I said quietly, keeping my eyes on the sea that spread out before us, the sea where I’d drowned and then come back to life. “Thank you for sticking with it, even though…”
Even though you didn’t want to train me after that kiss.
“Marcus also told me about what happened between you two while you were gone.” His voice was low and rough, but he always sounded like that, so it was impossible to tell whether he was upset by the news or not.
A pause. “Does that bother you?”
“No, Ro. I have no claim over you.” He sighed and shrugged his hands into his jeans. “In fact, I think I’ve been unfair to you.”
I glanced up at his strong and handsome face. “It’s okay, Jasper. I’m not going to keep asking you to explain what happened between us.”
“I want you to know why I reacted the way I did,” he said. “And I need you to understand that the reason I pulled away has nothing to do with how I feel about you. The truth is, Ro. I’m your guardian. I swore an oath to protect you, one I can never break. And when I took that oath, it created a bond between us. It’s an ancient power. And it means we can’t have a physical relationship or I risk losing my magic.”
“What?” I gaped at him in shock, and a strange sick sensation took shape in my gut. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
He gave a nod. “If I gave into how I feel about you, then I’d lose my magic and turn to stone.”
Chapter 31
The party started before sundown.
All the leftover supplies from the festival had been trotted out from wherever Kipling had stored it. Platters of food appeared on the long dining table, and helium balloons bobbed by on weighted strings. The setting sun cast an orange glow on the proceedings, dousing everything in the kind of warmth felt on the dawn of a new spring day.
Like life was beginning anew.
I wasn’t feeling quite so celebratory myself, still reeling from everything that had happened and from the bombshell Jasper had dropped on me earlier.
Instead of joining in, I curled up on the Scriptorium sofa and breathed in the soothing scent of leather-bound books and dusty stone. Alaric still stood like an ever-present guardian, eyes focused on the wall behind my head. So much had changed since I’d been gone, but not here. Here, everything remained the same. Despite that first helicopter visit from the hunters, they hadn’t returned in our absence. There’d been no attacks, no deaths, no pain. We were lucky. Somehow, things had turned out okay.
“Hello, love,” Marcus said from the open doorway as a giggling witch holding a wine goblet tumbled past him. He arched an eyebrow and jerked his thumb at the festivities. “You don’t want to celebrate?”
“This is me celebrating,” I said, hugging the blanket to my chest. “It’s been a long time since I felt like I could relax.”
“And now you can,” he said with a smile. “You’re home, Rowena. No one will ever bother you again.”
At the word home, I couldn’t help but remember how ready and willing Marcus had been when it came time for him to return to the Blood Coven. And how he’d risked his neck—time and time again—to save them. How horror-stricken he’d looked when he discovered what the fae had done to the mages he’d promised to protect.
“I’m sorry that you weren’t able to return to your home, Marcus,” I said. “I know you wanted to go back.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You think I wanted to go back because that place was my home? You’re wrong, love. I only wanted to go for you. To protect you. To help you get your sword. Yes, I wanted to fulfill my oath to the mages, but a part of me gave up on that oath the moment I laid eyes on you.”
He strode into the room and eased down beside me, draping an arm across the back of the sofa. His fingers brushed against the back of my neck, and that delicious ache between my thighs burned through me.
“So,” I said, giving him a shy smile. “You’re happy to be here?”
“Not happy.” He shot me that dimpled grin. “I’m elated.”
A beat passed, and my body instinctively shifted closer to his. “If I remember correctly, there was something you promised you’d do once we had more time.”
“Is that so?” He cocked his eyebrow, the finger on my neck tracing delicious circles on my skin. “Now that we’re back here with the others, I wasn’t sure if you’d feel the same.”
“Does that mean you don’t feel the same?”
He chuckled. “If anything, I want you even more.”
My heart galloped, leaving the rational part of my mind in a dusty cloud. My eyes caught on his lips. Those same lips that had trailed down my neck. And those hands...they’d done things to me I’d never known before. I was desperate for more.
“How’s this?” he asked. “Let’s go enjoy the party. It’s to celebrate you, after all. We’ll drink, dance, enjoy ourselves. And then tonight, you can stay in my bed.”
Shivers stormed my arms, and I found myself nodding before I knew what I was doing. Marcus smiled and took my hand, pulling me out the Scriptorium door and into the lively party. Things had ramped up while I’d been inside, and the buzz in the air was more than witch magic. Someone had found some speakers, and bass-driven music pulsed through the streets.
Marcus and I weaved through the crowd, laughing at a witch who was dancing with wild abandon, her long hair swinging to and fro as her arms writhed over her head. Her face beamed; her smile was as bright as the stars. Everyone looked so...happy.
Up ahead, I spotted Tess through the crowd, chatting to Kipling and a gargoyle statue while she sloshed a goblet of wine onto the cobblestone street. Shaking my head, I motioned for Marcus to follow.
“Kipling,” I said, jerking my chin toward Tess. “Why is my friend having a full-on conversation with a statue?”
“She’s drunk. You’re all drunk, the lot of you.” But the bemused smile on his face gave him away, particularly when he plucked his own goblet from the windowsill behind him.
Marcus pressed his lips to my ear, and a delicious shiver went down my spine. “I swear. We leave these lunatics alone for a few minutes, and look what happens.”
With a grin, I turned to wrap my arms around his neck and—
A
raven crashed to the ground in front of me, and a small tube tumbled from its claws. Gasping, I stumbled back, my hand pressed tight to my chest. Kipling tossed his goblet aside and sunk to his knees to take the tiny dark bird into his hands. We all stood silently to watch him, not daring to say a word. And then he darted off, no doubt to find the healing salve he kept tucked away for emergencies just like this.
I pointed at the tube the bird had dropped. “What the hell is that?”
“Don’t touch it,” Marcus said.
But he was too late. Tess snatched the tube from the ground and unfurled the contents. There were a few thick, rectangle pieces of white paper, all stuffed in there together. Her eyes darted across the pages, one after another. When she’d seen them all, she closed her eyes and pressed a hand over her mouth in a horror-filled gasp.
“Tess. What is it?” Dread crept close and surrounded me like a writhing mass of shadows. “What’s on those pages?”
Hurriedly, she shook her head and hid the papers behind her back. “You don’t want to see this. No good will come of it.”
“Come on, Tess.” Marcus held out a steady hand, palm up. “If it’s causing this kind of reaction, then we all need to see what’s on there.”
She glanced from me to Marcus before meeting my gaze again, a deep sorrow in her eyes. My heart clenched tight, and my palms went slick with sweat. A moment ago, the world had felt right again. A future I hadn’t known I wanted stood right before me. I’d felt hope and happiness and calm. Marcus wanted me, and I wanted him. But it was all dashed away by that look in Tess’s eyes. Because I knew that whatever was on those papers would change everything.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered before placing the papers into Marcus’s open palms, her own hands shaking.
He took one look at the contents before throwing them to the ground and letting out a roar at the sky. The sound of his anguish filled my head, and the happy chatter of the party died away to reveal a silence that was deafening.
My lungs burned from my held breath as I placed a shaking forefinger and thumb around the nearest paper. I lifted it from the ground and held it before my eyes. Horror spilled across the page. It was a photo of a body. A dead body. The eyes were open; the mouth was ajar. Her neck looked wrong and twisted. Broken.
“Sylvia,” I whispered.
Chapter 32
“Tell me exactly what the fae said when you made the deal.” Kipling braced his arms on the desk. The shifters, Kipling, Tess, and I had gathered in the Scriptorium to discuss the obscene delivery. Behind the photo of Sylvia, there had been two others. One of Edward and one of Kieran. The blood mages we’d rescued were now dead.
“King Oberon agreed to stop killing mages if I returned to the City of Wings.” I leaned against the wall beside Alaric, my hand wrapped around my neck. It was the only way I could stay standing right now. “And he said he’d put the illusion around the island so the magic hunters would no longer be able to see us.”
“So, either the magic hunters did this or the fae king lied,” Tess said.
“The fae cannot lie,” Marcus said quietly before shaking his head with a bitter laugh. “He did this. He made it sound like he was agreeing to stop hunting the mages, but he didn’t do that at all.”
“What are you talking about, Marcus? You were right there. The king said…”
What exactly had he said?
You want me to stop spilling innocent mage blood? His voice echoed in my ears.
“He said he wouldn’t hunt them anymore,” I said. “The exact words were, ‘you want me to stop spilling innocent mage blood?’”
“That’s right,” Marcus said with a groan before dragging his hand down his face.
Kipling frowned, and Jasper punched a fist at the air. Everyone looked…well, they looked horrified and defeated.
“He agreed to stop spilling their blood,” Marcus explained. “That doesn’t mean he can’t kill them. It just means he can’t do anything that would cause them to bleed.”
Spill innocent mage blood.
“Are you serious?” I curled my hands into fists and felt horror and rage shake through my body. “He tricked me? I thought we’d won, and yet…I failed. They’re dead. And there’s no telling who’s next.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Ro,” Eli said. “It is a classic fae tactic. They twist their words to make you think they mean one thing when the literal interpretation is the truth.”
“And I don’t think we need to wonder who’s next,” Kipling said. “That right there was a message. The fae are coming here. No doubt to slaughter every shadow witch in the city.”
My heart thundered within me. “Well, then we just have to leave.” I stopped myself. “No, not we. I’ll stay, of course, but everyone else has to leave. We can make a plan to evacuate the entire city. Find some boats to bring as close as we can and then fly everyone out one by one.”
“It’s a noble thought, my dear,” Kipling said with a sad smile, “but no one will be going anywhere. After what happened to you and Marcus on your way back, we know the hunters are closely watching this place now.”
“But the illusion,” I said, refusing to give up hope, even though deep down inside I knew he was right. “They can’t see the City of Wings. I know the fae king twisted his words on part of the deal, but this much was very clear. As long as I stay here, the illusion holds.”
“The city may be invisible, but the hunters still know where it is,” Kipling said. “They likely watched it vanish into nothingness and then got curious. They’ll be watching and waiting to see if anything happens. As soon as we left to board the boats, they’d see us. Besides, the fae can’t be very far away.”
My knees buckled underneath me, and I sunk onto the sofa. There had to be something we could do. Something. Anything.
“What do we do?” I whispered. “Is there anything we can do?”
“We’re doomed,” Tess answered. “The fae are powerful and immortal. No power of ours can stop them.”
Our eyes locked. This was it. This was the end. For the witches, for the shifters, and even for me. Now that I knew they’d tricked me, I could clearly see what the fae king had planned all along. He’d dangled a carrot in front of my face, one that had been far too irresistible to turn down. I would return to the City of Wings and soothe the witches’ frayed nerves, tempt them to stay under the guise of protection. He knew the Queen and how she thought, how she put the lives of her coven members before everything else.
With the illusion in place, she’d never want to leave the city.
A perfect trap, one they could not easily escape.
And then once he was done dispatching with every single witch in the city, King Oberon would pluck me from my stone home and carry me back to the castle he’d taken from the blood mages. A move that would doom the gargoyle shifters, and a move that would tear my heart to shreds.
I’d underestimated him. I’d taken his oath as truth.
And now we were going to lose it all.
Sorrow crushed down on me, and I bent underneath the weight of it. Hot tears splashed down my cheeks, one thought echoing in my mind like a song stuck in my head, destined to repeat for the rest of my life.
I’d made that deal. This was my mistake. The fae were coming to destroy everyone I loved, and I’d led him straight here.
Chapter 33
“Honestly, stop your sniffling, Rowena.” The Queen’s icy voice slithered into my ears. “If what I heard is right, then we need to be making preparations instead of sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves. Shadow witches do not feel sorry for ourselves.”
I didn’t bother to remind her that I wasn’t a shadow witch. She knew far too well.
“Ah, Queen Selene,” Kipling said with a tight smile. “What a pleasure it is to have you join us. I see you overheard our current predicament. It would be useful to get your input. This involves your coven as well.”
“What I heard was Rowena’s blubbering,” she said
in a snap before striding across the room to peer right into my face. Her eyes glittered, and her lips curled. “Now, you listen to me. We have not fought as hard as we have to let this Unseelie King get the better of us. He tricked me years ago, and now he’s tricked you. And he’ll continue to trick anyone he meets. I refuse to let him win.”
With a sad smile, I shook my head. For once, the Queen didn’t intimidate me. After what I’d experienced at the Blood Coven, I didn’t think she ever would again. “It’s over. There’s nothing we can do. If we try to get you out of here, they’ll attack. If you stay, they’ll attack. Hell, they could attack within the next five minutes.”
“So we stand and fight,” she said with venom dripping from her words.
“How?” I spread my hands to my sides. “Tess made a good point. The fae are more powerful than the witches. And they’re immortal. You can toss a killing shadow spell into their faces, and they won’t die.”
“You know who else is immortal?” She gripped my arms and dug her fingernails deep into my skin. “You.”
“I…”
“You are Rowena Mortensen,” she said, pulling back to stomp from one end of the sofa to the next, throwing her hands in the air to punctuate her words. “You are the daughter of Circe. The granddaughter of Hecate, goddess of witchcraft. And you are my ward. You’ve been trained in the ways of the shadows, whether you realize it or not. You know how to fight. You’ve found a strength within you that you didn’t know you had. The fae are going to attack this place? Then, do something about it.”
The entire room went as silent as a graveyard, and I felt as though the Queen had slapped me with the back of her knobbly hand. She’d laid down the law in a way that was impossible to ignore, but it still didn’t change the fact that I wasn’t good for anything, even if I was a goddess. There was nothing I could do to save them.
Carved in Stone_Protectors of Magic_Book 2 Page 14
