Hereditary Power

by Emma L. Adams

  The ghosts were crying, holding onto one another, looking around desperately. Summer and Winter alike, united in death.

  “Those wraiths,” I said to the half-faerie ghosts. “That’s what’ll happen to you if you die here. But I can get you out. Wait for me. I have a couple of things to take care of.”

  I cast my gaze around, looking for the path into the Summer Court—and spotted another ghost floating apart from the others. Not speaking. And unlike the other ghosts, he was Sidhe.

  “You died,” I said to him. Less time had passed in this realm than I’d thought.

  “You’re… human.” He stared at me. “How are you here… like this?”

  “Good question,” I said. “You need to tell them who killed you. It was the Seelie Queen, right?”

  “How did you—?”

  “She tried to do the same to me. Look, as a ghost, you can make yourself visible to them. Like a glamour. I can’t explain how to do it. I… haven’t been dead long, and I’m not Sidhe.” I glanced over his shoulder. Other, living Sidhe gathered in the meadow at the end of the path, entirely oblivious to us. “Watch.”

  I floated to the Sidhe. The book’s power hummed through my veins.

  “Wisp,” said one of the Sidhe. “Which of you is spinning a glamour?”

  “I’m not a glamour,” I told him. “I’m the Gatekeeper. And I’m here to warn you that one of your own is planning a coup. You need to gather an army to come to the Vale, or the Death Kingdom, right away. They took Summer’s gate.”

  “What magic is this?” demanded the Sidhe. Oh, Lord Raivan. What a surprise.

  “Hey,” I said, waving at him. “I’m dead. And so is this guy. The Seelie Queen killed him.”

  All eyes turned to the Sidhe ghost, who’d apparently figured out how to turn himself visible after all.

  “Lord Voren,” said one of the Sidhe. “What have you done?”

  “He’s dead,” I said. “Permanently. This is what you’ll become when you die, and that’ll be all of you if you don’t come and help me. The Seelie Queen is conspiring with Vale outcasts.”

  “She speaks the truth,” said the ghost.

  “You’re a glamour,” snarled the Sidhe. “A trick.”

  Oh, for god’s sake. The problem with living in a realm where nothing was ‘real’ in the normal sense was that even truth wasn’t absolute. For all I knew, Sidhe ghosts could lie. And according to everything the Sidhe understood, ghosts didn’t exist.

  “I’m here to warn you,” I shouted. “The Seelie Queen is a traitor, and her people are forming an army in the Vale. If you search for the gate—the Summer Gatekeeper’s gate—you’ll find someone has moved it from the Ley Line into the Vale.”

  I hadn’t thought such a thing was possible. It was fixed to the Ley Line. Hell, maybe it was still there, but hidden. It wasn’t like I’d checked the entire Ley Line. And Ivy had told me it led through the path of the dead…

  “Just trust me,” I said to the dumbfounded Sidhe. “The fallout of this will hit the Courts whether you want to help me or not. Also, there’s a new Sidhe on earth who stole a temporary source of immortality and made herself Sidhe, so she’ll probably come back to make trouble as well.”

  There was a flash of white light, and several people appeared in front of the stupefied-looking Sidhe. Quentin the brownie stood there. Behind him were Ivy, Hazel, Morgan and River.

  “There she is,” Morgan said, pointing at me. “Knew she’d be doing something risky.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” I hissed at them.

  “Helping you,” said Hazel.

  “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  The Sidhe stood frozen, staring at us. Lord Raivan scowled. “You again?” he said to Hazel.

  “You can’t keep me away,” Hazel said. “We’re looking for a criminal who ran into the borderlands.”

  “The Winter Gatekeeper ran away?” I asked, trying to catch someone’s gaze. River’s eyes were on the body in his arms. Oh shit. He’d brought me—brought my dead body here with him. What in hell was he thinking?

  “She broke the circle,” Ivy said to me. “She’s wounded, and pissed off, but she managed to cross into Faerie. She figured that ability out fast.”

  “We got her,” Hazel said. “When she was distracted taunting you, I set up an iron spell. She walked right into it.”

  “Her skin turned grey and started falling off,” added Morgan.

  “Nice,” I said. “But—did she run into Faerie, or the Vale?”

  “It shouldn’t be hard for them to find her if she’s here,” Hazel said. “They can sense iron from a mile away, and she has a whole stake embedded in her spine.”

  I stared at them, the Sidhe entirely forgotten. “How did I miss that?”

  “Because you were too busy trying to sacrifice yourself,” said Hazel.

  “If she’d taken that book, we’d all be six feet under. Where in the world are the Mage Lords and the necromancers?”

  “Dealing with the undead plague she raised with her last piece of necromancy,” said Hazel. “Holly ran to help. I think she feels bad.”

  “She ought to,” said Morgan. “She killed you.”

  “She’s not dead,” River snapped at him, apparently oblivious to the Sidhe witnessing the whole thing.

  “Can we debate whether I’m dead or not after we find our runaway gate?” I said. “And the Winter Gatekeeper.”

  Lord Raivan stepped forwards. “Get off our territory,” he snarled. “All of you.”

  “Ask the Erlking,” I said desperately. “For god’s sake.” I’d wanted the Sidhe at my back. Not my friends to risk their lives again. But time was running out. Mum was trapped, and if one of the gods was really responsible, even the Sidhe might not have a chance.

  Quentin stepped forward to talk to them, but their faces said it all. He was only a brownie, the others were mortals, and they still didn’t believe I was real. Let alone the other ghost. We were running out of time.

  Ivy caught my gaze. “I hope you have a plan.”

  “Get the Sidhe to follow me and confront the Seelie Queen. Didn’t quite work out that way. Their dead buddy is there and they don’t even think he’s real.”

  “Figures.” Ivy rolled her eyes. She was still covered in blood, but her injuries had entirely healed. Faerie magic—or gods’ magic—really was something. “You’re looking for your mother?”

  “The gate,” I said. “Or both. I think one of the gods has her. But the gate can’t move from the Ley Line. I reckon it might still be there.”

  Her eyes widened in understanding. “I think I know where it is.” She glanced back at Quentin, who was still talking to the Sidhe. “We’re on our own, though.”

  “Fine,” I said. “How do we get there from here?” Bringing four living people with me hadn’t been on my plan.

  “Where are you two sneaking off to?” asked Morgan.

  “To find Mum, and the gate,” I told him. “I’m dead. There’s literally nothing they can do to hurt me. Except hurt you, which is exactly why I came here alone.”

  “Tough shit,” said Morgan. “We’re your family. We’re here whether you like it or not.”

  The fool. All of them. My eyes burned. They’d totally thrown off my game.

  “Fine,” I said. “I don’t know what we’ll find at the end of this. Ivy, where’s the quickest route? Through borderland territory?”

  “This path leads there, eventually,” she said, indicating the way I’d come in. The path bent at improbable angles and wove away into shadows. “I can probably find it.”

  “Probably?” said Hazel.

  The Sidhe ghost floated to my side, his eyes wide and staring. He probably didn’t know what to make of my bizarre mismatched family.

  “Sorry they didn’t believe you,” I said.

  “Something is calling me,” he said. “Something beyond…”

  Ivy nodded to me. “Go after him. He’ll lead us in the right dir
ection.”

  The path changed as the Sidhe’s ghost moved forward, floating upwards. Uphill. River and Ivy turned in the ghost’s direction, while Morgan gaped at the spot where the meadow had been seconds before. It’d gone, to be replaced by a steep hill covered in half-dead trees. The smell of death drifted on the breeze, and a cold sensation spread through me. Something close by called to my spirit, and it wasn’t friendly.

  Ivy hissed out a breath. “Death Kingdom… he’ll pass through this way, but we need to find the old path of the dead.”

  “How do you know all this?” asked Hazel. “You’ve been here a lot?”

  “No,” said Ivy. “A couple of times. It all looks familiar, and when you have their magic, you get attuned to it.”

  The hill levelled off. The ghost kept floating onwards, into mist, but Ivy paused. “We need to find a path…”

  “I’m starting to think you don’t know the way,” Morgan said.

  River didn’t say anything. He still carried my body over his shoulder, his blade in his free hand.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” I told him. “Not with me. I’m not alive.”

  “Ilsa, you’re still breathing,” he said, his jaw set. “I won’t give up on you.”

  “This way,” Ivy called. “The path of the dead is a liminal space, so it overlaps with the Ley Line.” She took off again, weaving through the trees, her body outlined in shimmering Winter magic. A path began to appear between the trees, squashed flat, as though trampled by a million hooves. As the trees thinned out, it became more distinct.

  “Don’t walk off the line,” she said over her shoulder.

  I’d never have been able to keep up with her if I wasn’t a ghost. Hazel and Morgan ran behind River, downhill, as the path widened and the trees turned grey until the path almost resembled the Vale. It led in a straight line into nothingness in either direction.

  “This was faster when riding on a hellhound from the Vale.” Ivy looked up and down the path. “This way. Just keep moving in a straight line.”

  “I’m sorry, did I hear you say you rode on a hellhound?” I asked.

  “Long story. Keep close behind me. Anything might have moved in since I was last here.”

  “Wonderful,” said Morgan. “And I thought being a human necromancer was weird.”

  Eventually, the path widened into an empty clearing with dead grass and little else. In the middle of the patch of the grass lay the family’s gate. Summer’s gate.

  Mum was tied to it with thick ropes, her eyes closed. Aside from a thin gash on her cheek, she looked unharmed. Alive.

  My heart seized. The first thing she’s going to see is my dead body. I looked desperately at River, but Mum didn’t stir. And nobody else was around.

  “Well?” I asked of the echoing silence. “Who’s behind this? Not the Winter Gatekeeper… isn’t anyone going to own up to this?”

  Mum’s hand twitched, but she remained unconscious.

  “Come on,” I said. “I thought the Sidhe liked to show off. Or are you saving it until after you expose your new immortality source to the realms?”

  “I’ll get her down,” said Morgan. He walked towards the ropes that held our mother, and a blast of magic knocked into him. He flew back several feet. Hazel caught him before he fell.

  “It’s… magic.” His whole body was shaking.

  My heart climbed into my throat as I looked closer at the gate. The Gatekeeper’s symbol on the top gleamed, while between its bars, eerie light shone. Not magic… not the type I knew, anyway. Or maybe I did. There was something seriously powerful beyond that gate.

  “I thought the gods were dead,” I said quietly. “Except Arden.”

  “They were all dead,” Ivy said. “The last one told me, before he died. But… maybe not. If Arden survived, it makes sense others did too.”

  Ivy clearly had more to tell me… but whatever was beyond that gate was more than Summer or Winter magic. Magic fed on life or death, and from the state Mum was in, the realm beyond the gate was feeding on the Summer Gatekeeper’s life force, and on the family’s magic.

  I know what they did. The Sidhe—the Summer Queen—had opened a way into the hellish dimension beyond the Vale itself to capture one of them, to use it to give themselves immortality once more. The gate was unbreakable. There was probably no stable way to open such a rift within their own realm without risking total destruction. But here—the mortal realm was right on the other side of the line.

  Think, Ilsa. I might wield the gods’ magic myself, but mine was a whole different beast. And so was Arden. I was only guardian of one gate, not this one.

  “Hazel, can you feel the Summer gate’s magic at all?” I asked.

  “Only the Summer Gatekeeper is tuned into the gate to that degree.” She stepped up to Mum. “I should be able to get her down…”

  “I wouldn’t waste your life, child,” said the Seelie Queen, stepping into view. She looked at us appraisingly—especially at me. “You look a little less substantial than before, mortal.”

  “That’s your problem,” I said. “I was always mortal, and I never saw it as anything other than an asset. I have no reason to fear what comes after. I’ve seen it. People like you, though… what is it about death that scares you so much? The fear of losing your power, or the fear of coming face to face with those you wronged and exiled in person?”

  Her mouth twisted. “Do you know what happened here, mortal?” She indicated the dead grass, the empty space around the edges of the liminal space.

  Ivy shifted on the spot, her hand on her blade’s hilt. Go on. Kill her. Of all of us, she was the only one who’d actually killed a Sidhe.

  “This is the space where the realm of death meets the mortal realm,” the Summer Queen said. “Nobody from the Courts or in either realm can find us unless they know the path’s location. It’s forgotten… lost.” Magic streamed from her hand, above the gates, to the sky. The air rippled, and the ripple passed through me, through the gates I could barely feel here. This place was the fabric holding the worlds together. “This is the end of the line as far as your realm is concerned… in more than one way.”

  The implication was clear. As though conjured up from the depths of my memory, I saw a sky afire with magic, dark winged shapes wheeling above, dead turning to life to death again as the ripples shook the world.

  The invasion… they started it here.

  This was where the horsemen who’d invaded the earth had ripped the realms apart. But if that gate opened, worse than the invaders would escape. Maybe some of the gods had been exiled for a very good reason.

  “Don’t open the gate,” I warned.

  The Seelie Queen stood beside the gate, one hand on its edge. Too close. None of the others could move to strike her without risking the gate opening and swallowing Mum whole.

  “Why do you need her?” Hazel burst out. “The Summer Gatekeeper’s power is the same as any of the Sidhe’s. Any one of them would do.”

  “Incorrect. What type of magic is stronger?”

  “A vow,” I said. “You can’t be serious. The Sidhe tie themselves in knots with vows every other week. I’m pretty sure enslaving my family isn’t the most powerful or important thing they’ve done.”

  “No,” she said. “But it is a vow that links directly to the Erlking himself—and to a gate which might easily be manipulated for another purpose.”

  “For what? You want to bring back the monsters you exiled in the first place? Do you think they’ll obey without a fuss, or was stealing their magic once not enough?”

  “I never had the chance to steal their magic,” she said. “He kept that from me. Kept it all from me. Lost his magical talismans. He took the throne to take away my power.”

  I laughed, mostly in disbelief. “You can’t kill what’s already dead. I can, but you’re not like me. You’re weak.”

  Mum lifted her head. Shook it. “No. Ilsa…”

  “The mortal wakes,” said the Seelie Queen
. “You have no idea what it cost me to win over one of his playthings. In the end, I had to hijack his servant for my own, but this human woman kept outmanoeuvring my plans.”

  “She’s a Lynn. It’s what we do,” I said. “If you’re waiting for me to use the book to break open the gates of death, you’ll be waiting a while. You can’t control me or compel me like this. And if you open that gate, there’s an army of Sidhe behind us, waiting to arrest or shoot you on sight.”

  “Then I suppose it’s time to finish this.” She eyed the gate. “That’s enough of the Gatekeeper’s power.”

  A knife appeared in her hand. She lunged, and everyone moved at once.

  Hazel slammed into her before her knife hit Mum, knocking both of them out of the way, while a ghost rose from the fog, directly behind them. Ghosts appeared everywhere, half-faeries, angry and staring. Necromantic power hummed through the air, and Morgan’s eyes glowed white. He’d brought them here, or they’d followed me, to see me keep my word.

  “You never planned to help us,” they said to the Seelie Queen. “You lied.”

  “You pissed off a bunch of people,” I said. “Look and see.”

  Her mouth twisted in a snarl. “You pathetic mortals.”

  Ivy lunged, her blade spearing the Seelie Queen in the chest. She gasped, her body collapsing, but behind her, the gate rattled.

  It was too late. Too much power had gone into it, and the god would break free.

  Mum positioned herself in front of it. I knew that look. I’d probably worn it myself when I’d surrendered to the gate.

  “You can’t give your life, fool,” snarled the Seelie Queen. “It’s too late. If you don’t let me go, it’ll break out and destroy the line and everything on it.”

  “What the fuck did you think would happen?” I shouted.

  The Seelie Queen collapsed onto her side. Blood spilled out of her wound, but she probably had healing magic. She wasn’t the biggest threat. A huge indistinct shape beyond the gate hummed with power. It was a living, breathing talisman, amplified to max. Too dangerous to be allowed into this dimension. The gate would break apart.

  Mum’s eyes closed and she spoke a single word, a word of power. Everything stilled, even the gate.