Cast in Balefire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Mage Craft Series Book 4)

by SM Reine

  “Who made those changes?” Ariane asked. She looked sad, even resigned. Did she want to understand Elise better because Elise was her favored daughter, or so that she could understand Genesis?

  If Genesis had never happened, then Adàn’s family wouldn’t have been murdered by a despot. Arawn wouldn’t have been jammed into a dark corner to never see sunlight again. Seth wouldn’t be an unwilling god.

  “I will not choose to interfere whenever possible,” Marion said.

  “Excellent.” Ariane stepped to Marion’s front, grasping her hands. “You’re ready to be seen in public. Be careful, my little one.”

  There was an envelope in Ariane’s fingers. Marion concealed it among the film of her skirt as her mother left with Adàn Pedregon.

  It was another of Onoskelis’s labors.

  Marion had only pursued the first of them because she’d wanted to know how to communicate with Seth. But he’d been rescued from the Pit. They could be together as long as she had a gris-gris.

  She wanted nothing more to do with plans that weren’t her own.

  Saoirse stuck her head into the room. “Are you ready?”

  Marion tossed the unopened envelope onto her desk. It landed beside an open box of Three Musketeers. Ymir must have been in her rooms again while she was in Dilmun, because half of them were missing.

  She faltered at the reminder of Ymir.

  This wasn’t about railing against the will of gods, in the end. It wasn’t even about preventing Konig from killing her. Nor was it about the lingering question of Seth’s feelings for Marion—sadly, the most insignificant part of her fight.

  It was about the people of her kingdom who needed her to survive.

  “Your Majesty?” Saoirse prompted.

  Marion gathered her skirts in her hands. “I’m ready.”

  Charity remained in the abattoir long after the rulers left. There was nowhere else she could go. Her earlier travel through the palace had been shadowed by cries of fright from the residents, and she couldn’t stand the revulsion. Instead, she hung out above the abattoir, listening to Arawn’s happy humming as he carved an array of knives from the bones of dead demons surrounding him.

  He was currently squinting at one through his multi-lensed goggles. The glass magnified his black eyes a half-dozen times, and the irises warped when he lifted his head to look at Charity. “Are you going to stay up there all day, or will you come keep me company?”

  “I’ll stay here.” She sat on the edge of the abattoir. Even with her long legs, her feet dangled high out of reach. “It looks to me as though we’ve had our roles swapped, doesn’t it?”

  “If that’s what you want to think, then sure,” he said. “Hey, you want a knife?”

  She sort of did. It seemed to be an appropriate weapon for a revenant, though she’d found that her natural attributes negated the need for assistance. “Maybe later.”

  He grinned. “So there’ll be a later?”

  Charity wasn’t certain. In fact, she wasn’t certain of much where Arawn was concerned. “Have you ever tried not being a psychopathic Lord of Sheol? Or at least not killing people for a while?”

  He picked between his teeth with a knife. “And how would I eat if I didn’t kill?”

  “I eat without killing.”

  “Maybe you used to, but not with me you don’t. You’ve feasted on meat cut from at least a dozen victims while my guest. Is that only a problem now that you’re returning to society?”

  “I didn’t have a choice,” Charity said.

  “So we’re blaming that on me, huh?”

  “You did feed them to me.”

  “And you ate,” he said firmly. “Look, it’s fine. You don’t think cheetahs shouldn’t eat impalas, do you?”

  “Most cheetahs don’t live in a post-industrial society with synthetic blood and lab-grown meat.”

  “I like that you specify most. Gotta leave your options open for running across Dr. Cheetah, lover of hundreds-of-dollars-per-steak lab meat.”

  “You could at least try to be less evil. As it stands, I see no reason to help you get out of here.”

  “I didn’t ask for help. That was your idea.”

  It was her idea.

  And she had knowingly eaten the human meat he’d served her.

  Would she begrudge a cheetah for eating impala meat? Did it deserve to be caged? And what would happen if one cheetah broke another cheetah out of that cage so that they could happily munch innocent impalas in the Serengeti together?

  “You wouldn’t like me if I stopped being a psychopath,” Arawn said. “Girls like bad boys.” He set his last knife in a line with all the others. Even after he’d carved them, it was easy to identify the various femurs, phalanges, and ribs that he’d been working with. “I’m not real attached to eating people as a concept, though.”

  That was not a romantic thing he was saying. Charity’s shriveled heart was not flopping over in her chest in something that resembled an excited flutter.

  “You might like the undercity in Barcelona, by the way,” he said. “It’s ultra chic. Very revenant friendly. We could have a lot of fun together.”

  It took physical effort to make herself stop smiling. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  He sighed and wiped his hands off on his leather pants. “Don’t look now,” Arawn said, “but we have company. Annoying company.”

  Charity turned to find a dark presence at her back. Something that large, absorbing so much light, should have been a fright to see. But Seth Wilder’s face had a way of calming her, even if his face happened to be multiplied a thousand times within his mass. He was dissolving into the creature that’d emerged from Dilmun.

  She’d seen him among Rylie’s guards and known who he was instantly. The man wasn’t subtle in any form. But she’d been afraid to approach him with so many witnesses.

  “Are you okay? Where have you been?” She’d have run over to hug him, but she wasn’t certain which part she should hug.

  “Hell,” he said simply. “I don’t have long. I can’t focus while I’m away from Marion.”

  Charity stopped short a few feet back from the core of him. “Marion?”

  “Because she’s the Voice,” he said.

  “Right,” she said.

  “I’ve already been away from her for a while, so let’s keep this short. Under five minutes.”

  “Five minutes? We can work with that.” She self-consciously ran her claws over her scraggly hair, as she might have while wearing her glamour.

  Seth watched her with a sympathetic eye. “Are you okay?”

  “Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever been better,” Charity said. “I haven’t worn my glasses in weeks. I like it.”

  “I’m worried about you. You got held captive again.”

  That was up for debate. “Wait, again? When was I held captive before?”

  “Ollie,” Seth said.

  Right. Charity had been briefly abducted by Oliver Machado, until she’d escaped by eating him. It had been more frightening than landing in Duat with Arawn, yet still infinitely forgettable. “I’m made of tougher stuff than you think.”

  Most of his eyes warmed with affection. “I wish I was as tough as you. How have you done this, Charity? This comfortableness with yourself, your confidence…”

  “Eye of the storm,” she said. “Like I told you before. You get used to it.”

  “You’re not in the eye anymore. You are the storm.” One corner of each of Seth’s mouths lifted, and Charity’s brain throbbed at how many different realities she glimpsed. “It’s pretty awesome.”

  Arawn’s voice echoed from the bottom of the abattoir. “Told you!”

  Charity would have blushed if she’d had any blood to circulate through her body. She stepped further from the dungeon and lowered her voice. “I owe you an apology. I messed up, doc. Leliel fooled me, and it’s my fault that Shamayim is even in contention now.”

  “It’s okay. We’re all okay.” S
eth was fading. He’d have been optimistic in giving Charity two minutes, much less five. “I need your help again if we’re going to keep everyone okay.”

  The responsibility was too much. But maybe Seth was right—maybe Charity was the storm, and she could handle it. At least she could try. “Just tell me what to do.”

  25

  Niflheimr’s throne room became more alive when touched by Konig’s presence. The old decorations melted and what remained behind it all was beautiful and sparkling and moving. The walls perpetually slid into the floor, sending crystalline droplets spraying through the room as ice was shaved away by friction.

  A moist fog clung to Marion’s ankles as she strode into the room, chin held high. The diadem was lightless on her brow, and the sight of her king did nothing to change that. She wore that look with authority. She was a part of the dark, dead Niflheimr in transition, not this shining Christmas miracle that Konig wanted to show off.

  Jibril was likewise nonplussed by the display. He was using his wings to shelter his unamused face from the shower.

  As soon as Marion crossed the room, she was ringed by Raven Knights. Wintersong was there, as always, but another Raven Knight had joined their number again. Seth was cloaked in furs and wearing the face of the best man from his wedding to Rylie.

  Flowers of heat unfolded in Marion, and they had nothing to do with the warming charms protecting her in the diamond dress.

  The diadem flickered.

  “Thirty-nine.” Konig’s voice boomed throughout the throne room. His face was reflected and enlarged a dozen times so that the shards of his eyes glared at Marion as she joined them. She’d managed to dim the diadem quickly, but there was no telling if Konig had seen its brief light. “Thirty Raven Knights and nine angels. Those are who have agreed to move against Leliel.”

  The Summer Court’s army had thousands.

  “We don’t need to defeat them by force.” Marion took her throne. “I have reason to believe that the entrance to Shamayim is within the Veil.”

  “Go on,” Jibril said.

  “Leliel needed my blood to open Shamayim. When she fled, I saw her enter a swirling world of four seasons. A river bordered spring and winter, and that’s where the frost giants fish.” Marion splashed her memory of Leliel and the fake altar at the center of the throne room. “That’s the Veil, is it not?”

  Heather strode into the seething mass of Marion’s memory. She thrust the point of an arrow at one of the warmer-colored patches. “I’ve dressed a deer on that exact spot. That’s within the Wilds of the Autumn Court.”

  “We’ll be able to get there first,” Marion said. “We’ve already flushed urisk out of the Wilds, so activity has settled down in our quadrant. A smaller force moves faster too.” Marion trailed a finger from the inside of her wrist to the crook of her elbow. “We have the original source of my blood, so we can beat them to the Veil and secure the door to Shamayim.”

  She dismissed the memories with a wave of her hand.

  “Then what?” Konig asked.

  “That is the question, isn’t it?” Jibril asked. “Who is responsible enough to possess Shamayim’s fabled weapon?”

  Silence weighed heavily on them all.

  Jibril nodded slowly. “We can discuss Shamayim once we hold it. I can move faster than you, so I’ll scout out the Veil.”

  “If you can beat us there, then Leliel can too,” Marion said.

  His eyes gleamed with violent promise. “I’m aware of that.” He lifted from the ground with a single sweep of his wings. “I’ll return. Have whatever army you possess ready by the morning, whatever it takes.”

  Jibril gave Marion a significant look. He too knew that she would need the affirmation to rally the army, and he didn’t believe Marion would follow through.

  She didn’t dare look toward Seth again. “If you see Benjamin, don’t waste any time returning with him. He needs to be our first priority.”

  “Yes, he does—even more than you realize.” Jibril exited the circle of glowing white light Marion exuded and vanished into the winter wind.

  Nathaniel became a lot less ephemeral when he was traveling alone with Benjamin. Or maybe it was that the world was becoming more ephemeral to match Nathaniel’s state. In truth, Benjamin wasn’t certain that either of them were real anymore—it felt like they’d become ghosts.

  They walked across the desert of the Ethereal Levant untouched by heat or thirst.

  “Let’s try this one: the Meta is like Marty McFly in Back to the Future,” Nathaniel said. They’d been talking circles around it for hours, and Benjamin still didn’t understand. “Marty is the movie’s narrator. The way he experiences the movies is linear, and he doesn’t change even though time changes around him. The Meta is the narrator—the single definitive timeline that events are anchored by.”

  “I haven’t seen Back to the Future,” Benjamin said.

  “Yes I did! I just don’t remember it!” Nathaniel swung a kick at a tree. His foot passed right through it. “Kids these days. Who hasn’t seen Back to the Future?”

  “It’s a really old movie,” he said.

  When had they entered a forest? There wasn’t just one tree. There were dozens. Slender white trunks tipped by puffs of gold surrounded them. Nathaniel jogged down the hill toward a river that Benjamin didn’t recognize, leaves showering over his shoulders.

  For an instant, Benjamin thought that Nathaniel looked exactly like him.

  Or maybe Benjamin looked exactly like Nathaniel.

  “Why am I like this?” Benjamin gestured between the two of them as he hurried to catch up with his other half. “I’m not supposed to be separate, am I?”

  “There’s nobody else like me.” Nathaniel leaped over a rock and landed lightly in the stream, splashing his slacks. “The closest I’ll ever meet is Seth and his bevy of avatars, but this is still different because I’m not an avatar in either form. I’m an abomination of Elise and James’s decision-making.”

  “How so?”

  “They made me like this instead of letting me die,” Nathaniel said. “I thought they loved me.”

  Benjamin still couldn’t follow the conversation. It had the surreal amber tint of a fever nightmare. “I’m really bad at explaining stuff.”

  Nathaniel raked his fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his face for a moment before it flopped over his eyes again. “It’s always been a problem of mine. It’s so easy for me to get concepts, but I can’t translate that for stupider people.”

  Benjamin laughed. “I’m starting to sound like Marion.”

  “With good reason.” He scooped a rock out of the stream. “When I used to have blood, it was a lot like hers.”

  “How am I traveling like this? Where did Dilmun go?” The river was gone, and they were standing in a field of flowers. The grass swayed gently in a breeze that Benjamin couldn’t feel.

  “Ley lines,” Nathaniel said, hurling the rock into a tree trunk. It left no mark and made no sound.

  “I’m not a planeswalker.”

  “I am. I can manipulate dimensions in a thousand different ways. It’s a great power—a rare power, which was even rarer in the time I was born.” He glared scornfully at Benjamin, casting his gaze from head to toe. “Elise stripped my birthright from me. Can I be fixed at this point?”

  The field popped like a balloon under a needle.

  They stood in the Middle Worlds. Benjamin wasn’t prepared for it. He had a warding ring in his pocket that covered the basic protections, but he wasn’t wearing it. There was no protection from the assault on his senses.

  He was assailed by visions of rotten gourds, skeleton crows, and leaves curling in cold sunlight. He smelled copper—blood—splashed over bitter nutmeg. Animals wailed. His breath turned to fog, and it froze inches from his nose.

  Benjamin needed his warding ring.

  It slipped through his twitchy fingers, skittering across a ground made of alternating bone and a carpet of leaves.
<
br />   He tumbled through eternity trying to grab it.

  “Clumsy asshole,” Nathaniel and Benjamin said.

  There was no sense of gravity to orient him. He stretched between trees that were half-autumn and ran his fingertips across ground that felt like it was made of grass even as it looked like snow.

  The ring was at his feet. He jammed it onto his thumb.

  Benjamin came to his senses feeling like he had the most intense hangover of his life, which wasn’t saying much. He’d only drunk to hungover once, and that had been because he’d been sneaking sidhe mead from his parents’ fridge. One plastic cup of that had sent him over the moon. He’d been very sad the next day.

  This was worse.

  But at least the forest seemed to be real. The ring gave him that.

  Benjamin stood with one foot on either side of a writhing seam. There was autumn on one side, and winter on the other. It was a part of the Middle Worlds that he’d never seen. It was overgrown, tangled, and wild, like humans had never once attempted passage through the thorny brambles.

  “This is the Veil,” Nathaniel explained. “The boundary between each of the courts. Shamayim is near.” He vanished in a blink, leaving Benjamin standing alone in the warp and weft of reality.

  Though not entirely alone.

  A woman of noble stature stood at a point where four trees grew in a tall corkscrew, intertwined around each other. Some of the branches were bare. Half the leaves were orange, half were green. Cherry blossoms fluttered from it to rest upon the surface of the half-frozen river.

  Its roots were the most impressive part. They formed massive, tentacular arches that sprawled throughout the forest, touching every inch of the wilderness. White light glowed underneath.

  That was the entrance Shamayim. The final Heaven dimension.

  It’s always trees, Nathaniel said into Benjamin’s mind. He still wasn’t visible, but he didn’t need to be anymore. Benjamin understood that Nathaniel was always there. Always.

  Why trees? Benjamin wondered.

  Because I planted them. This is all mine. My worlds, my people, my legacy.