Cast in Faefire: An Urban Fantasy Romance (The Mage Craft Series Book 3)

by SM Reine

  Konig sat up slowly. It required pushing against the full force of Seth’s energy to do it.

  Avatar of god or not, Seth was still a man for the time being.

  “What did you say?” Konig’s words were chased by all the sidhe power that he normally held back for the benefit of mortals. It oozed from him. It twisted the hall.

  Seth didn’t repeat himself. “On your feet.”

  “Traitor,” he hissed under his breath.

  “We should vote now.” That was Rylie speaking from the other couch. Konig could barely hear her under the throb of sidhe energy whining like a badly tuned cello. “Raise your hands if you are in favor of stripping Prince ErlKonig of his title.”

  Konig didn’t look to see who raised their hands. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the endless, inky pits of Seth’s. Konig could see right through Seth’s skull into whirling infinity. Endless stars. Distant suns.

  A thousand-million deaths.

  “Four,” Rylie said. “Four votes.”

  Only four people voted in my favor? Konig’s heart sank, but still he couldn’t look away.

  He heard Deirdre Tombs’s shout of dismay, though. “That’s not possible! The votes—”

  “We can’t vote again,” Rylie said. “It’s settled. ErlKonig will remain Prince of the Autumn Court, and the wedding’s on.”

  Seth turned, shocked. “What?”

  Konig hadn’t lost the vote.

  He’d won.

  To say that chaos erupted when the verdict was announced would have been an understatement.

  Deirdre Tombs drew a gun.

  Several people began to shapeshift.

  The Raven Knights swarmed.

  Seth rounded on Konig, and whatever shreds of humanity had remained in him were gone, utterly gone, stripped away to bare raw vengeance.

  Konig’s survival instinct kicked in at the sight of Seth’s wrath. He’d seen death in those black eyes—a willingness to kill. He reached his mind into the ley lines, extended his body through them, and teleported away.

  He phased into the throne room. That alone was adequate verification that Konig had kept his title. It was a protected area separate from the rest of Myrkheimr, and cocooned in so many wards that a wayward sidhe would have been shredded. None but the royal family and their closest servants could leap in there.

  He landed safely, stumbling between his parents’ thrones. His heart was pounding wildly.

  Konig spun on the spot, looking around the shadowy throne room. The curtains had been drawn to conceal it from the rest of the kingdom, permitting not even the thinnest sliver of sunlight to touch the floor. It was also empty. There was nobody there to see his cowardly flight from Seth.

  That was fine. Seth had lost the vote and Konig had won the war. He was still prince.

  Amazing how quickly anger and fear turned into victory.

  He thrust his fist into the air. “Yes!”

  “It was Adàn Pedregon.” Nori appeared moments after he did, breathless and flushed. She had been given authority to access the throne room when she was serving as diplomat for the angels, and it didn’t seem to have been revoked. “I couldn’t tell you before—I’ve been busy—but Los Cambiaformas Internacional has been pulling strings. Plus Deirdre did such a good job convincing everyone that Seth isn’t a god because she thought he’d vouch for you—”

  “You saw the vote?” Konig whirled her into his arms, planting a hard kiss on her mouth. He laughed wildly. “You saw the vote! You saw my victory!”

  “Our victory.”

  “Yes, that’s what I meant.” Semantics. He was still prince, and he was about to become king.

  “It’s going to be a short win if we don’t do something about Marion. That’s why I came looking for you. Marion wants me to find Ymir before she walks down the aisle.”

  As high as he’d gone with the excitement, it took him a moment to crash back down again as the implications set in. Konig’s shoulders tightened so hard that they shook. “What did you tell her?”

  “I said I’d try. What was I supposed to say?”

  “You should have put her off,” he said. “You should have made her realize she needs to trust me.”

  “But how? It’s not like she can. We’re lying. She knows it. How can she trust that?” Each word made her voice rise in pitch until she was all but shrieking, loudly enough that people would be able to hear outside.

  Konig wanted to slap her hard enough to shut her mouth, but Nori wasn’t the same kind of beast as Marion, to be urged forward by spurs. She needed coaxing.

  “Marion won’t marry me if she knows what I’ve done to Ymir. Niflheimr will fall and you and I will lose our path to power. She absolutely cannot see him.” Konig watched her face, waiting to see if she’d come to the right conclusion on her own. She kept looking charmingly befuddled. He had to fill her in. “Kill the kid. Tell Marion that Arawn did it because she left the Winter Court unprotected. She’ll be too busy beating herself up to question it.”

  “I’m not going to kill a child!”

  “Do you want to lose everything we’ve been working for, now that we’re on the brink of victory?” His thumb skimmed over her bottom lip. “I’m so close. We’re so close. I can taste it.”

  She opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out.

  Her body jerked. She grunted. Her eyes widened.

  A blade thrust through her belly.

  Another jerk, and it cut upwards through her body, shredding her dress.

  Nori fell.

  Arawn stood behind her, yanking the sword free of her body. His hand was drenched in shiny half-angel blood.

  The stylists were retouching Marion’s makeup when news of the vote arrived. “We won!” Heather cried, bursting into the room. She was grinning with the triumph of it. Marion had never seen her smile like that before. “Only four people voted against us! Four!”

  Seth must have advocated for Konig. Marion’s plan had worked, and Konig was still prince.

  “Those are great results,” she said, moving her lips as little as possible. A makeup artist was brushing powder along her jawline.

  Why was she so dead on the inside?

  Heather slid onto the stool beside Marion’s. “Not to be a pessimist, but I really hadn’t expected that.”

  “I had a secret weapon on my side.” Marion’s tone was as empty as she felt. “Seth’s a god. I asked him to stand up for us.”

  “You did? That’s weird, because the doctor didn’t ‘stand up’ for you at all. He practically threatened to rain hellfire if people voted in your favor, and the vote still didn’t go that way. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  The feelings that blossomed inside of Marion were so strange.

  Despair. Horror. Anger.

  Delight.

  Seth hadn’t done as she asked. In fact, he’d openly defied Marion’s wishes. And he’d done it because in his heroic, Marion-first brain, he’d wanted to take care of her.

  Heather was still talking. Her voice faded in and out of Marion’s awareness. “We’ll have to find Konig quickly…only a few minutes until the wedding, but he had to flee the vote… It sounds like the Raven Knights had to arrest half of the council. I think your doctor friend attacked Konig, so he’s probably been arrested too…”

  Marion seriously doubted that anyone would have managed to seize Seth. She was surprised he hadn’t already materialized to abduct her before she could marry Konig.

  The idea wasn’t as unappealing as it should have been.

  Stupid, selfish Marion.

  “You’re being called, Your Highness.” Her hairstylist grabbed something off of the vanity and offered it to Marion. The white soapstone statuette that Marion and Nori used to communicate with one another was glowing.

  “Thank you.” Marion gripped it in one hand.

  The line of communication activated as soon as her fingers closed around it.

  Flashes of words and images cascaded over her. They would
have made no sense to anyone who didn’t have angel blood—not exactly like a phone call, but more like sharing a moment of perfect unity.

  Nori was on the floor of Myrkheimr’s throne room.

  She was bleeding.

  Rearing over Nori was Konig—with an arm locked around his throat and a demon sword near his ribs. Arawn was holding him. And that meant Arawn had done the impossible. Despite relocating the wedding to somewhere sunnier, Arawn was at their wedding.

  The sensations ended abruptly.

  Marion leaped to her feet with a shriek of shock. “Nori!” Her sudden motion upset the stylists, the stool she’d been sitting on, the table.

  Heather had her bow drawn in an instant. “What is it?”

  “I need to get to the throne room,” Marion said. “Right now!”

  But before she could grab the archer, screaming erupted from outside the windows.

  Marion bolted to the window. She already knew what she would see, but infernal power rippling in the shadows between columns was chilling nonetheless. It coursed over the crowd of humans who had been taking their seats for the wedding. Anyone who wasn’t sitting in daylight.

  “Impossible,” Marion whispered, even though she’d already seen Arawn, so she knew it was tragically possible.

  That was the only word that she could get out before the entire wing of Myrkheimr collapsed.

  It folded like a house of cards, the columns bowing in among themselves, the roof sinking, the floor rising to meet it.

  Heather swore loudly and launched out the window, nocking an arrow so quickly that Marion hadn’t even seen it come from the quiver.

  The archer disappeared into the crowd of fleeing attendees.

  “Heather!” Marion shouted, to no response. “Damnation above and below…”

  The crowd surged, turning against itself. She tasted the copper tang of blood on the air. Crimson runes raced across the courtyard, crawled up the walls, and ringed the collapsed area.

  With a discordant crash, hellish energy struck Myrkheimr like a bolt of lightning. Smoke and sulfur poured from dozens of people.

  They’d been possessed by demons.

  “They collapsed the building so Arawn could invade,” Marion breathed.

  But how? They shouldn’t have been capable of getting a foothold in the Autumn Court at all. That was why they’d moved the wedding from the Winter Court, after all. It was meant to be safer, dammit.

  The Raven Knights were closing in on the collapsed wing. It was the most obvious threat, and it would keep everyone occupied while Arawn murdered the soon-to-be King of the Winter Court.

  “I’m coming, Nori,” Marion said.

  Wedding dresses weren’t meant for running in. She was cursedly slow, dragging that train behind her, but incapable of getting out of the dress without help. She hitched the skirts as high as she could and pretended not to hear threads popping and diamonds scattering across the floor.

  The hallways were flooded with people running—some haloed in auras of infernal power, others bloody from the attack. They were all going the wrong way. Marion had to fight against the tide to head for the throne room.

  Marion was three steps from the corner to the next hallway when she tasted that copper tang again and the walls shivered around her.

  Dust blasted from around the corner.

  The path she’d been about to take had collapsed.

  Infernal runes raced from the destruction, lancing toward her toes. They leaped with the same muted balefire that had guarded Duat in Sheol.

  If that stuff touched Marion, she would never stop burning.

  She took a page out of Heather’s book and leaped through the nearest window.

  For a weightless moment, she thought she’d escaped the balefire.

  Then she struck the lawn outside, which bordered the western cliffs, and she gagged on smoke. Marion twisted to see that blasted train of her dress on fire. It swarmed through the grass like fireflies that gushed sticky black smoke.

  “Merde!”

  She hacked at her dress with the sharp point of an arrow from her quiver, severing the gauzy train from the rest of the dress. The cloth puddled to the grass, enveloped in fire moments later.

  Marion shielded her eyes from the sun and smoke as she gazed up at Myrkheimr.

  An explosion thudded through the ground beneath her feet. One of the towers vanished into smoke, collapsing instantly.

  She raced for the throne room, taking other paths between the cliffs and waterfalls, running fast enough that the infernal runes couldn’t catch up with her. The fight was elsewhere in Myrkheimr—in all the public areas where the wedding had been due to occur. The screaming grew distant as she plunged into the depths of the castle.

  She slammed into the throne room.

  Konig wasn’t there.

  Nori was.

  Poor, beautiful Nori looked like she’d drowned in her own blood. Angels bled in silver colors, but Nori’s human side ran strong. She was drenched in sticky, cherry fluids.

  And then Nori gasped.

  “Gods!” Marion threw herself beside Nori. For all that she couldn’t touch dirty things, she didn’t hesitate to press her hands against Nori’s wounds, fighting to stem the flow of blood. But it wasn’t like there were a few severed vessels. Her whole body was severed. Pinching the skin together didn’t help.

  She was dying.

  Why couldn’t Marion summon healing magic to mind?

  Nori’s unfocused eyes stared in Marion’s direction. “Ymir. Konig’s magic.”

  “Shh, don’t talk.” Marion’s fingers trembled while they smoothed over Nori’s forehead, smearing blood into her hair. Nori was dying. She deserved to be touched.

  It gave no comfort to Nori. Tears slid down her bloodied cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Marion.” Her chest jerked. A drop of blood slithered from the corner of her mouth to the corner of her ear. “I never should have—so sorry…”

  If she couldn’t do magic to save Nori, then Marion should have ended the suffering. It would have been mercy to knock her out, finish the job, whatever it took to save her from drowning in her own blood.

  For all her flaws, though, Marion was too similar to Seth in this respect. She couldn’t make herself responsible for the moment that Nori’s heart stopped beating.

  “Hello, Marion.”

  Her head snapped up.

  Arawn stood above her, elbow propped on the back of one throne. A bastard sword dangled casually from his other hand. It was identical to the sword Konig had selected for his duel against Arawn in the Nether Worlds, but this was the weapon that had killed Nori.

  “Do you want your fiancé?” Arawn asked. “Or should I just kill the lying dickweed for you right now?”

  21

  The Raven Knights had attempted to arrest Seth. At least, that was what he assumed they’d been trying to do. He hadn’t stuck around to see what the royal guard wanted from him.

  He’d tried to chase Konig into the throne room and failed. The wards were too strong.

  Seth had been trained to hunt werewolves by the best. They were different beasts than faeries, but hunting such powerful creatures was the same in philosophy.

  If he couldn’t get in the monster’s den, he could set a trap.

  He went to the courtyard, where the wedding was meant to be held, and he waited.

  Seth positioned himself on the balcony overlooking the altar. What he planned to do when Konig showed up—he honestly hadn’t thought that far, but he suspected it would be the kind of thing a man didn’t walk away from whole, or without regrets.

  Konig didn’t show up.

  Neither did the rest of the wedding party.

  “What are you doing?” Rylie approached, trailed by a young teenager who strongly resembled Abel. Not so much around the eyes—those were Rylie’s eyes—but in the stubborn set of his jaw, and the sullen way he wore his tuxedo. He looked as though he’d have much preferred a t-shirt and jeans.

  “I don
’t know,” Seth said, glaring at the altar. “I’ll figure it out by the time Konig shows up.”

  “Bad blood there, huh?” Rylie asked.

  “You have no idea.”

  The angel who had agreed to perform the ceremony, Jibril, was waiting for the wedding party too. He stood alone on the altar in front of the enormous group of spectators, outwardly serene even though he must have been getting worried.

  Everything was ready for the royal wedding except the couple due to get married.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened with the vote?” Rylie asked.

  Seth forced himself to focus on the Alpha. She was beautiful in that moment, as she was in all moments. She wore a sleek dress befitting her station. Even in her mature clothes, with her lined face, Seth could see the girl he’d fallen in love with.

  “Konig’s not a good man,” Seth said.

  “You told me that about Abel once or twice.”

  “This is different.” Konig was a thousand times worse than Abel. A million times worse. Some number that mortal minds couldn’t even comprehend.

  Rylie hesitated, and then said, “I have something you might want.” She led Seth a few feet away from her teenage son and pulled something out of her purse. It was a magazine for a Beretta 9mm. “I assume you’re carrying the same gun you always have.”

  “You assume right.” Seth thumbed one of the bullets out. It was iron—a metal that could kill the sidhe. He turned shocked eyes on Rylie.

  “I don’t get searched,” she said. “You seemed worried about events with Marion, and I just thought…” Rylie trailed off, as though unsure how to justify carrying a deadly weapon in her purse.

  “Thank you,” Seth said. He pocketed the magazine. “Seriously. Thanks.”

  “Did I introduce you to my son, Benjamin?” Rylie asked lightly. “Benjamin, this is Seth Wilder.”

  The teenage boy’s eyes widened. “Wilder?”

  “Seth is your uncle,” she said. “You might have heard your older siblings talk about him before.”

  “Wow,” Benjamin said.

  Seth shook hands with Benjamin Gresham—or perhaps Benjamin Wilder. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to ask. Like Marion had pointed out, Rylie and Abel had never married.