by SM Reine
One minute, Benjamin was incorporeally pacing around the sludgy lake in Shamayim, trying to figure out how to exorcise Nathaniel from his body and practicing all his favorite swear words.
The next minute, he was home.
In a blink, Shamayim turned into a valley bordered by rolling mountains and a waterfall that spilled into a crystalline lake. Every one of those features was as familiar to Benjamin as his own face in the mirror.
He’d spent endless hours of his childhood running around in those forests, trying to keep up with wolf shifters and deer shifters and mountain lion shifters who had no mercy for a human boy.
As a toddler, he used to climb on his dad’s back while Abel hurled himself off the top of that waterfall, so that both of them plunged to its chilly bottom together. And Benjamin had surfaced every time choking on water, but laughing, because it was amazing to move at werewolf speed and feel totally safe.
The towers of the academy peered at him over the trees, inviting him to come back, to explore the library, to get coffee with Sinead.
There was only one problem.
Benjamin was still outside of his own body, and Nathaniel was taking in the sights at the same time using Benjamin’s eyes.
Seth and Marion were there too, both of them wholly miserable. They didn’t have the warm, fuzzy sanctuary associations that Benjamin did. Plus, Marion hadn’t dealt well with the transition between universes, and she was barfing her guts out on the sand.
Even a pretty girl didn’t look that pretty when she was hurling.
“You want to go find your mom?” Seth asked Nathaniel as he kneeled beside Marion, rubbing her back.
“That’s not necessary,” Nathaniel said.
Because they’d already been found. Werewolves were shapeshifting as they flooded down the hill to meet them by the lake.
The sanctuary’s wards were the most advanced in the world. Having a god, a mage, and Benjamin’s body punching through them must have set off about a million and a half alarms.
In fact, Benjamin knew that the arrival of his body would set off a few very specific alarms.
The massive golden-furred wolf leading everyone down the hill—yeah, that was his mom, the Alpha in full form. She was shadowed by a second wolf as black as night and as enormous as a ticked-off god.
Benjamin wished he could have been happy to see his parents.
“Take me away,” Marion whispered, clutching one of Seth’s many arms. “Don’t let them see me here.”
He didn’t.
And when the golden Alpha stopped on the beach, shapeshifting into her human form with a flash of cracking bone and falling hair, it was Nathaniel that Rylie Gresham looked at. Nathaniel in Benjamin’s body. She had no idea that something had gone wrong with her son.
It was Nathaniel she staggered toward, Nathaniel who was on the receiving end of Rylie’s hug, and Nathaniel who got to hear her whispered words of relief.
Benjamin got nothing except a hell of a lot angrier.
13
The moon radiated milky paleness over the Wilds, shining so brightly that Konig could easily make out the aftermath of battle. His army was sprawled over a stretch of land that was forested only by steel blades. People were moving bodies into trenches to be burned—the bodies of seelie along with the bodies of dryads who hadn’t survived the fight.
Konig watched from a throne that he’d made out of dead, twisting vines. He stroked a thorn with his fingertip lightly enough that it didn’t cut. “Is it open?”
Dwynwen pressed her fist to her chest and bowed. “Yes, Konig. Open and almost secure. We’re just clearing a safe path to Alfheimr.”
The Veil had been opened so that he could see the Summer Court on the other side. Even during the nighttime, it was brighter over there. The sheer number of fireflies lit everything like daylight. The moon couldn’t compete.
“Have you seen my wife?” Konig asked.
Dwynwen shook her head. “Sorry. I’ll ask around.”
She flitted away.
But Konig still wasn’t alone. “Reminds me of your mom,” said a voice over his shoulder.
Rage had emerged from Myrkheimr. It was strange to see him in the Wilds, dressed in hip-hugging leather and boots that laced to mid-thigh. His shirt hung open to expose the sheet of tattoos that crawled from collarbone to navel.
Konig felt like a child who’d been caught sitting on his dad’s throne. He fought the urge to leap to his feet, making space for his dad to sit. “What are you doing all the way out here? Are you hoping to have first dibs on a bedroom in Alfheimr?”
Rage rubbed a hand over his upper lip and chuckled. “I’m not picky.”
“I’ll let you choose first anyway.”
He meant that to be a kindness—a display of generosity. But Rage only gave that chuckle again. “When are you moving?” He nodded toward the army sprawled throughout the forest of blades. Their voices drifting on the night warmed Konig.
“We’ll go at daylight,” Konig said. “Assuming Marion shows up in time.”
“Where is she?”
“Trying to pick a dress, I’m sure.” Or getting the court healer to work on her busted-up body. “She’ll be here. Marion’s ego’s too big to miss uniting the sidhe courts.”
“Uniting the courts, huh?” Rage asked.
“It’s a sure thing. You see my legions here?”
“Yeah, you’ve got a lot. I never had this much of a standing army.”
“You never invaded the Summer Court,” Konig said. It was one of his dad’s many failings. “Anyway, this isn’t even half of them. Everyone else is already in the Summer Court, and they’re just mopping up my road to the manor. Now what do you want? I’m holding vigil before my absolute victory over everything ever, and you should probably be sleeping.”
“Jaycee’s ready to perform the magic you requested,” Rage said.
The magic that would mean Konig was done with Marion.
Maybe he wouldn’t need her to invade Alfheimr after all.
Konig stood abruptly. “You should have led with that. When will Jaycee be done?”
“About five minutes after you give her a few drops of blood. She’s waiting for you in the darknet chamber now.”
“Oh really?” Konig’s eyes narrowed. “She needs my blood?” Not to say that he didn’t trust a political prisoner with his blood, but…well, he didn’t trust anyone who wanted his blood.
Except, maybe, his dad.
Konig glanced up at the moon again. It would still be hours before dawn, and vigils were boring.
He lifted a hand. That was all it took for a Raven Knight to materialize at his side. A few words later, and the Raven Knight was replaced by Heather Cobweb.
She smiled faintly when Rage kissed her knuckles.
“Been a long time, baby girl,” he said.
“Call me baby again and I’ll put an arrow through your eye,” she said, with absolutely no vitriol. “Good to see you while you still have two eyes.”
Rage would have ordinarily considered that invitation to flirt. It didn’t matter that Heather was his son’s age; Rage had yet to meet a vagina he didn’t want to acquaint himself with.
The grief of losing his mate had changed him. A lot.
“We’re going to the darknet chamber,” Konig said, holding his arm out for Heather. “I want to show you how I’m changing things—just like I promised I’d do.”
Heather glanced at Rage before resting her hand on Konig’s elbow.
Konig moved the Middle Worlds around them. The mental imagery involved was roughly equivalent to spinning a globe while he held himself stationary inches above it. He didn’t need to even shift his weight. He demanded that the world shape itself as he wanted, and it did.
They reappeared in the darknet.
Jaycee Hardwick sat at the lone workstation with perfect posture, because even sidhe needed to worry about ergonomics. Her hair was up in its signature bun. It was impossible to tell that she’d b
een imprisoned recently.
The only thing that made her look different from an office secretary was the fact that her workstation sat in the middle of an elaborate circle of power burning with sidhe magic. Runes crawled over her skin to light the whole chamber.
When she glanced up at Konig, her eyes glittered with distaste. “Took you long enough,” she said with a sniff.
Jaycee stood, and Konig saw the knife in her hand.
Heather had her bow at the ready instantly. “Put that down.”
Rage settled his hand on her shoulder. “The ritual to change the courts needs a couple drops of blood. That’s all. She’s not going to hurt Konig.”
Heather didn’t budge. “Whose blood?”
With her free hand, Jaycee swept up the cords of magic. Each fiber was as slender as a spider’s silk. When she tugged, all the magic moved, making the servers embedded in ice flash wildly. “Konig’s blood. Royal blood.”
She’d spoken two words too many. Konig was not the only one with royal blood, and asking for the king’s blood when his father was right there could not be anything but suspicious.
Konig turned to the rest of the chamber and opened his mind.
Show me your secrets.
The magical programming embedded in the spells erupted like fireworks, displaying their shapes and colors for Konig to analyze.
He’d never been good at the techno-sorcery that the Hardwicks pioneered. It had never seemed important enough to learn. But Konig didn’t need to know much to read the plain English among the digits and runes. Like a computer program, the Hardwicks had left comments on what some of the functions were meant to do. It was good business practice to document one’s code, after all.
At first glance, everything looked fine. Konig skimmed the spells and saw exactly what Jaycee had promised—a couple tiny tweaks that would result in enormous change. It would shift primary control of the Middle Worlds into a gender-neutral status.
And yes, it involved blood.
But the blood had something to do with changing control of the kingdoms.
Consenting to change.
The sight of that comment set off alarms in Konig’s skull. He refocused on his father, just inches away, and Jaycee Hardwick at the epicenter of all that magic. They were watching him. She was still holding that knife.
“If you need royal blood, then use Dad’s,” Konig said.
“The king’s blood,” Jaycee said smoothly.
“You said royal blood,” Konig said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Are you the expert in the spells I just wrote? My mistake.” She batted her eyelashes at him.
When she did that, it reminded him so much of Marion.
Konig wrenched the fibers of the magic from her grip and tore them to shreds. They splattered all over the icy walls of the chamber.
Rage raced to Jaycee’s side, as if afraid that having the magic wrenched away might injure her. But it was Konig he yelled at. “What are you doing?”
Jaycee gripped Rage’s sleeve as if for safety.
A small gesture, but Rage didn’t pull away from it, and that was a huge gesture.
Konig felt like he was going to fall over, he was so dizzy.
Jaycee and Rage were friends.
Really good friends.
Konig kept exploding the magic piece by piece. He totally shredded the spells until he found the component parts—a part of the spell powered by royal blood. And then he found the part of the spell where Jaycee would have used Konig’s blood to relieve him of the throne. He wouldn’t have been king anymore if he’d bled.
“Dad?” Konig hissed.
Rage’s lips tightened into a thin line. “ErlKonig—”
“I can’t believe you thought I’d fall for that! How stupid do you think I am?”
“Well, let’s see,” Jaycee said. “You’ve taken four courts at peace and turned them to war, killed thousands of innocents in the Wilds, squandered your near-universal popularity, and…hmm, what else? Is that enough? I think that’s enough.”
“And you knew about this?” Konig asked his father. “You helped her orchestrate this?”
“A lot of people are dying,” Rage said.
This was Jaycee’s fault. Taking advantage of Rage when he was wracked with grief over his wife.
Kill Jaycee Hardwick.
Konig gathered every single scrap of power that Jaycee had been building for her magic and did what he did best.
He turned it into a sword forged from his anger.
Konig drove the blade toward Jaycee’s heart with a scream of fury that made every corner of the Middle Worlds vibrate.
It would puncture her chest. Bleed her dry.
She would die.
But it didn’t hit her.
The magic penetrated…something. Someone. And Konig felt the pain as acutely as though it had entered his body, as though it were shredding his every blood vessel and boiling the moisture from his flesh.
When the vibrancy of his magical assault faded, Konig saw what his blade had punctured.
His father had stepped in front of Jaycee.
Blood poured over the elaborate tattoos on Rage’s exposed chest, his abs, his hips. He didn’t even look surprised.
Jaycee was gone. The coward—she had vanished when Konig had been distracted by the fireworks of his magic. The door she’d exited through was closing in the wall. She was abandoning Rage while he died.
Rage is dying.
The former king’s legs gave out. He struck his knees, and then folded over backward.
Heather reached him first, and then Konig an instant later. The archer evaluated his wounds quickly. She looked as calm as she always did on the battlefield.
But when she lifted her eyes to Konig’s, he saw that she was crying.
He’d never seen her cry before.
“He’s dead,” Heather said.
The nice thing about the Spring Court, Jaycee thought, was how empty it was. Most of the Middle Worlds were filled with bullshit of one flavor or another. Her sidhe counterparts were perverted hedonists, and they spread the infection everywhere they went.
Not that Jaycee didn’t have her own perverted-hedonist side. There was a time and place for everything.
Except in the Spring Court.
Where the other Middle Worlds had oversized estates at their hearts, the Spring Court had a shack. A very ugly, sagging shack. It stood on the edge of an island where it was very easy to wake up and roll directly into the water.
Aside from the obligatory wedge of the Wilds toward the west, and some scrubby grass that was in an eyeball-blasting shade of emerald green, there was nothing remarkable in the entire plane.
All the other courts had been expanded aggressively by their rulers, to varying degrees of success. The Winter Court was smallest of the others. Not because the first queen had been weak—quite the contrary. Her strength had made her a quick target for assassination and she hadn’t lived long enough to expand. Even the Winter Court stretched for many kilometers, though.
The Spring Court was little more than a handful of islands and hills amidst endless water, and it would always be that way.
Assuming Konig didn’t get his hands on it.
That was a big assumption.
Jaycee tumbled into the dimension through the ley lines. She landed right beside that ugly shack in a pile of sand.
Sand was terrible. It got into every crack and crevice and she hated it more every day. At this point, she’d have preferred a thousand vacations at a Dave and Busters to one vacation on the beach.
But she didn’t get up.
She wasn’t certain she’d ever get up again.
Rage is dead.
If he hadn’t stepped aside at the last moment…
Bare feet whispered across the beach. Her husband yanked Jaycee to her feet. “Frosty,” Pierce said, supporting her entire weight with his grip, “what’s wrong? Why are you already back?”
Her mouth moved, but sounds
didn’t want to come out.
“That little fuck-face,” Jaycee finally managed to say.
Understanding passed over Pierce’s face like a shadow. “Rage?”
“Dead,” she said.
Pierce looked like he was the one who’d taken a magical blade to the heart. He squeezed Jaycee tight, and she squeezed him back, but there was no embrace that could make the pain go away. “Tell me the changes went through first.”
Wouldn’t that have been a nice fantasy? At least then Rage would have died for a reason.
She could only shake her head.
Grief writhed through Pierce’s aura, distorting the island around them. He wasn’t a king, so his grief didn’t manifest the way that Konig’s moods made all those swords. Probably for the best. Pierce’s grief would have likely manifested as one of his favorite stupid coping methods, like an elliptical trainer in front of a TV showing Oprah reruns.
Right now it felt like Jaycee’s grief could have pulverized the island, so it was a good thing she wasn’t queen.
“I need to sit,” Pierce rasped.
They leaned on each other to stagger into the shack. Since Jaycee’s last visit, the king had constructed another bedroom off the back wall so that their daughter wouldn’t have to sleep in the same room as her parents when she visited.
Nobody was visiting—or inhabiting—the shack at that moment. It appeared to have been that way for a long time, based on the amount of salty crust caking everything.
“Where are Samita and Slater?” Jaycee asked hollowly. Those were the rulers of this plane. They hated the other sidhe even more than Jaycee did, which said a lot. She couldn’t help but admire that level of misanthropy.
Pierce opened a lockbox by waving his hand. “The two of them don’t come up for air very often anymore.” He pulled a pair of crystals out of the box and set them on the windowsill. “Those will alert us if anyone comes into the dimension.”
“Oh good,” she said. “I’m looking forward to having advance warning of my agonizing, painful death.” Now that Rage was dead, his stupid child would surely be coming after her.
Gods, this was not how Jaycee had hoped her week would fall out.
Pierce lowered beside her. They both sat on that packed-dirt floor, alone with the roaring of water. “You can cut the jokes, Jaycee. I know you’re upset about Rage.”
