by SM Reine
“I didn’t even like him.”
He didn’t try to argue with her, since even though he was a super-genius former billionaire whose medical research had saved countless lives, his wit paled compared to Jaycee’s. Surely that was why he was being quiet, and not because he could be grieving Rage in his own way.
Oh, he probably was grieving. He and Rage had been dear friends. “Are you okay?” Jaycee asked.
Pierce’s eye twitched. “Oh yeah, I love losing the last of my college buddies.”
“That’s a no, then.”
“When Rage came to me weeks ago, asking for help to dethrone his son, I was exhilarated. It was a challenge. A real challenge.” Pierce settled onto the floor mat that served as a bed. “And a way to protect everyone from Konig.”
“The little prick,” Jaycee said.
“I thought it was going to be a new era for sidhe. I thought we were helping. Now…” Pierce rested his elbows on his knees, staring out the doorless archway at the ocean. “I’m not okay.”
“Spare me your man-pain,” she said, conveniently forgetting that she was the only one of the two of them who had tears running down her cheeks. “Let’s come up with a solution.”
“For imminent death?”
“Oh, come now.”
“You’re the one who brought up our painful deaths,” Pierce said.
Jaycee made herself smile. She found smiling to rarely be useful, so she was out of practice. It hurt her face. “Cheer up. We won’t die until Konig figures out how to tear open the Spring Court.”
The crystals that Pierce had set on the windowsill alarmed. They blasted sidhe magic through the shack that made the very walls shake.
“Well,” Jaycee said. “Death really doesn’t beat around the bush.”
Pierce leaped to his feet. “Something’s coming through the Wilds.”
She beat him outside.
The wall between worlds distorted, and a very large hand pushed through. It was blue-skinned. The palm was big enough that it could have smashed all of Jaycee’s face at once with room left to spare for her mate. It was followed by a mountain and a diamond-sharp face topped with tousled hair of spun glass.
A frost giant. From the Winter Court, surely.
Pierce was in front of her instantly. He hadn’t been able to turn into a wolf since Genesis had made him sidhe, but the way that he bristled looked very much like he was on the brink of transforming.
“Run, Jaycee!” he roared, fists clutching faefire.
“Wait, wait, don’t go zapping at us!”
A familiar voice was coming through the Wilds behind the frost giant. Pierce’s fists wavered. Jaycee peeked under his armpit to try to see past the first intruder.
“Who’s that?” she whispered.
He shrugged. “Not sure.”
“I’m going to zap them,” Jaycee said decisively. She started sketching runes in the air.
“I said don’t go doing that shit!” Wintersong erupted from behind the frost giant and put himself directly in the line of fire.
“Oh gods.” Now Jaycee knew why she remembered that voice. Wintersong was part of the coven that had produced Jaycee and the Onyx Queen. He hadn’t always been a total moron. Really, he’d barely been a half-moron. But surviving Genesis had done him no favors.
If he’d been sent to kill them, then it was probably supposed to be one last insult.
Jaycee sketched runes faster.
“Don’t shoot those,” Wintersong said, spreading out his arms to shield the frost giant as much as possible. “He just a kid!”
“A kid?” Jaycee scoffed.
Pierce’s gaze tracked from the giant’s feet to his head. “He is pretty small.”
“I’m not that small,” the giant said, puffing up his chest. “I’m Ymir.” He was haloed by magic that tasted like wildfire smoke on the back of Jaycee’s tongue, and it kept the air surrounding Ymir cold and dim. The Spring Court’s friendly sunlight wouldn’t harm him.
That magic hadn’t come from Konig.
“Both of you are two milliseconds from being turned into an ugly crater on the Spring Court’s nicest island,” Jaycee said. “Go back through the Wilds and tell Konig to leave us alone!”
Wintersong didn’t back down. He was probably too stupid to realize how much danger he was in. “No point doing cratering, and no point in us talking at Konig. We’s been sents up here from Marion.”
“Why?” Jaycee shoved Pierce aside so she could face Wintersong properly. She was dying for an opportunity to stab someone until her grief went away. “Is she afraid of facing me again? She should be afraid of facing me!”
“Down girl,” Pierce muttered.
“Don’t think Marion’s afraid of nothing,” Wintersong said. “No, we’s gots something else. Some kind of…uh…” He scratched his chin thoughtfully, as if trying to remember the words.
“An offer,” Ymir prompted. “From Marion. She wants to know if you’d like to save the seelie, protect the Middle Worlds, and topple Konig.”
Niflheimr’s chill hadn’t bothered Konig in months. Ever since the coronation, he’d become essentially immune to the hostile environment—or else the environment had changed drastically enough that it was no longer hostile to him. Either way. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been cold.
He was cold now.
It was one thing to lose his mom, even though the Onyx Queen had been the only woman that Konig could have loved as much as himself. He’d admired her, and all the parts of himself he saw in her, and the things that she taught him.
She had been beyond compare.
This was different.
This was Rage. The Onyx Queen had taught a lot to Konig, but Rage was an extension of Konig. They were the same person. One soul split into two.
He’d betrayed Konig and died for it.
Knowing that Rage’s last act had been one of betrayal against Konig, against a piece of himself…
Gods, Konig had never felt so cold.
Rage’s death felt like an amputation. This was Konig’s blood oozing across the ice, dribbling in thick lines to slick the surface of the water. All the gemstone glitter of it had faded as Rage’s heart had given its final beat.
Konig clung to the physical remnants of his dad. He clenched his fists in Rage’s shirt until he had no feeling left in his fingers—and no feeling inside his chest.
“Konig?”
Heather had returned.
She’d run off to look for Jaycee, but her dagger wasn’t bloodied and there was no prisoner shackled to her side.
Konig didn’t feel anger. He didn’t feel anything except the cold.
“What are we going to do?” Heather asked.
“The spell,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. “We’ll do the spell Jaycee set up.” Even while he’d been bowed over his father’s body, his mind had been spinning. He’d been planning his next steps forward.
He just couldn’t take those steps forward until he was ready to leave Rage behind.
“We should get out of here,” Heather said. “Gods, Konig, we’ve got to get you home. We have to make arrangements and—”
“Wait,” Konig said, lifting his head. He’d accidentally dipped his hair into the puddle of blood. The locks clung together, heavy and sticky.
He gingerly peeled the magical blade out of Rage’s chest. It had been made from Jaycee’s spellwork and was now coated in royal blood, which meant it had greater potential for change than ever before.
The spell was broken down to its component parts, like an elaborate glass statue that had been shattered to dust. But everything was there.
“What do you know about sorcery, Heather?” Konig asked.
She put her hand on his wrist. “I don’t know if this is the time. We should do something about…him.”
“He wanted to take the crown from me.” Konig stood up, gathering calm around him like a cloak. “I’m done with him.”
It was time to mo
ve forward.
He kicked Rage’s body over the side of the icy island. The water accepted him smoothly and the former king vanished into darkness.
Heather watched in silence, nostrils flared, breathing hard through clenched teeth.
Konig picked through the shards of Jaycee’s spell. He discarded the portion that would have taken him off of the throne.
What was left was the spell that he’d demanded from Jaycee—a spell to make sure he could remain king even if his queen, the rightful possessor of power in the Winter Court, were to somehow happen to die.
He added a few extra runes. Sloppy ones.
“What is that?” Heather asked. Konig chose to interpret her expression as awe.
“I don’t want the Summer Court to go into anarchy if its rulers die,” Konig said. “I want transfer to be easy. I want to grab the thrones for myself.”
“You’re going to kill Oberon and Titania? Didn’t you say that we were going to arrest them? Put them on trial?”
Instead of responding, he repaired the circle around the workstation and plugged everything in.
The darknet chamber hummed to life weakly.
“What are you doing?” Heather asked.
“I promised that things were going to change for us.” Konig’s voice sounded so weird, so distant, so hollow. “This is how it changes. This is where it begins.” He bent over the keyboard, fingers moving through the threads of magic even as they struck each key. “This is how I’ll stop needing Marion.”
He clapped his hands to close the circle—to trigger the program—whatever.
And he felt the spell come to life. It rolled throughout the entire Middle Worlds like a warm, salty ocean spilling down the ice of Niflheimr.
Piece by piece, the Winter Court tumbled toward warmth, as though it tipped toward the sunlight. That heat would take over the Autumn Court next, and then the Summer Court, and then…
Then Konig would be king of everywhere his army could reach, with or without Marion.
He blinked, and his magically expanded mind refocused on the darknet chamber. The roof melted away and the stars winked above, even though there should have been several floors of Niflheimr sitting directly atop them.
Through those holes, Konig could see a swollen moon, perpetually full, hanging directly over his head. The same moon that had witnessed him at the Veil.
He glanced down at the dark waters below. Even with the swirling magic and the glowing moon, there was no longer any sign of Rage’s body.
“What have you done?” Heather asked.
Konig wrapped his arm around her shoulders, guiding her toward stairs that he formed with the lingering vestiges of Jaycee’s sorcery. “Tell me, Heather,” he said, “when do you want to schedule your coronation?”
14
It was amazing how quickly everyone got compliant when Rylie started barking orders. Even more amazing was how confident Rylie was delivering those orders. Seth remembered Rylie as a seventeen-year-old Alpha without the authority, conviction, or knowledge to guide others.
That kid was nothing like the woman who filled the sanctuary with her presence now.
When Rylie summoned Seth to her office, it was with the authority of a woman who expected him to listen—even if he were a god, and her ex-fiancé, and someone who had no reason to obey.
Seth did obey, though.
He walked into Rylie’s office alone. Marion was being seen by sanctuary healers in a cabin far, far away from Rylie and Abel, which was probably the safest place for her to be.
“She’s been holding my son captive?” Abel looked like he was on the brink of shapeshifting back into his wolf form. His hair was standing on end. His lined face rippled like muscles moving under the surface.
Seth began to say, “She was—”
“Ben’s been missing for months!” Abel slammed his hands into the desk, shoving to his feet.
Rylie used to be the more temperate of them, but she had her hands tucked behind her back, so she was probably trying to hide how close she was to shapeshifting, too. She spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully. “Why would Marion hold Benjamin?”
“Marion had her reasons,” Seth said.
Her lips spasmed. “Enlighten us.”
“Okay, but…I’ve got bad news. And it’s going to take a little bit of explanation to make sense.”
Rylie gripped the chair in front of her. As Seth had suspected, her fingernails had dots of blood around the edges. She was one shocking revelation away from having claws. “What?” she snarled.
“Relax,” Benjamin said without lifting his head. He was sitting on a bench by the wall. “You’re overreacting.”
“Overreacting? Overreacting?”
“Look, it’s not that hard to get,” Benjamin said. “I’m not your son. My soul belongs to Nathaniel Faulkner. And I’m destined to go back in time so I can make Genesis happen. Marion was holding me captive so I couldn’t go through.”
Seth grimaced. “Well, I mean—”
“Faulkner?” That came from Abel. But only because Rylie looked like she was too far into the wolf to speak rationally. “What the fuck did you gods do?”
Seth wanted to tell them that this wasn’t his choice. It wasn’t something he’d known about until recently—except for the omnipotence, which meant he probably had known—and he hadn’t even been there for it—except that he’d been omnipresent ever since Genesis so he probably had. Seth couldn’t disavow what the other gods did. He was one of them, indistinguishable from the rest of the triad.
The only reason that he even looked like the man Rylie and Abel used to know was because a fragment of magical tree grown by the gods had been jammed into his breast.
“I don’t even understand how this is possible,” Rylie said. One hand was pressed to her belly, as if trying to wish Benjamin back into her womb. She lisped around werewolf fangs. “How could I have James’s son?”
Benjamin rolled his eyes. “God, how stupid are you? You were pregnant when Genesis happened. The fetus died like everyone else. When you came back, I’d gotten stuck in there, and—”
Rylie erupted. “Stop it! I can’t hear this!” She wrenched Benjamin to his feet and wrapped him in a hug that made him squeak with pain. He was taller than her by several inches but he couldn’t have broken free if he wanted. “You are my son.”
Abel watched them with a confusing mix of hatred and fear swimming across his features. “What’s this about going back in time?”
“To make Genesis happen,” Benjamin groaned out. “In a couple days, on November fifth.”
“A couple of…? No. No.” Rylie held him at arm’s reach. She stared between all of them as though she didn’t recognize any of their faces. But she settled, unfortunately, on Seth. “How is this supposed to excuse the fact that Marion held him captive for months?”
“If Benjamin doesn’t get to the Genesis warp in time, then everything will be destroyed. By everything, I do mean everything,” Seth said. “Marion was protecting him so that she could protect the world.”
Benjamin brushed his mother’s hands off his arms while Rylie gazed at him in horror. “Protecting me? That’s one side of the story.” He slapped his own cheeks. “She barely even fed me. I’m practically a ghost of who I used to be.” He grinned at nothing—the window, or the corner by the window. It was hard to tell.
Rylie was beside herself. She didn’t have words. Only growls.
The fact that Abel was the rational one between them scared Seth more than anything he’d seen.
“I’m not surprised if Marion thought she was the only one who could protect the world,” Abel said. “Sounds like the kind of dumb-ass shit she’d do. But we could have helped. She knew we could have helped.”
“Oh yeah?” Benjamin folded his arms. “Because the two of you would let me travel back in time, is what you’re saying? Back to the days when the world was burning with hellfire and everyone fucking died?”
Rylie had gone
completely pale. “Benjy…” She blinked rapidly, breathing hard through her nose. “You’re right that I won’t let you go anywhere. I have lost…so much. And you? They want me to give you up? No!”
She whirled on her husband.
“Benjamin’s not going anywhere,” Rylie said. “And I am going to see to it that Marion is arrested for her many, many crimes.”
She slammed through the door, leaving it hanging open behind her. One of the hinges had broken.
Seth massaged his temples even though he didn’t have a headache, or a head, or real temples for that matter. They were all an illusion, and it was only a reflex.
“So,” Benjamin said brightly, “I think that went well. Don’t you guys?”
“That was a whole new level of frustrating,” Benjamin said to nobody in particular, because nobody could hear him except Nathaniel. And Nathaniel didn’t seem to be listening.
Gods, it sucked watching his mom having meltdowns over some ungrateful jackass like Nathaniel.
If Benjamin had been in control of himself, there was so much he could have done to reassure his mom. First of all, he didn’t even want to go through the Genesis warp, so she didn’t need to bother with that. Second of all, Rylie just needed to take some deep breaths and focus on regaining her human shape—she always had an easier time thinking clearly when she was human shaped. But she was bad at coaching herself through that.
He had shouted instructions to Nathaniel. “Hug her! Tell her she looks pretty! Remind her that her doctor said even werewolf hearts can’t cope with this much stress!”
Nathaniel had ignored him, though. And everything had gone as bad as it possibly could have.
Seth moved to follow Rylie, his presence billowing behind him like a cloak.
“I don’t recommend that,” Benjamin said. “You’ve got to let her cool off on her own. She’ll be ready for a cup of tea and a quiet talk in a few minutes.”
Of course, Seth didn’t hear.
Luckily, Abel grabbed Seth before he could chase Rylie out of her office. “Don’t do that. You’ve gotta let her cool off.”
