by SM Reine
19
Charity seriously doubted that it was a coincidence that more of Konig’s legions appeared only once the Godslayer had vanished. Up until that moment, Marion really could have used the support. Even an avatar of a god would have had trouble carrying out an assassination if eighty men had attacked simultaneously. But the unseelie had been absorbed in maneuvers elsewhere in the forest, performing trivial sweeps to kill seelie and the Hounds.
They hadn’t been trying to save their queen.
And that was probably for a reason.
“Let me do the talking,” Marion said as the army emerged from the trees. “These people are from the seventh. I know how to handle them.”
“Very well,” agreed Ariane Kavanagh. Yes, the queen’s mother had made a cameo appearance. Charity hadn’t bothered asking why or how. Of all the weird things she’d seen in the Middle Worlds, a random witch was far from the weirdest.
Charity frowned. “What do you mean, let you do the talking? Do you think that they’re going to do something to us?” Which was when she was surrounded by armed soldiers, with at least a dozen blades aimed at her heart.
Yes, the army is going to do something to us.
The world warped with magic.
It sucked being exposed directly to sidhe power again. Charity was still feeling raw from her earlier fight, so this was just salting the wound. She couldn’t stand against the full weight of the army leaning on her senses.
“Oh gods,” she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut against the assault of flashing color. She smelled lavender. She was drowning in lavender. Where was that cacophonous music coming from? Why were the violins screaming? Who was jabbing an ice pick into her brain through her ear canal?
Marion gripped Charity’s arm, and a cool spray of magic shimmered over her skin. It shoved the sidhe magic back.
“These are allies!” Marion sounded shockingly authoritative, even cold. She never used that tone of voice around Seth. “Lower your weapons and lift the magic!”
Sidhe spells peeled back, allowing Charity to see across the clearing to Seth. He didn’t look like Seth anymore. He looked like a square-jawed, bushy-browed member of the Raven Knights. It was still unmistakably Seth, though. Everyone else smelled like blood, but he didn’t smell like anything at all.
A soldier broke away from the rest of the seventh. Her lips and knotted hair were ghostly white. “You are lucky to be alive. There is something in the Wilds killing legions. It appears to be an animal.”
Guilt lurched in Charity’s gut. She was glad she’d sent the surviving Hounds into hiding—they’d probably get blamed for all the unseelie that she had killed.
“Yes, we have a killing machine loose in the Summer Court. It’s an avatar of a god. She is probably still in the Wilds,” Marion said. “You will know her because she has no face and four arms. Find her, and kill her from a distance.”
Many soldiers scattered. Charity turned to Marion. “I saw her leave, and we know she didn’t kill that legion.” She swallowed hard. “I did.”
“I want them to find her anyway,” Marion said dismissively. She leaned heavily on Seth. To anyone else, it would have looked like she’d been injured and needed support from a Raven Knight. Anyone who didn’t notice the possessive heat burning in Seth’s black eyes.
A trio of sidhe broke away from the remaining legion. They were distinctive because they were wearing designer clothes rather than armor, and they floated in on a breeze that smelled like rose petals.
“Handmaidens,” Seth muttered to Charity. He nodded to each in turn. “Aoife, Tove, Maddisyn. They watch Marion.” She understood that to mean that they spied on Marion.
They closed in around Ariane first with cries of surprise and delight. They already knew Marion’s mother. And clearly Ariane knew them, or else she was really comfortable hugging random strangers.
“Who is this?” Aoife asked, her nose wrinkling at the sight of Charity. A wrinkled nose wasn’t too bad as far as reactions went. Charity’s ex-boyfriend had thrown crap at her the first time that he looked upon her “fucked-up face,” in his words.
“This is Charity, a very good friend of mine who just saved my life.” Marion looped her arm through Charity’s, much to the surprise of the revenant. Most humans were too grossed out to touch her.
Charity tried not to look surprised by Marion’s lie. She’d had nothing to do with getting rid of the Godslayer, though. She’d only been helping the seelie escape.
It was hard to keep track of Marion’s secrets, and Charity barely knew a fraction of a percent of them.
“Do I want to know how Charity got to the Summer Court?” Aoife asked.
“The defenses were down. Anyone will be able to planeswalk in until my king erects the wards again.”
Aoife accepted the explanation by inclining her head. “All right.”
“Take my mother ahead to Alfheimr,” Marion said. “Get her anything she wants. I’ll meet her there after I’ve reunited with my king.”
“I’ve got her,” Maddisyn said. Ariane shot a look at Marion—not a happy look—and allowed herself to be led away.
“Take Charity to—” Marion began.
“I’m staying,” Charity said. She was Seth’s Voice now. She had a gris-gris, she was relatively neutral, and she wouldn’t go off without him.
Marion switched commands smoothly. “The sedan chair. Where is it?”
It took a moment of awkward murmuring and shifting in the crowd for someone to understand. One of the Raven Knights slipped away, leaping across the sky. “Why not call for Ymir?” asked the handmaiden named Tove. “You’ve been riding him everywhere.”
“Because I want a chair,” Marion said coldly—so coldly.
A chair soon emerged. It was a carriage lifted on the tide of unseelie magic, all icy silver-white adorned with glittering ruby. Its shade was trimmed by fringe that swayed with the slightest breeze. The jewels on its cables chimed against each other.
Seth helped Marion climb into it. Charity didn’t need help. Her legs were practically stilts.
Once all three of them were inside, Marion shut the curtains with a snap of magic.
“These spells will ensure nobody can listen in,” she said, shooting bolts into each corner of the shade. They clung like glitter to the cloth.
“I thought Aoife was one of your allies,” Seth said once they were safely enclosed. The chair shifted as they began to move. “You’re lying to her.” The vision of the bushy-browed Raven Knight faded back into Seth’s form, as if it had rotted away.
“And I lie to my mother, and to Wintersong, and to many other collaborators,” Marion said. “They only have pieces of the puzzle. It would be too dangerous for any one person beyond myself to know everything.”
“Including Seth?” Charity asked.
Marion’s gaze became as unreadable as the chair she sat in. The way the emotion drained out of her face looked like swapping masks. Better posture, less of a smile, her hands still in her lap. “What are you suggesting?”
“Don’t you think it was weird that the Godslayer didn’t hurt anyone?” Charity directed it toward Seth—hopefully a more sympathetic ear. “All the carnage came from the sidhe and…well, I did my share of killing too.”
Marion touched two fingertips to her throat, where the thin scratch remained. “You think the Godslayer didn’t hurt me?”
“I think it was an accident.”
“Are you accusing me of colluding with the Godslayer?” Marion’s voice was silken danger.
But even her dangerous tone of voice wasn’t as worrying as Seth’s quiet calm. He was accepting all of this without arguing, without speaking.
“I don’t think you’re in cahoots,” Charity said. “I just think she didn’t ever intend to kill you. She’s got some other plan.” She steeled herself to say what she had been thinking, even though she knew it would be wildly unpopular. “I’d expect that the Godslayer is here to protect Genesis. So if she’s after
Marion, then she thinks Marion is a threat to Genesis. To the whole world.”
Marion turned to Seth. “What do you think?”
Their eyes connected with such force that even Charity felt it.
“I think we’ve got to take steps to protect you and ask questions later,” Seth said.
Marion smiled at him.
Charity wanted to cry, Don’t agree with her! But the words caught in her chest.
Gods. How was she supposed to make him see reason when he was looking at Marion like that? Why didn’t these two incredibly smart people realize there was a lot of stupid stuff going around that was going to end in very bad consequences?
“We shouldn’t return to Alfheimr, though,” Seth said. “I might have done something to Konig.”
Marion’s eyebrows lifted. “Might have?”
“He killed his father. I made him face Rage’s soul in the afterlife.”
Her hands flew to her breast. “Oh gods. Rage? Rage is dead?”
“Konig killed him,” Seth said, even more emphatically, in case she might have missed it.
Marion was welling up with tears, and Charity was a little too much of a jerk to think that she was experiencing genuine grief over the former king. “But he loved his father.”
“And he doesn’t love you,” he said, “so think about what kind of danger we’re walking into if I didn’t manage to turn Konig’s brain into a vegetable.”
“Then it’s good that I sent my mother ahead separately of me,” Marion said. “At least she’s safe.”
The chair jolted to a stop.
“Marion…” Seth said warningly.
“We must be at Alfheimr.” Marion waved her hand to reopen the shimmering walls.
The beachside manor sprawled outside. They’d approached from the ocean end of things, so the sidhe who carried them were standing at the edge of the water. The wind that blew in off the ocean was too cold. It tasted like autumn, not summer.
That wasn’t the only sign of Konig’s influence. The wings of the manor had already slimmed down, going from wide-based Spanish pillars to something more jagged and stylized. Shadows crawled over the walls. Trees were yellowing as they died off, and rosebushes shriveled before Charity’s eyes.
Those signs were subtle compared to Konig himself, standing on the back porch. Wind whipped his crimson velvet coat behind him. The leather boots laced to his hips were tacky with drying blood. His violet hair was clumped into locks.
He looked every inch the king who had survived a battle.
Especially his haunted eyes.
“He doesn’t look like a vegetable,” Charity said. “He looks pissed.”
“Damn,” Seth said. “Careful.” Charity thought he was talking to her until she realized his hand was on Marion’s wrist.
“I know,” she whispered. Her eyes shut as she pressed her forehead briefly against his for the barest moment, so quickly that Charity would have missed it if she’d blinked. “Trust that I have a plan for Konig, as I do for everything else.”
“I do,” he said.
Then she was slipping to the beach to stand alongside her Raven Knights, and Charity had no choice but to follow.
Charity stepped out of the chair. She was flanked on either side by rows of soldiers as she headed toward the patio. These were the least injured of all the unseelie that Charity had seen invading the Summer Court, yet most of them were still bloody, and some struggled to even stand upright. Alfheimr hadn’t fallen easily.
“Princess,” Konig said as Marion approached. It took a moment of dull staring for Konig to recognize who was walking up the beach beside her. “Charity?”
She gave the most half-assed bow she could manage. “Sorry if my manner isn’t cut out for court. I’m not used to dealing with kings.” She was, however, pretty good at dealing with jerks, and Konig was the jerk who had first tossed her to the literal dogs in Sheol. And Charity felt good about bowing sloppily for him. Sure, it was petty, but she was feeling petty.
“That explains what happened to the third legion,” Konig said. He raised his hand and his voice. “Arrest her.”
“She had nothing to do with that, my king. Charity brought my mother from Sheol via a portal,” Marion said, gracefully ascending the stairs. “Together, they saved my life from the Godslayer. We owe her thanks.” She slipped her fingers into Konig’s hand and stood beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder, in the picture of a perfect queen with her king.
Seth had shadowed Charity up the beach, appearing once more indistinguishable from the rest of the Raven Knights. Konig noticed the extra body.
“Lot of Marion’s old friends are hanging around,” Konig said. For an instant, his face spasmed. And he looked furious. Pained.
Charity sucked in a breath and held it.
She’d risked her life to get seelie away from the forest in case they died in a battle between gods, and she’d succeeded. But she hadn’t thought about what might happen if Seth and Konig came to blows. It would probably be as devastating.
And at the moment, she stood between them.
Charity didn’t like Marion nearly enough to die over a slap fight between possessive guys.
Yet Konig didn’t lash out. He went calm again, pulling Marion hard against his chest without breaking eye contact with Seth. “We’ve won.” He kissed her hard enough to bend her spine backwards. Konig’s fist clutched the curls at the back of her neck. “We’re going to have a party in our new castle tonight, princess. We’re going to dance on the bones of traitors.” He bit out the last word while staring into her face. And, somehow, Marion looked as serene as ever. Like this was totally normal behavior.
Seth took a step forward. Charity grabbed his elbow. “Don’t,” she hissed under her breath. His arm vibrated with so much energy that it felt like he might collapse into a black hole and suck them all down with him.
“Excellent,” Marion said, seemingly oblivious to Seth. “I look forward to it. Will you have the Raven Knights escort Charity to a ley line so she may depart safely?”
Konig’s other hand gripped Marion’s hip. “Depart, huh? Where’s she going?”
“Does it matter?” she asked.
He barked a harsh laugh. “Nothing matters.” He fixed Seth with a hard, knowing gaze. “Take her to the ley line.” And he wrenched Marion up the steps to Alfheimr.
Seth boiled at Charity’s side. His expression was now unmistakably one of murder.
Until Marion and Konig entered Alfheimr, Seth didn’t turn.
Charity hurried after him. Nobody stopped them as they headed back out the way they’d come in. The streets were quieter. No more battling, but some wails of pain, some sobbing tears. The village was still smoldering.
“Seth,” Charity whispered urgently. “We’ve got a serious problem.”
“Just one?” he asked without looking her way.
“Konig recognized you.”
“I know. The fact he didn’t fight me means that he’s given up.”
Charity frowned. “Really? You mean…we win?”
“No,” Seth said. “It means he’s not fighting for Marion anymore. She’s about to die.”
Ice flooded her veins. “Then we have to go back.”
“I will, but I want you to return to Arawn. I want to know you’re safe so I don’t have to worry about you when…” He trailed off. The fact that he never finished that sentence could only mean very bad things.
“You’re about to do something really bad for Marion, aren’t you? Stop and think about this, Seth. Think about what the Godslayer did. You know this other god, and you know what she’s like. Do you think she’d try to take Marion down without good reason? This is a serious question. I’d like a serious answer.”
“I don’t have one.” He sounded so distracted.
“Gods, just listen to me!”
He swung around when Charity seized his arm. Seth looked like he was in physical pain. “What?” The word tore out of Seth as though Charity had been for
ced to cut it free.
“Nobody trusts Marion for a reason,” Charity said.
Seth took her shoulders in his hands. “You’re a good friend to me, Charity. Better than I deserve. But this… We’re not debating it. I’ve made my choice.”
“To ignore Marion’s agenda?”
“She’s not what you think,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
Seth lifted a hand. A ley line dragged nearer to them with a cracking of his wooden heart. They’d been a long walk from the path between worlds, but he’d wasted a millimeter of his time in the mortal worlds bringing the exit to Charity.
“Take care of yourself,” he said.
And he pushed her through.
The undercity hadn’t changed since Charity had left it. No new buildings, no new tunnels, nothing. She felt as though the labyrinthine cave system underneath Barcelona had been holding its breath waiting for her to come back.
To be fair, she felt like she’d been holding her breath for every moment that she’d been away from it. Returning to the undercity’s seamy darkness was the first time she could exhale. Nobody there cared what she looked like. They didn’t run in fear at the sight of her, or make sounds of disgust.
Arawn didn’t recoil at the sight of her. He heard the scrabbling of Hound paws on stone and smiled when he looked up, like he was seeing the first flowers blooming in the spring. That was always how he looked at Charity. He didn’t just tolerate her weirdness. He legitimately admired it.
It helped that the dude was pretty ugly too.
But Charity had grown fond of his tattoos, missing teeth, and the bones that stuck out of his chest.
Even the sight of Arawn was not enough to help her mood that day.
“Fuck everything,” she said, throwing herself onto a bench across from Arawn. The bench had been bought at Furniture Express. The demon artisans had yet to carve actual legitimate furniture that looked properly scary, and they couldn’t just grow it like the sidhe did, so they were sitting on cheap plywood with thin foam padding for now.
Arawn was sitting on a bench next to a tattoo chair, getting his equipment ready. He had actually gotten sterile, individually packaged needles. Charity had lectured him about infectious diseases a thousand times, but she was still shocked he’d listened.
