by SM Reine
She kicked him in the ankle and stomped away. She’d kicked him hard enough that a human would have bruised, but Pierce only watched her go with a familiar smile, much like the one Marion had often caught Seth using in her direction. A very affectionate smile.
Which she was never going to see again.
Gods save us all. No offense intended.
Sure.
Cold fingers wrapped around Marion’s waist. It was Ymir’s attempt at a hug now that he was so big. “I’m going to miss you,” Ymir said.
Heat pricked at Marion’s eyes. She wrapped her arms around his thumb and squeezed tightly, even though he was so cold that her cheek froze instantly. “I’ve already arranged for the Office of Preternatural Affairs to send you cases of candy every week. Big cases.”
“You’re the best,” he said, relieved. That was clearly what he’d been worried about. Not the fact he wasn’t going to get to see Marion, but that he wouldn’t get more candy from her.
So their relationship was slightly one-sided. The affection Marion felt for Ymir, he only directed toward chocolate. But perhaps one day—many years down the road, when his taste had matured and he was an adult serving as king on his own—he would warmly recall the half-angel who had put him on the throne.
Ymir might have been the only one in twenty years who would have such thoughts for Marion.
She let go of his arm. “You should go with Jaycee. Don’t want to miss the airship.”
Ymir pressed his giant face against her. It was a very clumsy gesture that nearly knocked her on her butt, but Marion realized he was trying to kiss her cheek.
She was laughing when he pulled away.
Perhaps he didn’t only love Marion’s Three Musketeers.
Nikki and Pierce had left while Ymir was saying his goodbyes, and Heather was right behind him on the way out. The archer stiffened when Marion called to her.
“Can you stay behind for a moment?”
“I’ve got to get to Alfheimr,” Heather said. “The airship—”
“You can planeswalk without it. I won’t hold you long.”
Reluctantly, Heather stepped back, letting Ymir crawl out into the garden. He wasn’t actually going to board the passenger compartment like the others would; he’d have to go straight to the ley line.
“Follow me, please,” Marion said.
She took Heather out to the living room as the airship’s engine sounds receded. Every single box had been labeled for the moving company to distribute Marion’s valuables, but she still had to sift through a dozen to find what she was looking for.
“Looks like you’re moving soon,” Heather said.
“Quite soon.” Marion would be leaving her house with one suitcase within the hour.
“Where are you going?”
“That much is a loosely kept secret,” Marion said. “I need time to be myself, and think for myself, and…” She shifted a couple of boxes to get at one in the back. “I don’t want people to be easily capable of asking me for help. Not until I come back. And I don’t expect to come back for years.”
“I don’t care. I was only asking to be polite anyway.”
Marion had figured as much. She picked her way out of the maze of boxes, wooden case in hand. “You were polite enough to heal my wounds after Konig’s attempt to kill me, and I feel that I owe you more thanks for that than control of Alfheimr.”
“Some thanks that is,” Heather said.
She ignored the new queen’s anger. “I’m taking very little with me when I move. Most of my valuables will be auctioned for charity, but I wanted to offer this to you first.”
Heather opened the case. She only glanced at its contents for an instant before shutting it again. “Why?” she asked hoarsely.
“It was made by the Onyx Queen for her successor,” Marion said. “However, I thought you might find it more meaningful than Nikki would.”
A moment’s hesitation, and then Heather opened the case again. She stroked the diadem in its velvet bed. It was less remarkable outside of the Middle Worlds. Even when Marion hadn’t been able to make it glow for Konig, it had still seemed to shimmer. Here, it was just an elaborate piece of metal holding an arrangement of pretty rocks.
Heather handed it back to Marion. “Destroy it.”
Marion gave a half-bow. “As the Summer Queen demands.”
Heather walked away, glancing over her shoulder at Marion one last time before the door shut.
With a snap of Marion’s fingers, the diadem melted. The fire was white-blue like her eyes. When she looked into it, her vision swam with green spots, and it was easy to imagine faces burning in those flames.
Konig. Seth.
The box and diadem crumbled to ash.
Wintersong poked his head in from the front door. He must have headed in to see Marion as soon as everyone else left. “Ready set go?”
She glanced around the room. It wasn’t just messy because of the boxes; the Godslayer’s invasion with balefire had torn a wall apart and left her orchard a wreck outside the window. She wouldn’t miss this mess.
Even if she had missed it, that wouldn’t matter. Marion had made a promise. She had every intention of keeping it.
“Yes, we can leave,” she said, picking up the handle on her suitcase.
Together, they vanished, and her manor was left empty.
26
When Seth was about ten feet from the clearing, the eyeball-scorching light from the Genesis warp suddenly dimmed. The Godslayer had been running ahead of him and missed a step at the sight of the darkness.
He wasn’t worried about the dimming light until he saw the Godslayer falter.
Then they erupted through the trees, and he really got worried.
Seth only needed an instant to take in the tableau waiting for him. The nest was still there, which meant Leliel hadn’t found a way to carry it through the Genesis warp. And Leliel was there too, staring dumbfounded toward the balefire, beside which hovered a motionless Benjamin Wilder.
Anthony and Dana and Abel were all unconscious on the ground.
Not dead. But not waking up any time soon.
Whoever had taken them down must have wanted them alive.
Marion was there too. Unlike the others, she was awake. She was also alive—for the moment. But she’d never looked so appealing to Seth before. Even when she’d been coughing up lungfuls of blood in Sheol, he hadn’t longed for her the way he did now. He wanted so badly to reach within and pull out her soul so that she could walk to the other side. She was walking around with a mortal wound.
Maybe not walking.
Marion’s legs wobbled and she sat down on the ground hard. Benjamin had been floating beside her, and he fell the instant that she did.
“What have you done?” Leliel asked. “Where did the warp go?” Her voice was harsh with fright.
“I locked it,” Marion said.
That was when Seth realized the warp wasn’t gone. It had just shrunk to a thread-thin sliver of light captured by a stone that seemed to hover above the ground. Seth recognized that stone.
She’d locked it using a piece of Metaraon’s statue.
Seth had helped her get that statue.
Leliel roared with rage, lifting a flaming sword from the corpse of an angel beside her. The blade caught fire. Her magicked wings whipped wide as she moved in with a blow that would surely decapitate Marion.
Except that the Godslayer got there first.
Her sword wasn’t burning, but it was sharp enough to cleave right through the base of Leliel’s wings.
Magic exploded. The angel tumbled to the ground.
The Godslayer had probably disabled her, but disability didn’t appear to be the purpose of this confrontation. All four of her arms brought their weapons to bear. Any one of them would have done the job in finishing Leliel off, but she used all of them.
So Leliel didn’t even get the chance to roll over and see who had killed her. Her soul blinked out of her body.
Seth’s breast cramped, and he could feel himself being pulled along behind her. He was on the brink of returning to the Infinite anyway. One more death almost pushed him over the edge.
The only thing that kept him rooted was the fact that the Godslayer turned on Marion next.
“No!” he shouted.
For the first time, Marion noticed he was there. Her eyes lifted to his. Shock drenched her features. “Seth?”
He phased across the clearing. He appeared in between Marion and the Godslayer instantly, and he grabbed two of the avatar’s wrists so that she couldn’t cut Marion.
The last of the ash vanished from his sternum.
What little control Seth had over his flesh began to unravel. James was beckoning him, calling him to the other side. He could practically smell the paper that Onoskelis had written their contract upon.
“You can’t kill her,” Seth said. His voice boomed from all edges of the Earth. “You can’t.”
The Godslayer’s hands opened. Her weapons fell. She nodded slowly, and it took him a beat to realize what she was doing. He’d asked her to nod in order to promise she wasn’t killing Marion.
When her arms relaxed, Seth let go.
He didn’t have a choice anyway. He was fading. The world was fading around him. His consciousness was retreating into the Infinite, and he couldn’t even make himself face Marion one last time before he lost grip of reality, before he faded entirely, and—
The Godslayer grabbed his shoulder.
Seth slammed into his body again.
Startled, he looked down at himself. There were still exposed ribs and a pulsing light within. The only thing that seemed to be holding him in place was the Godslayer.
“You brought her to stop me?” Marion asked, voice quavering. She got to her feet unsteadily.
“I did,” Seth said.
He hated to see such heartbreak on her face, now more than ever. “You betrayed me.”
“What do you think you’re doing here?” he asked.
She didn’t even look at the locked warp. “I’m making a choice.”
“A choice that benefits you,” Seth said.
“We all make choices that benefit us more than others,” Marion said. “You came to Ransom Falls to protect the people you love from dying, but how many dead have fallen that you didn’t save?”
Seth swallowed hard. “Marion…”
“How many?”
“Seventy-eight.” He shut his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see her face, but it meant that he saw all the dead OPA agents, and all the dead unseelie.
People who had died that Seth hadn’t saved.
People he hadn’t cared to save.
“You are all-powerful, but you are still a man,” Marion said. “You’ve accepted the necessity of death but refuse to apply those rules uniformly.”
“Is it necessary for people to die because of a situation you created?” Seth asked.
She didn’t answer that.
He turned to the Godslayer, still holding his shoulder. She was somehow equally frightening without her weapons. “So what’s your plan? How do you salvage this?”
She pushed him gently toward Marion.
“What?” Seth asked.
The Godslayer nudged him again.
“She’s saying you’re the plan to stop Marion,” Benjamin said from the ground. He was clutching his chest, like it was hard to breathe. “That’s why Marion was sent to look for you when she lost her memories. Elise wanted you to stop her.”
“You can’t know that,” Seth said.
He tapped his temple. “I can hear her. She says that you’ve got to fix this fuck-up and get the warp open so that…” Benjamin swallowed audibly. “So I can go inside.”
Seth reached for the lock so that he could remove it.
“Not like that,” Benjamin said.
“You wouldn’t be able to remove it anyway,” Marion said. She was circling them slowly, putting the closed warp between them and herself. “Only I can remove it, and I won’t do it. I won’t.”
“But why?” Seth asked. “If you were never on Leliel’s side—”
“That’s not true. I wasn’t deceiving Leliel at first, and I truly wanted to remove Nathaniel from Benjamin, my dear childhood friend, so that we would be capable of reshaping Genesis to our liking.”
“And you put a hit out on yourself.” Just like Lucifer had said.
Marion didn’t argue this time. “What better way to make people believe whose side you’re on than earnest attempts to murder you? Victimizing myself was always the only way to make people see me as anything but harmful.”
“So people would think that Leliel was really trying to kill you, and you couldn’t be on her side,” Seth said. “But you were.”
“I was a sixteen year old rejected by every parental figure in my life. Rylie planned to kill me and my mother preferred Dana. Elise treated me like a toy.” There was no venom in the look she shot toward the Godslayer. Just more of that relentless heartache.
It would have been so much easier to confront Marion if she hadn’t looked so hurt.
“Then there was Leliel—a maternal figure who told me that my blood made me special,” Marion said. “It’s alluring to think that one’s race makes one better than everyone else, particularly when everyone else is bent on making you feel so small. I planned to break the world on behalf of the angels. And set myself on an agonizing path that I’ve been punished for repeatedly.”
“Punished? Looks a lot like you’ve gotten exactly everything you wanted.”
The balefire was dimming further. Shrinking. The door was going to close, and Benjamin would never get a chance to go through.
The world would end.
James had said it, Onoskelis had said it. All these smart people knew that the end was coming.
Except for Marion. She refused to see it.
“The instant that I got my memories back, I remembered everything. Everything. I decided to use Konig to get at the military might of the sidhe. I’d planned to murder the king and queen if necessary. Do you know what that decision feels like? Deciding to kill people?” she asked.
“Marion,” Seth said softly. He knew exactly what that was like, a thousand times over, and she shouldn’t have had to ask. But Marion was beside herself.
After years of careful control, she was losing it.
“The worst of it wasn’t the manipulation, or immersing myself in a relationship with someone I always hated, or the dark thoughts I lived with. It was getting all my memories back and realizing how stupid I’d been.” She let her face fall into her hands. “I thought I was smart—that it was the one thing I knew about myself. Yet I fell for Leliel’s talk of superiority because…why? Because I was desperate?”
He couldn’t look at her folding in on herself like that. Seth wanted to engulf her again, to let her engulf him, to join their hearts so they could ache together.
He had to focus on the warp. It was still puckered shut by the lock and continuing to shrink.
“I had so many plans before I lost my memories.” She wiped at her cheeks. “So many. I’d planned for every single contingency.” Marion hugged her arms tightly around herself. “As I said, I didn’t plan for you—not until my memories came back.”
The Godslayer’s hand went tight on Seth.
“The boy known as Benjamin Flynn was first recorded on the Earth-that-was in the year 2001,” Marion said. “Do you know what happened between the years of 2001 and Genesis in 2015?”
Everything had happened in that time. Seth didn’t know where to begin considering which specific incident she might be hinting at.
Seth had been a small child in 2001—barely seven years old. But Marion hadn’t been alive at all. She’d been born ten years later. That meant it was likely that Marion’s mother would have begun her ultimately fatal affair with her father, Metaraon, in the intervening time.
The angels had been mostly wiped out of existence
by Elise in that time too.
All of Earth had been shattered.
Rylie had become an Alpha werewolf.
Abel had taken Rylie as his mate.
Seth’s mother had died. He’d died, too.
Everything had happened in that short time frame.
“When Benjamin doesn’t enter the Genesis warp, the most critical years in human history will be erased and rewritten from scratch. Nothing that we know now—everything that we take for fact, for the canon that our world is based upon—will be erased.” She swallowed hard, and Seth glimpsed vulnerability in her pale eyes. “You won’t be a god, Seth.”
Guilt surged within him. “You’re doing this for me?”
“For you, for me, for Adàn Pedregon and his family, for everyone like him. This world is terrible. It’s terrible.” That word, she spit directly at the Godslayer. “Adàn Pedregon would rather risk that the world get destroyed than live without his wife. I understand him far too well.”
So Seth wasn’t the one who was destroying universes for love, the way that James had claimed he would.
“Nothing’s going to happen the way you want,” he said.
“I have to risk it. For my sake…and for the angels’.” She swept a hand toward the nest. It looked like a pile of rubble. Without Leliel’s nurturing energy, they’d gone completely silent. “My race may not be superior, but it will go extinct if I don’t reset the world, and that is a travesty. If you can’t let me do this for us, then—”
“Um.” Benjamin coughed loudly. “Hello, Son of God here. Interesting information available if you guys want to pretend I exist!”
“This isn’t the time,” Seth said. He couldn’t deal with whatever emotional needs his nephew had at the moment. Not when there was tragedy on the horizon.
Benjamin kept talking anyway. “The angels are fine. The nest is probably a goner without Leliel, and Leliel is definitely a goner, but angels are gonna be fine. They’re already reproducing without a nest.”
“What? How?” Marion asked.
“Reproducing. Jeez. Do I have to spell it out for you?” Benjamin formed a circle with one hand and thrust the fingers of his opposite hand into it. “Reproducing.”
