by May Dawson
“What is it, sir?” I asked, my fingers marching over the ends of the books. My voice came out calm. If I kept moving, the panic didn’t feel so intense. I didn’t know how the hell I was going to sit down and focus on finding the right spells, though, when I was so jumpy.
Clearborn leaned against the shelf. “Chase, I know you didn’t come voluntarily into the packs—”
“It was my choice to sign up,” I said, my voice hollow. I’d thought at the time that it was the only way I could protect Blake and Skyla. I’d been trying to protect them, and I’d hurt them instead.
“The thing about having a pack is that you have a family,” he said. “A messed-up family, in many packs. But a family. And so when Blake and Skyla are in trouble, they’re our family too. We’ll do whatever it takes to get them back.”
I nodded. My eyes were suddenly hot, but I hadn’t cried since my mother died and I turned away into the stacks of library books, embarrassed. The leather covers swam in front of my eyes as I tilted my head back to try to get myself under control before the tears could spill over.
Clearborn rested his hand on my shoulder for a second, then turned and walked away, leaving me in privacy.
Maybe I didn’t have to choose between Blake and Skyla, and my newfound pack.
But that didn’t mean I was guaranteed a happy ending, either.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Tyson
“You look handsome,” Maddie told me.
I pulled at the collar of the ridiculous Fae costume I was wearing for the coronation ceremony. “You don’t have to lie to me.”
“You always look handsome,” she said mischievously, “and I like things that are shiny. Right now, you’re very shiny.”
She looked as if she was trying to find someplace to put her hands on me so she could lean up and kiss me, but the tunic I was wearing was encrusted with jewels everywhere. I sighed, but leaned my head down, and her lips met mine. Kissing Maddie took away some of the tension—I hated everything about this.
“Put on a good show, Ty,” she said with a wink, before slipping out into the hall. “I’ll be in the audience like a good subject.”
“Ha,” I said, right before the door closed between us.
“Part of the role of a king,” a familiar male voice noted behind me.
I turned to face Jorden. He seemed to be unstrapping his chest armor as if he was going to get comfortable, even though he was a ghost.
“Would you stop that?” I demanded.
He paused with a buckle in one hand. “Stop what?”
“Stop just appearing without announcing yourself.”
“I want to spend all the time I can with my son before you leave our world behind again.”
“Mm.” I looked around the richly appointed bedroom, which used to be Jorden’s. The quarters of the king of the spring court were filled with flowers and blooming trees, and a deep, warm hot spring cut through the marble floor on one side in place of a bathtub. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t really mine.
“Can I ever leave our world again?” I asked.
“Tyson,” he said. “Who would have such complicated feelings about becoming a king? About gaining wealth and power and the adoration of your people?”
“I already have a pretty good life,” I said.
“You’re still worried about the cost.”
“Just a bit.”
“Of course there’s a cost. To refuse your destiny and to make yourself small when you were meant to become a king—that comes at a cost too, Tyson Atlas.”
I shook my head, hating that I came face-to-face with my biological father only for him to endlessly try to manipulate me. Jorden genuinely wanted what was best for his kingdom, so I couldn’t hate him. But that didn’t mean what he wanted was best for me or for those I loved.
“Nothing about my old life was small,” I said.
A knowing gleam came into his eyes, as if he noticed I’d said my old life.
I shook my head and headed for doors, just as servants opened them into the hallway.
“If you’re ready,” the man bowed, and I suppressed a sigh. I hated that. “The High Delphin is ready.”
In the distance, music was playing, a lively triumphant tune coming from the same ballroom where my friends had almost met a strange fate.
“Lead on,” I said.
I didn’t want to pay this cost, if it turned out there was no way for me to escape the Fae world.
But what did one man’s fate matter if it saved all the packs? It wasn’t even a fate worth crying about.
Still, every time I imagined Maddie’s face, imagined the two of us being separated by entire worlds, something wrenched deep within my soul.
I’d never stop loving her, and any world without her would always feel cold and empty, no matter how beautiful it was.
Still, I stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind me, and I followed the servant to my own throne room.
Masses of Fae filled the room: beautiful High Fae with their ethereal faces and tall, slender bodies, high Goblins with enormous bodies who stared down at me with their small eyes from enormous heights, Fae that looked almost human except for tails or many eyes or just a single one.
For a second, looking out at them all and at the Delphin waiting beyond on the stone dais, I thought I couldn’t take that damned throne. Not even to fix what happened back in our world.
Then I saw Maddie beyond them, standing between Rafe and Jensen. The two of them, with their tall, powerfully muscled bodies, looked like her bodyguards in a room full of creatures that thought our kind was worthless. Her gaze met mine, and a tentative smile crept across her full pink lips.
If I didn’t take the damned throne, sooner or later, some asshole shifter would come looking for her, to take revenge for his dead wolf. They wouldn’t believe in prophecy.
I strode down the aisle. Music was playing, some kind of slow, ceremonial cadence, but I couldn’t walk at that pace. I needed to get down there, get this over with, and get my friends safely back to their own world with that shield.
The High Delphin waited for me at the end, holding the crown in her wizened hands. Nearby, I saw Fenig standing, surrounded by her orphans. Nat grinned at me, and I winked back.
As much as I dreaded being stuck here, I dreaded the thought of leaving this world and its people behind, too. Not when Turic was loose and the world was dark, and I could make it better.
“My handsome prince,” the Delphin purred, looking up at me. “I knew you’d come home.”
I knelt in front of her, and she placed the crown on my head. “We recognize you as the heir. Stand, and take your place as king.”
I rose to my feet, reaching to touch the crown, to make sure it stayed on. It felt heavy, too tight on my forehead.
“I am the ruler of spring. I am tied to this land,” I began.
A Fae melted out of the shadows near me, and someone shouted a warning. I glimpsed the silver flicker of a knife in his hand just before he threw it.
He threw it straight and true, toward my chest, but my magic rose first. A powerful wind knocked the blade harmlessly to the stone floor, and it skittered across the ground. The vines that had dripped from the wall suddenly yanked him against the wall.
The greenery dropped blossoms and flower petals on the floor in their sudden savagery, and as I stepped on them heading toward the male, the fallen flowers released a sweet scent.
The man let out a strangled cry, right before the vines that had taken him over squeezed around his throat. I watched in horror. I’d protected myself faster than thought, but I hadn’t meant to kill the man.
And yet. The ballroom was full of murmured voices as the vines retreated back up to the walls, and the Fae dropped at my feet, dead. The greenery was nothing but beautiful again, swaying faintly in the breeze.
Two servants swept in and carried the body away.
“Go on,” the Delphin prompted.
Still sick with
horror, I said, “I give myself freely to stand with my people, now and forever.”
The room filled with cheering.
But I was only looking for Maddie, and when I found her in the crowd, her gaze reflected the same terror that I felt.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Maddie
After the ceremony, we all went out into the lavish gardens that overlooked the city below.
“Don’t drink anything,” Rafe warned me, glancing over the tables full of food and wine.
“Hilarious,” I told him. “Nobody parties like the Fae.”
Tyson did the rounds, meeting people and shaking hands, while Rafe tried to resist looking at his watch—as if we were going to head back that very minute to retrieve the shield.
When Tyson went missing, though, I felt his absence in the crowd, the same way you feel something that’s fallen out of your pocket.
“I don’t like letting you out of my sight,” Rafe murmured as soon as I took a step back toward the castle.
“If I recall the last Fae party correctly, I got into much less trouble without you, actually,” I said. “Do you have some sort of fetish for having sex during parties?”
“I never found the idea particularly enticing before,” he said, stepping close to me, and just his nearness made my thighs tense, my nipples pebbling, even before his hand fell intimately on my hip.
“Maybe it was just the wine, then,” I said. When I looked up into his dark eyes, when the two of us were this close together, the rest of the world disappeared. It felt like I was drowning in him, and I didn’t want to surface.
“Maybe it was just you,” he said. He leaned down and kissed me, his lips tender, and I ran my palm up his chest. He pulled my body against his for a long, slow kiss before he released me, his lips quirking. “You inspire me to do all kinds of things I never particularly wanted to do before.”
“Are you trying to tell me you weren’t interested in dominating someone before?” I asked, my eyebrows arching.
He shook his head. “Only you. After all, I never met anyone else so desperately in need of it before.”
I laughed at that. When it felt so often like I always had to have all the answers, it was nice to be with Rafe and let him take control—for a while.
Things had felt tense between the two of us lately, and relief bubbled through my body to joke with him again. I debated asking him about how he felt as the team’s leader right now with our mission that had gotten so off course—but for a good cause.
But I didn’t want to destroy the light moment between us. Instead, I said, “I’m going to go check on Ty.”
“Where did our king go?” Rafe asked, his voice wry.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I bet I can find him.”
It took a while, but I did, eventually finding him in the vast, empty throne room that had been thronged with people for his coronation not an hour before. He was lying over the side of the throne, his legs dangling over the arm, studying the ceiling. One dangling hand gripped his crown.
“Are you drunk?” I asked as I walked across the room toward him, and my voice seemed to echo in the chamber.
“No. I should worry about you here,” he said.
“Funny. You and Rafe have almost the same jokes.”
“I worry about him more.”
“And you and I have almost the same jokes. Who knew?”
I headed up the steps to the dais and started to take a seat on the steps, but he pulled himself up. “Come here, M.”
I closed the distance between us and let him pull me onto his lap. The view from the dais made everything else in this cavernous room seem distant—and yet somehow overwhelming.
I wanted to ask him what we were going to do. I wanted to figure out our whole future, right then, and then cling to it. The future felt nebulous and scary.
But none of that would help Tyson now, so I rested my cheek against his shoulder and the two of us clung to each other, instead of the future.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
He scoffed. “I don’t think I can complain about anything right now, Maddie.”
“Why? Because this is someone else’s dream?” I raised my hand to take in all the finery around us. “You can always complain to me.”
“Is that a promise?” He held me close, wrapped up in his arms. He sounded quiet, calm, but with my face pressed against his chest, I could feel how fast his heart was beating.
“Are you scared we won’t ever make it home again together?” I asked in a whisper, as if saying it out loud might make it true.
“Yes,” he said, but his gaze went to the wall, where he’d killed the man who attacked him. “And I worry that even a Fae king isn’t worthy of you.”
I shook my head, hating that he would ever feel unworthy of anything. Tyson Atlas deserved every good thing—a throne or a sword, whichever he chose. A home. A family.
And I believed I deserved Tyson.
“Do you think I could ever be scared of you?” I chided gently.
He shook his head as if he didn’t want to answer, then managed, “I don’t even have control of my magic—and there’s so much of it. So much power.”
“I’m not scared of you having power, Ty, and you shouldn’t be scared either,” I promised him. “You’re a good man.”
“Maybe I’m not sure I’m good enough,” he whispered.
“Then I’ll be sure for you,” I promised, stroking the hard planes of his face. “And if you forget, I’ll remember for you until you know it too. And if we’re separated in two different worlds, I’ll never stop believing that we can find each other again.”
“You’re crazy,” he said.
My lips parted, but before I could answer, he caught my face with his hand and turned my face into his. His lips met mine with searing intensity, his hand possessive on my face, and he kissed me as if he needed me, as if he could never get close enough to me.
When we finally broke apart, I was breathless.
He admitted, “I love your kind of crazy.”
“That’s good,” I said, “because I’m not letting the Fae world take what’s mine from me again.”
He smiled at that, but I was already straddling his lap, and then his smile fell away as the two of us traded even more passionate kisses.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Later that day, we rode out en masse to the temple. Fenig did not approve of Tyson’s mission, that was obvious, but the new king had given his orders and she was going to carry them out.
This time when we arrived, everything was different. The forest was beginning to bloom again. There was no sign of Turic or even of his monsters.
“Feels like a trap,” Jensen muttered as we dismounted in the quiet clearing.
“I always appreciate your optimism,” I told him.
When we reached the temple, the thicket had receded almost completely. Only a few tangled briars still crept across the walls and doors.
“Come with me?” Tyson asked.
I put my hand in his. “Always.”
The two of us climbed the marble steps. When Tyson touched his fingertips to the door, the ground seemed to shake under our feet, I could’ve sworn his hand glowed—just for a second—before the last of the briars turned to dust and fell away onto the ground.
Together, the two of us stepped into a temple full of wonders. As we walked through, the walls of the temple seemed to whisper and murmur around us, but part of that was just the growing tendrils of green things that crept along the floor and up the walls in Tyson’s wake. These weren’t briars anymore—these were flowers that bloomed.
Inside, a man was waiting for us, his leg crossed at the knee and his foot bobbing. He was dressed in armor, with long white blond hair and the same bright eyes as Tyson.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Jorden?” Tyson stopped and turned to me, stricken. “You can see him?”
“Still a ghost,” he said, spreading his hands. �
��But now that you have a bit more power, so do I.”
“Interesting,” Tyson said, sounding as if he meant a whole lot of different things besides interesting.
Jorden seemed to really notice me for the first time. “Are you my son’s wife?”
Tyson choked. I smacked him in the chest. “No, I’m not, although he’d be lucky to have me…”
“I know!” Tyson said. “It’s just that we’re young.”
“Don’t waste any time,” Jorden warned. “Fae kings tend to be overthrown, poisoned, massacred, assassinated…you understand. Life is short and there’s no time to waste. If you love the girl, you should marry her.”
Suddenly, I realized I could never become Tyson’s wife. If Turic could take the throne because he was Jorden’s brother-in-law, then marrying into the family made me a possible heir to the throne.
But I could never stay in this world.
Shock went through me like electricity. It wasn’t as if I planned to marry Tyson tomorrow, but I always thought we’d have our happily-ever-after. Even with all the drama and angst and fighting, I’d thought sooner or later, I’d show him the error of his ways, and we’d be happy.
Tyson was so fixed on his father, he didn’t notice. I tried to focus on what was happening now. My love story with Tyson was not the most important thing—saving our packs, protecting the spring court from Turic, that was what mattered.
“Who killed you?” Tyson demanded.
“Turic,” he said without hesitation. “And worst of all, since I was a ghost, I then had to watch as he killed my sister when she confronted him. My god, it was almost a relief to be buried.”
Tyson and I exchanged a look. “How did you become attached to the ring? And how did you get buried?”
“I attached myself, my son. Long before anyone killed me, I attached a shard of my soul, so to speak, to the ring. It does run a bit of a risk, making one’s self into a ghost, but now I get to see your face, so it’s all worth it.”
“But you weren’t buried with your body. You were buried by that portal…”
