by S. M. Reine
Titania’s mouth clapped shut. She gathered herself, butterfly wings uplifted to catch the sunlight. “You can go in right now.”
She spun and marched the direction she had come from.
Lincoln followed, and so did all of Falias.
The last time he’d been on the doorstep of the cathedral in the Summer Court, there had been few witnesses. Now there were hundreds. And it wasn’t Titania standing in front of the doors, but Lincoln himself. The cathedral looked so much taller now. Its spire blotted out the sunlight on Lincoln’s face when his eyes tracked up to the crossless point.
The sky beyond was clear. Lincoln could see nothing in the sky—not a single star or crystal enclosure.
“Anoint him,” Titania said.
Herne moved forward, a bowl cradled in his palm. He swiped his thumb through the oil and then dabbed it on Lincoln’s forehead. A perfunctory acknowledgment of the ceremony Titania performed before entering.
The one streak was all Lincoln got. Then everyone was moving back.
“This is your last chance to change your mind,” Titania said.
Lincoln said, “Open the doors.”
Herne clapped his hands and spread them.
The cathedral opened.
Light blazed from within, brighter than any day Lincoln had suffered. It boiled over his skin with no heat. It seared through his eyes to the back of his skull.
He stepped forward.
Voices murmured behind him. Incredulity, fear. It all faded into a droning roar as the world distorted around Lincoln.
He stepped into the cathedral, lifting a hand to shield his eyes.
The doors slammed behind him. He was locked in.
Sophie bounced up on her toes at the back of the crowd. The sidhe were a tall breed, and she was sadly not. It was impossible to make headway through a crowd of faeries as a human, and being physically diminutive had not helped.
What would have helped was entering Falias with Lincoln, but he had made his disinterest in companionship clear. He hadn’t spoken to her once since waking up. He hadn’t waited for her before riding back to the city, leaving Sophie no choice but to make her own way.
She had barely arrived in Falias’s inner wall in time to see Lincoln stepping into that cathedral. Now the shifting crowd meant she could see nothing else.
“Excuse me,” Sophie said sweetly, pushing her arms between a couple of gentry. “Pardon me. So sorry. Just need to…yes, I need to get through, thank you.”
Bit by bit, she worked her way to the front of the crowd, nearer Titania. When Herne spotted her, he yelled, “Make way!”
The onlookers parted. Sophie smoothed her braids back as she passed the remaining meters, trying to pull together her dignity. She must have looked a total wreck after the recent days.
“How long should he be in there?” Sophie whispered, taking Herne’s side.
“Titania’s never more than a couple minutes,” Herne said.
Indeed, at that moment, the doors were clicking open. A hush fell over Falias as light spilled out of the cathedral again. Sophie clutched Herne’s arm reflexively, and he lifted his shield with the other arm.
It was only Lincoln who stepped out, looking just the same as when he’d stepped inside. Just as bloody and rumpled.
The door shut quietly behind him, and he hit his knees on the street in front of it.
“Lincoln!”
Sophie pushed aside Herne’s shield and ran to the steps, dropping beside Lincoln. She pulled his face toward her to look at him. His eyes were unfocused, troubled. Like he was trying to solve an especially difficult math problem in his head.
“Lincoln,” she said again, “are you okay?”
His gaze cleared. “Sophie?”
The queen strode forward. Lincoln struggled to stand and face her, so Sophie took position beside him, pulling his arm over her shoulders. He leaned against her like a crutch. He was very heavy, but she didn’t mind the weight.
“Well?” Titania asked.
Lincoln and Titania’s eyes met. Silent understanding passed between the two of them.
“Well,” he said, as if in agreement.
She nodded slowly.
“I never want to see you in Falias again,” Titania said.
“Fine by me,” he said.
CHAPTER 22
“Ow!” Cèsar shouted, leaping away from his sister’s hand. “That fucking hurt!”
“It seems you don’t have nerve damage anymore,” Ofelia said with an impish smile. She had spent the last few hours burning magic into Cèsar, picking metal shards out of him, and doing her best to reduce the impacts of iron poisoning. Most of it hadn’t hurt as much as that one pinch.
Once Fritz had been healed, and Cèsar had found a clean bathrobe, they had followed Ofelia into the Winter Court. Cèsar’s pain had grown too severe to wait for further healing.
Fritz was in the Middle Worlds too. He’d insisted. He was not, however, present for the healing. The king had taken him to dress the secretary in enough furs and wards to survive the eternal winter.
Even in Cèsar’s new bedroom, almost as ornate as his sister’s chambers, it couldn’t have been above freezing. Everything was made of ice, after all. Cèsar still wasn’t used to the fact that he felt much more comfortable here than in the balmy Summer Court.
“So I’m all better?” Cèsar asked, lifting his head to look at his body stretched out on the table.
Ofelia poked him in the forehead to make him lay back. “Not even close. I swear to whatever pathetic god they have in Alfheimr, the things I will do to them for damaging you…!”
“Don’t start a war over me,” Cèsar said.
“It’s not over you. You’re just a straw breaking Titania’s back.” Ofelia cracked her knuckles, and an ominous flash of magic traveled over the backs of her hands. “You could be healing for years to come, hermano.”
“Years?”
“A year is typically a bundle of twelve months or fifty-two weeks. So yes, a few of those.”
“But why?” Cesar asked.
“That’s how long it can take werewolves to properly heal from similar amounts of silver poisoning. It’s terrible. I’m sorry. But this is the life we’re living now, Ceez. We are sidhe, and our lives are different.” Ofelia pinched him again, and he nearly leaped off the slab. “My magic’s empty. We both need to rest now, but I’ll be back to check on you later. Stay here.”
“Here?” Cèsar asked. “Right here?”
“Not on the table, stupid,” Ofelia said. “But stay in the room for now, all right? You can deal with being incarcerated here. It’s not exactly a prison.”
Although the slab Cèsar rested on was utilitarian, the rest of the room held the finest in ice furniture. The bed was the only thing without a hint of ice to it. The comforter, Ofelia had told him, was stuffed with feathers plucked from swanmays and very cozy.
“Do you want me to help you move to the bed?” Ofelia asked.
Cèsar propped himself up on his elbows. That small motion made him ache from teeth to toes, although he couldn’t see his injuries under the bathrobe. “Nope. I’m good. I’ll move on my own once I feel like it.”
“Are you saying that because you’re actually good, or because you don’t want me to hear you whimpering that much?” Ofelia asked, hands planted on her hips.
“Go shove it up your ass, sis,” Cèsar said.
“Fine. Hurt yourself all you like. I’ll be back after a good sleep and a better fuck.” Ofelia almost sounded like Abuelita when she talked like that. The sternness, not the disturbing frankness about her sex life.
Cèsar waited until Ofelia had stormed out of his room to lift his head again, peeling open the neck of the robe to look at his body. It was crisscrossed with angry red gashes. His stomach lurched at the sight of them.
“Years to heal,” Cèsar muttered, flopping back onto the slab. “This sucks.”
“Amusing to see the man who made so many disability
jokes when I lost my leg so debilitated himself.”
The familiar voice lifted goosebumps on Cèsar’s spine. He moved too fast trying to sit up, and everything flashed with pain. Everything. Even his hair. Since when could his hair experience pain?
Cèsar groaned and fell onto his elbow.
“Careful,” scolded Fritz, sweeping into the room to help him sit up. “You don’t have to kill yourself to prove you’re not disabled.”
“Well I’m not,” Cèsar muttered. “Looks like you’re not either.”
The secretary of the OPA was looking a hell of a lot better, even though he was engulfed in fifty layers of fur. Fritz had pulled his scarf down inside the lined hood to expose his features, and the fact there was enough blood in him to turn his sharp nose and chin pink was reassuring.
Best of all, his eyes examining Cèsar’s visible wounds were as cold as ever, meaning he felt normal too.
“I could impose tariffs on every import from the Summer Court for what they did to you,” Fritz said with a deadly tone remarkably similar to Ofelia’s.
“Why’s everyone threatening to go to war over me?” Cèsar asked. “War. Huh. What is it good for?”
“Throttling an enemy nation’s income to destabilize their leadership and make it easier to place a puppet dictatorship?” Fritz suggested.
Laughing hurt Cèsar too. He had to brace both hands on the slab to keep upright. “You are one scary gimp. No trade wars. Okay?”
“I make no promises about what I do when I’m this angry.” Fritz was clenching his teeth so hard that Cèsar could hear the grinding. “It was a mistake sending you into the Middle Worlds.”
“No harm done,” Cèsar said. “I only had to transplant half a soul into you and spend the next few years healing iron wounds, because apparently I now get to be permanently damaged by iron. Shit happens. What can you do?”
Fritz’s glare suggested he was loudly thinking “trade wars.”
“Let’s get you to the bed,” Fritz said.
He pulled one of Cèsar’s arms over his shoulder. Fritz felt unsettlingly thin under Cèsar’s arm. They’d frequently trained to fight together before Genesis, and Cèsar knew the feel of Fritz’s physique almost as well as his own.
Fritz looked better, but he wasn’t better. He’d never be better again. Genesis had made sure of that.
Consequently, Fritz wasn’t much support on the way to the bed. Cèsar didn’t have the luxury of dignified silence. He whimpered the whole way. But Fritz lowered him slowly to the mattress without making a single teasing remark, and without threatening any further tariffs.
The overstuffed comforter was as great as Ofelia had promised. Cesar just about melted into it.
“For fuck’s sake,” he groaned, “my teeth hurt. Why do my teeth hurt?”
“God only knows,” Fritz said. “Perhaps you should ask Lincoln Marshall?” They’d had enough time together at the mansion to catch Fritz up on the weird events of the Summer Court.
Cesar gave a weak laugh. “You mean Inanna. I bet the dude’s pissed to find out he’s got a girl’s soul hanging out inside of him. Wish I could see his reaction.”
“We could find out if I arrested him,” Fritz suggested. “He sounds like a valuable asset.” He didn’t phrase it as a question, but Cesar heard the question in his tone anyway. Fritz was asking Cesar what they should do about Lincoln Marshall.
Cesar curled his hand around the neck of his robe, holding it tight the way he’d held Lincoln’s hand at the bottom of the crater. Lincoln wasn’t perfect. He was as dangerous and exotic as his redacted OPA file suggested, and kind of an asshole on top of that. His life was gonna be hard enough without Fritz breathing down his neck. “Nah,” Cesar said. “Let’s just let him go.”
Fritz nodded in silent acceptance.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Fritz asked lightly, arranging the pillows at the head of the bed so that Cèsar could sit up. “The impulses we suffer while under overwhelming stress. For instance, the impulse to show affection to a friend you think to be dying.”
“This is about the kissing thing, isn’t it?” Cèsar asked, still sitting on the foot of the bed. He was looking out at the room, with Fritz as his back, so they couldn’t make eye contact during this horribly awkward conversation.
“You can’t have expected to get away from that without catching some shit,” Fritz said.
“It wasn’t an impulse,” Cèsar said, leaning his elbows on his knees.
Silence from the head of the bed.
Then Fritz fluffed a pillow, or possibly punched it into submission. “Practicality, then. The physical manifestation of a spiritual action.”
“No,” Cèsar said. “Not so much that either.”
He had to look back at Fritz then, just to gauge his reaction. Fritz folded his arms. His mouth twisted, somewhere between thoughtful and worried. “I’m giving you an out, Hawke.”
Cèsar understood that on an instinctive level, just like he understood the correct reaction was to laugh it off, make fun of each other, and reaffirm their masculinity by talking about how gross it was for two adult men to touch mouths. The kind of thing an asshole like Lincoln Marshall would have done in the same situation.
“I’m not looking for an out,” Cèsar said. “I was scared to lose you. Still am.” Was it even possible to put the feeling haunting Cèsar into words? “We’re not kopis and aspis anymore, Fritz. We hadn’t seen each other for months until the week before Genesis. Now you’re trying to assign me to offices where you’re not working, and we’re still not seeing each other much, and…”
“You thought you’d seduce me to keep me on a shorter leash,” Fritz said with the edge of venomous sarcasm.
Cèsar wasn’t going to let Fritz laugh it off, or poke him into a fight either. “I was actually saving your life. And also, if I was going to have to deal with a life where you were dead, I wanted to kiss you before you were gone.”
There. He’d said it.
And now the seconds after that statement felt like excruciating eternity.
Fritz stepped away from the pillows after a few million years. He stood in front of Cèsar, near enough to warm the air between them.
“Lay back,” Fritz said.
Cèsar’s heart skipped a beat. “Why?”
“You’re supposed to be sleeping.”
Cèsar pushed back on the bed. He managed to keep his whimpering to a minimum. He felt like a rag doll stuffed with Brillo pads, held together by needles, and about as stupid as a rag doll too. That was a whole other kind of pain.
Fritz helped Cèsar settle back on the pillows. He was quiet, and staring a little too hard, and thinking so hard that Cèsar was surprised Fritz didn’t smoke out his ears.
“Jeez dude, you look so fucking serious,” Cèsar said. He had to break the tension with an unemphatic laugh. Otherwise something was gonna snap in half. “I’m just messing with you. Don’t be such an easy target. We’ve already talked about this—how we’re not gay.”
Fritz replied by leaning in to kiss Cèsar.
The secretary was a hell of a lot better at kissing when he wasn’t on the brink of death. He was calculated and probing, at first, as if to seek out his limits within the bounds of Cèsar’s kiss. But it quickly turned from questioning to biting, and desperate, and maybe even a little bit relieved.
Also probably sort of gay.
It was the weirdest thing Cèsar had ever done. Well, almost the weirdest. He had once gotten in a fistfight at a Star Trek convention over the layout of Jeffries tubes in a Constitution-class starship, and that was pretty fucking weird.
This was weird, but it was right.
For a month, Cèsar had felt like he was missing something big. Something that Genesis had taken away that couldn’t be replaced by sidhe magic.
It was this. Bonding with Fritz. Being close to him. Sharing the same sensations and occupying the same space.
Cèsar had to pull back first because leaning in hurt t
oo much. But Fritz didn’t let him get very far, bracing a hand against the headboard so that he could keep his weight off of Cèsar as they kissed. The cait sidhe magic reacted to the contact, and some pleased feline uncoiled within Cèsar’s breast.
This was what the animal wanted. Not to rip souls out of humans, but to share them. Languor in them.
It wasn’t the kiss itself that made Cèsar’s flesh light up, shining from the inside like fire and diamonds. It was the stroke of Fritz’s tongue against his, and the little dying sound Cèsar couldn’t help but make deep in his throat, and the whiteout joy of needs finally met.
It was the love.
Warm fingers tracked along the line of Cèsar’s neck to his shoulder, slipping under the robe to follow the line. Fritz mapping one of Cèsar’s injuries. Seeing how far it went. He shuddered when his fingers reached Cèsar’s ribcage, realizing how many physical wounds remained, and how deep.
“A trade war is too kind. Maybe I’ll send a nuclear bomb through the ley line,” Fritz said with silken anger, whispering the words over Cesar’s cheek.
“It’s not that bad,” Cèsar lied. He grabbed Fritz’s jacket and pulled him closer, forcing him to sit on the mattress. It wasn’t close enough. It would never be close enough again, just like how Fritz would never be that strong again.
Some things, once lost, could never be found again.
But new things could be built in their absence.
Fritz’s forehead rested against Cesar’s. His eyes were colorless in the darkness of the Winter Court. “I don’t think you’ll be working with the OPA again anytime soon.”
“What the fuck, man? Just because I’m a sidhe doesn’t mean I can’t serve.”
“You’re healing from serious wounds. You’ll be welcome back eventually.” Fritz withdrew enough for his gaze to track down Cèsar’s half-exposed chest, lingering on the diamond shine across his clavicle.
“I can get back to full service sooner than that. I just…” It would be too pathetic to say that he didn’t want to let Fritz travel for work without him. “I’ll be bored if I’m not working.”
“You? Who once lamented that he was too busy solving a murder to reread the Wheel of Time series for a fifth time? You’ll keep busy. For now, you need to sleep as much as possible, as do I.”
