by D. D. Chance
Belle’s tavern.
The glamour of the tavern’s place wards would hold the humans at bay for hours yet, maybe even days, depending on the wards the Hogan witch had placed on her business. But the place had been gutted.
Beside me, my second-in-command, Niall, scowled into the portal with his arms crossed, his face bleak beneath his thick, dark red hair, now wild after the dozen times he’d raked his hands through it. “There’s no way she could have survived a fire like that, not if she was trapped by her own wards.”
“She’s not there.” It wasn’t open for discussion. Belle and I hadn’t fully consecrated our union, but I’d bonded enough with the Hogan witch to know she lived. If she’d died, a part of me would have died with her. Instead, that part keened with misery, fear, and confusion. Belle was somewhere nearby, closer than I could fully understand, but still out of reach.
“Well, she’s not in the upper Fae realm.” Niall gestured to the other portals. “The broken Laram we recovered from Sakorn Castle said she placed the emerald crown upon her head, the steel bracelets on her arms, and then she fled. He said they were cursed with witch magic, but they have to be made up of Fae magic too, right? So with those, she can be found anywhere in the realm.”
“Anywhere in this realm, maybe,” a new voice grunted, a silver-eyed, silver-haired Laram hunter who purported to understand humans and their ways. He didn’t look happy. I didn’t care. He’d been paid handsomely for telling me how humans moved in the monster realm. The fact that his work wasn’t yet done wasn’t my problem. “But there’s a big world out there. Several of them.”
“Explain that,” I snapped. I didn’t have time for delicate sensibilities. The Laram were touchy about their title of lesser Fae, but it didn’t change it from being the most accurate description of them.
“How long has it been since you have walked the monster realm, let alone the human one, oh High King?” the Laram shot back. “Generations? Centuries? You don’t know the truth of either place anymore. You returned to the human realm long enough to capture the witch…temporarily. But you felt the decay there. You had to.”
I studied the Laram coldly, trying to keep my irritation in check. The truth of the matter was, there was no biological distinction between the lesser Fae and the high Fae, and everyone knew it. This warrior had every right to a seat at the high table, if he was willing to spend his life sacrificing for the greater good of the race. He—like most of the Laram—was not. They preferred to make their money and run their lives the way they wanted, with freedom as their ultimate goal. They were weak, but they weren’t stupid. I had to remember that.
“There was both decay and great possibility, as there ever is in the human realm,” I replied. “The Hogan witch isn’t there.”
“Oh, I agree with you on that. She’s in the monster realm.” The Laram pointed to the portal view of the White Crane. “There’s portal debris amid the ruins of her tavern. She had two doorways inside that building, it looks like. A broom closet that led to the spaces In Between, and the mirror above her bar that connected to an ever-shifting location within the monster realm. That mirror was Fae forged. The witch probably didn’t know that, and it probably did her no favors up to now. But now…it maybe saved her life.”
“The monster realm has no witches,” I said flatly, returning him to the most important point. “She should be able to be found easily.”
“Also true.” The Laram shrugged. “And yet do you have any sense of her, other than that she lives? The trappings of her bond to you should stand out like a bright flare. You ask me, the fact that it doesn’t means she’s stuck in the Riven District. It’s where I’d look first.”
I frowned. “The what?”
Turning away with a quick, cutting gesture, I sketched more portals, directing them to open on this area the Laram had identified, if only to avoid the smirk on his face. I had people to save, a realm to secure, and a mate to find. But the lesser Fae’s casual and correct assessment was that the high Fae had grown complacent in our realm of beauty and light. We didn’t even know what our neighbors were up to.
I lowered my hand, and three new portals opened onto a tight-knit cluster of buildings around a village square, with crowds of people moving in the streets. Torches flared at every corner, blanketing the area with light.
“It’s full night there?” Something about that felt off to me.
Another shrug from the Laram. He excelled at shrugging. “Doesn’t so much matter. The sun never shines on the Riven District. That’s where it gets its name—it was sundered from the day, a place where only dark desires rule. It’s one of those places that sprang up when no one was looking, but once we noticed it, we tracked mentions of it back about a hundred years or so, no longer. Rumor has it, anyone who has the misfortune of being in the Riven District was most likely thrown there, by curse or decree. There are few if any children in the district. Same with the elderly. Those who end up there serve their time and return to their own people—usually because someone pays for them to come back—or they die trying to escape. Those who choose to work in the Riven District without being sent there do so for their own dark designs—to make money or to hide, most often. But though they’re there by choice, they can’t leave either, not without something to sell to the warden. That bastard and his crew are monsters of an entirely different stripe, from what I hear, straight-up lizards on legs. The Luacra, they call them.”
Niall scowled, his one working eye going narrow beneath his furrowed brow, while his blighted eye remained hidden behind a heavy patch. “How is it I didn’t know of this place? I’m no stranger to your land. I have walked the monster realm many times.”
The Laram scratched his chin, a step up from shrugging, at least. “Most don’t know about it—especially not the Fae. It was only during my service to a dark wizard that I discovered the place. Most monsters have never been inside, by careful design. If there’s a monster you want screwed over, you send them there. If there’s a human you want killed—you also send them there. The Luacra have a taste for humans.”
“What?” I scowled. “Then why would Belle land there?”
The Laram scoffed with a laugh. “She wouldn’t. But whatever Fae wrought that mirror that ended up in her bar, apparently they had a sense of humor. I’m telling you, the fact that you can’t sense her—my money is on her being in the Riven District.”
“So we go get her.”
“You can’t go get her,” the Laram blurted, showing animation for the first time. I leveled him a withering stare.
He didn’t back down. “Don’t try your lord-and-master act on me,” he snapped. “You’re the king of the high Fae, but in the Riven District, you’re nothing but another asshole trying to get ahead. Fae aren’t wanted in the district. Neither are humans. Both are basically fair game, or so the rumors go.”
“You’ve never tested those rumors out?” Niall asked, clearly implying what he thought of the Laram because of it. “You never picked a fight?”
The Laram kept his focus on me. “You want to get your witch out of there, you don’t go in with a parade of warriors flashing gold. There’s too many of them, and they fight like dogs.”
“Do these Luacra have magic?”
“They do now, if they have your witch,” the Laram retorted. “That’s possibly a bad thing too. Remember, magic is a highly coveted commodity in the monster realm. The various native species have some basic abilities with illusion magic and shifting, but they can’t bend the world around them. Only wizards can do that, along with whatever mages or witches that come in from the outside. Humans who reach the monster realm are few and far between, and most of them don’t even understand they have magic. Those that do know spend most of their time trying not to get eaten by idiot monsters who don’t care about their abilities so much as how good they taste. If Belle uses her magic, the Luacra will see it—see it and run her down.”
“Then we’ll get to her first,” I retorted. It was
a simple solution.
A deep sigh came from the far corner of the room. Jorgen, the slender, sandy-haired djinn instructor I disliked the most at the Witchling Academy, was staring into the semicircle of portals I had opened onto the realms.
“Too late for that, I think,” he offered, and he pointed to a portal that was trained on the Riven District.
A beacon of gold and silver fire burned bright.
3
Belle
I watched Celia as she moved quickly through the shadows, her footfalls fast and assured despite the tangle of dark passageways and alleys that snaked through the tightly laid-out village. I could barely see her in front of me, yet she moved with a confidence that I immediately assigned to her shifter status.
“So, beyond your killer eyesight, what else have you got going abilities-wise?” I asked. “In case we come up against the guards or whatever?”
She snorted. “I don’t have any abilities. I’m not magical.”
“Right.” I bit my lip, trying to see into her future, but all I got back was more running through the dark. I couldn’t shake the idea that I knew Celia somehow…but how? Had she passed through my bar before? I doubted it. If she had, she would have remembered me.
I made a face behind her back, but smoothed out my features almost immediately. I didn’t know if this girl had eyes in the back of her head, but considering how strong the ones were in the front, I didn’t want to take the chance.
“You’ve got no magic at all?” I pushed, as we sidled up along one wall. The noise of a carousing party flowed around the corner, so I didn’t worry too much about being overheard, but I still kept my voice low.
Celia glanced back at me, her tawny eyes somehow catching the light, though there was precious little of it in this gloomy alley. Was her fire internal?
“That’s not how it works,” she said. “Some of the races in the monster realm have abilities beyond being able to shift, but most don’t. The Seline are a fully nonmagical one.”
“Seriously? You can’t open portals or bolster the defenses of your fighting party, or anything like that?”
“Ha! You must have come across an Akari.” She grinned. “Yeah, yeah. They’re the king of the beasts, but at least they’re not assholes about it. Like I said, we all keep to ourselves unless we’re thrown together in a place like this. Now shut up. Even when you try to be quiet, you sound like you’re shouting.”
“I could teach you how to be invisible,” I offered, thinking about the spells in my great-grandmother’s book. “Teach you the spell, I mean. Teach you how to leverage the energy that you have inside you, to match it up with the energy around you. That’s really all magic is, a combination of knowing how to access your natural power and then bending that power according to a prescribed spell so that the result is predictable.”
As I spoke, Celia shivered, a look of panic lighting across her face. She glanced away, cheeks flushing. “I told you to shut up.”
She peeked around the corner, then, to my surprise, reached back her hand to me. I took it, and she tugged me forward as she went around the corner. A crowd of people filled the square beyond.
“Can you make us both invisible?” she asked quietly. “We need to get across this courtyard, and if you can…well, I’d really rather not have to explain ourselves if we can avoid it.”
I didn’t know what made me do it. A certain stubbornness over somebody telling me what was or wasn’t possible? A need to help keep this shifter safe after she left me, though I half suspected she would sell me to the warden for a few gold coins? Or maybe it was my irritation at someone denying the spark of magic that was undeniably inside them.
Either way, I pushed her a little. “I can, but you know where we need to go, and you’re more confident in your presence here. My lack of understanding of this place could mess up the spell, but if you threw the spell, it would hold, no matter what.”
She peered at me, distrust and more than a little fear in her eyes. “You’re lying. You would risk us getting caught just to be right.”
“It wouldn’t be a risk. I can throw the spell, but so can you.” There was something here, I knew. Something important, right on the edge of my memory…
Celia’s face tightened with excitement—but she shook her head. “I tell you what, let’s maybe get across this courtyard and not get killed, and then we’ll have that conversation. I don’t even know if you can do it.”
I grinned. Up until a few short days ago, I would never have put illusion spells at the top of my skill set either. I’d relied solely on the place wards of my tavern and the small hedge witch abilities that I’d cultivated right up to the level of being noticed. Illusion magic was stronger, no question, but I could do it. And in this rabble, maybe I could still hide.
“Just so you know, to my eye, about half of this crowd has magic in them,” I said.
She grunted. “To your eye, we’re all magic, because we’re not you. Humans are always doing that. Now, turn on the spell or whatever so we can get going.”
I blinked with surprise at her assessment, but I buckled down just as quickly, breathing the short prescription for the illusion spell. A moment later, a cloak seemed to settle over my shoulders, and I could tell from Celia’s sudden jerk that she felt it. She lifted her hand, studying it. Her nails had been filed to blunt claws—not noticeable talons by any means, but a subtle reminder of what she was. I should check the manicures of more creatures in the realm that manifested as human.
“I can still see myself,” she murmured, but her grip on my hand tightened, and she tugged me forward. No one paid any attention to us.
“No one can hear us either,” I said with a confidence I didn’t totally feel. “But they can feel us if we touch them. So keep that in mind.”
Despite my ratcheted-up nerves, the illusion magic held all the way across the courtyard. The people gathered there were having some sort of celebration…or at least were using the get-together as an excuse to drink and yell. With the advantage of not having to keep my head down, I peered around with curiosity even as I stuck close to Celia’s side. Everyone in the courtyard appeared human, and there was only the slightest hint of sharpened nails and gleaming teeth to indicate they were anything but.
One man—creature—I didn’t know what, spun unsteadily beside us, stepping away from the firepit he’d been warming himself over.
Celia stilled, drawing in a sharp breath. “He can’t see us?” she asked again, more furtively this time.
I took in her ashen features, her mouth suddenly drawn tight. “No, he can’t.”
She stepped forward, keeping her grip solid on mine, but moved her body directly into the man’s path. As he staggered a little to the side, clearly drunk, she reached out and pushed him hard. He went sprawling backward, his mug of beer, or whatever they drank in the monster realm, flying.
He shouted in outrage as, cackling with glee, Celia dragged me forward, sprinting now. She wove us through the rest of the crowd until we reached the other side, where she stopped and bent over, not to catch her breath the way I was, but because she was laughing so much.
“That was seriously the most fun I’ve had in the past five years,” she gasped, actual tears running down the side of her face. Her body shimmered, and for an instant, I could see the cat within struggling to emerge in the midst of her high emotion. A crackle of magic deep within her sprang up, and I squeezed her hand tightly.
“Hey, your heart rate’s too high,” I warned her. “The spell requires you to stay calm, centered. You’ve got to calm down.”
She stopped laughing, her eyes flaring, then she shook her head. “You’re the one throwing it, right?”
“I am, but I also have the sight. And what that gives me is the ability to see what’s about to happen to anyone right in front of me. We’re going to get separated, and you’re going to need to know how to maintain the spell on your own.”
That made her stare at me more intently, and she gla
nced down at our linked hands. “What do you mean, separated?” she asked, alarm mixing with dismay. But I knew what I saw.
“Men are coming with fire.”
She jerked her head up, panic tightening her face. “Fire? No.”
I tightened my grip on her. “Yes. We’ll split apart. I don’t know if you’ll find me after that. But if you do, you’ll need to know how to become invisible beyond your natural skills. Are you willing to try it?”
Celia bit her lip, nodding quickly, and I took her other hand in mine, holding them close together as I stared into her eyes, then spoke the brief and powerful spell of illusion magic.
Far down the alley, a bold and dancing light flashed. Men with fire.
Celia turned, her head whipping around, and I caught a thin strand of gold gleaming at her neck. I flinched as a stiff, cold wind rocked me back, then a streaking form of tawny fur leapt away from me, the hiss of “Fire!” in my ears—
She was gone.
Even knowing that I should probably follow her, I didn’t want to lead the men any closer to her. The terror she had of them was legitimate and real. Whoever had damaged Celia the Seline, they’d done it with fire.
“Stop!” shouted the man at the head of the alley, the cluster of firebrands swinging around toward me.
I turned the other way and ran.
4
Aiden
Niall and I landed in a crack of the monster realm so foul, I reared back, choking on the stench.
“What the hell is this?” I demanded as Niall looked around, apparently unaffected.
“Decay,” he said succinctly. “Surely you noticed it when you went to the human realm, but this is worse because it’s closer to our home. This is one of the pockets of the monster realm that’s rotting from the inside, foul down to its core.”
