by Gwen Rivers
Then they all separate, moving in different directions.
Nightweaver remains, her gaze unflinching.
“Scouts. They’ll let us know when the Draugar near.” Nahini says.
“Can they fell them?” Soladin asks.
Nahini shakes her head. “There are far too many now. The spirits can buy us some time, but will eventually be overwhelmed.”
“We can make it,” Freda turns and faces me. Her golden helmet is tucked under one arm. “The cave is but an hour’s ride. Have the ghosts clear a path and ride through.”
“Past thousands of Draugar?” Bard cracks his three knuckled fingers.
An hour will be too long. Pharaildis won’t hesitate to gut Aiden on the floor. I doubt she can kill a full god with only one fey royal heart in her grasp, but Aiden hasn’t been a god since those bastards in Asgard turned on him. If Loki is freed there will be no stopping Ragnarök.
My gaze falls on the two thrones. One wreathed in shadows. The other idle. Waiting.
“If we can’t get to her,” Jasmine follows my line of sight.
I get to my feet. “We make her come to us.”
“It could kill you.” Nahini, covered with weeks’ worth of filth, still looks as beautiful and ethereal as ever. “Nic, you don’t have fire magic. You don’t have any magic. Underhill stripped it from you.”
“I’ve wielded it before.” I stare at the chair. “It’s the only way to stop her. Only a queen can set Loki free.”
“You’re the only one who can kill her.” Freda strides forward to block my path. “The only one with the ability to end this. If you die, we are all lost.”
“I can do it.” A small voice speaks up.
We turn to look at the child, Brigit’s last living daughter. Rowena.
She holds out her hand and a golden flame burst forth. “I was groomed for it. Father wouldn’t let me.”
Because even then, Rodrick had been in cahoots with Underhill? Or perhaps to do what any decent parent would do, to protect his child. “No, if it’s too dangerous for me, then I’m not about to let you do it.”
“It’s what I was born for,” she says. “What I’m meant to do.”
“Nic,” Freda puts a hand on my arm. “Nic, please don’t. You’ll die.”
I suck in a deep breath. Pharaildis had numerous chances to kill me but she didn’t. I remember my dream about her giving birth, hoping her babe would be an end to her loneliness. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill Rowena but me….
I hand Seelenverkäufer to Freda. “It has to be me. I’m the only one who can lure her back here. Away from Aiden.”
And have faith that my mate can free himself when I do.
Slowly, I approach the dais. The Shadow Throne sits quietly. No feeling of power comes from it. Is that because Gretchen is across the Veil? The Fire Throne hums as though it is eager for this encounter.
I reach for the fire I’ve only wielded once. The connection to Aiden, to Addison, must be somewhere inside me still. Carrying our daughter changed me. If I am to survive, it will be because of them.
“Any last-minute advice?” I ask Soladin and Taj.
“Don’t forget who you are. Why you are doing this,” Taj says. “Love is what got me through it.”
The king shares a tender look with his consort.
I swallow and then nod. I can do this. I was born in shadows but my heart…my heart burns with anger, with love, with the fierce need to protect those around me.
“If I don’t make it,” I say to Harmony.
She shakes her head. “You will.”
My lips turn up. “Did you have a vision?”
“No. You’re too stubborn to die.”
I smile, then sober. “Take care of him. And of her.”
There is a silver sheen in her eyes. “Always.”
Don’t waste it.
Those had been Addy’s last words to me. An order to do whatever it is I need to do. And right now, I must take the Fire Throne back from Underhill. To lure her to me. To end this.
“Nic,” Bard shouts from his position by the window. “The dead are coming. A lot of them.”
No time. No time to think or to feel anything other than hope. Aiden taught me about hope and love. Addison personifies it. I can do this.
I don’t ease into it, don’t reach my hand forward and trail it over the charred wood that glistens as though it has been shellacked. I pivot on the dais and sit.
And wait for the Fire Throne’s judgment.
At first, there is only silence. A great and terrible stillness that portends the calm before the storm.
And then I start to burn, from the inside out. All the oxygen is stolen from my lungs. The fire robs me of breath, eating away at everything that I am. The inferno rears hotter, higher until I am engulfed in a pillar of flame.
Someone shouts my name. I’m dying, I know it. No one can live through this.
Too late.
The Face in the Mirror
Through the Man’s Eyes
Pharaildis pauses with the dagger held high over her head. Her dark brows pull together.
Nic. Aiden falls to his knees. He can feel her pain, the agony she’s in. His mate is dying.
The wolf rips free, seizing control faster than ever. He sees his mother cringe back, though she doesn’t leave Loki’s side.
“No,” Underhill had been inches from carving out his heart. She staggers back. Then vanishes.
“My lady?” Rodrick’s confusion is clear on his face.
The wolf doesn’t waste time. Still bound in Gleipnir, he slams into the distracted fey general with all the force of a linebacker. They sprawl in the dirt. The fey’s head hits the stone floor with a dull thud. Blue-black blood spreads out from beneath him. His eyes stare sightlessly up at the cavern’s ceiling.
If he had been in wolf form, he would have ripped the bastard’s throat out.
I need to speak. Aiden tells the beast.
Hurry. The wolf recedes.
Aiden scrambles to his feet.
“Help me,” he gasps to his mother. “Remove the chain.”
“The wolf,” she whimpers. “He’ll kill us.”
“I’m trying to save you, Mom. Save all of us.”
Her lips tremble.
“Do it for your daughter,” he snarls. “The baby you handed over to Freya because you chose to stay with his sorry ass.”
Loki stares at him blankly.
A tear spills down Sigyn’s cheek. “You’ve met Harmony.”
He nods. “I have. And if you don’t care about your own life or mine, care about hers. She doesn’t deserve to die.”
“I met your mate.” Her lips twist into an expression no one would consider a smile. “She’s so cold.”
“No, she isn’t.” Nic is lava under an ice floe. “Believe me, she’s everything to me. As is our daughter.”
Her lips part. “Daughter?”
Though he doesn’t know for a fact that the One True Queen has been born safely, he can think of no other reason for Nic to have crossed the Veil. “You’re a grandmother. I haven’t even met her yet. Please. For once in your life, think about us before him.”
Loki remains oddly quiet.
Sigyn sets the bowl on a small ledge. Loki bellows as the venom drips onto his face. The acid burns him down to the bone. The room shakes in time to his thunderous bellow. Tears stream down Sigyn’s face but her hold is true as she removes the chain from his body.
Cracks form in the ceiling overhead and stalactites fall. Sigyn lunges for the bowl and catches the stream of venom. The snake hisses. Loki takes in a choked breath. His face is unrecognizable. The quake stops.
“I’m sorry,” tears spill down his mother’s cheeks. “For my part in it.”
Aiden kisses her on the forehead, a benediction he isn’t qualified to offer. He’s sorry, too. “Thank you,” he breathes and shifts to sparks.
It’s a matter of moments for him to travel up out of the cave. The wind
s whip up, propelling him to his destination. Mountains surge up out of lakes below. Underhill is moving the terrain until the landscape looks like cake batter being stirred by an invisible spoon. Shifting her home-field advantage. Whatever Nic’s done, she has her mother’s attention.
The mountain that conceals the Underground Palace appears. Aiden forces himself to travel faster. He must be faster than ever before.
He flies down into the depths of the Unseelie catacombs. There it is, the magnificent crystal palace that had been hewn on the orders of the first Unseelie queen. He doesn’t pause. Doesn’t count the flood of Draugar that surround it.
Aiden coalesces in the throne room to see Nic seated on the Fire Throne. Flames lick up and shadows curl around her. Her hair is ablaze. It’s going to reject her. His brave mate will die trying to wield a power that isn’t hers.
He lunges for her, intending to shift to sparks as soon as his skin touches hers. Her eyes open and she stares at him once. Her cracked lips mouth two words that he hears echoing inside his head.
Protect her.
The Throne explodes.
Aiden throws up a shield surrounding the small group of fey in the throne room. The pillar of flames spurts to the ceiling and shadows curl out of the corners to meet with it.
All around him their allies cough and choke.
“Nic?” This from Nahini who is nearest to him. “Where is she?”
The smoke begins to clear.
Nic is nowhere in sight.
Everything hurts. Even my toenails. The pain is so intense that, for a moment, I don’t realize what has happened.
Then it all comes back to me. Sitting on the Fire Throne. Aiden.
The explosion.
“Did you really think,” a female voice says from behind me. “That you could take it from me?”
I roll onto my back. Pharaildis stands there, her purple gown unsmudged, her kohl-lined eyes narrowed on the tiny tongue of flame dancing in her hand.
Above our heads, the runes pulse with their eerie green light. The Draugar trundle out through the doorway. Off to collect more dead fey for her army.
I glare at Underhill. “Why bother to save me?”
“You’re not my enemy,” she says. “You simply side with them.”
Time for some harsh truth. “I’m not your daughter, either.”
She tilts her head to the side. “I don’t understand you, Nicneven. Anyone else I would kill for ignoring my banishment. I offer you your life and you almost die in a fruitless effort to steal a power you can’t wield.”
Though it feels as if my bones will crack, I force myself to sit upright. “It’s Nic. And you never have understood me.”
“Why fight?” Her face is a picture of bafflement. “You had a child taken from you by another. A child you needed to help set you free. I thought you would understand.”
A part of me does. “I wanted that babe for the wrong reasons. How would your life have been different if the fey hadn’t taken me? You want to destroy the worlds.”
“The worlds destroyed me!” she shrieks. “For love, I lost everything.”
“I know. And it isn’t fair. But his was the action of one man. You punished him and were punished in turn. Don’t drag the rest of the living into it.”
The flame disappears and her hands clench into fists. “Don’t you get it? We are all wrong. Every last one of us. Twisted. Evil. The worlds need to be scourged clean.”
I hold her gaze. “You’re wrong. Not everyone is evil. I’m not.”
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” She waves her hand. A cabinet appears. From deep within I see the throbbing light of Brigit’s heart, the power bestowed by the Fire Throne. “She was supposed to be goodness itself. Yet she traded her heart for your head.”
“And I defended myself.” My horrific burns are healing too slowly. I need to keep her talking.
She reaches into the cabinet and extracts the heart. “You were after this. But it’s too late, Nicneven. My Draugar will capture your friends and I will take the wolf back to Loki and use him to set the Lord of Chaos free. The worlds will end.”
“Not if I end you first.”
Her full lips curve up in a genuine smile. “So that’s your plan? You think you can kill me? You’ll become me.”
“I won’t.” Collecting enough strength to stand, I rise to my full height.
“You’ve taken innocent lives,” Pharaildis says. “This prison will swallow you whole. After millennium incarcerated in this place, you will be just like me.”
“It never had to be a prison though. You made it this way. Your anger about John, about what happened to you. You are trapped in a jail of your own making.”
She shakes her head. “You know nothing about it.”
I move forward. Closer to her. My immortality is reviving me. “Why did you let the fey keep your child?”
She stares at me a long moment.
“Even before you had Brigit’s heart, you had the power to reshape this world. Why would you allow the fey to keep your baby from you?”
I see an echo of the vulnerable girl from my dreams in her dark eyes.
“You wanted better for her, didn’t you?” The same way I wanted better for Addison.
Pharaildis shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“You treated the fey as your children for a time. Played with their magic. Giving boons and doling out punishment. You cared about them. What changed?”
“I cared for them, but they never cared for me,” she seethes. “No one sought me out. I had the knowledge of centuries. Yet none came to be with me. You want to know why this is a prison? Because I am trapped with the knowledge that I don’t matter to anyone. Power isn’t the ability to shape the world, but to have the world recognize and celebrate your contributions.”
I hold out a hand to her. “I recognize you.”
She stares at it as though she’s never seen anything like it.
“End this,” I beg her. “I’ll stay with you. I promise.”
Her eyes glisten with unshed tears. “You aren’t fey. You can lie.”
“I can, but I’m not. I’ve discovered something about myself. I come from goodness. My soul was brought back by love, my body conceived in love and I’ve been raised surrounded by love. You never had the chance to know that. But you can have it now.”
A single tear escapes. It slides down her cheek in a glistening trail.
“Please, Pharaildis.” My tone is fraught with a sea of churning emotions. “I’m not your daughter. But part of her still lives in me. A portion that yearns to be with you.”
“No.” Her expression hardens.
I realize my mistake at once. Nicneven was one of the fey who never sought her out. I see her shut down her feelings an instant before she raises her hand. A ball of fire appears white and blue flames. A killing blow.
“Goodbye, Nicneven.”
Something clatters to her left a moment before a black blur slams into her from the side. Aiden, in wolf form. He knocks her to the ground, teeth bared.
I glance around, hoping to spy what he’d dropped. Seelenverkäufer. Each motion full of agony, I drag myself to it.
Pharaildis fights back like a wild thing, teeth bared, hands curled into claws of her own. The ground beneath us shifts. One blood-soaked finger traces something in the sky. A rune.
The Draugar at the far side of the cavern turn slowly to face us.
Nightweaver appears and dives inside one of the corpses. It shudders and collapses. The Valkyrie spirit emerges and then goes into the next one. Buying us time.
My hand closes around the sword hilt.
Nic, Aiden thinks at me. I can’t hold her much longer.
Pharaildis throws him off, straight into the black water. Dead hands grab for him, ready to pull him apart.
I don’t think. I lunge forward and plant my lips against hers even as I drive the blade into her stomach.
Delivering my
goodnight kiss for the final time.
Her lips part. The ground beneath us stills. Black lines streak across her face. The toxin acts fast or slow depending on the dose. I give Pharaildis every drop of the poison water she once drank to kill herself and her unborn babe.
“I….I…,” she sputters and her eyes fog. Her entire body shudders. A trail of blood oozes from her ear. Only moments from the end.
“I would have kept my promise,” I whisper through the knot in my throat. No matter how hard it would have been, after all she had done, I would have found a way to forgive her.
Chloe is right. Forgiveness is for quitters. And I am more than ready to be done.
Her lids flutter and all the tension, all the power, leaves her.
And finds me.
Aiden dissolves into sparks, freeing himself from the corpses.
“Nic?” Aiden shifts back to human form. He’s naked and sweating, covered with dirt and blood. His green eyes are wild. “What’s happening?”
“Stay back.” I hold up a hand as energy courses through me. This doesn’t burn like fire. It’s deeper, stronger. I close my eyes sensing…
Everything.
Too much. I fall to my hands and knees, retching. The land around me is dead or dying, poison is everywhere. Dizziness washes over me as all the thoughts and emotions of the fey make themselves known. Their fear and panic overwhelm me. To help or hinder? I’m losing myself in the endless sea of them.
I can feel the ground trembling beneath our feet, the land up above. I can see the fey. The Draugar, the ones in this cave and the ones that surround the palace. Can see them fall as ghosts dip into them, stealing their animation.
A hand cups my cheek. I detect his scent. Cedar, sage, and wildness. Aiden whispers, “Stay with me, love.”
I focus on his eyes. He’s here. He’s here and he’s in danger. Nightweaver is slowing down, she can’t take them all out. I must master the power. But not all at once. A little at a time. The same way I learned to fight. Right now, I need to shut all the noise out. In my mind’s eye, I picture turning off a faucet to cut off the flow of all the panic and pain. From a torrent to a trickle and then to a drip. Until it is safely contained. The tremors cease.