Grave War

by Price, Kalayna

  I sank into the seat, using the movement to cover a closer scrutiny of him. The face he presented the world was that of a man in his early fifties with clean-cut brown hair and the first set of wrinkles, which people tended to call distinguished as opposed to looking old. But today his eyes were a little too green, rather than the gray he normally wore, and his hair had streaks of his true pale blond showing through.

  Was his glamour failing?

  “What happened?” he asked, staring at me with those slightly too green, too bright eyes.

  “The ABS unit could probably answer that better than me—” Though not if he was going to lose his shit and drop his glamour. I didn’t know exactly why he hid the fact that he was fae, but it was a secret meticulously concealed. “It appears two bombs were detonated, one on the tourist side of the Bloom. One in the VIP room. The latter also had an attached fire spell, maximizing the damage.”

  “And the tree?” His hair was more blond than brown now, the ends lengthening from its clean-cut state to fall past his shoulders.

  “Charred. The door is gone. I have no idea if it can be repaired. Agents are searching for druids or nymphs or any other fae who might specialize in working with flora to see if we can heal the tree.”

  My father turned his head, but not before I saw the almost pained grimace that cut across his face. He stared out the window, in the direction of the Bloom.

  “It won’t be enough. If the door is gone . . . the tree is beyond helping.” He let out a breath, the sigh heavy and seeming to fill the limo. I almost thought I heard a mournful dirge playing just out of earshot, which could have happened in Faerie—the land reacted to all kinds of stimuli—but shouldn’t happen in a limo in the middle of the mortal realm.

  My shoulders stiffened, and I looked around, sure I was catching the lightest drifts of music, and the air suddenly smelled sweet. Like funeral lilies. My father’s steepled hands dropped, clenching at his sides, and the sweet, sad scent turned acrid and harsh. I lifted an eyebrow, studying his profile, which no longer resembled the features of a man I’d known my entire life. Now he looked young, no older than me, and his features were sharper, his skin glowing with the same telltale Sleagh Maith light my own shone with. Was he causing the distant music? The sourceless scents? He’d dropped his glamour, or more likely his emotions had eroded his control—was he losing control of some other magic as well?

  By the time he turned back to me a moment later, his glamour was back in place, not a dark hair on his head disheveled. The distant eerie music was gone, as were the misplaced scents, the limo once again smelling only of the polished leather seats. He gave me an empty smile that came nowhere near his eyes, and laid his loose hands in his lap.

  “This is not a good thing,” he said, once again a picture of calm reservation.

  “I’m aware.” Understatement. We had no direct route to Faerie, and this was almost certainly an attack on the winter court. I hadn’t heard from Falin still. No one could even reach the winter court. The fact that this attack might have corresponded to one that caused Falin to lose the court—and death was the most common way for a court to change hands in Faerie—was something I was trying not to think about but that buzzed like a frantic bee around the inside of my skull. And then there was the fact that I’d never seen my father lose control before. Oh, I’d seen his calm break a few times—but his glamour fail? No. That was new. And a little terrifying. It had only lasted a moment, but his reaction had my palms sweating in that cold clammy way that made me want to rub my hands on my pants, which wouldn’t have helped through my gloves anyway.

  “I don’t think you are truly aware of how severe this is,” he said in that same smooth, calm tone. Normally I would have chuffed under the implied condescension, but the contrast to his loss of control moments earlier made his calm now downright unnerving. I waited, saying nothing, because after a statement like that, there was no way he would fail to continue.

  “Without the door,” he said, steepling his fingers once again, “Faerie has no hold on this part of the mortal realm. Winter has no hold at all on this continent. The magic that sustains the fae living in this little oasis will soon dry up without the door to replenish it, leaving this place a magical desert. The surrounding courts’ influence will eventually claim winter’s lost land, but that will take time. Time in which no fae will be able to survive here.”

  I blinked. One of those long, slow blinks as your body stalls, waiting for your brain to process what you’ve just heard. My agents had freaked out at the loss of the door. I’d thought that was just because we’d lost easy access to Faerie. Hell, I was freaking out that I couldn’t reach Falin, and my FIB agents were court fae, their families and loved ones were in Faerie. I hadn’t considered that without the door, Faerie would have no tie to the land. That the belief magic that sustained the fae would dry up. “That . . .” I shook my head. “Can we fix it?”

  My father turned and looked out the limo window at the Bloom again. People moved in and out of the ruined building, processing the scene; photographing, tagging, and collecting evidence; or monitoring the stability of the remaining structure. The human bodies were finally being removed from the mortal side of the Bloom. I’d helped the crime scene techs locate each body earlier, but they’d only marked the location for further processing. Now I saw the first black-bag-topped gurney roll out, and I could feel the whisper of grave essence as it drifted through the air. The fae bodies would not be removed tonight. Nori had suggested not removing them at all, but waiting until the door was repaired and taking them to Faerie in case any could be revived, as death wasn’t always as permanent in Faerie.

  If the door was permanently lost, and the connection to Faerie was going to wane as much as my father said, there would be no reviving any of those fae.

  My father turned back to me. His eyes were once again unnaturally green, but his glamour was in place everywhere else, so maybe it was simply the last rays of sunlight catching his irises.

  “You should leave,” he said, his lips drawn tight.

  I blinked again. “Okay.” I slid across the seat, reaching for the door.

  “Not the limo, Alexis,” he said, sounding exasperated. “Leave Nekros City. Hell, the entire mortal plane. I very neatly arranged for you to have a prominent spot in the shadow court. You should go there.”

  “Pass. Prince Dugan agreed to back me up in refusing our betrothal.”

  Now it was my father’s turn to look surprised. Then he scowled. “He wouldn’t . . . What have you done now, you foolish girl? How did you get him to agree to that?”

  Oh, just saved the entire shadow court and cured the king of a deadly magical infection. I wasn’t going to go into all of that now, though. I was never going to willingly become part of my father’s planeweaver breeding program. He’d told me once he was playing the long game—but I sure as hell wasn’t going to be an obedient pawn.

  “Is there a way to save Nekros?” I asked, redirecting the conversation.

  My father stared at me, waiting, as if he thought that if he watched me long enough I’d spill all the secrets I held. Not likely. He may have shipped me off to a wyrd boarding school for all my formative years, but I’d spent every summer at home, and I’d grown immune to his stare of silence.

  The limo grew darker as the sun sank lower. With my night blindness, I could no longer read my father’s expression clearly. On the plus side, his silent glare was far less effective, but as the silence grew, the urge to squirm in my seat did as well.

  I didn’t get a chance to see which of us would break first. James Hetfield of Metallica began belting out that we were off to never-never land from somewhere inside my purse. I startled, and then dug through my bag, retrieving my singing phone. The display showed an unknown number, so apparently “Enter Sandman” was my new generic ringtone. The ghost haunting my castle had quite a sense of humor.

 
Without glancing at my father, I hit the engage button and lifted my phone to my ear.

  “Alex Craft, it’s been a while,” a bubbly but only vaguely familiar female voice said on the other side of the line.

  I glanced at the number again. I didn’t recognize it, but this was a relatively new phone—my phones kept getting irrevocably destroyed—so I had only a handful of numbers saved in my contact list.

  “So, funny story,” the woman on the other end said as if she hadn’t noticed my silence. “I was watching some B-roll we shot this afternoon, and I’m positive I caught sight of your unruly blond curls heading beyond the barricades in the Quarter. Are you at the Eternal Bloom? Can you confirm it was a bombing?”

  The voice finally clicked with a face. “Lusa Duncan,” I said, not hiding my inward cringe that was surely audible in my tone. If I’d recognized the number as the star reporter for Witch Watch, I wouldn’t have answered the phone. Not that Lusa was that horrible. We’d found common goals in the past, but she was still a hungry reporter and I was at a crime scene.

  “No comment, Lusa. Now I need to keep this line clear.”

  “Wait,” she called out through the phone. “Come on, Craft. At least tell me if you suspect this is connected to the explosions at the other fae establishments today.”

  I stopped, my finger hovering over the end button. My father, who had returned to staring at the ruined Bloom, whirled around, his piercing gaze locking on my phone. Clearly he’d overheard her as well. I jerked the phone back up to my ear.

  “What other explosions? Where?” I asked.

  “Oh, so now I have your attention. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

  I rolled my eyes, not that she could see me. “If you know about it, others do too. Do you really think it will be hard for me to find out?”

  She huffed on the other end of the line and I almost hung up, but then she said, “A small town in a folded space in Alaska, I can’t remember the name, but it was a private fae establishment. Also the fae bar in Terraville. Both experienced explosions around the same time as the one that rocked the Magic Quarter here in Nekros. I don’t think it is a coincidence.”

  “Neither do I,” I muttered, and then winced at her excited exclamation of “Aha!”

  “So are you confirming the explosion in Nekros was a bombing?”

  “No comment,” I said, and this time I did hang up. I didn’t want to say more than I meant with Lusa on the line. The phone immediately began ringing again, Lusa’s number showing on the display. I turned it to silent mode and sent her to voice mail as I wracked my brain to remember the details of the map I’d been looking at the day before. It felt like that morning in the FIB office had been a week ago, but it had been only slightly more than twenty-four hours. I knew there was a door somewhere in Alaska, and Terraville . . . I was pretty sure that was a folded space near North Dakota, and the site of another door to Faerie.

  “Those are the sites of the doors to summer and spring, aren’t they?” I asked, looking at my father.

  “Yes.” The word was a strangled whisper. His glamour had fallen again, and that awful, acrid scent filled the car. His fingers moved over his phone in a flash, sending a text, likely because he didn’t trust himself to speak to whomever he was contacting.

  I sank back into the leather seat, processing this news. I’d been sure Ryese was behind the attack on Nekros—he had a grudge against winter. But if it were him, why would he attack spring and summer? The light court was growing in power, but surely they wouldn’t want to alienate all the other courts. And what would cutting off all of North America from Faerie accomplish? Of course, Lusa hadn’t mentioned the door to fall. Where was it located? Somewhere near Mexico, if I remembered clearly.

  I picked up my phone and dialed the FIB office. “Were you able to find out anything about the other courts?” I asked as soon as Agent Bleek answered.

  “Well . . . we don’t actually have channels established to exchange information with the other seasonal courts,” he said, the words coming out as a reluctant mumble.

  I might have growled under my breath.

  “Then turn on the news. Apparently spring and summer were also attacked and at least one news outlet in town already knows. Try to find out if fall was attacked as well.”

  I disconnected and looked at my father. He’d returned to staring at the Bloom, though I wasn’t sure he actually saw it. He hadn’t bothered reestablishing his glamour and his fingers drummed against his knees.

  “How do we fix this?” I asked because I had no idea, but my father tended to be very well informed.

  He turned and looked at me with his too bright, too green eyes. Now I knew how unnerving it was when I looked at people with my own power blazing through my eyes, because the weight of his gaze was downright creepy. If he hadn’t been glowing, I wouldn’t have been able to see him at all in the gloom that hung over the street as the sun vanished behind the horizon.

  I braced myself for sunset. It was January, and it tended to come on quick and early. Since coming into my fae nature, I’d become incredibly aware of sunset and sunrise. Those times between were not particularly dangerous to fae—though they could be deadly to any changelings caught outside Faerie—but they were uncomfortable for about sixty seconds as the world transitioned from day to night and Faerie temporarily lost contact with the mortal realm. That was also the time most fae magics dissolved. It was unpleasant, but passed quickly.

  Tonight was different.

  Sunset hit like a fist to my guts and the air rushed out of me in a violent exhale. Outside the car, I saw Nori pitch forward, her glamour vanishing.

  The magic of Faerie rushed out of the world, but it didn’t immediately rush back in, and for a moment, I couldn’t catch my breath, my very blood feeling like it was consuming itself. The sensations lasted nearly a minute before they passed, leaving me exhausted, as if the entire day had caught up with me in one fell swoop.

  My father watched me, his features devoid of expression. He hadn’t been wearing his glamour, so I couldn’t tell if sunset hit him as hard as it had me and Nori, but there was a slight tightening around his eyes that made me suspect he’d felt something, even if it hadn’t been as drastic as what I’d experienced.

  “What was that?” I asked, my voice coming out raw, painful.

  “That was sunset.”

  Like I hadn’t figured that part out. I grimaced at him more than frowned, and he reached down without a word and pulled a bottle of water out of some unseen cooler built into the side of the car. Then he tossed it to me. I accepted gratefully, twisting off the top and taking several large gulping swallows. The cold water helped, and I felt almost back to normal when I replaced the cap, half the bottle already gone.

  “It’s going to get worse every sunset and sunrise,” my father said, watching me. “You are familiar with the right of open roads?”

  I nodded. “It allows a fae to pass through another court’s territory.”

  “Yes, but only for twelve hours. That time is significant. It prevents the fae in question from being away from their own land for too long, from experiencing too many sunsets or rises.” He frowned. “Every fae in Nekros—on this continent—if the other seasons’ doors are gone as well, is in danger of fading if they linger here.”

  I swallowed hard. “How long do they . . . we . . . have?”

  “A week? Two at most? Everyone needs to return to their courts.”

  “That seems really fast. I wandered around a lot longer than two weeks before I established my tie to winter.” I’d also started fading and nearly dragged my friends who were tied to me down with me. But it had taken more than a month from the time my full fae nature emerged before it became a noticeable issue.

  “You had no court tie, but you were still surrounded by Faerie. The land is no longer tied to Faerie here. The magic that
sustains the fae has been cut off. You now only have what ambient magic was left—most of which was lost during sunset—and what is in your own blood and bones.”

  Shit. That didn’t sound good at all.

  “How do we fix it? Can we plant a new amaranthine tree?”

  “If the amaranthine trees are destroyed . . .”

  “Can we replant them?”

  He frowned, turning again to look out the window. Then his shoulders twitched ever so slightly backward, his fingers flexing in the slightest show of surprise. I glanced out the window as well, but in the gloom, I couldn’t see much.

  “What?” I asked, squinting. The temptation to open my shields and gaze across planes to try to see whatever it was that had startled him was there, but I had no idea how much longer I’d be at this scene, and I needed as much of my poor eyesight as I could manage. While gazing across planes would give me an immediate picture of the world around me, it would cost me at least part of my vision after.

  “The tree . . .” my father said, his frown stretching downward. “It is no longer visible.”

  “That seems like a good thing. Maybe sunset reset whatever was wrong with the VIP area. It was unnerving with it half in, half out of the pocket of Faerie.” Or perhaps it had been visible because of a spell we hadn’t yet located, something malicious that had been planted alongside the bomb and fire spell, but that sunset degraded.

  My father’s frown didn’t lessen. “Perhaps,” he said, but his voice was empty, cold. Not a lot of hope to be found in that tone. He turned back toward me. “I should go. This conversation has gone on much longer than a briefing should have lasted.”

  He cared about his image as a Humans First Party member at a time like this? Screw that. “Is there a way to repair Nekros? Can we plant a new amaranthine tree? Is there some other way to establish a door?”

  “There are no amaranthine trees to replace the lost ones with.”

  Fae can’t lie, and there was no wiggle room in that statement. But fae can be wrong.