by D. D. Chance
We stumbled into a courtyard I immediately recognized, the empty lot behind the White Crane, for once cleared of users and the homeless looking for some place off the street to sleep. Instead, it was alight with witches.
“You fool,” Cassandra raged, whipping around in fury as she recognized that she no longer fought in the Fae realm. “You can’t constrain us. We have the power to rule three races, and we will take it.”
“Yeah, no,” I countered, feeling remarkably grounded to be back in familiar territory. I realized I’d given the same advantage to Cassandra, but if she didn’t appreciate it, that was her problem. In any event, we didn’t have more time to debate it. The witches began tossing around power like a game of killer dodgeball.
The first crackle of energy came courtesy of a joint throw from Cassandra and Lena directly at me, but with a swipe of one of the strange knives the not-quite-a-witch had given me, I deflected it to the side and it barreled into the brick wall of the shop beside the White Crane.
“We’ve got you,” Celia howled, and she and Maggie double-teamed right back, lofting a stream of fire all their own.
I’d read once about the reaction of the Roman legion when those warriors found themselves in a battle against the druids of Wales during the Romans’ great push northward. According to some historian whose name I had long ago forgotten, the Romans were stunned immobile during the opening waves of the battle, taken aback by the antics of the white-clad druids chanting and invoking spells. The historian went on to say there was little the druids could ultimately do to forestall the sweep of the Roman invasion, but the druids felled a great swath of soldiers in that first onslaught, and it wasn’t just because the Romans were too afraid to attack in numbers. Those original druids were strong, and their descendants had left Wales and traveled across the ocean to settle in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Their taste for battle hadn’t diminished.
A flash of heat raked across my cheek.
“Send me back—send all of us back. I command it, witch.” Lena stood before me, her eyes blazing with rage. No one else was around us—and I recognized the haze that covered us—it was cloaking magic. Had Magnus taught it to her? “My king needs to see the value I bring, the value I have always brought.”
“How can you do this to him?” I demanded, my hands coming up reflexively to block Lena’s fiery spell. I was only partially successful in warding it off, and I gasped as my lungs constricted, my next words dying in my throat.
“Not Aiden. He’s a puppet if ever there was one,” Lena sneered, punctuating her words with jabs of her heavy knife. “He should have brought the Fae back to power. He should have put me in a position where I could have done it for him, but he would not. Now they’ll see.”
I wobbled to the side, going down hard on one knee. Lena anticipated that move, and her next strike was low and slashing, the intricate dagger of Fomorian gold hissing but then shearing off at the last moment, causing her to grunt in surprise. My lips twisted at the irony.
“Apparently, King Lyric believes in the sanctity of marriage after all,” I gasped.
I hadn’t intended it as a barb, but it scored a direct hit—and the taste of Lyric’s name on my lips sent an entirely different surge of awareness through me, an awareness that caught me up short. At the height of his exertion and our unexpected connection, I could sense the foreign king’s thoughts, the tide of his blighted history rolling through my mind. What exactly was Lyric doing calling out Aiden the way he was…and why?
My newfound awareness didn’t matter to Lena, of course. She stepped back from me in outrage, her brows drawing down.
“You lie,” she cried. Her focus faltered enough that there was a mighty crack in the shell that protected us from outside eyes.
And that was all that was needed—that, and the sudden burst of connection I had to a fiercely struggling banished king fighting to the death back in the realm of the Fae. I flung up my hands, feeling the weight of my shackles, my crown, but claiming them not as restrictions…but yet more magic I could wield. I commanded a portal to open, and it did. Through it swept black-clad men and women, led by a steely-eyed Danae.
The witches of the White Coven spun to face the new threat, but there was power in Danae’s stride, and more power still in the fire that crackled between my hands. I was practically consumed by it, while Danae held up an amulet that looked like the sun.
“I command you to begone,” she said. Instantly, a rush of demons swept around the witches—no, not demons, djinn. Their long, flailing arms wrapped around the witches and whisked them away in a puff of smoke, while somewhere far off, a mighty laugh rolled out, exuberant and delighted.
“I am here to serve my queen!” came a deep and thoroughly pleased declaration.
Danae’s jaw tightened. “I’m so going to regret this,” she muttered, then she stared hard at me.
“Take the Fae noblewoman back to her people where she belongs.” She turned her cool eyes to Lena. “Be glad you can’t see the future.”
Lena’s eyes widened, and she darted a glance at me. I could see the future, and it didn’t look all that bad for her, but I wasn’t about to let her off the hook quite yet.
A cold breeze rushed through the courtyard, and Lena yelped, while Danae turned to me.
“You’ve developed full portal magic,” Danae accused. “But bringing this many—that shouldn’t be possible for you. How did you get here?”
Belatedly, I held up the jagged knife the woman named Sariah had given me, and Danae rolled her eyes. “The Night Witch. Of course. Well, she’s not going to help you get back. You’ll have to go through the In Between, and the way is filled with demons. I don’t have time to take you, either. Fortunately, I know someone who can.”
She closed her fist at her chest, and briefly murmured words I couldn’t quite catch. A moment later, another bone-chilling gust of wind nearly rocked me off my feet. I turned to see an enormous, bristling male with fiercely glittering eyes, their glow banking sharply as he caught my startled stare. He was tall and bulky, with long, tawny hair and a distinctly feral grin, and his golden gaze swept slowly and deliberately from Danae, to me, then back again.
“It takes some sack for you to summon me when you know there are humans in greater need, Danae of the Iron Sea,” he rumbled.
She pointed to me. “This witch has a need to be protected in the In Between, and I’m not about to lose her to demons. I figured an Enforcer would be a proper escort.”
The massive demon chuckled, a low, menacing purr, and I suddenly felt safer than I had in far too long. “Then I live to serve.” His gaze shifted to me. “I’m Warrick of the Syx. Don’t try any witch tricks on me, Belle Hogan. I’ve had my fill of them today.”
Before I could assure him I’d keep my witch tricks to myself, Danae stiffened, her gaze shifting to the far horizon, taking in some vision only she could discern. “Go, and move swiftly, Belle,” she advised quietly. “Your king has need of you.”
“Both of them do,” I agreed grimly.
36
Aiden
“You dare,” I growled again, though I could sense the Fomorian king coming through the shifting portals before my eyes could fully track him. He dropped like shattered darkness through a dozen different openings, coalescing once all twelve of him hit the floor.
Our battle had taken us back into the castle solarium as we chased each other through portals we both could make, and I was glad to keep the carnage of this king from sinking into Fae soil. With him spread halfway across the room to start, I didn’t know where to strike first, but once the oily puddles pulled together and built up boots, legs, an armor-clad torso, shoulders, arms, and fists bristling with blades, I was already in motion. I cloaked our battle in Fae magic to hide it from the others locked in war around us, and struck.
“I thought you weren’t allowed out of your hole to fight me,” I taunted as I dragged my sword around in a mighty arc, aiming to take off L
yric’s head where it was attached to his body. I didn’t quite achieve that, but my sword struck something solid. With a curse, King Lyric wrenched away, stumbling toward the side of the room.
“I have every right,” Lyric roared back, and it was his turn to bring his sword around, an ancient blade gleaming with deep-cut runes. “I have the right to defend my people against certain death. That has always been my right.”
Something in his words struck me with greater force than his sword against my shield, and that reverberated strongly enough, shaking me all the way to my toes. As we grappled, I stared around wildly, taking in the varied battle scenes. The Fomorian creatures were gaining ground as witches and warriors alike fought them back. The Luacra lizard men fought the Laram and the soldiers of the valley Fae beyond the solarium walls, the intensity of their battle making it impossible to see who was gaining the upper hand. It wasn’t as if King Lyric’s people were being slaughtered, so what was he talking about?
“You’ve stolen my wife,” Lyric snarled as he swung at me again.
That got my attention in a hurry, which I suspected was King Lyric’s entire plan. Well, it worked, and blind fury swamped me. The idea of this abominable creature in any of his guises laying his hands upon Belle, forcing her to bend to his will, if only long enough to complete an invalid contract of marriage, stoked a fire deep within me.
“The fact that you dared to touch a hair on her when you knew she was under my protection—”
“Under your control, maybe,” Lyric scoffed, punctuating his words with the series of punishing blows that startled me into taking several steps back. For a king buried in a prison with no light and no hope for millennia, he clearly had spent plenty of time honing his battle skills.
He also didn’t know when to shut up. “Belle yearned for me the moment she saw through the caul of possession you sought to hang around her. She ran to me, and when she reached me, I—”
“Enough!”
Another burst of rage blanked my senses, driving me forward. For several minutes more, there was no more talking, only the thrust and parry and crushing blows traded between two lifelong enemies. I had never laid eyes on this paltry king, but for him to think he could hold his own with me when I had spent most of my life in service to the blade and the shield, dedicated to protecting my people, was both an insult and outrage. He would learn what it meant to attack a Fae. He would learn what it was to give his life in service for his people.
“Aiden!”
Once again, my focus was shattered, but this time, I couldn’t help the swell of pride and joy that ripped through me as Belle and her team of witches crashed through a new portal, their swords and athames held high, light arcing between them. They rushed into the center of battle, but King Lyric was not distracted. He didn’t spare Belle so much as a glance as he leapt forward wildly and drove his blade through my shoulder.
For a long moment, I stared at the offending weapon in shock, unable to make sense of his transgression. Then Belle was on us both, attacking us like wildfire, practically detonating with energy and light. She flung her hands out as if in supplication to the sky, but it was not the sky that responded, but the very arches of the solarium, infused with the witchling power of Reagan Hogan and the artistry of Fae craftsman. A burst of light crashed down over us, catching both King Lyric and me in a blaze of spectral radiance, bathing us in healing fire.
“Stop,” Lyric roared, only it was not the cry of rage.
I whipped around, surprised at the tone of his voice. Not rage or fury or indignation—it was the cry of a king who had been pushed almost past the point of his last endurance, tipping on the precipice toward madness. It was the cry of pain, of loss, of wild and unremitting despair. And as King Lyric whirled around to face me, his face blank with shock, his eyes wild, his arms jerking up, somehow able to defy Belle’s most powerful magic to take another swipe at me, I finally understood.
“You want me to kill you,” I said, and my words penetrated Lyric’s fury enough for his eyes to glitter with malice. “You bastard, you’re practically begging for it.”
“You don’t have the strength,” Lyric seethed, rekindling my outrage even as Belle rushed between us.
“And I am telling you both to stop,” she interjected, and it was her turn to sound desperate and panicked.
I turned to see her body shimmering, almost translucent, as she gave herself over to pure power, pure light. “You were betrayed!” she gasped to Lyric, then she tipped her head back and cried out with obvious pain.
“Belle—” Forgetting Lyric, I reached for her hand, only to realize that Lyric had dropped his blade and leapt for her as well.
At the very moment I braced myself to defend her, Lyric closed his hand around Belle’s other slender wrist. Power shot through us both, our free hands splaying wide, and magic raged forth.
“What are you doing?” I couldn’t force the words out of my mouth, past my grimace of agony, but I poured them into her mind, desperately trying to understand.
I was not alone in my question either. I felt Lyric’s near-crazed energy seeking and searching, desperate for resolution.
“Betrayal, loss, pain,” Belle whispered, and she swung around toward Lyric. “You discovered the truth, finally knew what you could do to save your people, and it was a sacrifice you were more than willing to make, at long last. You came to the Fae to plead for their lives.”
I snapped my gaze to Lyric, but his eyes were electric with rage now. “That is past and done!” the Fomorian king spat. “The bastard king killed the delegation—nearly killed me, but I was not ready. I had not done enough to prepare my people. I crept home to bleed and prepare for a war that never came.”
Belle nodded. “Because Reagan Hogan saw the truth. She saw what Orin planned, the devastation of three realms torn asunder due to a Fae king’s pride.”
I gaped at them both, but as linked as I was to Belle’s thoughts, I saw what she saw, followed the path of pain that Lyric had already taken. I wouldn’t have been able to understand it without her…and he would never have revealed it unless he had linked himself to her, in a last, desperate bid to draw me into a battle to the death.
“My people,” choked King Lyric, the words gritted out through clenched teeth. “They have suffered enough.”
“We’ve all suffered enough,” Belle agreed. And she flung back her head, and spoke a spell I’d never heard before.
37
Belle
I was lost. Lost in a plane that was neither the Fae realm nor the Fomorians’ prison, nor the monster realm or human. And it wasn’t the In Between either. It was a place of pure possibility, where energy danced.
I wasn’t here alone. I could see the structure of entire realms laid out before me. There was a human realm full of fire and strife, the realm of the high Fae limned with gold and white light. There was the monster realm where lesser Fae, monsters and lizard men roamed.
These last creatures were heavily cloaked and spelled, their protection deriving solely from the darkest of the realms, the Fomorian underworld, home of shadows and primordial ooze. The stuff of creation, but in an environment where creation could never thrive. How much of the strength of King Lyric had gone to protect his small outpost in the monster realm? He had lain dormant in that realm for millennia, and only in the past few generations had his people been able to find the sunlight—and not full sunlight at that. I would never forget the perpetual twilight of the Riven District.
There were other realms too, sparkling like faraway stars in the sky. A realm of magical warfare constantly recreating itself; and a borderland alongside it, filled with high mountains, virgin valleys, and riches that gleamed from every rock and crevice. To the west was the land of mists and rushing winds, bursts of fire arcing over the roiling clouds, and hints of fertile lands beneath. The land of dragons.
But my attention was drawn mostly by the endless possibilities of my own crystalline world as two kings rose and stood in the
center of the solarium, raging at each other. King Aiden, King Lyric, and a human witch between them. All those millennia ago, when we had the opportunity to parlay this wild magic to banish the Fae and the Fomorians from earth, witches acted out of fear and justified anger. Pushing them both beyond the veil, ensuring our people would stay safe. But magic always finds a way.
“You are the last of the royal line of the Fomorian,” Aiden accused Lyric as I sank back into my own body, his voice aghast. “You aren’t seeking to win this war at all.”
“And you’re a fool who’s yet to rule a decade. I won the moment I stepped onto the field.” Lyric’s words were barely a sigh, and I wheeled toward him, shocked at what I saw.
Gone was the haughty splendor of the warrior I’d seen on his high throne, tempting me with magic far beyond anything I would have ever granted myself—ever believed possible for myself. In his place stood a warrior who still gripped his sword, but who wore the battle of his endless fighting like a cloak of honor. His deep teal-green eyes were sunken in a lined and craggy face, his skin whipped thin and harsh against his cheekbones. His thick white-blond mane of hair hung heavily over his shoulders, as if it too could no longer bear the weight of strife and death. His heavily muscled body swayed, somehow looking too frail beside Aiden, who now shifted toward him, not in strategy for a quick killing strike, but as if he was afraid Lyric would collapse.
“How long have you served as king?” Aiden demanded, and King Lyric smiled wearily.
“I came to power three hundred and fifty years ago, when the king who ruled before me finally set aside his crown and created me anew.” He slanted a glance at me. “You commented that there were few Luacra females in the Riven District. You are right. In truth, we could not create life ordinarily until we carved out our niche in the monster realm. That was part of the curse. But though we could not produce life, the land we were relegated to was the pure origin of life. So we also could not die by natural causes. When we grew too tired to carry on, we simply lay down in utter surrender and then we rose again. Such a process was never one our people could get used to, and eventually, they sought to die by the king’s grace.”