Violet had definitely fallen down that rabbit hole. For sure.
Otherwise, how would she have found herself sitting at a table in a cave under Lake Superior surrounded by the kings and queens of the most powerful supernatural realms in existence?
They keep looking at the chair.
The queens had all introduced themselves to her as they’d arrived. And for the first time in her life, when she met another beautiful woman, she didn’t instantly sense jealousy from her. Instead, these women, these queens, seemed genuinely happy to see her. Genuinely happy, in fact, that she existed. It was as if she filled a piece of their puzzle and made them more complete.
And the really, really nifty thing was… she felt the same way about them. And she’d only been queen a single afternoon!
Still getting used to that one, she thought to herself.
But there was a restless worry around the table. Instead of making people fidget with impatience, it made them overly still but for their eyes, which darted to their spouses – and then to the empty chair. The one they all kept going back to.
It was at the end of the table, opposite D’Angelo. According to Keeran, it had been moved. Normally, Mason Rushmore would have been seated a few chairs up from Keeran, after the Dragon King. But everything was different now.
And Violet knew that when he said that, he meant it in more than one way.
Once the twelfth king arrived, D’Angelo approached the end of the table and addressed them. “I want to thank those who helped rescue the gargoyle children now staying with Lily and Daniel Kane. I know they’re in good hands, and they have lives to look forward to,” he said. Then he looked directly at Violet. “Thanks to you.”
She turned her eyes downward and tried not to blush.
D’Angelo’s gaze left her and turned to the Warlock King, who sat just to D’Angelo’s right, near the edge of the table. Jason Alberich nodded an acceptance of the recognition, and D’Angelo took a deep breath.
“Now to the reason we’re all here. As you know, the assigning of a sovereign at this table must be recognized by every king, and now that we’re lucky enough to have them,” he added with a smile, “every queen as well.”
A few murmurs went up, a few faces broke into smiles, and the tension around the table began to both relax in one respect, and grow stronger in another. More glances at the empty seat, more hopeful expressions.
And then, quite suddenly, someone was sitting in the chair.
Several people around the table, including Violet, were surprised enough by the sudden appearance of a person in the before-empty seat that they scooted their own chairs back several inches and half-stood, preparing for a fight. Magic flooded Violet’s veins, her heart thudding.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said D’Angelo calmly. “Our newest king.”
Stunned silence claimed the room. The man in the chair grinned. His hair was as black as Keeran’s, so dark it was shot through with streaks of blue in the reflections of the torchlight. His clothing was dark, completely casual, and hugged a figure Violet had come to accept as a “king’s figure,” strong and tall. His chin bore a rakish amount of black stubble, again, just like Keeran’s. But it was his eyes that Violet was instantly drawn to. They were green shot through with gray, like jade that had been tainted by melted metal. They seemed vast and all-seeing, as if nothing could escape their inquiry.
Power poured from him like it did so many of the men at the table. But in yet one final way, that power reminded Violet of the man beside her. It was dark.
“I believe some of you are already acquainted,” D’Angelo added.
Suddenly, Keeran laughed. In a voice filled with genuine humor, he turned to the Time King who sat at the end of the table, and said, “William, send us back a few seconds, will you? I want to put a scorpion in the chair.”
The newcomer laughed as well, a glorious sound that got inside Violet – just like Keeran’s laugh always did. She swallowed hard and found herself looking to the faces of the others in the room, as if their expressions would tell her who the hell this guy was. Curiosity was just about killing her at this point. She wanted to know why Keeran was laughing. She wanted to know how they knew each other.
But most of the people at the table, the women especially, seemed as lost as she did. A few of the men had smirks on their faces. Some looked mystified. The Time King shook his head. The Winter King swore softly, and vapor appeared before his smiling lips.
“For the rest of you, this is Hesperos.” D’Angelo paused as the man he’d called Hesperos stood up.
Yep, she thought helplessly. He’s tall.
“The Nightmare King.”
*****
“How was he able to kill off nearly an entire race of supernatural beings?”
The people around the table had more or less recovered from the fact that Hesperos, the king of the incubi, had been named their thirteenth sovereign, and now they were discussing what had happened with the gargoyles, and what the Entity was after in the first place. Keeran was still a little surprised; a place at the table had been offered to Hesperos in the past, and he’d promptly turned it down. His race was one of blatant misconception, and Hesperos was a smart man. Keeran knew that he’d always shied away from dealing this directly in the affairs of the realms because he was afraid the nature of his people would drive a wedge between them. He never wanted their intentions to be misconstrued. Being an incubus was difficult enough in this day and age, when religion had all but made them into horror story monsters. To have twelve other factions turn against him would have been devastating.
But again, Hesperos was smart. He now obviously recognized the need to fill the gap at the table, and fill it fast. Keeran had a feeling the Nightmare King was also a little curious as to whether fate could actually hope to pin him down with a life-long mate. Anyone at the table would have bet otherwise, and from the rakish grin on the man’s handsome face, it was clear Hesperos was betting against fate too. But you never knew.
Prophecies had a way of coming true. And it would be the perfect karma to suddenly make the man who couldn’t wait to hop into bed with another beautiful soul finally fall madly, helplessly in love and be emotionally chained to the same woman for the rest of eternity.
That thought kept a small smile on Keeran’s face as they discussed what had transpired. Siobhan, the Warlock Queen, had just asked how it was possible for the Entity to kill off an entire nation of supernatural beings. It was something Keeran was curious about as well. Hell, everyone at the table was.
D’Angelo shook his head. “No one really knows. Theories arose that Mason was working for the Entity, and hence allowed himself to be vulnerable. However, it’s now been determined that Mason was on our side… and the traitor is still among us.”
That was always a sobering thing to remind themselves of. Quite suddenly, no one really wanted to talk about anything, and the table fell completely silent. Keeran glanced down at the woman sitting beside him. As usual, the moment he looked at her, he was struck with how enormously beautiful she was.
The second thing that he noticed, however, was that she looked preoccupied. Tense. Worried.
Shit, he thought. Her sister. How could I have forgotten?
Dahlia Kellen was one of the most important things in the world to Violet, and he had been behaving as if he couldn’t have cared less about the woman’s welfare. The truth was, he didn’t know her enough to either care or not care. He simply hadn’t wanted Violet to go after her, and he’d done everything in his power to stop it her. Because he couldn’t lose the woman he loved.
Not again.
And now he realized that if he didn’t help her find her sister – that was exactly what was going to happen.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
How am I totally okay with all of this? Violet wondered, as D’Angelo called the very fast, purely formal meeting to a quick close and people began to file magically out of the room. For some reason, it seemed to her that she should be bewil
dered on all counts, and to be sure, she was definitely feeling some amount of discombobulation – but she was functioning. And she was pretty impressed about that.
Her sister was in danger and Violet had just become a queen. Other than the temper tantrum she’d thrown because of Lovelace’s magic, she was handling things decidedly well. She wondered why.
The answer that almost always came of late came again: It’s because you’re the queen.
This was what she was meant for, she guessed. Perhaps it was similar to someone being seen in the crowd on a television screen and being offered the main part in a movie – and then winning an Oscar. That person was a born actor who simply hadn’t known it. Fortunately fate had.
Violet had been discovered, in a way. And being discovered obviously didn’t mean that you weren’t meant for the part. It just meant you hadn’t known you were supposed to try out for it in the first place.
Most of the room was empty. There were a few kings left – Kristopher the Winter King, the newly appointed thirteenth member at the table, Hesperos the Nightmare King, and D’Angelo and his queen Evie – were still gathered around the Vampire King’s end of the table, talking. The Shifter King, Darius Walker, was preparing to catch a ride out with Jason Alberich and his queen, Chloe, as there was no other way for him to get to places like this without a lift from a magic user. And the Phantom King, Thanatos and his queen, Siobhan, were taking one last look at the chair Hesperos had filled before they would be returning to their starkly dismal landscape of Purgatory. Where they would probably be dealing with Mason Rushmore, the dearly departed Gargoyle King himself.
“We’re going after your sister.”
Violet jumped a little at the sound of Keeran’s whisper beside her ear. A few goose bumps raised on the side of her neck – his voice, his nearness – and then she was looking up at him with wide eyes. But he wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he was opening a portal in front of them, and she could tell just from looking at it that it was not a normal portal. This one went to the Twixt.
Depending upon where it was leading, every portal had its own “color.” Sometimes that color was more like a texture, and sometimes it was even a sort of sound. But since it was difficult to describe these differences in any other tangible way, she just thought of it as a color. She recognized the Twixt portal easily because she’d so recently been there herself.
“What?” she asked, just out of reflex.
“Just a heads up,” he told her, again without looking at her. He seemed to be gauging something in his head; his gaze was narrow and distant. Calculating. Careful. “We’ve wasted enough time.”
Oh my gods, she thought hastily. I mean, yes, we have, but…. Sudden fear gripped her. It was more of a dread, really. She didn’t have her backpack, she didn’t have her books, she didn’t have her nifty, prepared set of potions and antidotes and –
Finally, Keeran looked down at her, capturing her gaze. “You’ll be okay,” he told her as if he could hear her thoughts. “I’m with you.” He turned his attention back to the portal and added with a chuckle, “And you’re pretty damned good at taking care of yourself anyway.”
“I’m coming with you,” came a new voice.
Both Keeran and Violet turned to face Hesperos, who’d come up behind them. He smiled sheepishly. “There’s strength in numbers. It makes no sense for all of the kings to go; it might be a trap, after all. But the Entity won’t be expecting me yet. He doesn’t know I’m here and may not even know who I am. And what better way to prove that I belong at that table?” He gestured to the table they’d vacated.
Violet had wondered whether the Entity had been trying to lure the kings or their queens into the Dark by taking Dahlia. Not that she cared. She would go anywhere for her sister.
An unexpected and abrupt sinking feeling settled in her gut, so hard and so strong that she actually placed her palm to her stomach. It was unfamiliar; she’d never sensed this before when thinking of Dahlia. She felt the blood leave her face.
Because suddenly, someone was screaming.
The scream was far off, distant but terrible. She heard it deep inside herself, in an echo-filled forest, in the depths of her spirit. It was Dahlia. Pain shot through the right side of her neck and coursed through her entire body. It took her breath away. She couldn’t cry out, she couldn’t move.
“What the hell? ” she heard someone say.
Vaguely, she felt herself being turned. Someone was shaking her. Someone was even calling her name. But her vision was elsewhere, moving through a forest, moving into the woods, toward the screaming, toward the pain. Toward Dahlia.
*****
“Shit,” Keeran muttered. Things had just taken a very big turn for the worse. Violet was still very much on her feet, but her gaze was distant, and her eyes were wide with fear. She was pale and terrified.
The remaining kings and queens were gathered around him; they’d instantly sensed what he had when Violet had suddenly gone “under.” Somewhere in the Dark, her sister was suffering, and because Violet was her twin sister, and because she was now also linked to the Dark as the queen of the Shadow Realm, she was feeling part of it right along with her.
Keeran could feel it too. He’d pushed his luck and had waited too long.
“I’ll come with you as well,” said Kristopher, the Winter King. Keeran glanced up at him. The man looked like a Viking, blonde and blue eyed and positively huge. He could have been Thor. Hell, maybe Thor was modeled after him. Any army in its right mind preparing to do battle with the devil would want him on its side. But he was also a king – and that was probably just what the Entity wanted.
“It isn’t safe,” Keeran said.
“Safe for who?” Kristopher asked, his brow raised, his expression hard. In that moment, Keeran had the very real sense that there was little in the realms capable of taking down the Winter King. It wasn’t like you could melt him. He was immune to temperatures of any kind. He was immune to a lot of things.
“If the Entity believes we’re on to this as a trap, he’ll think you’re coming alone,” said D’Angelo as Keeran turned back to Violet and searched for any signs that she might be in pain. He would be able to sense that. She wasn’t suffering; she was just empathizing with her sister.
“So in effect, the more, the merrier,” added Hesperos.
“Then it’s decided. Let’s go deal with this once and for all,” finished Kristopher. Spoken like a true Norse god.
Keeran looked from one of to the other, but kept his fingers firmly wrapped around Violet’s upper arms. He could feel her trembling beneath his grasp. His body responded to her discomfort in the most basic way.
His blood flooded with hormones, his eyesight shifted, his magic swirled, and his fangs were extended in his mouth. He could feel them press against his bottom lip, and distractedly wondered if anyone around him noticed. He’d never allowed the wolf in him to show before. Hell, it had never wanted to show. He was the Shadow King, wrapped in darkness and secrets. The wolf was a part of him from another lifetime, a dormant existence so to speak, that Violet had simply awakened with her perfection and brought back to life.
Keeran turned back to the multi-level portal he’d opened. He’d concentrated hard on crisscrossing shadow paths so that it would be impossible to trace his progress, and hopefully impossible to determine where he would come out on the other side. He’d used a good deal of magic taking these extra measures, and he’d done it to keep the traitor amongst the kings from interfering. However, if two of the kings were traveling with him, he may be going to the extra trouble for no reason.
One, rather. Hesperos hadn’t been amongst them when the traitor had been discovered. Still… he could also be a plant. With the Entity, nothing could be taken for granted.
In the end, this was a fight, and Keeran’s wolf was a fighter, and right now, it wholeheartedly needed to be in charge. “I appreciate the sentiment, and I accept your assistance,” he told the men. His voice had chang
ed as well. It had always been deep, laced with magic, and accented by every corner of the world. But now there was a growl to it, there in the background like a hint of something primordial. “But if either of you further endanger Violet with your presence, I’ll rip off your shadow and drag it out through your nostrils.”
He wasn’t making an idle threat. He could do it.
There was the briefest of pauses before Hesperos smiled. “Sounds fair to me,” he said.
And Kristopher just nodded.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
He wasn’t at all certain why he, in particular, was supposed to accompany the Shadow King on this rescue mission. But the fact of the matter was – Lalura had told him to. And in the end, that woman was more powerful and more dangerous than a Norn. Hell, maybe she was a Norn. With Lalura, no one could tell for sure. All the kings knew was that when Lalura Chantelle made her rickety way toward you, leaning heavily on that cane, her blue eyes clear as the Aegir sea on a spring day, you did what she damn well told you to do. Period.
And that was what she’d done to Kristopher that morning:
“He’ll want to head into the Dark. You’ll want to go with him.”
“Pitch often travels into the Dark,” he’d countered easily as he summoned a floating tray sporting a steaming pot of tea and a tea cup for the old woman. It was cold in his realm. Of course, he could very quickly warm it up if he wanted, but it wasn’t something he was going to do without very good reason. That kind of magic was exhausting. “He leads the Nimbus to hunt for wayward shadows.”
Pitch’s leadership of the Nimbus was a secret to all but the thirteen kings and the Nimbus themselves.
“This time will be different,” she explained, clearly appeased by his tea offering, because she instantly summoned a rocking chair, sat down in it, and set her cane aside. Then she calmly took the pot, poured the tea, and Kristopher watched as magic whitened the liquid with cream.
“I see,” he said.
“And you will be there.”
The Shadow King (The Kings Book 7) Page 14