Fifth Essence: A Reverse Harem Tale (Lovin' the Coven Book 5)

by Jacquelyn Faye

  Then I remembered where we were and why were here. I frowned and shook my head to shake away the ludicrously lustful lusty thoughts of lust, clouding my brain. "Where are my friends?"

  He straightened and held up his hands in a peaceful gesture. "Do not fret. We placed the males in the room next to you, unsure of your relationship. I can take you to them, if you wish."

  "Maybe in a minute. What about the rest?"

  "You speak of Lord Delron?"

  I nodded. If they hurt him in anyway while I was unconscious… "Did you say Lord Delron?"

  "Aye. Lord Delron of the Church of Night."

  "Church of Night?"

  "Yes?"

  "I'm a little confused. He told us he was like a herald or something. For your queen."

  "Why would he say that? He does not reside in our court or realm? He is the head of the Church of Night."

  "You're the herald?"

  "Nay. The prince. Prince Elleslyn."

  "Your mother is the queen?"

  "That is what it means to be prince, yes." He looked up at me guiltily.

  "Oh, boy. I have so many questions I don't know where to begin."

  "Perhaps they should be asked of my mother?"

  "No. She's kind of scary, and I want to know where I stand before I'm standing in front of her, if you know what I mean."

  "I understand. May I sit?"

  "Sure."

  Yuki got up and offered him the chair, sitting down next to me and leaning back. "My thanks," he said to her.

  He was just as graceful as I'd imagined as he sat down on the padded leather seat. I've never wanted to be upholstery before that moment, but there I was. "Where is Jaeren, his sister, and her guards?" That was a good place to start.

  "Prince Jaeren, of Elfhame Autumn Glade?"

  "Yep."

  "I am assuming he is in their castle?" He wasn't faking the look of utter confusion he was sporting. Nobody was that good of an actor."

  "You returned him?"

  "We had him?"

  Something was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. "Hold the phone. You didn't kidnap him?"

  "Why would we do that? Their military force is much greater than ours. Should war break out between us…we would not fare well."

  "No offense, but I kind of noticed that."

  "None taken," he said and calmly held up his hand. "Where did you hear this rumor."

  "Uh. Delron."

  His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Why would he say that?"

  "To get me to come here to listen to your marriage proposal?"

  "Listen to the marriage proposal he brokered with us on your behalf?"

  "Huh?"

  "I am assuming this is the first you are hearing of this," he said with a gentle sigh. "When I first looked upon you and saw your beauty, I knew it was too good to be true."

  His words added a splash to the sploosh, drips, and dribbles. Seriously, nobody should be that good looking. But he was still a dark elf, and I trusted him about as far as I could throw him. He seemed pretty solidly built for an elf. "Why would I, a witch of the mortal realm, wish to marry a prince of Faerie?"

  "Money. Power. Granted, our kingdom offers little of either."

  "Got em both, don't need more."

  "Then I have no answer for you. The reason is with Lord Delron, who left for the capitol as soon as you were ensconced in your rooms."

  "This isn't the capitol?"

  "No. We are a kingdom. The capitol of Darkenfall is where the unseleighe high king lives."

  "Oh. They don't teach that in social studies. So, no Jaeren here. Where is his sister and her guards?"

  "Prince Jaeren has no sister."

  "Sure he does. Glabriella. She was with us when we came here!"

  "I can assure you… Jaeren and Renlynn were the only two elves born of their fallen king. And I worry that you are not well."

  "Why?"

  "Because the four of you were the only ones who arrived here at the castle beside Lord Delron?"

  "No, we weren't. There were three elves! Right, Yuki?" I turned and looked at her, afraid that she was going to say no, and that I was insane.

  "My master is telling the truth. There were elves with us. They came to supposedly negotiate for the release of her brother."

  Thank fuck.

  Got your back, Boss.

  They were really here, right?

  Yes!

  "See, I told you," I said smugly to Elleslyn.

  "Then they were invisible to us," he said thoughtfully. "The question that remains is, are they still among us?" He closed his eyes for a moment and two guards entered the room. "Start patrols inside the castle. Be on the lookout for a trio of elves. Use any items granting magical sight that we have."

  "Yes, my prince," they answered and left.

  "Not going to lie, you don't seem like a bad guy. Why do you sell drugs to humans and not let people have families?"

  He tilted his head in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

  Damnit, Delron. Priest or not, I'm going to kick your ass.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Watching the queen eat was not conducive to my normally healthy appetite… It was a combination of watching her gnarled, hooked fingers dragging the still moving food to her lips, the tongue that snaked out, trapping the squirming food and pulling it into her mouth, and the culmination of the sounds that sounded like porno sex that erupted from her orifice as she chewed. I swear that I heard one of the little buggers scream before she swallowed.

  I let mine run away from my plate. I wasn't even a fan of sushi unless it was cooked. Moving whatevers were not on my menu. The vegetables and roasted meat, however, didn't stand a chance. Especially after I pretended it was cow. "Any sign of Glabrielle?"

  I couldn't help but notice the prince was giving my Shea a small, shy smile. I cocked an eyebrow at him as he turned to me and blushed, Elleslyn shook his head. "Nay. What they were seeking in this realm is beyond me."

  "She knows the gem isn't here anymore, so it couldn't have been that," I mused aloud and stared at my empty plate.

  "Gem?" The queen finally spoke around a mouthful of squirmy slug with legs.

  I looked up at her and ignored the legs between her teeth. Or tried to. One was still twitching. "Yes. My father's gem. It contained his power and he somehow smuggled it out of his prison. King Renlynn had it, and I was told you sent it to him. It drove him mad."

  The queen gave her son a questioning look.

  "I'm sorry, you said it belonged to your father?"

  "Uh…yes."

  "A red ruby the size of a child's fist?" Elleslyn continued.

  "Uh…yeah."

  "How could it belong to your father? That is a holy icon of the Church of Night? It has been in this realm for nearly a hundred years. Since the war between Night and Day was lost." I could tell by the anger on his face who won that battle. It was a shock to hear that it had happened in their kingdom, though.

  "Here? Day fought the night here?"

  "Yes. Tis why this cursed sky never darkens!" He pointed up in emphasis at the orange glow above us.

  I just thought they were really trying to pull off the Halloween motif they had going on. "Yep. I didn't know it happened in your realm. It gets dark on the seleighe side. Why is that?"

  "I assume it is because they were not abandoned by the sun and moon like we were. When day and night fought, they left as well."

  The Lord and Lady. My father is night, but who is day? "I know Aodh is the god of night, who is the god of day?"

  "I know not the name you have given the Night," the queen answered in her raspy tone. "The Night is naught but the Night. To give another name to the Day would make as much sense."

  I nodded.

  "Do you truly claim to be a child of the Night as well as a witch?"

  I looked at Yuki. I'd heard her mention that another name for vampire was child of the Night. "You mean a vampire?" I asked the queen.

  "Blood drinker, yes.
"

  "Apparently, I am sometimes. But I meant that the Night is my actual father. He married my mother before he was imprisoned."

  "Blasphemy!" The queen stood and shook in barely contained fury.

  Guess I should have left that part out.

  "Sit down, Lilith." A very familiar voice spoke from the shadows. Shadows that hadn't been there a moment ago. Glancing up at Shea, I nearly shot out of my seat. He was gripping the arms of his chair tightly and struggling to keep them focused.

  "Help him, Daughter." The goddess' voice called softly.

  I quickly got out of my chair and walked around the table, putting my hands on his shoulders. He sighed softly at the contact and immediately calmed, not struggling with his shadows. "Are you okay?" I whispered softly in his ear.

  "Now," he answered and smiled.

  From the shadows, two figures emerged. The Lord and the Lady gazed upon us and smiled. Every elf stood and bowed, no question who stood before them.

  "Lord and Lady?" The queen shook as she stood, hanging on to the back of her chair for support.

  The Lady floated a foot over the wet looking stone floor of the patio we dined upon. The Lord made no such grand gesture and stomped cloven hooves against the ground, striking sparks as he shifted from foot to foot.

  "Yes, Lilith, Queen of the Unseleighe Court of Willowmere."

  The queen began crying. "You have graced us once again?"

  "We have never left. Our embodiments are merely hidden in the sky by the imbalance left after Night's capture."

  "We thought you had abandoned us in punishment," Elleslyn said by way of apology.

  "Do not be sorry. The day might have masked our presence, but thanks to the small one," she pointed and smiled at my Shea, "we were able to pass through the shadows that even daylight cannot completely extinguish."

  I couldn't help squeezing Shea's shoulders in pride.

  "We do not have long, the strain on the child is immense," the Lady said, sadly. The Lord gave me a wink.

  "How do we fix all this?" Elleslyn begged.

  "You cannot. Only the daughter of Night can free him, restoring the balance."

  "I don't even know where he is," I said in futility.

  "No, but you know who does."

  "Day?"

  The gods nodded. "Isn't that right, Aine?" the Lady's eyes narrowed as she focused on the other side of the table.

  I gasped as Glabrielle slowly came into view. She wasn't sister to Jaeren, she was the goddess Day.

  Holy fuckballs.

  "Greetings, Brother," she said to the Lord with a little nod of her head. "And to you, wife of my brother."

  "Aine, release your spouse from his prison," the Lord pleaded in anguish.

  Everything clicked into place in my head. Everything. The Lord, the Sun, was brother to Day. The Lady, the Moon, was sister to Night. They sun and moon were wed, just as day and night. I also had a feeling that my mother was the reason Day had imprisoned Night…

  "He left you to be with my mother," I said aloud, without thinking. Don't piss off the deities, Dot.

  "That hag, with her fiery hair? He didn't leave me to be with her, she spelled him!" Day was scary when she was pissed.

  "My mother might be a lot of things, but a hag…is probably one of them. However, she would not spell a man just to be with him!"

  "What about a god?"

  "No offence, but few things impress my mother. Including me. But let me get this straight, you imprisoned him for cheating on you?"

  "No. Marriage vows are sacred, but even gods stray. No. He was imprisoned because of you."

  "Me?"

  She nodded.

  I looked to the Lady, not really trusting Aine, or Glabrielle, whoever the hell she was. The Lady gave me a curt nod. "It is true. It was decided that any celestial who mated with a human would bear an eternity of imprisonment. Too many abominations have walked the realms."

  "Any celestial?"

  "Angels, demons, and gods. We were forbidden to procreate with mortals. As I told you before, even the gods answer to higher powers, Daughter."

  I cast a nervous glance at Dar. Thankfully, or so I hoped, I couldn't get pregnant unless I truly wanted to. Shaking my head, I turned back to the goddess. "So, my father, whom I never met, is going to be stuck wherever he is forever?"

  "Unless freed by their offspring, yes. The Powers That Be decided that would be their one chance at freedom. If the abomination they created forgave them for their very existence and worked to free them."

  "Where is he?"

  "That I cannot say, but the one in your hands might have an inkling. He is a scholar."

  I looked down. Shea just nodded, still struggling to keep the shadows focused even with my power added to his.

  "Remember the Law, Aine." The Lord's voice sounded strained.

  "I know the Law! You do not have to remind me, Brother."

  "We must go. Seek out your Father and this land will be healed. Fail…" The goddess was fading from sight.

  I nodded in understanding.

  They faded completely into the shadows and Shea cried out in relief. Glabrielle snarled at the lot of us and faded into a flash of orange hued light. I reached down and lifted Shea's chin, forcing him to look up at me. "Where?"

  "Where all fallen angels go when they sire Nephelim," he answered as if I knew where the hell that was.

  "Let's just say I knew the answer to that. Where in the realms would that be?"

  "Tartarus," Dar answered for him.

  "Like Greek mythology Tartarus?"

  "The Greeks merely wrote of it. It has nothing to do with their mythos."

  "Where is it?" I was looking back and forth between the two of them, wanting an answer and a fucking clue as how to end this entire nightmare.

  "Remember how I told you there was no hell and that Gehenna was the lowest of the planes?"

  "Yes," I narrowed my eyes at Dar.

  "Technically that was true, but not completely true, either."

  "Huh?"

  "Allow me?" Shea asked Dar, who nodded in return.

  Shea traced a sphere on the table. "Picture this sphere as every plane of existence you could imagine. The Human Realm, Faerie, Gehenna, the White Plains, the Shadow Realms. All of them, tucked nicely in layers in this ball of existence."

  "Okay."

  Now picture another sphere encircling the other. That is Etherium."

  "Okay," I said and fought the urge to rub the bridge of my nose.

  "Ethereum is the realm of the gods and other things you can't even begin to imagine. It has polarities, just like our realms. Top is positive, the lower is negative…"

  "And?"

  "At the bottom is Tartarus. If Hell had an underworld, Tartarus would be it. All of the angels, gods, devils, and demons who were to suffer an eternity of torment and anguish, were thrown into the pits of Tartarus."

  "Oh. And that's where we have to go?"

  Shea nodded, more than a little fear showing on his face.

  "I take that back. That's where I have to go?"

  "I'm sorry, yes. If you wish to rescue your father…"

  "To hell and back."

  "Precisely."

  Chapter 18

  "I can't believe that bitch was actually a goddess!"

  "Glabrielle?" Dar wanted to clarify.

  "Yes!" I dropped down on the bed in the room the dark elves had given me. After the pantheon had left, things had gotten a little more than weird. The queen looked torn between kicking me out of her realm and kissing my feet. I didn't want her sandpaper crusted chops anywhere near my toes. Elleslyn treated me the same, but even a little more reverently. It knocked down his hotness level a little. I didn't care for people who thought too highly of me. "Even with all those answers, I still have a million questions."

  "Such as?"

  "Jaeren. Where the hell is he? We came to rescue him and he's not even here. Why does Delron want me to marry the prince? How did my father get
his gem out of Tartarus? Why did Delron give it to Renlynn? Did he know it would drive him insane? That one kind of pisses me off, to be honest. And what was Glabrielle doing in the castle, and why was she pretending to be his sister? That one pisses me off, too."

  "That is a lot of questions."

  "Without any answers."

  Dar sighed and put his hand on my leg. "I'm sure they will come."

  "First thing first. Find Jaeren and get him back."

  "Even before your father?"

  "Oh, that one is going to have to wait. I'm not marching into Hell until I know exactly what is going on and how to get there."

  Dar smiled at me. "You are learning."

  "Repeatedly getting the shit kicked out of you is a good teacher."

  "So is realizing that sometimes patience truly is a virtue."

  "Yeah. I suck at that."

  "Let us look at this logically. Who told you Jaeren was here?" He was smiling. The bastard probably already had it figured out.

  "Delron. We know this."

  "So, assuming that what he said was a falsehood, the truth is that he knew that Jaeren had, in fact, been abducted."

  "Yes?"

  "So would it not stand to reason he would know who, if it wasn't in fact him, abducted him?"

  "I guess. But now he is gone, too, so it's not like I can just ask him."

  "No, but it is a place to start."

  "True."

  There was a soft knock at the door. Dar gave me a questioning glance and I nodded. Without hesitation, he got up and opened it.

  Elleslyn was the last person I'd been expecting, but there he stood. "May I come in?"

  "Of course."

  He stepped into the room and shut the door behind him before crossing his wrists in front of him. "I have spoken with the queen. She wishes me to offer you sanctuary here as long as you would need."

  "Tell her that I appreciate her offer, but that we will be leaving shortly."

  He sighed but nodded in understanding. "I am sorry your trip here was for naught."

  "It wasn't. I learned a whole bunch of things that I didn't know yesterday."

  "More importantly, I am sorry to learn that your marriage interest was only feigned on the part of Lord Delron."

  I blushed before finding an appropriate response. "Do you know why? Why did he want me to come here?"