by Lexi Blake
My hand came up to protect the only thing that chained me. “You’re wrong. I’m not some queen.”
“Yeah, baby girl, you can say that as much as you like, but she makes sense,” Momma said.
“That creature in the lake, he was trying to take your charm off.” Marcus moved in behind me. “What if he knew it’s blocking your power and he was seeking to free you?”
“And the demons came to the brugh seeking magic,” Dad mused. “Do you think they were looking for Summer?”
They began talking, debating whether or not I was some sort of energy conduit to power the planes. I stepped away. It was easy to pull myself into the shadows.
They were wrong. I wasn’t some sort of fated being. I was a mistake.
I was a killer and a thief, and it was right that I couldn’t access my magic. If I could access my magic, why hadn’t I saved Marcus and myself from being taken in by Taggart? Why hadn’t I gotten us out of that cell?
Because you belonged in that cell. Because you didn’t want out of the cell or the execution that would follow. Because you’ve craved it since that moment you truly knew who you were.
“Summer?”
I turned, startled at the sound of Dean’s voice. I forced myself to take a deep breath and banish those dark voices in my head. I hadn’t talked to Dean much. I’d been wrapped up in meeting my parents and then in soothing Marcus.
And myself. Being around the vampire eased something deep inside me, centered me.
“Hey, Dean. Are you all right?”
“As good as I can be.” He stared at me for a moment as though trying to figure out how to handle me. “I know it’s hard to believe that Erna did that to me, that she could have had bad intentions all along.”
I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to toss out the logic that said that one of the two truths had to be correct—my parents and Dean were lying or Erna was. Despite the fact that I’d been with Erna for a decade, it was impossible for me to believe my parents were bad.
If I had to choose which world to live in, it would always be the one where my parents loved me.
“How did it happen? The stone in your head coming out, that is?”
“She was only supposed to take the stones out of your dads, but apparently the stones didn’t want to come out,” Dean explained. “She got angry. Very angry, and she forgot to focus the magic. I was on the periphery and the one she’d put in me came out. I didn’t even realize it had happened. I thought I got hit with some flying dirt or something. Kelsey found it and I’m glad she did because I felt different, but I didn’t know why.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how I don’t like tea when you make it?”
It had always seemed weird to me. “I fix it exactly the way she does. I don’t know why…of course. You would drink it because she made it. But Dean, that doesn’t mean she wants to hurt you. What she did was wrong, and she can’t be allowed to do it again, but you have to know that her people consider men to be lesser beings. That’s wrong, too, but I’m worried she did it because she thought we couldn’t trust you in the beginning.”
“Or she did it because she knew she already controlled you,” Dean said softly. “I was the one thing you insisted on, so she found a way to control me, too.”
“Why would she do that? What does she get out of it?” I’d been thinking about it since that moment she’d torn me from my mother. “We haven’t exactly had comfortable lives the last ten years. She could have settled down somewhere. With the strength of her magic, she could have made a comfortable living on any number of planes.”
“I don’t think that’s what she wanted.”
The realization of what he was saying washed over me. “You’ve been in her head. You got through whatever spell she used to hide us.”
A hint of confidence curled up his lip. “I did. Well, I got a glimpse when she tried to take you away in the forest. You’re right about how powerful her magic is. But now that my head is clear I have to wonder. She was the sixth of seven daughters, the weakest of her kin. I’ve studied up on Arete. I can’t imagine witches so powerful that Erna is their weakest link wouldn’t be on the ruling council. Yet according to Erna they were struggling to work their way up.”
“She hid her power for a long time.” At least that was what she’d told me. “She was afraid her sisters would try to take it if they realized her trials had brought forth more power.”
“Or she found a way to steal someone else’s.”
I put a hand on the charm. “How would she do it?”
“I know how I would do it,” Dean began. “I would siphon it off you. If what Charlotte says is correct and it can’t truly be contained, then that magic needs somewhere to go, and why shouldn’t it go to her?”
“Then why wouldn’t she use it? Why live in a ramshackle brugh? Why give up all her comforts? Never once has she suggested we settle down somewhere and live out our lives. We’ve struggled and been in dangerous spots.”
“I don’t know because I only had a brush against her mind before Marcus managed to get inside.”
Marcus wouldn’t have been able to complete Dean’s task. “His powers don’t work the same way yours do. He wasn’t trying to read her. He was only trying to get her to let go of me. What did you see?”
His eyes were suddenly on the darkness of the forest. “I saw a second face, something shadowy and frightening. But that didn’t scare me as much as the word she meditates on. It’s always there, always in her mind, her one goal.”
A chill went through me. “What word?”
“Transform.” He sighed and turned back to me. “She is becoming something. She is transforming, and she’s close now. I think all these years she’s been working toward this. What she transforms into, I don’t know, but when she does she will bring down vengeance on all those who harmed her, who denied her a rightful place. She will tear across the planes to have her way. That’s what I got. And Kelsey swears she saw something when Erna attacked her. She says her face briefly changed. I think she’s close to having all the magic she needs to complete her transformation.”
She’d vowed to do whatever it took. And she’d promised to come back for me.
“Bella?” Marcus moved out of the shadows and took his place at my side.
His place. The words had whispered across my brain. This was his place and he was my good right hand, my love, the heart behind my power. He was the final domino to fall in a long line that would save the planes.
I shook off the thoughts because they scared me even more than Erna did. I wasn’t some goddess who could power the planes. I didn’t have some grand destiny.
Still, I took Marcus’s hand. I was falling in love with him and it was because we fit together. That was the only destiny I needed.
“We should sleep.” Marcus stroked my hair back. “We have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow. According to Taggart we must cross two planes to get to Tír na nÓg.”
I didn’t think I would be able to sleep. “Can we sit by the stream for a while?”
“Of course.” He would always indulge me. He would sit beside me and simply be, allowing me to think.
He was everything I could want in a man.
In a king to sit at my side.
I let him start to lead me away.
“Summer?” Dean sounded wistful.
“Yes?” I looked back and he was so young and fragile. He did have a great destiny, and I prayed we’d found the right people to lead him through it.
“It looks good on you.” There was the saddest expression on his face. “Love, that is.”
He turned and walked away.
Marcus squeezed my hand and the night was quiet around us.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Zoey
I knew the minute I entered the tent that things were about to go sideways. It had been building all afternoon and evening since that moment when I’d died.
It wasn’t a big deal. Erna ha
d managed to short-circuit my heart, and the vampire blood in my system had brought me back, lickety-split. No blood. No foul. I’d died plenty of times and honestly, this one didn’t even make my top ten.
But this was the first time I’d died and Daniel didn’t have the power to bring me back.
Oh, technically he had. His blood had been in my veins, but he couldn’t give me more, and I think it hit him hard. He’d been quiet all through dinner. We’d sat around the fire eating the Vampire plane’s equivalent of MREs and talking to Summer. I’d asked her a million questions and basically enjoyed being near her.
But Daniel had been quiet, and a quiet Daniel always worried me. A quiet Daniel was a plotting Daniel.
“I’m fascinated with all this tech.” Dev was sitting on a chair that had come out of a cube of nanites. All the chairs around camp had. They were surprisingly comfy. “I’m not sure if I should take it back and have our company try to reverse engineer it or worry that these suckers are going to achieve sentience and take over the worlds.”
The tent wasn’t exactly what Dev would have provided, but it was large enough to fit the three of us comfortably, and Taggart had provided us with fresh clothes and most of what we would need. There was a big bed, three chairs, and a tiny room that would serve as a bathroom. I’d already taken what I’d been told was a sonic shower. Dev had preferred to jump in the stream, but then he could call the plants to his defense if a kelpie got him.
“I don’t think we should play with fate. We have enough to worry about with Myrddin. Let’s fix that before we start worrying about tiny machines. I just said good night to our daughter. Where’s Daniel?”
I’d sat by the fire for a long time talking to Kelsey and Dean and waiting for Summer to show up again. It was the mother in me who couldn’t go to sleep until I knew she was safe inside her tent. I’d resisted the urge to go look for her because I’d known Marcus was with her.
Dev gestured to our tiny bathroom and I could hear the hum of the shower. “He’ll be out in a minute. Is Summer comfortable? I don’t suppose she’s bunking down with Kelsey.”
I rolled my eyes and plunked myself on my faery prince’s lap. “No, babe. She’s with Marcus, and hopefully these tents are soundproof because I don’t think they’re going for celibacy.”
His jaw tightened. “I noticed she didn’t have a mark on her neck.”
If she didn’t have a mark it was because they’d completed the ceremony. She’d taken his blood. “It was inevitable. I can see the attraction between them. I know you feel it. It was as inevitable as we were. You and me and Daniel. Can you make it easier on her than it was on us?”
We’d had a lot of hurdles to jump in the beginning, and most of them had hit Devinshea. It had taken a long time and many years to get my father perfectly comfortable with my Fae husband. Once we’d had kids, Dad was suddenly all about the threesome. I didn’t want Summer to wait so long. Especially since Marcus wasn’t going to bring in a third so they could have children.
Although I did know some nice guys.
“All right. I’ll go easy on them. She does look happy with him. But I’m now worried about far more than her choice in a mate.”
“I know.” What we’d learned from Charlotte Taggart had shaken me. If she was correct, it meant Erna would definitely be back because she wouldn’t leave that source of power behind. Kelsey had told me what she’d seen and what Dean had felt from the witch. It was only a matter of time, and we needed to be ready. If we hadn’t been close and had the skills we’d had around us, she would have gotten away with Summer. “I’ll feel better when we’re in Tír na nÓg. According to the Dellacourts we should be safe there. They said the palace is locked down when it comes to dark magic.”
“I’ll be happy, too, because hopefully someone knows how to get back to the Earth plane.” Dev wrapped his arms around me. “If not, then we have to hope one of the Planeswalkers will be grateful enough to take us.”
“I don’t think it works that way.” Daniel walked out wearing nothing but a towel around his muscular body.
And I felt my faery prince’s interest rise.
I wrinkled my nose his way. “Seriously? I’m sitting on your cock but he walks out and suddenly you’re ready to go.”
One hand tightened on my hip and his other hand ran up to cup the nape of my neck. “Well, now I’m in the same space with the two people I love most in the world, and you know how I like to show my love.”
He shifted and I felt exactly what he wanted to give me.
And I had to admit that Danny looked good. Danny was my All-American hottie, with broad shoulders and muscles for days. I adored his sandy blond hair and those blue eyes that never failed to make me catch my breath.
“I do know your love language.” I kept my eyes on Danny and how low that towel was riding on his hips. “It’s been a while since I got a lesson in it though.”
Dev leaned in and I could feel the warmth of his breath against my skin. “How about we make up for lost time? Tell me, my goddess, would you like to make a baby?”
I wanted that more than anything. I wanted another chance. I’d lost that precious time with Summer, and I wanted another shot. I knew it wouldn’t be the same. I could never get back that time with her, but Danny and I had another chance, one we never thought we could have.
“Dev, we need to talk,” Daniel said quietly.
Dev leaned over and brushed his lips against mine, softly, but I could feel his magic start to warm my skin. My nipples peaked, tightening with delicious anticipation.
Before we’d been forced to this plane, we’d been having a dry spell. I’d been working on Kelsey’s wedding, and Danny and Dev had become Myrddin’s professional ass kissers, which hadn’t endeared me. Then there was the fact that we had three kids.
How long had it been since we’d thrown down hard?
This was exactly what we needed. We’d slept together the night before, but we hadn’t made love. We needed to physically connect, needed our hands on each other, needed to remind ourselves why we were stronger together.
“Have either of you really thought about what happened today?” Daniel asked, his tone still an Eeyore-like grim.
He’d been fairly quiet about his human state with the exception of complaining about the food. I’d known it was lying in wait—his fear and insecurity. It had been bound to come out.
Dev groaned and his head fell back. “Of course, I’ve thought about it. I was there. Daniel, she didn’t die. I won’t die. We’ve got so much of your blood in our system that it will take weeks, maybe months for it to be gone. We will not be stuck here for that long. I promise. Between the Fae in Tír na nÓg and the Planeswalkers, we’ll find a way home in the next couple of days. We’ll take Summer and the kid, and then we’ll have a whole new set of problems to deal with.”
“Yes, like the fact that the minute Myrddin realizes I’m human, he’ll probably kill me and take the crown himself.” Daniel moved to the small table where the clothes cube sat. All he needed to do was take it in his hand and the nanites would cover his body.
“Don’t put that on,” Dev ordered. “You know I’ll have it off you in five minutes. I mean to have my way.”
“And I mean to have my conversation,” Daniel replied. But he set the cube down. “We need to consider letting me die.”
That got me on my feet. “Don’t you dare. We don’t know anything about why this happened, so we can’t possibly know what will happen if you do that. We don’t know that you’ll turn. You could simply die and not come back. I am not willing to risk that.”
Dev stood at my side. “Nor am I. When we get back to the Earth plane, we’ll put the academics on the problem. And Sarah and her coven.”
“I don’t need any of that. It can’t have changed my DNA,” Danny insisted. “I turned when I was young. I’ll do it again and I’ll be myself.”
It was the ultimate height of frustrating irony that he’d wasted those first years as a
vampire moaning about the fact that he wasn’t human. “I will never forgive you if you do that to yourself. You’ll be leaving me and Dev, and you risk leaving your children and everyone who loves you.”
Daniel’s hands fisted at his sides. “I can’t protect like this. I can’t protect you.”
Dev’s whole body was tense now, and it wasn’t about arousal. He pointed Daniel’s way. “This. This is what you do. I thought we had moved past this, but the first time you’re vulnerable you go right back to it.”
“This?” Daniel asked. “What exactly do you mean by this?”
I knew exactly what Devinshea was talking about, but I was going to let him explain.
“You pull away. What are you going to say next? That maybe it would be better if you stayed here so you don’t drag everyone else down?”
Daniel’s eyes flared and I knew Dev had made a direct hit. “Well, now that you mention it…”
I let out a groan of pure frustration. There were definitely things about our first years as a threesome that I didn’t miss. “I suppose I’m staying here with you. Do you know that will cost us time with our daughter, and I don’t even…”
I’d been about to tell him I didn’t care that I didn’t have super strength, I was going to protect her, but he stopped me.
He put his hands on my shoulders and looked down at me. “I was not going to say that. I think you should go with Dev. Stay close to him and to Marcus. Kelsey can handle leading the team. She’ll keep an eye on the Taggarts and the Dellacourts.” He glanced over to Dev. “When you get to Tír na nÓg, introduce yourself as the inner plane’s high priest and Zoey as your goddess. Don’t mention anything about representing the Council.”
Dev’s eyes rolled. “Sure. Pretend you don’t exist. Got it. And you’ll stay here without any protection, and hey, if you die then you get to find out if you’ll turn. I’m sure that then you’ll come flying in to save the day.”