She was right—but no way in any hell was I staying home. Not when it was Julian out there. “How many of your field agents are also specialized seers? I’m not just talking about positioning myself as the querent. I can be an active channel for their visions. You know Madison’s work on this, right? I can open up my third eye, and let them use it to see.”
Grayson glanced away, and by that I knew she was wavering. “Besides,” I added, “we’re talking about going toe-to-toe with the Unseelie. Having somebody with you who’s emotionally invested in the target will help, not hurt.”
The set of her jaw told me that including that last bit might not have been the best idea. Sure, my empathic defenses would be an asset . . . but they would come at the price of my ability to do practically any other magic at the same time.
“You should take us both.”
That came from behind me, and I recognized Neeya’s voice, even though I’d never heard her sound like that. She’d always been more volatile than the other Fiain, more ready to show her feelings, but now she sounded like Julian: detached, almost clinical. Utterly focused on the task at hand. She came up beside me and said, “If you try to cut your way through the Unseelie to grab Julian, it’s entirely possible they’ll sacrifice him before you can get close. I can pull him out.”
Grayson hadn’t been to the practices in Toby’s basement; she didn’t know what Neeya meant. I did, and my stomach executed a backflip at the thought. “Teleportation. Neeya, it isn’t safe.”
She regarded me with eyes that, but for their color, might have been twin to Julian’s. I’d seen this look on him dozens of times: cool and confident, and not willing to be questioned. “Do you think I would risk him if I weren’t sure? I can do this. You have my word.”
Promises worked better with things that were under the promiser’s control. Neeya might be confident, but that was no guarantee she could actually pull it off. But tactically, she was probably right.
And in the end, I trusted that she wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.
There were people queuing up to talk to Grayson. She stood for another three seconds, considering. They felt like the longest three seconds of my life. Then she said, “Kim, you’re in. Go help the divination team. Neeya, I’ll decide after I’ve seen what the predictions say. Be ready to go if we need you.”
~
“Third eye channeling?” The head of the divination team stared at me in disbelief. “I’ve never heard of that.”
I opened my mouth to explain about Professor Madison’s research, then closed it. Any attempt to summarize it would just make it obvious how little I knew. “Look, the hard part’s on me. Just give me something to scry in—a crystal ball, a showstone, a bowl of ink, whatever—and set up a telepathic link. Once I’m ready, you should be able to use my mind as your focus. You’ll basically be looking through me at the focus I’m using. Do you follow?”
“No,” he said, “but I’m willing to try. Thanks to their wards, we’ve gotten bugger-all so far.”
Convincing him was the easy part. The hard part was actually doing it.
Somebody brought me clothes while the diviners prepped. It was a Guardian’s uniform: jacket and trousers of dark green, the silver buttons printed with pentacles. They gave it to me because it offered a degree of magical defense, but I couldn’t help reading a different meaning into it. Registration was a mere formality; right now, flinging myself headfirst into danger, I was a Guardian.
That thought should have distracted me. Instead it gave me focus, steadying my heart and breathing as I settled myself in front of a gleaming obsidian mirror in a plain silver frame. It wasn’t as good as a familiar focus would have been, but I hadn’t yet replaced the one Julian gave me, which had been ruined during our battle the previous fall.
I couldn’t think about that. Only one kind of magic was helped by dwelling on emotional baggage, and this wasn’t it.
The problem was, I couldn’t approach this divination the usual way, either. Normally I would try to put myself into a precognitive trance, directing my thoughts toward the topic on which I needed information. But that would warp the results here, because I was too close to the subject. For the other agents to use my closeness, I had to clear my mind as much as possible: pure meditation, releasing thoughts and feelings until there was nothing left, nothing but the image of the mirror in front of me.
And I had to do it fast. No pressure.
But my mother had prepared me for this, long before I became a wilder, before I even manifested psychic powers. I’d started practicing meditation at the age of seven, under the guidance of my Yan Path teacher. A lot of his lessons had backfired, giving me difficulty with ceremonial magic instead of a talent for it . . . but the meditation had stuck.
The experience was unnerving. I woke from my trance to hear other agents giving rapid-fire reports about things I didn’t understand, things they’d gotten from me. The head of the team clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Good work. We’ve got a time frame, an estimate of numbers and positioning—even an educated guess at tactics. Where the hell did you learn that?”
“Annals of the Future,” I said faintly, trying to blink away the sense of missing time. “Spring issue. Last year.” He gaped at me, and I was glad all over again that I hadn’t tried to explain.
Half an hour had gone by, and I didn’t remember a bit of it. All that knowledge had passed through me, but none of it had left a mark in my memory.
Except for one thing. It was with me, I thought, because the team leader hadn’t asked for it; the knowledge had slipped by stealth into my mind, and there it lingered. I knew why the Unseelie could use Julian’s life to undo the geas, as if he were the tab on a zipper and would pull the whole thing apart.
Laying the geas all those centuries ago had required the participation of a willing sacrifice.
Which meant the Unseelie were playing Julian like a fiddle. I had no doubt now that they had removed the shield from him; he would have tested that, triggering it on himself to make sure they’d told the truth. With his freedom in hand, and being told his death could give that gift to everyone else . . .
He wouldn’t just be willing. He’d cut his own throat if they asked him to.
And I, in my innocence, had fed that. My inability to live with being gutted was a fresh spur to Julian’s determination.
Why could I not have been a reason for him to live?
These were the thoughts cutting at me as I went at last to the scryers’ ritual circle. But here, at least, my distraction was useful, because my job now was to do no magic at all. All I had to do was sit and think about Julian.
Nobody was linked to my mind this time. I had privacy in my own head for all the memories, the good and the bad alike. My first sight of Julian, at the First Manifestation monument, when I’d had to remind myself not to gawk at the university’s new wilder. Dinner in the Earle dining hall, me and Julian and Robert and Liesel, laying the first stones of a foundation that had withstood an Otherworldly storm two years later. His habits of self-reliance, even secrecy, which frustrated me even as I tried to respect them. Conversations about the psychic sciences; conversations about inconsequential things, like why the newest campus buildings were invariably the ugliest.
Samhain. Growing closer to Julian, and then defending him against an attack neither of us could explain. Everything that had followed afterward — shouting at him for endangering me, then flinging myself into harm’s way for his sake. The battle I tried not to think about, when he saved me and I tried to kill him. Our life here in D.C., all the little domestic notes, our shoes on a rack together and frozen lasagna in the oven, and the astonishing transformation when I understood that Julian craved touch as much as he shunned it.
Him holding me after I was gutted, and swearing he would do everything he could to save me once again.
Even dying. But I wasn’t going to let him do that.
“Got it,” someone said, and my eyes snapped open.
They’d built a framework for the gate right next to the scrying circle, silver bars inscribed with sigils. The strike team was waiting, a mixed crew of Guardians and SIF agents in tac gear, festooned with amulets and carrying—guns? One guy was stashing additional clips in his vest, and I saw something painted on the side. For an instant I mistook it for the letter H; then the tilted cross-bar registered on me. Not H, but Hagalaz: the rune of destructive force. Was this what Grayson had told that woman to get authorization for? What was in those bullets?
Now was not the time to ask. I scrambled to my feet and went to join them. One of the wilders was familiar: Inola, whom I’d met at Toby’s house. Then she stepped to one side and I saw that Neeya was there, too; apparently the divination team’s report had persuaded Grayson to let her come along. Or maybe she’d just argued until Grayson gave up. She was silent and white-faced, her eyes distant with the look of a person focusing intensely on something other than the world around her. I bit down on the urge to tell her not to grab Julian unless there was no other choice. If she did have to teleport him out, I wanted her as prepared as she could be.
We reached out to one another with our minds, linking in a web that would allow us to communicate faster than words. I became hyper-aware of each person’s location, the Fiain glowing in my subconscious like points of fire, the other Guardians and the SIF agents shining more dimly. And Grayson, the keystone of this arch, the mind that would direct our entire operation. She didn’t have to give orders; we felt them instinctively. I shifted my weight forward onto the balls of my feet, ready to spring.
The gate began to hum, the sigils carved into its bars sparking to life. I knew, without being told, that we weren’t just opening a passage to the Otherworld; our sorcerers were trying to bend the gate, putting us as close to our target as we could get without landing on top of it. The image was there in my head: a hill overlooking a broad river. Broader than I recognized, and the hill higher—but it was Bellevue, south along the Potomac in Maryland. The Unseelie hadn’t taken Julian far at all.
The air between the silver bars flared and shimmered. Moving as one, we leapt through, out of our world and into the Otherworld.
~
It was like the shock of cold water, except it didn’t end: there was no numbness, no adjusting to the new environment. Every shred of breath went out of me, and I had to struggle to draw it back in. All the strangeness of a wilder’s presence—the strangeness I had lost track of when I became one—this place was all that and more. The mortal part of me wanted to flee home, while the part that was sidhe sang that this was home, at last, at last.
Around me was forest, thick and primeval, like something out of an old fairy tale. The darkness was near-total beneath the interlacing branches, only the occasional white trunk of a birch standing out like bone. I could hear animal life in those shadows, scurrying away from our sudden presence. I hadn’t known, when the Unseelie took me to the Otherworld the first time, that its geography mirrored ours . . . but this was the valley of the Potomac River, as it might have been had human hands never touched it.
I scraped my sweaty palms along the sides of my uniform, my breath coming fast and shallow. I hadn’t thought about this before I asked Grayson to bring me—hadn’t realized what it would mean to return here, to put myself in the Otherworld, to remember all the things I wished I didn’t. I was a fucking idiot for coming along. This was where they lived, the Unseelie, the golden-eyed monsters that had invaded my mind and warped my thoughts until I didn’t know which way was up. They could be out there in the shadows right now. They were out there: that was the whole reason we’d come here, to fight them. But I couldn’t have mustered the focus for a levinbolt if you paid me.
Neeya stepped in front of me and hissed, “Kim!”
I stared at her, trying form words and failing. With a snarl, she balled up one hand and punched me under the ribs, hard.
Back home, it might have been a bad idea. Violence could have been the trigger that sent me over the edge into a full-blown panic attack. Here, though, her fist was almost comforting: a human touch, a reminder of flesh and blood instead of the inhuman magic that transformed me last fall. I abruptly became aware that I’d been broadcasting my distress along our mental link to the entire strike team, and Grayson was standing three paces away. What she would have done to me, I didn’t know—but I held out one hand, wordless assurance that I would be all right. That I could pull myself together.
By the set of her jaw, she regretted having brought me along. But it was too late to send me back. We had to keep moving, before the Unseelie found a way to stop us.
Our scouts had already fanned out, interspersing Guardians with armed SIF agents, forming a perimeter while we got our bearings. Inola rose into the air; I caught the brief flash of surprise as she found himself ascending much faster, with much less effort, than she expected. This entire place was like a mild dose of fairy dust. Magic was almost as easy as breathing.
Unfortunately, that would be even more true for our enemies.
The gate sorcerers hadn’t managed to get us precisely where we needed to be, but they’d gotten us pretty far. Inola shared an image of rivers, a broad one curving off to the side while a narrower one cut along behind us; that was the confluence of the Potomac and the Anacostia. We were on the correct bank, at least. Now we had to get south, through where Congress Heights would be in the mortal world, to the promontory known as Bald Eagle Hill.
It was two miles through the trees, with every nerve hyper-tuned for sounds, movement, the first touch of psychic influence against our minds. I stayed in the center of the group, because this was training I hadn’t gotten yet: how to keep watch on the move, shifting our shields to protect against the most likely avenues of attack. I hadn’t been getting enough exercise, either; pretty soon my heart rate and breathing were up for reasons other than fear.
I used that. My pounding pulse became a metronome, a mantra, a way to banish extraneous thoughts. It was possible my usefulness had ended with my role in the divination and the scrying, giving everyone the link they needed to break through the Unseelie wards. I refused to accept that, though. Julian had saved me once. Now I would return the favor . . . and atone for the battle last winter when, obedient to my Unseelie masters, I tried to kill him.
Misdirection.
The thought came through our link, crisp and clear. One of the scouts had noticed us going wide of our mark, led astray by a telepathic effect. We were close; with the charm broken, I could see the shadow of the hill rising up before us, its crest barren of trees.
I flung my senses outward, seeking the one mind I knew they couldn’t hide from me.
He was there, charging up the hill. We’d caught them before they were quite ready; they’d meant to perform the ritual at dawn, and although the sky was beginning to grey in the east, the sun had not yet broken the horizon. There was significance to the dawn, the symbolism of light dawning—and I knew, in the part of my subconscious that touched on deep memories when the diviners used me as a channel, that the original sacrifice had been performed at sunset. But that didn’t mean they would wait.
Fire roared toward us, searing and unsubtle. Grayson was already linked with two other agents, and they cut it apart. In the wake of that blast, one of the armed SIF guys took aim and fired, and an inhuman shriek split the air. Hagalaz: the rune of destruction. The ammunition was filled with pellets of pure iron, and it burst apart when it struck, sending the poisonous metal deep into the body of its target.
I could have lashed out at the Unseelie, using what I’d learned to distract them while my teammates did something more effective. But as much as a part of me rejoiced at the sound of that scream, we hadn’t come here to kill them.
We’d come here to stop the ritual.
Grayson’s go-ahead came almost before the thought formed in my own mind. I ignored the battle around me and reached out to stop Julian.
They’d put wards around him,
but those were fraying as he ran, as the sidhe turned their attention to defense and iron shredded the air. My first tactic was deceptively simple, a telekinetic tripline he leapt over without bothering to counter it. That was only the feint, though, the distraction to let me get at his mind. I formed my energy into a blade, aiming to bore through his shields—
There weren’t any. Julian’s mind was as open as the sky above us, bare of every wall it had ever held. Not just the deep shield, but all his personal defenses, every technique he’d been taught at the Center and studied under Grayson’s eye. For these, the moments he intended to be his last, he was as vulnerable as the infant he had once been.
I slammed into that vulnerability with all the force of a wrecking ball. Julian staggered, dropped to his knees. The Unseelie on either side of him dragged him up and continued toward the summit of the hill. A stone waited there, ready to receive his body, but I was not going to let him go. Not even sparing an instant for apology, I took over his mind, paralyzing his limbs and then turning them against his captors.
Or I tried to. He had one defense that didn’t go away with his shields, that only got stronger without them: his determination to die. He had fixed his soul on this sacrifice, on the belief that by giving up his life he would save us all. That belief burned through my control, our weapon against the sidhe now turned against me. He lurched onward, half-carried by the sidhe, and they had the attention to spare for everything I sent against them, because I wasn’t ready for this, I hadn’t learned enough.
Neeya was ahead of me, blasting a path. We ran up the hill after Julian and the Unseelie, agents flanking us on either side. I gave up on attacking, gave up on control, just swamped him under with my desperation. They were lying to him, they were using him; I was going to lose Julian to this crusade, and all it would do was hand the victory to our enemies. His grief was immediate, and his regret. He didn’t want to hurt me—and I clung to that, tried to draw it out, tried to make him care more about me than about this moment. But it did no good: he’d made his choice, and even I couldn’t turn him from it.
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