by Chloe Neill
“It is the power of oppression,” Uriel said. “Those who came before were ignorant. We do not blame them for their actions; they knew no better. Magic came to this land slowly, over time. Those who were given the gift first were believed to be infected. Dangerous. Deadly.”
“They believed their world was under threat from magic,” continued Eae. “That it was a punishment, a way to control and terrorize. Beings with magic, beings of magic, were locked away, until they became too numerous to ignore.”
Camael picked up the story. “Then they were punished. Tortured. Reeducated, although there was no education in what they did. Eventually the populace believed the danger large enough that a new solution had to be found.”
“A permanent solution,” Uriel said. “One that required magic. Many opposed its use even in this scenario. But others believed it was the only way to stem the tide.”
“The Abethyl,” I said, and he nodded.
“The rock was pulled from the Undine Mountains, the carvings intended to perform the most sacred of rituals. To absorb the magic they believed was so evil.”
It was, like Malachi had suggested, not unlike casting off. But instead of my placing magic into the object, the object pulled out the magic on its own. Absorbed it, like rice absorbing moisture in a saltshaker.
“It was used on nearly one hundred citizens before the practice was stopped,” Camael said.
“And why was it stopped?” Liam asked.
“Because they came to their senses.” Eae slipped her hands into the folds of her gown. “Not immediately, mind. And not without debate, discussion. It was tragedy that turned the tide—an illness that mutated, began to kill children. Magic, they finally acknowledged, was a tool that could be wielded for evil, or for good. They decided to try the good.”
“And it was that simple?” Rachel asked, shifting her gaze from the architecture to the angels. “Suddenly, they decide everything is good?”
“There is nothing simple about that,” Uriel said. “But our community determined the conversion was necessary, and so the conversion was carried out.”
The conversion. I guessed that was a more polite term for “coercion.”
“And the Devil’s Snare?” she asked.
“It was intended as a punitive measure,” Uriel said. “To remove the magic of those who refused to accept the will, the consensus. Fortunately, it proved unnecessary. Magic, as it turns out, is its own reward.”
That might have been the party line, but wasn’t the answer simpler? That the beings they’d wanted to punish just brought their bad behavior into our world? They certainly weren’t going to admit that here and now, but I’d have bet a month’s supply of ice that I was right.
“We host the Abethyl in the Citadel as a reminder of what came before, and what we have accomplished.” Camael gestured to it. “To remind us that magic is a gift, and should be wielded as such. But certainly should be wielded.”
“If you had the Abethyl,” Liam asked, “which could do that already, why did you need the Devil’s Snare?”
“Because the Abethyl was not strong enough,” Malachi said grimly, eyes on Camael, “its effects too slow, too narrow. The absorption takes time—hours for any one individual. Together with the Inclusion Stone, they could target hundreds at a time.”
“And the effect would be nearly instantaneous,” Uriel said. “It was an efficient idea.” He linked his hands in front of him. “If ultimately unnecessary.” His gaze shifted to Malachi. “And now you wish to use it again. On people of the Beyond.”
“On invaders of Earth,” Gavin said.
“Without it,” Malachi said, “there is little hope to save their lands from the Seelie threat.”
“Are their lands worth so much trouble?”
“Was Elysium worth so much trouble? When the rebellion came, did you simply abandon it to the Court of Dawn?”
Camael’s gaze went cold. “Are you implying something, Commander?”
“There is nothing to imply,” Malachi said. “It is the humans’ home—their place of memory—and they do not wish to lose it. We can help them.”
There was silence for a moment as Camael regarded Malachi. “We are, of course, sympathetic to the cause and understand the havoc the Court can wreak. But surely you know we cannot release the Abethyl. It is a touchstone, a symbol.”
“We’ve come a long way,” Rachel said. “We need your help, and it’s help you can offer.”
“Our hands are tied,” Camael said.
“Then come with us,” she said. “Come back with us to Earth—to Terra—and help us defeat the Court.”
“We cannot interfere,” Camael said.
“Now,” Rachel said. “You mean you can’t interfere now. Because choosing not to help for the last eight years has been its own kind of interference, hasn’t it?”
Her tone was chilly, and the ice in her eyes was decidedly unfriendly. But there was approval in Malachi’s eyes. Maybe the gap between them could be bridged.
“Again, we understand your frustration. It is simply that you do not understand our ways.” Eae’s voice was equally pleasant and condescending, the voice of a parent explaining something to a recalcitrant child.
“You have traveled far,” Camael said. “You will stay here tonight as honored guests. Rooms shall be prepared for you.”
We looked at Malachi. While I, for one, could certainly use a rest, he’d know better than the rest of us whether that was wise.
“That is kind and appreciated,” Malachi said, nodding as Camael rose and walked away, presumably to make arrangements.
* * *
• • •
Malachi warned us with a look not to talk, so we waited in awkward silence, looking around, smiling occasionally at the lovely Paras who glanced our way, and generally being uncomfortable.
We were escorted up another staircase that curved gracefully to the third floor. The banisters—marble—were carved with happily writhing bodies that curved beneath our fingers.
“For you,” the guide said, gesturing at me and Liam, then opened two massive carved wooden doors. She extended a hand, clearly intended us to walk inside, but we looked back at the others.
“Where will we be?” Gavin asked. “We’re all pretty close. Family, really.”
“Of course,” the woman said magnanimously. “You’ll all be staying in this complex.” She looked at me. “I understand yours is the only room . . . for a couple?”
“Correct,” Rachel answered. “The rest of us would appreciate separate rooms.”
“In that case,” the woman said, “the chimes will sound when dinner is prepared.” She gestured to a hanging display of delicate bells. “You will be escorted.”
We walked into our room and she closed the doors behind us, leaving us alone.
I pulled off my backpack, dropped it onto the floor, and looked around.
Calling it a “room” hardly did it justice. It was a palace, with stone floors and arched ceilings with gold stenciling.
The room was at least thirty feet long. A platform poster bed took up one side of the room, all made of pink granite, natch. And on the other side, fragrant water steamed in an enormous pool built into the granite floor.
The wall opposite the door was open to the city and covered by gauzy white linen. Each time the curtains swayed, they revealed a bit of the city beyond. The breeze was deliciously cool, and the air smelled of wisteria.
I pushed aside the curtain and walked to the heavy balustrade, the stone cold beneath my fingers, and looked down at the city sparkling below.
Liam moved behind me, the heat of his body and his solidity a comfort, even in the midst of apparent luxury.
“It would be easy to live here,” I said. “Constant electricity. Hot water on demand. Plenty of food and drink. Cool air, mild climate. And un
like humans, they didn’t incarcerate us the second we walked through.”
I wouldn’t deny the idea of settling into this drowsy kind of life had some appeal. Assuming I could find some way to balance my magic, and Liam could find some way to deal with his magically created desire.
“In fairness, we didn’t come through solely to attack and destroy them.”
“Acknowledged,” I said. “Still . . .”
“Still,” he agreed.
“I know New Orleans isn’t perfect,” I said. “It’s old and decayed and gritty and occasionally stinky. And it’s hot. But it’s also, I guess, rich. Layered. Complex.”
“It’s real,” he said, slipping an arm around my waist as he stood beside me. “From the Ursuline Convent to Storyville, Bourbon Street to Devil’s Isle. New Orleans has always been New Orleans. And usually without apology.”
We stood in silence for a moment, looking over the undeniably beautiful, but alien, land.
“It’s handcrafted and artisanal,” I said quietly.
Liam looked at me, a confused smile at one corner of his mouth. “What did you say?”
“Handcrafted and artisanal. I hate those words, the way they’re used. Hate when they’re applied to modern crafts, like we’re the only ones—the first—to come up with the idea of actually making things. They ignore everything that came before them. They’re . . . plastic words. They’re fake labels. And this place feels the same. Like a pretty shell that’s been laid over all the pain that came before.”
“Like there’s no past,” Liam said quietly. “Just an inoffensive future.”
“Yeah.” I turned away from the view, looked back into the room. “And that pool of a bath looks pretty inoffensive right now. I’m exhausted, and I don’t think there’s a single part of my body that doesn’t ache.”
“Well, we did cross a foreign land on foot today, so it’s understandable. We’ll do dinner and then we’ll take a break. Get some rest.” He began to knead my shoulder, digging into a knot, which sent delicious shivers down my back.
“Can you just do that for six or twelve hours?”
“I don’t think I have six or twelve hours of activity in me.”
I looked at him. “Are you okay? Magic-wise?”
“I’m exhausted,” he said, and now I could see it in his eyes. Not because he looked physically tired, but because he looked more defeated than I’d seen him in a long time.
“You’re still fighting it.”
He nodded. “Every second. Whatever is inside me, it’s needy. It can feel the magic, and it wants more.”
“It’s hungry.”
“It’s voracious,” he said, and sounded relieved that I understood. “I’m trying to keep it at a low murmur in the back of my mind. Not a screaming banshee.”
“Maybe I can help,” I said, and clutched his T-shirt to pull him closer, lifted my mouth to his. When he groaned, the sound rich and harsh and full of desire, I deepened the kiss, drawing him closer, drawing him in, trying to take his mind away from the struggle.
My struggle was different from his, but only in form. At base, it was the same. Human versus magic. And he was the one who’d seen my particular demon, who’d pushed me to find another way.
I knew a kiss wasn’t a permanent solution. But when he melted against me, his lips soft and seductive, his hand at my waist, pulling me closer, I knew I’d done what little I could.
And then the chimes sounded.
He growled, nipped my lip. “We will finish this later.”
“We absolutely will,” I said, and opened my eyes, was relieved to find mostly blue ones staring back at me. “And I’m planning some strategic escalations.”
“I’m intrigued, Claire-Bear.”
Damn Gunnar. “Can we forget about that, maybe?”
“Never. ’Cause you’re my Claire-Bear now.” He sighed, wrapped his arms around me. “This time tomorrow, we’ll be home again. I’m going to hold to that.”
“But without the Abethyl?” I wondered. “After we traveled all this way.”
“I imagine Malachi has a plan. And it won’t be long before we see it in action.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We cleaned up as best we could, but I still felt grubby in a T-shirt and cargo pants, and wondered if I should have thought to pack something more formal for the dinner.
Frankly, while I hadn’t thought the Paras of the Beyond would attack—if they were that violent, wouldn’t they have handled the Court long ago?—I also hadn’t expected the apparent hospitality. Hiking shoes were going to look weird beside gauzy tunics and sandals. But I managed to wash my face, brush my hair, tidy up a little.
We were met outside our doors by the wee deer and taken back downstairs and onto the lawn on the other side of the Citadel.
The courtyard was, as all other places we’d seen in Elysium so far, enormous. There didn’t seem to be a shortage of real estate here. A vast flat lawn with a view of the hills in the distance, dotted here and there with statuary, carefully pruned shrubs, and covered stone colonnades for lounging. Birdsong was a pretty background melody, although I didn’t actually see any birds.
Maybe they’d been magically corrected, too.
I looked down at the deer and its innocent eyes, wondered if it felt odd about escorting us. But I couldn’t read its expression. Because it was a deer.
We followed it to the patio, large slabs of marble in the dappled shade of the fabric woven between stone beams above the colonnade. There were tables in the shade, and the scent of roasting meats was in the air.
“You may sit,” the deer said, then trotted on its tiny hooves to the lawn, where it began to gnaw the manicured grass.
“It’s so cute,” Rachel said. “And so unsettling.”
“Do they eat deer here?” Gavin asked quietly as we took seats at a table near the edge of the colonnade. And we’d brought our backpacks. Both in case we needed to make a quick exit.
“Deer, yes,” Malachi said with a smile. “But not magi—creatures who can shift forms. His name is Terrence.”
Of course it was.
Other Paranormals began to mill through the space, take their own seats. Less variety, I thought, than the Paras in Devil’s Isle, but that was probably because there were both Court and Consularis there. I guessed only the winners made it to the table at the Citadel.
They looked at us as they passed, some with interest, some with lusty gazes aimed specifically at Malachi. We were curiosities; he was a hot dish. Rachel seemed to make a point of ignoring the glances, and that said enough.
“We have prepared a feast to tempt the senses,” said a Para with pale green skin and short horns, possibly a relative of Moses’s, “and share the bounty of our world.” He gestured as four men bore a very large roast beast on an enormous wooden tray.
They placed the tray on a table, and another man stepped toward it, began to carve the beast. Another cadre of people came out with plates laden with food. They stopped at the platter, waited for the carver to load meat onto their plates, and then surrounded our table. With the synchronized movement of dancers, they lowered the plates to the table in front of us.
There was so much food piled up I couldn’t see the ceramic beneath.
The beast was . . . a beast, and that’s about as much as I could identify it. Some of the smells of the other dishes were familiar—roasted meat and spices and herbs—but the colors were strange. There were blue strips, flowers in some sort of jelly, smears of bright green and dark fuchsia pastes, and more of the honora berries we’d seen earlier today.
Glasses and goblets were placed around the plate and filled with what smelled like wine, and more platters of food were put on the table until it was as full as the individual plates.
“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Gavin said. “If someone tries to take you down a
chocolate tunnel, decline.”
We just looked at him.
“Am I wrong?”
“Eat,” Liam said, and picked up the two-tined fork mounted to a holder at the edge of his plate. “This is probably your only chance to take a meal in the Beyond.”
“And it’s very good deer,” Malachi said, chewing a bit of the meat.
We stared hard at the platter, and I imagined big eyes staring back at me.
“That’s a joke,” he said. “I’m developing my sense of humor.”
“Not fast enough,” Gavin said, pushing back his plate. “Not fast enough.”
* * *
• • •
Wave after wave of Paras brought in a seemingly endless supply of trays and food. We ate and watched and were surrounded by the din of conversation as Paras chatted, laughed, moved from table to table to see and be seen. None of them talked to us.
It was uncomfortable to be different. To be vulnerable. And to be surrounded by so much excess when the Zone was filled with so much want. A single tray of food would have fed a Devil’s Isle family for a week.
“Is it because we’re foreign, or because we lack acceptable magic?” Liam wondered, sipping spiced wine from a golden goblet.
“Both,” Malachi said. “I think you are an affront to their unity. To their conception of their own magic.”
His tone wasn’t unpleasant, but matter-of-fact.
“Is that why we’re here?” I asked. He shifted his gaze to me, and while he didn’t smile, there was a kind of approval in his eyes.
“In part,” he admitted.
He hadn’t eaten more than a few bites; he’d spent most of dinner staring at the dancers, their apparent contentedness.
“How are you doing?” Rachel asked, concern obvious in her eyes.
“It is strange to be here, in surroundings that should be so familiar to me, and still feel so out of place.”
“You haven’t been home in a long time,” I said. “I imagine everything starts to feel unfamiliar after so much time has passed.”