by S. M. Reine
Elise took Rylie to the safest place she knew: straight into the depths of the Palace, just outside the wards protecting the throne room.
She didn’t let the werewolf regain her footing before dragging her inside.
Rylie hit the floor on hands and knees, hands clapped to her mouth, fighting not to get sick from the transition between dimensions. Elise stood over her with her arms folded. “You’re pregnant.”
Those words seemed to shock Rylie enough that she forgot she felt ill. She lowered her hands slowly, eyes round. “What?”
“The angels didn’t spare you to be nice. They’ve been sparing pregnant women because of Leliel’s command—makes sense, considering she’s the archangel of labor. She always shared my soft spot for children.” Elise realized her error immediately and, without missing a beat, said, “She’s basically Eve’s clone, and maternal as fuck toward all babies. Even werewolf pups.”
Rylie began trembling. She grabbed the nearest banner to pull herself to her feet. “Don’t tell Abel.”
“Why? Is he the father?”
“Yes! Of course he is. Who else?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.” The fucking werewolf Alphas were breeding in the middle of a war against Heaven.
She stalked away from Rylie, trying to rein her temper in before she completely lost it. She’d been planning to rely on the girl. She’d assumed Rylie’s reluctance to shift was merely moral protest. Elise could talk her out of something like that, given enough patience.
But she couldn’t change without losing her goddamn fetus.
Why did females do that? It was as stupid as the way that her mother had allowed herself to become impregnated by Metaraon. Or the way that Stephanie and Yasir had decided to make a family after joining a cult. Why, when there were so many battles to fight, did these fucking morons decide to add vulnerable lives to a dying world?
She rounded on Rylie, fists clenched so hard that her fingernails dug into the palms. “How long before it’s out?”
“The—the baby?”
“Yes. The baby. When can you shapeshift again?”
Rylie lifted the hem of her shirt. She barely had any stomach yet. It only looked like she had eaten too much for lunch. Werewolves had excellent abs—the muscle held everything in, so even that much of a bump looked bizarre on her. “Stephanie’s been keeping an eye on me, and she thinks—”
“Stephanie.”
“She handled the twins, too,” she said, cheeks bright red.
“She’s in a cult.”
“I had to trust someone with this,” Rylie said. “Obviously you’re not Miss Sunshine about family business, I didn’t want to worry Summer, and Abel…” She bit her bottom lip. “Look, this wasn’t exactly planned. I wanted to wait to tell him until things calmed down again. I wanted us to be able to enjoy it this time.”
“How long?” Elise asked as patiently as she could manage.
“Five more months. It’s just one baby this time. It should last to the end. The first time, I ended up going into labor—”
“I don’t care.”
Rylie’s mouth snapped shut.
Five months. The war wasn’t going to wait five months. The world probably wouldn’t fucking exist in five months at this rate.
“Do you know what we saw up there?” Elise asked, pointing at the sky. “That machine, infernal and ethereal, some kind of universe manipulation—you saw what it did to the doorway. It destroyed the route to New Eden.”
The werewolf looked blank. She obviously didn’t understand.
“Metaraon quarantined Araboth, the garden that imprisoned Adam, so that there was only one way in. That one route was for Metaraon’s convenience. But I don’t see why you couldn’t cut off every pathway to prevent your enemies from reaching the dimension.”
The girl was shaking again, hands clasped over her heart. “So if that was the only door left, we wouldn’t be able to get the pack back.”
Or Marion. “Hopefully that’s the worst consequence,” Elise said grimly. “I’ve got no idea what happens when you start ripping apart the fabric of the universe like that. I need to talk to James.” She turned to leave, but Rylie caught her elbow.
“Is it okay?” she asked. “I mean, can you tell if the baby is fine? I had to partially change to fight the angels, and I’m afraid I might have gone too far.”
The fact she had the gall to ask Elise rankled. “This is a war, Rylie, and you’re one of the only werewolves left. If you think you can survive this without needing to shapeshift anyway—”
“Please. Just check, if you can.”
Elise rolled her eyes. She could probably check. Fetuses had heartbeats and brain signals, just like all other humans. She usually blocked that sense out so that she didn’t have a constant feed on the mortals in her vicinity, but there was no reason that she couldn’t check on Rylie’s pregnancy.
The idea of it appealed to Eve. Looking in on an unborn baby.
You’re part of the problem, Elise snarled at Eve, knowing that the first angel couldn’t really hear her. Bet you were popping out babies during wars, too.
Rylie looked so damn hopeful.
Elise gritted her teeth and spread her fingers over the curve of Rylie’s stomach, opening her senses beyond the point that she usually allowed. She could hear Rylie’s blood rushing through her body. Her heart was beating too fast. Her mind writhed with anxiety, so much more than she even showed in her aching eyes.
And there was a second, tiny heart beating inside her. A primitive mind stirred, little more than reflexes and muted urges. Looked like a normal, useless baby, as far as she knew. “It’s not dead,” Elise said.
Rylie sagged. “Thank God.”
“God isn’t the one who phased you out of Shamain before you got sucked into a black hole.”
“Then…thank Elise?” It was probably meant to be a joke. Elise didn’t smile. Rylie bit her thumbnail. “I know you have lost all respect for me over this, but I’m doing what I have to do. This is the only choice I could make.”
Elise let out a slow breath. She hadn’t lost respect, exactly. Just her patience. “Damn it, Rylie, this is a hell of a time to go on maternity leave. This is why you lost the pack. If you’d just fought Levi…”
“I know.” Rylie nudged the edge of the rug with her toe. “Trust me, I’ve thought about it constantly. But I made my choice.” Rylie lifted her luminous gold eyes to Elise’s. Her irises looked less like moons and more like the fires roiling outside the throne room’s windows. “This doesn’t mean I can’t help. I’m still Alpha, and I’m still more than a match for the angels. I don’t need to be sheltered. I’m going to help you with this war.” A small smile. “Which is why you really can’t tell Abel yet. He’ll wrap me up in a straitjacket and stick me in a safe corner if he finds out.”
Elise ran a hand through her hair to work out the tangles, sighing. She was half-tempted to lock the kid up in a safe room somewhere herself. “It’s not my business. I don’t care what you do.”
“Good. I can be a mother and a fighter. Just because I’m doing woman-type things doesn’t mean I’m broken.”
“Let’s not go that far.” She couldn’t help it. She ruffled Rylie’s hair. “Congratulations, or something.”
Rylie had the nerve to beam at her.
Eleven
RUNES BURNED INTO the air just a few inches above the road. The world distorted as though by waves of heat as the street lamps flickered and turned off. Then it all vanished, leaving nothing to show for the brief hit of magic except a man pulling leather gloves onto his hands again.
James donned a borrowed jacket as he strode up the street, lifting the lapels so that they sheltered his jaw from the damp island breeze. He had always been more of a cold weather man than someone who enjoyed the desert, but transitioning from Dis’s burning heat to Ireland’s soggy chill would have been a shock for anyone.
He had cast Nathaniel’s spell so that it zeroed in on the tracking
spells being cast in Ireland, and he recognized the broken walls and mossy cottages where he had arrived. It was as he’d expected—he had arrived just outside the Talamh Coven’s village.
Nobody from the coven emerged to greet him as he stepped up to the gate, and there was no warning buzz of magic when he unlatched it. Their wards were gone.
It began raining again as he quietly slipped up the road, hesitating only to look through the windows of one of the communal cottages. The tables were empty. The kitchen was clean. There was no sign of a struggle, no bodies, and no protective magic. The Talamh Coven was much too smart to leave themselves vulnerable in such a way. It could only mean that none of them were there.
Yet he did feel another kind of magic tickling at the edge of his senses. There were witches nearby. They were casting spells.
But they weren’t from his allied coven.
Elise might have been onto something when she’d suggested sending a centuria with him to investigate.
He pushed the thought away and went to one of the private cottages. It looked to have been very deliberately emptied—there was no furniture at all.
The sense of active magic grew.
James followed it back to the high priestess’s home. Its windows were as dark as the others, but energy hummed in the air, reaching out to him with gentle fingers. This wasn’t a powerful witch casting, but he or she didn’t need to be—dimensional mapping was more a matter of cleverness than sheer strength.
He pushed the front door open. It creaked softly as he entered, escaping the cold drizzle.
This cottage had been emptied, too. The only furniture remaining was a wingback chair by the fireplace. He recognized it as having belonged to the high priestess, but the figure sitting inside of it was not the woman that he’d expected to see. She was too short, too thin.
James ungloved one hand. The runes lit the space with faint blue light.
The girl was sitting with her feet propped up on the arm of the chair, her head resting on one of the wings. Her hair was brown, chin-length, and ratty; it was obvious she hadn’t had a professional haircut in too long. She had gained a little weight. She looked sickly.
And she was not happy to see James.
“Brianna?” The initial shock quickly turned to relief. “You’re awake. You’re alive.”
“Yep,” Brianna croaked. “Thanks for noticing.”
As terrible as she looked, it was still far better than the way she had looked when he had dropped her off with the Talamh Coven. She had been newly bound to Seth as his aspis when he died during the Breaking, and the shock of it had rendered her comatose. It would have been hard to look worse than that.
Even so, she wasn’t the bright, sparkling girl who had eagerly volunteered to be bound to Seth Wilder. She’d never had that glimmer of hatred in her eyes before.
He floundered for words. He felt like he probably should have made an apology to begin with, but he had a feeling that he knew how well she would take that, and he was sick of having his apologies ignored. He wanted to ask her how she felt, too, but the answer was obvious.
“Are you the witch doing the dimensional mapping?” James finally asked.
“Nope,” Brianna said. Which meant she wasn’t alone.
The floorboards creaked behind James.
He turned, unspooling magic into his fingertips too slowly, too late.
Something hard connected with the back of his skull. He hit the ground and everything went black.
James stirred at the sound of arguing.
“You can’t kill him yet.”
“Do you have any idea what he can do? Seriously, do you have the faintest clue? Because if you knew—”
“I know perfectly well, thank you. I’ve known him since he was a boy. He has spent the majority of his life haunting my daughter. I know what he’s capable of far better than you do.”
My daughter…
That voice. That accent.
He tried to lift his head, but his body was impossibly heavy. It took all his willpower just to peel his eyelids open. He was in a dark bedroom. It was still nighttime and still raining. He couldn’t have been unconscious for long.
“Then let me kill him before he wakes up,” said a man.
“Are you a coward?”
“I’m just practical enough to know that none of us can match him once he’s awake. That’s all.”
Gathering his strength, James lifted his head to look down at his body. Someone had tied cloth tightly around his fists and duct-taped them to his wrists, like makeshift mittens. It wasn’t the first time that he’d encountered someone smart enough to restrict use of his hands, but the only person to do that to him before was…
Anthony Morales.
The door had swung open and the young man stood on the other side, arms folded, a hatred nearly identical to Brianna’s twisting his face into an ugly mask. At least he’d given up on grooming that pencil mustache. He had a full beard and shaggy hair. But all the attention he had neglected to give his hair seemed to have been turned instead to his body, as his arms were twice as thick around as the last time James had seen him, exposed by a shirt with the sleeves torn off.
For the first time, Anthony actually looked intimidating. Even so, it was the woman at his side that made James’s mouth go dry.
She wore a full-length dress belted at her tiny waist. She was short, barely above Anthony’s elbow, and nearly overwhelmed by her brunette curls, which gave her heart-shaped face the look of a doll’s. Her full lips and cheekbones were incredibly familiar. James had spent many, many hours looking at a woman with features very much like hers.
It was Ariane Kavanagh, Elise’s mother.
“Fuck me,” Anthony said when he realized that James’s eyes were already open.
Ariane slapped his chest lightly. “Watch your language.” She hefted a black purse on her shoulder and slipped into the room. “Hello, James.” She almost made it sound friendly, but her hard eyes told the truth.
James was definitely not in friendly territory.
Ariane sat on the bed beside him. The mattress barely sank under her weight. This close, he could see that she had aged significantly over the last few years, finally beginning to catch up with James. She should have been older than him, but spending years as a Palace hostess in the City of Dis had suspended her in time, leaving her the same age as the daughter who now ruled. Her eyes were finally imprinted with the faint hint of crow’s feet. Her roots were graying.
“Have you nothing to say to me?” Ariane asked lightly. James couldn’t seem to gather the strength to respond, and she smiled. “That would be the potion. You are drugged, mon ami.”
“Not drugged enough,” Anthony muttered.
She shot a look at him. “You can leave us alone now. He won’t hurt me.”
“Fucking stupid.”
“Language,” she said again.
Anthony rolled his eyes and disappeared down the hall, leaving the door open.
James managed a small groan. Ariane opened her purse, picking through its contents. “I’m sure you’re feeling terrible. I understand. This potion I’ve given you is not a particularly gentle one; you will feel terrible for hours after its effects begin to wear off.” She plucked a bottle from her purse. “This one will deepen your paralysis.”
He tried to clench his jaw, tried to turn his head. It took no effort for Ariane to pull his chin down and pour the contents of the bottle into his mouth.
It was either swallow or suffocate, and James’s instincts made the choice for him. The potion burned sickly in his stomach.
He had always thought that Elise had gotten her hardness and cruelty specifically from Isaac Kavanagh, her father and the former Inquisitor for the Palace. But now he thought that Ariane wasn’t without hard edges of her own. At that moment, in fact, she looked frighteningly like her daughter, only much more petite.
“I’ll take care of the talking for the both of us,” Ariane said. “I don’t hold
any particular grudge against you, but young Monsieur Morales has a point about how dangerous you are, and I may yet allow him to have his way with you.”
A way that probably involved a bullet in the skull.
“Fortunately, for your sake, I need you,” she went on. “I’ve found a path to New Eden but don’t possess the ability to reach it, especially now that the fissure has closed. Do you know anything about the fissure closing, James?” She didn’t bother waiting for him to attempt speaking. “You can help me reach New Eden.”
How could she know about New Eden? It was frustrating to have so many questions and no ability to ask them. He twisted his fingers inside the sweaty confines of the duct-taped mittens, trying to find a hem to pick at.
“I’ll make it as simple a task as possible,” Ariane said. “You only need to get me inside and leave a way out. I believe that Anthony, Brianna, and I will be able to take care of the rest.” She pulled another potion out. Its contents were sludgy and red. “This will restore your ability to speak.”
The moment it touched his lips, he regained feeling in his tongue. He worked his jaw around.
“Why?” James asked. The word hurt coming out of his chest.
“You aren’t allowed to know.”
He searched his thoughts for a reason that Ariane Kavanagh might want to get into New Eden. She had spent time sheltered in Araboth with Adam—perhaps she’d made a friend that she needed to contact? It seemed unlikely. Her lover, Metaraon, had been viciously controlling. He also seemed to be an unlikely reason to want to enter the city, considering that Adam had ripped his head off.
Unless…
James’s gaze dropped to her flat stomach again. When they had been in Araboth together, Ariane had been pregnant with Metaraon’s child, on the verge of giving birth. That had been years ago now. Her second child would have been…what, four years old now?
The name dawned over him.
“Marion,” James said.
Ariane turned pale. “You can’t know.”
He hadn’t given the name enough thought. He had wondered frequently whom Elise might go to war over, but not the name itself, or the fact that it sounded French. To be fair, he’d assumed that Ariane was dead after her time in Araboth—but he should have thought it through. He should have known.