by Dean Murray
I tried to reach for the emotions I would need to burn another peak memory, but the blow to my head had left me feeling like my emotions were wrapped in gauze. Jace conjured up a sun lance of his own, but Fenrir dodged aside at the last instant and I knew that all the attack had done was restore some of the strength the big wolf had lost recently.
Jace yelled and charged forward. Fenrir sprang toward my boyfriend, but then all of a sudden someone else barreled into Fenrir from the side.
It was a woman, one who was about my size, with short, beautiful dark hair and skin that had an odd shimmer to it in the artificial light from the lantern. I thought for a minute that hitting my head so hard had made me hallucinate. There didn't seem to be any other explanation.
The newcomer couldn't weigh more than a hundred and thirty pounds, but somehow she collided with Fenrir hard enough to knock the two-ton wolf sprawling end for end. I was still trying to get my feet to work, trying to blink my eyes clear of this impossible scene, but she'd grabbed Jace's ax from where it was buried in Fenrir's side as he'd gone cartwheeling away from her, and as Fenrir bounced off of the wall and came around snarling she hit him across the face with the haft of the ax hard enough that the metal deformed.
Jace sped past me, slowing just long enough to grab his sword, and then he headed straight towards the fight. I heard Kat moving behind me as she came out of the near trance required for her to heal her leg, but it was obvious to me that she wasn't going to make it over in time to help out—the fight was progressing too quickly.
The blow from the ax handle had staggered Fenrir, but he still shifted back to the offensive fast enough that the newcomer had to jump to one side. Fenrir spun and snapped at her. I could see that he was trying to back her into a corner, but she was just as fast as he was, and Jace was close enough that Fenrir had to worry about him too.
Jace slashed at Fenrir—an attack designed more to wound than to kill, but one that Fenrir had to honor. As the massive dire wolf shifted his weight around to the side, the woman stepped in and slammed her ax into Fenrir with enough force to sink the ax more than two feet into his back.
A few seconds later Fenrir was nothing more than a corpse that was melting into the air, and Bethany was standing on my sternum. "Sorry, I would have arrived sooner, but I'm not even close to being in Fenrir's league. Besides, if he'd disembodied me that probably would have been game over."
Jace arrived at my side a second later and the warm healing energy coming from his hands was the most welcome thing I could have imagined in that moment.
"Just hold still for a moment, Selene. I'll have you back on your feet before you know it."
Once Jace was done, he and Kat both helped me to my feet and we walked over to the woman who was kneeling on the stone floor with her eyes closed.
I wasn't sure exactly what I was supposed to do. She hadn't acknowledged any of us, but based on the way that Jace and Kat were behaving, this woman was extremely important.
I took the opportunity to get a better look at her. She was beautiful in a way that I could never hope to manage. Her face and hair were flawless, and she had the willowy build of a runway model, but all of that paled in comparison to her skin.
She wasn't just pale like I was. It actually looked like underneath her skin she was nothing more than a being of pure light. Even as I thought that, I felt a growing frustration over the fact that I wasn't doing her justice.
She wasn't radiating light or anything as gaudy as that, she just seemed like there was something more to her, something just under the surface, something that put her completely out of my league.
"You did well bringing me here, little sister."
I thought for a moment that she was addressing Kat, or failing that, me. It turned out I was wrong on both counts. She was talking to Bethany, who stood up to her full three inches of height and all but saluted.
"Thank you, my liege. I knew that Selene and Kyle had been fighting Fenrir, so it was reasonable to assume that they would have weakened him. When Jace and Kat promised to enter the battle as well, it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up."
"Indeed. And none of that had anything to do with the fact that you were worried about your friends?"
"Would you have come if I'd told you that I needed your help in a hopeless fight that we couldn't possibly win? Punish me if you must, but my first loyalty is to Genevieve and my second loyalty is to Selene. The Seelie Court is a distant fifth or sixth for me right now."
The woman opened her eyes and looked at me for several seconds before turning her stare to Bethany.
"You might be surprised at what I would be willing to do. That is water under the bridge now though. I will spend a few more minutes here absorbing as much of Fenrir's lost strength as possible, and then I will pursue him. I doubt that I'll manage to close with him again—he's much too wily to be caught easily, but I'll chase him halfway back to the Unseelie Court on the chance that I might be able to bring him to bay again."
The beautiful, unearthly woman looked at me again. "I am the Lady. You've changed from your last incarnation, Selene."
I bit off a hysterical laugh. "It seems like people have done nothing over the last few days but tell me how unchanged I am."
"I'm sure they are right when it comes to the superficial, but in one very important way you seem to be changing, or at least making the effort. I'm sure it must be hard not to just default back to rage all of the time."
It took me a second to find my voice. "Did Bethany tell you that?"
"No. Bethany can tell whether you're defaulting to anger or…something else, but that is simply because she can only feed off of effects powered by a certain kind of emotion. I, on the other hand, have amassed the power required to know what emotions are feeding me. Not many would make the choice you're making."
"I'm not perfect at it. If I don't have enough emotional reserve using a positive emotion I default back to anger, but I'm trying."
A sound from behind us brought everyone around. It was Kyle. He looked like he'd been through hell and back—the trip from the bunker had obviously taken a tremendous amount out of him, but he was there standing behind the third ward with Excalibur at his hip and a white-bound journal under his arm.
I opened my mouth to tell him that he shouldn't be out here where he couldn't regulate his body temperature, but I couldn't get the words out. I hadn't expected to have Jace and Kyle in the same spot at the same time—especially not before I'd had a chance to tell Jace what had happened.
Kyle's eyes were practically burning a hole into Jace, and when I looked over at Jace I realized that he knew. I couldn't have said for sure how he knew, or even how I knew that he knew, but he was aware that I'd kissed Kyle.
Kat looked like she wanted to say something to defuse the situation, but she was as stumped there as I was. The silence stretched out for nearly a minute before the Lady walked over to the very edge of the ward and captured Kyle's gaze with her own.
"I was not aware that you had taken possession of Excalibur."
"It's a relatively recent development."
She smiled, but the expression didn't make it to her eyes. "Every development is recent to someone like me. Even my decision to give that blade to Arthur feels like it happened just yesterday. How did you get your hands on it?"
"I played to the previous owner's weaknesses."
"That sword is mine, and always will be. Give it to me and you will have my thanks both for returning the sword to me and for saving me the work of killing Isepeth myself."
"If you want to trade for Excalibur then give me something of equal value. If all you've come to do is threaten and demand then you can leave. I'm not interested in listening to more of the same bluster Fenrir is so good at."
"I'm not Fenrir. I could have my lieutenants here within a few hours and we could bring your wards down within a few days. The Seelie Court isn't plagued by the internal dissent that cripples our darker brethren. If I decide that you'll die before the week
is out, it will be so."
I knew what Kyle had been through over the last two days. Even being locked away in the bunker while I'd been waiting for Jace and Kat to arrive hadn't bought him more than an hour or two more to recover. He had to be at the very end of his endurance, had to be standing there solely through willpower and pride, but at that moment I almost believed that he was still the same demigod who had chased Mephistoles off and then proceeded to fight Fenrir to a standstill three times in two days.
He looked indomitable. He looked like one of the gods we'd once believed ourselves to be.
"You don't have the infighting that characterizes the Unseelie Court, but they have you outnumbered three to one. That's the little secret that you all try so hard not to think about. It's much easier for people to be bad than it is for them to be good. It's true for humans, and it's true for we Awakened. Your court may be more united, but your numbers are only barely sufficient to keep up with your commitments. You're locked in an eternal, grinding war where nobody ever really dies. If you pulled your most trusted servants in to help you take down my defenses you would win here, but you'd lose everywhere else. Gains that you've spent the last three hundred years trying to consolidate would be wiped out in a matter of days."
"Please stop fighting!"
It took me a second to realize that it had been me who'd screamed.
"Kyle, stop antagonizing her. You have nothing to win and everything to lose." I turned to the Lady and bowed my head to show her the respect that everyone but Kyle seemed to think she deserved. "Please don't do this. Kyle saved Kat and me from Fenrir and has been responsible for disembodying that monster twice in the last few days. Kyle has his share of problems, but he's not the enemy. Please let him keep the sword and come help us fight Mephistoles."
She didn't look at me—at least not at first. Instead she placed her hand millimeters from Kyle's ward and a finger-sized stream of crackling energy discharged from the ward into her hand.
"I don't have to rely on the same kind of brute-force methods that Fenrir employs. If Jace and Kat are willing to stay here and watch my back I won't even have to call in my lieutenants."
Kyle opened his mouth, but she cut him off with a look that was full of such terrible majesty that all of us took a step back.
"You're right that my presence here puts other accomplishments at risk, and Selene is right that Fenrir and his kind are my true enemies, but if Selene is wrong about you, I will come back here and take away your life. The only thing that has stopped me from doing so before now is that you're not as dark as some and I worry about what you'd come back as. Don't make me regret my leniency."
The energy discharging from Kyle's ward had been slowly growing the entire time that the Lady was talking. By the time she was done, it had engulfed her arm almost all the way up to her shoulder, a radiant, blue cocoon that should have vaporized her entire arm, but which didn't seem to be harming her in the slightest.
She turned away from Kyle and started towards the surface, holding her arm out away from her body while she walked. I started to go after her, but before I could take my first step, I remembered that Kyle was holding what I suspected was my journal.
"Kyle, is that my journal?"
"Yes."
"May I have it? I don't read French yet, but I'll learn. I'd like to know what else is in there."
"Sure, just come through the ward."
"Don't do it! You can't trust him, Selene. He's a snake."
Jace's voice was anguished in a way that I'd never heard out of him before. I wanted to disagree, wanted to tell him that Kyle wouldn't hurt me or hold me there against my will, but there was something in Kyle's eyes that I couldn't read. It almost felt like Kyle himself wasn't sure whether he would do those things.
I looked at him and held out my hand, stopping a few inches away from the ward even though I knew it wouldn't hurt me. "Can you just hand it through?"
"After everything you still don't trust me."
"It's hard to trust you right now when I can see that you're not entirely sure what you're going to do."
"I could force the issue. I could make you choose here and now."
That last bit was said so quietly I was almost certain that Jace hadn't heard it, but I still wanted to crawl under a rock and hide for the next thousand years. I didn't run away though because I had people who depended on me.
"If you force a choice right now the choice will go against you, Kyle. Apart from everything else there's still the matter of my dad being Mephistoles' prisoner. I have to get him out, and you're not in any condition to help with that."
"I could be by the time we arrive."
"Then come help us. It sounds like it's going to be touch and go with just Kat, Jace and me since Mephistoles has someone helping him. We could really use you."
"I will not assist my brother, not if my life depended on it."
"You wouldn't be helping Jace, you would be helping me."
Kyle gritted his teeth. "There is no difference. I will not help him, not even indirectly."
"You're lucky he doesn't live by the same rule or you and I would both be nothing but rotting corpses inside of your bunker."
I turned and walked away without looking back. I cursed myself all of the way back out to the surface. I'd made the wrong choice in trying for Kyle's help—I would have been much better off trying for the Lady's assistance.
I expected Jace to tear into me at any moment, but he just led the way through nearly a mile of dark spaces and twisty hallways illuminated only by the pair of lights floating above my friends' shoulders.
I kept trying to come up with a way to break the awkward silence, but nothing seemed appropriate—especially not with Kat walking between Jace and I like she was, especially not when every second might count when it came to getting back to free my dad.
When we finally slipped around a pair of large rocks and out into the sunlight I was astonished at just how bright the natural light was. I was squinting, but it was still so bad that I could barely make anything out.
Bethany had settled back onto my shoulder, but even she seemed to be having a hard time dealing with the sunlight. She only managed a warning a split second before I crashed into what turned out to be the Lady.
I should have at least knocked her off balance, but it was like bouncing off a warm, soft boulder. She grabbed me, steadying me before I could fall.
"You should hold still until your eyes have finished adjusting."
"Thank you. I'm sorry for running into you."
"It's fine, all of us older, more powerful fairies are capable of adjusting our weight. Unless I'm making a special effort to lighten myself I weigh in at just over a ton. In an emergency I can double that. You would have had to hit me a lot harder than that to cause me any real problems."
"I guess that explains how you were able to knock Fenrir around like that. It makes a lot of sense, but you've got to be the only female in the world willing to publicly admit to her real weight."
It wasn't exactly the most appropriate thing to have said—she was the queen of the Seelie Court, or at least the next best thing to a queen—but it had just popped out. If she'd taken issue with my comment I would have blamed it on the sunlight or the fact that I'd been in several fights for my life since I'd found out that I was one of the Awakened, but she didn't seem to mind.
That was probably good; I didn't really want to lie to her. The truth was that there was more to it than just those things. When she'd touched me it had sent a surge through me that I didn't know how to interpret. It wasn't sexual like what I felt with Jace or Kyle, but it seemed to shoot through me and revitalize everything it touched. She was better than caffeine by a long shot.
"I'm far too old to care what any males—fae, human or otherwise—might think of my figure. Besides, weight doesn't mean quite the same thing in my culture as it does in yours. In our culture, it is a thing to be celebrated. It represents power, it helps keep you safe."
&n
bsp; "Wow, there is so much about the world that I didn't even realize I didn't know. I look forward to the day when I know everything there is to know."
"As one of the Awakened you should have more care with your words. Unlike the humans who are so fond of such hyperbole, you actually could eventually achieve that goal. At least when it comes to knowing most everything worth knowing. I'm not sure that the prize would be worth the effort though."
My eyes had cleared enough to see the Lady. She was even more incredible-looking out in natural light, but I'd more or less expected that. I wasn't expecting for her to be looking at me with another expression that I couldn't even begin to interpret.
"You have a question, Selene. Go ahead and ask it."
"Will you come help us defeat Mephistoles? We could really use you. I'm not sure that we can do it without you."
"I'm sorry, Selene. I wish I could, but there are other considerations. The only thing I can guarantee right now is that I'll keep Fenrir occupied for at least the next few hours."
"There were two other fae here earlier too. You'll have to worry about them as well…"
"I know. Jace informed me of their presence, but they are minor powers and Fenrir will reform hours before they will. Unless another member of the dark court comes here looking for Fenrir or me for some reason, it will just be the two of us."
"You can beat him again?"
"Nothing is guaranteed. Fenrir has been hiding the true extent of his powers for quite a while now, but he's just suffered through three dissolutions in short order. My odds are very good. I won't be able to stay here forever, but there is a good chance that I can kill him at least once or twice before I have to leave. With a bit of luck I'll be able to kill the pooka too."
"How will you find him when he reforms?"
"I'll be able to sense him. Not exactly, and not for long, but well enough that he won't be able to hide from me. If he reforms inside of the city then he'll have to go past me to get out. If he reforms out here then I'll be able to tell that simply by his direction of travel."
"Okay, I think I understand. I wish you were coming with us, but you have things that you should be doing. I guess the proper goodbye is to wish you good hunting?"