by SM Reine
The differentiation between seelie and unseelie sidhe made a lot of sense when Marion looked at him. Luke had said that they were like day versus night. Konig was every inch the nighttime taking human shape. He was also the same breed as many of her would-be assassins.
“Prove you’re my boyfriend,” she said.
Konig laughed disbelievingly. “But Marion—”
“Humor her,” Luke said, his voice as tight as his back muscles.
“Who in the Nether Worlds are you?” Konig asked.
Luke responded by cocking the gun.
Konig lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. He only had eyes for Marion, as though Lucas were no more than a window between them. “You and I met at the after-party for the last election for Alpha. We were at the werewolf sanctuary. You wore a white dress.”
That told Marion nothing. Memories wouldn’t work. “Physical things. Things I could prove right now.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’m not,” Marion said.
He laughed again, with even less genuine amusement than earlier. “You’ve got a scar on your ribs where you were accidentally shot with an enchanted arrow while visiting my home at Autumn Court. I tossed Saoirse into the dungeon over it, but you insisted that I have her shoot at you again so you could learn to dodge.” His smile made Marion’s heart skip a beat. “Does that prove I’m not a changeling?”
She lifted her shirt, tilting her side toward the light. There it was—a faint, glistening line of white. A scar. The rest of the memory was meaningless, but the scar was not. “What was I doing in the Autumn Court? Isn’t that where sidhe live?”
“You only agreed to date me if I trained you how to fight against the unseelie, and the Autumn Court’s training grounds are the best in the Middle Worlds,” Konig said.
A date in exchange for some kind of martial training. It did sound like the kind of thing Marion might do.
And Konig knew about her scar.
She stepped hesitantly around Luke.
“Marion…” Luke said warningly.
Konig lowered his hands as she approached, letting them hang by his side. The way he smiled warmed the chill violet shards of his eyes. “You’ve been out of touch for weeks. I was so worried—we started posting ads online in the hopes someone would spot you, but you vanished as soon as we got a tip. Are you okay?”
“I’ve lost my memory,” Marion said. “I can’t remember anything that happened before two days ago.”
“You’ve forgotten me?”
“Everything.”
His eyes flicked up to look at Luke over Marion’s shoulder. “Who’s that?”
“Dr. Lucas Flynn.” She rubbed her shoulders. She was colder than she’d been before Konig showed up, as though the overwhelming power of the sidhe was shutting down her system’s defenses against the bitter ocean air. “Luke. He’s been helping me.”
“A doctor,” Konig echoed skeptically. Luke was still holding the gun, but not aiming it. Probably because Marion had gotten in the way.
“I can explain more, but not here,” Marion said. “Can you magic us, perhaps, to the island…?”
She hadn’t finished the sentence before Konig waved.
They appeared on a rocky beach Marion didn’t recognize, without an instant of blurring or a spark of magic.
“Of course,” Konig said.
She turned quickly, searching for Luke. He wasn’t there. “The doctor,” she said. “Bring him with us.”
“Who is he?” Konig asked, a hint of anger tipping the words with razor-sharp danger.
“I was found in Ransom Falls, California,” Marion said. “He works in the emergency department of Mercy Hospital. He’s been helping me.”
“Helping you, or hiding you? Did he abduct you?”
Her cheeks warmed. “Dr. Flynn has saved me from assassination attempts. Get him off of the boat. Now.”
Konig waved again.
Luke appeared a few feet away. Relief flashed across his features when he saw Marion, though it was quickly replaced by annoyance. He still hadn’t holstered his gun.
“I’m okay,” Marion said quickly.
“You can’t blame me for wanting to protect my princess.” Konig wrapped his arm around her shoulders with utter, possessive confidence. “If you’ve been…helping her…then I’m sure you’ve noticed how priceless she is. And with the summit at the United Nations approaching—her disappearance at this time had us all thinking the worst.”
Marion’s heart skipped a beat. “I’m involved with the summit? The one that they’re talking about on the news?”
“Gods above,” he said. “You’ve really forgotten everything, haven’t you?”
“That’s what I told you,” she said.
“Have you even forgotten this?” Konig asked. He kissed her. The brush of his lips against Marion’s was like rolling ice over her skin. Her blood pulsed in time with distant drumbeats. Konig certainly seemed familiar with the way she liked to be kissed—even though Marion, until that moment, wouldn’t have known that she liked the stroke of his thumb along her jawline, or how confidently he claimed her tongue with his.
It was an intimate kiss, deep enough that Marion felt no doubt that she’d been much more intimate with Konig before.
She stepped back, fingertips lifting to her mouth. Somehow, her skin wasn’t frosty-cold, even though it had felt like such a pleasant chill in the moment.
“Even that,” she said faintly.
Now Konig looked worried. “I should get you to my parents. They’ll be able to fix this.”
“Who are your parents?” Marion asked.
“The king and queen of the Autumn Court,” he said, taking her arm. “We’re not far from the ley lines. I’ll pull you through.”
“Wait.” She turned to see that Luke had finally holstered his gun. He wasn’t watching them, though. He’d wandered down the beach and was staring at the ocean. Giving them privacy. Lost in thought.
“I have to talk to my friend before I go anywhere,” Marion said. “In private.”
Konig’s eyes narrowed. “Alone?”
“He won’t hurt me.”
“I can phase away momentarily, but I’ll return in five minutes to take you with me.” He clasped her hands in his, pulling her against him. “I’ve already lost you once, princess. I’m not going to let you out of my grasp again.”
His second kiss was a little more urgent, but no less thrilling. He tasted of peaches ripening in the late summer sun and magic with roots entrenched deep within the Earth. Konig was as much a piece of the world as the trees, the grass, the sky.
Her boyfriend, a sidhe prince of the Autumn Court.
Marion obviously had a lot of remembering to do.
* * *
There was no sign of other sirens or naiads when Marion joined Luke by the ocean’s edge—only solemn, thoughtful silence from the doctor, and a breeze that bit at her salt-crusted flesh to send shivers into her marrow. “I should go with Konig,” Marion said. “If anyone can restore my memory, it will be the sidhe.”
Luke sighed, like he’d been waiting for her to say that. “Fine.”
Marion had known him for all of two days. It shouldn’t have mattered to her if he disapproved. “He is my boyfriend.”
“Yeah, that’s what he claims. He’s appeared out of nowhere, he’s unseelie sidhe, we don’t know anything about where he comes from—”
“Whereas I know so much about you? You’re just some surgeon from a hospital in the middle of nowhere,” Marion said.
“Just some surgeon. Yeah.” He raked a hand through his hair. “We’re on Vancouver Island now, so close to your home.”
“Should I take this danger back to my family when I have an alternative?” She rested a hand on his shoulder. “Konig knows things about me that he would have to be very close to know.”
“There’s no way to be sure he’s right about how you got that scar,” Luke said.
; She hadn’t been thinking about the scar so much as how he’d known exactly what kind of touch would stir her body. “I believe him. I do.”
“I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“Thank you.” Her hand slid from shoulder to elbow, and she relaxed into a genuine smile, beaming at him with the relief that she wanted to allow herself to feel. “We’re going to be okay.”
The corners of his lips lifted momentarily. Marion wondered if having a strong physical reaction to a man’s smile—a man who wasn’t her supposed boyfriend—was criminal enough to make her worthy of assassination.
It was just that she felt so much closer to Luke than she had any right to be. There was so much more to the doctor than she could see on the surface. A man as depthless as the ocean, a doctor and skilled sharpshooter who easily defended her from assassin threats.
What if Konig wasn’t the only man in her life that she’d forgotten?
“Have you ever been to a garden before?” Marion asked abruptly. “A garden with very big trees, filled by blue light, and without a visible sky?”
“What?”
“As I told you, I remembered something the last time I cast magic. I remembered a garden with a boy, a black boy, whose skin was almost your color, and—and I think there might be other similarities too.” Like Luke’s jawline. Marion could easily imagine the boy having grown up to look very much like Luke. “I think it would be the right age difference. I was perhaps four years old. You’re—ten years older than me? Nine? He was a young teenager, so…”
“Marion, when you were four, I was an adult. My fiancée had already left me. I’m not the boy from your memories.”
“You can’t be more than ten years older than me,” Marion said.
Luke gave her that lopsided smile. “I’m not the guy you remember. I promise.”
“You’ve never been in that garden, then.”
“Not that garden,” Luke said.
“You’re not telling me something important.”
“I’m not telling you a lot of things. Believe it or not, Marion, I don’t have to tell you anything.”
His tone was identical to when he’d been telling her that he wasn’t going to buy her clothes, and it triggered the same feelings of shame. “I thought that we were getting to be friends.”
“Marion…” He brushed his knuckles down her shoulder, tracing along the hem of her sleeve. “If I thought that I was locked up anywhere in your missing memories, I’d tell you.”
Marion believed that. She also believed that the idea of leaving without him was unbearable. “You’ll come protect me in the Autumn Court, won’t you?”
“I thought you trusted this guy, this ErlKonig,” Luke said.
“I want to. But he appeared fifteen minutes ago, whereas you’ve been with me for two days.” Marion weighed the words she wanted to say. “I’d be afraid to go without you.”
He sighed again. “I’ll stick around. You’re still my patient, for the time being.”
She would have hugged him if it wouldn’t have been weird.
Marion settled for saying, “Thank you.”
* * *
The Autumn Court was unlike anywhere Luke had been in his current lifetime: a place so magical that when Prince ErlKonig yanked him into the Middle Worlds, Luke’s brain shut down completely.
Before his senses failed him, Luke got an impression of a road. Of trees glimmering like gemstones in the midday sun. Of a beach, an ocean, and clouds.
They were only impressions. Luke’s eyes were open and receiving information, but he was experiencing a short between eyeballs and brain. Instead, he was sustaining assault on his every sense. He smelled rotting leaves and moist dirt and pumpkins split open in bitter sunlight, while his flesh crawled with the sensation of spiders. He heard music played in sharps and flats, with a rhythm akin to a rapid reel.
Luke pressed the heels of his palms to his temples and tried to shove away the sensations. The world swirled around him.
“I don’t think I can do this,” Luke gasped.
There was a hand on his sleeve. He looked down to see Marion’s slender fingers gripping the leather. If she moved her hand up six inches to his jaw, or down a few more inches to his hand, their skin would make contact. And gods only knew what would happen after that.
“Can you see, Doctor?” Her voice danced in and out of his ears.
Luke tracked up her hand, her arm, her slender throat patterned with blue veins, her heart-shaped face. That pair of Husky-bright eyes was the only real thing he could focus on, so he did. “I can only see you.”
“We should go back.”
“No.” That was Konig. “I’ll fix this.” Another hand appeared, and this one was neither slender nor friendly. It was heavily boned. A fighter’s hand with skin that shone like brass.
Luke jerked back. “Don’t touch me.”
“Let me touch you, or I’ll kick you back to Earth alone,” Konig said.
“Please,” Marion said. He wasn’t sure if she was pleading with Luke to stay or go.
He wasn’t going to leave her with Konig. He’d promised. Dammit, why had Luke promised Marion anything? “Fine,” Luke said.
He gripped the unseelie prince’s fist. His senses snapped into place.
No longer were the road and beach mere impressions. He was standing on rocks that shimmered in shades of gold and copper. Cold, colorless water sloshed over his feet. Dying trees etched jagged outlines against a crystalline sky.
The turrets of a castle stood on the horizon, far beyond a pumpkin patch with thorny vines as thick around as Luke’s waist.
Myrkheimr. Home of the royal family of the Autumn Court.
He’d heard of Myrkheimr before. It was supposed to be one of the more sizable properties in the Middle Worlds, second to Niflheimr in the Winter Court. He’d never imagined it could be quite so vast, though. Its towers brushed the clouds and the walls climbed the hills beyond.
Marion was watching him with concern etching her brow. “Doctor?”
Luke shook his head to clear the lingering cobwebs of confusion. “I’m fine. I can see now.”
“The Middle Worlds are challenging for mere mortals,” Konig said in an irritatingly lofty tone. It was still hard for Luke to look at him directly. Even when everything else made sense, the prince distorted the world the same way the bottom of a beer glass distorted an alcoholic’s view of a bar. “I’ve placed a filter over your brain that will allow you to see the commonly accepted reality of the Autumn Court. What you perceive now isn’t truth, but it’s as close as your mortal senses will ever be able to accept.”
And what a perception it was. Ravens wheeled through the chilly sky and gave mournful shrieks as black as their feathers. Leaves twirled and whirled in gentle spirals on winds Luke didn’t feel.
Marion provided strange contrast to the hot colors of the Middle Worlds. Her eyes glowed faintly. Her hair shimmered with a pale halo. And her skin remained cool in tone, more blues than peaches.
If Luke only looked at her from the corner of his eyes, he almost thought he could see wings.
“My parents will be relieved to see you, princess,” Konig said. He pulled Marion along the beach and plunged into the depths of the forest as though he’d instantly forgotten Luke.
Or like he wanted Luke to feel forgotten.
Luke followed more slowly, careful to keep Marion within sight.
Most of her assassins were sidhe, and this world was filled with them. He heard their voices among the trees. They soared with the ravens above and crawled with the worms chewing through the soil below. His feet slipped on the rocky beach and people laughed in response, as though mocking him.
There were foxes along the trail, flitting in and out of the bushes. They watched him with brassy eyes the same shade as Konig’s magic.
Thorny vines reached for him. Luke elbowed them away.
“Are you coming?” Marion threw a glance at him over her shoulder, a pink flush on her ch
eekbones and delight in her eyes. She liked the Autumn Court. He wondered if memory was stirring now that she was with him. Her boyfriend.
“Coming,” Luke said. Though he wasn’t sure why. A prince of the Autumn Court would be as capable of protecting Marion from assassins as Luke.
The path to Myrkheimr looked like it should have been miles long, but they reached the castle within moments. All it took was a momentary distortion of forest, as though it were folded in half, and then they were at the gate.
The castle grounds were guarded only by a low fence winding between the trees. But there were archers in the high branches, concealed by the gold foil of the leaves, and Luke caught glimpses of arrows leveled at them when Konig approached.
“It’s me,” the prince called. “Is Dad home?”
An archer leaped nimbly from the branches, landing on the path. She had white hair twisted into twin braids and leather pants the same color as fox fur.
“The king and queen are home,” she said. “They’ve been waiting for you.” A smile danced in her eyes. “All of you.”
10
For Marion, entering the halls of Myrkheimr felt like coming home, and not because the surroundings were familiar. Everything was immaculately clean. Better still, the entryway was being actively cleaned by servants with dusters, rags, and wands. Magic sparkled over the wood floors. Marion could smell soap, and when she traced her fingertips along the edge of a table, she felt not even a speck of dust.
It was amazing that Myrkheimr could look so clean when the rest of the Autumn Court was distinctly worn. The stone pillars ringing the entryway were cracked, and the flowerbeds were shriveling from the first bites of winter. Nothing looked old, exactly. Just weathered.
But it was all clean. Immaculate, in fact. And rich. Every chair and crumbling brick had a distinctly artisanal, handmade touch to it. Marion could even see the tooling marks on the portrait frame hanging above the fireplace.