by SM Reine
“I wish you would.” Brianna’s voice went soft. “You know Rylie’s sick with worry about you. Rylie and Abel both. I’m worried too.”
“Call Charity for me. Please. And for the love of the stupid new gods, keep your oath.”
“Of course I will. Who do you think I am? I haven’t changed at all. You, on the other hand—”
“Thanks for your help,” Luke interrupted.
Brianna hung up first.
* * *
The library of the Autumn Court had far fewer books than Marion had expected. The room was composed of magical windows like those in the throne room, so there simply wasn’t room for the floor-to-ceiling shelves she’d hoped to see.
A few pedestals held ancient-looking texts within glass cases. There were also freestanding shelves with other books that looked worthy of display at museums. Otherwise, the space was occupied primarily by comfortable furniture, which would give the people who sat within the library excellent views of the gardens.
Marion wandered along the pedestals, skimming the titles. None were in English or French. She couldn’t read them. “What will you do to bring my memory back?”
“Are you aware that most sidhe were human before Genesis?” Violet asked.
“That’s what I’ve been told.”
“Like many others, I was a human—a witch—so I should be able to dig up a sounding spell to delve into your mind. I’ll see if there’s an enchantment to remove. Wait here. I’ll call you once I’m ready.”
Violet moved into the library’s mezzanine, leaving Konig and Marion at the bottom. “Alone at last,” Konig murmured, using his grip on her hand to pull her against his chest.
She gazed up at his brilliant violet eyes. “Not exactly alone.”
“I trust my guards, and you do too.”
She didn’t have any choice but to trust what he said. Hopefully she wouldn’t need to lean on blind trust for long if the Onyx Queen was about to bring her memories back. Marion buried her face in his chest, letting the overwhelming sensation of sidhe fade away. “Where was Luke taken?”
“The south wing. He’s safe.” Konig rubbed Marion along the furrow of her spine. “Want to tell me why you’re wearing scrubs?”
“It was the only thing I had in the hospital. I was wearing pajamas when they found me in the forest, so this was my only option.”
“Strange. I wonder when you were taken. When you were on your way to the summit?”
“I don’t know. Should I have been going to the summit?”
“You disappeared a couple of weeks ago, so…no.” He shook his head. “You were taking care of business without me, so I didn’t know what you were up to. I thought you might have been visiting with the werewolf Alpha. You’re friends.”
Friends with Rylie Gresham. The woman whose autobiography Marion owned.
“I never would have expected to find you in California,” Konig said.
“How did you find me in Ransom Falls?”
“I asked my father to place ads for you on the mortal internet. We made a tip line. Someone called it in.”
If someone had reported Marion’s location, then it must have been one of the hospital staff—the only people she had encountered while in Ransom Falls. “When was the last time I spoke to you? Before I lost my memories, I mean.”
A smile crossed Konig’s features, which instantly made her think dirty, intimate things. “You were visiting me here. It was barely three weeks ago.”
Marion’s gaze tracked down his broad chest to his muscled legs and the hand gripping hers. It was a very large hand. “I wish I could remember everything we’ve done together.”
“Very soon, you will.” Konig kissed her gently, thumb tracing along the line of her jaw. It didn’t feel as intimate this time. It was more like he was positioning his hand to break her neck.
The paranoia was surely because of her missing memories. Even so, she couldn’t help but pull away to glance at the second level of the library, where Violet had vanished. There was no sign of the queen.
“I take it we’re serious,” Marion said. “That we’ve been together a long time.”
“A couple of years,” Konig said. “And yes. It’s serious.”
She wasn’t sure if the thrill in her chest was excitement or fear.
There was nothing intimidating about Konig, even if he had been carrying a sword in Port Angeles and tried to carry her away in a fog. She certainly wasn’t afraid he would hurt her. Marion worried about what he expected of her—what sort of things they might have done, if she’d remembered him.
Marion was no more ready to dive into their relationship than she was prepared for the summit.
She pulled away, and he released her readily, though she remained trapped within the heat of his purple-eyed gaze.
“You look weird in those clothes. Not bad, but…strange,” Konig said. “But you could make a paper bag sexy, I think.”
Marion couldn’t help but giggle. “I can see why I’d date you.”
“There are many reasons.” He arched an eyebrow.
Konig followed her as she walked along the shelves, trailing her finger over the bumpy spines of the books. They reassured her in a manner not too dissimilar to having Luke’s presence, but they were as exciting as Konig’s touch. These were books available to only a select sect of unseelie sidhe—and to Marion.
Rare knowledge was the very best kind of knowledge.
“What else do you know about me?” Marion asked as she strolled around the library. “My family?”
“Your family doesn’t live at your home. You were emancipated and have lived alone since you were fifteen.” Konig tapped his chin. “Hmm. What else? I know that you were raised by a single mother before you chose to move out on your own. I haven’t met her. You don’t talk about her much.”
She stopped walking. “My parents are divorced?”
“Your father’s dead. He’s been dead for years. Since before Genesis.”
All those fleeting fantasies she’d had of being greeted by a large family back home—a large, adoring, rich family—were quickly withering. “So the angel blood I have…is it from my mother or father?” Marion asked.
“Your father. I can’t believe you don’t know—I never would have expected to have to explain this to you. Damn.” Konig took one of Marion’s hands in both of his. “Your father’s the whole reason that you’re needed at the summit, princess. He used to be the Voice of God, too. Just like you.”
11
Marion didn’t realize that she needed to sit until she was suddenly in one of the library’s plush chairs. The Voice of God. “What does that mean?” she asked once she remembered how to speak.
Konig kneeled in front of her, gazing intently into her eyes. “It means that you’re the sole point of contact between the gods and the mortal races.”
“That’s not possible. The gods are dead.”
“Who told you that? The doctor?” he asked. She nodded. “It’s true that the average person hasn’t seen the gods since Genesis. But you’re not an average person. You’re the Voice.”
Of all the potential roles Marion had mulled since waking up in Ransom Falls—student, model, action heroine, whatever—she never would have considered “envoy to gods” as a possibility. But it did have a certain ring of familiarity to it. A very faint one. “That’s why everyone’s trying to kill me before the summit. The gods told me something they don’t want to spread around. Right? What did they tell me?”
“Only you would know.”
She could imagine why that kind of information might get her killed. If the gods had plans, and if those plans didn’t coincide with what other leaders had in mind for their factions…
Gods. Marion was probably about to piss a lot of people off.
That only broadened the pool of suspects for who might have hired assassins. Not narrowed it.
“If we’re as serious as you say, then I’m sure I’ve told you something about my spee
ch,” Marion said with a note of desperation. The idea that she was due to give a speech in two days with no memory of what she was expected to say was too horrible to contemplate.
Konig’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. “No, you’re more loyal to the gods than to me. Your independence is part of what I find so attractive about you. As a prince, I’ve no shortage of women hurling themselves at my feet. I like that I have to seek you out.”
The prince closed the gap to claim her lips. Marion kissed him without feeling it.
Violet appeared at the top of the stairs. Konig pulled away from her quickly, though the queen didn’t remark on what she’d caught them doing.
The Onyx Queen descended in a spill of skirts that trailed down the steps behind her. She set a wooden box with a gold lock on the table beside Marion, her white eyes unfocused and blank. “This holds an artifact that should help us sound into your mind, if you’re ready.”
Marion licked her lips. She still tasted Konig. “Of course I’m ready.”
Violet passed a hand over the lock. It clicked. The lid opened easily, revealing a tarot card that glowed within a bed of black velvet.
“Card number twenty. Judgment.” Violet lifted it out with both hands as though it were heavy. “I took this card from a former friend. It’s for dredging truths out of one’s past. I’ll repurpose it for our cause.” She offered it to Marion. “Take the card.”
Marion’s fingers tingled warmly at the contact with the waxy card stock.
The art on the Judgment card showed an angel in the sky. He had severe features and wings like a hawk’s. He held a trumpet in one hand. Naked mortals were prostrate on the ground below, arms stretched toward him, as though begging silently. The detailed art was beautiful—and unsettling.
The angel looked familiar.
“Study the card and take deep breaths, dear girl.” The queen touched her forefingers to either of Marion’s temples. Power flowed through them.
The illusion of the tidy library warped. The books vanished, replaced by graying tree branches oozing orange strings of amber. Marion stood in a dead field peppered by gravestones. The sky was ash, the soil brittle.
The true Autumn Court.
Strangest of all was that this dying land wasn’t weak, nor was it defeated. The power of the court was in death. The cold, the gray, the aged. All of that magic wound Violet and Marion tightly in chains of ivy, binding hearts and minds. Marion could hear music. She smelled rotting leaves.
Fear climbed down her throat.
They’re going to see. Don’t let them in.
“You’re okay,” Konig murmured from behind Marion, lips warm against the back of her neck. When he spoke, she saw the alluring illusion of the Middle Worlds again: the library, the comfortable chairs, the paintings hung in expensive frames.
She tried to take deep breaths, like the queen had told her to, even as magic probed her skull. Marion could feel it squirming like dried-out worms between the lobes of her brain.
That was pain. Real pain.
“Stop,” she whispered as her vision blurred and whited out. “Stop.”
“Deep breaths,” Violet said again.
As the probe delved deeper, Marion could see the memories that it was touching.
She saw a nightclub illuminated only by pillars of cold blue flame. The dance floor was filled with preternaturals. In her memories, she glimpsed human-like faces and easily assigned species to them: succubus, seelie sidhe, lamia, shifter.
The probe kept digging.
Marion sat in the grass behind a cottage, overlooking a tepid lake. She played with a brown-skinned toddler whose crazy curls stuck out from his head in every direction. A feminine voice said, “I can’t let you do that, Marion. You have no idea how much devastation it would cause.” The speaker was obviously trying to sound calm for the sake of the toddler.
And Marion had responded, “I’d like to see you try to stop me.”
Violet kept going, and senseless images flashed around Marion.
A tall woman with brown hair, very much like her own, nestling Marion in her lap.
Another woman with redder hair and a harsh face.
A pair of twin swords.
That boy that Marion had seen in the garden.
And then the garden itself, with towering trees, and dim blue light, and—
“No!” Marion shoved.
The Queen of the Autumn Court stumbled away from Marion. The gold-locked case tumbled to the floor between them hard enough that the wood cracked.
Marion tossed the Judgment card away, too. It was burning white hot. “No.” She shook her head, struggling to swallow around the lump in her throat.
The vision of the library had returned. Everything looked so solid, so real—especially Konig beside her, and his mother glaring from against the windows.
Marion had pushed Violet away magically.
“I’m sorry,” Marion said, standing quickly. “Are you okay?”
Violet lifted a hand to prevent Marion from approaching. “Yes, I’m fine. There are defenses layered in your mind, and they attacked when I tried to push through. I shouldn’t be surprised. The Voice would never leave her treasures unguarded.”
“You aren’t hurt?” Konig asked.
His mother shook her head.
Marion sat down again, slower than before. She couldn’t stop shaking. “Did you find anything?”
“Very little.” Violet gestured to her guards. Two of them moved to collect the gold-locked case and the Judgment card on the floor. “The walls you’ve built are thick and numerous. I’m not sure they’re all yours, though. Whoever took your memories away must have erected many of them.”
Marion didn’t want to describe whom she had remembered. It felt too private. “I didn’t see anything.” She pressed a hand to her aching temple. “Is there nothing else you can do to return my memories?”
“Not alone, I don’t think. I’ll have to confer with the other courts,” Violet said. “Do you have any other leads I could suggest? Any information about your attackers?”
“Not many. All I know is that most of my assassins…” She trailed off, realizing what she had been about to say. Most of my assassins are sidhe. She might as well have directly accused her boyfriend and his family of trying to murder her. “There’s a listing on the darknet. An advertisement for a bounty on my head. Could you track the original poster?”
Violet beckoned to one of her servants, whispered in his ear, sent him away again. “We’ll see what we can do. We don’t have many technologically skilled people in the Autumn Court, but the Hardwicks are unseelie—they’re the ones who originally designed the darknet. If any information exists, we’ll be able to get it from them.”
“Will it take long?” Marion asked, wringing her hands.
“It might. The Winter Court’s still in anarchy, after all,” Violet said.
“There hasn’t been a queen of the unseelie court in five years,” Konig explained, rubbing Marion’s back in circles. “A lot of the unseelie sidhe have stuck around to try to bring things to order, including the Hardwicks, but…”
“They’ll never get it in line,” Violet said. “I wish the Hardwicks would give up that stupid chase and join us here. The rest of them can burn for all I care. Put that away.” The last order was directed toward her guards, who took the Judgment card back upstairs.
“What can I do to help for now? About my memories, I mean?” Marion asked.
“Do your best to remember on your own,” Violet said. “Seek familiar places. My son can help you with that.”
“Happily,” Konig said. His knuckles traced a line down Marion’s cheek from the corner of her eye to the corner of her lip. “I think I might know what would get the cogs of your mind turning, princess.”
* * *
Despite the kingdom being suspended between summer and winter, the foothills behind Myrkheimr were lush, and that was where many members of the court were hanging out.
Sidhe. Marion was surrounded by sidhe.
Any of them could have been assassins.
Everyone bowed deeply to Konig when he passed. Smiles faded whenever they looked at Marion, but they seemed to have nothing but affection for the prince himself. Marion wasn’t nearly as popular as her boyfriend.
Konig opened a gate set into a stone wall. “This way, princess.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
His eyebrows lifted. “You’re my princess.”
“Am I really? Literally?” Marion didn’t hate the idea, but a royal title sort of implied having lands to control, too, among other resources. Or else it might have meant that she was engaged to marry Konig.
“You’re not literally my princess.” He took her hand, lifting her knuckles to his lips. “Not yet.” The brush of his skin against hers sent chills cascading down her spine.
A path climbed the foothills on the other side of the gate, carving through the center of a pumpkin patch overlooking an archery range. Several sidhe were practicing their skills. It was weird seeing so many people wearing modern clothes, like jeans and t-shirts, but using old-style ranged weapons.
“Here we go,” Konig said. “Your favorite place in the castle.”
“I’m supposed to recognize this?” Marion asked.
The weight of disappointment dragged his shoulders down. “You’re the one who would only date me if I gave you access to the range.”
“I’ll try it out.” She tried to force herself to sound more positive than she felt for his sake. “I’ll see if I can trigger something.”
They entered a shed at the end of the range. There was an assortment of weapons inside: not just bows, but some other oddities, like glaives and clubs.
Marion didn’t know the first thing about using any of them. Aside from the naiad with the coral swords, the only weapon she’d seen used was Luke’s firearm. “How about a gun?” At least she knew where the trigger was on one of those.