by SM Reine
Luke lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “My legs aren’t broken. You ladies should get going. I’ll be in touch soon.”
Charity clutched his keys in both hands. “Thank you, Doctor.” The way she said that reminded him too much of Marion.
Luke took a few weapons out of his pickup: knives, guns, one wooden stake just in case. He stashed them around his body. Then there was nothing to do but watch Charity and Nori leave. The headlights soon disappeared into the trees. Luke hoped Charity was a good driver. He was terribly fond of that pickup.
Alone, he turned to survey the circle, Ollie’s mutilated remains, and the sidhe magic in the spellbook. The same magic that Luke had seen in the Autumn Court.
Oliver had brought the assassins to Ransom Falls in an attempt to kill Marion, and he was working with the Autumn Court.
But the Autumn Court weren’t the ones who had decimated her memory.
Luke had been around the block once or twice—or three times—but of all the magic he’d seen, werewolves he’d slaughtered, demons he’d hunted, he’d never seen anything like the markings on that circle of power. And neither had Nori, which was even more telling.
It was something new. Something scary.
Something big.
Luke flipped the collar of his jacket up, pulled it tight around his body, and covered as much of his skin as possible. He glanced around the clearing. Stretched out his senses, opened his mind, searched the region for anyone who might be watching him.
There wasn’t a single pulse for almost a mile. Charity was fast getting out of dodge.
That meant no witnesses.
Luke snapped his fingers.
In a whirlwind of brimstone, he slipped out of the dimension and vanished.
14
Marion was running, laughing, dancing. Her vision was narrowed to the man who pulled her through the open halls of Myrkheimr, their fingers hooked together like links on a chain. She had to slip through dangling vines like a veil in order to follow Konig.
The music from the dinner party chased them through the halls. It somehow grew louder as they raced away, as though they were plunging into an ocean of sound, absorbed in the beat.
Konig’s fingers slipped from hers as he darted around the corner.
“Konig?” When Marion turned that same corner, hands seized her from the darkness, wrenching her behind a statue.
He pressed her against the wall. “Speaker for the ethereal delegation,” he murmured, kissing a line along her jaw to the soft skin behind her ear. The play of his tongue nearly buckled her knees. “And I for the Autumn Court. Together, we’ll own the summit.”
She let her head fall back with a sigh as he kissed her, stroking along her ribs, her arms, the curve of her spine. The layered veils of the dress gave him access to her skin in all kinds of odd places.
“Are you two having fun?”
Leliel’s cool voice made Marion look over Konig’s shoulder.
The angel waited on the other side of the statue. Golden lantern light haloed her auburn hair and highlighted her shapely shoulders. Her sway-hipped posture reminded Marion of a longbow’s curves.
Konig lifted his head from Marion’s throat, pushing her hair back from her face in mounds. “As a matter of fact, we are having fun.” He kissed Marion again, briefly, as though unperturbed by their audience. “We’re not open for sharing. Find other sidhe to entertain you.”
“I came to talk, not to…” Leliel arched an eyebrow. “Cast magic. Marion, can we speak?”
“No,” Konig said.
Marion peeled herself away from Konig, checking her dress to make sure that it covered everything it should have. “I’ll be only a minute.”
His eyes burned with hunger. “Less than a minute.”
She struggled not to smile or blush when she faced Leliel again. She failed. The whole idea of making out with someone she barely knew was far more thrilling than it should have been, but there was a time and place for that. Talking to the angel who led the Ethereal Levant required at least a fraction of professionalism.
Marion glanced back at Konig. He was watching her walk away, and her cheeks burned even hotter.
Less than a minute.
It was strange to walk beside a woman even taller than she was. Marion hung back a step or two so that she could watch Leliel’s graceful motions, which were those of a long-legged heron. “You seem to be adjusting well without your memories,” Leliel said. “Few people would settle into the sidhe courts so easily, but you’re not the average person, are you?”
“You’d probably know better than I do.”
“I think not. You don’t like me, and you’ve always avoided me,” Leliel said. “You’re so much more amiable since you lost your memory, so perhaps we should see this as a healing opportunity. You can join your people, as you deserve.”
“My people,” Marion echoed. “I’m as much witch as angel. Gaeans are also my people.”
“Metaraon conspired to kill God and dragged us all into war. Even before Genesis, most of our kind were killed as a result. Our numbers are few. Very few. Like it or not, you’re one of ours, and we’ll all suffer if we don’t find a way to stand together.” Leliel wrapped her arms around her own ribcage, touching her back with long, delicate fingers. Her spine was tattooed in a color that was only slightly darker than the skin. “Look at me.”
Marion peered closely at the intricate lacework of lines. She reached out to touch them, and as her fingers inched closer, the ink began to glow. “Those are magical runes, aren’t they?”
Leliel shifted, drawing away. “My wings were severed in battle. Another consequence of your father’s actions.”
“I saw you fly into the court.”
“Magic.” She tapped the edge of the tattoo, then unraveled her arms. “We’ve a college in the Ethereal Levant intended to teach the art of mage craft. Few of us can perform such magic. Fewer of us remember how to do it. This was tattooed by our one and only competent paladin.”
“It’s amazing,” Marion said honestly.
“His skill is nothing compared to yours.” Leliel’s smile rendered her breathtakingly beautiful. “It’s always seemed a shame to me that you alone can perform magecraft with mastery akin to those of angels from the past. The days of the garden of Eden.”
The garden of Eden.
The garden…
The memory of the curly-haired boy flashed through her mind. Marion blinked it away. “I don’t have mastery of magic right now.”
“But you normally do. I want you to agree to be our speaker, and then I want you to come to the Ethereal Levant to join your people. You can teach us magecraft.”
“Why should I do that?” Marion asked. “What do I get out of it?”
“Can I show you something, mind-to-mind?” Leliel’s long, delicate fingers rested on Marion’s temples.
She drew back. “You didn’t ask last time you got in my head.”
“And I apologize for that.”
Leliel waited, hands outstretched.
Marion nodded. “Go ahead.”
The other angel’s fingertips brushed Marion’s skin again. Their minds opened, unfolding like blossoms in springtime.
If Marion’s mind was a vase empty of memory, then Leliel was water poured from a pitcher. She filled Marion.
Images bubbled between them.
Marion stood in a cavern dampened by clinging fog. She was surrounded by large spherical stones, most of them tall enough that the tops were level with her chest. They glowed with inner light.
Leliel stood beside her, hand resting on one of those spheres. “This is where we came from.” Movements thumped from within the rock as if responding to the angel’s touch.
They weren’t stones. They were eggs.
Marion turned to look around. Though many of the nests were cloaked by large-fronded ferns, she still counted dozens of the biggest spheres. She estimated that there must have been hundreds. The dim recesses of the cave vanis
hed into fog, so for all she knew, there could have been thousands.
Thousands of angels.
“This was Araboth,” Leliel said, “where our holy father, Adam, spent his final centuries. He cohabited with the remnants of Eve’s nests. Both Adam and the eggs were attended by Metaraon—your angel predecessor.”
Before Marion had a chance to absorb that information, the setting shifted. Eggs vanished along with the foggy cavern.
They stood on a grassy hill in a shimmering city of light.
“New Eden,” Leliel said. The skyscrapers ringing the knoll seemed to have been grown from white bone. They resembled trees, in a way.
Marion stepped back to gawk at the buildings, which scraped a cloudless blue sky. Winged bodies swooped from one structure to another, hawks in a forest. All angels. Almost as many of them as there had been eggs in Araboth. “My gods.”
Her heel caught on something hard. She stumbled. Marion caught herself on a tombstone thrusting from the grass.
“We first began dying in the wars against Lilith’s forces,” Leliel said as Marion traced the name on the tombstone. She couldn’t quite read it. The dreamlike state she shared with Leliel was missing information. “We hadn’t known we could be killed until then. We honored every soul we lost, and attempted to regroup, regrow, restore our species though Eve was gone. But then there was the massacre.”
Marion blinked.
The buildings caught flame.
New Eden was burning—the beautiful skyscrapers, the towering forests. The blue sky was clogged with choking smoke.
People were screaming.
Marion scrambled to her feet, ran to the edge of the grassy hill. She looked down on the white cobblestone streets of New Eden to find winged, decapitated bodies filling the streets. Blood raced between the stones and flooded the channels with a crimson tide.
A dark force walked among the dead. It was a faceless being, shadow taking human shape, and it carried swords.
As Marion watched, it murdered every single angel it crossed paths with.
It was coming toward the hill. Toward Marion and Leliel.
“What is that?” Marion asked.
“The Godslayer,” Leliel said. “First she killed Adam, and then she came for the rest of us. She’s the reason your father is dead, too. When she was done in New Eden, barely two dozen of our lives remained, where once there had been thousands. It wasn’t long before Genesis followed.”
Leliel clapped her hands. The shadowy Godslayer disappeared, and New Eden was silent for a moment.
Then a wall of black appeared.
It swept through the trees, chewing up branches, ripping the forest out by the roots. Wind shrieked with the pain of a million extinguished souls. It rushed toward the hill so quickly that Marion didn’t have time to turn and run.
One moment, she stood among the burned remnants of New Eden.
The next moment, there was nothing.
Marion shocked back to consciousness in the Autumn Court. She had fallen to her knees in the hallway, gasping for breath.
When she looked up at Leliel, her vision was blurred by tears.
It was one thing for Luke to describe what the Genesis void must have been like—massive, merciless, and all-consuming. But to see it, feel it, and have no escape from the inevitability… That was another thing entirely. Marion was shaking.
Leliel helped her stand again. “That’s what’s become of the angels,” she said gently, brushing the hair out of Marion’s eyes. “So few of us remain, and you ask why you should help us. What’s in it for you. Do you understand now?”
Marion struggled to catch her breath.
She understood.
“I’ll do it. I’ll help you,” Marion said. “Starting by acting as speaker for the angels.”
Leliel’s eyes sparkled. Marion loved how she felt when the angel smiled upon her, as though the sun were shining on her from the brightest planes of Earth. “This is yours, then. I return it to you with pride.”
She handed the enchanted silver cuff to Marion, who gripped it tightly in both hands. It hummed with magic. Marion’s magic. Touching it stirred feelings much like the ones she’d experienced when stringing the bow at the archery range. The silver bracelet was something that she knew in an intimate fashion that was impossible to forget.
Yet she still couldn’t change the magic. Whatever connection she should have felt to the spells was simply absent. The omission was within Marion’s skull, somewhere in the hole where the missing memories should have rested. Nothing remained but lingering wisps of Leliel’s vision.
“Thank you,” she said, clasping the cuff around her wrist.
“No, thank you,” Leliel said. “You can come to the EL with me tonight. We have a lot to discuss to prepare you for the summit.”
“Well…” She was very curious to see the Ethereal Levant, and her curiosity was a powerful force. The only force more powerful at the moment was her longing to return to Konig. She needed him now more than ever, after feeling the merciless terror of the Genesis void. “Can we meet tomorrow morning, before the summit?”
Some of Leliel’s glow faded. “Very well. I’ve already discussed everything with Violet, and our writers are collaborating to prepare your keynote speech—in case we can’t bring your memory back before then. They’ll deliver it to you as soon as they’re done.”
“The writers are working on it right now?” she asked. “I thought everyone was at the party.”
“Not all sidhe are overwhelmed by their baser urges.” Leliel glanced over Marion’s shoulder and lowered her voice. “Though most of them are.”
Marion turned to see Konig waiting at the end of the hall, long hair shadowing one side of his face, expectation in the lines of his body. He’d followed them at a respectful distance, but his expectations were clear.
“We’ll talk tomorrow and transport you to the UN. The summit begins tomorrow evening,” Leliel said. “Enjoy your night.”
* * *
When Konig said that he wanted to show Marion something as wondrous as the bedroom with its walk-in closet, she was skeptical. After wearing hand-me-down scrubs for so long, she doubted that anything better than her closet existed, whether in the Middle Worlds or anywhere else.
But then he took her to the gardens.
“Behold,” Konig said.
He was watching her closely, waiting for a reaction.
She was confident that her surprise satisfied him.
Lights on every tree branch illuminated the leaves in eerie gold and copper. The stamens on the flowers were brighter than the moon and lit the petals from within. Fireflies darted from tree to tree, darting through breaks in honey fountains that spurted from fissures in the soil.
Even as she watched, everything was growing: the pumpkins, the vines, the herbs. They were fed by that golden flow of magical honey, and everything was in constant, gentle motion.
Marion couldn’t have hidden the awe the gardens struck in her even if she’d wanted to.
“I won’t bother asking if you like it.” Konig dragged her down the path twisting between flowerbeds. “We’ve discussed it before.”
“The only thing I’ve seen that’s more beautiful than the garden is your hair,” Marion said.
That surprised a laugh out of Konig. “My hair, you say?”
The silver cuff on Marion’s wrist had gotten warm. She lifted it to show him. “Leliel gave me the honesty thing.”
“Now that’s interesting. My enigmatic princess compelled to be utterly honest.” Konig encircled her opposite wrist with his fingers, mirroring the shape of the bracelet. “What do you think of the Autumn Court?”
“It feels like home,” she said.
A sly smile inched across his face. “What do you think of my parents?”
“I don’t think much about Rage at all. Violet is scary. I don’t think she likes me, and I don’t think I like her.” Marion bit the inside of her cheek to try to stop herself, but it was
too late. It was out there. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t like her either,” he said dismissively. “What do you think of me? Aside from my hair?”
“I’m incredulous that I could be with you,” Marion said. “Though I also feel like it’s no surprise, as I deserve the likes of a prince.” That was getting to be a little too honest for her. It was the same kind of arrogance that had embarrassed her in Port Angeles. She started trying to wiggle the bracelet off. It was tighter than she expected, as though it had shrunk to fit her.
“What do you think of that doctor, Luke?” Konig asked.
Marion wrenched the bracelet off.
“That’s not nice,” Marion admonished. “We’ve talked about him enough. I’m here with you. Isn’t that enough?”
“I don’t know,” Konig said, his hand tight on her arm. He bowed closer to her, until she could taste his breath on her lips.
She only allowed him to kiss her briefly. Her enthusiasm for his affection had waned in the wake of Leliel’s dark memories. “Why doesn’t the Autumn Court let the angels regrow here, in the gardens of Myrkheimr? Or outside, in the forest. There must be somewhere safe you could put them.”
Surprise touched the violet shards of Konig’s eyes. “That was the first thing we attempted when the angels approached my parents for an alliance. We’ve just got too much magic around here. It screwed up the nest, made things grow wrong.”
“Don’t you think that would happen in the Winter Court, too?”
“Not if we evacuated the survivors still in there,” Konig said. “Empty everything out, and make sure the angels start their nest as far from the ley lines as possible… It’ll be fine. Why do you ask?”
“Leliel showed me things,” Marion said, swallowing hard. “It made me so sad. I wanted to know if we might have a Plan B if I’m not able to negotiate for the angels to win the Winter Court at the summit.”
“Your compassion astounds,” Konig said. “I love you, Marion Garin.”
A mischievous thought seized her. “Prove it.” She lifted the bracelet between them.
Konig donned it with a laugh. “All right. I love you. I have never felt about anyone the way that I feel about you. I’d die for you.”