by SM Reine
“This is delightful. Keep talking,” Marion said.
“I fantasize of what an Autumn Court would be like with you on the throne beside me,” Konig said. “Mage and unseelie. We would conquer the world.” He pulled her tighter against him, the silver cuff burning with heat as it worked its magic. “I want to spend my life with you, and I fully intend on marrying you as soon as I can get away with it.”
All the blood rushed to her head. “Oh,” she whispered. Marion cleared her throat. “What do you mean, as soon as you can get away with it?”
“You only have to tell me when.” Konig punctuated that with the kind of kiss that made it feel like her clothes might just melt off.
They didn’t melt away, so Konig seemed interested in taking their removal into his own hands. He fisted her skirt. Lifted it to expose her calves, her knees, her thighs. His knuckles skimmed her tender flesh, and Marion almost collapsed on the spot.
“Wait, let’s go to my room,” she said, pushing her dress back down.
“Mine is closer,” Konig said.
15
Marion wasn’t certain how they made it to Konig’s room, or even how far it was from the garden. For all she knew, their kissing had stirred sidhe magic that instantly transported them from the honey fountains to the entrance of Konig’s room.
Some part of her wanted to stop and look around—to see what a prince’s bedroom would look like.
It was a very small part of her.
He ripped the bracelet off and pushed it back onto Marion’s wrist.
“Tell me how this feels,” he said as he kissed her throat.
She couldn’t help but gasp, “Good.”
He pressed himself between her thighs, lifting her legs with arms hooked under the knees. She was trapped between the prince and the wall beside his bedroom door, his lips on her throat, teeth nipping the tender flesh. Her heart pounded so hard that it felt like it would punch through the bone.
Gods, he did feel good. That was the total truth.
Shouldn’t this feel more than good? Shouldn’t it feel…familiar?
Marion kissed him, pushing the shirt off of his shoulders to expose his chest. His heart thundered under her palm as he pulled her dress aside, exposing her breasts. Konig’s lips trailed down her collarbone. Ice rolled over her flesh, followed by goosebumps.
Sidhe magic swelled between them. There was a distant orchestra playing in time to the beat of her heart, summoning ancient, primal magics that flowed through the veins of the Autumn Court.
This was how they did magic.
This was life.
She’d been choking with need in the garden, but now that she was facing the reality of it, in the solitude of Konig’s rooms, she was suffocated by hesitation, sadness, the shadow of the Genesis void in the corners of her mind.
Konig effortlessly carried her to the bed and spilled her body across it. The prince collapsed atop Marion. His weight flattened her to the bed, and it was pleasant. More than pleasant.
She wanted him to stop.
He slipped down her body, shoving her skirts above her knees. Konig trailed kisses along the inside of her knee. “Princess,” he whispered, his breath so much hotter than his skin. His finger traced up her hip, hooked in the waistband of her underwear.
The word leaped out of Marion. “Wait.”
Konig didn’t immediately acknowledge she’d spoken, tugging the lace down.
She pressed her knees together.
“Wait.”
“What?” he asked, looking up at her. His cheek rested against her thigh.
“I can’t,” she said.
Konig pushed up to hang over her, weight braced on knees and hands. “You…can’t?”
She scooted out from underneath him. Marion splayed her fingers over her breasts to conceal them. “I’m so, so sorry. It’s this bracelet making me be honest, and—I’m sorry,” she said. “This all feels strange with my missing memory. I didn’t want it to feel unfamiliar, but…” Marion swallowed hard. “And then after everything Leliel showed me, I’m just not in the mood.”
Konig pushed back to rest on his knees. He looked as wounded as though she’d stabbed him instead of merely asking him to stop. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. Slow down.”
“Slow down? Slow down? It’s not the first time we’ve been together, princess. This isn’t fast.”
“I know, I believe you,” Marion said. “I just need my space. I need time. And…I need memory.” When nothing she said changed his expression, she apologized again. “I’m sorry.”
Konig was still for a long moment, his glower tensing her muscles into knots.
He finally climbed out of bed with a sigh, plucked a robe off of the door of his armoire, and tossed it onto the bed with her. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Marion pulled the protective shell of silk around her body before slipping out of the bed. “I don’t want to hurt you, Konig. I want to be with you.” She flashed the bracelet at him, reminding the prince of the enchantment.
“You’re doing a great job by accident if it’s unintentional,” he said harshly. “Ever since you’ve come back—you’ve been different, Marion. I don’t think I like this person you’re becoming. You’re not my Marion anymore.”
“Maybe I should have left with the angels tonight after all,” she said, eyes stinging.
Konig gave her a long, appraising look. “Maybe you should have.”
* * *
Marion’s bedroom was empty when she returned to it—so empty that even the fullness of her closet and all its fine designer clothes were no comfort.
The windows stood open, curtains fluttering in a breeze that smelled of pollen and honey. She stepped through them onto the balcony. Her room was on the opposite side of the tower from Konig’s, so she couldn’t see his bedroom or the garden. She could only see the fringes of Myrkheimr lit by starlight, and the village half-hidden in the trees.
Marion gazed at the moonless sky and felt…empty.
She was missing something.
It wasn’t a physical ache. The discomfort came from within. The feeling that she wasn’t where she needed to be, and that the time wasn’t right.
Marion turned to reenter her room, but its furnishings were so unfamiliar that they felt hostile. Would she have been happier if she’d agreed to go to bed with Konig? If the chemistry between them meant anything, she doubted she’d ever slept in the Autumn Court without a coppery-fleshed sidhe prince wrapped around her body.
There was a large package on her bed that hadn’t been there earlier. Marion sat on the edge of the mattress and lifted the box’s lid.
Inside, a longbow was nestled beside a slender quiver of arrows. The bow’s strings were coiled within wax paper at the bottom. There was also a note that only said, “For my princess.” Konig must have arranged for someone to leave it in her room earlier, while they were at dinner.
“Oh, Konig,” she sighed to herself.
She strung the bow and hefted its weight in her hand. Why was she so comfortable nocking one of those deadly arrows when she had been totally uncomfortable kissing her own boyfriend? Marion’s body wanted to shoot but it didn’t want sex. That wasn’t right.
Marion propped the bow and quiver beside the bed, then stripped off her dress, unwinding the many layers of cloth from around her lean body. The dress seemed more difficult to remove than it had been to don in the first place.
For the first time, the Autumn Court felt cold. She pulled Konig’s robe around herself again.
Someone knocked at her door. She answered it to find Heather Cobweb with an envelope. “From the ethereal delegates,” said the archer.
Marion took it. “Thank you.”
“You’ll have a guard posted in the hall outside your room all night. We’ve been ordered to get anything you need, so just step out here if you have any requests.”
“Thank you,” she said again, and she shut the door firmly.
; The envelope contained one page of tightly written text—her speech for the beginning of the summit, to replace the one that she had presumably forgotten.
“It’s been almost fifteen years since Genesis changed our lives,” she read aloud under her breath. “Where it once took Adam, Lilith, and Eve seven days to assemble nothingness into something, it took our new gods only one. The Nether, Middle, and High Worlds are a gift to us. I’ve been given messages about the gods’ intent to help us make the best use of these gifts.”
She skimmed a few more lines down.
The speechwriters had concluded her speech with, “The Winter Court deserves an appreciative population as much as the angels need a safe haven, and the gods see these problems as having a single satisfying solution. The angels must move from the Ethereal Levant to the Winter Court.”
Marion lowered the paper, frowning at her pale-cheeked reflection in the mirror.
It was one thing to have the speechwriters prepare something for her, but it was another thing entirely to pretend they could guess at the will of the gods.
A gust of wind pushed Marion’s window open wider with a creak. She turned to close it.
A figure stood on the balcony.
Marion thought it was Konig at first. He was tall enough, slender enough, and carrying a sword almost as tall as he was.
He entered the dim light of her bedside lamp. His skin was the dull color of dead leaves. Limp hair hung to the small of his back. His sunken eyes were fixed on her as firmly as his fingers were upon the jagged hilt of the sword.
That wasn’t Konig, but an assassin. In the Autumn Court. Where she should have been protected.
Marion seized the bow from her bedside. She was quick to nock an arrow, but the assassin was quicker to dart toward her. A sidhe had the advantage in the Middle Worlds: the ability to slip from one spot to another before she could blink.
He swung the sword. She leaped back, putting the bed between them. The tip of the blade sliced smoothly through the ribbon tying her robe shut.
Marion opened her mouth to shout for the guards.
Another flash.
The assassin seized her from behind, wrapping his hand around her mouth to smother the cry. All that came out was a muffled wail.
He was close enough to quiet her, but too close to use such a great cleaving blade with any effectiveness. And too close for Marion to use the bow. She slammed the jagged point of the arrow into her assassin’s thigh instead. Cold blood gushed over her fingers.
“Shit,” he hissed, blasting ice on her cheek.
She stabbed again, but he twisted out of its range. His hand shifted on her mouth. Marion sank her teeth into the pad of his thumb.
He jerked away with a shout.
Marion threw herself across the room. “Heather! Help me!”
It should have taken barely an instant for Heather to enter. She’d said that there would be guards all night barely three minutes earlier.
Nobody came.
Worse, Marion had dropped her bow by the assassin’s feet, so now she only held a single, blood-slicked arrow.
She darted for the balcony. The assassin did, too.
Marion got through the doors first and leaped onto the railing, prepared to dive over the side into the forest.
A hand fisted in her hair. Jerked her back. Tossed her to the floor.
The assassin loomed over her, wrapping the magic of the Autumn Court around himself like the cloak of an executioner. He radiated greed. He was dreaming of money—a million dollars—and the thought of what he would do with Marion’s body had him giddy.
He lifted his sword in both hands. Its point glistened in the light.
And then—a gunshot.
The assassin wasn’t where he had been standing moments earlier, so the bullet only zipped past his shoulder.
Marion pushed up onto her elbows, searching for the shooter. Her eyes fell on a balcony a dozen feet from hers, where another man stood. The bullet had come from the barrel of a gun that had saved her life more than once before.
Luke was back, leather jacket, handguns, and all. And he looked pissed off.
He shot again.
The assassin lifted his sword in time to deflect the bullet. The ricochet shattered the window.
There was no way the guards hadn’t heard that.
Luke leaped off of the other balcony and landed on hers. A choked cry caught in Marion’s throat when the assassin met him with the blade, but Luke dodged under it effortlessly.
When he shot again, he didn’t miss.
The assassin thudded to his knees beside Marion with a gaping hole in his chest. The sword clattered to the floor.
Blood dribbled across the stone. Marion kicked wildly, driving herself away from the puddle so the icy amber tide wouldn’t touch her.
She was caught in warm arms.
“Did he get you?” Luke asked, dragging her off of the ground.
Marion wasn’t actually certain. The adrenaline throbbing through her body was so intense that she couldn’t feel her body at all. There was so much blood—but all of it the color of tree sap, so none of it hers.
“I think I’m okay,” she said, clinging to Luke’s chest. “He came out of nowhere. How did he get at me?”
“Dunno. Let’s get inside.” Luke half-carried her into her room again, shutting the doors behind them. Blood crept into the bedroom near the edge of the frame and soaked the carpet.
She allowed herself to stare at Luke for only a moment. She drank in the reassuring squareness of his features and inhaled his leathery scent.
He had come back for her.
The logistics of it seemed irrelevant, just as she momentarily didn’t care about Konig’s accusations toward Luke. He obviously did have iron bullets. He’d just used them to exterminate an unseelie assassin. Marion had never felt so grateful before.
She was dizzy with giddy relief. “You came back.”
“I couldn’t help myself,” Luke said. How could he manage to shoot that lopsided smile at her when he had just killed someone?
He just killed someone. Assassins are still coming after me.
Marion peeled away from Luke and scrambled to pick up her bow. She realized her robe was hanging open, so she pulled it shut with her other hand. “How did you know—?”
“The Autumn Court sent the assassins.” Luke glanced out the windows, then whipped the curtains shut. “They’re trying to kill you.”
All that giddy relief came to a screeching halt.
The Autumn Court?
“Just because the assassins are sidhe doesn’t mean…” She swallowed hard, shook her head. “No, I don’t think—”
“Oliver Machado had magic out of the Autumn Court’s private library. They had to give those spells to him, so they’re the ones who want you dead.” Luke flung the closet open, grabbed an outfit from the drawers nearest the door.
“But why?” Marion asked.
“We can only guess. Let’s wait to do that once we’re away from the people trying to murder you.” Luke tossed clothes to her. “Get dressed so we can leave.”
Her door opened an inch—just long enough for Marion to see Heather on the other side.
The guard was already lifting her bow to aim.
Marion shut her door and shoved the desk in front of it. Bodies banged uselessly into the other side—not just Heather, but a half-dozen other guards from the sounds of it. They didn’t sound happy.
“I should find Konig. This is a mistake. He’ll clear it up.” Marion yanked the jeans on under her bathrobe and slung her bow over her shoulder.
“I think the whole court’s in on it,” Luke said.
But Konig had just been kissing her, trying to make love to her, showing her a beautiful garden that flowed with honey. He would never try to kill her.
“No,” Marion said.
“Come on.” Luke extended a hand toward her.
His bare hand.
The guards pounded their fists i
nto the doors. Magic burned in the hallway, making Marion’s skin itch all over. The handle went white with heat. They’d be through within seconds.
“Come on,” Luke said again, more insistently.
Her every sense longed to take his hand, with an urgency as powerful as the one that had pushed Konig away from her that night.
Marion brushed her fingertips against his palm.
Her mind opened.
Knock knock, Marion.
The world shifted. It swirled and twisted and filled with light.
There was magic in her mind, in her soul.
They reached the balcony at the same time that Heather broke through the doors with reinforcements. Magic teemed around their fists, and when Marion tried to look directly at them, all she could see was blinding light.
“Get away from me!” Marion cried, clutching Luke’s hand.
She thrust her opposite hand toward the guards.
The magic came from within—within, and without. It flowed from the pulse of her blood and from the sky above. The stars fed her. The brilliant sparks of thought roiling within Luke’s mind. The books on the shelves.
She was an angel, a mage.
Even when Marion didn’t understand why or how, she couldn’t change who she was.
Magic punched into her would be assassins and sent them flying.
They smashed through the bedroom wall, and then the wall beyond that. The force of Marion’s magic kept pushing until they were flying through open air beyond the outermost walls of Myrkheimr. Only Heather managed to push back, clinging to the hallway outside the room.
“Stop!” roared the archer, lifting her bow against the force of magic.
“Hold on to my neck,” Luke said. He swept an arm under her legs, scooping her easily off the ground and stepping over the first assassin’s body. Marion clung to his neck as he ordered. She was weightless in his arms.
He leaped off of the balcony.
Falling in the Middle Worlds didn’t feel like it should have—as though the air thickened and gravity slowed, allowing them to float rather than tumble. The grass took their bodies gently, soft as a pillow.