by SM Reine
Marion tried not to tremble. “But I don’t know what to say. I can’t give Leliel what she wants.”
Konig’s expression was deadly serious. “Do you realize how many people would die if angels attacked the Middle Worlds?”
Until she had invaded Leliel’s mind, Marion wouldn’t have been able to picture it.
But she had seen into Leliel’s memories. She had seen ancient armies, infernal and ethereal, battling on the planes of Earth. It had only taken one angel to fight every ten thousand demons. Even if Leliel were the last of two dozen angels, as she claimed, they could truly wreak devastation on the entire world.
They’d start with beautiful Myrkheimr, its gardens of honey, and people like Nori and Konig.
Rylie studied Marion with worry furrowing her eyebrows. “Are you ready?”
Marion took the speech Leliel and the Autumn Court had prepared out of her pocket. She skimmed the words again and swallowed hard.
Konig was right. If Marion had the opportunity to prevent war, she had to do it. What harm could there be in giving the Winter Court to the angels anyway? It was in anarchy, a world without leadership. It wasn’t like the angels would be invading an established kingdom.
Marion took a step toward the door, but stopped when a thought struck her. “Wait,” she said, rounding on Rylie. “The attack outside, and in the lobby—those were diversions created by friends who were trying to help me get into the UN safely. I need them to be released.” As an afterthought, she added, “Please.”
Shock flashed through the Alpha’s eyes. “Did you just say please?”
“I told you Marion’s memory is gone,” Konig said.
Rylie looked more unsettled by this than anything else that had happened that day. “I’ll see to it that your friends are released.” Satisfied, Marion moved to follow Konig into the hallway—toward the speech she still had no choice but to deliver. Rylie paced her. She whispered urgently to Marion. “If Elise and James don’t want the angels to have the Winter Court, you better do what they say.”
Marion frowned. “Who are Elise and James?”
The doors opened. Secretary Friederling stepped inside. He was shorter in person than he’d looked on the screens hanging outside the UN, and he was leaning heavily on a cane with a hawk’s head and glimmering gemstone eyes. “What’s the holdup? Everyone’s waiting.” He snapped his fingers impatiently. “Today, Ms. Garin.”
He was speaking to Marion.
She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.
It was time to give her speech.
* * *
The OPA agents escorted Marion backstage at the auditorium. She struggled to take each step toward the theater. Marion’s body was filled with lead.
You can’t give Leliel what she wants. She tried to kill you, and you’re going to piss off the gods if you obey her.
But the gods probably don’t even exist. You haven’t seen them, have you? You’ve been on the brink of death a dozen times and they didn’t save you.
You can save lives by giving the angels what they want.
There has to be a catch. Leliel is evil.
You can’t give that speech.
Marion could hear how restless the crowd was from behind the curtains. Voices and magic hummed throughout the entire room.
Everyone was waiting for her.
“Go,” urged a security guard. It looked like he was about to push her on stage. If Marion were going to humiliate herself in front of everyone, she wouldn’t be pushed. She’d do it with dignity.
She walked out on stage and winced into the bright, hot lights. The intensity of them was a mercy. It meant that she couldn’t see the expectant faces of all those powerful people who were wondering what a fraud was doing on stage wearing the mask of Marion Garin.
Rylie Gresham would have gotten back to her seat by now. The Alpha of all shapeshifters was waiting to see what Marion would do.
Deirdre Tombs, chair of the American Gaean Commission, would have a booth of her own. She’d be accompanied by a dozen of her toughest allies with the strongest connections to the media. Some of them were surely filming Marion.
Konig would have joined his parents and the other members of the Autumn Court, too.
Marion’s face would be on televisions everywhere, including the screens hanging on the outside of the United Nations building. She could imagine Luke standing on the rooftop to watch her fail. It was easy, since a few large monitors were positioned around the stage, and Marion could see her own desperately confused face staring back at her.
She stood stupefied before an entire room of deadly creatures—people who held the strings of the world and made nations dance as puppets. People who trusted Marion to deliver the word of the gods even though she was lucky she could tie her shoes without help.
She unfolded the speech on the podium. She gripped the microphone so tightly that her knuckles were white and her forearms trembled.
“It’s been almost fifteen years since Genesis changed our lives.” Her voice was hoarse, cracking, shaking. “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 best use of these gifts.”
But I don’t remember the message.
She couldn’t make herself keep reading. She struggled to keep standing, to keep her calm, to keep breathing.
Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Motion caught the corner of her eye, and she turned to see the curtains swaying.
Luke stepped onto the stage with a faint whiff of sulfur. Snow clung to his hair and the shoulders of his leather jacket. His eyes looked blacker in the brilliant stage lights, and his skin warmer, almost more like burnished gold than brown.
He strode toward her without even glancing at the audience.
Murmurs erupted into shouting. Marion couldn’t understand what anyone was saying because the summit’s attendees were yelling over one another.
All the tension in her body melted into blind gratitude.
Luke was there. He was going to save her one more time.
She rested a hand on the microphone to make sure that it wouldn’t pick up her voice. “What are you doing? How did you even get inside?”
“That’s not important.” He ducked his head to whisper into her ear. “Knock knock, Marion.” Luke’s bare, chilly fingers clutched Marion's.
The doors of her mind opened.
Warm surety flooded Marion, accompanied by the buzz of magic and frothing memory. It was too much for her to pick through all at once, so she focused on the thing that mattered most: leading the summit, as was her birthright, her job, and her honor.
Marion knew what the gods wanted. She was, after all, the Voice.
She crumpled the speech written by the angels in her fist, dropped it onto the stage, and spoke from memory.
“We meet this week to discuss the fate of the Winter Court,” Marion said. Luke’s fingers tightened around hers. “It’s been in turmoil ever since the previous leader was arrested by the Office of Preternatural Affairs. It’s a travesty that none of the sidhe have stepped up to take care of this precious jewel. Even now, Niflheimr is in ruin, and the court is rocked by anarchy. The surviving unseelie within the court are frozen in battle. They have been abandoned.”
The murmuring voices were quickly subsiding.
She could feel the eyes of the angels on her, waiting for her to give them the Winter Court.
But the message of the gods was stronger than any other influence on Marion. It was a living thing coiled in her belly, speaking through her lips. She was no more than Pythia, the oracle who spoke the words of Apollo.
“The gods want to make one thing clear: the Winter Court must not be yielded to angels or demons,” Marion said. “The sanctuary of the Middle Worlds is solely intended for gaean occupation. They are prepared to enforce this with blood.”
Screaming.
Marion gripped Luke’s hand tightly and leaned toward the microphone to finish her speech.
“As the Voice of God, I will be taking immediate custody of the Winter Court,” Marion said. “Vote as you will in the days to come, but know that the summit’s decisions bind only mortals. I speak to the will of the gods. Niflheimr is mine. Those who dare to defy me will know the gods’ wrath.” She smiled when she spoke, and she could see her cheeks dimpling on the monitors around the room.
Dread filled her even as she smiled.
She hadn’t meant to say that. She hadn’t had a clue what the gods’ message was.
But now it was out there, and she couldn’t stop the war it would incite.
* * *
The attendees descended into something resembling a riot, and security moved swiftly to remove Marion from the stage. She stepped behind the curtains with Luke and the guards, breaking her grip with the doctor’s hand. The instant they no longer touched, the gods’ words fled from her, draining all the confidence along with it. Marion’s magic and memories slipped back into murky oblivion.
It didn’t matter. The damage was done.
But she still had Luke’s company.
She turned to security. “Leave us,” she ordered.
They didn’t question her. She was too important for that.
It wasn’t until the doors shut and Marion was alone with Luke that she allowed exhaustion to replace adrenaline.
“Oh gods,” she whispered, half-giddy and half-horrified. “I can’t believe I did that.” And then she realized exactly what had happened. “Oh no. I can’t believe I did that.”
“Why would the gods want you to have the Winter Court?” Luke asked, eyes narrowing as he studied her face. It looked like he thought he would be able to find answers if he stared at her hard enough.
“I don’t know. I didn’t mean to say that.” The shaking started all over again. “I can’t take over one of the Middle Worlds. I’m not really a princess. I’m just…gods, I don’t know who I am.”
He took her shoulders. Marion couldn’t help but notice that Luke avoided touching her skin again. Her mind was far dimmer without his contact. “You did what you had to do, and you’ll keep doing it. You should be proud of yourself.” The corner of his mouth lifted in a lopsided smile. “I am.”
Her cheeks got hot, and she ducked her head. “It wasn’t the sidhe trying to kill me. It was Leliel. She nearly murdered me before I could get on stage, and that’s why my speech was so late.”
“Leliel? I’m not surprised to hear that. But I don’t believe the Autumn Court is innocent. They’re allied with the angels.”
“Leliel confessed,” Marion said. “Konig was shocked.”
“Maybe Konig doesn’t know what his parents are up to,” Luke said. It sounded like giving that concession to the prince pained him.
It equally pained her to say, “I agree with you.”
“At least you’re safe now,” Luke said. “Be careful, Marion. Watch out for yourself.” He squeezed her shoulders gently. “I have to go.”
“Go? Where?”
“Away,” he said.
“For how long? When will I see you again?”
“I don’t know.” The way he said it was more of an answer than the words themselves. Luke didn’t plan on coming back. “Good luck, Marion. You’re going to do great things with the Winter Court. I can tell.”
Before she could protest, Luke stooped to brush his lips over her temple. The briefest kiss was electricity through her brain.
It whited out her entire mind.
Marion was a little girl in a garden of towering trees. She was running free, bouncing off of springy green moss, splashing through the icy churn of a brook that babbled her name. She was searching for doors in a skyless world.
And Luke was there.
He had always been there.
Someone was shouting. “Seth!”
Marion’s vision cleared. She was still standing backstage, but Luke Flynn was nowhere in sight. She brushed her fingertips over her temple where he had kissed her. The skin was hot and cold all at once. Her back hurt. Her ribs felt as though they’d been squeezed.
But somewhere, deep within, in a place that she hadn’t found yet—a door had opened, and it was permanent. A door that would never shut again.
“Seth!” Rylie Gresham burst backstage, nose lifted, sniffing the air like the wolf she was capable of becoming. Her private guard was barely two steps behind her. They had golden shifter eyes and held big guns. Marion didn’t even care.
The sound of that name she’d been whispering to herself for so long—Seth—was almost as electric within Marion’s gut as the brush of Luke’s lips. “What did you say?”
Rylie seized Marion’s hands. “Why didn’t you tell me you found Seth when we were talking in the ballroom? You know I’ve been looking for him for years!”
“Seth,” Marion echoed. “Do you mean…Seth Wilder?”
Rylie gave a disbelieving laugh. “Of course I mean Seth Wilder. What other Seth would I care about? Why was he on stage with you?”
Luke is Seth Wilder.
All this time, Marion had been traveling with the man she needed to find.
She spun on the spot, scanning the area behind the stage for any sign of him. It was rapidly filling with people who wore werewolf sanctuary-branded t-shirts—people who belonged to Rylie’s delegation.
There was no sign of Lucas Flynn.
Seth Wilder.
Whoever he was, he had already disappeared, leaving nothing for Marion but a few lingering memories and the brush of a kiss on her temple.
And he’d made it clear he was never coming back.
* * *
Marion Garin, daughter of the former Voice of God Metaraon, has returned to power. She's the only one who can stop brewing war between the shapeshifters, sidhe, and angels. But Seth Wilder wants her help, and Marion owes him a favor. A big favor. She'll do anything he asks. Even if that requires putting the world at risk for it.
Marion’s story continues in Cast in Hellfire!
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