by SM Reine
But it would also mean losing the election.
She would never let Rhiannon win.
“Shove it up your cloaca,” Deirdre said. “I’m going back to Earth.”
He lunged at her.
Deirdre whirled out of the way, leaping behind the nearest tree.
Melchior smashed into the one that she’d left. His fists pulverized the bark and sank inches deep into its core.
Wood sprayed around him. Ice showered from the branches above.
He yanked his hands out of the tree. Smoldering coals remained in its belly.
Melchior rounded on Deirdre, jaw dropping. The inside of his mouth was glowing. No, actually—the glow was coming from deep within his chest, emanating up his throat, illuminating his teeth.
He was going to breathe fire in his human form, this time aimed right at her.
“Gods,” Deirdre said.
She leaped off the side of the hill.
Melchior’s flames blasted over her head in a column as thick as her body, missing her head by millimeters. She actually felt her hair curl from the proximity of the heat.
Wind battered at Deirdre as she plummeted toward the trees. They grew rapidly underneath her.
“Change!” she screamed at herself. “Change!”
But when she reached within, searching for the anger that Melchior had said would allow her to shapeshift, she didn’t feel the power of the transformation.
She was angry all right. Angry and afraid, but mostly angry.
The power just wasn’t there.
Deirdre’s flaming flesh spluttered and went dark.
Seconds later, she smashed into the trees at the bottom of the valley.
They broke her fall, but she couldn’t tell how much of the snapping was the tree branches and how much was bone. She was numbed by the cold. Beyond shock. Unable to tell if her body was shattering.
She hit the ground on her side in a snowdrift. It was cold, so very cold, like daggers of ice stabbing into her side.
Without Melchior’s protective warmth, she couldn’t seem to keep her own fire flowing. Her body temperature wasn’t enough to even melt the snow. Her fingers and toes numbed, ears stinging as she fought to get to her feet.
Deirdre twisted to gaze up at the black sky. Melchior was a glowing point of light at the top of the hill. Wings unfurled from his back, sending plumes of smoke spiraling toward the clouds.
He was shifting again.
“Oh, man, so screwed up,” Deirdre said. Her teeth were chattering. She could barely understand herself.
The healing fever swept over her, blissfully hot in comparison to the surrounding snow. It was the only thing that got her moving.
She scaled the nearest tree and swung into the branches. Deirdre’s climb was clumsy and slow, fingers immobile from the cold.
The air churned as Melchior swooped over the trees.
He was halfway to his dragon form, winged and huge. He shot fire into the forest.
The trees caught around Deirdre.
“Damn!”
She leaped to the low branches of the nearest tree, and then to another tree, and another. The forest ended in an abrupt line at the edge of a valley. Deirdre hurled herself out of the branches and landed on the snow. She didn’t break through—it was solid as concrete, and about a million times slipperier than an ice skating rink.
Deirdre slid down the hill into the valley, ice scraping along her hip, her ribs, her shoulder.
It was so cold.
Melchior strafed her. He opened his giant dragon jaws, serpentine tongue thrashing in his mouth, and fire billowed within his body again.
Could dragonfire stun a phoenix?
Deirdre did not want to find out. If she fell unconscious, she would surely wake up in chains.
She threw herself down the icy slope, skidding faster to the nadir of the valley. Melchior burned a path where she had been seated only moments earlier, melting all the ice away, exposing dead grass underneath.
The portal that he’d opened to drag her into the Middle Worlds hung open over the next hill. The swirling patch of darkness was hard to see in the gloom of the night. It must have only been a quarter of a mile distant, but it felt like it was so much further than that, completely unreachable.
She needed to get through before Melchior caught her.
A fireball smashed into a tree to her left. It exploded, showering bark everywhere. She shielded her head with her arms and kept running.
Melchior roared so loudly that they must have been able to hear him at the castle. The trees shook with the fury of it. Ice pelted her numb skin.
Deirdre reached the top of the hill. The portal was even higher than she remembered. At least fifteen feet off the ground. Maybe out of her reach, since she was so numb and weak.
Melchior dropped toward her again. His claws flashed through the black night, aiming for her throat.
She leaped for the portal. She lifted her arms high. Spread her fingers out.
Deirdre stretched.
It was too high over her head. She was never going to reach it. She couldn’t fly—she wasn’t a phoenix, she didn’t have wings, she was going to be devoured by Melchior—
And then everything was black.
She smashed into carpet a millisecond later. Her momentum sent her rolling, arms and legs flopping, hair in her face.
Deirdre shoved up onto her knees, prepared to run from Melchior again. The floor was slippery with melted ice. Snow drifted from Deirdre’s hair and dissolved on contact with her skin.
She wasn’t in the Winter Court anymore. She was back in the cabin on the airship.
The door banged open. Trevin entered, attack spells crackling in his fists, ready for a fight, eyes aglow with the force of his seelie magic.
Then he saw Deirdre naked and dripping wet on the floor and burst into laughter.
An undignified end to an undignified night.
X
“What in the world is wrong with you?”
Deirdre shivered and pulled a blanket tighter around herself. “I’m cold, that’s what’s wrong with me. Is there a coffee pot anywhere on this stupid airship?”
Rylie gaped at her in disbelief. They were sitting at a table on the deck of the dirigible as the sun rose, waiting for Marion to arrive. Trevin was carrying those silver chains and eyeballing Deirdre again. “You just ran off with a competing Alpha when we’ve got a standing arrest warrant with your name on it, and you’re asking for coffee?”
“Well, I doubt there’s going to be coffee in solitary confinement,” she said.
“You are unreal.”
“Melchior admitted that Kristian belongs to Rhiannon, though,” Deirdre said. “It wasn’t a totally useless trip.” It especially hadn’t been useless since she had gotten to shapeshift—finally—but she wasn’t going to share that with the Godslayer. Rylie didn’t deserve to know about that part of Deirdre any more than Melchior did.
“I already knew Melchior was lying. I didn’t need you to verify it.” Rylie massaged her temples. It seemed another headache was coming on.
“If you’d been really smart, you wouldn’t have come back,” Trevin said.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” Rylie said softly.
Deirdre shrugged. “And miss the election? I wouldn’t dream of it.”
The sidhe’s eyes focused past her on the clouds beyond the deck. “Looks like our visitor has arrived.”
A small, light airplane that sparkled with enchantments soared through the sky, drifting close enough to tether its nose to the dirigible’s deck. Once it was stable, Marion climbed out of the pilot’s seat and jumped aboard the airship.
The mage girl hadn’t dressed up for the visit to the Summer Court. Her jeans were stained with something that looked like barbecue sauce. She wore a fluffy ponytail holder as a bracelet.
“Beautiful morning,” she said breathlessly, pulling the scarf off of her brunette curls. “Don’t you think?”
&nbs
p; Rylie stood to greet her with a kiss on the cheek. She was all smiles at the sight of the girl, her ire toward Deirdre forgotten. “Does your mom know that you flew here alone?”
“She knows I’m going to the Summer Court to cast a binding oath on the king of the seelie sidhe,” Marion said. “I hardly think she’d be surprised to hear that Abel let me on the ultralight alone.”
“So it was Abel who let you fly yourself.”
She grinned bashfully and didn’t respond to the question. Marion spotted Deirdre. “Hey! It’s my favorite terrorist!”
“Marion,” Rylie admonished.
“What? I said she’s my favorite.” Marion pulled out her cell phone, thumbs flashing over the screen as she started sending texts. The teenager was practically glued to her phone. It must have killed her to go without it for a few hours while piloting a ship. “Are we going through the portal or what?”
The Alpha sighed. “Yeah. We’re almost to the juncture.”
Deirdre had no idea how Rylie could tell. They had been over unremarkable ocean for hours, and the place that they were hovering looked identical to everywhere else they had passed.
She let Rylie and Marion enter the cabin first, casting a last look over the steely ocean.
It was a quiet day. Clouds drifted slowly past, borne on a wind that couldn’t penetrate the wards on the airship.
There was no sign of Melchior, Niamh, or any other unseelie assassin.
The dragon had told Deirdre that returning to Earth would mean her death at Rhiannon’s order, but the early morning had been suspiciously quiet. Maybe she was safe out on the ocean. Or maybe Rhiannon just hadn’t caught up with her yet.
“Coming?” Trevin asked, holding the door open. He hadn’t stopped smirking ever since he’d found Deirdre in her room. He most likely thought he’d caught Deirdre on the walk of shame through the ley lines. At this rate, everyone was going to think Deirdre was skanking it up with all the Alpha candidates.
She brushed past the sidhe, head held high.
The doorway to the Summer Court was kept in a locked room at the back of the airship’s gondola. It was a rather ordinary door, identical to the others on the ship aside from its golden frame. And also the fact that it stood open to expose brilliant golden light rather than another room. It was so bright on the other side that Deirdre couldn’t make out any details of the Summer Court.
Friederling was waiting for them. Unlike Deirdre, he looked like he’d rested well overnight, and he wasn’t leaning on his cane quite as hard as usual. The golden light radiating from the Middle Worlds made his blond hair look white.
The sight of the secretary made a hard lump lodge in Deirdre’s gut.
She hadn’t had time to consider what refusing Melchior might mean. But now she had a reminder shoved in her face.
Friederling had given her a deadly ultimatum, and Deirdre still had no idea what she was going to do about it.
“Good morning, Miss Garin,” Secretary Friederling said.
Marion waved. “Hi Fritz. Is everyone ready to go?”
“Whenever you’re ready,” Trevin said. “I need to keep this side of the door secure, so I’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”
“You’re not coming?” Marion asked. The girl’s eyes seemed bluer than usual, as though proximity to the magic flowing from the portal was making her power glow, too.
“We aren’t allowed to bring any guards with us. You ladies will have to trust that I can keep you safe,” Secretary Friederling said.
Rylie laughed. Deirdre laughed too, a little bit too loudly and without any real mirth. Rylie might not have been insulted that that some human man would joke about being stronger than an Alpha and a mage, but Deirdre could be insulted enough for the both of them.
The secretary climbed onto the dais that held the doorway. Rylie paced herself to walk alongside Friederling despite his exaggerated limp. He looked like he could have used a walker more than a cane. Maybe even a wheelchair.
The two of them passed through the door and vanished into the light. There was no change in the humming that emanated from the door.
Marion finally stuck her phone in her back pocket. “So how’s Everton Stark?”
“Murderous,” Deirdre said. “As usual.”
“Cool.”
“Not really.” Deirdre climbed onto the dais, but didn’t step through the door. She still hadn’t shaken the chill of the Winter Court. She wasn’t eager to see what terrors the Summer Court held.
“It’s okay,” Marion said. “Nothing is going to happen to you. This is just a door.” She rapped her knuckles against the golden frame. It echoed hollowly.
Deirdre squared her shoulders. Maybe she’d been spending too much time with Stark, but having the girl recognize Deirdre’s fear spurred her on like nothing else could.
She hated the idea that Marion would think she was afraid. Weak.
Deirdre passed through the doorway.
The air tightened, squeezing gently like a blanket wrapped around her body. Deirdre shut her eyes against the bright light.
When she opened her eyes again, she faced rolling green fields.
For an instant, she was convinced that she had died again and found herself in that nowhere-place between life and oblivion, where the sun was always on the brink of rising and it never rained. But she wasn’t alone in this place. Rylie and Friederling had arrived before her, and when Deirdre glanced over her shoulder, she saw that Marion had come too.
There was an archway behind Marion that matched the one on the airship, all glistening gold and gems. It stood on its own at the peak of the hill without any walls to hold it up.
The mage checked her cell phone. “Merde,” Marion said. “No reception.”
“We’re in the Summer Court,” Secretary Friederling said with thinly veiled irritation. “They don’t have satellites here.”
Deirdre stepped away from the others to the edge of the hill to look down upon the Summer Court for the very first time.
The rolling hills were carpeted in forest, much like the Winter Court. But while the place she’d visited the night before had been trapped in the icy depths of darkness, this place was…well, it looked like summer. The trees grew tall and twisting, with roots that thrust from moist, fertile earth that smelled of wet leaves. The dirt roads were lined with golden vines that hung with heavy grapes the color of rubies.
A postcard village sat in a clearing between the trees, its paths leading to a white-sand beach and sapphire ocean. There was a chateau on that beach, made of sprawling gold brick with green roofs. The windows reflected sunshine as though the chateau were on fire.
That was where the queen of the Summer Court would live.
A vehicle was approaching their hillside. It took Deirdre a moment of hard staring to process what she was seeing. “That’s a carriage, isn’t it? Do the Middle Worlds not have modern technology or something?”
Rylie stepped up beside Deirdre. “No, they do. It’s personal preference of the queen. She’s kind of a romantic.” The Alpha looked like she belonged in the fairytale land, blond hair blown back from her face by a warm wind that smelled faintly of fruit. “Technology doesn’t reliably function somewhere with this much magic, though. Animal propulsion is more reliable.”
The carriage looked like it belonged at Disneyland. It was a white round thing covered in golden spirals and led by a team of four horses.
As they drew nearer, Deirdre realized that the horses emanated an aura like the sidhe, inhaling all light that touched them and emitting their own gentle glow.
They weren’t horses. They were something magical.
They reached the top of the hill in seconds, then they stopped a few feet away, nickering in greeting.
Deirdre’s eyes widened as she looked them over.
The horses had horns thrusting from their foreheads. Long spiral horns as long as Deirdre’s arm.
“Kind of cool, isn’t it?” Rylie asked. “I think I went
into seizures of Lisa Frank joy the first time I saw them.”
“Are those…?”
“Unicorns,” Marion said. “They don’t bite.”
Deirdre stretched her fingers out hesitantly. The unicorn at the front butted its velvety nose into her palm and exhaled a warm breath over her fingers. A leathery tongue lapped at her wrist.
She stroked its neck. The unicorn’s hair was soft, almost more like a foam. Its long beard glistened in the sunshine.
It nudged her harder, pushing its face into her hip.
“They like candy bars,” Marion explained. She produced fun-sized Snickers bars out of her pockets, and she instantly had the attention of all four unicorns.
“That can’t be healthy,” Deirdre said.
“They’re unicorns.” She unwrapped the candy bars one at a time and let the unicorns eat out of her palm.
Deirdre felt numb all over watching it.
After all the horrible things that she had lived through in the last few weeks—heck, in the last ten years—it was more of a shock to come across a place full of perfect, beautiful things like the Summer Court than it was to be exposed Stark’s asylum or the endless chill of the Winter Court.
“When I retire, I’m moving here,” Rylie said. She was probably joking, but it made anger twist anew within Deirdre.
If Rylie wanted to move to the magical unicorn paradise, she could.
Deirdre didn’t have that option.
Marion had run out of candy, but the unicorns inspected her clothes for more, nosing the small of her back and underneath her long, curly hair.
Secretary Friederling checked his watch. “The king consort is expecting us soon. If you ladies are done…?” He wasn’t impressed by unicorns. Deirdre hadn’t needed another reason to hate him, but if she wanted more, then that was a pretty good one.
The door to the carriage swung open of its own volition. Rylie climbed in first, and then the secretary followed.
Deirdre waited for Marion to finish petting the unicorns before joining them.
She hesitated only an instant before climbing into the plush body of the carriage. It didn’t look like a trap. It was a glistening cage of gold and jewels being pulled by unicorns, for the love of the gods—like something Deirdre might have imagined if someone had asked her to design her perfect vacation when she was six years old.