by SM Reine
But right now all she could see was a silver forest and a lot of magical mist.
“Okay,” Deirdre said, rubbing her hands together. Runes had been added to the control panel. That must have meant that she could control the magic with it rather than the sound system.
Her companions were out there somewhere, possibly along with an unseelie queen. She just needed to find them.
Deirdre flipped a switch.
The forest outside the window disappeared, revealing the normal club.
The change was so immediate as to be shocking. It wasn’t accompanied by any of the usual swirling and distortion that she got out of unseelie magic. It was like changing a channel on the TV.
She flipped another switch, and the icy stalagmites returned. Her heart leaped when she realized that Vidya was fighting down there, surrounded by four different unseelie.
Deirdre leaped to the door and flung it open.
Icy wind blasted her in the face. It sucked the breath out of her lungs.
And there was nothing outside except endless silver forest.
“What the…?”
She stepped back in to look out the window. She could see Vidya fighting through the glass. But when she went to the door, she only saw forest.
Deirdre frowned and shut the door, returning to give a harder stare to the control panel.
“Magic and technology,” she muttered, running her hands over the sliders without manipulating them. A phoenix might have been closer to sidhe than shifter, but she still had no idea what to do with the magic.
She’d just need to experiment.
Deirdre pressed a couple of random buttons, and Vidya disappeared, along with the stalagmites.
Magic flashed on the other side of the window. She glimpsed a crystalline ice castle, a frozen ocean, a starry expanse.
And then she pressed a button that made a man appear on the dance floor in front of the booth.
Melchior.
Where he stood, the ice had melted under his shoes, exposing concrete. His shoulders steamed.
A massive monolith rested behind him, which Deirdre hadn’t seen elsewhere in the club until that moment. It was opaque, like granite, but carved into a shape like a diamond. The sight of it filled her with strange, preternatural dread.
Deirdre understood instinctively that she’d found what she was looking for.
Somehow, the unseelie queen was trapped inside that monolith.
The dragon shifter beckoned to Deirdre. His mouth moved, and even though she couldn’t hear him, she could tell what he was saying.
“Come and get me.”
Deirdre went to the door again. When she opened it, she found the same view outside the door as she had seen outside the window: a long stretch of ice so shiny that it was almost a mirror, a few silver trees, the monolith, and one dragon.
She didn’t step down the stairs yet. “Is that where you put her?” Her voice carried over the magicked landscape.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Melchior said.
“Sure, and I’m the Alpha in charge of all shifters.”
His eyebrows arched. “You could be, if you wanted.”
A shiver traced down her spine that had nothing to do with the wind.
Deirdre reached into the sound booth to curl her fingers around the hilt of the Ethereal Blade again. She tucked it against her side, careful not to let Melchior see.
“I don’t suppose you’ve seen Kristian around?” Melchior asked. “Rhiannon sent him to greet you.”
Deirdre feigned ignorance, plastering an innocent expression on her face. “What a shame. I must have missed him.”
She slipped down the stairs on unsteady legs, keeping herself angled so that Melchior wouldn’t be able to see that she was holding the Ethereal Blade. He would know that she had some kind of weapon—he wasn’t stupid—but she hoped he’d think it was a gun.
As she grew closer to the monolith, it started throbbing harder. Her eyes tracked around the runes. She wished that she had Stark’s eye for magic. It meant nothing to her. None of it.
But what had he said about magic? You didn’t need to know anything about it to figure out which part of the spell was critical, which piece couldn’t be replaced, which cog the machine needed in order to run. Witches would always show off their best work. They’d be showy about it.
Deirdre could use the Ethereal Blade to break the spell down.
When she drew nearer to the monolith, Melchior moved forward, forcing her to sidestep in order to keep out of his reach.
His eyes burned through her, hungry and wanting. “Stark is still fighting in this forest, caught in the labyrinth of my queen’s magic. But you aren’t. You found me.”
He wasn’t even trying to figure out what she was hiding behind her back. His eyes were fixed to his favorite body parts, the ones that he’d been eager to get those scaly hands all over in the Winter Court.
Now that Deirdre was closer, she could see that the monolith wasn’t truly opaque. There was the shadow of a woman frozen inside of it, encased like a ruby trapped in amber.
The queen.
The monolith was also scored with sword marks. Each scratch was an inch deep and had flowers frozen to it.
Kristian had tried to cut his way through the stone to reach the queen using the Ethereal Blade, but even the blessed sword hadn’t been able to cut through that monolith. Ofelia was truly a powerful sidhe. Powerful enough to rival the angels. And she must have chosen to trap herself in stone rather than allow Melchior to kill her.
“I found the queen,” Deirdre said. “I’m here for her, not for you. But you haven’t been able to get inside. Right?”
“I don’t need to get inside now that you’re here.” His lips curved into a ruthless smile. “You’re still marked for the sluagh, and it’s a single-minded creature. It will hunt you until you’re absorbed, my little heron. And now it will follow you into Original Sin to the unseelie queen.” He spread his arms wide. It was a gesture of victory, like celebrating a touchdown. “I had worried I wouldn’t find a way to kill Ofelia, but you’ve fixed that.”
Deirdre’s heart contracted.
He must have been bluffing. The sluagh wouldn’t be able to kill the unseelie queen—it was an unseelie beast. She would be immune to it. Right?
She didn’t want to consider what it might have meant if he wasn’t bluffing.
Melchior continued. “I could still save you by taking you into the Winter Court with me. You really are perfect—powerful, ruthless, deadly. Life as my concubine would be very…pleasant.”
His tone dropped on the last word, going deep, throbbing, like hands stroking the inside of Deirdre’s body.
She shivered. It was a pleasant shiver, totally unlike the one she got from proximity to the monolith.
Deirdre forced a confident grin. “I don’t see why I have to be the pet. What about this idea? You can be my concubine. I’ve always wanted a dragon.”
He slithered around the nearest tree, the muscles of his abdomen flexing in sinuous lines. “What would you do if I took you up on that offer, my little heron?”
“Aren’t you loyal to Rhiannon?”
“Dragons are moody,” Melchior said. “I’m loyal to my whims.”
Deirdre shivered again, one long shudder after another. The heat of their bodies interacted, pushing their temperature higher and higher. Like they were going to set fire to the iron forest just by looking at each other.
The monolith responded to their heat, too. The surrounding runes glowed more brightly. The air hummed with power.
“I’m the only one who’s seen you in your animal form,” he said. “I’m the only one who knows you as a shifter. Truly knows you. My whims pull me to you. I might be willing to follow those whims away from Rhiannon under the right circumstances.”
Gods, but Melchior was an awfully pretty man, all hard lines and muscle and scales.
Sure, he was with the unseelie. Sure, he’d dedic
ated most of his life to being a sadist, inflicting pain on Stark. And sure, he didn’t have any sign of Stark’s only redeeming quality: his principles.
Melchior’s only interest was pure self-satisfaction. And maybe Deirdre’s satisfaction, too.
He could make her shapeshift. He could probably make her do a lot of other amazing things, too.
Deirdre would have been lying if she said she didn’t want Melchior. Her eyes tracked down his exposed flesh to the line of darker scales that vanished into his waistband. On any other man, that would have been soft hair. What Niamh had always called a “happy trail.”
“If you agreed to take a compulsion from Stark, I’d take you,” Deirdre said. “I mean, our vision for the happy future of gaeans includes everyone. Even shifters like you.”
“Dragons?”
“Bastards who have betrayed their kind in the pursuit of power.”
“You cut me deep,” Melchior said.
She hadn’t cut him deep yet, but she would.
The Ethereal Blade was chilly in her hand. It was impatient. It wanted to be wielded, not hidden.
“If you’ll dedicate yourself to our cause, and if you’ll take a command from Stark to make sure we can trust you, then I’ll let you live,” she said. “You don’t even need to be my concubine. I was joking about that part.”
“I wasn’t,” Melchior said.
Those two words were enough to make her lower belly clench and her knees go weak.
Yeah, he was really hot.
She kept the sword behind her back as Melchior closed the distance between them. He moved like he was nothing but spine and muscle, serpentine, masculine but graceful.
They stood only a few inches away from the outer ring of runes now. The sheer power of it tingled over Deirdre’s skin.
“Consent to compulsion from Stark?” Melchior mused, stroking the backs of his knuckles over Deirdre’s cheek. His breath was hot on her face. The contact of skin on skin smoldered.
“That’s all you gotta do,” she said.
“He would use that compulsion to force me to free Ofelia, wouldn’t he?”
“That’s the cost of your life. Yes. I need her alive in order to make the election happen.”
“Did he tell you what happened the last time that I accepted his compulsion?” Melchior asked.
“He didn’t want to talk about it.” She was leaning into him despite herself, pressing her hips and belly to his, seeking more contact from the only creature she’d ever met who burned as hot as she did.
His head dipped toward hers. “I’m not surprised. Why would Stark want you to know that he commanded me to abduct his daughters?”
Shock washed over her, even more unpleasant than all the radiating magic and the cold. “He made you abduct his kids?”
“I am a terrible man who has done terrible things, but the worst thing was dragging two screaming girls away from their mother at the command of the father who hates them. I would rather die than let that bastard compel me again,” he whispered, his lips slithering against hers. The dry leather of his tongue flicked against her chin.
Her heart was pounding through her whole body, from crown to fingertips and toes.
Why would Stark have done that? Did it change anything?
Not with Melchior.
I would rather die than let that bastard compel me again.
“So be it,” Deirdre whispered back.
She turned her head a fraction of an inch so that they kissed. He tasted like cinnamon and curry. His tongue was inhumanly agile, and Deirdre could only imagine what kind of things he could do with that.
Some of the tension drained from Melchior at the kiss. Fire blazed between them, the heat of a phoenix warring with the heat of a dragon.
She let the Ethereal Blade fall to her side, angling the tip up at his ribs.
Melchior didn’t even notice.
His hand slipped to the back of her head, tangling in her hair. Even though she’d almost bitten his tongue out before, he wasn’t guarded—if anything, it only made him more aggressive, biting at her lips, hard enough that she felt the sharp edge of his fangs. He was on the brink of cutting her.
A groan rolled through Deirdre’s chest. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and brought the short blade of the falchion close to his skin.
She’d only have one shot. She needed to make it count.
A roar shook the silver forest.
Melchior leaped back, out of her reach, mouth opening wide in a hiss. His burning eyes focusing on the origin of the growl.
Stark stood among the trees. He had seen them kissing. He was already halfway to his bear wolf form.
And he did not look happy.
Deirdre heaved a sigh. “Oh, for the love of—”
Melchior launched at Stark with a dragon’s shriek.
He was suddenly holding the triple-barreled golden revolver, even though he certainly hadn’t been wearing enough clothes to hide it. The gun didn’t look as ridiculously oversized in his hands as it had for Deirdre; it fit him comfortably, like an extension of his massive, muscular hands.
Arms lifting smoothly, he aimed the gun at Stark as the half-man, half-beast launched into the air.
Melchior’s finger squeezed the trigger.
“No!” Deirdre shouted.
A fireball blasted from all three cannons at once.
For a heart-stopping moment, she thought that the fireball was going to strike Stark in the face. Powerful or not, Stark wasn’t powerful enough to survive that strong a blast, that much fire, that deadly an attack.
But he jerked aside at the last moment.
He presented his flank instead of his skull. The concussive blast struck the center mass of his body. It consumed him in flames, devouring his fur, melting his flesh.
And he acted like he didn’t even feel it.
Stark sank his forepaws into Melchior’s chest. Claws sank into scaly pectorals. Hot blood spurted from the wounds, blazing hot, glowing in the darkness of the unseelie silver forest.
The force of Stark’s momentum carried both shifters into the trees.
Away from Deirdre.
If he had waited just five more seconds to growl, she would have killed Melchior already.
“Damn it,” she swore.
She didn’t chase them. She wasn’t going to get between a fighting dragon and bear wolf, not when she was finally alone with the monolith and its nauseatingly powerful magic.
Let them kill each other.
Deirdre stepped up to the edge of the circle to study the runes more closely. Some of them could have corresponded with the runes that she’d seen in the sound booth, but she wouldn’t know unless she went back to look. She didn’t know the runes well enough to remember them.
To break the spell, she just needed to stab the right part with the Ethereal Blade. Right?
“Right,” she said out loud.
Roars shook the silver forest. She couldn’t tell what noises belonged to dragon and which belonged to bear wolf, but judging by the fire among the silver trees, the fight wasn’t going in Stark’s favor. Once Melchior finished him off, he would come back for her.
She didn’t have time to figure out the spell—she had no idea what she was looking at anyway.
Deirdre thrust it into the ring of runes.
The Ethereal Blade ripped out of her hand. It whipped around, flipping a one-eighty, and shot past her.
Deirdre jerked an inch to the left. The blade cartwheeled past her.
The Ethereal Blade vanished among the silver trees, rejected by the powerful magic protecting the obelisk.
No wonder Kristian hadn’t been able to cut his way through it.
Melchior’s serpentine form rose from among the trees, climbing into the sky. Deirdre had no idea what he was really doing—he couldn’t be flying within Original Sin, not unless it had suddenly become a thousand times more spacious on the inside, but it looked like he was flying.
He roared, sh
ooting a pillar of flame from his mouth into the air.
Stark must have been down.
And Deirdre was out of time.
The monolith was covered in ice. Deirdre was a creature of fire. She should have been able to burn it away—if she could just summon her flame powers.
She stepped over the circle of power. The magic didn’t recognize her as a threat, so it didn’t fling her into the trees the way that it had with the sword. It even allowed her to press her frigid hands against the ice encasing it.
The stone was so cold that her skin adhered to it. The phoenix inside recoiled.
Melchior landed to the ground behind her, shaking all of Original Sin. His heat radiated at her back.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Do something right for once. Please.”
Why couldn’t she turn into a phoenix? Why couldn’t she shift without Melchior’s help? Why couldn’t she control her anger?
If she changed, she could save the queen, save the election, save the gaeans.
Melchior roared again. Deirdre braced herself to be consumed by dragonfire, digging her fingers into the ice, squeezing her eyes shut.
It didn’t happen.
She peered over her shoulder.
Melchior’s back was to her. He was attacking something coming from the opposite direction that she couldn’t see—the club over there was too dark, and the vibration of magic seemed to distort the trees.
No, it wasn’t darkness.
There was too much movement within that darkness. Even at that distance, Deirdre could make out the thrashing of skeletal hands as shadow consumed the silver forest. Melchior’s roar drowned out everything else, but she knew there would be screaming within the shadow.
For a moment, she was eight years old again, hiding underneath the blackberry bushes in her hometown. The Genesis void was closing in on her. Darkness and death consumed the world.
But this wasn’t the end of the world. This was a soul-consuming sentient monster that wanted to destroy Deirdre.
“Tombs!”
She turned to see Everton Stark holding the triple-barreled dragon revolver in both hands.
There was no time to be relieved by the realization he had survived.
He was aiming that gun right at her.