Realm of Mirrors (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 3)

by Sonya Bateman

  SONYA BATEMAN

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  Copyright © 2016 by Sonya Bateman

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

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  PROLOGUE

  Winter Court, Arcadia – Thirty Years Ago

  He cringed at the sound of her tread on the dungeon steps, and despised himself for it.

  For a fortnight she’d kept him down here, stripped of his power—and everything else. His clothing, his dignity. The Court’s sadistic cáesdhe had done their work well. If not for these chains, he’d no longer be on his feet.

  But he would not yield.

  She approached him slowly, and he could not help but tremble. Her beauty was undeniable, her power nearly boundless. Without his own magic, resisting her charms came at a painful price—and of course, she knew that.

  It was a price he’d pay to keep his love safe.

  “Oh, my. You seem so tired, gallae.” The mere sound of her voice tore at him. “Wouldn’t you like to rest?”

  “Not in your bed,” he gasped. “Highness.”

  A sweet, false smile. “In hers, then? You’ve only to tell me where she is, and I’ll have her brought to you.”

  “Aye. In pieces.” He managed a glare. “You’ll not touch her.”

  “Where is she?”

  Despite the promise of pain in those words, he said nothing.

  “Míilé lahn!” She gestured fiercely at him. A hoarse cry escaped as a thousand phantom knives filled his body. “Where is she?”

  He gasped again and spat blood. “Safe from you,” he panted. When he’d sensed the Unseelie Guard, his own men, coming for him, his son had agreed to take her to the one place the Queen could not reach her—across the Veil, to the human realm. He’d also given the master stone to his lieutenant, Levoran, who’d promised to keep it from her hands and deliver it to his blood when the time came.

  If she’d not managed to destroy every trace of his lineage by then.

  She moved closer, until he could feel the passing of her breath on his skin. “A human,” she murmured. “All this suffering, this humiliation…for a human. A disgusting, filthy insect.” Her eyes searched his, and in them was nothing but the coldness of the ages. “At least tell me why,” she said.

  Drawing breath was difficult. “You’d not understand, Highness,” he grated. “You do not love.”

  She backhanded him, hard enough to split his lip. “How dare you!” she roared. “I am the core of the storm, the blood of all hearts. The very essence of passion!”

  “Aye, you’ve passion unmatched,” he whispered…and thought, but not love. She loved no one save herself.

  “And yet you refuse me.” She grabbed his hair and forced his head up. “You’ll bed Seelie and Unseelie, noble and lowborn, all manner of Arcadian peoples. And even a human. A human over me, your Queen.”

  “Highness…Moirehna, please.” He knew she’d not see, but he had to try. “I’ve sworn to protect you with my life. This I have done, for centuries,” he said. “But I cannot protect you from within the silk prison of your bed.”

  “You’ll do as your Queen commands.” She released him roughly. “You will tell me where she is, and you will serve me as I desire. Or I will destroy you.”

  He shuddered and straightened as best he could. “Kill me, then, because you’ll never have her. Or me.”

  Her eyes flashed, and for a moment he was certain she would strike him dead. But then, she smiled. “Very well, gallae. You’ll have your life, and your filthy little pet. In fact, you’ll have all the humans you can desire,” she said. “You will be brought before the Winter Court, and banished from Arcadia. But first…you will suffer.”

  As she spoke, four cáesdhe descended the steps.

  No…three cáesdhe. And Levoran.

  Though his face was as expressionless as the Court torturers, misery filled his lieutenant’s eyes. Levoran would follow orders—and he was grateful for that, at least. Her threats to destroy him were empty, but she’d not hesitate to strike Levoran down.

  She leaned toward him, her smile twisting on itself. “If you’d not sent your son to flee with the human whore, I’d have ordered him to do this. But your dear, trusted lieutenant will suffice.”

  The Queen moved back, but she did not leave the dungeon. She stayed to watch.

  She watched until he no longer had the strength to scream.

  CHAPTER 1

  Manhattan, New York – Present Day

  I still hadn’t gotten used to the way people stared when we were out in public. Sadie and I could pass for normal, but Taeral—well, my brother kind of stood out. Even in Manhattan, land of the free and home of the weird. Nearly seven feet tall, with long black hair and a black duster over black clothes, and a silver metal arm longer than his normal one. The stares were worse in broad daylight.

  At least Taeral didn’t mind being stared at. He just hated the humans right back.

  “You’re certain this place is near,” he said as we turned the corner at Seventh and Twenty-Ninth.

  I nodded. “Abe said they have a file on it. Apparently, it’s on the NYPD’s watch list.”

  “For what?” Sadie said.

  “Existing.”

  Eight years ago, The Grotto had been a run-of-the-mill, glass front tattoo shop sharing space with an occult bookstore on Forty-Second, between Ninth and Tenth. Now that space was a Starbucks. Four successive cab drivers and a search on Sadie’s phone failed to turn up a new address, so I’d called Abe. Who’d been reluctant to give me a location for a vaguely suspicious tattoo studio that no one seemed to know anything about.

  I couldn’t blame him, really. I had my own suspicions, considering the owner of the shop in question had given me magic tattoos that I didn’t know were magic until very recently. And then I found out the guy was some kind of rogue Seelie prince.

  Being half Unseelie, I’d been forced to assume whatever magic they contained wasn’t supposed to help me—since apparently the Seelie and Unseelie had a long tradition o
f trying to kill each other at every opportunity. Still, I’d had them eight years now, and the tattoos didn’t seem to do much except glow.

  Taeral was a lot more worried than me. And a lot more pissed—but he usually was. Angry was his baseline emotional state.

  “All right,” I said as we walked. “Tell me why we’re doing this now, instead of taking a little time to recover from…oh, I don’t know, fighting a pack of werewolves and a shitload of soldiers with super-weapons?”

  We’d only been back in New York for a few days, after we’d helped Sadie save her family from Milus Dei—a whole new branch of the evil cult bastards we thought we’d already destroyed. Turned out there were pockets of them all over the world, with all sorts of fun plans to exterminate the Others. The one we’d just stopped involved a serum that temporarily gave humans the abilities of a werewolf, which would’ve let their soldiers kill just about anything.

  I was still horrified at what I’d done to save the werewolves and humans they’d captured to experiment on, and I wasn’t anywhere near ready to jump back into the supernatural fray. But here I was, making a surprise visit to a Seelie prince.

  “I’ve explained this already,” Taeral said. “It is the new moon. We cannot afford to wait another month—we must know what he’s done to you.”

  “Right.” I’d gotten that much, at least. Fae magic was tied to the moon. Every Fae had a spark, a certain capacity for magic, and once that was used up they needed moonlight to recharge. I had a slight advantage there because of the moonstone. The pendant I always wore, which had come to me under strange circumstances, was a kind of battery for storing moonlight that I could tap into when my spark ran low. “So you think this guy’s going to try using magic against us,” I said.

  “Aye, I do.” Taeral stared ahead without expression. “But in this realm at least, no Fae can kill another when the moon hides it face.”

  “Jesus, you think he’ll try to kill us?”

  Taeral shrugged. “He is, allegedly, a Seelie prince. We cannot risk believing he won’t.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Cobalt had seemed like such a nice guy when he gave me the tattoos. He’d done it all for free, over multiple sessions, once I’d gotten enough nerve to explain why I wanted them—to cover the scars.

  The process had taken weeks. Because I had a lot of scars.

  “Okay, let me get this straight,” I said. “If there’s no moon, then no one can kill us?”

  “No Fae can.” Taeral frowned slightly. “This restriction does not apply to humans.”

  “Oh.” So much for being safe from Milus Dei for a few days a month.

  Sadie, who’d pulled ahead of us a bit and crossed the next side street, stopped and waited at the curb. “You said the address is 542, right?” she said as we caught up.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Because we already passed 540 back there. And this is 544.”

  I frowned, glanced at the building just ahead, and saw 544 on the window of the door. “What the hell?”

  “There was no 542,” she said.

  I shook my head. “There has to be,” I said, doubling back across the side street.

  For some reason, the first building on the block was further away than it looked. Walking toward it made my head swim a little. But when I reached the door, the numbers above it read 540.

  I turned to find Taeral and Sadie approaching, both with uneasy looks. “Maybe your captain friend gave you the wrong address,” Sadie said. “I mean, there just isn’t a 542 here.”

  “Actually, there is,” Taeral said slowly. “The place is warded.”

  “It’s what?”

  “Warded. There are protection spells here…against the Unseelie,” he said. “A kind of camouflage that prevents us from finding the entrance.”

  “Hold on. I’m not Unseelie,” Sadie said. “So why can’t I see it?”

  “Because it is our proximity that triggers the spell.” He put a hand on my arm. “Move back, Gideon,” he said. “Sadie, stay where you are.”

  I frowned and started backing up. “How do we know when we’re far enough away?”

  “We’ll know.”

  Sadie watched us warily. “Um, Taeral? Are these spells going to do something…weird to me?”

  “No, a’ghreal,” he said with a faint smile. “You are perfectly safe.”

  “All right.” She didn’t sound convinced.

  We’d gotten two or three buildings away when Sadie started to shimmer.

  I stopped to glare at Taeral. “You said it wouldn’t do anything to her.”

  “It hasn’t,” he said. “What you are seeing is your perception, because the spell affects you. Not her. Now, move away.”

  “Fine.” I shuffled back another few steps.

  Sadie blurred, and then vanished.

  Okat, that wasn’t nothing. “Where the hell is she?” I said.

  “Holy shit!”

  Sadie’s voice sounded like it was traveling through a tunnel, and it kind of creeped me out to hear it coming from the empty sidewalk in front of us. I could still see the cross street beyond, and the buildings on the other side. “Guys, there’s a building here,” she said. “It…wasn’t here before. There’s a door, but no address numbers on it.”

  “That is the place.” Taeral started forward again.

  I followed him and watched Sadie pop back into existence, staring open-mouthed at the exposed side of building 540. “It just stopped being there,” she said as she turned to look at us. “And it wasn’t like disappearing. I can’t explain it. The building wasn’t there, then it was, and then it…wasn’t again.”

  “Great,” I said. “So how do we get in?”

  Taeral looked at the place where the building should’ve been, even though there wasn’t enough room for another building. “I can break the wards,” he said. “I’ll not exhaust my spark doing it, but I will not be at full power. And obviously this Cobalt means us harm, if he’s warded against the Unseelie.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” I said. “Besides, we have to take the chance, right?”

  “Right,” Sadie said. “And if it comes down to it, I’ve got my luna-ball.”

  “Uh, let’s try to avoid going wolf in the middle of Manhattan.”

  She snorted. “Do you really think I’d do it unless I had to?”

  “Enough,” Taeral said abruptly. “I’ll handle the wards. And we’ll all be prepared to do what is necessary.”

  I sighed. “Fine. Go for it.”

  Taeral faced the building that wasn’t there, closed his eyes and held out his metal arm. He murmured something I could only hear enough to know the words were Fae—and pale blue light glowed from the runes etched into his hand and arm. The air in front of him shimmered, the way Sadie had when we backed away.

  And then the building…was.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Okay. How in the hell did he hide a whole building?”

  I couldn’t stop staring. The two-story brick structure that wasn’t there a minute ago was nothing like The Grotto I’d been to. The only windows were on the second floor, and the door was a solid, dull green metal with a push bar instead of a knob. There were no words or numbers anywhere on the place, and nothing to indicate this was a tattoo shop.

  No wonder the NYPD was suspicious. This place had shady written all over it—I half expected some bouncer with biceps the size of my head to step out and demand the secret password.

  “He’d not hidden it from everyone. Just the Unseelie,” Taeral said. “That requires less power than a complete warding. But still, it is no simple spell.”

  “So I guess he’s pretty powerful.”

  “Aye. If the rumors are true.”

  “Well, let’s find out,” Sadie said as she walked up to the door and pushed the bar. Nothing happened. “Er. It’s locked,” she said.

  “Then I’ll unlock it.” Taeral moved for the entrance.

  “Whoa, hold it,” I said. “Maybe they’r
e not open right now.”

  He stared at me. “And?”

  “Look, it’s one thing to take apart a bunch of spells. But if we just unlock the door and walk in, we’re breaking and entering.”

  “So?”

  I sighed. “One of those things is just a really bad idea. The other one is illegal. Besides, if the place is closed, that means no one’s here anyway.” I stepped up next to Sadie. “Let’s try this first, okay?” I said, and knocked on the door.

  Nothing happened. After a minute or so, I knocked harder.

  “This is pointless,” Taeral snapped. “Let me—”

  “Wait. I hear something in there,” Sadie said. “Footsteps.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Werewolf. Enhanced senses. Remember?”

  “Oh, right.”

  Then I did hear something faint, like footsteps. There was a pause, a click, and the door opened a few inches. One bleary brown eye peered out. “Sorry. We’re not buying, and we don’t need Jesus, thanks,” a male voice said, just before the door started closing.

  The voice sounded a little familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Hold on,” I said quickly. “I’m looking for Cobalt, and I’m not selling anything. Including Jesus.”

  The door paused and the gap widened slowly, revealing a man with light brown hair, a whisper of stubble and a puzzled frown, with a coffee mug clutched in his free hand. So much for familiar. I’d never seen him before, and he definitely wasn’t Cobalt—who was tall, dark-haired, and had quite a few tattoos and piercings. I wasn’t that great at sensing Others yet, but this guy seemed human. “Do you have an appointment with him?” the man said.

  “Uh, no. But he did some work for me, and I had a few questions about it.”

  “Well, he doesn’t open until four. He’s here, but I don’t know…” The man leaned aside to look at Sadie, and then Taeral. His expression grew guarded, and he glanced at something off to the side. Then he frowned. “You’re not welcome in this house.”

  “Huh?”