by J. C. Nelson
“I didn’t know that would happen.” Ari’s face contorted, and I felt like a heel. Actually, like the fungal growth on a dwarf’s heel. Maybe worse.
“Yes.” Grimm spoke with confidence now, or maybe acceptance. “To grant a wish, you must take its life and claim the power for your own. I no longer grant wishes because I understand the true cost, as do you, now.” He spoke once more as the sea of voices, but this time directed to the Fae Mother.
When she answered, I heard “of course” and “gladly” and “I will be sure,” and a dozen others all at once. She turned her gaze on me. “Father asks that I send you home, but you must not arrive before he makes it safe.”
She reached for me, and I drew back my hand. Last time she touched me, I spent three days in the hospital, one of them hooked to a ventilator. “Don’t fear.”
Fear seemed like a reasonable response, to be honest. I forced myself to hold steady, then summoned all my will and reached out toward her.
Our fingertips brushed, maybe didn’t quite touch, and the air crackled between us. Then she put her hand down and nodded. “It is done.”
I let out my breath. Nearly dying once made me understandably nervous about such things. Beyond the tingling in my fingers, I didn’t really feel anything. Then I rubbed my fingertips together, and something clinked.
I glanced at my hands. Each finger had a microscopic diamond on the tip. For one brief moment, I was amazed. Then the diamond divided into two. And four, and then too many to count. I had five karat fingers, which would be amazing if the stones weren’t embedded in my skin.
I scraped at the stones, diamond on diamond, then looked up, pleading with Grimm. “Help me. Ari, please.” I reached for her, and she stepped back, a look of fear in her eyes.
“Marissa, please try to calm down. You are not being harmed.” Grimm’s assurance did less than nothing for me. “You didn’t complain about this last time.”
I pulled up the edge of my shirt to see a wave of tiny diamonds crust over my stomach. My hands grew stiffer, harder to move as the diamonds formed layers. “I don’t think I was awake for this last time.” Then I felt them on my eyelashes. In my hair. I could no longer turn my head.
“She needs time to recover, princess.” Grimm turned his attention from me, unaware that I could still hear and see. “And you and I have much to discuss.”
The world looked like a kaleidoscope as my eyes closed to slits. Then I was wrapped in lead, held so tight I couldn’t move, couldn’t take a breath. And at long last emptiness consumed me. What came next, I can’t say.
Thirty-One
“MARISSA?” IN MY mind, it was Liam’s voice. “Marissa?” Except that Liam was a girl. “Can you hear me?” Definitely a girl, and one I recognized.
I opened my eyes, a crust of diamonds falling from them. With a little work, the casing on my mouth and jaw cracked, and I spat out a tiny chunk of diamond and drool. “Where am I?”
Ari reached down and picked a piece of diamond off my face. “We’re back at the Agency.”
For a moment, I had this glorious thought. I looked straight into her eyes, which I knew would be blue as always.
Her witch’s eyes stared back at me. “It’s going to be okay.” She gave me a hug, crunching the shell around me as she did. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.”
“If he told you that, don’t believe him.” I shook myself and kicked my feet free. Someone had leaned me up against the wall like a crate. I took a few unsteady steps, leaving a glittering trail. “Need to change. I’ve got diamonds in places I don’t even want to talk about.”
“Girl’s best friend?” Ari gave me the gigawatt smile.
“That would be you. Thanks for not letting me pancake out there.”
Ari swept her hand, and the jewels at my feet danced into a pile. “I’ve got some learning to do about how to catch people, but I’m getting better.”
“I’m heading to the showers.” I stumbled toward the door and opened it.
“Handmaiden.” Malodin leaned in the hallway, waiting. His voice made my skin crawl. “I trust you enjoyed your nap?”
“Get out of my Agency.” I spat a diamond at him.
“Marissa, my dear, I’ve allowed him to stay on his best behavior.” Grimm appeared in the hallway mirror, looking sharp as always. If anything, he’d upgraded to a finer silk suit. “When Mr. Malodin first arrived, he was quite rude. Michael helped us reach an understanding of how one behaves around the Fairy Godfather. On the plus side, floor three will be opening for lease soon.”
Malodin’s sneer turned into a barely controlled mask of rage. “When I destroy the world, I will start with this building. Handmaiden, your third plague is due. The harbingers have almost reached the city.”
“Already?” I glanced to Grimm, wondering how long I was asleep.
“Ari, you have a visitor in cargo.” Mikey shouldered past Malodin, pushing him out of the way. “Looks like a garbage man, talks like a lawyer.” He glanced at the mirror. “You need me to tear demon brat here to pieces again?”
“That won’t be necessary, Michael. Please make sure the one o’clock shipments are correct today.” Grimm waved him off, and Ari followed.
“You’ll get your plague.” I leaned against the wall, trying to figure out a way to twist my words.
“A proper plague. Something that causes carnage and suffering. Something that brings fear. When the harbingers arrive, you will do your part.” Malodin turned without waiting for me to answer and stalked down the hall.
“Marissa, step into my office, please.” With those words alone, Grimm sent me back to being an eighteen-year-old recruit, not even trusted to carry a bag from one end of the city to the other. I walked down the hall to his office, figuring my shower would have to wait.
Grimm waited in his desk mirror. I expected anger. All I saw was concern. He kept his eyes closed as he spoke. “My dear, what have you done?”
“It was an accident. I went down to seal off the dealing room, and he was waiting.” I sank into a leather chair, rubbing my fingers over the leather till it squeaked.
“Marissa, I only have a few hard rules.”
I shook my head, sending diamonds scattering. “I know. No princesses. Speaking of which, where exactly is Ari?”
“She’s downstairs fighting with the lich, who wants her to seek safety in his basement when the apocalypse arrives.”
“Oh, and let’s not forget rule number two: no men. Liam is where? Doing what?”
Grimm opened his eyes and looked over the edge of his glasses. “Those two are special circumstances. When I say No Apocalypse, I mean No Apocalypse. And your boyfriend is preparing to board a flight home as we speak.”
My hand whipped to my bracelet as I called his name. “Liam!”
“Marissa, sweetheart.” He sounded like always. Just like I remembered him in my dreams. “We’re kind of having a problem. G, there were a few issues with the job, and the vampires aren’t happy about it.” With Grimm’s aid, Liam appeared in the full-length mirror before the portal. He sported a beard that would have made Paul Bunyan jealous and fresh scars along his arms and chest.
“Stay calm, sir. I’ll negotiate with them shortly. A few issues indeed.” Grimm said we’d basically own them skin and bone if anything happened to Liam. The vampires, it seemed, were more attached to their skin and bones than I gave them credit for.
“I love you. I’ve missed you so much.” If tears crept to the edges of my eyes, I didn’t mind. Some tears I welcomed. The diamonds, I could live without.
“I’ll be home before you know it. My scaly side is ready for a nice long rest, and I feel like I haven’t lifted a hammer in ages. I miss the city. This place has great views, but it’s a real fixer-upper.” Liam yawned and stretched his arms. Behind him, a blond woman with a tan complexion approached and said something in yet another one of those languages I don’t speak. Liam nodded and replied with a sound that I’d heard when people had seizures.
“You understand that?”
“It was either ‘The masters want to meet downstairs’ or something about a school bus and a rabid badger. I’m okay with either. G’s going to tell them how it is, then I’m on the first flight out of here. Woke up in a pile of armor.”
“Queen Mihail. She tried to kill everyone. Ari, me, Grimm, everyone. She sent a strike team of princes after you.” I wanted to hug him. To wrap my arms around him. To do carnal things with him that would scald poor Ari’s eyes if she walked into my office without knocking.
He ran a hand along that ferocious beard and growled. “I’ll deal with her.”
“You’ll have to get in line. I think everyone at the Agency is after her, and she’s holed up in the Court of Queens. It’s going to be like Gwendolyn all over again, except that I can’t even bring charges against her.”
“M, why don’t you have Ari take you on a field trip? She’s a princess, right? Isn’t that almost as good as a Queen?”
Behind him, the vampire woman spoke again. Their language seemed mostly made up of vowels and biting one’s own tongue.
“In a moment,” said Liam, then turned back to me. “I’m sorry, M. Negotiations are starting, and I’ve got to be there.” Then his gaze fell to my hand, and he squinted.
I cut the connection out of equal parts fear and frustration. I wanted to call him back. To hear him talk, the sound of his voice, and imagine his callused hands on my cheeks. To ask him exactly what there was to negotiate. The other part of me was near certain that he’d seen the ring. His surprise for me, which I’d carried around the whole time.
“Grimm. What in Kingdom is going on with Liam? Negotiations?”
He snapped into the mirror like I’d turned on the television set. “I trust you feel recovered?”
“I do, though I’ve got enough gemstones on me to start a jewelry store. What could you possibly have to negotiate?” I walked out, heading toward my office. Might as well sit in a comfy chair while I raked Grimm over the coals.
Grimm followed, looking at me from anything with even a trace of shine. “Our vampire friends are not happy with the terms of their contract and would like to renegotiate.”
“You can do that? I mean, once a contract is signed?”
“Marissa, contracts are renegotiated every day. Such as yours. The time frames for each event were very poorly laid out, a fact I’ve exploited to gain a few days.” He disappeared, and the contract scrolled across the mirror, with a few of the squigglies glowing in gold. Not that I could read them any better.
The moment Grimm returned, I locked eyes with him. From the subtle change in his face, he knew what was coming. “Can you fix Ari?”
He waited to answer me. Probably weighing a dozen lies to see if any fit. “I cannot, my dear. Any more than I could heal the handmaiden’s mark. Arianna will carry the scars of Wild Magic the rest of her life. My training will ensure that the princes of Kingdom find other, easier targets to kill.”
He didn’t mention it was my fault. He didn’t need to.
“Ask, Marissa. There’s no easy way to go about this.” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath.
There was a time I’d have fallen for that fatherly look. The kind older gentleman. That time was gone. “You son of a bitch, I don’t know where to start. When were you going to let me in on the fact that you didn’t have all your power?”
He paused for a moment, gathering his breath, but I didn’t give him a chance to answer. “I didn’t ever have an appointment with a doctor in Kingdom, did I? Those pills you gave me are iron supplements, not birth control. Did you want me to pass on Liam’s curse? And why didn’t you tell me the Black Queen was your daughter?”
I think the cursing bothered him more than the questions. As a fairy, curses were no laughing matter, and for the first six years he made me hallucinate about swallowing soap any time I cursed.
“Isolde. Her name was, and will always be, Isolde. It is true. I granted a princess a wish, and she wished that I would love her. Our daughter was my greatest pride. My most shining accomplishment. Skilled in magic beyond any other, gifted with her mother’s love and a fairy’s power.
“Understand this, Marissa: Everything you’ve heard about her was true. She took her skills in magic and used them against people, changing them inside and out. She took the power I gave her and used it to crush nations underfoot.
“And I am the one who forged a sword to kill her. I am the one who arranged for a fair prince to wield it. And I knelt by her side as they burned her, holding her power back until the flames consumed her.” A single tear of glitter ran from his eye.
“So, yes. The Black Queen was my daughter. Yes, I am responsible for the evil she caused. And I took that responsibility. I ordered the death of my own child, and held her while she burned.”
I thought of the Root of Lies. How he’d always kept it in his office. Sweet or creepy, I couldn’t quite make up my mind.
“You had limits put on your power. As punishment.”
“Protection, for both of us. My daughter’s power is derived from my own. While I remained limited, she was but a shadow.” Grimm opened his eyes, alert.
That wasn’t right. Couldn’t be right. I’d seen him. Seen his frozen image, the way the black thorns choked the light from his crystal, sapping his power.
“I saved you. There wasn’t any light getting through.”
“My dear, I could have burst through that constraint with only the slightest flicker of thought. Indeed, I had grown tired of the bounds on my power and decided to throw them off, when the time was right.” I hated it when Grimm used that “as you should well know” tone, but this nagging feeling in my stomach said this is what the Fae Mother tried to tell me.
“When would the time be right?”
“In about eighty years, or so. I think that would have given you long enough to live a natural life, expire of natural causes. Then I could release myself, deal with my daughter, and continue business as usual.”
The impact of what I’d done finally reached me. All the anger and righteous offense drained out, leaving me weak. “So where is she? How long do I have?”
Grimm disappeared from the mirror, and the realm where he trained Ari came into view. The thorn tree that loomed over the plain, covered in flowers. “My daughter is no more prescient than I am, my dear. She foolishly anchored her spirit to a tree in another realm. I hope she enjoys an eternity of sunset.”
“You could have told me. I trusted you.”
Grimm put one hand to his forehead, rubbing his eyebrows. “Have you done nothing you regret? Nothing you are ashamed of, or would take back, if the laws of the universe allowed it?”
Ari. I’d give anything if only I could have known what dropping a spellbook in her lap would cause. A single question to Grimm, and I’d have known. Instead, I pushed her, part of me as excited as she was as her power developed. I dropped my eyes, unable to stare, unwilling to show the tears that welled up in them.
“Arianna’s condition is not your fault. Look at me, Marissa.”
“I don’t appreciate you reading my mind.”
His laughter caused the mirror to vibrate, a deep, rolling laugh that turned his face red. “I know you. I’ve watched you more closely than you could possibly realize. If the wind blows wrong, part of you wonders if it was your fault. If the cab pulls away, you blame yourself for not running faster. Some things are beyond your control.”
“Why didn’t you make an appointment for me?” After the shock of learning about the Black Queen, a ball of fear rumbled in my stomach as I ran over the possible reasons.
“You didn’t need it. I’m sorry for the deception with your pills. I wanted to avoid this conversation for as long as possible, and your red blood cell count is always low. I wanted to spare you this pain for as long as possible.” He waited for a moment, long enough for my hands to go numb from the grip I had on the chair. “Marissa, you can’t have children.”
&nbs
p; Thirty-Two
ALL THE MAGIC in the world couldn’t soften that crushing blow. I sagged onto the bed, refusing to accept it. The sane part of me remembered the only thing Grimm valued more than magic was knowledge. “How long have you known?”
“Two years, my dear. I needed to be able to plan your maternity leave.”
“Was it something that happened on the job? Something I was exposed to?” The number of things I’d gotten into that might be considered hazardous to my health would fill an encyclopedia. I held my breath while I waited for his answer.
“No. I believe you have always been this way. It isn’t something you did, or something done to you. It is no one’s fault.”
I caught a hitching sob in my throat, trying to turn it to anger. Trying to turn it back on him. The only thing that came out was a squeak. “Don’t tell Liam. I don’t want him to hear it from you.”
Grimm bowed his head in acceptance, then faded away in the silence. Alone, with only the muffled sounds of Ari’s voice through the walls, I lay my head down on the desk, covered my head with my jacket, and wept for children I would never have.
* * *
I SPENT SEVERAL hours alone, until the rational side of me kept nagging. If the world ended, not being able to have children wouldn’t make a difference. I put my hand on my wrist and called Grimm. He snapped into view, his face scrunched up in a scowl. “Do you know what that piper you found is doing? She leads an entire flock of poodles around. Bought them collars. I caught her and Michael playing Frisbee in the park.”
“I’ve got bigger problems. End of the world. Apocalypse, remember?” I liked to face my problems head-on.
“My dear, I am well aware of that. And I think there’s an answer you’ll enjoy greatly.” The smug grin on his face made me wonder exactly what crackpot idea he’d settled on.
“Kill Malodin?”
“No. Settle a score with Queen Mihail. I have no qualms about having someone killed, when necessary, but I want that meddlesome woman alive. She’s the key to getting out of your contract. You see, Malodin made a deal with her before you. Demons are only allowed one active contract, so Malodin is in breach of his until his terms are fulfilled.”