Half Bad: A Reverse Harem Goddess Romance (Godhunter Book 31)

by Amy Sumida

  “Magical seepage,” I murmured. “Sounds like an STD.”

  Arach grimaced at me. “This is serious, A Thaisce. We need to make sure this isn't happening all over Faerie.”

  “Exactly, King Arach,” Cian declared. “That is why I've called all of you here. I need you to check every one of the old passages between Faerie and the Human Realm within your kingdoms. I already have teams checking the paths in the Forgetful Forest.”

  “I don't believe we have any passages,” King Rowan noted.

  “No, you wouldn't,” Cian agreed. “Your kingdom was created after they were made. But I wanted you to be included in this discussion and made aware of what was happening in our realm.”

  “Thank you.” Rowan nodded. “We appreciate that.”

  I wasn't the only one who'd had a rocky start with the Dark Fey. When Rowan said he appreciated being included, he truly meant it. After all that had happened with the Dark Fey, it wouldn't have been surprising if King Cian was less than gracious to the King and Queen of Darkness. But there was a reason Cian had become the High King, he was known to be wise, calm, and fair.

  “I will send a wayfarer with each of you so that the paths may be fully inspected,” Cian went on. “If they find more seepage, they will handle it.”

  “But shouldn't we be investigating why this is happening?” I asked.

  “We live in a realm of magic, Queen Vervain,” Cian said as if that explained everything. “These things happen. Spells wear thin and magic seeks freedom—that is the way of power.”

  “Oh,” I mumbled. In my head, I asked Faerie, You agree with that?

  Huh?

  Do you... holy Holly Hobby, you weren't listening!

  I was too, she huffed. There was a flower and a cliff and... when are you going home to have sex with your sexy husband?

  What the faerie fuck?! I resorted to foul language.

  Don't get snippy with me! Faerie snapped. It's time for growth, Vervain. The realm needs to flourish and that need translates directly to me. Now, get to flourishing.

  Does this have anything to do with the seepage?

  The what?

  The magic seeping into the Human Realm!

  Magic is seeping into the Human Realm?

  I clenched my jaw. Yes. A ward had to be reinforced to stop it. Cian says it's normal, that wards thin. Is that true?

  Of course, it's true! The High King of Faerie does not lie, she grumbled.

  Not knowingly. But are you sure it's the absolute truth? I pushed. Are you certain this doesn't have anything to do with your new amorous attitude?

  My realm's fertility does not cause seepage, Faerie sounded offended. You may relax, Vervain. This is a minor matter, I'm sure.

  My shoulders dropped in relief. Thank you.

  Anytime, babe. Now, can you... oh, never mind, Roarke is having sex with his wife. Oh, my, that Cat-Sidhe is so very vigorous. You should see this technique, it's making Anna's eyes roll back—

  Okay! Nice talking to ya. See ya later, Faerie.

  Well, I'll see you, but you won't see me. She chuckled.

  Great, now I had to worry about an invisible peeping Faerie.

  “Queen Vervain?” King Cian asked in concern.

  “Sorry, High King,” I said, refocusing on things outside of my head. “I was just checking with Faerie.”

  “And?” Queen Meara—still holding baby Eveline—prompted.

  “She agrees that it's a minor issue.”

  “Oh, good,” Nora huffed. “I was getting worried.”

  I blinked and looked around the table. The other monarchs weren't—worried, that is. Only Nora, Lugh, and I looked as if we'd been anxious. Was it a Sidhe thing? Did they know more about the paths and therefore knew it wasn't a big deal? Part of me wanted to talk about it more but another part of me knew that I already had too much to deal with. I had come to Faerie to relax, not get into more trouble. If there was a bigger problem, it would reveal itself in due time, no doubt. For now, we'd fix the problems we knew about.

  Chapter Twenty

  We rode back to the Fire Kingdom with two more faeries than we'd arrived with: Lugh and the wayfarer. Isleen couldn't stay behind to spend some time with Lugh at the Castle of Eight since she'd be needed to coordinate the search in the Fire Kingdom so Lugh decided to go to Fire with her. This meant that our carriage was full and the wayfarer, a Fire-Sidhe named Mallien (Cian was thoughtful enough to send wayfarers to the kingdoms of their birth), had to ride on the driver's platform with our Phooka driver.

  I stared out of the window, wondering how many faeries were in those woods, searching for passages seeping magic into Earth. Hopefully, they'd find them quickly and repair the weakening wards before something worse than a few flowers popped up on my home planet.

  “When the paths were open, did this happen?” I asked Arach.

  “What?”

  “The flowers,” I clarified. “Did faerie flowers spring up around the paths to Faerie when they were open before?”

  Arach went still. He transferred his stare to Isleen, whose expression had gone pensive.

  “What I say?” I asked.

  “I'm as lost as you are,” Lugh muttered. He looked to his girlfriend for the answer. “Isleen?”

  “No,” Isleen said. “Nothing of Faerie leaves without a faerie's assistance.”

  “So, why is it happening now?” I asked.

  Isleen shrugged. “As King Cian said, magic seeks freedom and the Faerie Realm hasn't been free in thousands of years. It's possible that the very act of trying to suppress it has made it push harder.”

  “What happens if we don't get the passages under control?” Lugh asked.

  “The realm could seek to expand itself to Earth,” Arach surmised.

  “The magic of the Faerie Realm on Earth,” Lugh whispered. “Fuck me.”

  “But we've had a giant passage to the Human Realm open for years now.” I waved toward the enormous tree that we were just passing—the one set at a crossroads between kingdoms. “Nothing like this has...” I trailed off as I realized that the Great Tree was a different path entirely. “Oh.”

  “Yes, I see that you've figured it out for yourself,” Arach noted. “The Great Tree is a tracing point, not an open passage. It has the Aether as a buffer while our old paths ran through the Aether, much like Torrent's veins of Internet that he uses to connect the Human Realm to the God Realm.”

  “You're worried now,” I declared, almost triumphantly.

  “Yes.” Arach frowned. “Why does that gladden you?”

  “Because you weren't before. It was only Nora, Lugh, and me who seemed to be scared of what this could mean. It's kinda nice to have you on board.”

  “You're right, Vervain,” Lugh said in surprise. “My father was concerned about getting things fixed, but he wasn't worried.”

  “Not everything is a calamity.” Arach rolled his eyes. “Faerie herself told you that all would be fine, A Thaisce. When's the last time that she didn't take a threat seriously?”

  “Faerie is acting weird.” I crossed my arms. “She's watching people have sex. When has she ever done that?”

  Arach lifted a brow at me.

  “Okay, she's done it before, but she's never been this into it,” I amended. “First, she urged me to go home and have sex with you, but then she noticed that Roarke was having sex with Anna and started to describe his technique to me. She has never behaved like that before.”

  “I assume you asked her about it?” Arach countered.

  “She said the realm is fertile or something. Flourishing.”

  Isleen smiled brilliantly. “That's wonderful! See, my Queen? Nothing to worry about. Of course, Faerie would be distracted by such intimacies during a fertile time—she's the land and the magic. She feels our needs and they affect her. Winter will be here soon, this is the land's last chance to bear fruit and plant seeds.”

  “You're saying that when the realm is randy, so is she?”

 
“Exactly.” Isleen grinned, then shot an amorous look at Lugh.

  “I'm beginning to see the perks,” Lugh murmured as he lifted Isleen's hand to kiss it tenderly.

  “If you start making out in front of me, I'm kicking you out of the carriage,” I declared. “I don't care if you're the High Prince, you can plant your royal seeds somewhere else. Somewhere I'm not.”

  Lugh chuckled. “I promise to wait until we're out of your sight, Vervain.”

  “Thank you.”

  Arach sighed in disappointment.

  “What?” I huffed at him.

  He gave me a look.

  “You seriously wanted to sit here and watch them like live theater?”

  “Of course not,” Arach scoffed.

  I started to relax.

  “I was hoping their behavior might inspire you to do the same with me,” he finished.

  “Someone save me from horny faeries,” I grumbled. “At least you're not as bad as when I first agreed to try for children.”

  “Do tell.” Lugh grinned.

  “Arach wouldn't leave me alone. We had sex nearly non-stop. I had to start hiding from him to give my lady bits a break.”

  “That was before she realized that I could heal her with an application of fire,” Arach added. “She can heal herself in the same manner, but it's more fun when I do it.”

  Lugh blinked. “What?”

  “Fire heals most Fire Fey,” Isleen explained. “So, when Queen Vervain's channel was aching from King Arach's—”

  “Okay, that's enough,” Lugh cut her off before I could.

  “It's just sex,” Isleen said, then shared a commiserating look with Arach.

  “I don't have a problem with the sex, but I don't want to hear about my friend's aching lady parts either,” Lugh said firmly.

  “You were the one who encouraged her to 'do tell,'” Isleen reminded him.

  “Yeah, because I thought she was going to talk about the sex,” Lugh whined. “Not her sore pu—”

  “I agree,” I cut him off. “I don't want to talk about my abused peach either.”

  “Peach?” Arach asked with a chuckle.

  “You've never heard that term?” I countered. “It's because, you know, the dent in a peach kind of looks like...”

  “Yes, I figured that out as soon as you said the word,” Arach assured me. “I just wanted to make sure I heard you right.”

  “You did. I had a friend in high school who only called it that.” I shrugged. “I think it's a good word for it.”

  “Oh, so do I,” Arach grinned lasciviously. “There are so many ways I could use that word.”

  “If you lick your lips right now, you won't get within biting distance of my peach for a week,” I threatened.

  Arach grimaced and sat back heavily. “Fine. Ruin all of my fun.”

  “Don't some humans call it a pie too?” Lugh mused.

  “Yes, I've heard that before,” I admitted. “Why?”

  “Well, I was just wondering what a peach pie would be.” He lifted a brow at me. “Is it an orgy? Or perhaps it's just redundant.”

  “Maybe it could be used to describe a particularly juicy—” I cut myself off with a look of horror. “By the flame! Now, I'm getting pervy. That's it! No more sex talk, not even innuendos.”

  Arach sighed deeply. “Again, I say, you're ruining all of my fun.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Once we were home, Arach had a meeting with Isleen and several Red Caps about escorting the wayfarer to all of the old pathways to Earth within the Fire Kingdom. While he was busy at his meeting, I went to check on our sons. The boys are at an age when they don't want a nanny, but Arach and I can't watch them all of the time and they need to be at least checked on. So, we have Granuaile, one of their childhood nannies, surreptitiously watch over them. Granuaile reported that Hunter and the twins had long since given up on their archery lesson, lured to the pool by the laughter of the other children. After their swim, they'd had a full day of playing in the playground I had built—and by that, I mean that I designed the thing and had other faeries build it—to the right of the castle's backdoor. This meant that by the time I found them, they were passed out in their beds, Hunter curled up beside Brevyn with his restrung bow still clutched in his little clawed hand.

  My stomach clenched and fluttered. I'd barely been there a day and I hadn't spent much of it with them, but I already wanted to leave. No, it wasn't want, it was need. I should never have left the God Realm while Viper was missing. It was so stupid of me. No, I wasn't losing any time there nor was there anything for me to do while I waited, but going to Faerie had only extended that wait for me. I thought I'd relax here? How idiotic. It was just another place to pace and bite my nails. Another place to try to push aside my worry for a man I loved while I waited for some sign from him. Except here, I wouldn't receive that sign.

  “Sons of Anarchy,” I cursed under my breath as I headed back to my bedroom. “I need to get back. Now.”

  I stripped out of my faerie dress and put the wedding rings Arach had given me back in their box before getting into my human clothes and putting on the diamond ring my god husbands had given me. Arach didn't like me wearing it while I was in Faerie; his dragon needed at least the illusion that I was all his.

  I'd have to interrupt Arach's meeting to tell him that I was leaving, and I didn't want to do that. Plus, he'd probably try to have sex with me before he let me go, and I wasn't in the mood. Now that I'd decided to return, every minute I waited was making me antsier. I'd just go; I'd be back before he even knew I was gone. No, it wasn't right. I shouldn't be leaving like that, but love makes you do stupid things and I have always been love's fool. So, I asked my ring to return me to the God Realm a minute after I'd last left.

  I felt instantly better as soon as I was back in my bedroom in Pride Palace. I contacted Trevor first, to let him know that I'd returned safely. He welcomed me home and informed me—surprise, surprise—that nothing had happened during the minute I'd been gone. I resisted the temptation to try to speak with Viper again. Even though it felt as if a day had gone by, it had only been a few minutes since I'd last made the attempt. Instead, I grabbed my purse off the coffee table and pulled out my cellphone. Muttering to myself about being a wimp, I plopped down on the couch and texted Austin.

  He texted back a few minutes later: Bodies were the homeowners. Killed by snake bites. The Chief now thinks we have a serial killer making his way through Texas. It didn't help that I told him I got an anonymous tip about the house. He called in the FBI.

  “FBI,” I murmured. “That could get tricky.”

  I texted: Does that make it harder on you?

  Naw. They can keep an eye on the town tonight.

  “Damn it,” I growled. I'd forgotten that we'd have to patrol again.

  You sure they'll be enough? I texted.

  Honestly, I don't think they'll strike in Lexington again.

  “He has a point.”

  “Who has a point?” Odin asked as he walked up.

  “Austin says the FBI got called in after the bodies were found at the snake house. The bodies were of the homeowners, who were killed by snake bites. But a snake wouldn't bury its victims or squat in their home so the Chief of Police thinks it's a serial killer.”

  “Did they find the tunnels?”

  “Shish kebabs,” I snarled as I texted Odin's question to Austin. “I hadn't thought of the tunnels. If Viper tries to come back—”

  “He won't,” Odin cut me off. “Why would he when he could just trace home?”

  “If he wants to come home.”

  “Did you try to speak to him again?”

  I nodded. “The same. Nothing—no emotions or response. I'm getting scared, Odin.”

  “I'll go into the tunnels.” He sat down beside me and pulled me in against his side. “I'll find him.”

  “Thank you.”

  My phone buzzed with Austin's text: I covered the tunnels.

 
; Thank you, I repeated the words, this time in text.

  You coming over?

  I looked at Odin. “When do you want to go into the tunnels?”

  “There's no time like the present.”

  I texted Austin, Be there in 5. Meet us at snake house.

  It's a crime scene. Don't let anyone see you.