by SM Reine
Marion had given her life to protect these people, and now they were protesting the favor she’d done for them. “Of all the ungrateful…”
Aoife’s eyes went wide. “Let’s go inside and talk.”
“No,” Marion said. “I need to get to Niflheimr. Clear a path for me.”
“Your Highness—”
“That’s an order, Cobweb!” Marion was queen now, coronated and married to the king, leader of the unseelie despite her angel-blood. She didn’t have to stay in the Autumn Court if she didn’t want to.
Heather set her jaw. “Make way!”
The sidhe never attempted to lay their hands upon Marion as she moved through them. That alone was worrying. Touch was as critical to faeries as sex, and it would have shown more respect if they’d been catching at her dress, her hair, brushing their fingers over her skin. The fact that they recoiled from any contact said that they found her repulsive.
A sidhe’s protest was as quiet as their lovemaking was loud.
It was only a few hundred meters to the gazebo, but it felt longer than the distance within Duat’s Bronze Gates. And those stares felt deadlier than balefire.
Hatred followed her to the ley line juncture.
Heather hung back at the bottom of the stairs, keeping the crowd back with the enormity of her presence while Marion and her knights approached the serpentine bolts of the ley line. Heather was beloved by the people of the Autumn Court. Even as she glared, in full intimidation mode, the others remained close to her. Almost cuddling. Marion had no doubt that every last one of the gentry would have embraced Heather if they could have.
That was simply how the culture, the magic, and the people functioned. Any one of them could have made the diadem illuminate by hugging Heather. A gods-damned baby could have made that diadem illuminate.
In Marion’s defense, the gods-damned baby wouldn’t have been trying to make diamonds glow for a man it hated.
Marion focused on the juncture. It buzzed and thrashed at her approach, and the ley line became so loud that she almost didn’t hear the shout.
“Cheater!”
Marion slipped through. Myrkheimr vanished, and autumn turned to winter.
She materialized at the top of one of Niflheimr’s towers.
The wind slapping her cheeks felt even colder than usual. A single tear had tracked from her eye to the corner of her lips, and it had frozen the instant that she touched the Winter Court’s frigid climate.
Her cheeks were dry by the time the rest of Marion’s entourage arrived. “Cheater?” Marion echoed. “What in the worlds is that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t even listen to them!” Maddisyn said.
Tove drained her wine cup. “Haters gonna hate.” Her voice echoed off its bottom.
Heather stomped into the tower, yanking extra furs off of the hooks on the wall. “There are rumors about you. People are saying you cheated on Konig.”
Marion wanted to laugh, but she was afraid that if she did, it would turn to bone-wracking sobs. She had no choice but to remain as rigid as the frozen ocean. “I didn’t think the sidhe believed in cheating. They have sex with anyone.”
“Oh, we do.” Heather specialized in fighting, but she was a sensual being as proud of her body as any other. “We’re all about consent, though. If you have sex without a partner’s understanding and consent, it’s cheating.”
“Forgive me if I still have a hard time distinguishing the ordinary sluts from the high-octane sluts.” Marion knew which of those two categories Konig fell into. And she knew which of those two categories Nori had been.
Tove guffawed. “High-octane…?”
“Whoa there!” Saoirse laughed. “Those are some fighting words, Your Majesty.” She nudged Marion playfully.
Of the female sidhe, only Heather didn’t laugh. She remained painfully serious. “You can see why everyone would be worried. The diadem didn’t light up.”
“You told me that wouldn’t be an issue,” Marion said.
“I was wrong. People are talking.” Heather paced Marion down the stairs, sticking to her elbow. They were chased by giggles and skittering footsteps on the stairs above.
The archer fell silent when they entered the public area of the palace. As promised, the denizens of the Autumn Court were hanging out like beautiful statues, just as they did at home—though they all wore much more fur and magic to protect themselves from the cold in Niflheimr. It might have been the first time Marion walked through a gathering of sidhe without glimpsing a single nipple.
They were as distant as the protesters had been, if not as quiet. These sidhe weren’t protesting. They were on board with Konig’s plan to inhabit the Winter Court, even if they still weren’t excited to see Marion.
Nobody knew what she had done for them.
The cruelest part was that they couldn’t know the truth. Just as Marion couldn’t leave Konig, nobody could know there was no love between them.
This perverse culture of consent had barred Marion in a cage without choice.
Once they got through the common area, Heather continued speaking under her breath. “It wouldn’t have been a problem if it had been just the diadem, but word’s gotten around about what happened during the vote.”
Marion stopped beside a window looking across the jagged spires of her ice-castle. It was strange to look out of the towers to see light and activity.
Heather must have been referring to Seth. He’d gone to the vote intending to support Marion’s wedding, but once Seth found out what Konig had done…
It had turned out that the zen doctor had a limit to his zen.
“What are people saying?” Marion asked dully.
Heather folded her arms within the furs, fingers tucked under her armpits. “You don’t want to know.”
“Stop arguing with your queen.”
It wasn’t obedience that sparked like flame in Heather’s big, round eyes, but resentment. “They say that the Voice of God’s in love with one of her gods. You’ve got Konig’s dick on a leash, keeping him celibate while you have a love affair on the side.”
Marion glanced up the stairs toward the other sidhe. Only Wintersong was looking in her direction, and he looked more thoughtful than judgmental. The handmaidens pretended not to hear anything.
“Dispel the rumors about me.” Marion’s voice came out a croak.
“It’s not that easy. Most of the gentry saw the diadem firsthand, and everyone’s heard about Death, and…”
“All right then. What do the protesters hope to accomplish?”
“They haven’t issued official demands,” Heather said. “Right now, the survivors in the army are only saying they won’t fight for you.”
The Autumn Court didn’t have much of an army in the first place. Aside from the Raven Knights, they only had a few dozen sidhe in the barracks at any given time. The rest were civilians who could, theoretically, be mobilized in times of war.
There hadn’t been war in years.
Until the wedding.
Then Arawn had secretly invaded, captured Rage, and collapsed half of Myrkheimr, killing hundreds.
They were at war now. Arawn had made his opening volley, and if the army refused to fight, Marion would soon have more to worry about than trolls invading from the Wilds. “Damn it all,” she muttered, sweeping down another flight of stairs. Her cloak slithered behind her. “Find out who’s running the rebellion. I’ll deal with them personally.”
Heather’s heels rapped on the ice as she followed. “You can’t do that. You’re like the stepmother of a big family now—an intruder. They’ll stand against you.”
“Then I’ll have Konig address them. We can’t lose the army.”
“You need to win them over,” Heather said. “I’ll help as much as I can, but you must be the impetus behind gestures of friendship.”
The Raven Knights opened the double doors to the residential wing. Marion strode through. “Why will you help me? You should resent me a
s much as the rest of the sidhe do.”
“I’ll help because Konig loves you.” As if it was so obvious. “Did you know that Konig and I grew up together?”
“He’s mentioned it.” Konig talked about Heather almost as often as his parents.
“My dads were part of his mom’s pack before Genesis. I swore an oath to protect Konig when I learned to walk.”
Nori’s face swam in Marion’s vision again. “So you protect him. You love him.”
“Sidhe are love,” Heather said. “Everything is love.”
“I feel the love,” Marion said.
She slammed into her bedroom, locking Heather and the handmaidens out of it. She was more careful in taking the diadem out of her hair. Its faceted depths reflected her face back a dozen times, and Marion realized she was crying again.
“Are you okay?” Ymir was sitting on her bed, swinging his feet over the edge. Marion must have been truly distracted not to notice his presence.
“I’m very tired,” she said, settling the diadem in a velvet box. “How are you?”
“Hungry.”
“No surprise. I think you’ve grown three inches since I last saw you.” Marion beckoned him over, and Ymir stood in front of her, gazing up with childish impatience. He was up to her chest now. “Is nobody in the kitchens?”
“They’re serving dinner, but it’s not good,” he said.
She laughed. “I see.” It was probably great food, knowing the sidhe’s cooks. Ymir wasn’t gentry, though. He was a child from the villages with no taste for fine cuisine.
Marion had anticipated this from Ymir, and she’d thought to order more candy from Earth in advance. An aide had brought her an entire box of Three Musketeers bars—Ymir’s favorite.
She gave him one and he tore into it with gusto.
“Slowly,” she said.
It was already gone. Ymir’s mouth had a chocolate smear at the corner, a smudge of brown across his semi-translucent blue skin. “Can I have another one?”
“No. Too many of those and you’ll get fat, not tall.” She patted him on the head. His hair was cold to the touch—as cold as patting an icicle, though not as wet. “Gods above, you’re frosty.”
“I’m supposed to be,” he said.
The sudden growth must have been due to Konig’s stabilizing effect on the unseelie courts. Ymir used to look like human child with unusual tint to his flesh. Now he actually looked like he was made of snow, with hair of ice, and he was swelling in size. It was a healthy look for him. The eyes peering out of the flattened face were bright, intelligent, and friendly.
It had been barely days since Marion’s wedding, so his growth would likely accelerate. Ymir might soon outgrow the ability to sit on her bed at all.
“You can have one more,” Marion conceded, giving him a second Three Musketeers. She sat beside him as he ate it more slowly than the first. “May I ask you something, Ymir? How would you suggest that I make the sidhe like me better?”
“Chocolate,” he said firmly.
“Is that why you like me?”
“Uh-huh. I like you because you have all the chocolate.”
She would need a lot more to appease all the sidhe protesters she’d faced that day.
But appease them she must. Ymir needed stability between the courts. He needed Konig’s magic far more than he needed Three Musketeers bars.
Marion needed to make that damn diadem glow.
4
February 2032 — Sheol, The Nether Worlds
It was amazing how quickly Charity Ballard had adjusted to the idea of living in Hell.
Not Hell, she reminded herself inwardly. Sheol. The politically correct name is Sheol, even if a rose by any other name does something-something.
Name aside, the setting looked remarkably Hell-like, as all things in the Nether Worlds tended to be. Ichor dribbled from holes in the walls. A carpet of Hounds prowled the ground a dozen stories below her bedroom. Insect-like demons scrabbled to her immediate left, so near that flecks of gold in their otherwise black carapaces gleamed.
There was a lot of startling beauty in Sheol, like those flecks of gold. For every butcher ripping apart a demon of his own species, there were dreamy blood-murals depicting sunlight the demons hadn’t seen since Genesis. There were baskets woven of hair and bone. The metalwork was best, Charity thought. Burning Man had nothing on the sprawling abstractions welded by magma poured out of demon fingertips.
And, of course, there was all that balefire.
It formed a solid dome over Duat. It was a seething bright white that didn’t actually brighten anything within the city, as though it consumed all light it generated. Nobody went in or out. Anyone who attempted died. But those extra sparks of balefire were beautiful too, and she grew to appreciate them.
Charity was confined to her room whenever Arawn was holding meetings with his evil allies. She could only leave the window open, hanging halfway out to watch life and death flow within Duat. She had never felt more at peace than she did while at that window, inhaling Sheol’s sour wind.
The glasses that controlled her glamour gleamed on the windowsill to the left of her elbow. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn them.
Right now, the lenses were reflecting brilliant yellow-orange flame.
There had been balefire encircling Duat for as long as Charity had been held captive, but in recent hours, it had begun to thicken. Now it threatened to spread into the Dead Forest.
Balefire in its native form couldn’t be controlled, but Arawn had mastered Duat’s defenses.
Hadn’t he?
The spread must have been something that Arawn was doing. Charity hadn’t seen him much in the last few days, and not at all that night. He was up to something. Arawn wouldn’t let the balefire roam free.
Her bedroom door shook from an impact on the other side. She tensed but didn’t immediately stand. It wasn’t so strange to be subject to random assault in Sheol. Demons warred with one another even when they were in the best of moods. That was the nature of the beast—or the faction, in this case, as the denizens of the Nether Worlds were universally driven toward chaos.
If her door were about to be knocked in from an explosion of violence, it wouldn’t be the first time. She wouldn’t be hurt. Nobody would dare lay a claw upon Arawn’s property.
Nothing happened after that initial thud. The attack she expected never followed.
Charity eased away from the window. Her clawed feet didn’t tear at the ground the way that demons’ did, but the clicking noise was similar. The rapping of nails against stone was universal regardless of faction.
Her apartment in Arawn’s tower had been shaped to accommodate a revenant’s peculiarities. Ample space between the furniture allowed easy passage for her lanky body. The flooring had been replaced with cooled tile so she didn’t overheat. The lights had been moved from the ceiling to the walls so she wouldn’t bump her head—not that electricity usually worked well enough in Sheol for lights to be used.
She reached the front door in three leggy strides. It had a peephole the size of her circled thumb and forefinger, and the warped glass made the view fisheye.
There was nothing in the hallway other than a suit of armor with a spear thrusting through the bloodied breastplate. That ugly decoration hadn’t been moved despite Charity’s complaints. She was, after all, still a prisoner.
Charity was just stepping back when there was another thump on her door.
She opened it an inch, leaving the chain engaged.
A single black eye stared up at her from the region of her ankles.
Charity shut the door, released the chain, and opened the door again. This time, the eye slid backward, along with—fortunately—the skull that it was attached to, and the remaining upper half of a body. He was seriously injured. Many more bones were showing than usual.
The instinct of a nurse was stronger than a revenant intrigued by blood. She hauled him into her room and kicked the doo
r shut.
“Arawn?” she prompted, settling him on her fainting couch. His eyelids fluttered when she tilted his head back.
He turned into her touch. “The balefire. What’s happening?”
She glanced out the window. “I think it’s spreading. What happened to you?”
“I almost died,” Arawn said.
“Almost” was yet to be seen. The condition of his exposed viscera didn’t look good, even for him. Charity applied pressure with both hands. Warm blood slicked between her fingers, smooth as liver whipped by a blender.
“Do we need to run?” she asked.
“There’s nowhere we could run,” Arawn said. “He’s everywhere now.” His eyes rolled back. Blood dribbled down his jaw and his skin flickered to transparent. “Seth’s a god again.”
Charity would have sold her shriveled soul for the ability to heal patients at the rate Arawn healed naturally. He slept through the day on her couch and awoke when the clocks chimed Tuesday. Half of the wounds had already healed.
During that time, the balefire never stopped spreading. Word from the servants who delivered Charity’s food said that it had reached the riverbanks.
Arawn was in no condition to do anything about it. Quick healing still meant a long rest for him. She waited by his bedside that entire day, chewing her claws short while she watched the wounds visibly seal.
He had arrived on her doorstep naked, and she’d kept him draped in only blankets for ease of treatment. Arawn was as ugly as any demon. Human though he seemed, he was not an attractive human by any means—not that Charity was judging. She was a revenant, after all.
His tattoos were entrancing, though.
He’d inked his entire body with illustrations of the seasons, the sun, the changing moon. All of it was visible between what looked like seams torn open on his skin. The designs were a love letter to the glimpses of Earth a demon had once gotten from Hell. An Earth he could no longer survive on.
Arawn woke when she was staring.
“You shouldn’t get up yet,” Charity said, alarmed by how swiftly Arawn sat up. “You’ve got a long way to go.”
“This will never get better.” He waved dismissively at his ragged, exposed ribcage—the only remaining wound. It allowed Charity to see his organs jiggle as he stood. “It’s normal. It happens to every body I make for myself.”