by SM Reine
Saoirse wiggled a photo out of the back of a journal. “Who’s this?”
“Hmm?” Marion’s gaze flicked up from the page that she was reading.
“This woman and the baby.”
She took the picture from Saoirse. Marion hadn’t seen it before. “Where did you find this?”
“It was stitched into the cover of a journal.” The woman opened it to show Marion where she’d peeled open a book. The desecration would have been horrifying if Marion hadn’t been so fascinated by the image itself.
The woman was hawk-nosed and angry-eyed. Her right eyebrow was pierced. Black hair was sleeked into a ponytail that hung straight over one shoulder without so much as a split end. Her eyes were equally black, and her skin was glowing milk.
She held a young toddler on her hip. That toddler had Marion’s mouth, Marion’s chestnut curls, Marion’s white-blue eyes. She never would have worn a dress with so many lacy frills as an adult though.
“I don’t know who the adult is,” Marion said, though a poison blossom was unfurling in the depths of her gut. “I’m the child.”
“Did you have a demon nanny?”
“Leave it to the unseelie queen to be raised by demons,” Maddisyn said with an uneasy laugh.
“And what are these?” Aoife had found the pages of runes that Marion had drawn after meeting Onoskelis. Marion had taken them out long enough to organize the pages in a leather folder and forgotten to lock the drawer.
“It’s instructions for making a gris-gris,” Marion said automatically.
Shock jolted through her.
A gris-gris? Marion didn’t even know what that was.
“Oh, okay,” Aoife said. It made sense to her.
Maddisyn asked, “What’s a gris-gris?”
Marion was grateful when Tove answered. “It’s like a magical charm bracelet. Excellent for spells which need to be applied and removed without recasting each time.”
“Like glamours,” Aoife said.
That must have meant that Charity Ballard’s glasses, which hid her revenant nature, were a form of gris-gris.
Marion took the leather folder from Aoife. She paged through it with this new information, and it looked…different. More colorful. More musical.
She was onto something important with those runes.
“Are any of you a sorcerer?” Marion asked, sliding her childhood photo into the folder.
“I was a witch before Genesis.” Tove peered over Marion’s shoulder. The sidhe reeked of sticky, woody pipe smoke. “That’s some next-level gaean magic there.” She poked the page. “And that is ethereal magic for sure.”
Marion thought that some of the runes might have been infernal, too. She tucked the folder back into her drawer, runes and photograph and all.
The lock clicked.
She’d have loved more information about gris-gris from Tove, but she couldn’t show confusion, even now. Anything the handmaidens witnessed, Konig would surely know.
Marion never let them see her falter. Not once, day or night.
The only time that belonged to her was when she was asleep.
Her life had become so strange that she preferred her dreams. When she slept, she could let her life as queen fade away, and she could imagine that the dreams were reality.
She imagined that she had never woken from her coma in Arawn’s tower. The last few months of her life were fever nightmares wracking an unconscious body. She sat up in bed to find Seth sitting on the edge of the mattress, both of them confined in a cell that oozed with ichor.
Marion knew Seth was watching her even though she couldn’t seem to look directly at his face. His chest had been ripped open to expose a pulsing heart.
“I thought you’d sleep forever.” She could hear Seth’s voice, imagine the way his scarred lips would move, but couldn’t see him.
“I was trapped.” Marion wanted to cradle Seth’s throbbing heart in her hands. She felt its pulse against her tongue and tasted lips against hers.
Marion’s dreams of being trapped in Sheol were strange, but that was a life she wanted. A life of adventure and freedom, ideally shared with one Dr. Lucas Flynn.
The real nightmare was Konig cornering her after court one day.
“Dinner,” he said. “You owe me dinner, if nothing else.”
Her heart leaped into her throat.
The handmaidens were near enough to hear them. Weren’t Marion and Konig pretending that they were close, even when they slept apart? Nobody should have known they ate separately except the kitchen staff.
More rumors would get around. It would fuel the protests and unravel any progress Marion had made.
She began walking toward the door. The handmaidens were so surprised that it took them a moment to catch up. “Wait, Your Majesty!”
Konig was so leggy that a few lazy strides carried him at Marion’s scurrying pace. “We made a promise to each other, princess.”
The handmaidens might believe he referred to their wedding vows. Marion knew he meant the promises they’d exchanged during the funeral instead—when they finally talked about Konig’s cheating ways.
He would abstain from sex entirely.
She would allow him to win back her trust.
“It doesn’t mean we must have dinner every night,” Marion said.
“Not every night. But at least once, and soon.”
She stopped at the bottom of the gazebo, shivering in the wind that rippled from the Winter Court. “I take my leave.” Marion curtsied.
But when she stepped through the ley lines with Wintersong holding her elbow, she appeared on the other side to find that Konig had beaten her there. As a sidhe, he didn’t need help planeswalking. He’d always be faster getting around.
Konig was a splash of blood against an ice-blue backdrop, a rose with its bud closed against the cold. The instant he set foot in Niflheimr, the sky lightened by degrees. Nearby trees blossomed with frost berries. The Winter Court became less Marion’s home and more Konig’s.
It was his, though. He was the only sidhe in their relationship. The Middle Worlds would always prefer his magic to Marion’s.
“I don’t have time for dinner tonight,” Marion said. “I promised my time to my mother.” And her handmaidens. Marion would have to get them drunk enough to ensure they couldn’t report her conversation with Ariane to Konig.
The king continued walking alongside her as she spiraled down the tower’s stairs. “You can’t keep missing the family dinners in the Autumn Court. People notice.”
Family dinners. What a joke. He was talking about the same lavish, nightly orgies that the new residents of Niflheimr had been having. “Tell them that the pathetic half-angel is too exhausted by traveling between planes to attend dinner in the Autumn Court.”
Marion tried to open the door to her room, but Konig grabbed the handle. “There’s nothing pathetic about you,” he said sharply. “You’re the most powerful queen to ever hold a throne in the Middle Worlds.”
“Why are you so insistent that we have dinner? Is it because you hope to get me alone in your rooms, with the expectation of sex to follow?”
“I want us to be together, Marion, wherever that happens and whatever it means. I won’t deny a political bent, but it’s only that I want my people—our people—to love you as I do. We’ll only achieve that with cooperation.” His thumb stroked along her knuckles. “You are my wife.”
She wouldn’t have been if she’d had any alternative.
Marion’s head was filling with that fog again. Her vision was swimming, her heart pounding. This was a dream—only some bitter nightmare concocted by Sheol’s atmosphere. “I’ll come to your dinner tomorrow night.”
“That’s all you’ll give me? A public dinner?”
“My kingdom needs my attention.”
“I need your attention,” Konig said. The indignity of being refused eroded his charm quickly. His thumb had gone from gently stroking to pressing firmly, squeezing her hand
against the handle. “I’m the one who’s functionally running ‘your’ court, along with the Autumn Court’s magical needs. You owe me your attention, your gratitude, and anything else I want.”
Including sex.
Especially sex, Marion expected.
“I’m doing fine with the Winter Court all on my own,” she said.
“You’re not doing anything except playing voyeur at your handmaidens’ sex parties.” Konig leaned in and lowered his voice. “I’ve screwed all of them. You’re not breaking new ground.”
It was humiliating to stand beside a man the public knew as your husband and hear him talk of other sexual exploits. He’d ensure that she knew she was dirt without ever breaking his smile, and the people would go on believing him to be the victim.
“You’re the one who told me that partying is the majority of a sidhe’s work,” she said coolly. “I don’t need to lean on your intrinsic magic to run my kingdom. I’m fine.”
“You’re fine, you say,” he said. “You don’t look fine, princess.”
“I’ll see you at dinner tomorrow.” She shouldered past him. “Good night.”
She slid into the room, and the Raven Knights remained in the hallway outside. So, thankfully, did the handmaidens. They must have been taking the chance to flirt with Konig and update him on Marion’s activities.
Her carefully constructed facade crumbled as soon as the lock clicked. She ripped the diadem from her hair, toed her shoes off, and let her hands fall into her face.
With her eyes closed, the line between awake and asleep blurred. Seth was sitting on the bed next to her. She couldn’t see his face, but it was there. He was there. And he was smiling.
“He’s not wrong.”
Those kind words came from Ariane, who was bustling around the kitchenette. A pot simmered in the fire pit. The smoke from powerful herbs wafted through the air in sparkling lines.
“Which part of it?” Marion said, pushing away from the door.
“All of it. You’re being selfish, and you do owe him dinner—among many other wifely duties.”
“Forgive me if I put little stock in marriage advice from a woman working on her third husband.”
Ariane had been unfortunately clear about the depths of her relationship with Adàn Pedregon, and she’d been spending every other day on Earth with him.
“Your father and I never married.”
“Ah, that changes everything.” Marion twisted her arm behind her back, seeking the buckles. It was so much easier when the handmaidens helped. If they hadn’t been busy with Konig, they’d have already had Marion in a bathrobe with a wine glass.
Ariane approached with a wine glass, so she was halfway to the fantasy. “Here you go, my sweet.”
“What is it?” The peachy-pale fluid inside smelled fruity. Possible potions whirled through Marion’s mind.
“Fear not. It’s only chardonnay.”
Marion sipped it as Ariane opened the dress. “Did I have a demon nanny when I was a baby?”
“Not a nanny,” she said. “Why?”
“I found an odd photo.” She had taken it out to ask Ariane about it earlier. Now it rested atop her desk. “Who is that holding me?”
“Why, that’s Elise,” Ariane said. “You stole that photograph from me, didn’t you?” She whipped it off of the desk and began tucking it into her skirt.
Marion yanked the photo away before it could disappear. “This is my sister?”
There was a resemblance in features, but the complete difference in coloring masked much of it. Elise had none of Marion’s carefully cultivated style, grace, and chilliness. The radiating anger must have come from Isaac Kavanagh, Ariane’s first husband.
“She was so angry that I took that picture,” Ariane said. “She claimed people would try to hurt you if they knew of your blood, and she’d hoped to keep you sheltered as long as possible.”
“My blood?”
“Metaraon’s blood. He was a powerful mage, and you’re his direct descendent. At the time, you’d have been one of a handful of living half-angels, and only one of three mages.”
Marion’s dad had been dead by the time she was born, so the other mage couldn’t have been Metaraon. “Who else was there?”
“Elise’s aspis, James Faulkner, and his son.” The wrinkles edging Ariane’s puckered lips aged her. Disapproval made the woman ugly. “James is also a descendant of Metaraon, though more distantly than you. We won’t discuss him.”
“Why not?”
“Aging is a strange thing. The longer I live, the more that I see people begin life beautiful, and they rot by the day inside. James Faulkner rotted faster than others. I don’t waste my time thinking of people that foul.” Ariane held a hand out. “I want my photograph back.”
Marion touched a drawer. It unlocked at the contact. She put the photograph into it, and then locked it once more. “What potions are you making this time, Mother?”
Ariane’s nostrils flared. Her lips were edged with white. “A few essentials. I’ll leave your share in thanks for the supplies you contributed.” Ariane hadn’t asked for Marion to donate supplies. She must have been raiding Niflheimr’s storerooms.
“What do you regard as essential?”
“Healing potions, some illusions to escape dangerous situations, augmentations of strength and speed.” Her mother shrugged. “The usual. You can have anything I’ve made except the contraceptive potions.”
Marion choked on chardonnay.
She wasn’t sure what was worse—the fact that her middle-aged mother needed contraceptive potions, or the fact that she thought she could withhold contraception from Marion. “I’m not having children, Mother.”
“You need to produce a daughter to keep our family on a sidhe throne. You should get to that before you’re assassinated.”
Could chilly silence from ungrateful sidhe truly lead to assassination attempts? Marion had thought she was done with that after Leliel’s bounty.
Gods, the idea was exhausting.
“I think you just want a grandchild and are disappointed your ‘better’ offspring isn’t delivering,” Marion said.
Ariane savagely pinched the delicate skin on her daughter’s side.
Marion leaped away with a gasp, hand flying to the injury. It smeared crimson on her fingertips. Blood. She was bleeding. “Mother! How dare you?”
“Listen to me.” Ariane’s voice was very gentle. “You’re the bride of an unseelie king, and you do owe him sex—not just for the sake of his magic, but for the security of the entire kingdom, and the establishment of your legacy. Don’t you care about legacy?”
“I won’t discuss my sex life with you.”
Ariane took a potion off of the stove and set it aside. “I want you to be happy. I think you’ll find that I’m the only one in the unseelie courts who feels that way.” She shot a look at Marion, guarded behind the veil of her hair so that only a sliver of her face was visible. “I’m sorry. I can go back to Adàn and stay there.”
Marion sank to the sofa, cradling her glass of wine in both hands the way that she’d held Seth’s heart in her dream. “No,” she said, “please stay with me.”
Ariane wasn’t trustworthy, but she also wasn’t going to tell Konig every detail of Marion’s behaviors.
“Are you hungry?” Ariane asked.
“Not really.”
“Then we get to business.” Ariane offered an envelope to Marion with a flourish. It was sealed with wax.
Marion broke the seal with a thumbnail. “My first labor for Onoskelis.”
There was only a single line on the inside: “Have Benjamin contact Lucifer to get darknet access.”
Marion flipped the page over to check the back. It was blank. “Who’s Benjamin?”
“You don’t know a Benjamin?” Ariane peered at the page. “What about a Lucifer?”
A vampire named Lucifer had been seated beside Marion at the summit. Seth had been working with him before the wedding.
The vampire had wanted administrative access to the darknet, and they’d given it to him. Marion hadn’t cared for the wealth of deadly information on the darknet servers.
“Did Onoskelis say anything when she gave it to you?” Marion asked.
“It was delivered to the home I’m staying at in Barcelona. I never saw her.”
And Marion had thought that getting her memories back would be quick. She didn’t know where to begin with that instruction. She dressed herself in silence, threading arms through sleeves, legs through denim, feet into boots.
It would be difficult to reach Lucifer. Marion wasn’t criminal enough to have his contact information readily available, and Konig would be angry if he learned she’d gone to Earth seeking a vampire.
The letter was right—she needed help to contact Lucifer. And apparently that help was meant to come from Benjamin.
Her bedroom door creaked open. The handmaidens flowed into the room with a wave of sparkling magic, and they immediately began poking at Ariane’s potions with interest. Ariane happily turned from Marion to socialize. She fit in with them well. The only way to tell her apart was her age-lined face.
Marion shrugged on layers of fur, warm enough to shelter her against the Winter Court’s wind, and waved to the handmaidens. “Let’s go for a walk.”
6
Marion was surrounded by Raven Knights as soon as she left her bedroom with the handmaidens. Her two usuals were there, but they were accompanied by a handful of others who had been drifting between courts.
She hadn’t paid much attention to her guards in the past because it was too hard to distinguish sidhe from one another. Now she studied them with renewed interest.
All Raven Knights were gentry, the strongest class of sidhe. That meant features that were human despite the array of striking colors. Their shapely bodies were packed into ballistic armor. Long capes whipped behind them, dancing on the cold wind.
These knights had trained daily to protect the former rulers of the Autumn Court. They were skilled with battle magic and swords, they didn’t like casual chitchat, and they only allowed Marion to be alone when in her bedroom.
That was literally everything she knew about them.