Cast in Balefire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Mage Craft Series Book 4)

by SM Reine

  “Me?”

  “No, the other you sitting at this table with us right now.” She sniffed in annoyance. “You look familiar, but I can’t determine why. Have you interned for us?”

  “No, I haven’t.” He’d only ever interned for the Office of Preternatural Affairs, but that much coffee fetching for Secretary Friederling had only been tolerable for one boring school trimester.

  “Hmm. Clearly you know me.”

  “Only by your venerable reputation,” Benjamin said.

  Jaycee tapped a finger on her chin, gazing at him for a long time before finally shaking her head. “I’ll place you soon. I’m sure of it.” She stood, tugging the hem of her jacket around her hips to neaten it. “Enjoy the view, young Mr. Flynn.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  He couldn’t watch her walk away because then he’d have had to look at the rest of the courtyard, with all the…stuff.

  Instead he focused on a tower overlooking the courtyard.

  Marion stood on a balcony. She’d let her hair down around her shoulders, but otherwise looked the same: the same revealing dress, the same noble stature, the same not-quite-right expression that edged on too vulnerable for the girl Benjamin once knew.

  With a jolt, he realized that she was looking behind him.

  A Raven Knight with white hair kneeled beside Benjamin. “For you, Master Flynn.”

  He had a piece of paper folded into thirds and sealed with wax. Benjamin took it gratefully.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  His name was written on the outside in Marion’s elegant hand. The note was, he assumed, about their mutual search for Shamayim.

  Whatever Benjamin felt when he looked at Marion, he hadn’t come here to reconnect with her.

  He’d come for destiny. Fate. Whatever.

  Benjamin looked up to Marion’s balcony again, but the Queen of the Unseelie was already gone.

  Returning to the sanctuary was a shock both pleasant and not so pleasant. It was always weird returning to Earth after time in the Middle Worlds. The colors were duller, the people weren’t as ridiculously pretty, and Benjamin’s brain didn’t require seventeen levels of wards to remain functional.

  The sanctuary might have been plain, but it was home. The smell of wet wolf fur had been following him around for as long as he could remember. It was hard to sleep when there weren’t shifters howling in the rain-soaked forest, crying their dreams to a watchful moon.

  It was after curfew for the academy, but Rylie had arranged for her son’s late arrival. The security guard in the tower waved at him before opening the gates to let him inside.

  Benjamin didn’t head straight for his room. He wandered down the path toward Golden Lake, peeling open the wax on the letter that Marion had given him.

  Benjamin,

  Please be careful seeking Lucifer for access to the darknet. You may contact me when you have information or at any other time you deem prudent.

  I don’t yet know why fate has brought us together, or what waits in Shamayim, but I appreciate your help. I hope you’ll make yourself available for more in the future.

  Marion Garin

  She concluded the letter with multiple titles, which he didn’t bother reading. He already knew that Marion was Head High Honcho Fancy-Pants Leader of Everything Ever. The fact she’d included that in a letter to him was itchily, uncomfortably formal.

  “Hey Benjy!”

  Benjamin stuffed the letter into his back pocket before turning to face his mother, Head High Honcho Fancy-Pants Leader of the American Preternatural World, who was trucking toward him from across the lawn.

  He cursed inwardly. Of course Rylie was there. She always stayed awake until he got home.

  It didn’t help that his youngest brother was currently frolicking around Rylie’s feet. He was in his wolf form, which was, even at puppy age, half of Rylie’s mass.

  A wild hurricane of fur smashed into Benjamin’s shins. It staggered him. “Hey there, Louie,” Benjamin said, ruffling his brother’s ears. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

  “Oh, we don’t have bedtimes in this family,” Rylie said, following more slowly. “The prisoners run the prison.”

  “Funny. I seem to remember getting stuck in bed at eight o’clock.” Until Benjamin started attending the school full-time, at which point he’d been trapped in his room starting from curfew at seven o’clock. “Probably because I can’t chew my way out of any room you put me in, huh?”

  Louie responded by enthusiastically gnawing on Benjamin’s leather shoe.

  “You’ve always been a good kid,” Rylie said. “You never gave me nearly as much trouble as I deserved. It might help if you got into more trouble.”

  Oh, then his mom would just love it once she found out he was trying to get into Shamayim with Marion.

  “What’s got you walking out here alone?” Rylie paced him as they continued around the lake, dogged by a playful werewolf whose tail swished wildly. “I see you have a letter in your pocket. That’s not a love letter, is it?” She sounded hopeful.

  He laughed. “No, it’s not a love letter.”

  “Shame.”

  “Mom. I’m not like you.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. I only—”

  “It’s not normal to have already met the person you’re going to marry at my age,” Benjamin said. “I think we’ve got a few years before you need to worry that I’m going to die a spinster.”

  “I don’t want you to be lonely,” Rylie said. “Even Lizzy has a boyfriend.” She was the sister closest in age to Benjamin at fourteen years old.

  “I’m fine. Seriously.” How was a mundane son of the Alpha supposed to find a girl at the sanctuary who’d take him seriously?

  The image of Marion in the unseelie gardens drifted through his mind. The patterning of snowflakes over her boobs, her ridiculously long legs…

  “Then what is the letter?” Rylie asked, drawing Benjamin’s attention back to her.

  “Oh, just…a thing.” He stumbled over the words. He might have been honest if he didn’t feel caught in the act of mentally ogling Marion.

  “A thing from the Autumn Court?”

  “Why do you want to know?” Benjamin asked.

  “I’m just curious,” Rylie said. “I wish I could have gone to dinner with you. It’s hard to let you go into the world like this.”

  “Do you talk to Summer and Abram like that?” They were his adult siblings.

  “That’s different.”

  Everything was different between Benjamin and his siblings. For one, all of them were special in some way. Summer was a werewolf. Abram was married to the freaking President of the North American Union. The rest of his siblings were some flavor of shifter and would, knowing his family, probably grow up to colonize other planets.

  And then there was Benjamin.

  “Tell me everything,” Rylie said, linking her arm through his. She rested her cheek against his shoulder. “Absolutely everything.”

  “Well, Marion’s settling in, it looks like.” He couldn’t say her name without seeing that dress again. He wished his mom wouldn’t have preternatural eyesight so that he could hide his blush in the darkness. “I got greeted by King ErlKonig, though. I think he’s in charge.”

  “Really? Not Marion?”

  It did sound weird, but as far as Benjamin could tell, Konig had been the propelling force behind the night’s official events. Marion was more wrapped up in Benjamin and Shamayim.

  He liked that idea.

  “She’s doing magic again,” Benjamin said, just to keep from thinking about bad things. His mom would smell his mood on him. She knew everything.

  “How much magic?” Rylie asked. “And what kind? Defensive or offensive?”

  “That’s a weird question.”

  “I’m curious,” his mom said defensively.

  Years of observing political goings-on had instilled Benjamin with a Spidey sense for intrigue. He didn’t need his mo
m’s keen werewolf Alpha nose to detect Rylie’s change in posture, her shifty eyes, or the way she fidgeted with her nightgown.

  “Marion did that mirror spell,” Benjamin said. “Remember that one?” When she’d spent a year at the academy, she’d taught that spell to her witchy classmates. They’d needed to ban the spell in order to stop kids from preening in the halls and leaving magic residue everywhere.

  “Oh yes, I remember that. We still have trouble with girls slinging it everywhere,” Rylie said. “Is that the only magic you saw?”

  Marion had also pushed back against sidhe magic. Benjamin hadn’t seen much of it—he’d just been sneaking back into the courtyard when that firework display had gone off. Plus, a mundane mind meant that sidhe barfing magic rendered Benjamin brain-dead.

  If Marion had been keeping up with the sidhe, then she was getting her strength back. Rylie would want to know that.

  But why? What about the subject of Marion was suddenly so interesting to his mom?

  “I wasn’t paying a lot of attention,” Benjamin said.

  Rylie folded her arms across her chest. “You weren’t paying attention?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve come of age.”

  “Oh.” Rylie’s hand flew to her mouth. “You mean…the post-dinner party…?”

  She thought he’d jumped in on the orgy. “Oh, gods, Mom. No. No. I’m not eighteen yet. I can only watch.”

  “That’s bad enough,” she said. “Is the castle’s magic as strong as it was under the last rulers?”

  No, it had seemed weaker, less colorful. But again…why did Rylie want to know? “I wasn’t looking at the magic.”

  A horrified giggle slipped from her. “Of course you weren’t.” Louie snapped his jaw on the hem of Rylie’s nightgown. He tore yet another hole along the flowered trim. “I think it’s time for bed.”

  “I’m gonna hang out for a while,” Benjamin said. “See you in the morning? Maybe we can have breakfast together?”

  “I wish, but I’ve got to make another meeting. I should have been asleep hours ago.” She kissed him on the cheek even as she jerked her nightgown away from Louie’s teeth. Rylie Gresham, ever the multitasker. “I wanted to see you first.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” He kissed her back.

  Rylie was slow to leave, even with an annoying puppy dragging her around. It was like she wanted to stay with Benjamin longer. He doubted that was because of motherly sentimentality.

  Benjamin watched the lake from the eastern bank, his shirt’s collar and the hems of his slacks flapping in a warm wind. Even the sound of water slopping over the rocks was less magical than in the Middle Worlds.

  He waited until he could no longer hear his family before reading Marion’s letter again.

  I appreciate your help. I hope you’ll make yourself available for more in the future.

  “You can’t tell Mom about Shamayim.” It was Nathaniel again. The black-haired guy with the icy-blue eyes. He’d appeared on the shore of Golden Lake with its waves sloshing over his feet.

  Nathaniel resonated with light and power that rendered him numb on the inside, so Benjamin couldn’t manage to feel startled. He felt like he was slipping into a dream.

  “I can’t tell Mom about Shamayim,” Benjamin agreed.

  “She’ll stop me. She won’t let me go because she loves me too much. And then what happens to Genesis?” Nathaniel asked.

  “I’ve got to trigger Genesis.” The words came from Benjamin unbidden. He didn’t need to understand what they meant to know it was true.

  Things were changing for Benjamin. It wasn’t just that he would soon leave the academy for a mundane college, or the fact that he was now allowed to witness sidhe orgies. It wasn’t even the fact that he was being shadowed by a tall blue-eyed guy whose voice seemed to echo throughout the eons.

  Benjamin’s mother wanted to use him for intelligence gathering. It was a compliment, in a way. He’d have been happy to help at any other time, against any other target.

  “Not Marion,” Benjamin said.

  And Nathaniel agreed. “Never Marion.”

  12

  Marion awoke in a room she didn’t recognize. She sat up, curls whispering as they slid off of the pillow. The instant that her eyes fell upon the windows edged in swords, she knew: she had spent the night in the king’s bedroom at Myrkheimr. Alone.

  Konig hadn’t offered to share it aloud, but the offer had been in his eyes. He’d spent the hour before that watching the joyful orgy between sidhe in the courtyard, and that had aroused his magic, so it likely aroused his body too.

  Yet he had gone to sleep elsewhere—the exact location didn’t matter to Marion—and she had spent the night in the marriage chamber.

  It was supposed to be her room as much as Konig’s, but she felt like an unwelcome visitor among the cracking stone and shimmering steel blades. When she slid out from under the down comforter, her feet met tile as cold as any floor in Niflheimr.

  Konig entered, drawing on his day coat. “Morning, princess.”

  “Queen,” she said. “I’m queen now.”

  “I’ve never been using an official title for you,” he said. “Put this on. You’re shivering.” He slid a silken robe over her shoulders. Marion cinched it around her narrow waist. “We don’t have long before the ethereal delegation arrives.”

  That was another issue they’d taken care of before retiring the previous night. If there was any angel but Leliel working with the Summer Court, Jibril and Suzume would know. And if it were Leliel working with the Summer Court, then they would want to remedy that.

  Marion emerged from the bedroom to find an empty living space. “Where are my handmaidens? I want to dress immediately.”

  “Breakfast first.” Konig pulled one chair out—presumably for Marion.

  She sat in the other chair. “I don’t eat breakfast. I’ll have some tea, though.”

  “I insist.”

  “So do I,” Marion said.

  “Do you need to be so hostile? You’ve been in such a mood ever since we entertained the Summer Court. You eviscerated them verbally.”

  “We were in that together,” she said.

  “You chose vinegar where honey would have made things far easier,” he said. “Please, princess. Be reasonable. I don’t want to fight. We’ve only got a few minutes before we have to start working, and I’d love to enjoy one peaceful meal together.”

  Marion took the pot and poured herself hot water. She’d been supplied fresh loose-leaf tea in a metal ball, which she sniffed before dropping it into her cup. “I don’t think you and I have ever had a peaceful meal together. That’s just not the way we function.” The tea was strongly flowery without being sweet, just as she liked it. Her cup tinked when she set it back down.

  “But in the past, we did function,” Konig said. “I’m the only person you can function with, in fact.”

  “Do you mean to imply that you do so much better? I don’t see anyone else clawing to put up with electro-shock therapy,” she quipped.

  Konig dropped his fork. “What?”

  “What?” Marion asked over the steaming rim of her cup.

  He looked like he’d seen a ghost. “What did you say, princess?”

  “Damn it, Konig, I’m not being hostile. I’m just teasing you over your initials again.” His full name was EKG—ErlKonig Graymont. They had an old running joke equating EKG with ECG therapy, and paralleling it to his terrible personality. “I’m surprised you don’t remember.”

  “I’m surprised you do,” Konig said. He slipped from his chair, sinking to his knees in front of hers, breakfast forgotten. “Marion, you haven’t remembered anything until now.”

  She hadn’t made any bad EKG jokes since losing her memories, had she? Konig had been nothing but a total stranger to her.

  Parts of her relationship with Konig had returned with Onoskelis’s gift.

  “Marion,” Konig said again, softer, reaching up to touch her cheek. He hadn’t believe
d that her memories were coming back until that moment, and now there was an emotion exposed in Konig that she hadn’t seen before.

  Hope.

  He thought he really might be getting his girlfriend back. The one who had stolen kisses from him behind his parents’ throne room when Marion was supposed to be there for diplomatic missions. The one who had shared secrets and dreams and fantasies of ruling the world alongside him.

  The woman who used to have sex with him. The woman who wanted to be with him.

  “What’s the affirmation that Oberon mentioned?” Marion asked. It seemed like a good moment to approach a subject he’d been reluctant to discuss.

  Hope didn’t vanish, but it became cautious. “Are you ready to know?”

  “I’ll fear the worst until you tell me.”

  “Before Genesis, sidhe were witches and werewolves,” Konig said. “Most mated pairs involved one witch, one wolf. What do you know of werewolves?”

  She knew anything that the Old Marion had seen fit to include in her journals. “They’re the most numerous gaean race, and wolves are the most common type of shifter. They can transmit the ability to shapeshift via bite, though modern medicine can prevent the transformation.”

  “It takes three months for the initial transformation to complete,” Konig said. “After the first three months of partial transformations, it becomes permanent—you can’t cure the werewolf anymore. Many witches mated to werewolves while they were mid-transformation, and the mating only became affirmed after three months.”

  “It doesn’t sound like it applies to us,” Marion said.

  “Sidhe tradition applies to us.”

  Ah, tradition. The thing that Konig selectively cared about very, very much. In that case, Marion could extrapolate what kind of affirmation they may have. “What you’re saying is that we have some kind of formal ceremony to affirm our ‘mating’ three months after the marriage, in honor of the werewolves who founded the sidhe species.”

  “Exactly.” Konig gazed at her in silence, as though waiting for a shoe to drop.

  Marion felt lost. “What is it?”