by SM Reine
“How do you even know about that?”
“I wrote more in my journals about Sinead than I wrote about the times I saved Rylie from assassination.”
“Of course you did,” Seth said. Marion was certain that she wasn’t imagining how fond he sounded. “Sinead McGrath is a good witch, though?”
“Probably.” Marion wouldn’t have wasted time feuding with someone who wasn’t excellent at magic, especially since she could have hexed anyone else off the face of the planet for screwing with her wardrobe.
“Who won as student body high priestess?” Seth asked.
“I’m surprised you’d even have to ask. I did. I always win.”
“Not always,” he said soberly.
She traced her hands along the unbroken skin on her throat. “We survived. That’s a win.”
“But the Canope. Your memories. You shouldn’t have done that for me.”
“There was no other choice,” Marion said.
“I don’t think I can die. Not permanently, anyway. I’d just lose my body and…” He pointed to the sky and an imaginary Heaven where gods might have resided.
“Neither of us knew that at the time. We still don’t know that.”
Seth shrugged it off, like there was no point trying to argue something he believed to be fact. “When I was carrying the Canope, I picked up on some of your memories. Elise wanted you to find me. You wouldn’t do it. She emptied your mind and left nothing but my name so you’d find me.”
Unpleasant cold washed over Marion’s shoulders. “No, it couldn’t have been her.” She’d just gotten used to the idea that Elise wasn’t out to get her. Being told she was wrong—that a god did want to hurt her—made her stomach lurch. “I found one of the assassins—Geoff Samuelson. He said that some goat-woman confronted me.”
“A goat?”
“A goat-woman. Yes.” She lowered her voice. “That’s why I was in the office. I was using the OPA databases to download creature files onto my phone. If I can find her, maybe I can get answers.”
“It’s not what your memories showed me,” Seth said. “Elise was so angry that she struck you.”
Marion touched her cheek reflexively. It was like her body remembered the blow even if her mind didn’t. “But I wouldn’t do what she told me.”
“You didn’t even know me, but you stuck up for me. And the way I thanked you for it…” His gaze dropped to her throat again.
Marion’s memory of her time in the Dead Forest of Sheol was hazy. It was little more than a sensation of walking through a long corridor toward a doorway.
Seth had stood between her and that door. He hadn’t let her die.
“Do you still want to hurt me?” Marion asked.
“Not at all. I don’t understand why I did when I was in Sheol.”
“You’re clearly some kind of death god, and I was dying. You were operating on instincts that told you to finish the job. I don’t blame you.” After a moment’s hesitation, she took his hands. “You didn’t need to run from me. I wish you would let me help.”
“I might need your help yet,” Seth said. “If I wanted root access to the darknet, could you hook me up?”
Yet another mention of the darknet. It couldn’t be coincidence. “No way.”
“Yeah, I get it.” He looked abashed.
“No, it’s not about you. It’s because I don’t know where the servers are, but you’re not the first person this week to look for them. I’ve searched Niflheimr top to bottom for them, and even searched the bedroom of the former administrators, but I’ve got no clue. Pierce and Jaycee Hardwick left no clues behind.” Marion laughed shakily. “It seems like everybody wants the darknet at this point. The American Gaean Commission is searching, and Jibril thinks Leliel wants access as well.”
“Lucifer’s the one who asked me for it,” Seth said. “He’s the leader of the vampires.”
Marion knew who Lucifer was. She’d been seated next to him at the summit. “Why would he ask you, of all people?”
“Because I asked a favor of him first,” Seth said.
Rylie and Sinead returned before he could elaborate.
“The coven is on the way,” Rylie said. “Sinead is pretty certain they can slow the decay. They’ve got a healer in the group and Sinead’s good with constructs. Between the two of them, they should be able to fix your avatar.”
“Words like ‘pretty certain’ and ‘should’ don’t comfort me very much,” Marion said.
Sinead’s hatred was painted all over her face, but her tone was carefully civilized. “We’ve been studying the craft at the Academy for years and have broken new ground on gaean magic. If you think you have anything to contribute, though, don’t be afraid to jump in.”
It was a challenge.
A few months earlier, that was a challenge Marion would have happily risen to meet.
Unfortunately, since she was studying everything secondhand from the internet, Marion knew less magic than an adept at the Academy, and far less than Sinead.
It was arrogance that had driven Sinead and Marion to rivalry while at school. Marion couldn’t fix what she’d done in the past—just like Sinead couldn’t bring back Marion’s dresses—but she could swallow her pride and take the chance to learn a little more magic from someone with greater mastery of it than her.
“I’ll just watch from the sidelines, if that’s okay,” Marion said.
Surprise lifted Sinead’s eyebrows. There was a slash of white through one that corresponded with the pattern of her vitiligo. “Yeah. I think that’ll be okay.”
Seth squeezed Marion’s hand encouragingly.
“Then let’s do this,” he said.
It took twenty minutes for the coven to arrive from around the school. It was more than the traditional number of twelve—more like twenty, Seth determined after a quick count. Not all of them took position within the circle of power so the extras must have been students.
“Are you comfortable using this as a teaching opportunity?” Rylie asked. She was sitting in the center of the altar with Seth.
“Working on a ‘golem’ is a hell of a lesson, don’t you think?”
Rylie smiled faintly. “It wouldn’t be the strangest lesson we’ve had at the Academy.” She sounded proud, as well she should have. A school of witches, werewolves, and angels—that was likely to be her legacy, even after her legislative impact had faded into the past.
“You can include anyone you like,” Seth said. “I trust you.”
“And Marion too,” Rylie said.
The half-angel was talking to Sinead in the back corner of the room. It obviously wasn’t a comfortable conversation. They stood a good eight feet apart with such guarded body language that they might as well have both been wearing armor. But they were talking.
“I trust her, yeah. She’s a good person,” Seth said.
“She’s not good or bad. She’s a person.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ve had Marion in my home every summer since she was five years old. I know her too well to say she’s good or trustworthy.”
“Harsh.”
“I’m a parent,” Rylie said. “I’ve learned that sometimes the kindest thing you can do for a child is to be harsh on them.”
There was nothing childish in the way that Marion spoke to Sinead with impassioned fervor. She was gesturing with her hands now, illustrating concepts by etching symbols in the air with her fingertips, which occasionally sparked with glimmering magic.
She looked graver than she had when Seth had met her in his hospital, with all her wide-eyed confusion. Things had happened to her. She’d walked this close to death. And soon, she’d be married to an unseelie prince. Marion was young, but far from a kid.
“Then let’s try it that way,” Sinead said loudly enough that everyone in the room could hear it. “Let’s get in the circle.”
The witches gathered. Rylie and Seth got to their feet. “I should get out of the way,
” Rylie said. “You’re in good hands.” She brushed his shoulder when she stepped down from the altar.
The sensations he’d been trying to ignore roared to the forefront of his mind—the cable of life that wound through Rylie and connected her to the surrounding world.
There was death in Rylie’s past.
Before Genesis, Rylie had fought beside Elise on the edge of the world. They had conflicted with angels—Leliel among their number—and one of them had stabbed Rylie. She’d been saved by the gods, similar to the way that Seth had been saved. Rylie had kept her mortality, though. Unlike a vampire, she was alive, not undead. That meant death loomed in her future as well as her past. Her tenure as Alpha was bookended by oblivion.
If he wanted, he could know how Rylie was going to die. Again. Permanently, this time.
Seth shoved the sensations away, trying to focus on the here and now. On Marion’s heart-shaped face looming over the heads of the other witches. She looked worried, but when she realized he was watching, she offered a dimpled smile.
“We’ll use a spell similar to the ones that we use to contain a shapeshifter in her human body,” Sinead explained to the adepts ringing Seth. “We’ll need more energy than we use to prevent shifters from shifting, as well as a thread of healing from Flora.”
“Excuse me,” Marion said. “You can prevent shapeshifters from changing forms completely? Without direct control from the Alpha?”
“That’s right,” Sinead said.
There was no smile on Marion’s lips when she looked at Seth now. They were likely thinking the same thing. If preventing shapeshifting was magically possible, then they could save shapeshifter patients from death—patients like Elena Eiderman.
“Why haven’t those spells been adapted for medical application?” Seth asked.
“It’s too difficult for most witches. People would kill themselves trying to attempt it.” Rylie had taken position where the iron-and-stone flooring faded into long grass, which grew all the way to her knees.
“We’d also have to share proprietary sanctuary magic with the public,” Sinead added.
“That’s not fair,” Marion said.
“You’re the one who told me we should keep it a secret,” Rylie said.
Marion’s face fell. “I was?” She must have been wondering if that meant she was responsible for Elena Eiderman’s death.
“Let’s focus,” Sinead said. “Seth, please remove your shirt so we can see what we’re working with.”
He took a bracing breath, seized the hem of his shirt, and lifted it over his head.
Silence strangled the room.
Seth’s decay had gotten worse. It was less grotesque as it advanced because his thorax now looked too inhuman to be properly disturbing, but there was still a hint of the ribcage encasing shadowy memories of the organs he had contained.
Mostly there was light—the glimmer of godly power, which promised to tear away his mortal flesh completely.
When the wound was exposed, he had a harder time shutting off his awareness of the death in the room, too.
One of the witches he didn’t know would suffer a brain aneurysm in five years. She would drop dead where she stood with no warning sign.
Two of the witches were going to die in a car accident driving back from Northgate, the town nearest to the sanctuary. Both of them would be drunk. One would remain in intensive care for eight days before succumbing, whereas the other would be crushed to death when the car flipped. They’d take out the driver of the other car in the collision with them.
Nine of the witches would die of old age, over a span of sixty to ninety years—a good life span for preternaturals of their ilk. That indicated they were strong enough to maintain health with magic, but not so strong that the magic would kill them.
Hundreds of students were near enough in the school that he could simultaneously see their lives, too.
He couldn’t bring himself to look at Marion. He didn’t want to know.
“Do it fast,” Seth said hoarsely, eyes fixed on his chest and the smoky power dribbling over his hips.
Sinead began chanting. When she did, the witches raised their hands, linked their fingers, and began to circle him. The spell shoved against his flesh, forcing him into the mold of a human shape so tight that it hurt.
The pain must have showed on his face.
“Careful,” Rylie called from outside the circle.
“As careful as we ever are,” Sinead said.
The salt ringing the circle of power lifted in a cyclone that whipped at his legs.
Magic squeezed him tighter.
Thread by thread, the fog spilling from Seth’s chest retracted. Flakes of skin and bone that had been drifting from the injury reversed.
Getting knitted back together hurt almost as much as when the Hounds had chewed on him. The witches circled and chanted and his skin was growing back together and it hurt.
His knees buckled. He sank to the altar with a groan.
The sense of death only grew along with the magic. Threads of life and death pinwheeled through eternity, pulling Seth along with them.
Another of the witches would die while pregnant because her boyfriend shot her in the face.
Yet another would die in childbirth.
A student in the nearest wing was going to die in a dominance fight between werewolves when he was in his fifties.
Another would die of cancer—cancer! Something that nobody had realized that shapeshifters could even get. It would strike her when she was in her eighties and take twenty years to murder her.
And then there was Rylie.
“No,” Seth groaned aloud as the magic pushed. “No.”
He didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want to know.
But there was no avoiding it.
He saw the horrible instant that Rylie would permanently shuffle off of the mortal coil.
The magic ended.
Seth came back to reality and collapsed on the altar.
Sinead was kneeling over him, arms folded, a frown on her bow-shaped lips. “We’ve stopped the degradation.”
He looked down. She was right. His skin was no longer flaking away.
“Is he healed?” Rylie asked from outside the circle.
Sinead was silent, so Seth was the one who had to tell them, “No.”
Seth was silent for a long time after the coven left with Rylie, sitting alone on the altar. Marion waited to approach. She’d give him all the solitude he needed.
They were at an Academy for educating young preternaturals, and he looked like the most magical thing there. He hadn’t pulled his shirt back on, so the wound was still exposed to the air. She caught the occasional glimpse of a heart beating within his ribcage.
Seth must have felt her watching. He patted the altar beside him, silently suggesting that she should sit.
She stood on the ground by his legs, leaned her elbows on the elevated platform, and gazed up at him from below. Marion was tempted to poke her fingers in the gaping wound to find out what that internal fog would feel like. She resisted. It was doubtful Seth would appreciate the intrusion.
“They stopped the degradation,” Seth said. “I can tell I’m not dying anymore. But I’m not fixed.”
“The problem isn’t you. It’s with the nature of healing magic.” Marion had been able to see the threads of magic as they’d been cast. She had seen its power, and its limitations. “To heal, witches restore a body to its current optimal state. Bones can be mended, but old age can’t be fended off. It’s only returning people to a template. You have no template.”
He glared at the lake behind the ritual space. “Guess that’s the bitch about being an avatar instead of a real person.”
Marion had seen the term “avatar” in her journals. She’d tried to talk Elise and James into taking on avatars so that they could rejoin the world. She’d even offered to let them crash on her couch once they inhabited mortal bodies—to no avail.
Th
ere were many very good reasons that Elise and James only interacted with the world through Marion. One of the reasons—a big one—was that they simply couldn’t keep track of anyone else in the mortal worlds.
Gods existed outside of traditional time and space. If they took on avatars, they’d be just as likely to appear five hundred years from now as they would the present. They also might not return in a form that anyone recognized.
It was miraculous that Seth had appeared immediately after Genesis in a body that resembled his old one.
“How do you feel otherwise?” Marion asked. “Do you feel all…murderous?”
“You mean, do I want to kill people? Yeah. I still feel all of that.” His head hung between his shoulders. “I know how Rylie dies.”
Marion had never heard that much emotion in his voice before. Not even when he’d been dying.
She studied him in the afternoon light that rimmed his bare biceps, his forehead, the rounded bridge of his nose. Despite the wounds, he still looked very young.
And heartbroken.
This wasn’t just a mortal avatar of a god. This was a man who’d lived a life before other gods interceded—a man who’d lived and lost and loved.
He still loved, in fact. He was clearly in love with Rylie even though she had cheated on him, had a million children with another man, and now looked like an old lady by comparison.
“How does Rylie die?” Marion asked.
Seth ran his hands over his face. “A phoenix shapeshifter kills her. A woman named Deirdre Tombs.”
9
Cold shock spread over Marion. “Deirdre kills Rylie? Why? When?”
“I don’t know exactly when or why. All I know is that this Deirdre Tombs will be the one who pulls the trigger.”
“Are you sure? I think the two of them are somewhat friends.” Although they may have been the kind of friends where Deirdre was blackmailing Rylie. Perhaps assassination wasn’t so far-fetched.
Seth wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I’m sure.”
After the threats that Deirdre issued in the Winter Court, Marion hadn’t needed another confirmation that she was dangerous, but it was sobering to hear anyway. If Deirdre could beat Rylie, then it seemed unlikely that Marion would defeat her in the vote for Konig’s title as Prince of the Autumn Court.