by SM Reine
She ran her fingers over his knuckles, as though soothing a hurt from knocking a door too hard. “How do you know that you didn’t let her die because that’s the natural order of things?”
“Rylie’s death isn’t natural. She gets shot.”
“All death is as natural as being born. It’s something that happens to all of us eventually. We don’t get to choose.” The words weren’t touching Seth. Marion could see the hurt in him, and she wanted to take it away, but she couldn’t. “I wouldn’t be happy with that answer either, just so you know. Nothing is beyond my control. If I were a god, I’d want to save everyone too, just like you.”
That elicited a small smile from him. “I didn’t want to save anyone. I didn’t care about anything.” Seth’s eyes had gone unfocused, seeing to places and times that Marion couldn’t imagine. “Being God is the ultimate detachment. The universe moves through you, but you don’t have anything to do with it.”
“Something inspired you to become an avatar.”
“A grudge against Elise,” he said.
“You willed yourself back immediately after Genesis. I’m sure it was for a better reason than annoying my sister.”
“Coincidence.”
“You won’t let me talk about myself badly, but you’re dismissing your own strengths as though they’re nothing.” Marion smoothed her fingers over the back of his hand again. “You are anything but an unfeeling god, Dr. Flynn.”
He finally focused on her. It was the old pseudonym that had snapped him out of himself. “When I become a god again, I’m not going to care about you either. I won’t care that you’re marrying Konig. And I won’t care that you’ll die.”
Each statement lashed out at her, though she knew that it was part of Seth’s self-flagellation, whipping himself with something he considered bitter truth. “I may not be a god, but I know if I walked outside of time, I would never stop caring.” Her throat worked. It felt like she was swallowing needles. “I wouldn’t stop caring about you.”
Seth’s only response was to pull her against his chest.
The embrace surprised her, though not unpleasantly. She let her arms creep around him carefully to tighten her fingers on the small of his back, where the fatal wounds from the Hounds had yet to spread.
The locks on the hallway door clicked. The handles shifted.
Marion turned, lifting her hands reflexively to cast spells.
Who would be trying to enter the bedroom of a sidhe couple who hadn’t lived in Niflheimr for years?
“Pantry,” Seth whispered.
He dragged her away before she could summon any spells to mind.
“This is my palace! I don’t need to hide!” Marion hissed back.
“Don’t you want to know who else is looking for the darknet?” Seth pushed her through the door beside the fire pit, slipping in behind her. He left it open an inch so that he could watch the room on the other side.
There wasn’t a lot of space in the pantry for two people and one voluminous party dress. Unexpected adrenaline thrilled through Marion at the dig of the shelf into her spine and the press of Seth’s knee against hers. They weren’t as close as they had been while dancing, but it was much quieter and more private, and her pounding heart was too aware of it.
Seth’s hand crept to the small of his back as he peered through the crack in the door. He wasn’t distracted by Marion. He was focused on what was going on, instead of how much warmer it was to be closed up in a tiny pantry with someone who wasn’t her fiancé.
She wasn’t shivering anymore.
Marion lifted onto her toes to look over Seth’s shoulder.
Whoever entered the Hardwicks’ room wasn’t dressed for the party. It was a short, broad figure cloaked in a hooded sweater, like the kind purchased in university bookstores. Not the kind that a person would wear to a fancy political gala.
The person was walking briskly towards the pantry.
“Seth,” Marion hissed.
He pushed her back with one hand, while the other crept to the small of his back to draw a handgun.
When she took a step closer to the rear corner of the pantry, her heel slipped on uneven floor.
Marion fell with a tiny gasp.
Her hand flew out. Her reaction time was good enough that she realized she shouldn’t grab the pantry shelves—not unless she wanted to pull a lot of jarred fruit on top of her head—but not good enough to remain standing without help. So her fingers closed on the back of Seth’s shirt.
Both of them hit the ground with a loud thump. Probably too loud to hope that the intruder didn’t hear it.
Seth was braced above Marion on his elbows. It was too dark in the pantry to see his face clearly—and dark enough that light glimmered through his shirt where he’d been wounded, despite the glamour hanging from his neck.
“Are you okay?” Seth sounded alarmed, like he couldn’t imagine what could have made her fall.
She couldn’t seem to draw in a chestful of air. It had nothing to do with Seth atop her or the snugness of her dress.
Her fingers spread across his chest. The energy underneath called to her, begging to be unleashed. But above that energy, there was nothing but human muscle and flesh.
“No,” Marion said. “I’m not okay.”
The pantry door flew open. The intruder in the hoodie stood on the other side.
Seth was on his knees instantly, turning to bring the gun to bear.
His reaction wasn’t as fast as that of the sidhe.
Heather Cobweb and a Raven Knight materialized behind the intruder in a flash of light. The relief that Marion felt was only secondary to the shock—not just from suddenly finding herself in an apartment filled with sidhe, but being seen by Konig’s guard with Seth.
“On the ground!” Heather commanded, her belt knife drawn.
The intruder didn’t argue, but they also weren’t in a hurry to comply. Marion thought she heard curse words grumbled as the hooded figure got down.
Heather ripped the hood off to expose the intruder.
Dana McIntyre rolled her eyes. “I take it I’m under arrest?”
Dana was clearly a woman accustomed to being arrested. She made herself comfortable in the dungeon, propping her feet up on the wall and reclining against the floor. The sidhe’s magical bindings didn’t cramp her style at all.
She also wasn’t intimidated by the company she kept. The Raven Knights and Heather Cobweb were bad enough on their own. Having the Onyx Queen, Seth, Marion, and Konig looming over her should have made her slightly nervous. Add in the fact that Jibril was waiting in the hall…
Yet Dana was as relaxed as though she were having a spa day.
“Really, Dana?” Marion asked, arms folded over her chest. “Are you so angry at me that you’d invade my wedding festivities? I know I hurt you, but this—this is low.”
“Self-centered as always. You think everything’s a personal grudge against you,” Dana said.
“I’m confused,” Heather said. “Who is this, exactly?”
“Dana McIntyre is a triadist and mercenary who operates out of Las Vegas.” Marion sighed. “And she’s my sister.”
That surprised a laugh out of Heather. “She’s your sister?”
“Not by blood,” Marion muttered. She shot a look at Konig to encourage him to back her up. The Knights had retrieved him from the party after apprehending Dana, and he still had a full goblet of wine. His eyes were a little glazed from excessive drink.
“I don’t do much mercenary work. Call me a spellsword,” Dana said.
“At the moment we’re calling you a potential assassin,” Konig snarled. “You don’t want to be a potential assassin. The sidhe don’t like those types of people. Right, Heather?”
The archer responded by passing her belt knife from her left hand to her right. She smiled faintly.
“You’re stupid and I don’t like you,” Dana said.
Konig’s face darkened. “You—”
; “She didn’t go for the party because she wasn’t trying to kill anyone,” Marion said. “I have to wonder how you got in, though. You’re not on the guest list—although you could have been if you’d asked nicely.”
“Then I’d have had to go dance. I don’t dance.” Dana shrugged. “Your wards are going bad. I got in the same way I get in anywhere.”
“You’re not a planeswalker,” Marion said.
Dana shrugged again. She wasn’t offering information she didn’t need to.
It was easy to imagine what Dana did, though. Even though she didn’t use magic herself, she had dozens of enchanted weapons. It stood to reason that not all her artifacts were offensive.
“If you weren’t planning to assassinate anyone, then what are these for?” asked the Onyx Queen, gesturing to the Raven Knights.
One of them stepped forward. He was cradling grenade-sized spheres in his hands, which sparked with crimson energy. They didn’t just resemble grenades—they were grenades, meant to explode with magic rather than gunpowder.
“We found those placed around the ballroom,” Konig explained at Marion’s expression of surprise.
She turned on her sister. “Oh, Dana. Why?”
Dana snorted. “Arawn’s gathering energy by killing people and burning their spirits in balefire. He needs a few hundred souls more in order to ascend to Earth. Where do you think he wants to get those from?”
“Our wedding,” Konig said. “He wants to harvest his dead from our wedding.”
“Exactly,” Dana said. “I thought I’d blow a few charges to scare you guys into canceling it. And I figured I’d find the darknet servers while you were distracted.”
Konig flung his free hand into the air. “Those stupid servers again. Everyone’s on about those servers!”
“Why do you want them?” Marion asked. “Is it about the weapon?”
Dana paled. Her thoughts fizzed across the surface of her mind, more transparent than Marion had ever seen before. She hadn’t thought Marion knew about that.
“What is the weapon?” Seth asked. “Do you know?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Dana folded her arms obstinately. “Arawn wants it. Leliel wants it. Everyone wants it. I’m doing y’all a favor by trying to get there first.”
And Dana had thought that setting off a few bombs would fix everything. It was spectacularly bad planning, yet it seemed so very…Dana. She was a punch to the face in human form.
Marion certainly felt as though she’d been punched. She had one hell of a headache developing. “You could have just told me about this when I was in Las Vegas.”
“I wanted to beat Arawn without having to deal with you,” Dana said.
“I don’t see why Arawn’s plans are your problem anyway.”
“Because if he ascends, he’ll probably destroy the Pit of Souls on his way up. And then what happens? I dunno. It won’t be good.” Dana sat up straighter. “Cancel the wedding. You’ve got to shut down Niflheimr completely.”
Konig laughed and drained his goblet of wine. “The wedding goes on as planned. We won’t be cowed by petty threats.” Clearly he meant Dana, not Arawn.
“Why don’t we move the wedding to Myrkheimr?” Violet suggested.
Marion would have rather swallowed needles than have the wedding in the home of her overbearing mother-in-law. “I can’t leave Niflheimr. The wards could fail completely if I leave again.”
“But there’s sun in the Autumn Court,” Seth said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Arawn can’t go in the sun, and neither can people that he possesses with his demons. Then there won’t be wedding guests in Niflheimr, either.”
Dana glared black hatred at him. “Yeah, that’s the obvious solution to this, isn’t it? Move the wedding’s location. That will fix everything.”
“It’s less vulnerable than the Winter Court on multiple levels,” Violet said, as if the decision had been made. She waved to Heather Cobweb. “See to it that everything begins relocating immediately.”
The archer bowed and exited.
Through the swinging door, Marion glimpsed Jibril watching. He would surely be hearing everything.
“There’s another option to protect Niflheimr,” Dana said. “Marion could just ask the gods to take care of it.”
She was looking at Seth when she said that.
Marion tried to catch her eye, shaking her head.
No, Dana. Please don’t.
“The gods haven’t shown any sign of being directly involved in affairs to this point,” Violet said. “I don’t see why that would change now.”
Dana looked directly at Marion, saw that she was shaking her head, and grinned. Dana’s teeth were uneven. The canines were yellow. “It’ll change now,” Dana said, “because the third god of the triad is standing among us right now. Seth Wilder is a god.”
16
Until the moment that Dana spoke, Seth had been ignored by everyone in the room—the Raven Knights, the royalty, even Marion.
Seth Wilder is a god.
And he was suddenly the most interesting person there.
Marion turned to him with an apology on her lips, but he didn’t hear it.
Grief, anger, and disbelief were etched on the faces of every sidhe in the room. Seth didn’t need them to share their stories of Genesis to imagine what they were all so upset about. He’d heard enough stories while working at Mercy Hospital: families lost under collapsing buildings, husbands eaten by demons, children who never came back after the void consumed them.
As soon as Dana named him as a god, all of that grief was turned toward him.
Marion reached for Seth.
He left before they could touch.
When Seth snapped his fingers, he didn’t have a location in mind. He just wanted to be away, and he was.
He appeared in a bedroom elsewhere in the Winter Court. He was standing beside an unremarkable bed with about a thousand pillows piled against the headboard, and adjacent to an open closet with skirt suits hanging from the hook inside.
It wasn’t Marion’s bedroom or the one where the Hardwicks had lived, so it took him a moment to realize what had drawn him there, of all the places in the universe he could have gone.
Those nude-colored skirt suits were the kind of thing Rylie was wearing these days.
Once he recognized her clothes, he heard the murmur of her voice on the other side of the wall and felt the call of life and death that he associated with the werewolf Alpha.
He nudged the bedroom door open with a knuckle but hung back where he wouldn’t be seen.
In the sitting room, a dozen people sat around a long table, all of them still dressed for the gala in fancy dresses and tuxedoes. Rylie was at the nearest end, sharing tea and appetizers in the form of dainty meat cubes. Raw meat meant shifters. Seth was shocked to see that one of those shifters was Deirdre Tombs.
Seth momentarily contemplated taking Deirdre down right at that instant before anyone could react.
Rylie was facing away from him, but her head lifted, tipped to the side. Her nostrils flared.
She smelled him.
“Excuse me,” Rylie said to the others at the table. “I forgot that I’m meant to have another meeting in my rooms in a few minutes. Would you mind…?”
“Not at all.” Deirdre Tombs stood up, and half the table stood with her. All of them must have come with the American Gaean Commission. It was arrogant—maybe even naïve—for Rylie to have allowed so many members of an opposing faction into her private rooms.
His memory of Deirdre standing over Rylie, gun still smoking from the shot that had killed her, was far too vivid.
Deirdre’s people left, and then Rylie murmured a few words to her personal guard, and they were gone too.
Only then did she turn to smile at the corner in which he lurked.
“Hey,” Rylie said softly. Seth emerged from the bedroom. He was wearing the glamour, but her gaze shifted down to his shirt, as though expecting to see the gaping maw o
f his ribcage again. “This is a pleasant surprise. I hope it’s a social call.”
“It’s not,” Seth said.
She unbuttoned her suit jacket, slid it down her shoulders, and folded it over the back of a chair. “Then what do you need?”
“I don’t really know,” he admitted. “I had to get away and didn’t think too much about where I was going. Dana McIntyre told everyone what I am. They know.”
“Dana’s here?” Rylie asked. “Color me shocked. I didn’t realize Marion and Dana were still on speaking terms.”
“They’re not. Dana tried to blow up the engagement party.”
Rylie’s hands flew to cover her mouth. “Oh no. And then she told everyone?”
“The Autumn Queen and half a dozen Raven Knights,” Seth said. “It’ll get out fast. Everyone’s going to know soon.” Each word made him feel heavier as the reality of it sank in.
His identity had been revealed in Niflheimr at a time when word could spread the fastest. The most powerful preternaturals were in attendance with all their aides.
Seth dropped onto Rylie’s couch, cradling his head in his hands.
“What am I going to do?” he asked. “I don’t want to be a god.”
“We don’t get to choose leadership, Seth. It chooses us.” Rylie would know best. She had never asked to be Alpha, but she had risen in power until she became capable of controlling other werewolves. He had seen how it changed her over the years that had followed.
“It’s not leadership that chose me. It was Elise. This is her fault.”
“Does it matter where blame belongs?”
“Yes,” Seth said. “Because all this bullshit—the whole world dying and changing, and the war between gods—that was Elise’s fault. She put me in front of it. And when Dana told people what I was, they looked at me like Genesis was my fault.”
Rylie sat next to him, carrying a cup of tea and a saucer. “Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. I don’t have experience being a god, but the shifters see me like a queen, and…well, I can tell you that leadership sucks. You have to be a face for everyone to direct adulation and anger toward. Elise would be terrible at it. You’re not. You’re made for this, Seth.”