by SM Reine
She pressed her hand to the wall as she rounded a corner. The wards were accompanied by a second, stronger set of spells that would demolish the whole building. She’d hoped she wouldn’t have to use them, but, well, if an entire army was coming…
Better demolished than turning everything over to King Konig.
King Konig. Lord, the sidhe were bad at names. Konig meant “king” in some other language, so he was literally “King King.” They might as well have named him “serious attitude problem” on his birth certificate.
Would a child with a normal name, like Eugene, have ever had the nerve to invade Frost Tower? Highly doubtful.
Jaycee activated her demolition spells.
A five-minute countdown began.
It took another ninety seconds for her to spiral up to the rooftop. She was rounding the final curve when she heard an explosion from ahead.
Jaycee’s eyes widened as light poured into the tunnel.
“Well,” she said.
Nobody should have known the secret passage was there, but someone had broken into it on the far end.
In order to know it existed, the invaders either knew Jaycee’s architect—highly unlikely—or been capable of accessing her wards, which would have taken unusually powerful magic. She was betting on the second one. And her bet was confirmed when she emerged from the end of the tunnel.
“Well, well, well,” Jaycee said.
A frost giant was crouched on the rooftop, his hands braced on either side of what used to be a hidden escape hatch, looking down into the not-so-secret passage with a jagged face. He was bigger than a car and probably weighed as much. He turned the air around him so cold that moisture became snow.
And he had a witch mounted on his shoulder, sitting delicately as though she were riding a horse sidesaddle.
Well, not a witch.
A mage.
“Hello, Jaycee,” said Marion Garin, Queen of the Unseelie, also known as the Voice of God. She was wearing elbow-length gloves that concealed the god marks on her knuckles.
“Hello, Marion,” Jaycee said. “Want to tell me what’s happening?”
The hallway trembled. The army had penetrated her secret door and was coming up from behind.
There was no escape.
“We’re here to arrest you for sedition,” Marion said.
“Sedition?” Jaycee asked. “Couldn’t you have come up with a charge more creative? Or perhaps more accurate? You could have unleashed mundane bureaucracy on me just by reporting this building to the OPA.”
“Konig decided on sedition,” she said with surprising honesty. There was no insisting that Jaycee really was guilty. No showboating. Just that this was the charge that Konig wanted to use in order to take Jaycee down, and that was the charge Marion would uphold.
Of all the undignified ways to lose Frost Tower. Getting arrested over a silly charge by the wife of some temperamental brat.
“Just so you know, this tower is about to be demolished, and everyone inside will die,” Jaycee said. “There’s just enough time for you to escape. You may be able to withdraw much of your army if they access the ley lines as well.”
“No, I don’t think so.” With a wave of Marion’s hand, she hijacked Jaycee’s spells, laying claim to all of Frost Tower.
And she disabled the wards while she was at it.
“Well,” Jaycee said again. She hadn’t expected that one.
Marion had always been good at magic, but she hadn’t been that familiar with sidhe magic. Becoming queen had done her a lot of favors.
The queen slithered off of the frost giant’s shoulder and her midnight-blue dress pooled around her. “Ymir, would you kindly…?”
Ymir punched the tunnel wider and then reached in to grab Jaycee like he was King Kong. She slapped his chilly hand away. “Don’t you dare.”
Jaycee took herself up onto the roof, thank you very much, emerging into that dense magic fog. Even though she couldn’t see it, she could feel a helicopter incoming, and if any pilot would be capable of approaching in such conditions, it would be Isidora.
Even now, with her safeguards destroyed, Jaycee was not without options. She was never without options.
“What is the real goal of this?” Jaycee asked, circling Marion warily. “Have you allowed yourself to become a pawn in Konig’s game of grudges?”
“We have no grudge against you,” Marion said.
“Yet you’re trying me for sedition.”
“The accusation is hardly a stretch. You were in the Autumn Court at the same time as the former leaders of the Summer Court. You invaded our party without an invitation. Our people have every reason to think you’re colluding with the seelie traitors.”
Jaycee couldn’t deny that she’d been in the Autumn Court. She had taken advantage of an opening in the wards, but only so that she could look for Pierce in Myrkheimr.
Far more concerning was the other thing that Marion had said.
“Former leaders?” Jaycee asked.
“We no longer recognize the sovereignty of the Summer Court. The entire Middle Worlds are ours, as they were always meant to be,” Marion said.
This arrest attempt was looking worse by the moment.
On the bright side, Jaycee’s sensitive hearing was picking up the chugging of chopper blades. Isidora was close.
Jaycee peeled away the illusions that made her appear human—very much like the human she’d been before Genesis, in fact. Her real skin was diamonds. Her hair was the black fog rolling in off of a stormy ocean at midnight. She was the moisture in the air, the mist that perpetually clung to Seattle.
Jaycee’s magic and presence extended into infinity. She was a mighty gaean creature, connected to the fabric of the Earth in the way that a half-angel could not be.
She understood that non-sidhe couldn’t handle the full effect of a sidhe’s presence. She was accustomed to hiding herself at all times to prevent humans from perceiving the well of gravity with Jaycee at its center.
Now she didn’t hold back.
She let it all out. She pushed it out, forcing it on Marion.
And she saw the moment that Marion was overwhelmed.
In someone as powerful as the Voice of God, it wasn’t a total mental breakdown. The pain was demonstrated by Marion wavering on her feet and her eyebrows crimping. It showed in the step backward that she needed to take, reaching out to Ymir as though she was no longer certain that the ground was stable under her feet.
Jaycee smiled. “Remember next time whom you’re dealing with, my so-called queen.”
The helicopter was near. Jaycee felt it in the shifting air.
Jaycee summoned the wind of winter and her sneakers lifted from the roof of Frost Tower. It wasn’t a precise way to fly, but it flung her toward Isidora’s helicopter. It appeared in the fog as a black form, hovering like an oversized bee just beyond the edge of the roof.
She was almost there. She was going to escape.
But then the lightning.
It lanced through the sky in a bolt of blazing white. It struck the propeller.
The helicopter pitched to its side and tumbled from view.
In her shock, Jaycee lost control of the wind.
She tumbled through the air—an undignified head-over-heels cartwheel.
Electric magic snapped around her like a lasso, yanking her back.
Jaycee struck the roof in front of heeled shoes and navy-blue spills of fabric. Looking up at Marion from below, the mage girl seemed taller, her hair brushing the sky as the smoking helicopter vanished behind her. Ymir sauntered up behind her. He cuffed Jaycee’s wrist and yanked her upright.
“Please,” Marion said. “Don’t waste your time fighting me. You have so little time left.”
The frost giant yanked them through the ley lines.
Konig had captured many political prisoners in his short reign as king, but he’d left Heather to worry about detaining most of them. Jaycee Hardwick was different. She was a
prize—the head of a deer that he would mount on his wall to commemorate the hunt. He escorted her back to the Middle Worlds personally.
Jaycee wasn’t shackled, but she didn’t need to be. Every resident of the Winter Court lined the halls to see a Hardwick in custody. If she tried to escape, she’d be buried under a hundred blasts of simultaneous faefire.
The stick insect of a woman kept her chin held regally high. She didn’t make eye contact with anyone, remaining focused on the end of the hallway.
“Impressive,” Heather said, keeping pace with them as they headed into the depths of Niflheimr.
“She’s not that impressive.” Konig glanced behind him to make sure that Marion was still at his back. She was serenely quiet, surrounded by handmaidens, and without a single external indication of the enormous magic she’d cast to capture Jaycee Hardwick.
“I meant the fact you got Jaycee at all,” Heather said. “We’ve been looking for the Hardwicks for weeks. I was starting to think we’d never find them.” Her lips twisted. “Although I suppose I shouldn’t underestimate you by this point.”
It was really Marion who shouldn’t be underestimated. She had declared that she was going to arrest Jaycee, and she had formed the plan. Konig had let her do it as a favor. In return, he would take the credit.
Raising his voice, Konig said, “Send a statement to all the Middle Worlds. Tell them that I’ve guaranteed the safety of the unseelie courts by removing a dangerous traitor.”
“You removed her?” Heather asked in a neutral tone.
Perhaps she did know that Marion had been behind it all. Heather was much less stupid than the average sidhe woman.
Konig cast another glance at his wife—and at the hundreds of sidhe trailing through the hallway behind her, who were listening attentively to the conversation. He also glanced at his wife’s gloves. They were meant to hide the marks of her affair with Death, but they only served as hideous reminders of the truth.
“Yes, I removed Jaycee Hardwick,” Konig said. “And she’ll be put on trial for what she’s done to us.”
“I’ll draft a statement,” Heather said.
She broke away from the others. She cut a stunning figure with her curves wrapped in brown leather, and Konig’s eyes lingered on her back as she raced away.
They arrived in Niflheimr’s dungeon. Most dissidents were kept in Myrkheimr, but Jaycee was too dangerous to bring into Konig’s childhood home. Instead, she would get to enjoy the abattoir that Konig had built to contain demons.
Jaycee peered through the doorway and gave a disdainful sniff. “If you were as civilized as your father, you’d have the courtesy to lock me in a proper bedroom.”
“If I was my father, I’d probably chain you to my bed,” Konig said. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
She laughed. “Cute. No. Thank you.” Her eyes flicked down to his tight trousers. “Really, no thank you.”
Jaycee didn’t permit the Raven Knights to touch her. She climbed into the abattoir all on her own, dignified but for the sneakers that didn’t match her skirt suit.
“What do you think?” Konig asked Marion.
He wasn’t asking what she thought of the capture or the reaction from the sidhe. That didn’t matter. He was asking what she thought of the aftermath—especially the statement where Konig took credit.
Being deprived of due credit should have set her off. She had too much pride to take that. She should have exploded. But Marion smiled thinly. “You know what I think,” she said, quietly enough that everyone in the hallways wouldn’t be able to hear her. “I think you’re trying to provoke me.”
Clever as always. He lowered his voice. “How does Jaycee fit into your little pet project, anyway? Is she somehow qualified to help you with the…angel thing?” Marion had been working on some kind of heritage project where she recovered artifacts from Dilmun. Sentimental girl stuff.
“You said you don’t care about my project,” she said.
“I don’t, as long as you keep your attention where it belongs,” Konig said.
“My attention is exactly where it belongs.” She shot a cold look down at Jaycee. “Capturing Jaycee is a safeguard. The Hardwicks are too strong to let the Summer Court get them first. I did this for you, my love.”
Gods, he adored her when she was like this, cruel and pragmatic and focused. “I love you.” Konig wrapped a hand around the back of Marion’s neck and dragged her toward him for a kiss.
She leaned into it, biting at his lips. “I know,” she whispered back.
He pushed her away as quickly as he’d grabbed her. “Take care of whatever remains on your agenda. I will interrogate Jaycee Hardwick.”
She gave a shallow curtsy. “My king.”
Marion took two of her handmaidens by the elbows, and they vanished into the ley lines.
“Stay here with me,” Konig said to the third handmaiden.
Maddisyn looked startled. “Of course.”
He shut the door to the hallway, leaving the Raven Knights and onlookers outside. Jaycee was so far down the hole that she wouldn’t be able to hear them talking, not that there was anything she could do with information she overheard now. “You haven’t turned in any reports lately.”
“Reports?” Maddisyn asked.
“On Marion,” Konig said with an amount of patience that should have won him some big prize, like a Nobel.
Maddisyn fidgeted, pulling on her hair. “Oh. Well. You two have been spending a lot of time together lately, so I just figured you knew everything she’s been getting up to from firsthand observation.”
Spending more time with Marion made Konig feel like he knew her less by the moment. Her patterns of behavior were incomprehensible. Weeks would pass where she didn’t leave his side, but then she’d vanish for days to work on her heritage project. And she never told him what she was doing when she returned.
Marion was doing something, even if she insisted that Jaycee wasn’t part of it. Konig was busy enough trying to conquer the Summer Court to let her do it. But he’d have it conquered soon enough. Then there would be nothing left to do except break down the puzzle of his wife.
“Have you seen her working on her project?” Konig asked.
Maddisyn was the worst of the handmaidens at keeping her cool. Her face was already reddening like she might cry. “I’ve picked her up from Dilmun a couple of times, but I never stick around.”
“What’s she doing in Dilmun? Is she alone?”
“Usually.”
“But not always?”
She chewed on a knuckle—a nervous habit she’d had as long as Konig had known her. Right now, her knuckle had been gnawed so much that the skin was raw. “Sometimes there are other angels.”
“Like who?” On a hunch, he asked, “Have you seen Leliel?” Leliel had long been an enemy of Marion’s, and even stabbed her a couple of times. There was no way in the world that they could be meeting amicably to do some trivial project.
Maddisyn’s gaze fixed to the floor at Konig’s feet. She wouldn’t look at him.
Konig seized Maddisyn’s arm. Hard. “Have you seen Marion with Leliel? Tell me right now.” He dragged her toward the edge of the abattoir, and she gave a tiny squeal. “Tell me, or I’ll let you keep Jaycee company.”
“Maddisyn?”
One of the Raven Knights, Wintersong, peered through the door. He was an old white-haired sidhe whose brain hadn’t worked right since Genesis. He spoke with his words a little bit jumbled, his thoughts wandering, his behavior often inappropriate. Konig had written him off as a useless moron who was good with a sword.
Wintersong’s timing was way too good for a useless moron.
“What do you want?” Konig snapped, yanking Maddisyn away from the ledge.
“I camed here to get her to Marion,” Wintersong said. “They’s gots errands. Dresses fittings and shit.”
That was probably true. Sidhe had parties every day, and seldom wore outfits twice. They were constantly
getting new dresses fitted.
Konig considered keeping Maddisyn anyway. He could pull the truth out of her with magic. He’d learned from keeping his political prisoners that even powerful gentry were susceptible to a good hard squeeze from, say, tree trunks.
But Jaycee was waiting for interrogation.
He let Maddisyn go. She hugged Wintersong’s side, and he put an arm around her shoulder.
“Have fun with the dresses,” Konig said. “I’ll see you soon enough.” He bared his teeth at her in a grin. He’d been told he had a very handsome smile by women throughout his entire life. “Very soon.”
3
Konig expected Jaycee to be difficult to interrogate. He hadn’t expected her to ignore him completely. “Jaycee,” he snapped for the seventeenth time since he’d entered the abattoir.
Again, she didn’t even look his way.
It wasn’t as though Jaycee Hardwick couldn’t hear him. The abattoir transmitted sound superbly. His voice resonated so clearly that it was like three other Konigs spoke from opposite ends of the room.
Yet she was still circling the bottom of the abattoir, staring at its blank walls of black ice as though they held all the information she needed for escape.
“Jaycee!” He lashed out with magic that time, making the walls blaze with fire.
She jerked away from the edge of the abattoir. “Like a toddler,” Jaycee snapped, upper lip curling as she surveyed Konig. “You’ll do whatever it takes for attention, no matter how obnoxious. There’s a reason Pierce and I never opted to breed little Hardwicks. I’ve no patience for snot-nosed children.”
Snot-nosed? Konig was attended by so many healers that his mucosa couldn’t have permitted him a runny nose if he’d waded through a sea of pollen, cat hair, and dust. “Why don’t you rephrase that in a way that’s more respectful toward the man who has you captive?”
Her laughter was unpleasantly sour. “Man?” Jaycee toed her shoes off, kicking them across the floor. Barefooted, fresh ice spread from underneath her pedicure. “Do me the favor of being frank. Tell me what you want modified so I can tell you where to shove that request.”