Cast in Godfire: An Urban Fantasy Romance (The Mage Craft Series Book 5)

by SM Reine

  Rylie pulled back. She folded her arms. “What’s going on with you and Marion?”

  That wasn’t the question he’d expected in that moment.

  Although he supposed he should have expected it to come up soon.

  If Abel had been hearing rumors—Abel, who was neither gossipy nor communicative—then everyone would have heard about it. Rylie also had intelligence connections in the Middle Worlds. She’d probably known the moment that the army went on strike because they believed their queen was in love with Death.

  “You don’t want an answer to that,” Seth said.

  His non-answer seemed to be more answer than Rylie wanted. “That’s insane, Seth.”

  Insane was probably the perfect word for it. “She will die. And soon.”

  This did seem to trouble Rylie. “Are you certain? How does…” She bit her bottom lip. “How’s it work?” She lifted a hand toward his forehead.

  Seth shifted out of her reach. “It’s not like seeing into the future. It’s not a prophecy, and there’s no ambiguity. I exist in every moment that people die. I exist in the moment she dies.”

  “If that’s true, then you can’t change it anyway,” Rylie said.

  He wouldn’t believe that. “Give her refuge. Help me save Marion’s life.”

  “It’s too late, Seth.” Rylie hesitated. “I released the contingency plan.”

  “You released the…what?” Seth asked.

  “I’ve always known Marion would be dangerous if she went off the rails, and I’ve had a plan to stop her for years. I’ve already released it.” Another moment of hesitation. The longer she paused, the more Seth tensed. “I’ve already released…her.”

  Horror stretched long in his gut.

  “You placed the Godslayer’s casket.”

  “I had no idea where she was buried,” Rylie said. “But I knew whom to call when it was time to let her out.”

  It was Rylie’s fault that the balefire had taken Ransom Falls.

  Rylie’s fault that the Godslayer now walked the Earth in search of Marion.

  “You have no idea what you’ve done to us, do you?” Seth asked. “Whatever you think of Marion, she doesn’t deserve this. She’s good, Rylie. She’s so fucking good, and strong, and she’s always trying to do the right thing, and you sent the Godslayer after her!”

  “I did what I had to do,” Rylie said. “All you can do is protect yourself.” Her eyes focused over Seth’s shoulder, and her golden irises darkened with anger. “Nobody else can do it for you.”

  He turned to see that Marion was lingering at the edge of the clearing. She’d heard what Rylie had done.

  “Marion—”

  She looked crushed—devastated—for only an instant before she turned to walk away.

  It should have been easier to catch up with Marion, since he was a god and all. But when she moved, she moved fast. And she seemed to know all the hidden parts of the forest that even Seth didn’t know, so it was impossible to track her without using his omnipotence.

  When he finally reached Marion, it was only because she’d stopped moving. She’d gotten down to the Academy lake and stood on the shore, arms hugged around herself.

  He wanted to embrace her. To apologize.

  But his hand went to his chest, and he felt the amount of ash remaining. He’d used too much power since entering the mortal worlds. It wasn’t as though he could regret saving Ransom Falls. But he regretted that he’d spent all this time wandering around, trying to protect Marion from physical threats, when the worst threat clearly didn’t attack with knives or guns.

  He came up behind her, searching for words. “Look, Marion,” he began.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Seth faltered. “What?”

  “Nobody has ever stood up for me like that before.” Marion glared out at the mountain, so much duller in color than anywhere in the Middle Worlds. “Nobody trusts me like you do.”

  “I don’t think anyone knows you like I do,” he said.

  Her shoulders tightened. “Rylie knows me better than my own mother, and she sent the Godslayer to kill me. What does that say?”

  “It says that your mom and Rylie have a lifetime of prejudices screwing up their judgment. She’s afraid, Marion. That’s all it is. People get stupid when they’re afraid.”

  Her eyelashes fluttered, her head dipped. The motions were barely millimeter adjustments to her body, but they weighed heavily on her, dragging her whole energy down. “What will you do if you learn that I’m not who you think?”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Seth said.

  She turned on him, and he could see that she’d been crying again. But this time she couldn’t seem to stop. Her whole face had gone red from the force of it, even underneath her makeup, her glamours. “How do you know?”

  “I’ve got faith.” It was the closest thing he could say to the words that were clawing him up inside like an angry werewolf pacing the forest. He was a demon-god who’d lived a million deaths and he still couldn’t get those words out.

  Not again. Not now.

  Not even to her.

  But faith—Eve had once had faith in Adam. Seth thought he understood Eve a lot better than he should have.

  Seth gave her a lopsided grin. “Anyway, I already know you’re an asshole. There’s no revelation there.”

  She laughed wetly. “You’re stupid.” She wrapped her arm around his waist and rested her cheek on his chest. “I didn’t think I’d ever like someone as stupid as you.”

  “Yeah, well, I never thought I’d like an asshole as much as you.” Seth leaned back to look at her. Her face was still red, but she wasn’t crying. “Let me show you around.”

  Marion didn’t move at all for an instant, she was so confused. “What? Around…the sanctuary?”

  “Yeah. Don’t you know I helped build it? I could tell you about it.”

  “I grew up here,” she said. “I’ve heard all the stories about how it was built.”

  “You haven’t heard my stories.”

  “True,” Marion said. “They don’t speak of you often.”

  “Can’t imagine why,” Seth muttered, glancing over his shoulder. Rylie had followed them out of the forest. She was determinedly not looking toward the lake as she headed for the Academy.

  Rylie was staring so hard at her own feet that she didn’t seem to notice the shape moving across the sky.

  Seth noticed it, though. He looked up to see a helicopter lifting off from a pad above the waterfall. Between the roar of water and the wind, the rotors were noiseless from here, even to preternaturally sensitive ears.

  Abel and Benjamin had left for the airport, where they could swap for the jet to California.

  Distraction accomplished.

  Marion followed Seth’s gaze, and her arm tightened around him. “Benjamin?”

  “Yeah. Abel’s taking him to the warp.”

  “It doesn’t open until November fifth,” she said. “That’s almost a week away.”

  “They wanted a head start,” Seth said.

  “I suppose.” She still looked troubled.

  They walked down the hill together in silence. It wasn’t far to the town. Nowhere in the sanctuary was far from anywhere else, since everything had been crammed into the same valley. “You know how we ended up with this property?” Seth asked, leading her down the road.

  “Because it was beautiful?”

  “Because it was cheapest,” he said. “Rylie’s dad left her a lot of money when he died, but not enough to get a nice piece of land and build a refuge for werewolves. This was dirt cheap because it was so hard to get to.”

  Marion looked over the town again with something resembling distaste. “It’s…cheap?”

  “I prefer to think of it as priceless,” Seth said.

  “What other stories are coming to mind?” Marion asked, pausing beside him on the street corner.

  Seth raked a hand over his hair. “Well…” He turned wher
e he stood to look around. Rylie had made enormous changes to the sanctuary even since his visit in the body of a deteriorating avatar. “Nothing around here. I hadn’t been downtown before today.”

  “How did you live here without visiting downtown?”

  “It was added after I left,” Seth said. “We never had actual stores—an actual restaurant. Not to mention the bar.”

  “The bar.” She smiled. It wasn’t a huge smile, but she’d been so serious lately that it looked as good as a grin.

  “What?”

  “The bar just reminded me of something amusing,” she said. “Sorry. Keep talking.”

  “I’ve got nothing. What were you thinking?”

  Her smile crept wider. “Well…it was during my short time at the Academy. I led a bit of a revolution among the witches. We sneaked out after curfew one night to come here and get into a keg.”

  “And you got your ass kicked by Abel for stealing?”

  “Oh, not at all. He thought it was hilarious.” She giggled. “Because he found out when we were already in the healing ward getting fluids for the enormous hangovers.”

  Seth barked a laugh. “How much did you guys drink?”

  “Barely a shot each. We had no idea that Rylie had imported seelie ale, and it was so strong that a group of girls keeled over from the taste of it.” Marion covered her face in her hands, as if too embarrassed to face the memory. “My half-angel blood saved me the hangover. I pretended anyway so Abel would consider my sentence served as he did with the other girls.”

  “Bet you didn’t fool him.”

  “I was assigned to scrub his toilet,” she said. “Without magic.”

  “And you didn’t die?”

  “You’d know best.” Marion dragged Seth away from the bar. “They don’t serve seelie ale anymore. It’s called the Marion Rule Number Six.”

  Seth would have been lying if he said he wasn’t impressed. “How many Marion Rules are there?”

  “More than six,” she said.

  It was bizarre to walk around the sanctuary—a place Seth had helped build—while laughing with Marion over a story that could never have taken place in the sanctuary he remembered. Witch students at a school, a bar, faerie alcohol. There hadn’t even been sidhe before Genesis, when he’d lived with the werewolves.

  Their lives had intersected in the same physical location, yet there was no overlap at all.

  Only when Seth walked past the place they used to have communal dinners outdoors did he remember. There was a slight overlap.

  “Wait, I just remembered something,” he said, stopping by the picnic tables. They were currently only in use by a couple young shifters playing checkers. “There was this werewolf who used to live here—his name was Trevin. Crazy guy. Fun, though. He used to like picking fights with me.”

  “When you were mundane?” Marion asked.

  “Well, not a god, but I was never mundane. You know what a kopis is?”

  “A human class of warrior naturally inclined to fight preternatural creatures with improved strength, reflexes, and senses.” The way she rattled off those words, it seemed likely that kopides had ended up in history books.

  Seth never would have expected people like him to end up in history books. Not in his lifetime.

  Now that he was a god, he figured he should get used to being history.

  “Yeah, I was one of those kopis things,” Seth said. “And I killed a lot of werewolves in my day. I was well trained, so it was a fair fight.”

  “I believe you,” Marion said.

  “Trevin didn’t. He made a bet that he could kick my ass only using spaghetti noodles and—”

  “Wait. Spaghetti noodles?”

  “Slightly cooked, al dente,” Seth said.

  “I wasn’t questioning how cooked they were.”

  “Well, he wanted to prove how weak even kopides were compared to werewolves.”

  “With noodles.” Marion’s eyes were sparkling.

  “With noodles. And werewolf speed.”

  “What were you armed with?”

  “Also noodles.”

  She clapped a hand over her mouth to smother a laugh. When she could finally speak again, she said, “Should I bother asking who won, or should I skip to asking how long you spent in traction afterward?”

  “Nice, that’s confidence for you.” Seth nudged her with an elbow. “I sent Trevin home with his tail between his legs. You don’t have to be faster if you’re smarter. You should know that.”

  “You beat a werewolf with al dente noodles?”

  “Mine were fully cooked,” he said. “And made of rice, because Trevin has a rice allergy. It’s rare for werewolves to be allergic to anything because of their immune systems. But with enough rice pasta shoved up his nose—”

  He was interrupted by Marion exploding with laughter. It was loud enough to scare the birds out of the nearest tree.

  She was momentarily unselfconscious when she laughed like that, and she lost that lofty, model-like perfection because of the faint lines on either side of her mouth. Even the faintest indentation and the tiny snort she gave were deeply humanizing.

  Seth wished he’d had the time to figure out how to make Marion laugh like that every day.

  He rubbed his chest as he chuckled, feeling the line of wood. It had shrunk another millimeter. He could tell. And he hadn’t even been doing much of anything—that was just the slow creep of time across his body.

  “Is Trevin still here?” Marion asked. “You should visit him. I’m sure he’d love to be reminded of the story.”

  His hand fell. “Trevin turned into seelie sidhe during Genesis.”

  “Oh. That Trevin.” Just like that, in an instant, the smiling and laughter had cut off. Her entire attitude became grim.

  Dimly, on the edges of his senses, Seth felt all the seelie that were dying at that moment. He didn’t need many details to know they were falling under unseelie swords.

  Dying in a war that Konig was waging.

  They might have had time to discuss that if Seth hadn’t realized that they were being shadowed. He only realized that there were werewolves in the surrounding trees because one of them was going to be killed in a logging accident next week. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have felt them.

  Rylie had no intent of letting Marion linger in her sanctuary. They were being followed by guards who were intended to escort her out—peacefully or otherwise.

  Seth angled himself so that they wouldn’t be able to see Marion. “I can find somewhere else to hide you.”

  “I can’t do that,” Marion said. “I have so much to do in the hours leading up to Genesis.”

  “You’ve got days,” Seth said.

  She hesitated. “Yes. A few days to protect Benjamin until he can get to the Genesis warp, and—”

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ll meet up with Abel and make sure he gets there. No matter what Leliel’s doing, no matter how many Godslayer avatars crawl out of caskets, I’ll protect Benjamin.”

  “And you’ll have him there on the 5th, exactly at midnight local time?”

  “Even if it uses the rest of my time on Earth,” Seth said.

  Marion gripped his shirt in both hands, tugging hard, like she was going to tell him not to do that. But she said, “Thank you,” and then, “I have a plan to protect myself from the Godslayer. A new plan. I’ve put in a call to my mother.”

  “Damn,” Seth said. “Pulling out the big guns.”

  “I will be fine. Care for Benjamin, and let me care for my side of things.” She smiled in a shadow of her earlier unrestrained laughter. “You said that you trust me.”

  “I do,” he said.

  Marion didn’t step away. And he didn’t either.

  The werewolves were shifting nearer, until Seth could hear them breathing. The trees rustled from their bodies.

  Seth wanted to drag Marion to the ends of the universe whether she wanted to or not. In the Infinite, the Godslayer may have been able t
o reach her, but Konig wouldn’t have. She would be safer from all except James.

  So perhaps not all that safe at all.

  There was nowhere that he could take her where she couldn’t be touched by the hand of mortality.

  He needed to trust that she could take care of herself.

  “I’ll take you wherever you want to be next,” Seth said.

  “That won’t be necessary.” Marion’s hands slipped to his chest, and she spread her fingers over his sternum as she leaned forward. Her lips brushed his cheek. “Thank you. Sincerely, thank you.”

  And then she snapped her fingers. A Raven Knight—Wintersong—appeared and sized up the situation in heartbeats, from their location, to the ring of werewolves, to Seth’s presence.

  Marion and her guard vanished.

  After a moment, Seth did too.

  16

  The moon was exchanging positions with the sun when Konig returned to the Wilds. In the waxing daylight, the hole in the Veil separating unseelie territory from seelie was much more visible; a rippling sphere stretched from the horizon toward the clouds. On the other side of that hole, the forest shifted from one of blades and ice into emerald green. But even those leaves were beginning to yellow. Konig’s army had been in the Summer Court for weeks, and his influence pressed heavily against them.

  Marion was waiting for him when he approached with Heather pressed to his side. “My king.” Marion gave a shallow curtsy to Konig without meeting his eyes. Her behavior and dress was so inoffensive for once that it took him a moment to realize that Marion was there at all.

  She’d prepared for the big moment in the way Konig would have wanted her to. In addition to leather gauntlets, she wore the armor that he’d commissioned for her—a few revealing scraps of chainmail enchanted to protect what it didn’t cover. She was drenched in enough magic that she looked sidhe. She was even radiating light from her back, as though she had wings.

  Even now, Konig could acknowledge that she looked the part of his queen.

  He let go of Heather’s hand and said, “You’re late.”

  “I needed to clear my desk of distractions, so to speak.” Marion’s eyes were lowered to the smooth stone beneath their feet. Her thick eyelashes looked like lace fluttering atop her cheekbones.