by SM Reine
She had no clue what had happened while she was gone. Rage’s death, the shift in power, Jaycee Hardwick’s escape—it had all escaped Marion while she was “clearing her desk” and doing her hair. Must have been nice.
“I didn’t ask why you were late, and I don’t care,” Konig said. He extended his free hand toward Marion. “It’s time.”
He raised his voice for those last words, signaling his people to bring a sedan chair through the trees. It was an elaborate construction of magicked wood and silk, like a portable throne. Konig lifted himself onto it via magic. There were only two chairs. Konig sat in one, and Heather had no choice but to take the other when he pushed her into it.
How would it look to others, the two of them seated while Marion stood beside them?
Konig didn’t care.
His fingernails ached. He’d dug them into the wood of the sedan chair too hard.
“Out of the way,” Konig said to the knights.
They took their hands off of the sedan chair, and he lifted it on a sheet of cold, billowing fog. It would hold them over the center of the army, giving them the best view of their kingdom as they entered with the final wave of the invasion. And it meant that any seelie who’d survived would be forced to look up and see their rightful king.
Sun spread over the Autumn Court with warm fingers.
“Let’s move,” Konig said.
The army began to march. The chair swayed into motion.
He turned a victorious grin on Heather, which she didn’t return. Her face was blank. It looked a lot like the face she made when she was in the middle of war. There was no anger or pain. Just calm resolve.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“Your father,” she said.
Konig wasn’t. He didn’t plan to think about his father ever again. Not how yielding his body had felt against the toe of Konig’s boot, or how easily he’d slipped over the semi-melted bridge, and the colorless quality his skin had taken as the chilly waters consumed him.
He’d never think of that again, just as he’d never recall childhood memories of sitting on Rage’s lap, tracing his tattoos with a fingertip over and over again until he memorized them. He wouldn’t think of Rage’s singing voice, all hoarse from bad vocal practices during his career. He hadn’t been able to belt anymore, but he’d sounded pleasantly gravelly when murmuring lullabies to Konig.
These things didn’t matter anymore. He was dead by his own fault.
How could Rage have turned on Konig like that?
“We should delay this,” Heather murmured, breaking through Konig’s thoughts. “All of it. The invasion—”
“Delay it?” He laughed a little too loudly. “Delay taking control of the Summer Court’s magicks? I can’t believe you’d want to subject unseelie troops to a lengthier campaign.”
“But what about everything that Rage and Jaycee said?” she whispered urgently.
“What about it?”
Marion looked over her shoulder at them. Her eyes flicked down to Konig’s hand clutching Heather’s, and then up to the archer’s face.
When she stretched out her arm, that frost giant lumbered alongside the sedan chair. He’d gotten so big now that Marion couldn’t reach his shoulder even from an elevated position. “I’ll enter the Summer Court separately,” Marion said, “for effect.” She stepped onto Ymir’s palm. He set her gently on his shoulder.
The sun broke over the horizon. They stepped through the tear in the Veil, passing from one side of the Wilds to the other, and the army dragged winter behind them.
Alfheimr rose from the heart of the Summer Court, in the depths of the sun-lit valley where most seelie lived. Its outline was familiar to Konig. Its sprawling wings, Spanish-style arches, and windows overlooking the ocean made frequent appearances in his dreams, since he’d grown up there. Nothing had changed.
But everything else about the Summer Court had changed.
Marion gasped loudly enough that Konig could hear her, even though she rode Ymir’s shoulder to the left. She remembered the fief as well; she knew that it was not normal for the villages to be smoldering black smudges.
This was all him. The army flooding the valley—those were his people, and they were acting on his plan. The villages smoldered with unseelie faefire he had created.
Every last scrap of power came from him.
And all the stricken seelie staring at them in…what was that? Worship? Reluctant admiration?
Well, all of that was for Konig, too.
They descended deeper into the valley and took the one paved road leading to Alfheimr. It carved a direct path through the fingerprint of Konig’s military might.
Nikki and Hooch were waiting for him at the gates to Alfheimr. “Well met,” Nikki said with her usual stiff formality. It irritated Konig. She should have been singing, dancing, laughing. Konig had let her lead his army to victory. Why wasn’t she giddy?
“Well met,” Konig said with equal chill.
He pulled Heather down from the dais. Marion slithered gracefully down Ymir’s arm and landed beside them.
The doors to Alfheimr opened wide. Konig set foot inside his new mansion.
These were the floors where he used to play with imported Lego. Those were the windows he’d broken by hurling valuables through them. The curtains had been picked out by his mother. The ocean view had been designed by his father.
This was almost as much home as Myrkheimr and it belonged to him now.
His father would never know of Konig’s victory.
The stairs turned black as Konig ascended them. When he entered the throne room with Heather, violet and crimson dribbled down the drapes to dye them in unseelie tones.
Oberon and Titania were kneeling on the floor within a ring of Raven Knights. It was all too satisfying for Konig to see the queen on the floor. All her delicate, butterfly-like beauty was pinned down by his blades, as though she were a specimen kept in a glass case.
Nikki had neutralized the royalty by taking their power from them. They were helpless.
“Isn’t Nikki amazing?” Konig asked.
“You should be afraid of her,” Oberon said in a low voice. “If she can take us down, then she can take you down, too.”
“If that thought makes you feel better in your final moments in charge, then savor it,” Konig said. He sat on Oberon’s throne. It was a tangled mess of vines and tree branches. Ordinarily, the wood was mahogany accented with shimmering green leaves; the instant that Konig brushed the chair, it turned black. Crisp leaves blanketed the floor.
“I claim Alfheimr as mine!”
Konig slapped his palm onto thorns that adorned the armrest. Blood gushed over the seat like liquid rubies. The black vines of his seat absorbed it hungrily, taking every drop.
The whole manor reacted. Every last scrap of summer shriveled as blades thrust from the windowsills, twining overhead to form deadly arches.
His consciousness expanded. It was like he had yet another pair of eyes, and they opened so that he could see everything throughout the Middle Worlds—every part of it that mattered.
There was so much devastation in the Wilds. Even the newest growths shriveled as Konig took over.
Autumn prevailed.
He was high on victory until Marion sat down on the throne next to him. Marion. The woman who had constantly insulted Konig and forced him to fall in love with her before shattering his heart into a hundred thousand fragments.
She was sitting serenely on the throne beside Konig, straight-backed and regal. She was lying in her body language. In her eyes. She was pretending to be the great queen that she wasn’t.
But the disdain she cast down at Titania and Oberon was real. She didn’t have to lie because she felt that for everyone.
Konig stood, drawing his bastard sword. He couldn’t have remained seated beside Marion another moment without losing his composure—without losing his mind. “You planned rebellion against me.” He stopped in fr
ont of Titania, powerless on her knees. “You wanted to take the Autumn Court for yourselves. Anything to say to that?”
“Where’s your father?” Oberon asked.
Panic washed over Konig. Rage? Where is Rage? He felt like he was standing in the darknet chamber again, pushing his father over the bridge into the water. Swirling, melting ice concealed Rage as he sank into the depths of shadow.
Konig dug his knuckles into his brow, pushing away the thoughts, the headache, the grief. He inhaled deeply and lifted his head. “You have nothing to say in defense of yourself? That’s fine. It makes this easier.” He lifted his sword and his voice. “For their crimes against the sidhe, Oberon and Titania will be decapitated.”
That got a reaction from everyone. Even Nikki’s eyes widened a little.
Only Marion didn’t budge.
And neither did the rulers kneeling at Konig’s feet. They didn’t look afraid. They’d shifted to lean against each other, but their faces were calm.
“Well?” Konig asked without amplifying his voice magically.
“Well what? What would you want me to do?” Titania’s voice was irritatingly squeaky, as always. “Would you feel better if I cried?”
“I don’t think you’re taking me seriously.” He kneeled in front of her. Leaned in close. “I’m about to kill you.”
Oberon’s golden eyes flashed. “We’ll be back. We’ll all come back. And we’ll remember what you’ve done to the Middle Worlds.”
“It doesn’t matter what you do to us,” Titania said forcefully. “Our people will be safe from you. The contingency plan is on her way as we speak.”
Konig had no clue what they were talking about. He looked between the two of them, trying to decide if they were lying, or sharing some secret truth.
No. They were just trying to confuse him, take his eyes off the target.
Trying to keep their heads.
Konig straightened.
He opened his mouth to say something—he wasn’t sure what. The right words escaped him.
Oh well.
With two swift slices of the bastard sword, he severed the king and queen’s heads from their shoulders. Both landed on the stone with heavy, satisfying thuds that echoed off the raised ceiling.
Konig’s heart was pounding as he sheathed his sword. Its blade was still bloody, even dripping a little bit.
He turned to Marion. “Well?”
She only smiled faintly and nodded.
Approval.
For some reason, that made it all so much worse. He’d been enjoying his triumph, and Marion had touched it. Everything she touched turned to shit. The satisfaction was gone.
But then her smile faded.
Her eyes turned to wide circles as she jerked back in her chair. “No,” she whispered.
Konig turned to see what she was looking at, but he initially couldn’t make anything out. The sidhe had gone silent at the execution. Now they exploded with movement, pushing away from the door, and he couldn’t see beyond them.
“Move!” he shouted.
With a sweep of his hand, he shoved the sidhe aside.
A creature stood in the doorway that only loosely resembled a human. It had no face and four arms, every one of which gripped a weapon. Had its energy not been so wrong—so perversely human—then Konig would have thought it was one of the strange denizens of the Wilds.
This must have been Titania’s contingency plan.
But it wasn’t there for Konig.
Slowly, it raised one of its swords…and it pointed the blade directly toward the thrones.
The monster had come for Marion.
Seth missed the private jet taking off from the airstrip in Northgate, but that didn’t mean he missed Abel and Benjamin entirely. He materialized in the passenger compartment of the jet while they were thirty thousand feet over middle America.
Benjamin was sitting in one of the seats by the bulkhead, knees hugged to his chest. He glared at Seth. “What?”
“I’m here to protect you,” Seth said.
His nephew snorted and rolled his eyes.
Seth didn’t take it personally. Benjamin was sixteen, and when Seth had been sixteen, he’d been kind of a jackass. He’d also smelled terrible because he hadn’t figured out deodorant yet. It turned out that drenching himself in body spray wasn’t a substitute for showering. Who knew?
Point being that teenagers were terrible.
So he moved toward the back of the plane, where someone almost as terrible was currently working on a laptop.
“Did you get satellite photos?” Seth asked, taking the chair beside his brother.
“Yup.” Abel turned the laptop so that Seth could see it. “Looks pretty bad.”
It took a moment for Seth to understand what he was seeing. He tilted his head to the side as he studied the shape of the forest surrounding Ransom Falls, and he could tell that the weird encampment was near the Genesis warp. “Those aren’t tents in that camp.”
“Naw.” He turned the laptop back around. “They’re big round things about the size of a car.”
That meant that those spheres were the eggs. Abel had found the nest. “Leliel is blocking the trail from Ransom Falls.”
“That’s what you’re for, isn’t it? Snap your fingers and make the angels go away?” Abel asked.
But it would take a lot of power for Seth to vanquish them, especially if the eggs hatched before he arrived. An act like that might be enough for him to destroy his ash heart. Which meant he’d never see Marion again.
Or he could find another way to handle them.
“I can’t fix that,” Seth said. “Not easily. We’ll need to use sanctuary resources.”
Abel lifted his eyebrows. “All right. The OPA’s got bombers. Could try those out.”
“Bombers?” The OPA was a government organization—not even military. “They’d do that on American soil?”
“To save the world?” Abel shrugged. “Maybe. Secretary Friederling’s all right. He doesn’t worry about what cowards think about glassing our enemies, no matter where they’re geographically located.”
“That’s not the right solution anyway. I asked LCI to hold the Genesis warp. We can’t turn around and bomb them.”
“You invited LCI into America?”
“You just suggested bombing America. Foreign shifters are better than that.”
“Says you,” Abel said. “Anyway, I don’t see signs of LCI. No camps at all. Just the nest.”
“You might not be able to see them. Adàn’s good at what he does.” Seth propped his chin on his fist, turning the satellite photos over and over in his mind. “I don’t know, man. Maybe we don’t have to destroy the angels at all. They’re the last of their race.”
“Worst race ever,” Abel said.
Seth didn’t like the angels, but he liked Abel’s evaluation of them even less. “They’re just people.”
“Sounds like the shit someone pussy-whipped would say,” he said.
It didn’t work as the insult Abel intended. It just sent Seth back to the moment he’d been standing in front of the sanctuary’s bar, watching Marion laugh over the idea of defeating a werewolf with rice noodles. “Am I being stupid?” Seth asked suddenly. “Nobody trusts Marion, but I’m…”
He was in love with her. Painfully, desperately in love.
“You’re not stupid, dude,” Abel said without looking up from his laptop. “You’ve got good taste in people. You’ve always put up with me, even when everyone hated me, and I turned out fine. So if you like her, it’s fine.”
“Not the answer I expected,” Seth said.
Abel shrugged. “I’m just glad you’ll stop pining over my wife. You are gonna stop pining, right?”
“Shut up while you’re ahead.”
“Fine.” He smirked. “You’re still pussy-whipped.”
Seth’s heart was aching, and it didn’t have to do with ash from the Tree this time. “Thanks.”
“Whatever,”
Abel said.
Benjamin was muttering from the front of the airplane. “Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up or I will kill you.”
Abel turned his back so that Benjamin wouldn’t see his mouth moving. “My kid smells weird,” he said.
Seth glanced at his nephew. He’d started to rock forward and backward on his chair, knees drawn underneath his chin. “He spent months in Shamayim.”
“That’s why I didn’t pick up how weird his smells are at first. I just thought it was because of the captivity thing.” Abel closed his laptop. “But…I don’t know. Hard to explain to someone who isn’t a werewolf. Everyone’s got distinctive smells, like a fingerprint, and his have changed.”
But Benjamin looked exactly the same, even if his demeanor was different. “Could it just have changed from trauma?”
“Don’t think so.” Abel scratched his jaw thoughtfully. “It’s like he’s had a brain transplant.”
The closed laptop chimed loudly.
“What’s that?” Seth asked.
“Email,” Abel said. He opened the lid again, and he clicked around for a minute. “Huh. Well…that report looks bad.”
Seth didn’t get a chance to ask why.
He didn’t need to ask.
At that moment, something jolted his omnipotence so painfully that he couldn’t ignore it. He felt so many deaths simultaneously—like someone had just dropped a bomb somewhere much more populous than the nest of angels in Ransom Falls.
But it wasn’t a lot of lives. It was just that these lives were huge. They were connected to the fabric of existence, and when they died, everything was sucked into a black pit.
“Oberon,” Seth whispered. “Titania.”
Abel looked up from his laptop. “They just got assassinated.”
17
Seth had never been so grateful for Charity’s weird relationship with Arawn. When he asked the revenant for backup, he didn’t just get his friend’s help. He got a half-dozen Hounds too.
“They’re getting restless in the undercity,” Arawn had said. He’d been tattooing Adàn Pedregon’s spine while wearing those stupid goggles, so his eyes had been buggy and his hands had been smeared with ink. “Why don’t you take the Hounds for a walk? Exercise them, feed them, etcetera. Take a lot of baggies, because they shit like you wouldn’t believe.”