by Lucy Auburn
“I’m not weird!” he protested. “Well, maybe a little. You don’t have the best track record when it comes to dating women I care about.”
Here it was again; no matter how much time passed, Leon seemed incapable of forgetting that I’d dated his sister. It wasn’t my fault that things ended badly—though maybe, I was starting to realize, it wasn’t her fault either. “Sera and I had issues long before we broke up. You can’t keep holding that over my head.”
He grunted, and then to my surprise he said, “You’re right.”
I turned to him, my eyebrows raising as high as they went in surprise. “I’m right? Did those words really come out of your mouth, or are you being possessed by Leo and he’s fucking with me?”
Leon was quiet for a moment, something deep reflected in his blue eyes. “You’re right that I shouldn’t hold it over your head anymore. Love is complicated.” Clearing his throat, he awkwardly scratched at the back of his neck, brushing rock salt from his collar. “I actually talked to Sera recently and she told me some things.”
“I’ll bet,” I muttered, looking out towards the horizon again. My phone vibrated in my pocket, but I ignored it for now; it was the brief vibration of an incoming text message, not worth stopping this conversation to check. Leon and I so rarely got along. “Look, Hardwick, I can’t promise that things won’t get complicated. Especially if you and I start dating the same woman.”
He snorted. “Believe me, that thought has occurred to me more than once.”
“But it doesn’t seem like fighting about it will help things,” I observed, glancing over at him with narrowed eyes. “And if you can get along with another man who’s interested in her without starting a pissing contest, I think you can accept it if she explores her sexuality with me. It’s not like I’m getting down on one knee and asking for a monogamous commitment.”
“And you wouldn’t get one if you did,” he said, his voice a deep rumble. I flinched a little at the words, but forced it down, knowing the truth of them; no succubus was meant to belong to one woman—and I wasn’t exactly at a point in my life to demand more commitment from someone than I knew how to give. “Okay.” Leon reached out and patted me on the back. “We’ll do our best to share time, then. And not fight about it.”
“Great,” I muttered, forcing myself not to twist away as he settled a hand on my shoulder, my fingers itching for a knife. “And I’ll try not to ruin her for men.”
He laughed, his teeth flashing white, humor dancing in those baby blues—eyes I’d once thought were identical to Sera’s blue gaze, but that I now realized had a lightness to them. At least, when he wasn’t glowering at someone.
Moving away, I reached into my pocket for my phone, and Leon affably gave me space so he could shut the front doors of the hotel and lock up for the landlord. As he did so, I glanced at the message on my screen, surprised at the sender; I hadn’t known the blackfyre knight figured out how to use his phone. “The key is in the lab,” the message read, “but I don’t know which lock box. Help? Tame Min not here.”
My mouth quirked at his first collision with autocorrect, which didn’t exactly have Korean names in its repertoire. Turning away to make sure Leon couldn’t read, I typed a reply. I’d been itching to smash the mirror since the moment Selena told us she found it; now was as good a time as any, with an ally on my side. I just had to figure out a way to sneak out from under the detective’s nose without making him suspicious, and I knew exactly how to do it.
“Ready to go?” Leon headed towards his squad car.
“Definitely.” As I slid into the passenger seat I asked him, “When we get back, do you want to do a round of meditation?”
He glanced over at me with surprise in his eyes. “I didn’t think you liked it. Too much sitting still.”
“I want to try again.” I tried to keep my voice level and pleasant. “I think it might help Iva with her recovery.”
“Is her hand eye coordination still suffering?” he asked, voice empathetic.
I shied away from talking about it too deeply, hating the emotions that my baby sister’s brush with death brought up in me. “She could be better. And I think a little mediation might help.”
“Sure, I’ll go through it with you again. I get to pick the playlist this time though—metal isn’t exactly relaxing, you know.”
“So you say,” I muttered under my breath, staring out into the blue skies and thinking about fate. If I had my way, by sundown the prophecies would be useless words that never needed to be spoken aloud again, and my sister and I would be dark hunters—and nothing more.
32
Selena
As we headed to the ambassador’s office together, I tried to figure out how Damen was doing, ignoring the sullen, sharp looks he sent my way. “How’s your side? You were bleeding pretty bad when we found you.”
“I healed as I always do.”
“Your steps are uneven,” I noted softly. “Do you remember anything about the injuries? How you got them, or who gave them to you?”
“Whoever they were, I’m sure I gave twice as much as I got.” He fixed his eyes straight ahead, his back as straight as a soldier’s. “Why does it concern you, anyway? Who are we to each other?”
I swallowed, the question one I didn’t have an easy answer to. “We were... trapped in the Underworld together,” I said, because I didn’t know how Damen got down there, but he’d never seemed to fit entirely. “I found a way out, and you helped me escape.”
“That’s all?” He raised a sharp eyebrow at me, his eyes almost seeming to glow as he looked me up and down. “I would think that we were lovers, given how you look at me all moon-eyed.”
I choked, face burning hot, and ahead of us Tae Min stumbled just a little between steps. Licking my lips, I tried to find words inside me and failed. So I settled for, “It wasn’t like that. You’ll see once you remember—hopefully.”
Thankfully we reached the ambassador’s doors just then. His current receptionist, who was a gossamer-winged young man with feminine makeup on, waved us in with a bored expression. The great ceremonial doors swung on their controlled tracks. Damen didn’t gape or stare as we walked into the large room Petyr used as his office; he seemed unimpressed, if anything.
“Damen Thorson.” Rising to his feet, Petyr walked around his desk and reached out a hand towards Damen, who clasped it in both of his. “I have to admit, I hadn’t been expecting a demigod at my doors. These things are... unusual, you understand.”
“For me as well,” Damen said, sizing up Petyr as they spoke. “Normally I don’t leave my father’s realm without my brothers at my side, but this was... different.”
I blinked, holding back my surprise; Damen had never mentioned brothers or his father. Then my mind turned over the surname he’d used just now, the same one he’d given when he first woke up. In the midst of worrying for him and the shock of his memory loss, I hadn’t really listened closely until now.
“Wait a minute.” Damen turned when I placed a hand on his shoulder, tugging him around to look at me. “Thorson. Your father is Thor?”
“Who else?” he said, arrogant and glib. “Thunder is my domain.” Brushing off my hand, he added, “I thought you said we knew each other.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “You didn’t mention your family to me. Maybe it was a secret.”
“Maybe,” he said, a curious expression on his face. “It sounds to me like I didn’t share the details of my mission with you, which must mean we barely know each other at all.”
His words hit me like a solid blow; I nodded, admitting, “I guess that’s true.” Tae Min shot me a sympathetic look, and for a moment I was tempted to walk over close to him and reach out for comfort, but I knew it would be inappropriate. Besides, I was stronger than that these days; I didn’t need comfort just because a man I’d known for only a few months didn’t remember or care about me. I said to Petyr, “Let’s get this over with. I want to get back to the lab s
oon and figure out if the mirror we found really is the Key.”
“And I want to be there when you do.” Petyr held out his hand with the ring, and I put my own hand over his, Tae Min’s following on top of mine. Damen seemed to hesitate for a moment, eyes narrowed, so the ambassador said: “It’s this or we hire a portal witch and wait days for one to show up.”
He scowled, putting his hand over ours. “I hate realm walking,” he grumbled. “These Lightblood rings are torture devices.”
I blinked at Petyr, who was wearing a sheepish look. “You didn’t tell me they were called that.”
“I didn’t want you getting any ideas,” he said. “Especially given how our first trip went. The rings magnify existing powers as well. I thought you might be tempted to use one and get yourself lost.”
Given that I’d gotten myself stuck in the Underworld for three months and just used a strange book to visit the Shadow Realm, I couldn’t entirely blame him. The book was in the glovebox of my car now, burning a hole through my mind anytime I thought about it. If I carried it around with me I just knew I’d get into trouble, but I hadn’t been able to put it back in Petyr’s library. It tempted me.
Glancing back and forth between me and Petyr, Damen asked, “Lost? I don’t get it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said sharply. “Let’s just go.”
Petyr’s voice was warm and soothing as always, and it took the edge off my sudden nerves. “Your wish is my command.”
In a blink we were gone, traveling through the universe in mere seconds. When we came out the other side we were in the Realm of Light, in an unfamiliar part of Illyrium. Pulling my hand back, I gaped all around us at the beauty and majesty of this place. It really did feel like another world entirely. Beautiful smooth stones were laid into the ground beneath us, their light changes in color marking different parts of the large clearing and series of buildings that surrounded us. Light blue stones formed a path towards a cascading waterfall that fed into a pool beneath it; I glimpsed a few naked bathers in the pool and averted my eyes.
Another, light purple path led towards a garden full of strange and interesting plants: flowers that changed in color, vines that undulated across the ground, trees whose branches dipped towards the earth in greeting. There was also an open air building made up of Corinthian columns at the end of a blue path, a spiraling yellow path leading towards a light at the top of a tower, and a large group of people almost a hundred strong that stood behind us, practicing fluid stretches and movements at the end of a red path.
There were other, smaller buildings in between, as well as curved benches where various fae sat in silence or quiet discussion. More than one of the people I saw was injured; there were bandaged wings, limping steps, and bodies curved with age and pain. I wondered what led them all here, and if they were drawn by the same healing we sought for Damen.
Tae Min took over, motioning us towards the blue path. “I’ve gotten permission from the Elders and the fae in charge of this area to bring Damen to the healing spring and see if it helps his memory. The water is renowned for its ability to cure many ailments, but its power is limited—it works best on the divine. Thankfully,” he said, addressing Damen directly, “you’re a demigod, and so the water should work well on you. It’s less effective on lesser fae, and has next to no impact on humans or near-humans like dark hunters, so we lucked out on this one.”
As we neared the spring that turned into a waterfall, Damen frowned, peering over the edge at the pool it crashed into below. “There are no steps down.”
“That’s correct.” Tae Min’s voice had an apologetic tone to it. “The only way down into the pool for the injured is the waterfall. So it’s not without its risks—though presumably if you got injured on the way down, you would be healed by the water at the bottom. Also,” he added, “you can’t wear your clothing in the water. Foreign materials are said to spoil the water’s effectiveness.”
Looking down at his borrowed clothes, Damen shrugged. “Nudity is just nudity,” he said. His eyes slid back to Petyr and towards me, and I saw the hint of a wicked smile in his eyes, though it didn’t curve his lips noticeably. “I suppose if we weren’t lovers as you said, this will be a real treat to you.”
“I wasn’t planning on watching,” I said, pushing past the flutter in my chest that I got when he looked at me like that. “I’m sure there are other things to do around here besides stare at you.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll find something to do.”
That was when Damen reached down to the bottom of the shirt he was wearing, grabbing on and fluidly pulling it up before I could say anything. His movements revealed tanned, tight skin that showed off an exquisite set of abs and two muscular pecs that led to the strong arms that had kept me captive for so long. I swallowed and started to avert my eyes, but a thin rope of scar tissue on one side of his chest caught my attention.
It was a series of wounds, four in total, running parallel to each other. They went from his shoulder to his stomach. Fanning out from the wounds were a series of burns that had almost healed.
Despite myself I stepped forward, ignoring Damen’s cocky look and the curious eyes of the other two men on me. Splaying my fingers, I set them at the edges of the wounds and had my suspicions confirmed when they matched up. The tears in his skin, deep enough to make him bleed, hot enough to burn him, had come from a woman’s hand.
Her hand. Persephone. I felt a deep rage inside me, and had to step back as my hand curled into a fist. Damen was looking down at me now, confusion in his eyes; he seemed to have forgotten his earlier mission to flirt with me. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head, then paused and said softly, “You’ll know when your memory returns.”
Clearing his throat, Tae Min looked over at me with sympathy in his eyes, and as always I wished that I deserved it; Damen wouldn’t even have gotten hurt if not for me. “I’ll monitor his progress while he’s here by going down to the shore—yes, there’s a way down, Damen, but the water only works if you go over the edge. While I’m down there, you and Petyr should check out the garden. I have the feeling there are a few plants there you’ve never seen before. Who knows, some of them might even be the ambassador’s cousins.”
Petyr rolled his eyes at the joke. “Hilarious. You know it doesn’t work that way. C’mon Selena.” He motioned me over, and I shot one last look at Damen’s scarred chest before turning away and walking along beside him. “You won’t believe some of the species of flora that grow here in the Realm of Light. It’s really something to see.”
As we walked between rows of beautiful plants, I barely managed to resist looking over my shoulder towards Damen and Tae Min. It was just as well that they both disappeared over the waterfall’s edge and down below; otherwise, I never would’ve been able to look away. All I could think about was that last kiss I had with Damen, the one that electrified my skin, and whether or not he would ever remember it.
Naomi
Skimming my fingers along the wall, I reached inside for my dark senses and tried to figure out which lock box in Tae Min’s lab was the one that held the mirror. Elah hovered behind my shoulder, his energy like a gnat at my back. “Can you stop that?” I snapped my eyes over to him, frowning. “If someone walks in, you look way more suspicious than me because you’re so nervous.”
“Sorry.” He pulled at his collar and leaned back against the wall with a sigh. “I’m not used to this kind of subterfuge. Things are more straightforward back home: hunting, demon battles, protecting the homeland. You’re sure they won’t be back soon, right?”
“Petyr’s secretary said he left for the Realm of Light with Selena, Tae Min, and that demigod she found injured in the woods. We have at least a couple of hours before they show back up.” My hand stopped at a place in the wall that was giving off the same kind of danger I’d sensed before, and a smile curved my lips. “This is it. Your turn.”
I stepped back while he brought flames t
o his fingers, then concentrated the fire into a single smooth torch. Walking over to the lock box I’d indicated, he held the heat against the lock until it melted, then stepped back as the metal door swung open. “No going back now,” Elah commented, a slight frown creasing his mouth. “Let’s hope this is worth it.”
“Oh, it is.” Reaching in, I avoided the still-warm door to grab the mirror inside. “If this is what we think it is, destroying it is our number one priority.”
“How do we know it’s the Key, though? They haven’t even started testing it.”
“Does it matter?” I looked up at Elah, who shook his head. “Exactly. We don’t have time to test that it’s the Key before we destroy it. If it isn’t the Key, we still will have destroyed something that could endanger us all. And if it isn’t—”
As I spoke my eyes flicked down into my reflection, and I stared at the mirror for too long. Words appeared across its surface, derailing my train of thought completely. I wanted to look away, but my feet were rooted to the spot. I felt sure that what it said was the truth.
Walking over next to me, Elah looked down into the mirror’s surface and frowned. “‘I am the Soul.’ That doesn’t make any sense. You know, it said something similar to me earlier—’I am the Heart.’ But it disappeared so quickly that I thought I’d just been seeing things.”
“It’s not disappearing now,” I murmured, eyes riveted at the words. Souls were important to my people; something about the message felt like a portent. One that I had to ignore. “It doesn’t matter. This changes nothing. Let’s get started.”
Setting the mirror down on a table in front of me, I flipped it over so that it couldn’t distract me again. I wanted to get this over with, and move on with my life; I wanted to be able to help Iva through her rehab process by telling her that it had all been worth it, and she’d stopped the hell gates from ever opening again. If the Key undid all of that and put us all in danger, I was sure that she would do what her soul called her to do, and I didn’t know who I would be without her.