by Liz Schulte
I squared my shoulders. “I’d be honored to walk with you,” I said. I opened the gate and we headed down the narrow path the guards made. Both sides went silent. No one so much as breathed as we moved forward, side by side. Anticipation filled the air—the slightest spark and the whole place could erupt into chaos. “Just keep walking,” I said to Lily under my breath before I stopped.
I stood between the two groups, emotions popping and crackling around me. I understood what both sides were saying, but fighting was the last thing any of us needed. It took a few minutes, but a hush spread through the people.
“Go home,” I said, trying to sound as firm and earnest as possible. “You’ve been heard. Change comes to all of us, whether or not we’re ready for it. I’m going to marry the half-elf, Selene. Nothing you do will prevent it. You can embrace us as your leaders or we will step aside. Either way, change is before you. Go home, be with your families, and listen to your heart.”
I turned and saw Lily, who had ignored my orders and was waiting a few feet away. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she nodded at me. Our footsteps were the only sound as we walked through the town. When we were out of hearing range she glanced over at me.
“Do you mean it? Will you really walk away from the crown?”
“If they cannot accept Selene, then they cannot accept me. I’ll make a more formal announcement later.”
A smile lit her face and she shook her head. “So you get them all riled up then you pass the buck on to someone else. Yeah, we are definitely related.”
I laughed. “That was actually my plan. Selene had a better idea though.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re going to have an election. The people can choose the direction the fae move in.”
She looked like she was mulling it over for a few moments, then she nodded. “That might actually work.”
“That’s the hope.”
Lily’s club, Thistle, was obliterated. Chairs, tables, glass, everything was smashed to bits.
“Have you considered this could be a good time to switch careers?”
Her eyes narrowed. “All of this is your fault, not mine.” She wrinkled her nose. “Well, technically, I guess it is Dad’s fault.”
A sigh filled my chest. It had been easy not to think about my father or what had happened the night before. Selene was back and we had plenty of other issues to handle. Lily pushed up her sleeves and started tossing stuff to one side as she sifted through the destruction. All fae had long lives, but elves lived the longest. Elves typically lived thousands of years. We weren’t actually considered adults until we were over a hundred years old. Fortuna fae probably lived about the same length as a half-elf, around five hundred years, but Lily was only twenty and she already ran her own business and was completely self-sufficient. She was a tough kid.
She didn’t bother looking back at me. “Feel free to pitch in. If you’re here, you’re helping. Don’t think being Erlking exempts you from manual labor.”
I laughed and dug in, adding broken chairs and tables to the pile she started. “What are we looking for?”
“Money, of course. Any money or chips should be saved.”
I unearthed a body with a Pole sticking through its chest. “And the bodies?” I asked.
She came over to look. “Oh.” She reached down and yanked out the splintered piece of wood. “It’s a jinni. He’ll heal. Move him to the side.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“What? I mainly work with jinn. I like them. There’s no bullshit. I always know where we stand.”
“And where’s that?”
She shrugged. “So long as I’m useful to them, they have my back.”
Sure enough, the man’s wound began to close and within fifteen minutes he was awake and Lily introduced him as Presley before putting him to work. Apparently being impaled was not a reason to take the day off. She didn’t chat like Selene would have, but she also wasn’t completely serious either. Lily worked hard, but still had a good time.
“Look at this.” Lily displayed a lime-green and zebra-print purse with a splayed hand. “I think it’s your style, Pres.” She tossed it to him.
He caught it and opened it then threw it to the side. “No cash.”
“I thought jinn only dealt with humans,” I said.
He gave me a cold stare. “I thought elves only married their own.”
“You know about elf politics?”
He shrugged. “The world is changing, Erlking. There are wheels in motion. The jinn won’t always be pawns for demons to move around.”
“Is that so?”
He turned back to work.
“I know a jinni who’s free,” I said. His spine stiffened. “Holden Smith.”
He looked over his shoulder. “You know Holden?”
I nodded. “He’s a friend.” Friend might have been a stretch, but I was willing to bet this guy wouldn’t know any better. The coldness vanished from his eyes and he nodded at me like we were suddenly on the same side.
Whatever Holden and Olivia had going on, it could change the whole dynamic of the Abyss. I shook my head. It was well beyond my depth to get involved. The jinn being free was something I doubted the world was prepared for, but as I’d told my people earlier today, change comes whether or not we are ready for it.
I PICKED UP GRAM’S paper as I went up her steps. We’d tried to talk her into staying at the castle the night before, but she had refused. Everything in my life was changing and happening so fast, I didn’t know how I felt anymore. On one hand Grandma had betrayed me horribly, but on the other, she had been tricked and was trying to make up for the betrayal now. I mean, was it really any different than what I did to Cheney? And he managed to keep forgiving me. Life very rarely ever works out perfectly. We have to accept the people we love, flaws and all, and be thankful we got them in the first place. Despite everything, Gram was my family. She was my blood and nothing was ever going to change that. Then again, so was my dad, but that didn’t mean I was ready to hug it out with him. While “forgive and forget” was a good philosophy, sometimes the practice of it sucked.
I knocked on the door. She answered a few moments later, still in her robe and slippers and sipping coffee that was black and pungent. “Good morning,” I said.
She ushered me inside, shutting and locking the door behind her. “I’m just making breakfast. Care to join me?”
I shook my head. “I already ate. Thank you though.” I followed her into the kitchen and helped myself to a glass of orange juice before I leaned against the counter by the refrigerator and watched her cook for a few minutes. It was so familiar. I could have been sixteen again and telling her about school while she made me breakfast, but I wasn’t. In fact, as clear as that memory was about being sixteen ten years ago, so were my memories from a hundred years ago. They were all part of me now. I had lived two lives up to this point and now they were one.
Grandma didn’t ask me why I was here or say anything while she cooked. She hummed to herself as she fried eggs and a piece of ham. “Thank you for helping yesterday,” I said.
She kept her back facing me. “That’s my job. One that I had been far too neglectful of.”
I took a deep breath. “I could use your help again.”
She scraped the eggs and ham onto her plate then sat the skillet in the sink before she faced me. “Come. Sit.”
She sat down at the table and I took the chair across from her, folding my hands in front of me. She looked like she had aged twenty years in the past few weeks. “I did what the priestess asked and brought back the Pole of Charon.” She nodded. “But I didn’t know what it did and Cheney didn’t get to me in time to stop what happened. Gram, the Pole can tear holes between worlds. Obviously it doesn’t belong in the Abyss. I said I’d deliver it to them and I did, but now I need to take it back.”
She nodded again, her mouth pursed, making her wrinkles more pronounced. “I cannot help you with that. It is be
yond my power.”
I smiled a little. “That isn’t what I need help with. The necromancer, Frost—you met her, right?—went with me because she felt the dark magic in the Pole and thought I shouldn’t touch it. The priestess told us to take it into the crypt, but Cheney showed up, so I didn’t go in. Frost did, though, and then they all vanished: Frost, the Pole, the priestess, and the crypt. I need to find them before the boundaries between worlds start to crumble.”
She set down her fork and took another sip of coffee. “How do you propose we find where they went? They could be anywhere, this world or the next.”
I nodded. “That’s the problem. We have used every method available to us to track them here, and there’s nothing. I don’t think they’re here at all.” I pressed my lips together, trying to organize my thoughts. “The spirits wanted the Pole for a reason. It seems fairly obvious that they must want to come back from wherever they are. I don’t think they’re in the underworld or they could have gotten it themselves, but they must be somewhere that isn’t here. If they’re trying to tear a hole between worlds then that Pole should be putting off tons of dark magic. We should be able to find it, right?”
“Ghosts are not in this realm or the underworld. They are in an in between,” Gram said. She traced her old wrinkled finger along the rim of her mug. “You cannot find the dark with light. Dark magic is what you came to get help with.”
“I don’t see another way. I’m only doing it to save people.”
She gave me a sad smile. “Some of the best witches who have turned dark started down the path with good intentions. They won’t save you. The dark will seek out the gateways in you and feed from them until you do not resemble your former self. It won’t come at you in a single attack. It will be an ongoing struggle for the rest of your life. And you, my child, will live a very long time.”
My stomach knotted. “I don’t have a choice. I brought the Pole back. It’s my responsibility. If you have other ideas, I’m open to them. Honestly, I don’t want to do this.”
She sighed. “I wish I wouldn’t have been such an ignorant old woman. There was much I could have taught you over the years.”
I squeezed her hand. “There’s still time.”
She nodded. “Come.”
I followed her up to her secret room in the attic. She slowly lowered herself to the ground, not moving around nearly as easily as she had just a year ago. She pried a couple boards up from the floor and stuck her arm in all the way to her shoulder. She pulled out a white velvet sack with a pentagram and glistening rune burned into the material. It was bound with rope wrapped three times in each direction, forming a cross around it. She held the sack on her lap with both hands resting on the top. As she looked down at it, the wrinkles on her weathered face seemed deeper and more pronounced.
“Dark magic is addictive. Once you cast, it becomes part of you. You will never be able to rid yourself of it, but if you are lucky, you can push it down and bury it within. Each time you cast it grows and spreads through you. I don’t know where that threshold is when it is too late to go back. For some, it may be only once, while others might be able to cast twenty spells without blackening their soul.” She handed me the book with shaking hands. “I cannot touch this book without its protective covering ever again. It calls to me, and has been calling for many years.”
“When you cursed me, was that the first time you used it?”
“The first and only. Its power has beckoned to me ever since.” I started unwrapping it, but she stopped me. “One last thing—only read the spell you use.”
“Why?”
“Even reading the words silently without the ritual will feed the magic and help it grow. Use extreme caution, dear. Treat this as you would a ticking bomb.”
My fingers went back to the rope and Gram licked her lips, still focused on the book. I hesitated. “Should I do this somewhere else? I don’t want to tempt you.”
She nodded, tearing her eyes away from the book on my lap. “That might be for the best.”
In my entire human life, I’d never seen anything affect my grandma quite like this—that scared me more than her warnings. I chewed on my bottom lip. If this stained my soul in some way, would it hurt the baby, too? Also, was this something I should wait to do until Cheney and I stepped down? The last thing we needed was for me to be evil and in power. Obviously, I had to do it before the wedding—
“There’s more you haven’t told me, isn’t there, child?”
I half snorted and half laughed, pulling back from my thoughts. “There’s always more. One thing never goes wrong at a time.”
She looked at me inquisitively.
I considered my words carefully, not sure how much I wanted to reveal. There was little doubt in my mind that we would eventually mend our relationship and perhaps have a stronger one than we ever had before, but as much as I wanted to be, I wasn’t quite there. “If I’m bonded to someone or carry another life with me, how would this work? Would my casting hurt them, too?”
“You are worried for Cheney? You haven’t renewed the bond yet, have you?”
“No. But he is pushing for as soon as possible. Also, I’m worried about what would happen if I go full-on Darth Vader while I am still queen of the fae.”
She turned to the shelf behind her and rifled through a few books before she found what she was looking for. “A magical bond connects life forces. They can extend or shorten lives and they tie two lives together in such a way not to be broken by death. When one dies, so will the other, but the bond won’t end there. It will keep manifesting in each new life. The souls will always find their way back to one another. A magical replication of soul mates—some believe that all soul mates start with a similar bond in a past life, but it is debatable. In some instances the bond may manifest itself as shared emotions, physical pain, and occasionally a telepathic link, but those instances are rare. I don’t see anything that would make me believe that an injury to your soul would harm the other’s. You were bonded with Cheney before. Did you share any of that with him?”
“I couldn’t hear his thoughts or anything. I just felt pain when we weren’t together.” I mulled over what she said. “So if I bond with him, then his life will always be tied to mine, even in the next life?”
She reread the passage to herself. “This isn’t an exact science. It is hard to study multiple lives. What it is proposing is that forming a magical bond in one life will create a soul mate in the next. But who knows if that is true. There are people of the opposite camp who think that once you both die then that’s it.”
“I’ve seen the underworld. I am not sure I can believe in reincarnation. Who’s to say once we die that we get the chance to come back?”
She smiled gently. “These are mysteries far older than me and out of my depth. I don’t have answers for you.” She patted my knee. “But who’s to say when you make it through the atonement for the sins of one life, you do not begin another? Perhaps we have endless opportunities to do it right the next time.”
I couldn’t imagine Charon using the Pole to send people back. Purgatory seemed endless.
“These are not questions we will find answers to today. As for your other concern, there isn’t much to be done about it. You’re the queen of the fae, and that isn’t likely to go away anytime soon since you are marrying the Erlking. If you turn dark, you will have to be dealt with. I recommend that you not have the wedding first, in case they need to…”
“Kill me?”
She nodded. “It might be the only choice. Would you rather he let you terrorize the world?”
I shook my head, but I knew for a fact Cheney would never kill me, no matter how evil I became. Neither would Sy for that matter. There was only one person I could count on to do the right thing if the situation came down to that: Sebastian. It wasn’t fair to ask it of him, but he would see the bigger picture. That was why Sebastian and I became friends to begin with. He was always willing to do what had to be do
ne. He was good at making tough decisions and sticking to them. “I’ll make the arrangements before I open the book.”
“That’s wise.” She let out a heavy breath. “I’ll keep searching for another way.”
I nodded and stood with the book safely tucked under my arm. “Thank you.”
“Be careful.”
I stooped over and gave her a hug. “Do you need help up?”
She laughed. “No. I think I can still manage.”
I took a step back from her, preparing to transport.
“Selene—” I looked down. “Could you stay for a while? I know you are busy, but…”
I understood what she wanted: a chance to make peace, to get to know each other again—or maybe for the first time. Our entire past was built on secrets, lies, and head-butting. I closed my eyes for a moment. Forgiveness didn’t come as easy as walking away for me—maybe didn’t for anyone. I looked down at the jeans I was wearing, a reminder of the changes I needed to make in my own life. I was far from perfect. If wearing more pants would keep me from getting stuck wearing a dress in Hell again, then maybe hearing Gram out would help me forgive her and start healing both of our souls.
She wasn’t getting any younger, either. If she ended up in purgatory, I didn’t want them to use me—our relationship—against her. I hoped to change my own purgatory before I went back, so maybe I owed her the chance to absolve herself of the guilt she felt. I nodded. “What did you have in mind?”
After an entire morning and afternoon of talking with Gram in front of the fireplace and sipping tea, I transported back to the castle grounds. My heart felt lighter in a way that was hard to describe. I didn’t technically have time to spend an afternoon chatting, but I was glad I’d done it anyway.