by Amy Sumida
Oh, yeah, the psychopath had an entire wardrobe for me in his dressing room. He had picked everything out himself, down to the accessories. He even coordinated outfits for me. Drostan was so insane, I could barely keep a straight face around him. But I put on the clothes and let him have his little fantasy, playing along so he didn't dose me with that Dark Kiss again. He wanted to dress me up like a Barbie doll? Fine, it was better than him tearing the clothes off me. I could humor a madman if it prevented my rape.
“You look beautiful today, my love,” Drostan squeezed my hand before lifting it to his lips for a kiss. “Your face has filled out.”
I nodded but said nothing. He was right, I'd gained the weight back and felt better. Stronger. And my magic had just returned. I could kill this bastard and jump off the roof, using my air beag to float to the ground. I'd have to hope no one spotted me as I made a run for the trees, but I could fight back if I had to. Yeah, that would be better than waiting and lying in bed beside this insane, backstabbing bastard one more night. He was so nuts that putting up with him was starting to make me nuts.
A fire crackled in a fire pit before us. Drostan had lit it earlier, showing off with his fire beag for me. Pathetic. A thermos of hot chocolate sat on the rim of the stone circle, but I stared beyond it at the flames. The bright orange glow seemed to urge me into action. I leaned forward and set my mug down beside the thermos.
It was time to blow this popsicle joint.
I started to call on my firethorns when the sound of shouting echoed up to us. Drostan surged to his feet and ran to the edge of the roof. With a racing heart, I chased after him and leaned over the thick, stone railing. A group of people in black gear were advancing rapidly on the house, leaving grim lines in the snow. The breath caught in my throat. My husbands had found me! I was being rescued! I searched the faces below but didn't recognize anyone. They must have brought in another team to help.
“Fuck!” Drostan screamed. “No! How did they find us?” He turned toward me, hand extended. “We have to go, my love.”
I punched Drostan in the face just to give me enough time to fill my hand with a ball of burning thorns.
“Seren!” Drostan whined in shock as he stumbled back, blood dripping from his lips.
A boom shook the house, then another. Screaming, no, shrieking, peppered the shouts of Drostan's men. I was briefly distracted by the sounds, especially when they were followed by roaring. Was that Raza? My heartbeat sped up with joy.
Drostan leapt for me, but I felt him coming. That tingling awareness turned out to be handy in a fight. I blasted him with the fireball just as he started to move. He went tumbling onto his ass, but got up immediately and with a snarl. Drostan's eyes lit with magic, but they were icy blue, almost white, instead of the electric blue they should have been. It startled me enough to make me pause.
Drostan shook his head like an enraged animal and jumped at me again, his fingers curled into claws. I waved a hand at him, wrapping him in burning thorns. The fire might not bother him because of his mór, but the thorns would hold him until I could find another way to kill him. I could always sprinkle some lavender dust in his eyes and star-cross him. The thorns should hold him still enough for that. Then I could make him kill himself. Wouldn't that be fitting?
Yeah, I was past the point of being honorable and way into the fantasizing-about-ways-of-killing-him zone.
“Seren, you're wasting time!” Drostan shouted as my thorns bound him. He kept breaking them, and I kept binding him anew. “We have to leave before they find us.”
Another tingle of awareness swept over me. Something to my left. What the fuck was that? It wasn't as if Drostan could be in two places at once.
“Too late,” a voice like fire at midnight crackled over us.
Drostan paled even as he broke free of my thorns. I was too startled to renew them, and instead, turned toward the newcomer—a man who approached on my left. I didn't recognize him but I felt him; that tingle had come from him. He had to be an extinguisher, he didn't look like a hunter or a vex, but there was such an air of power about him that I was second-guessing my conclusion. He felt off too, tingling aside, but who else could he be?
The tall man stepped forward, every movement graceful and yet also implying danger. A slim but athletic body filled out his black gear—a combat uniform that, upon closer inspection, looked slightly different from what extinguishers wore. There were no charm pockets or any iron weapons on him, and his boots looked as if they were made of soft leather, not the hard stuff extinguishers preferred. He spared a quick, sardonic smile at my inspection, the motion softening the hard line of his lips, but his refined features—too refined to have stemmed from any of the Great Five Families—seemed to sharpen when he shifted his intense stare back to Drostan. It was as if his golden-brown skin had tightened over his bones, similar to the way Raza looks when he gets angry. I shouldn't have caught the color of his eyes at that distance, but they started to glow. Green at first, then the ring of gold in their centers began to burn, surpassing the green. The ends of his short, ebony hair lifted gently, as if in a soft updraft.
“You are a hard man to find, Varcan,” he said to Drostan. “Using the hakhil to hide your magic was clever. You've been very careful. But you made a mistake, and we caught a hint of you fifteen minutes ago.”
Varcan? Hakhil? I scowled, looking back and forth between the men.
Drostan looked away from the strange man to stare imploringly at me. “Seren, please, you need to come with me! Now, Seren! He's dangerous!”
“You're not going anywhere!” the new man shouted and leapt forward.
Drostan spun out of his path and vanished in a cloud of embers. Just puff, and he was gone.
“No!” the man roared as he came to a stop in the space where Drostan had been standing, sparks raining on his shoulders. “Fucking, thieving, conniving prick!” He tossed his head furiously, swinging the bangs out of his face. Then he noticed me gaping at him and cleared his throat. He took a deep breath and in a calm tone said, “Your Majesty.” He inclined his head. “It's an honor to meet you.”
“What just happened?” I waved limply after Drostan. “How did he do that? That wasn't twilighting. Even if it was, he's not a Twilight Fairy, and it's not twilight.”
“He's not a fairy at all,” the man's voice dropped into a deep, gentle tone.
“He's not a fairy?” I made a few strangled sounds. Then I shrieked, “What do you mean, he's not a fairy?! I met him in Seelie. My husband introduced us. He's a baron of my kingdom.”
“No, you didn't meet him in Seelie,” the man said firmly. “You met Drostan Dealan. The man who's been holding you captive is not your Seelie Baron.”
“What?” I whispered, my mind reeling.
“I'm sorry, Seren, but I can't reveal more to you.” He stepped closer. “You will find the real Drostan downstairs.” His eyes had stopped burning, back to green with golden centers. That stare coasted over me, pausing on my eyes and then moving to the streak of ombré purple in my hair. “I didn't expect you to be so . . .”
“What?” I went still.
He smiled abruptly and bowed. “My name is Astar, but you can call me Star if you like. It's been an honor to save you, Queen Seren. Perhaps we'll meet again.”
“Star?” I blinked. “That's Seren means.”
“I know.” He grinned, and it was a movie star smile, the sort that can make women swoon . . . or scream.
I scowled. “You're not an extinguisher are you?”
“No.” His grin widened. “Not my family. Sleep well, Your Majesty.”
“Wait, what—”
But before I could say more, he pursed his lips and blew golden dust into my face. I fell, but he caught me, swinging me up into his arms.
“I didn't expect you to be so pure,” Astar whispered as I fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Pure?” I grumbled as I sat up in bed. “What the hell does that mean?”
“What the fuck is going on?!” I shrieked as I stood up.
Silence answered me, and I knew Astar and his team were gone. They had been hunting Varcan, but he'd said it was an honor to rescue me. Why? Who was I to them? Who were they to me? Had Anu sent them? The God of Earth liked to work mysteriously by gently urging people along but not actually interfering. Was Astar in a secret paramilitary group of psychic humans? Humans who had developed talents that the Councils didn't know about? Extinguishers beholden to no one.
“Oh, God, my head hurts,” I whispered. “I need to find a phone.”
I rushed through Drostan's rooms but there wasn't a single phone to be found. I went down to the second floor and found evidence of a wicked battle. There were scorch marks and blood everywhere but not a single corpse. Nor was there anyone alive. Every room was empty and none of them had phones, not even the nurses' station. In the age of the cellphone, I suppose that wasn't so surprising, but it was irritating and as I searched, my anxiety rose. I kept seeing Drostan's—I mean Varcan's—feral face as he fought me, then that man, Astar. His burning eyes. What the actual fuck?!
I was trembling by the time I made it to the basement. I had searched all three floors above ground and found only destruction. The basement was no different except for one thing; I heard voices.
“Hello?” I shouted as I ran down a long, echoing corridor.
“Here!” Someone shouted back. “We're in here! Hello!”
I followed the voice into a bleak room of cells. This was more like what I had expected to be kept in when first taken. A row of cells with simple metal beds, toilets, and sinks—that's it. And the cells were full of fairies, one of whom I recognized instantly.
“Drostan,” I whispered in shock. “Holy fuckballs, it's true.”
“Your Majesty?” Drostan Dealan, the real Drostan Dealan, gaped back at me. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask the same of you. I just came from fighting you on the roof.”
“That wasn't me! You have to believe me, Queen Seren! My security team and I have been down here, locked in these cells, for months. That man took us and then he and his men glamoured themselves to look like us.”
“I believe you.” I held up a hand to stop him. “How do I get you out of there? Do you know where the keys are?”
“They're in that desk.” Drostan waved a hand at a desk near the door.
There was a computer, a freestanding microphone, and a coffeemaker atop the desk. I had a feeling this was where ol' Bal sat to speak to me when I was trapped in that luxury suite.
“We have our magic, but we can't push it past these bars,” Drostan went on. “There's some kind of energy field blocking us. I think you have to disable it before you can unlock the doors. I saw them open the left drawer and hit something inside it when they turned it on.”
In the left drawer, I found a set of keys and a button. I hit the button and felt something shiver through the air. The men gave cries of relief as the containment field dropped, and then I rushed over to unlock their cells.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Drostan laid a hand on his chest and bowed.
It was so strange to see him like that, looking at me as if we were mere acquaintances and speaking to me so formally. That face that I knew so well—the one I had first associated with a friend, then with an enemy—was back to simply belonging to a baron of my court.
“You're welcome,” I said. “The bad news is that I can't find a phone, so we may have to walk to the nearest town.”
Drostan laughed bitterly. “I'm looking forward to walking out of here. I don't care how far we have to go.”
“You say that now, but wait until you see the snow we have to trudge through,” I teased.
“Snow, sleet, hail, I'll walk across fire as long as it's outside,” one of the other men said.
The rest of them laughed in agreement and relief.
“But don't you have a team with you?” Drostan asked me. “Where are the hunters? Or are you with extinguishers?”
“I was taken prisoner like you. In fact, I thought it was you who abducted me,” I explained. “Then these people in black gear showed up and drove off your impersonator, but they left before I could find out who they are. Damn, I didn't even thank that guy.”
“We saw a few of them.” Drostan nodded. “But they ignored us when we asked to be released. So, you were a prisoner too? And you were set free by those soldiers?”
“That about sums it up,” I said.
“Dear Danu,” one of Drostan's men exclaimed.
“Let's get out of here before another group of mystery men show up.” I turned and headed for the door.
“Hold on, Your Majesty,” Drostan said as he went to a door beside the desk. “They took our things, presumably to help them impersonate us. I expect they are long gone, but I saw them put a purse in here. I'll bet it's yours.”
“My purse?” I rushed over as he opened the door.
Sure enough, there it was, sitting on a shelf—the black leather Gucci bag Daxon had bought me for my birthday. I gave a yip of joy and snatched it up. Both my scry phone and my cellphone were still inside it. Everything was there in fact. I pulled out the phone, then slung the purse over my shoulder.
“Come on,” I said to the men. “Let's get some fresh air while I make this scry. It looks as if we won't be walking after all.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
It took a while to find out where we were. One of Drostan's guards finally ran down the long driveway to find the mailbox and returned with a pizza flier that had been addressed to “Current Resident” and had the address on it. I'd handed Drostan my cellphone and told him to order us some pizza; he and his men had looked as if they could use some greasy, hot food. Then I had scried Killian.
My husbands—all of them—were on Earth. Daxon had scried Raza and Tiernan, and the Kings of Seelie and Unseelie had taken our children to visit their grandpa in Twilight, then hopped a plane from San Francisco to St. Louis. They'd crowded Killian's scry phone, each man needing to see for himself that I was all right, while I had tried to figure out how they could get to me.
But now, they were here, and we were drinking coffee in one of the mansion's many sitting rooms, this one on the ground floor. Drostan and his guards were with us, all of them a bit shell-shocked, but not so traumatized that they couldn't eat; empty pizza boxes were stacked on a table nearby. They had given their statements to Nightblade and Lance, listened to my accounting of events, then had sat back and sipped their coffee like it was ambrosia.
The hunter and extinguisher teams were off searching the house, especially the lab, but my Star's Guard had stayed behind to guard me. They stood around the edges of the room while the rest of us—my husbands, Wayne, Drostan, his guards, and me—sat on the pretty couches and drank our coffee. The drugs and all of Drostan's—ugh, I mean Varcan's—research were being boxed up to be taken to the St. Louis Human Council House for cataloging, examination, and then disposal. All but the samples they'd be sending to my Uncle Dylan for analyzing, that is. Although the drugs and research notes would be taken to the human council house, the hunters would be allowed access to the evidence as well given a front-row seat to its disposal. Everyone wanted to m
ake sure that shit was gone. It said a lot about Uncle Dylan and Gentry Tech that the Councils were allowing him to have even a sample of the drugs.
Thankfully, Varcan hadn't taken us too far from St. Louis. We were in a town called Belleville, just across the border in Illinois. The house had been purchased by a man named Harlan Gold, but Wayne couldn't find much information on him, so we assumed it was an alias. Wayne sat in a chair to my left, working on his laptop and occasionally speaking into his phone, and Killian was on his phone as well, but the rest of us were relaxing. Or maybe I should say processing.
My husbands and the Star Guard looked haggard. As bad as I'd had it, they'd had to deal with the fear of me being in the hands of criminals for nearly three weeks. The news that Drostan was imprisoned along with me, but not in the way they'd thought, had thrown them nearly as much as the Flame Witches and the mysterious militia.