Chapter 50
Ash
This is going to be a disaster.
I know it the way I know ambush weather. The air changes before the first shot.
We walk across the clover toward the tavern and the bonds at my wrist go tight. Silver-blue sharp enough to sting. Gold warm against my pulse. Orange pulling like a hand on my sleeve.
Here goes nothing.
It’s fine, everything is fine. Just my family meeting the Fae I’ve already bonded to for my very long, very immortal life.
Kieran stands in the doorway. Arms crossed. He’s already taken in my cousins, head to toe. His face gives nothing away, but I know the way his mind works.
Too quickly. Too sharp.
Orion leans against the wall beside him. Just casually appearing unreasonably large. His amber gaze finds mine and doesn’t let go.
Finnian still sits on the bench. Legs crossed. A book open on his knee that he’s definitely not reading.
“Oh,” Vanessa says. “Oh, they’re pretty.”
“Nessy.” My cheeks go red. They burn—which is interesting, because it’s the first time I’ve been embarrassed around them.
It’s fine. Everything is fine.
“The dark one looks like he could snap my spine.” She tilts her head. “I’m into it.”
“That’s Kieran. And he absolutely could.” I pause. “Snap your spine, I mean.”
“The red one smells like a furnace.” Vanessa inhales deep, nostrils flaring, and her pupils slit vertically for half a second. “And old magic. Very old.”
“Orion. No biting.”
“And Mr. Darcy over there with the book?” Pepper nods toward Finnian.
“That’s Finnian. He’s—”
“Let me guess.” She cuts me off. “Yours and no biting. I won’t.”
“Ah, yes.”
And then the awkward silence settles. No one looks at anyone else. They all stand there while I hope the earth—
Pause. I can actually make that happen.
I count three heartbeats of silence. Pepper’s hand rests on the doorframe. Kieran’s shadows are completely still at his feet, which means he’s controlling them hard. Orion’s weight has shifted forward onto the balls of his feet.
Everyone in this clearing is deciding whether to fight or play nice.
“Welcome to the borderlands.” Kieran shatters the silence. “Your journey must have been—”
“Long, murderous, and mostly uphill.” Pepper walks past him into the tavern without waiting for an invitation. “Where’s the bar?”
Kieran’s mouth opens. Closes. His eyes cut to me.
I shrug. “That’s Pepper.”
“I gathered.”
Sabina stops in the doorway. Gives Kieran the look. Boots to jaw. I’ve seen her do it to wolves, to gods, to Pepper’s mates when they first showed up. It takes about three seconds and it’s never wrong.
“You’re the Unseelie prince.” She definitely not asking him a question. “The one whose father runs the court Ash needs to take.”
“That is...a mostly accurate summary.”
“And you chose her over your birthright.”
A muscle works in Kieran’s jaw. “I chose what matters.”
Three seconds. Then the nod. The one she doesn’t give to anyone who hasn’t earned it.
She walks inside.
Kieran exhales. Barely. But I catch it.
Vanessa doesn’t go inside. She goes to Orion. Circles him once. Twice. Sunglasses up. Full dragon eyes.
She sniffs his collarbone.
He doesn’t flinch. Just raises an eyebrow. “And you’re the dragon.”
“Mhm.” She sniffs again. Closer. “You’re missing something. Right here.” She taps his sternum. “There’s a hole. Big one. Shaped like a bowl.”
Every muscle in Orion’s body goes tight.
The bond lurches. His pain, not mine. The hollow where the Cauldron used to be, wide open, and Vanessa just stuck her finger in it.
“Nessy—”
“It’s fine.” Orion’s voice is steady but the bond says otherwise. “She’s right. Something was taken.”
“You should get it back. You’re leaking.” She tilts her head. “Magic. Out the hole. Like a bucket with no bottom.” She pats his chest once and walks inside.
Orion stands very still.
There was no way to warn them what they’re like. And maybe, looking at us four from an aerial view—we really are four terrifying women.
“Your cousin just told me I’m leaking like a bucket.”
“Is she wrong?”
“No.” He looks at his chest. “She’s not.”
We follow the others inside and the doorframe is narrow enough that Orion and I brush shoulders going through. The bond sparks at the contact, brief and electric, and then I’m inside and the tavern is full of people I love and I can’t breathe for a second.
Not panic. The opposite. Like walking into a room that’s been empty your whole life and finding it furnished.
Pepper’s already behind the bar because of course she is.
Sabina’s running her fingers along the wood grain like she’s reading its history.
Vanessa has disappeared toward whatever smells like meat.
And my guys are filing in behind me, their magic pressing against the walls alongside my cousins’ magic, and the tavern groans under the weight of all of us.
Both halves of my life. One room.
It’s all so different now.
Finnian’s book is gone and I don’t know when he lost it, but he’s at the bar with Sabina now and his hands hover over her forearm where the arrow tattoos shift and ripple under her skin.
“These are Artemis-forged sigils,” he says, not quite touching. “Third generation inheritance markings. The lattice structure alone—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Sabina flaps her hand. “Magic arrows. They go where I want them. The divine lineage stuff, you know.” She squints at him. “You’re the one who memorized her heartbeat.”
Finn blushes and my gods, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Ash told you.”
“Ash told us a lot of things.” Sabina leans against the bar. “Including that you,” she points at him, “committed treason. For her.”
“Treason is a strong word.” He looks at me almost for help.
“It’s the right word, though.”
He doesn’t look away. “Yes.”
The nod. Same one she gave Kieran. Two for two.
Pepper has found the alcohol. She’s behind the bar because Pepper always ends up there, pouring something amber into glasses with the efficiency of a woman who’s been tending since she was old enough to reach the taps. Which she has, even back when she was too young to legally be there.
Her fingers spark purple against the bottle neck and the glasses slide toward their targets on their own.
She doesn’t even notice she’s doing it. The Fae wood hums under her palms, responding to the chaos magic the way the forest floor responded to my thorns.
Kieran’s shadows twitch at his feet. He clocks the same thing I do.
My cousin’s magic talks to Faerie. That’s going to be interesting later.
“The big guy.” She nods toward the kitchen. “Dagda?”
“That’s him.”
“He gave me a beer the size of my head and told me my chaos magic is—and I quote—delightfully unhinged.” She looks almost offended. “I think I like him.”
“Everyone likes Dagda. It’s annoying.” It really is.
“The BBQ smells amazing.” Pepper barely finishes the sentence before Vanessa is gone. Not walking. Not even running exactly. Just one second she’s beside me and the next she’s vaulted the bar and disappeared through the kitchen door like a woman possessed. Or like a dragon who smelled ribs.
A crash. A grunt from Dagda that shakes the walls. The sound of something ceramic hitting the floor followed by the most aggressive, unashamed slurping I’ve ever heard in my life.
“That’s a whole rack of ribs!” Dagda bellows from somewhere behind the wreckage.
“Was,” Vanessa calls back, her mouth clearly full. “Was a whole rack.”
Kieran looks at me with the expression of a man reevaluating every choice that led him to this moment.
I shrug. “She’s a dragon.”
“I gathered.” He keeps saying that. I think it’s becoming his coping mechanism.
The tavern is too small for all of us. It’s in the walls. Too much magic in one room. The wood groans. Dagda emerges from the kitchen with a platter that could feed a small village and sets it on the nearest table like a Fae charcuterie.
“Question.” Sabina sidles up to me. “That one. She creeps me out.”
She’s pointing to Badb. “She is,” I exhale. “That’s Badb.” I point to Macha who is throwing darts. “Macha.” Then to Morrigan. Sitting on the other side of the room, a slight smile on her face.
“And her?” Sabina elbows me.
“Morrigan.”
She hums. “Tell me about her.”
“You know how growing up, Artemis was secretly Grandma?” I lick my lips. “Morrigan, she raised me in a way I only hope to completely remember one day.”
“Before?” she leaves the word hanging.
“Before.” I look at her. “Before Mom, Dad.”
I focus on the life exploding around me and catch fragments I can’t hold onto fast enough.
Vanessa’s voice from the corner—”depends on how fresh the kill is”—and Orion’s laugh cutting across it, startled and real, overlapping with Sabina’s hand going flat on the bar the way it does when she’s winning—”Taxonomy is a cage, not a framework”—while Finnian’s eyebrows climb toward his hairline and behind me, Pepper’s chaos magic makes the bottles rattle softly on the shelf and something loud and ancient drifts out of the kitchen that might be Dagda singing or might be a war cry. Hard to tell with him.
Everyone talking at once. No one waiting for turns.
My cousins’ voices braided through my guys’ voices in a way that shouldn’t work and somehow does, and I can’t track all of it but I try anyway because I want to remember this.
Whatever happens next, I want to remember what it sounded like when everyone I loved was in one room and no one was dying.
Vanessa passes behind me on her way to steal more food from the kitchen and leans down close enough that her breath hits my ear.
“The scholar is the most dangerous one in this room,” she says, the way you’d mention the weather. “You know that, right?”
And she’s gone before I can respond, which is probably for the best because I don’t have a response. I’ve known since the Dark Forest, since I watched him cut through a camp of twenty with a sword that shouldn’t exist and come out the other side with blood on his hands and hunger in his eyes.
That doesn’t mean I wanted to hear it said out loud. Some things are easier to carry when they don’t have words yet.
Kieran sits at the edge. Watching. The way he does.
Pepper is beside me at the bar, close enough that our elbows almost touch.
Almost.
I feel that quarter inch like a blade.
Three years ago there wouldn’t be air between us. Three years ago her elbow would be in mine.
I don’t close the gap.
“He watches you,” she says. Not specifying which one.
“They all watch me.”
“Not like that.” She’s looking at Kieran. “The other two look at you like they can’t believe their luck.” She takes a drink. “That one’s already figured out how to lose you.”
He won’t lose me. But I get it. It’s probably the same emotion I feel when I look at them. That same ache in my heart I can’t quite name though I know how to.
I look at them like I know how to lose them. I know how precious it is that they exist. That they’re here.
Moments come too fast and snatch everything away. Holding something you love close, knowing you could lose it—that’s the real gamble with love, isn’t it?
I take a drink and the amber burns going down in a way that feels like punctuation.
“Kieran doesn’t—”
“I’ve got five mates, Ash.” Her voice is flat. “I know what it looks like when a man loves someone so much it’s already breaking him. Jasper did the same thing for two years before I finally told him to stop mourning me while I was still alive.”
I look at something else.
Vanessa laughs at something Orion says and his whole face opens. I’ve only ever seen that look aimed at me.
Huh.
Finnian’s eyes find mine across the room. Are you all right?
I nod.
He goes back to Sabina. And I go back to pretending.
Everyone in this room came for me. Crossed worlds. Bled.
And I still feel like I’m borrowing something that isn’t mine.
They came because they’re good people. Not because—
I take a drink and hide the thought somewhere I can never look at it again.
“Hey.” Pepper’s voice. Quiet enough that only I hear it. “Your face just did a thing.”
“I’m fine.”
“Liar.” She doesn’t push it. Just sits beside me with that quarter inch of air and lets me lie.
She shows up. She doesn’t leave the light on, but she shows up.
I don’t know which is harder.
Across the room, Kestra appears in the doorway. She takes one look at the scene and her eyes find mine immediately.
“Ash.” Her voice carries something I don’t like. “We need to leave. Now.”