Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Aether sent me home. I braced for pain and got exactly what I expected.
It tore through me on impact, sharp, immediate, and familiar. My fingers curled wrong, stiff and uncooperative, like they didn’t quite belong to me yet. Muscles lagged behind thought. Breathing became shallow.
My spirit settled back into my body like it had no other choice–because it sure as hell didn’t. I’d been sent back.
I lay there, caught somewhere between waking and not, time stretching while my body struggled to catch up. It always went like this, whether I’d been gone mere minutes or much longer, whether I’d crossed too far or only brushed the edge.
This time, I knew exactly how far I’d gone.
My chest tightened before anything else fully worked. Not from pain but from absence.
I forced my eyes open. Eyesight returned first, followed by the fine motor movements that allowed me to push the hair free from my face.
The vaulted ballroom ceiling swam into view, white and gold catching the light in soft gleams. Intricate beams crossed overhead, and their familiarity should have grounded me but it didn’t.
For a split second, stupid and impossible, I expected lost souls to be there surrounding me, waiting, watching me come alive.
The space beside me stayed empty.
Torment in my chest folded in on itself before I stopped it. Power followed the pain, spreading fast beneath my skin, sealing what death had broken. Magic moved to smooth over the damage and force everything wrong into rightness.
Aelthira had been right when she said I wasn’t meant to stay dead.
That didn’t make waking feel like a win.
Air filled my lungs, deeper this time. My fingers twitched, then curled properly. Control returned in pieces and awareness followed.
But this fabric—
Too stiff and formal, filled with the faint scent of flowers and wax and still air.
I’d been arranged. Prepared. For a funeral.
They’d laid me out between the tall arches of windows overlooking the garden and courtyard, like something meant to be admired or mourned.
Or worse: to serve as a warning.
I stared up at the ceiling, breath steadying, body knitting itself together until my arms flexed at my sides. This was real and solid.
Not alone.
Somewhere out there I had people waiting for me, and when the thought came, deliberate this time, I seized it. I was chosen, but not like before. The quiet hollow space in my chest slowly filled. I felt the loss but it didn’t ruin me.
A long black dress pooled beneath me. The neckline rose beneath my chin, the sheath cut tight at the waist and flowing down to my bare feet. Black lace fell from the shoulders in lieu of literal sleeves.
I sat up, dizziness trickling away the longer I stayed conscious.
Where were the guards? They’d left me alone, no one standing watch over my body.
It took several moments for all five senses to return. That’s what happened when one literally rose from the dead.
My jaw worked, tongue traveling over my teeth. All was well there. I tasted more floral bitterness on my tongue, lavender and rosemary for remembrance. A sendoff to make sure I passed through to the Summerlands?
No one expected me to return.
I shook my head, and felt my hair pinned tight to the crown of my head. Veins popped and fizzed with magic, my balance off-centered. I slapped a palm to the side of my head and with a final pop, hearing returned.
It came with a shrill scream.
Shouts rebounded off the stone, the sound snagging on the cracks in the mortar, imparting their memory into the castle walls to hold forever.
Nearby weapons clanged, an uproar of feet pounding against ancient tile and stone. The castle braced for battle and found it outside the relative calm of my not-so-final resting place.
Shouts grew, the frenzy stirred by something, or someone, outside the ballroom. I inched off the marble platform, cool enough to remind me of the dolmen. Eventually I found my legs, and folds of black draped around my bare feet.
“One step at a time.”
The warble of my voice shocked me into silence. Was that me? Or was it someone grinding two stones against each other to create sparks?
Hard won steps, slow and agonizing, brought me to the door. My heart thudded out a tempo in time with the crash of weapons and pulse of magic. Each clang was a call of the dead, heading to the place I’d recently escaped from.
I inched out of the ballroom into a fight turning the hallway of King Tywin’s castle into a killing field.
Dorian’s shifters, direwolves, and Unseelie formed a fleshy barrier between door and great hall. Mismatched armor with his insignia branded into leather and metal protected them from the worst enchantments from my soldiers. They held their own.
Wait…my soldiers? How the hell they—or I, for that matter—ended up in the royal castle, I had no clue.
Familiar features stuck out amidst the fray, a flash of green hair, muscles on a fighter with veins as blue as the ocean pulsing beneath his skin, a pink pixie wielding a marble statue as a flail.
Equally familiar magic brushed against my senses like a welcomed friend. In the midst of my people—
Captain Hezarwick, commander of the guards of the king’s personal retinue, bellowed out a warning before gutting an enemy soldier. The man fell to his knees and Hezarwick pulled his sword free.
However it happened, the castle guard fought against Dorian Jade. Not against my people.
What brought us to Eahsea? What did I miss?
This battle spilled blood on the pristine floor of the oldest castle in Faerie. Yet…
The peace and serenity I’d cultivated in the Summerlands lingered. A glow, my glow, the one that pushed open the gate to the walled city, changed me in some soul-deep level outside of my understanding.
None of my usual panic surfaced at finding myself in the epicenter of battle, or my friends being at risk.
Power flowed in a steady stream and the individual elements of war broke themselves down into smaller pieces. The elements making up the foundation of the fighting.
I stood a moment longer before my Fae magic rose, twining higher with the lifesaving power from the best witch I knew. My wolf provided the spine, the solidity for all three magics to work in harmony.
When I called, it came. Easily. Potent.
A small flick of my fingers froze Dorian’s people. One paused mid-movement, the tip of his sword inches away from one of my soldier’s necks.
I exhaled and another wave took down the zombies Dorian had called up. Those I had no qualms about destroying. They should not exist in the first place.
Time slowed, the elements of it a visible weave binding the people together. It flowed like gravity and I moved with it, tiptoeing through the battle and leaving a wake of frozen people behind me.
Magic disintegrated the moment it birthed. Killing curses, fire, water, earth, tornadoes—all spells ceased because I willed it so.
This fight was over before it began, years in the making and done in a blink.
I stepped over bodies and another push of magic froze an oncoming wave of enemies. Several people on my side stopped as their weapons fell. And in the echo of those fallen swords and shields I caught my reflection.
Glowing again.
A small smile teased the corners of my lips high and the glow spread. It blushed my cheeks, gilded my fingers.
No more fighting. No more harm done to anyone simply because they were different from someone else. In the end, we all traveled to the Summerlands.
If we made the choice, we all moved past the walled city to the great Beyond. The Aether showed me that.
I thought of Aelthira, of Onyx’s face when he’d made the jump. My parents, blissful and ecstatic, together again.
These memories called up more magic until people on both sides stopped fighting.
I moved my fingers through the air, riding the currents of time and gravity, my wolf singing in my blood. Someone blanched and promptly keeled over when I walked past. Poor guy.
Most of them probably knew I was dead. They were watching a literal phantom. If the element of surprise was on my side, then I’d use it. Gleefully.
The entry doors to the castle had been blown wide open. Wood thicker than a man’s torso hung on hammered hinges. They creaked when I passed, a greeting, and I moved into the garden. Flowed through it.
This was why I came home. The way I was always meant to come home.
A figure stumbled out of the crowd, parting from the circle of guards around him. Kendrick Grimaldi stared at me with wide, wild eyes. His hair stood on end and veins bulged in his muscles, distorting the lines of his tattoos.
Even without his wolf, Kendrick survived.
An old man, a cruel and sadistic ancient, faced with a ghost.
We stared at each other for a long moment before his lips snarled over cracked yellow teeth. “It’s not possible. You’re not fucking here!” His surprise turned to ready rage.
“Old human men have no business being here, Kendrick.” My voice held firm the longer I spoke. “Whatever you promised to deliver to Dorian for bringing you over, he got the worst end of the bargain.”
“Just fucking die and stay dead, you bitch,” Kendrick growled and rushed at me.
His victory was close enough for him to taste it and I recognized its tang in the air, something harsh and metallic. He was drowning in it.
So I let him drown and sidestepped his attack cleanly.
He lunged for me again, and without touching him, my power wrapped around his wrist. A sharp tug brought him to his knees hard enough to crack the flagstones beneath us.
Kendrick howled, eyes bugging out of his head. I could play with him. I could toy with him the way he had with so many people, using his ugly and harsh black magic to prolong his life.
But peace enveloped me and any desire for retribution I’d once had disappeared.
“I can’t let you hurt anyone ever again.”
He lifted his face to mine. My power squeezed around him, cutting off circulation as my wolf rose, joyous.
“I don’t know where you’re going, but I hope you enjoy it there.” I waited precious seconds until understanding dawned.