Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
Jack
“Are you ready?” Dyfri asks, standing in the middle of our living room with a small, enigmatic smile that I suspect means he’s about to do something that will probably give me a heart attack.
I’m not ready. I don’t think anyone could be ready for whatever this is. But I nod anyway, because backing down now would mean letting Dyfri face whatever’s waiting for us alone, and that’s not happening.
“Good.” He takes my hand, his fingers warm and reassuring against mine. “Try not to panic.”
“When you say, try not to panic...”
And then he’s leading me straight toward the wall.
I have about half a second to process the fact that we’re about to walk directly into solid brick before everything goes strange and disorienting. The wall seems to ripple around us like water, and suddenly we’re stepping through it as if it were made of mist.
“Fucking hell!” I breathe as we emerge on the other side.
“Language, dear Husband,” Dyfri says mildly, though I can hear the amusement in his voice.
I look back at what should be a wall and see nothing but empty air. “How many of the walls in our flat are actually walls?”
“About half,” Dyfri admits. “I’m very fond of secret passages.”
We’re standing in what appears to be a disused office building, all concrete and broken windows and the sort of industrial decay that suggests it’s been abandoned for years.
The December air cuts through my jacket like a knife, and I can see my breath misting in the cold.
Graffiti covers the lower walls, and there’s that distinct smell of damp and neglect that clings to forgotten places.
Three people are waiting for us in what might once have been a reception area.
The first I recognise immediately. The tall, blond Welshman who approached me in the rose garden.
He’s dressed down today, wearing jeans and a dark hoodie instead of an expensive suit, but those emerald green eyes are unmistakable.
There’s something regal and dangerous about the way he holds himself, like a coiled spring ready to unleash violence at a moment’s notice.
The second is a young man who looks like he’s stepped out of a particularly brooding music video.
Dark hair falls across sharp cheekbones, and he’s dressed entirely in black.
Fitted jeans, leather jacket, boots that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.
He’s beautiful in the way that dangerous things are beautiful, and when those dark eyes fix on me, I feel like prey being assessed by a predator.
There’s an aura of power around him that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, something primal and otherworldly that speaks to instincts I didn’t know I had.
The third person makes my chest tighten with an awful recognition, even though I’ve never seen him before.
He’s young, probably early twenties, with long blond hair tied back in a simple braid and the sort of otherworldly beauty that screams ‘fey’ even in human form.
But where Dyfri carries himself with confidence despite his past trauma, this young man seems to fold in on himself, hugging a steaming mug like it’s a lifeline.
The sadness radiating from him is almost palpable. I just know he is a victim of the Fey Court.
Dyfri immediately moves toward the young man, his entire demeanour shifting into something gentle and protective. He sits beside him on a makeshift bench and takes one of his hands with careful tenderness.
“Hello, Ninian,” he says softly. “How are you holding up?”
Ninian gives him a tremulous smile. “Better, now that you’re here. Though Silas has been making me drink his awful coffee again.”
“My coffee is perfectly adequate,” the dark-haired young man, Silas, says without looking up from the map he’s studying. “You’re just spoiled by fey luxuries.”
There’s no real heat in the words, and I catch the way his eyes flick toward Ninian with what might be concern.
“Silas,” Dyfri says, and there’s a note of amusement in his voice. “Jack doesn’t need to hear about your ongoing coffee disputes.”
So the intimidating one is Silas. I file that information away, along with the growing certainty that he’s something far more dangerous than he appears.
“Why did you bring him here?” Silas asks, those dark eyes fixing on me with calculating intensity. “He’s a nobody.”
“Hardly,” Dyfri replies calmly. “He’s the prime minister’s son. He has direct access to MI5 as well as military contacts. More importantly, he wants the same thing we do.”
Silas looks supremely unimpressed. “Polite political connections don’t win wars.”
“No,” the Welshman interjects, his accent thick. “But they can prevent unnecessary complications. He’s an asset, Silas.”
“If you say so.” Silas doesn’t sound convinced, but he turns his attention back to the maps spread across the table. “Though I reserve the right to say I told you so when this goes sideways.”
“Speaking of things going sideways, Cai,” Dyfri says, his tone taking on a sharp edge as he turns to the Welshman, “perhaps next time you could coordinate your recruitment efforts with the rest of us? You nearly blew everything by approaching Jack in the garden.”
Cai has the grace to look slightly abashed. “Time was a factor.”
“Time is always a factor. That doesn’t mean we abandon basic protocols.” Dyfri’s voice carries the authority of someone used to managing difficult personalities. “If anyone was going to recruit Jack, it was going to be me.”
Cai frowns. “I was planting the seeds. Seeing if he was receptive without you having to compromise yourself.”
“I appreciate the thought, but you should have discussed it with us first.”
The Welshman sighs. “You’re right.”
Dyfri nods in acceptance of his apology.
The easy way he chastises Cai, the respect Silas shows him despite his sarcasm, tells me more than any briefing could. These people have worked together before. Dyfri isn’t just involved in the Resistance. He’s one of its leaders.
“Right then,” Silas says, apparently deciding I’m not an immediate threat. “Let’s get on with it. I’ve got other shit to do.”
Over the next hour, I learn more about the scope of their abilities than I ever imagined possible.
Silas, it turns out, is the Grand Master of the Paranormal Council.
Every supernatural creature that was living on Earth before the fey invasion falls under his authority.
When he mentions having “legions at his command,” he’s not exaggerating.
Vampires, werewolves, demons, spirits, and things I don’t have names for, all answering to the young man who looks like he should be fronting a goth band.
“We’ve been here longer than humans have had written language,” he says matter-of-factly. “We’re not about to roll over for a bunch of interdimensional colonisers.”
The casual way he mentions necromancy as one of his specialities makes my blood run cold. When he talks about “consulting with the dead” for intelligence gathering, I start to understand why the temperature seems to drop whenever he’s particularly focused.
Cai leads the dragon riders, and when I press for details about numbers or capabilities, he just gives me that enigmatic smile and says, “Enough.”
And Ninian... Ninian is a portal expert who fled the Fey Court and has been living under the protection of the Resistance ever since. The way Dyfri’s jaw tightens when the conversation touches on why Ninian left the court tells me everything I need to know about what he survived there.
“The summer solstice is our target,” Silas is saying, leaning over a detailed map of London. “Maximum symbolic impact, and the fey will be distracted by their own celebrations.”
“What exactly are we targeting?” I ask.
Ninian speaks up for the first time since we arrived, his voice soft but sure. “The portal network. All of it.”
“We’re going to sever Earth’s connection to the fey realm permanently,” Dyfri explains. “No more quick routes home. No more reinforcements. No more escape.”
The implications hit me like a physical blow. “You mean...”
“Complete severance,” Silas confirms. “The portals will close forever. Any fey still on Earth when it happens will be trapped here permanently.”
“That gives them a choice,” Cai adds. “Go home and defend their realm against the unseelie attacks, or stay here and be cut off from their people and their world forever.”
“The unseelie attacks are confirmed?” I ask, my voice slightly hoarse.
Ninian nods miserably. “The scouts I still have contact with... the armies are already massing. It’s going to be a slaughter if the seelie don’t pull back soon.”
“Then we make sure they do,” Dyfri says firmly. “We force their hand.”
“How many portals are we talking about?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around the scale of what they’re planning.
“Seventy stable anchor points within England alone,” Ninian replies. “There is a main lynchpin somewhere, and we need to find it. If we can take that out and destabilise the others simultaneously, the entire network will collapse.”
“Simultaneously,” I repeat. “That’s...”
“A coordinated strike across multiple targets,” Silas finishes. “Which is why we need every asset we can get. Your government connections could be useful for accessing certain locations.”
As the meeting continues, I find myself increasingly awed by what they’ve accomplished.
This isn’t some hastily thrown-together Resistance movement.
They have supply networks, communication channels, safe houses, detailed intelligence on fey military positions.
They’ve built an entire shadow infrastructure.
And Dyfri has been at the centre of it all.
I watch him coordinate with these dangerous, powerful people like it’s second nature.
He knows their strengths, their limitations, their personal histories.
He speaks to Silas with the careful respect you’d show a loaded weapon, treats Ninian with gentle protectiveness, and matches Cai’s strategic thinking with insights that come from years inside fey power structures.
How long has he been planning this? How did he manage to build all this while maintaining his position as a loyal fey prince?
“The window is tight,” Ninian says, pulling out what looks like a complex astronomical chart. “The portal network is most vulnerable during the solstice alignment. We’ll have maybe thirty minutes to complete the severance before the magic stabilises again.”
“Thirty minutes,” Cai muses. “Cutting it close.”
“It’s enough,” Silas says with quiet certainty. “It has to be.”
When the meeting finally winds down and we’re preparing to leave, Dyfri pulls me aside.
“Questions?” he asks quietly.
“About a hundred,” I admit. “But the main one is... are you sure about this? Cutting the portals permanently? That means you can never go home either.”
Something shifts in his expression. “Some goals are worth any sacrifice.”
The simple honesty in his voice does strange things to my chest.
As we prepare to leave through a carefully crafted portal, I catch Silas watching me with what might be approval.
“Don’t get him killed,” he tells Dyfri, but his tone is almost gentle.
“I don’t intend to get anyone on my side killed,” Dyfri replies.
“Intentions don’t stop bullets. Or fey magic. Or portal collapses, for that matter.” Silas’s smile is sharp but not unkind. “Just be careful. Both of you.”
It’s a sobering reminder that what we’re planning isn’t just politically dangerous. We’re talking about severing magical connections, forcing an entire civilization to choose between abandoning Earth or being stranded here forever.
But as we step back through the portal into our flat, Dyfri’s hand warm in mine, I find that I’m not afraid.
We’re going to free our people. We’re going to force the seelie to choose between Earth and their homeland. And we’re going to do it together.
Whatever comes after, we’ll face that together too.
I refuse to let Dyfri down. And I refuse to let the fey occupation continue.
The summer solstice can’t come soon enough.