Chapter 1
Chapter One
“You updated the mate log, correct?” Xavier asked.
“Of course.” Who knew that fated mates were a thing? I hadn’t. “It’s mostly a shifter thing, right?”
“Mostly.” Xavier shoved a giant box across his desk, the weight of it scraping against the polished wood.
“Add that to secured storage,” he instructed, barely glancing up from his computer screen.
Behind him, the wild lights of the necropolis pulsed through the wall of windows, the sky choked with ominous clouds rippling with ethereal lightning.
Three months working for Xavier across the Veil, and I still hadn’t gotten used to the display. Unnerving. Breathtaking. A lot like my boss himself, with his sharp features, silver hair, and a presence that screamed otherworldly, no matter how human he looked.
“Luca?” Xavier’s voice snapped me back. His storm-gray eyes locked onto mine. How long had I been staring? “The sword?”
“Oh. Right.” I grabbed the box, nearly staggering at the weight. “It’s a sword?”
“‘Curse Cleaver’ is a stupid name for a dagger. Take it to the secure storage for magical weapons.”
My nose itched just being near the thing.
Stupid, sensitive nose. A damn side effect of the ‘variance’ that hit me after that mystery cold three months ago.
One day I was human, sneezing my way through a nasty fever, and the next, I was a shifter with a nose that could sniff out magic like a bloodhound.
Getting fired from my accounting job was bad enough.
Losing control of the change in the middle of the office?
Worse. It was like pissing yourself in public.
Except instead of wet pants and humiliation, you lost your thumbs, your voice, and any last shred of dignity as coworkers started cooing “Here, kitty kitty” at your newly furry ass.
Ending up as Xavier’s personal assistant had been the only boon.
The pay was divine, literally, but no amount of godly generosity could make hauling cursed artifacts, wrangling supernatural nutjobs, or enduring politicians who looked at me like gum stuck to their Italian leather shoes feel any less like glorified janitor duty.
Especially when your boss could smite you with a glance.
“Be back in a few,” I muttered, hauling the box toward the elevator.
Sylas leaned against the wall beside it, looking bored.
His long red hair, unnaturally vibrant, like something out of an anime, marked his supernatural presence as one half of the twins.
Yin and yang, though I had no clue which was really which of that dynamic.
His brother, white to his red, was no doubt lurking nearby.
Kitsunes by nature, not at all native to the human world I’d been born in, were tricksters to the core, and they could be dangerous, or so Xavier warned, though neither bothered me. Sometimes clients disappeared around them, and I knew enough to be wary.
“I’ll escort you down,” Sylas said as I hit the button.
I eyed the box. “Should I be worried?”
“Not this time.”
Not ominous at all.
The doors slid shut, and down we went.
Sylas waited at the elevator while I made my way through the two shielded doors and to the weapons vault.
What did Xavier need with an enchanted arsenal?
I never asked. Rather, I liked to think he was good for all of humanity, or non-humanity too, by keeping dangerous magical weapons contained.
Maybe he was planning for the next war and gathering arms for his people, which I was now technically a part of as new shifter stock.
But I tried to think positively of most people until they proved otherwise.
The vault hummed with spells and electronic wards as I heaved the box onto a shelf already crowded with blades: a rapier that whispered in French, a cleaver that dripped black ichor no matter how often it was cleaned, and a katana wrapped in something’s peeling skin. Gross.
Just another Wednesday.
I headed back up, humming absently along to Huntrix’s “Golden,” until the elevator lights blinked. Sylas growled. I took a step back. No one wanted to be stuck in an elevator with a grumpy kitsune, and what the hell was with the lights?
My watch buzzed with a reminder of a meeting. The Summer Court’s envoy had likely already arrived, and the meeting was in four minutes. Fuck. I hadn’t even had a chance to lay out refreshments.
The elevator doors opened as Keanan, Sylas’s twin, showed a willowy man with glowing gold hair and eerie butter-colored eyes through the loft toward Xavier’s office.
The attire looked like something out of a high-end fantasy novel based in Europe, frumpy and filled with ruffles.
But if I stared too long, the man flickered, an outline of wings fluttering before his appearance restabilized.
“Wrong time of year for that sort of bastard,” Sylas grumbled.
“Yeah?” I asked quietly as we exited the elevator.
“Summer Fae rarely leave their court in winter.”
“Maybe it’s super important.”
“Hmm,” Sylas said without commitment.
The envoy held a painting, its shape obvious beneath the butcher paper wrap, and ignored our arrival as I rushed to beat them to Xavier’s office.
I peeked in the room to ensure Xavier was ready.
He was, though focused on something on his computer screen.
Behind him, white flakes floated in the strange dark fluorescent ombre of the sky over the Veil outlined through the window.
Snow across the Veil? The holidays were coming.
My first as a variant, and I’d been avoiding my family for fear of being cast out.
“I’ll bring coffee and snacks,” I said. Happy to be busy, if nothing else.
“Tea,” Xavier corrected.
I flinched. Xavier hated tea. “Right away,” I agreed as I nodded to Keanan, gave the envoy a slight bow, and raced to the kitchen to turn on the electric kettle and gather up snacks.
I shoved a tray of shortbread into the oven to warm, hoping the smell would ease any tensions as dealing with the Greater Fae was never a pleasant experience.
The electric kettle hissed like a pissed-off cat as I arranged tea on the tray.
Not that Xavier had a lot of options beyond Earl Grey or chamomile.
“Fucking fairies,” Sylas muttered from his post between the office and kitchenette.
I paused. “Uh… which kind?”
He shot me a withering look. “Greater Fae. The kind who think riddles substitute for conversation.”
“Right.” ’Cause I had a lot of experience with those? The timer dinged. I grabbed the shortbread, sliding one to Sylas, hoping to ease his grumpy mood. His twin watched from outside Xavier’s office doorway, silent as a shadow. I offered him a cookie as I passed with the tray.
He took it without blinking. “They’re arguing,” he said. “As if the Fae have any power in Xavier’s territory.” He opened the office door for me. “And to arrive in the offseason of their power shows disrespect.”
Inside, the air hummed with tension. The envoy’s wings flickered at the edges of my vision, like a film reel glitching. I fixed my gaze on the teapot. Professional. Polite. Don’t stare at the goddamn wings.
Xavier leaned against the front of his desk, radiating disinterest, ankles crossed, arms folded over his chest, gaze above our heads.
The fae paced the room. The painting leaned against the wall, no longer wrapped, a vibrant ocean at sunset scene.
My gaze fell to it as if drawn by magic.
I’d always been a sucker for bright colors and pretty art.
Molten gold bled into deep plum, the kind of sky that belonged to a world where the sun died after a heroic tale of vanquishing demons.
Below, the ocean churned in a secluded cove, waves lashing at jagged rocks like they were trying to carve something new into the land.
Memories, life, or consequences perhaps, as the stormy sea glowed an eerie dark teal of a deep-sea trench.
The brushstrokes sculpted with texture and movement, curled the waves in white foam crests, dark depths gaping between like a giant mouth swallowing all the secrets beneath.
My younger days of art classes, hidden from parents who wanted a son more focused on business, reignited a passion to study the lines in the span of a heartbeat.
My breath hitched, hands tightening on the tray, and I couldn’t drag my gaze away from the scene. The water felt real. As if I listened hard enough, the sound of waves crashing would fill my senses, and something beneath, calling to me, like a siren song whispering to my soul.
“Luca.”
Xavier’s voice shattered the trance.
I gasped and swallowed hard, yanking my focus away from the art and to my boss. “Sorry!” I said and rushed to set the tray down on the top of the desk.
Neither of them sat, though the fae stopped pacing.
Xavier waved at me to leave. I rushed for the door, half tripping over my own feet as I passed the painting, thinking I caught a glimpse of something in the water. Perhaps it had been a change of direction revealing a new detail?
“Consider it a token,” the envoy said. “A reminder of… shared visions.”
“I’m not certain our vision aligns,” Xavier said, his voice cool. “It feels more like a warning.”
The envoy sputtered. “Of course not. My Queen would never…”
The office door clicked shut behind me, sealing away their argument.
In the kitchen, I cleaned the counters and restored the area to magazine cover perfection, the memory of the painting’s detail and blazing color burned into my mind.
Something about it felt… sad? Was it the sunset?
Perhaps the distant hint of storm clouds rising?
The meeting ended abruptly only a few minutes later.
The envoy swept past the kitchen without a glance, his form flickering from human back to something more bug-like the whole way.
As if his agitation made it hard for him to hold his shape, or perhaps his glamour, as I knew Fae were famous for that.
He didn’t take the painting with him.
Xavier stood in his office, towering over the painting, expression grim.
“It’s pretty,” I told him.
“On the surface,” Xavier said, “a lot of things are pretty.”
I stared at the painting, again drawn to the strokes defining the waves. The entire painting felt like it was moving, as though staring long enough would rock me to sleep. Or with the storm hinting in the corner, perhaps it would drown me in violent turbulence.
“You used to paint, didn’t you?” Xavier asked after a long moment, tearing my focus from the art.
I cleared my throat. “I guess. Before life got in the way. Work. Family expectations. All that. I was never very good.”
We both stood there another few minutes, the silence stretching awkwardly, and my gaze was drawn back to the painting. “Should I take it to storage?”
Xavier huffed, and I turned to meet his eyes, flinching at the restrained rage behind them. Had I done something wrong? “You like it, don’t you?”
I blinked at him, then glanced at the painting and back to him. “Uh, it’s beautiful. Sort of haunting. But the mastery of the strokes is something I’ve never seen outside of an art history book before.”
He gave an absent nod, then turned away, heading back to his seat at his desk. “Take it home with you.”
“What?”
“You like it. Take it home with you.”
“Won’t the Fae get mad?”
“I don’t share their visions, and they aren’t allowed to take back gifts.”
I bent to pick up the painting, surprised by the weight of it. “It won’t attack me in my sleep or something, right? Drown my family or curse me with boils?”
“As if I’d give you something like that.”
Alrighty then. With the painting tucked under my arm, I made my way out of his office, planning to drop the painting off at home as I ran errands for him.
“Never question the prerogative of gods,” Keanan muttered as I passed him.
In the kitchen, Sylas crunched a cookie with deliberate loudness and laughed. Assholes. Both of them.