Chapter 22
Wolf Moon, waxing gibbous
I wake up on some kind of fancy chaise, feeling more well rested and content than I have in . . . maybe ever. Who knew sorcery agreed with me like this?
I sit up and see we’re still in the same spell room. Winter is on a similar-looking chaise across from me, rubbing at her eyes like she’s a bit less awake than I am.
“That was quick,” I say to Savi, who is standing by one of her windows, frowning out at something I can’t see from my chaise. “I don’t know why I feel so . . .”
“Refreshed,” Winter contributes, around a yawn. “I don’t think I dreamed a single thing. It was glorious.”
“The good news is that the wards I created took hold, and they did it fairly quickly,” Savi tells us.
She turns back from her window, and I’m briefly distracted by all the flowing things she’s wearing that make her look like a sorceress of old in some video game.
“The bad news, I’m afraid, is that quickly in spell terms was still longer than expected. ”
I stretch my arms up over my head. “How long?”
“We started the spell work on Friday afternoon,” Savi says, managing to sound both apologetic and matter-of-fact at once. “It is now Sunday afternoon.”
“Oh shit,” Winter says, jumping up from her chaise. “Two days? Ariel is going to—”
“Ty,” I breathe, my heart kicking in. He’ll freak. He must already be—
“About that,” Savi says. She waves at the window she’s standing at, then indicates that the two of us should come closer.
Winter and I crowd in, staring at the scene unfolding before us.
It takes me a minute, but I recognize those woods.
“This is here,” I say. “This is your land.”
Half the pack is assembled outside Savi’s wards. They keep throwing themselves at the wards, checking for weaknesses. There is also a selection of terrified-looking mages with them, clearly doing their best to use magic to break in.
There is also what appears to be a whole battalion of vampires. They keep shifting in and out of their various smoky forms, fangs out, also testing the wards.
“How long have they been out there?” Winter asks, her eyes wide as she stares out.
“Oh, you know.” Savi sounds airy. “A minute.” She shrugs when I lift a brow at her. “Anyway, you’re both awake now. Might as well face your personal armies before they wreck the wards I have painstakingly erected over the course of many years.”
“This is not the time to play disappearing games,” is all I say, in a low voice, hoping Savi can see how serious I am. “Vin?a is no joke, and she’s all anyone’s thinking about right now.”
I remember the Connor of it all as I say that, but then, he turned out to be a minion too, didn’t he? So it’s all the same dance around the same death goddess that I grew up hearing about—the way humans tell ghost stories about Bloody Mary while looking in mirrors.
No one thought those prophecies would actually come true. That a mess of planets would align to bring on the Reveal and put Vin?a back into play. That she would do her very best to rise on Halloween.
That she’s apparently not imprisoned in the watery deep, as planned. That there are ribs involved and she’s currently lurking inside someone, waiting to bust out again.
Vin?a Vin?a Vin?a. I’m fucking tired of Vin?a.
“Vin?a is exactly who I was thinking about when I crafted this spell,” Savi retorts, looking like I slapped her.
Once again, I can see the cracks in her unbothered, smooth exterior.
She even scowls at me. “Do you think I have any desire to go head-to-head with that putrescent psychopath again? I can assure you that I do not. If the wards we now wear on our bones keep her away from us, all the better.” She tilts her chin up in a manner any wolf would read as instantly belligerent.
“I will tell your men this myself, not that I, a sorceress of old and mistress of the fate I choose, need to make myself palatable to males.”
Winter and I exchange a look and don’t point out that this is not a power issue for us. I don’t think I’d react well if Ty disappeared for a couple of days with no explanation. I’m more than happy for Savi to do the explaining on this one.
She is muttering again. Suddenly there’s a swirling sensation again, everything is golden and bright, and then we’re all standing in the snow some ways down the mountain from Savi’s house.
For a moment, there’s a kind of startled, intense pause.
Then the shouting kicks in.
Wolves are everywhere, baying and barking. Ty bounds toward me and knocks me down, then stands over me, all of his fur standing on end. I let him. When he’s clear there’s no threat, he starts licking me roughly, letting me know he was scared and he’s furious and he needs to make sure I’m okay.
“I am,” I tell him. I can see the indigo rings of his eyes, starker than usual today. “I’m okay.”
I say this a few more times, and then he shifts in a blur and hauls me up to my feet. His gaze moves over me, dark and assessing, and then it goes murderous when he turns it on Savi. He doesn’t let go of me while he does it.
“What the fuck were you doing in there?” he demands.
I can see that Ariel and Winter are standing pretty close together, with Ariel’s hand at her neck and a look on his face that I would not like aimed at me. Though Winter seems fine.
Savi doesn’t appear to be the vampire king’s favorite person right now either.
“I haven’t done that spell in a long time,” Savi is saying, very casually, as if she doesn’t notice the bared teeth aimed at her from two different species.
“I haven’t done it like this ever, actually.
I knew it would take a minute.” She smiles, fully serene, and by now I can read that smile.
It means she’s actually not the least bit sorry.
“I didn’t realize there would be quite so much of a time lapse. ”
When there is nothing but the sound of the wind in the trees and glowering from all sides, Savi lets out an elegant sort of tinkling laugh that she must surely know can only fan the flames. Maybe she’s tired of this winter already and looking for a little fire.
“We thought you were all dead,” Ty growls at her.
Ariel looks as if he’s been turned to stone. “That can still be arranged.”
“Don’t be silly,” Savi says, as if that is something the vampire king is renowned for. His giggly silliness. “If I was dead, all my wards would drop immediately and you could have strolled right in.” She looks at Ariel. “Surely you know that, vampire. You’ve seen enough wards in your time.”
“What I know,” Ariel says coldly, “is that sorceresses are inherently untrustworthy. As you have proven.”
“I don’t really know what happened,” Winter says then.
She has her hand on Ariel’s chest, and it sounds like she’s going off on a tangent, but there’s a certain gleam in her gaze that suggests to me she knows exactly what she’s doing.
“I personally feel more rested than I have since sometime in junior high school. I have to take that as a win. I didn’t know I could sleep that deeply. ”
She looks at me then, raising her brows, and something else occurs to me, too.
This valley succeeds the way that it does because these three intense and powerful beings get along.
Wasn’t that what Christmas dinner was about?
The vampire king has a consort now. I’m about to accept Ty’s claim to make me his queen.
Savi is a wild card, but whatever spell she did just bound Winter and me to her.
That makes all of us responsible for maintaining this peace.
No matter how many times Vin?a tries to mess it all up.
“Look at us,” I say. Soothingly. “We’re all fine. Crisis averted.”
When Ty gets me back to the den, however, he’s clearly not convinced. He insists on examining every part of me, scenting me on such an intimate level that if he wasn’t so furious, it would be hot.
“Two days,” he thunders at me, over and over again. “I thought you were dead, Maddox.”
“I would be able to feel if you were dead,” I remind him, after repeatedly assuring him that—as he could tell—I was alive and breathing and fine. “You should have been able to feel if I was.”
“That’s how we found you at Savi’s place, asshole,” he growls. But he’s all over me, his face in mine, and this isn’t our usual flash fire. He’s raw. “We couldn’t get to you, Maddox. I can’t be in a situation where I can’t get to you.”
I want to fight with him, but I know that if the situations were reversed, I’d be as ripped up about this as he is.
It was a blink of an eye to me. For him it was two interminable days when there have already been too many terrible things this fall.
This happened literally within hours of his finding out that his own VP, friend, and confidant betrayed him.
Everything he thinks he knows is inside out, and on top of that, I disappear?
I’d be a little bit feral myself if I were him.
I let him scent me all he likes. Until he’s satisfied that Savi didn’t plant any sorcerer’s land mines inside me, somehow.
“You don’t know what she did,” he growls at me.
I can feel it, though. “Savi is not our enemy,” I tell him.
Then I wrap myself around him and hold on while he rages a little bit. While he gets his panic out of his system. While he gets my scent all over him and can relax.
Eventually he pulls away and moves back on the bed, raking his hands over his face. Through his hair that is falling everywhere today, making him look like a wolf gone Viking.
“The full moon is three days from now,” he says when he speaks again. “We need to talk about that.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I assure him. “It’s a winter moon. It’s going to rise late and sullen and take its sweet time getting up there, too. And no matter when it does, I’ll be right there beside you, ready to go.”
The words I think he’s been waiting for all this time, not very patiently.
Today he frowns at me. “I don’t want you to do that.”