Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Ava woke to the sound of voices carrying through the opera house—voices that definitely didn't belong to Lysander, Bitty, or Serrik. But she knew them all the same. Her eyes snapped open as she recognized the familiar cadences of argument echoing from the main theater.
Nos and Ibin.
Shit, shit, fuck-fuck-fuck—
Rolling out of bed, she hastily pulled on her clothes as the voices grew more urgent.
The last thing she needed was there to be a fight in her absence.
Jogging out of the room, she headed toward the theatre.
By the time she made it there, Nos and Ibin were standing just in front of the stage, both of them looking disheveled and exhausted.
“—have to warn her!” Ibin shouted. “Don’t you get it, you utter pillock? He's gathering forces. Unseelie who've been scattered by the merger, constructs born from human nightmares, anything that can fight and kill. He finally has his way, and there’s no one here who can stop him except you two!”
Serrik had descended from his web and taken human form. He was standing on the stage, his arms crossed over his chest, staring down at the two fae with an expression that was as hard and cold as a marble statue’s.
Lysander sat on the edge of the stage in his humanoid form, while Bitty clutched his arm, hiding behind him, her wings occasionally buzzing nervously at her back.
“Warn me about what?” Ava slowed her jog to a walk as she got close enough to them
Ibin turned to see her, her face instantly lighting up in relief. The Seelie ran toward her and hugged her tightly. “Ava! Thank the stars you’re safe!”
“Define safe,” Ava replied through a laugh as she returned Ibin’s hug. “But it’s good to see you. I’m glad you both made it through that mess okay. Hi, Nos.”
Nos frowned, but bowed his head to her. “Greetings, Weaver.”
They hadn’t ever really been on the best of terms. And that was fine. “How’d you know where to find us?”
Ibin sheepishly raised her hand, taking a step back from Ava. “I don’t know how exactly to explain it, except that you’re…a bit of a lighthouse in the dark.”
Yeah, that tracked. She was the Web, and Ibin was a dream-thing. “And you’ve come with news that Valroy’s not wasting time, from what it sounds like?”
“We found him yesterday.” Nos’s mis-matched jaw twitched. “Or rather, I should say that he found us. He slaughtered a Seelie lord in front of us. Needless to say, the treaty is no longer in place.”
None of that was a surprise. But it was still a disappointment.
Ava just wished she had more time. Time to adjust, time to get her feet under her—time to spend with Serrik.
She felt like she was finally getting to know him, even just a little.
Rubbing a hand down her face, she let out a sigh.
People were dying because of what she’d done.
She didn’t get to sit around and ignore that.
“Great. Well, he’s nothing if not predictable. ”
Nos shut his eyes, his expression grim. “Many Unseelie rally to his side, those who share his bloodlust. And…many humans, as well, kneel at his feet—desiring survival, or power, or wanton destruction in their own right.”
“How long until he starts to march?” Ava wasn’t a military commander. She had no idea what she was doing. Besides, she had no idea what she even had at her disposal to fight with. How could they possibly stop Valroy?
Well, they did have Serrik. And her. Even if she was liable to make matters worse by breaking reality farther than she was to make it any better.
“Hours. Maybe. And he’s close.” Ibin frowned.
“Right.” Ava felt the weight of the world—three worlds—settle on her shoulders.
This sucked balls. “Okay. So. Plan. We need a plan. If we don’t know how to un-fuck reality immediately, we need to stop or at least slow down Valroy until we do.
Serrik, what do you know about him, and how we can slow him down?
Lysander, do you know anything about Unseelie military tactics? Bitty, I’m going to need you to scope—”
“No.”
The single word, spoken with quiet finality, stopped Ava in her tracks. She turned to stare at Serrik. “I’m sorry, what?”
“No.” His expression was neutral. Unflinching and hard. This time, the coldness had reached his eyes. “We will be going nowhere near him. In fact, we shall be leaving this…amalgamation of a city, and retreating to a safe distance.”
Silence stretched between them as everyone just stared at Serrik, herself included.
Finally, Ava laughed. “I’m sorry, fucking what?” She pointed up the aisle toward the lobby. “Your half-brother is out there slaughtering people and preparing for mass genocide and you want to run and hide?”
“A strategic retreat. Until a plan can be devised.” Serrik might as well have been a statue for all the shits he clearly gave about her yelling at him. “A proper plan.”
“Are you out of your goddamn mind? We have to stop him!” She threw up her hands. “People are dying out there because of what I—what we—did! I’m not going to turn tail!”
“And that is unfortunate.” His tone remained infuriatingly calm. “But the humans are not, and have never been, our responsibility.”
“Not our—” She had to pace away a few steps, laughing quietly in disbelief.
“Oh my fucking god, Serrik. Not our responsibility? Not our responsibility! You dragged me into the Web. You force-fed me that spider. You made me—all of this—all of this! In the name of your schemes and your designs. And now innocent people are going to die at Valroy’s hands, the same innocent lives you claimed you wanted to protect by murdering all the fae in the universe, and you just want to let him do it?
Let Valroy slaughter thousands and thousands of people?
Millions, by the time he’s done?” Turning back to face him, she had to check her anger.
The lights were flickering. Taking a deep breath, she held it, and let it out, forcing herself to calm down.
She didn’t want to take out her fury on her friends.
Serrik, maybe.
Her friends didn’t deserve an opera house suddenly turning into an angry sentient opera house.
“I am merely stating that we should locate a base of operations somewhere quiet, somewhere farther away from this madness, and allow the world to…normalize, as much as it is able to do, before we act.” He shrugged dismissively.
“You are ill-prepared to take on a creature such as Valroy. And without your gifts under my command, as was my original intent, this could go quite poorly for us.”
“Oh sure, blame this on me wanting to maintain my own damn agency and soul!” The lights flickered again. Ava gripped the back of one of the rows of seats, desperately trying to cool her temper. “If only I had just let you enslave me, things would have turned out perfectly.”
“That is not what I am saying, Ava.”
“Then what are you saying?” She shot him a look that told him to be very, very careful with his next words.
If he got the meaning, his expression didn’t betray anything. “Simply that matters would not be this…” He paused, searching for the right word. “Tumultuous.”
Oh. Oh, that was rich. “Things are about to become a lot more tumultuous around here, assclown, if you don’t start explaining to me real quickly why you’ve suddenly become a coward.”
That finally got a reaction out of him. His expression turned dark. “Will the rest of you leave the room?”
“No. They stay. I want them to hear why you’re suddenly too chicken to face Valroy.” She took a step toward him. “Why you want to run away with your proverbial tail tucked between your seven fucking legs.”
He grimaced, baring his teeth at her, the first crack appearing in his composure.
“Because my wrath will not stop with him!” His hands lowered to his sides.
“Every last one of them will die.” He gestured to the other fae gathered in attendance.
His expression turned sadistic. “And I will delight in it.”
“Serrik…” She felt cold settle over her.
He stalked to the front of the stage, moving with a predatory grace even in his human form.
“Do you think simply because I have found companionship in you that I can simply set aside nearly two thousand years of rage? Of hatred? Of the loathing I see reflected in their faces, even though I stand here as their ally in this moment?” He gestured at Nos and Ibin.
“But you’re half-fae,” Bitty was still cowering behind Lysander. “You’ll die too, won’t you?”
“Would that not be the most fitting end to my tale?” Serrik laughed sadly. “Is that not how this story should be written? I was never designed for love. This was an accident. An aberration.” He gestured a hand dismissively at Ava, his smile sharp and bitter.
“Oh fuck you.” She rolled her eyes. “Fuck you and your ‘woe is me’ security blanket. You’re running away from this because you’re scared to face the truth.”
“And do tell, what is that?”
“That you might have to actually forgive the bastards who did this to you!” Her grip tightened on the back of the row of the seats next to her.
Suddenly the bolted-down legs snapped free and elongated, and the Boston Opera House row BB seats 101-109 got up in their new and startling form as an enormous theatre-seat centipede.
It raised its bizarre amalgamation of a seat-head, let out a loud, quite-rusted, scraping-metal-spring “SCREEEE,” and angrily trundled off up the aisle to go do…
whatever it was it decided a theatre-seat centipede ought to do with its life.
Putting her head in her hands, Ava let out a long, ragged sigh. “Fuck me. Just, fuck it. Fuck everything. I can’t even—I can’t even get mad without—is that thing going to cause a problem?”
“I…don’t know?” Ibin tried to helpfully answer, even though Ava wasn’t really asking anyone in particular.