Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When Ava and Serrik emerged from their sanctuary below the opera house, they found the main theatre space empty. But it wasn’t hard to figure out where everyone had gone, judging by the sound of shouting and muffled explosions coming from outside.
“Well, shit.” Ava sighed. “Here we go, I guess.” Glancing back at Serrik, she saw his jaw set, tense and rigid. Yes, he had decided to stay with her. Yes, she had convinced him not to abandon the fight.
But they hadn’t resolved his actual problem.
That his urge and vow to destroy all fae still remained.
And now it looked like he was going to have to face down whether or not he could choose forgiveness in the end sooner rather than later. All because Valroy couldn’t put a fucking pin in it for ten goddamn seconds.
They headed out the front door of the opera house, emerging into a world that had fundamentally changed in the space of a few stolen hours.
Nos and Ibin were standing on the sidewalk, watching the horizon. Lysander and Bitty were missing. So was Abigail, but that wasn’t entirely shocking. The Seelie Queen likely had business to attend to.
The air tasted different—electric with magic and thick with the acrid smoke of distant fires. Where before there had been the chaotic but somehow peaceful merging of three realities, now there was something darker threading through the atmosphere. Violence. Fear.
Death.
“I repeat—well, shit.” Ava instinctively reached for Serrik's hand. Through their connection, she could feel his immediate shift into predatory alertness, every sense extending outward to catalog threats. “Do I even need to ask? It’s Valroy, isn’t it?”
Serrik's golden eyes swept the transformed landscape around them.
In the distance, she could see columns of smoke rising.
The aurora lights that had danced so beautifully above them during their intimate encounter now flickered erratically, as if the very fabric of the merged reality was being stressed by whatever Valroy was doing.
“Indeed.” His voice was carefully controlled, but Ava could feel the tension radiating from him like heat from a forge. “And from the scent on the wind, he is not being…subtle about it. Blood. Too much of it to simply be conquest. This is…slaughter. He has begun his work.”
A familiar weight settled in Ava's stomach—the crushing realization that while she’d been finding peace and love in Serrik’s arms, people were dying because of choices she'd made.
The merger of the worlds hadn't just created chaos; it had created opportunities for monsters like Valroy to act without old constraints.
“We need to stop him. Now.” She started walking.
Serrik’s hand caught her upper arm. “Ava—”
“No.” She turned to face him fully, seeing the conflict already building in his expression.
“I know what you're going to say. That I’m not ready, that Valroy's too powerful, that we should retreat and regroup. That you don’t want to face him yet because you don’t want to murder everyone, and I get that.
But people are dying right now. And every moment we waste twiddling our thumbs, it’s just going to keep getting fucking worse. ”
Serrik was quiet for a long moment, his internal war playing out across his features.
The way his ancient hatred of the fae battled with something newer, something that whispered that perhaps not all of them deserved to burn.
“You know what I become,” he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper.
“You know what I am capable of when my…restraints are removed.”
“I know.” Ava stepped closer, placing her hands on his chest. “And I also know that you won't let it go too far. Not with me there.”
“You have more faith in me than I do.”
“Then trust my faith.” She smirked, trying to project more confidence than she felt. “Besides, what's the worst that could happen? We die horribly and the world ends?”
Despite everything, that earned her a small smile. “Yes. I suppose that is the worst that could happen.”
Their moment was interrupted by the sound of running footsteps. Lysander appeared around the corner of a building that definitely hadn't been there an hour ago, his usually perfect hair disheveled and his eyes wild with panic.
“Ava! Serrik!” He skidded to a stop in front of them, breathing hard. “Thank the gods you're both here. We have a problem.”
“Let me guess,” Ava said dryly. “Tall, blue, and douchey?”
Lysander nodded fiercely, leaning on his thighs, catching his breath. “And he—he killed—” He shook his head in disbelief, his eyes wide in fear, panic, and…grief. “He killed Izael—”
Ava’s eyes went wide. The teal haired goofy psycho? Wasn’t he an Unseelie duke or something? “What? Why?”
Lysander shook his head. “I didn’t get a whole lot of details out of the boggart who’d talk to me. Something about Izael questioning the future of the Unseelie after the war, and…Valroy not taking kindly to that.”
Serrik sighed, shutting his eyes. “Valroy has never cared for what came after his designs. It is not his way. His is the plague that kills all life.”
“Leopards, faces.” Ava rolled her eyes. “Awesome.” Letting out a ragged sigh, she looked out at the columns of smoke. “What about his wife, Alex?”
Lysander shook his head. “I don’t know. The boggart didn’t mention anything about her. I don’t think she was there.”
Odd. Very odd. But she wasn’t exactly close with the Unseelie couple, so there wasn’t much she could do about it.
Bitty came bursting out of the door, iridescent beetle’s wings buzzing at her back. “Um! E-excuse me? I—I hate to—I hate to interrupt—”
Turning to face Bitty, she smiled at the poor nervous little thing. She always looked so sorry to do anything. “What is it, hon?”
“Queen—Queen Abigail would like to speak with us all. She’s…she’s on the roof.” She pointed upwards as if nobody knew where the roof of the opera house was. “Um. She said it’s urgent.”
Nodding, Ava looked up at Serrik, whose expression was as grim as she felt.
Their momentary interlude in the basement was likely the only chance at peace they were going to have.
Possibly ever. And the briefest flicker of emotion that flashed over his golden eyes told her that he was having precisely the same realization at the same time.
Reaching up, she put her palm to his cheek and turned him to look down at her. “Hey.”
He said nothing.
“I love you, my spider.”
The hard edges of his expression softened. If only slightly.
Going up on her tip-toes, she kissed him. Gently, he cradled the back of her head in his hand and returned the gesture. When they parted, he had an almost wistful expression on his face. “And I you, my Weaver.”
Nothing was going to be simple or happy in this nightmare scenario. Nothing had been. So why would it start now? Turning back to Bitty, she nodded. “Lead the way.”
Bitty headed back into the opera house who half-hovered, half-ran up the stairs that led them up to the fly system over the stage. Several ladder climbs later, and they wound up at the top of the fly system.
“Oh, no—” Lysander shook his head. “No, no, no.” He backed away from what stretched out before them. “I’m not doing it.”
The area of flooring they had to cross was the top of what must operate the fly system for the rigging of the theatre.
Pulleys were mounted to flat iron stock that stretched out across the room, bolted to giant I-beams that supported the entire structure.
The iron stock was spaced such that the cables could stretch down to hold up the bars that flew up and down to raise and lower scenery or curtains or what-not.
It also meant that the spacing was just enough that a foot could pass through if a person were careless.
It also meant that it was very easy to look down and see straight to the stage some eighty or ninety feet down.
Ava blinked. “What?” She gestured at the stretch of not-quite-flooring in front of them. “You can’t tell me you’re afraid of that. It’s not that bad.”
Lysander hissed like, well, a cat. “No. No. Absolutely not. You can go without me.”
Serrik sighed. His glamor shifted and melted away, and he was once more his seven-legged, enormous spidery self. The golden tips of his legs tapped on the steel. “Come here, feline.” He picked up Lysander by the back of the coat.
Lysander let out one of those low, warning “rrrroowwwwlll” noises, but shifted into his cat form. His tail swished furiously from side to side, but he hunkered down on Serrik’s back, all puffed up fur and claws.
Ava tried very hard not to laugh. “See? Serrik’s too big to fall through the floor, now. And he’s a spider. He’s designed for this.”
Lysander merely growled in response.
Ibin was hiding her own laugh in her hand as she was picking her way across the room. Nos was guiding her like the perfect gentleman. Bitty was flying ahead, pulling open a door that went outside.
Ava stepped over the last of the cables and headed out onto the roof, the wind instantly blowing her dark curls into her face. She loved her curly hair, but sometimes the curls really got in the damn way.
It took her a second to get her hair back under control. When she looked back out at the world, she felt sucker-punched.
From up high, it was so much easier to see the extent of the damage she had caused.
A brownstone from Boston sat next to bits and pieces of Brooklyn Bridge, which had its missing pieces reconstructed from nightmarish trees that she knew came from Tir n’Aill.
And if she wasn’t mistaken. She saw the Eyes, that terrifying monster from the Web, clinging to the underside of what might be a floating section of Central Park.
This…needed to stop.
This couldn’t go on.
It was wrong. Just simply wrong.