Chapter 51
Selene!
I rouse to Memnon’s voice in my ear and Nero’s nose against my cheek.
Something warm is dripping from the back of my head and sliding down my neck. I blink, grimacing against the throbbing pain in my skull.
Otherworld. Eislyn. Coup.
Devil’s pronged dick.
I groan as I push myself up. Broken remnants of a glass pane slide off my back. That must’ve been what hit me.
More still are falling.
My queen, get yourself to safety!
My eyes rise to the other end of the building where the fighting rages on. I see a flash of Memnon’s magic, and I exhale.
My gaze moves to across the way, where I last saw Eislyn.
Devil’s double-pronged dick.
The bitch is gone.
I rise to my feet and use one hand to stroke Nero and the other to feel the back of my skull.
I wince when I feel a stab of pain.
Some fucking ward that was.
“Heal.”
My magic is slower to leave my palm than I’d like, but it flows into the wound well enough to repair torn tissue.
I wait the painstaking minute it takes to stitch it all back together.
Then, after applying another ward, I dash in the direction Eislyn went, Nero at my side, the two of us following the droplets of the fairy’s spilled blood.
I follow the trail through the palace, past the slain bodies of fae soldiers and servants. Down into the bowels of the building, to a long, narrow room.
A marble path straight down the center of the room bisects a series of marble pools. A flowering plant that has no earthly equivalent grows along the edges of the water and up the walls. Like everything else I’ve seen since I’ve come to this land, its beauty defies words.
But it’s what’s on the other end of the room that catches my attention. Because within a circle of stone columns is a shimmery film, one that looks like it’s a rip in the fabric of time and space. It’s here that the droplets of blood abruptly end.
I reach across my bond. Memnon, I say, Eislyn has fled down a ley line. I’m going after her.
I sense dread stirring in him.
Careful, est amage, he cautions, she could be anywhere.
No, I’m certain there’s only one place that she’s retreated to—
Back to where it all began.
—the Khuno River palace.
Nero and I step onto the ley line, and in an instant the palace falls away, replaced by a tunnel made of warped light and the vague colors of the world beyond it.
Just like when I walked this road earlier with the Bargainer, however, I can see what lies beyond the tunnel more clearly, as well as the rifts that indicate doorways.
They don’t technically look quite like doors, more like ripped seams, but when I peer through them, I can see they do, in fact, open to specific places.
I’d heard that the ability to travel ley lines was unique to fae and creatures of other realms, but I don’t think I realized what that meant until now.
This has to be another effect of the lilac wine.
My eyes scan the floor of the tunnel, looking for any remaining drops of blood Eislyn might’ve shed. But if her wounds are still bleeding, the ley line has already sucked the evidence of it up.
Ahead, the road splits. That was another new feature I noticed earlier with the Bargainer. I hadn’t worried too much about it then, because I had a guide, but now it’s going to prove trickier.
I pick a road and travel down it. At the first rift I see an island floating in the air, surrounded by the brightest sunlight.
Wincing at the light, I retrace my steps and take the alternate road.
Behind me, I hear a growl.
“Oh, wi-itch,” a voice taunts. “I smell you.”
You have got to be kidding me.
A demon followed me?
I can’t see its form yet, but I’m sure I’m working on borrowed time here.
Swiftly, Nero and I head down the other road, though I’m unsure where it will take me.
Behind me, I can hear the heavy breathing of the demon pursuing us. My familiar pauses, his tail twitching as he glances back.
“Don’t worry about him. Let’s see if we can get out of here before he reaches us.”
A fool’s hope, most likely, but I am, in fact, a fool.
I quicken my pace. Up ahead, another crack splits the wall of the ley line. Through it I can just make out darkness marred by the unholy glow of flame.
Witches’ tits, I think that’s an entire new world I’m staring at.
I’m almost to the opening when I turn and see the galloping form of a male demon on all fours.
I swallow my scream at the unholy sight. I didn’t know they could run like that.
My mind races for a spell as it closes the distance.
One springs to my lips.
“Obscur—”
The creature crashes into me, knocking me to the ground. I grunt at the impact, hitting the soft floor of the magical road.
I manage to shove my forearm up between us as the demon snaps his teeth at my neck.
“I’m going to eat you, then your soul, and then I’m going to fu—”
With my free hand I slam my fist into his jaw.
Curses! I shake my hand out as my knuckles throb. That hurt.
The demon shakes his head.
Before he has time to recover, my familiar leaps on his back, his claws unsheathed as he tries to drag the demon off me.
“Nero!”
With a growl, the demon reaches around and grabs my familiar by his neck and throws him down the tunnel.
I hear my familiar yelp.
Then it all. Goes. Red.
I dive for the demon, my power exploding out of me, and the two of us roll.
He slashes me across the face once, then twice. I can feel my blood drip down my skin, and it’s rolled into my mouth, but wrathful as I am, I cannot taste it.
“You do not ever fucking touch my familiar.”
I punch the demon—once, twice. Fury the likes of which usually belong to Memnon now rises in me.
The only real magical rule when it comes to demons is that dark magic is useless against them. That, if anything, it can fuel their own power. But there’s nothing against physically maiming a demon, and there are countless spells that don’t utilize dark magic that are still helpful to me.
The demon squeezes my neck, his claws piercing my flesh.
Dark spots cloud my vision.
SELENE!
The two of us roll again, and I’m now beneath the creature.
He laughs a little as he stares down at me, a little black blood dribbling from his lips.
I bring my knee up between us, but my foot is trapped at the wrong angle.
Choked as I am, I cannot voice my incantation, but I can still press my intention into my magic.
I gather the shreds of my power, and I move my hands to the demon’s chest. My mind homes in on the first spell I ever spoke, way back in Rome.
GET OFF ME.
My power leaps from my hands, blowing the demon back.
His body perfectly hits the rift in the ley line, and it’s as though the realm beyond has a magnetic pull. First it drags in his feet, then his torso.
“No,” he growls. He glances behind him, and whatever he sees beyond makes his eyes widen. More desperately, the demon repeats, “No!”
I stand. “Enjoy hell, asshole.” Lifting my boot, I slam it into his face.
The demon loses his grip. I hear his horrible, wrenching scream as he’s sucked in, and then he’s gone.
I stagger back, then sit down heavily on my haunches, breathless.
Nero comes over to me then. “Heal,” I murmur, pressing my hand against his fur as I stare at the opening in front of me. I place a hand on my own chest and repeat the spell.
Without question, my magic is moving slower. It takes longer for my power to stitch together the flesh wounds on my face than it did my earlier head wound.
While I wait for my spells to finish, I stare at the opening in front of me. Within it, I can see hellfire, burning orange and amber but also a deep crimson hue akin to blood.
Even from here I can hear the screams of souls, distant though they are. The sound raises the hairs on my arms.
So, this was clearly not a branch of the ley line that led back to Earth.
Once Nero and I are healed, I stand, then retrace my steps back to where the tunnel branched off and head down the other tunnel, though it clearly opens to locations within the Otherworld.
Places so bright they hurt my eyes and ones so dark the night beyond looks velvety.
Impossible to tell where I am, except for somewhere in the Otherworld.
Eventually, the ley line branches again, and when Nero and I start down the tunnel on the right, the next opening I see leads out to a stone circle. Beyond it a little ways away, I see a road and a parked car.
Earth.
Goddess’s good grace, finally.
It takes me mere minutes and several glimpses into places I do not remotely recognize to realize that while the lilac wine might’ve given me the ability to better see these roads, it does not make me better equipped to actually navigate them.
I don’t have time for guesswork. I can feel whatever edge I have slipping away.
The ley line and I have a unique relationship, one based on barter. I sincerely hope that right now, it’s willing to make a trade.
I pull a strand of my hair. “Ley line,” I call out to it, “I offer you a strand of my hair in exchange for the safe passage of me and my familiar to the doorway that Eislyn Alder, exiled princess of the Flora Kingdom, exited.”
I drop the strand of hair, watching it float to the ground where it is absorbed, then consumed by the ley line. The walls shiver, then smooth.
I take a few tentative steps forward, but nothing about my surroundings changes.
“I will give you a taste of my blood—blood that has been altered by fae magic.”
I pause. Wait. Perhaps it’s my imagination, but these ley lines seem particularly still. Curious, perhaps?
I can only hope.
I don’t need to cut myself open to bleed. Blood still wets the side of my cheek. I swipe it now, then hold out my hand, letting it drip to the ground.
It only lingers there for a moment. Then it seems to sink into the floor the same way my magic sinks into flesh.
Around me and Nero, the walls ripple. Something is happening.
I take a step, then another. The walls around me smooth, and my surroundings appear as they once were.
I lay my hand flat on one such wall.
“Please,” I implore. “Please help me.”
But magic, sentient though it is, doesn’t have empathy the way we do. It little cares for the plight of humans and fairies alike, and if my offering wasn’t suitable, my words won’t make a difference.
I glance down the tunnel, gauging my odds of finding Eislyn myself before I focus on the ley line once more.
This extensive magical road sees the comings and goings of many, many beings, some alive, some dead, some good, some evil. It touches multiple worlds and peers into each. But it only gets brief glimpses of our lives.
Perhaps that’s why it’s always seemed keen for secrets.
“In exchange for safe passage to the doorway Eislyn Alder exited from, I will share a true story.”
There’s a subtle quivering around me, followed by that same sharp stillness, as though it’s waiting.
I roll my lips together, afraid this won’t work. “Long ago there was a woman you helped on this road. You ferried her across Earth, and in return, she gave you items you might enjoy. The last time she passed down your tunnels, she told you a secret. And that secret was that she was pregnant.
“The baby didn’t live. She didn’t live either. An enemy killed her and her child moments after she left.
“But through a strange twist of fate, that woman lives again. And her husband, the father of her child, lives again. They are married. They may have another child.
“Unfortunately, their enemy also still lives, and she was the one who killed the woman I first spoke of. In fact, that enemy recently walked down your tunnels.
“I know all this because I am the woman in the story. It was me who gave you bits of my world. Me who was pregnant.
“Last time I told you a secret, I didn’t survive it. I might not survive it again.”
“I intend to stop Eislyn before she has another chance to kill me, but to do so, I need to get to the Khuno River palace.”
I fall silent, absolutely sure that what I gave the ley line now was less worthy of passage than my hair or the blood I spilled.
But then, ahead of me, the tunnel shudders, then compresses. Placing a hand on Nero, I take a step, my panther following my movements, and it seems as though we’ve leapt across the world.
Which, technically, we have.
I take another step. Again, the tunnels contract.
On my third step, the walls seem to smooth out. To my right is a narrow tear in the ley line. Beyond it I see verdant, familiar trees.
“Ready, Nero?” I whisper.
And then, before the ley line can reconsider its bargain, I pull us through.