Magic Triumphs

CHAPTER 13

DURING THE GUILD’S remodel, the architect decided to mitigate some of the damage to the building by adding a small balcony to the top floor. Framed by bay French doors, the recessed balcony was tucked away in the north wall, facing the Guild parking lot, all but invisible from the ground. The mercs called it Christopher’s Roost. Sometimes, at dawn or dusk, he’d come here and stand on the rail, watching the sun, before he sprouted his blood-red wings and soared into the air. I liked to come here during the day. I’d brought some plants—nothing fancy, some ivies, bamboo, and pothos—three chairs, and a big beanbag stuffed with sawdust.

I sat in my chair now, Conlan asleep on the beanbag, and watched the flurry of activity below. Corpses littered the parking lot. Neig had sent a dozen of his creatures to attack the Guild. We pulled into the parking lot in time to see Curran rip the last of them in half. He’d grasped the beast by the neck and the arm and pulled him apart like he was tearing a piece of paper.

Now he was below, supervising the cleanup. Biohazard had been called, but there was no telling when they would get here. Meanwhile, the bodies had to be secured, the parking lot salted and disinfected with fire, and the wounded treated. I’d excused myself from all of it. I’d had my fight.

Someone walked up the stairs behind me. They moved quietly, but all of my senses were still keyed up and I recognized the sound.

“Hi, Martha.”

The older woman sat in the chair next to me and handed me a cup of tea. I sipped. It was half honey.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“That’s okay. He’s full of surprises.”

Martha glanced at me and drank her tea. “We put him down in his room for a nap.”

George loved her nephew so much, she’d set a room aside for him in her house. Every time I saw it, it always cheered me up.

“There is one window in the room,” Martha said.

“I know.” It was a small window about five feet off the ground, secured with a grate of silver bars.

“The grate has a latch,” Martha said.

I nodded. Most bedrooms had grates that could be unlocked, otherwise the bedroom would become a death trap in a fire.

“A lion cub can’t open the latch. It’s intricate.” She sipped her tea. “It requires human dexterity.”

Where was she going with this?

“But a shapeshifter child in human form can’t hold on to the bars, because they have silver that will burn their hands.”

She paused.

“Aha,” I said to say something.

“Conlan opened the latch and escaped. There were claw marks on the wall and claw marks on the latch. He did this very fast. George put him down for a nap, and fifteen minutes later, when I came to check on him, he was gone.”

That was how he avoided the silver. He turned into his warrior form, climbed up, and worked the latch with his claws.

“Curran didn’t tell me everything.” Her voice held a gentle rebuke.

“What did he tell you?”

“That my grandson is a shapeshifter, and assassins are hunting him. What else should I know?”

We would need her to watch Conlan. I had to come clean. “He can hold a warrior form,” I said.

Martha startled. “The baby?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“For however long he wants.” I sighed.

Martha fell silent.

I finished my tea.

“What else can he do?” she asked softly.

“We don’t know.” I set my cup on the little table between us. “We know he can’t control his magic, and it makes him visible to people who can sense it. My father put a price on his head. One of my father’s associates was seen bringing a briefcase into the Keep. He was escorted by renders. He left without the briefcase. The next day Robert brought us an offer of friendship and alliance.”

Martha leaned back. “Jim will never betray you.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because she’d cut off his balls and feed them to him,” Desandra said behind me.

“What are you doing here?”

The alpha of Clan Wolf stalked into the light and leaned against the wall. “I was driving by. Saw the spectacle. Thought I’d stop by. What are those furry foul-smelling dead things in the parking lot?”

“They belong to a guy named Neig. He’s ancient, powerful, and he might be a dragon.”

“What does this Neig want?”

“To conquer the world. And for me to help him against my father. This was a demonstration of his power.”

Desandra sneered at the parking lot. “Not exactly impressive. Oh well, most men have trouble with foreplay.”

She had a point. With as much as he’d hyped his demonstration of power, I had expected bigger fireworks.

“Nobody will harm my grandchild,” Martha said. “Clan Heavy won’t stand for it.”

I didn’t say anything. Clan Heavy was powerful, but it was only one clan.

“They say a lot of silly things about us wolves.”

Desandra studied the polish on her nails. They were long, sharpened to a point, and bright yellow like the mane of blond hair falling on her back.

“They say we mate for life, that we have lupine dignity, that we are all stoic and sour. Rubbish. But one thing is true. We forget nothing. We remember our friends and our enemies. If the Beast Lord were to betray his friends, well, he wouldn’t be fit to be a leader. If Martha goes for his balls, someone will have to go for his throat.”

Orange light rolled over Desandra’s eyes. She smiled. “Poor Beast Lord,” she purred. “Why, he wouldn’t know where to turn.”

A vampire dashed across the parking lot. Grape purple. What now . . .

“Aiming for the Beast Lady seat?” I asked.

“If they begged me to take it on bended knee, I wouldn’t.” Desandra grinned, baring sharp teeth. “Too much hassle. I’m a single mother. All I want to do is raise my children in peace.”

“And rule the largest clan with iron claws,” I told her.

“These are plastic.” Desandra waved her nails at me.

“Jim knows what he would face,” Martha said. “He isn’t a fool.”

“All the same, I don’t want Conlan near the Keep. And I don’t want him at your clan house. Too much risk for everyone.”

“We will take care of Conlan,” Martha said. “We’ll do it on your street. Don’t worry about it.”

“And Mahon?” I asked.

“What the old bear doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Martha said.

“You do what you need to do,” Desandra said. “We’ll do our part.”

An undead vaulted over the balcony. “In-Shinar!” A desperate note vibrated in Javier’s voice.

“What happened?”

“Rowena failed to check in. We can’t find her or her vampire.”

Damn it.

I got up and closed my eyes. Magic spread before me. I couldn’t find someone I didn’t know. I could detect when a significant power breached my borders, but the sahanu were invisible to me. They didn’t have enough power. I didn’t know them well, but Rowena was related to me by blood, a bond strengthened by friendship and a vow of loyalty. It was a tenuous connection, but it would have to be enough.

The sea of magic waited for me. I had to stir it up. I pulled my power in and released it. The pulse of magic rolled through the city like the toll of a giant silent bell. The floor underneath me shuddered.

Pulse.

Another pulse.

Pulse.

There, a faint trail, something weak, something small and insignificant but carrying traces of Rowena’s magic. Her vampire.

It was on the very edge of my territory, just inside the border, left for me to find. And there was something else. Ancient and scorching, like someone had raked the fabric of the magic with white-hot claws. Neig.

I opened my eyes. “Get Ghastek,” I snarled at Javier. “Get your strike teams. Get the bus. Get everyone.”

WHEN TEDDY JO carried me into the air, he did it in a contraption he called “the sling” and I called an old playground swing. When Christopher carried me, he picked me up like I was a child. It wasn’t my favorite way to travel, but I needed speed, and he hurtled through the air like a hawk diving for his prey.

We were going southeast, toward Panthersville. The city slid under us, so tiny it seemed unreal. How the hell did people get into planes on a regular basis before the Shift? I did a lot of things well. Heights and flying weren’t among them.

“Would you like me to fly lower?” Christopher asked.

“No.”

What I would have liked was Rowena, safe and sound. I felt as if I were trying to outrun a giant rolling boulder while more boulders fell on me from every side. Whatever was holding me together was wearing thin, and when it broke, there would be hell to pay.

I just had to find Rowena. I had to find her alive, not in a vat of boiling people . . .

The spark of magic was almost directly under us.

“We’re here,” I told Christopher.

His great red wings folded. He went into a dive. Wind tore at me. I shut my eyes.

We swooped and miraculously stopped falling. I opened one eye. Christopher stood in a pasture, holding me. A copse of magnolia trees, their thick branches twisting up, waited in front of us, the boundary of my territory just yards away, beyond the tree line.

Christopher set me down, carefully.

The pasture lay quiet. Insects chirped. Birds sang in the branches, some trilling melody. The heat of summer streamed from a sky so beautifully blue, it almost hurt to look at. The weak “glow” of Rowena’s magic was right in front of me. I pulled Sarrat out of its sheath and walked forward, under the dense canopy.

The sound of someone’s hoarse breathing echoed through the woods, creepy enough to give me nightmares.

A massive tree spread its branches before me. A bloody chain was wrapped around the trunk.

I moved forward, carefully, one foot over the other, circling the tree.

Step. Another step.

The back of the trunk came into view. A dead vampire sagged against the loop of the chain, a massive pike thrust through his heart. Next to it, held in place by the loops of the same chain, a yeddimur sagged against the trunk. Blood stained the fur on its sides where it must’ve tried to gnaw itself free of the chain. Above them, a single word was clawed into the bark. Kings.

“Kings?” Christopher frowned.

I turned in the direction the bloodsucker would’ve looked if it were still alive. It made sense.

Two vampires tore out of the woods and galloped across the pasture, both so old, no sign of upright locomotion remained. They ran on all fours, grotesque ugly creatures, so warped nobody would’ve guessed they’d started out as human. Their sunblock, a deep crimson, looked like fresh blood.

“She isn’t here,” the undead said in unison in Ghastek’s voice, his words sharp enough to cut.

“What’s Rowena’s effective range?”

“Four point six seven miles.”

I pushed through the vegetation to the other side.

“Kate!” he snapped.

The underbrush ended. We stood on the apex of a low hill, fields and woods rolling to the horizon. A column of black smoke stabbed at the sky due southeast.

“Kings Row,” I told Ghastek.

The distant roar of water engines came from the northwest—Curran and the mercs were catching up.

Ghastek’s bloodsuckers streaked down the hill. Christopher took a running start, swept me up, and flew into the sky.

KING’S ROW, POPULATION around a thousand, was born from the remnants of a fracturing Decatur. Most of the people gave up trying to fight nature fueled by magic steroids and pulled into the city proper, but a few neighborhoods remained, turning into small towns: Chapel Hill, Sterling Forest, and Kings Row. They set up their own post offices and water and guard towers and held on to their land.

Christopher circled the settlement. Kings Row was no more. Nothing remained except for a charred ruin. Black ash hid the ground. Smoke billowed from half a dozen places, greasy and acrid, joining together into a single massive cloud above. Here and there remnants of the fire smoldered, red veins in the black crust. With a fire, some structures would’ve been left standing: fireplaces, brick walls, ruined appliances, burned-out cars . . . There was nothing. Not even the outline of the streets. Only black ash.

He’d taken a thousand people. I didn’t know if they’d died in the fire or if he’d kidnapped them, but they were gone and Neig was to blame.

No more. I needed to get my hands on him now.

And what would I do when I did? I didn’t even know if a blood ward would hold against that.

Christopher took another turn. Something shone through the smoke, a smudged orange glow.

“There!” I pointed, but he had already seen it. We dropped through the smoke and landed on the ash. Heat scoured my face.

A twelve-foot-tall pillar rose in the middle of the ravaged field, a translucent column dusted with ash. Within it, an orange glowing liquid flowed. Glass, I realized. The pillar was glass, its outer crust solid, but inside it was molten.

Christopher made a choking sound.

I looked up.

There was a human being in the pillar.

Oh dear God.

The body was encased in glass up to the shoulders. The head and neck were free, smudged with soot, all the hair burned off, but the body itself floated, submerged in the molten glass. It wasn’t burned. The molten glass should’ve boiled the flesh off the bones, but I could see pale legs dangling in the glowing liquid.

What the bloody fuck?

The head opened its eyes.

Still alive. How?

The dry cracked lips moved. “He . . .”

Ghastek’s vampires slid to a stop next to me and froze.

“He . . .” the person in the glass said. “Help.”

Rowena.

Every hair on my arms stood on end.

I concentrated on the pillar, pulling magic inside me to shine at it like a light. I couldn’t see it the way Julie did, but I felt the veins of glowing power twisting into the pillar in a complicated web. Inside, Rowena was coated in it as if she wore a skintight bodysuit. The web cradled her, winding through every inch of the pillar. The whole thing was bound together. Shit.

Ghastek’s left vamp charged to the glass column.

“No!” I yelled.

It turned to me.

“If you break the glass, she’ll burn to death.”

“Are you sure?” Ghastek asked, his voice clipped.

“Yes.”

A Jeep rounded the bend of the road. Julie and Derek jumped out and ran toward us.

“Can we drain it from the bottom?” Christopher asked.

“She’s wrapped in a spell. It’s clinging to her like a second skin. The skin is connected to the pillar. We break any part of it, she’ll die instantly.”

The vampire spun around. “Get her out of there.” Ghastek’s voice vibrated with steel. “Kate!”

“Quiet.”

If we broke the pillar, she died. If we tried to lift her out of it, she died. If tech hit, she died.

Vampires dashed out of the woods on the northern edge of the town. The People catching up with Ghastek.

Julie reached me, looked up at the pillar, and clamped her hand over her mouth.

What do I do?

The awful sound of groaning wood rolled through the air. I turned. On the south side, the trees shuddered. Green branches twisted and dropped. Something had snapped the decades-old pines like toothpicks.

Something huge. The druid carving flashed before me. I pulled Sarrat from its sheath.

“Form on In-Shinar!” Ghastek snapped.

The undead lined up into a wedge behind me.

An oak split, spun on its trunk, and plummeted down. A massive snout emerged into the light, six feet across. An enormous head followed, shaggy with brown fur. Two curved tusks big enough to skewer a car flanked the snout, followed by three pairs of shorter tusks. Short spiked horns protruded from the beast’s skull.

Well, of course. That’s what this party was missing. An enormous, pissed-off pig. Fuck me.

Behind me the Guild Jeeps tore around the bend of the road and sped across the burned ground, raising a cloud of ash.

The colossal boar took a step forward. Ragged gashes crossed its hide, cutting through a network of faded scars. Here and there, spiked balls punctured its hide, half-sunken into its flesh. Someone had tortured this boar.

The beast swung its head toward me. A broken chain dangled around its neck, as thick as a lighting pole. At its end hung a huge metal symbol, Neig’s shackles.

“It’s a god.” Julie took a step back. “Its magic is silver.”

I hold gods prisoner, tormenting them for my pleasure.

Neig had captured a god, kept him prisoner for a thousand years, tortured him, and now he’d loosed him on us. There would have been only one boar god on the British Isles for Neig to capture.

“It’s Moccus,” I said. The Celtic Boar, guardian of hunters and warriors, the Caledonian Monster. A god, or rather its manifestation. Killing it wouldn’t kill the deity, but it would banish it from our reality. A tech shift would rip him out of existence instantly. It would also kill Rowena.

“Does it have any weaknesses?” Ghastek asked.

“No.”

The boar opened its mouth and roared. The bellow slapped my eardrums, a mad blast of rage. It reverberated through the burned-out town. Ash trembled.

Just what we needed.

Moccus pawed the ground. Another bellow smashed into us.

The bloodsuckers waited, unmoving.

Nothing I had would deliver a punch strong enough to one-shot him. We’d have to bleed Moccus. It would take hours. We didn’t have time to fight him.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw three Guild Jeeps barreling down the road toward us. They went off the pavement and tore through the scarred town, raising clouds of ash.

“We have to kill it fast,” I said.

“Fast isn’t an option,” Christopher answered, his voice detached. “He’s too large and he’s a god. He will regenerate.”

“We have to try. Rowena doesn’t have time.”

Moccus sighted us. His deep-set eyes ignited with fury. The boar was finally free from confinement. Free to punish. Neig had driven him mad.

“Protocol Giant,” Ghastek said, his voice calm. “Prioritize damage over undead casualties.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Rowena whispered from the pillar. “Go. Leave.”

Moccus started forward.

Here we go. I pulled magic to myself.

The leading Jeep slid to a halt. A single man jumped out and sprinted to the boar. I would know that sprint anywhere.

Hi, honey, we’re over here, but please ignore us and run at the magic boar all by yourself. It’s only a giant enraged animal god. No need to worry. Nothing bad ever happens in situations like this.

“Curran!”

He ran past us at breakneck speed. As if we weren’t even there.

“Damn it.” I unsheathed Sarrat.

“Idiot,” Ghastek volunteered.

Moccus bellowed, giving voice to pain and insane anger, and broke into a full charge. The ground punched my feet and I stumbled to keep my balance.

The boar charged toward Curran like a runaway train.

I broke into a sprint. He’d need backup. The undead followed me.

My husband jumped. His human skin tore. Magic punched me, like the first ray of sunrise coming over the horizon. Fur spilled out, a whole cloud of it, black and huge. A colossal lion smashed into the boar.

I blinked. No, the giant lion was still there.

What the hell? What in the bloody . . . How?

He was as big as Moccus, solid black, a majestic mane floating in the wind, sparking with streaks of magic.

What . . .

The lion opened his jaws, fangs glinting in the sun, and plunged them into Moccus’s neck. The boar and the lion rolled. The ground trembled.

“Kate!”

The two colossal creatures snarled and roared, trying to bite and gore each other.

How was this possible?

“Kate!”

I realized I was standing still. My vampire army had come to a halt.

“Rowena!” Ghastek’s vamps screamed in my face.

Rowena was my friend. Rowena had held Conlan just yesterday, and today she could burn to death. I couldn’t let her die. I knew exactly what I had to do. I just had to do it. It was that or she would be boiled alive.

A clump of dirt the size of a truck flew past me. I ducked and spun back to the pillar. “Get wood. As much as you can. We need a fire. A huge fire.”

The vampires spun around. There was nothing to burn except for the distant trees. They would take too long.

“Does it have to be wood?” Ghastek asked through his twin vamps.

“No. As long as it burns. We need a big flame.”

The mercs had piled out of the Jeeps and stared at the battle raging only a few feet away. Barabas was on the front line. I caught a glimpse of his face, touched with awe.

I couldn’t think about it. I couldn’t afford to process it now. There was no time. I turned to Rowena. She stared at me.

“Leave me,” she said, her voice breaking.

“Not going to happen.”

“You have Conlan . . .”

“Conlan will be fine. I will be fine. You will be fine. Everything will be fine.”

I would go to hell for making promises like this.

An armored bus emerged from behind the curve of the road and headed for us. The People’s mobile HQ.

It sped to us and came to a stop. The doors swung open and Ghastek stepped out, followed by two Masters of the Dead and a dozen journeymen. I recognized familiar faces: Kim, Sean, Javier . . .

“We’ll burn the bus,” Ghastek said over the snarls.

The undead attacked the bus, pulling the reserve gasoline containers out of the back and dousing the vehicle with it.

The two giant animals were still fighting. It took everything I had to not run over there and help.

One of Ghastek’s undead grabbed him, wrapping its arms around his legs. The second picked up the first and raised Ghastek to the pillar. He raised his hand to her cheek. His fingers stopped just short of touching.

“Let me go,” Rowena told him.

“Never,” he said.

“Ready,” Javier told me.

“Carlos!” I called.

A short merc turned toward me. I pointed to the gutted bus. “Torch it.”

Carlos leaned back and flexed, bringing his arms together as if he were squeezing an invisible basketball. A spark burst into existence between his spread fingers and spun, growing, twisting, turning into a flame, first reddish, then orange, then white. His hands shuddered. He grunted and launched the fireball at the bus.

The more of yourself you give to the fire, the louder the call will be.

The armored vehicle exploded.

I reopened the cut on my arm and thrust it into the fire. Heat cooked my skin. My blood boiled into the flames, turning them red. Pain hit me, and I sent it into the blaze with my magic, opening a pathway across thousands of miles. The fire roared, bloody, and I screamed into its depths.

“FATHER!”

The blaze snapped, a glowing silk curtain pulled suddenly taut, and my father appeared within the flames, eyes blazing with power.

“WHAT?”

I pulled my arm out of the fire and cradled it. It hurt. God, it hurt. “Help me.”

He stared at me. He chose his own age, sometimes young, sometimes older. Today he wore the face I knew, a man in his late fifties, full head of hair, wise handsome face that could’ve belonged to a teacher, a prophet, or a king. He’d let himself age like this because he wanted to look like a man who could’ve fathered me. He had still kept it, even two years later.

“Please help me.”

“YOU ARE ASKING ME FOR HELP? WHY SHOULD I HELP YOU, SHARRIM?”

My father was proudest of me when I managed to beat him. Weakness and begging wouldn’t work. I had to be smart about this.

“Do you remember the ashes of Tyre?”

He looked behind me. His gaze swept over the grave of Kings Row and halted on Rowena inside the pillar. A muscle in his face jerked. Something sparked within his gaze. He buried it before I could pin it down. What I said next would determine if Rowena lived or died.

“He says you killed his brother,” I said. “This is a demonstration of his power. He doesn’t think our family can match it.”

The flames went out. The bus lay before me, suddenly cold. My arm hurt.

It hadn’t worked. He’d abandoned me. I’d banked on his pride and lost. I turned away.

A draft touched my cheek. Next to me Roland lowered the hood of his plain brown robe and looked at the pillar. The undead scattered. Ghastek stood alone by the pillar, his chin raised, his eyes defiant. The rest of the People huddled in a clump to my right, putting me between themselves and my father.

“Have you thought of a solution?” he asked, as if he’d just given me a complex mathematical problem and was curious if I could solve it.

“I can take control of the pillar, but that will require breaching it, and any breach will break the protective envelope around her. If I attempt to claim the protective envelope around her as my own, it may disintegrate and she’ll die.”

He nodded, his handsome profile slightly curious. “Continue.”

“My best option is to freeze her into stasis with the spell of Kair, while I claim the land. The spell of Kair would hold her separate from our reality.”

I wouldn’t be able to hold it for longer than an instant either. I didn’t have enough practice.

“Claiming would allow me to instantly disintegrate the pillar before it burns her, but claiming is a two-step process: the initial pulse that disperses from me to the boundary and the return pulse that travels from the boundary back to me. In the space between the two pulses, I’m powerless. The spell of Kair requires a constant flow of magic from the mage. It will collapse. The first pulse of claiming will disrupt the magic net that’s keeping her alive right now. If she’s out of stasis between the two pulses, she’ll burn to death.”

And I had just told him that Erra was teaching me. I would worry about it later.

My father crouched and picked up a handful of ash. “When their kind scorch the land, they wound it. Are you prepared for what will follow if you claim it?”

I had no idea what would follow. “Yes.”

My father nodded. “Three seconds. That is all you have.”

Three seconds was an eternity longer than I would’ve lasted. It had to be enough.

I had only generated a powerful claiming pulse once, and I’d required a tower to do it. Erra had been having me practice claiming small chunks of land, a couple of feet here and there, and then letting them go, and it required a lot of preparation.

All I needed was a twenty-yard circle around the pillar. That would contain any veins of magic stretching from the pillar. I could do this. I just needed an anchor. Claiming required an anchor, whether it was a tower or a nail thrust into the ground. I needed a conduit for my power.

I didn’t have anything.

Wait. I had my sword. I grasped Sarrat with my left hand and knelt, holding it straight up.

Slowly, deliberately putting one foot in front of the other, Ghastek walked away from the pillar to the group of People waiting on the side.

My father raised his hands. Light stabbed from them. Words, ancient and beautiful, poured out of his mouth, moving the magic itself. It was beautiful. It was poetry and music wrapped into a song of pure power.

I stabbed Sarrat into the ground and fed every drop of me into it.

A pulse tore out of me, a crimson wave of light rolling through the land. There was a pause, a single heartbeat that lasted for an eternity. Silence met me, and then, in the distance, I heard a noise, like a tornado coming from far away. It grew, deafening, overpowering, and slammed into me, jerking me off my feet. I hovered three feet above Kings Row. My skin turned to ash. Flames burst inside me, incinerating me. My body burned.

Neig had drained the land of its magic to make the pillar. It needed magic to survive and it was taking mine. It was pulling the magic out of my veins.

The agony drowned me. It hurt. It hurt so much. The land would consume me.

Rowena.

Through the bloody haze covering my eyes, I reached toward the smudge of magic burning in my mind and struck the pillar.

My vision cleared for an agonizing moment, suddenly razor-sharp, and I saw Curran lock his huge fangs on the back of Moccus’s neck and bite through it. The great boar gasped and went limp, finally at peace.

The pillar shattered, the molten liquid spilling, each drop turning into a perfect globe of glass, suffused with stolen magic.

Don’t panic, Erra’s cool voice reminded me from my memory.

The glass was mine. I crunched the droplets with my power. They broke as one, then again, and again, raining down in a glittering waterfall, and I crunched them again and again, feeding their magic back into the land while a crystal rain fell onto the soil, slipping into the earth.

The wailing lessened, then grew quiet, then turned to a whimper, a whisper, and finally vanished. I fell on the ground, landing badly on my side, and blinked. My hands weren’t charred. Not even my left, which I’d stuck into the fire.

I sat up. A perfect circle spread around the pillar, green with fresh grass. A familiar aroma filled the area. It smelled like spice and honey. Delicate flowers had sprouted all around me, small white stars with black centers. I had made them once before, when I’d cried during a flare, because a man who served Morrighan had died. I cared for him, and I had tried to keep him alive, but in the end, I’d had to let him go.

Rowena lay on the ground next to me, naked but unburned.

She opened her eyes, raised her hand, and struggled to say something.

Alive. She’d survived. We’d done it.

I felt oddly numb.

My father sat on the ground next to me and gently touched one of the flowers. Ghastek knelt by Rowena, took her into his arms with infinite care, and carried her away.

The boar’s corpse sprawled on the ash, all of its flesh stripped, the great bones rolling gently, as the lion dug into its stomach. The awful chewing sounds of a huge predator eating echoed through Kings Row. A part of me knew this was Curran and he was eating a god, and I should be freaked out by it, but most of me refused to deal with it. I was spent.

“Has the creature spoken to you?” my father asked.

“Yes. He wants to conquer.”

“So did his brother. What else did he say?”

“He offered for me to be his queen. He wants me to betray you. He hasn’t gotten around to saying it, but he will.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I reminded him that my father and my aunt killed his brother and destroyed his army, so he was a losing bet. He told me he wasn’t his brother and promised to prove it. This is his proof.” I turned to him. “He has the yeddimur.”

A muscle jerked in my father’s face. “They are an abomination.”

So the great and powerful Nimrod had a weakness after all.

“Is he really a dragon? Was his brother a dragon?”

“Yes.”

Great. Freaking fantastic.

“He said his brother proposed marriage to Erra.”

My father sneered, and I saw his older sister in his face. “We don’t marry serpents. We erase them from the flow of history.”

“Oh good.”

We sat quietly for a long moment.

“Tell me of the dragon,” Roland asked.

“His name is Neimheadh. He ruled Ireland and Scotland with his army of human soldiers and corrupted creatures. When the magic weakened, he retreated into the mists with his army. Now he’s back. He took people from towns on the edge of Atlanta and boiled them for their bones.”

“The tie that binds.”

I looked at him.

“His kind make their lairs in pockets of reality, a small fold in the fabric of time and space,” Roland said. “They are creatures of immense magic, and they warp the natural order of things to make their homes. This Neig has taken his troops with him into his lair. They existed within it for so long, they themselves became bound to it. The warped magic permeated them and changed them. The magic here isn’t ample enough to sustain him or his army, not unless the wave is quite potent. He and his forces must absorb the magic of our reality to reattune themselves. Humans are magic and numerous.”

“They eat the human bones, so they can manifest here when the magic is weaker?”

“Drink them, most likely. Grind them into dust with magic and mix them with milk. A barbaric practice.”

I rubbed my face. Simple explanations were usually correct ones. Consuming people would be logistically difficult. Too much mass. Bone powder made more sense. Here is your bone smoothie, great way to start the day. I wanted to vomit.

Roland reached out and stroked my shoulder. “Most of them never deal with us, but those who choose to mix with humans are a plague on this world. A plague I will one day cure.”

“Father . . .”

“Yes, Blossom?”

“If he has to drink this bone powder to manifest during magic, how many people will he have to kill to survive through tech?”

“Hundreds of thousands,” my father said.

“Can I enter this pocket realm and kill him?”

“You can’t enter without permission.”

“What if he gave me permission?”

“You would be very foolish to enter.”

“But if I did . . .”

“I forbid it.”

Aha, that and a dollar would get him a cup of bad coffee. He wasn’t exactly in a position to forbid me anything.

Roland softened his voice. “If somehow you end up within his domain, do not eat or drink. If you consume something, it will anchor you to his realm and you will be subject to his power for a short while. It would wear off unless he continued to feed you. As long as you don’t eat anything he presents to you, you can leave at will and nothing within his lair can hurt you. Simply wish to be back here, and the mists will tear, and you will be back in our world. In his realm, you are a ghost. You can’t be hurt, but you cannot hurt him in return. But it’s not a place you should ever visit, Blossom. Dragons are unpredictable, and their command of magic surpasses ours. They’re good at manipulation.”

Curran raised his huge head. His mouth was bloody. He staggered from the corpse, a huge nightmarish beast, too big to be real.

“He sent his champion to fight me,” I told him.

“Where is the champion now?”

“Dead.”

My father smiled.

“You sent assassins to murder your grandson. Your only grandson. They wanted to kill him and eat him. You are despicable, Father. How do you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning?”

“What happened to the assassins?”

“I killed them.”

“I know,” he said. “I felt them die.”

“Your own grandson.”

He smiled at me again. “The sahanu were growing troublesome.”

I stared at him, speechless. “Wow. Just wow. You used me to clean up your cult.”

He shrugged. “You used me to rescue a woman who betrayed me. I’d say we’re even. Besides, my grandson was never in danger. You are my daughter, Blossom. One of a kind.”

“We are not even. Not even close. Do not come after Conlan again. I swear I will kill you.”

A strange contortion gripped the lion’s body. He arched his back, then jerked his head to the sky. His great maw gaped open. The sun reflected on his fangs, which were longer than my legs. He roared, his eyes blazing with gold. A nimbus of pale silver twisted around him, crackling with violent energy. Two protrusions burst from his back. He snarled, and the protrusions unfolded into black wings.

That’s it. I’m done.

The mercs screamed and howled. The look on Barabas’s face could’ve launched a fleet of spaceships.

“Some are born to godhood,” Roland said. “Others attain it. I cautioned you against marrying him.”

The lion walked to us.

Wind whispered. My father was gone. The grass where he’d sat was slowly springing back.

The lion stopped in front of me. He folded his wings, lowered his colossal head, and slowly, carefully lay down on the grass, his face to me. He could’ve taken me whole into his mouth, and there would still be room for ten more people.

“Is he silver?” I asked.

Nobody said anything.

“Is he silver?” I repeated, raising my voice.

“Yes,” Julie whispered.

I got up, turned my back, and walked away from him.

“DO YOU WANT to talk about it?”

I lay on the edge of the woods, the grass soft under me. The scar of Kings Row lay a few yards away. The sky above me was a beautiful blue, and cute little clouds floated here and there, like fluffy little sheep chasing each other in a vast pasture.

“Baby?”

Curran sat next to me. He’d ripped through his clothes during his dramatic transformation. He’d scrounged up a pair of shorts somewhere, but the rest of him was naked. His hair fell on his shoulders in a blond mane.

I turned my head and looked at him. To say that Curran worked out would be like saying that a marathon runner occasionally jogged. His body was a meld of strength and flexibility that translated into explosive power. He had a raw, feral edge that drew me to him like iron to a magnet. I knew that body intimately. And right now, it was bigger. Taller, with broader shoulders, crisp definition, heartbreaking proportions, corded with steel-hard muscle. He was perfect.

No human was perfect.

He must’ve been perfect for a while. Funny how I hadn’t noticed it before. Probably because I loved him. To me, he’d always been perfect, with all of his flaws. I turned back to look at the sky.

A muscular arm blocked my view of the clouds. He was offering to let me punch him in the arm.

I raised my hand, moved his arm out of the way, and studied the clouds.

“It’s not that bad,” he said.

“How many animal gods have you eaten besides the tiger in my dad’s castle and Moccus back there?”

“Four.”

Yep. Exactly what I thought. “Funny how that’s the exact number of your hunting expeditions.”

He didn’t say anything.

And my aunt had encouraged him. Not that surprising, since she’d never liked him. The betrayal stung.

He reached out to touch my shoulder. I slid out of the way.

“Kate . . .”

“You’re a god. You’re no longer human. Your thoughts and your behavior are no longer your own. With all of the things my screwed-up family has done, they’ve always steered clear of godhood like it was on fire. And you, you jumped into the flames. You’ve lost your humanity, Curran. You don’t control yourself anymore. You are controlled by the faith of the people who pray to you. What happens when the magic wave ends? What if you disappear?”

He opened his mouth.

I sat up. “I just want to know why. Conlan and I weren’t enough for you? What did you want?”

“Power,” he said.

“I thought you loved us.”

“I love you more than anything.”

“I understand if I wasn’t enough. It’s fucked up, but I get it. But you have a responsibility to your son. How could you?”

I didn’t look at him.

“Why the White Warlock?” he asked.

“What?”

“Why do you need the White Warlock?”

Ah. The best defense is a good offense. “The witches and I need her for the ritual to weaken my father and put him into a coma. For it to work, we need someone to channel the collective power of the Covens. I can’t be that person. My power is too different, but she can.”

“And what happens if the ritual fails?”

“Who snitched?”

He sighed. “Nobody. I saw it in your eyes when we fought your father. How about your responsibility as a wife and mother? What about that?”

“What about it?”

“You’ll kill yourself. Or you’ll kill him and that will kill you. Either way, you’re going to leave me and our son. Do you think Conlan will care that you sacrificed yourself? Is it going to comfort him when he’s crying because you’re not there?”

“He’ll be alive to cry. You’ll be alive. That’s all I care about. My dad and I are bound. As long as one of us lives, the other does, too. Do you think I want this?” I turned to him. “I would do anything for just a little more time. Ten years. Five. One. Any time at all to be with you both. But he is coming. He already tried to kill Conlan. The only way to keep him safe is to take my father out of the equation.”

“Roland won’t be the only enemy Conlan will have.”

“Yes, but right now he is the worst. I don’t want to do it, Curran. I’m not looking forward to it. But if I have to die so our son can live, so my father is stopped, then I’ll kill that sonovabitch, even if I die too.”

“I gathered,” he said, his voice dry.

“If I have to do it, don’t try to stop me.”

He reached out and took my hand. I let him.

“I won’t stop you,” he said. “It’s your life. It’s your choice what you do with it. I’ve tried to stop you from doing things in the past, and it’s never worked. It’s pointless. You will do what you will do.”

I had expected a fight. This was too easy.

He gave me his Beast Lord stare. “But if I agree to this, you have to accept that I will do everything in my power to make sure things don’t go that far.”

“Including becoming a god.”

“Including that. I needed an upgrade. This was the only way to get it.”

“But you’re not you, Curran.”

He grinned, showing me his teeth. “Still me.”

“Bullshit. Have you seen Barabas’s face? What happens when shapeshifters start worshipping you?”

“They won’t have the chance. It’s all coming to a head one way or another.” He said it with an awful finality.

There was no way back from godhood. It was terminal. It would eat at him, slowly but surely, gradually changing him until the man I loved disappeared. He knew it, and he went through with it anyway.

He had done it for me. He’d given up his free will so I would survive. Oh, Curran.

If we somehow survived, I would stay with him forever, living for the glimpses of my old Curran in the god.

“What happens when the tech hits?”

“Nothing will happen. Erra has been gauging my divinity. There isn’t enough to make me a god yet. I’ll be fine.”

He pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around me, and inhaled my scent. “I’ll never let you go.”

I put my face into the crook of his neck. “You have to.”

“No.” He kissed my hair. “You and me, Kate. We’re forever. Conlan will grow up and go his own way, and you and I will still be here, squabbling over who is going to save whom.”

He held me while I cried quietly into his shoulder and wished with everything I had for a life I wasn’t going to get. What good is immortality if the people you love can’t be there with you?

For the first time in my life, I wished magic had never come.

Finally, I stopped. The tears had only lasted for a couple of minutes, but it had felt like an eternity.

“We’ll have to tell the Conclave,” I said.

Curran grimaced. “Yes. They won’t like it. They would accept a fire mage, but a dragon isn’t something they can cope with.”

I knew it. Luther had explained it to me once. We lived in an age of chaos, never knowing if magic or tech would have the upper hand or what they would throw at us. The human mind wasn’t built to cope with constant uncertainty. Instead, it sought to find order and consistency, some pattern, some sort of logical equation where a certain consequence always followed a specific event. Water evaporated when heated to a boiling point. The sun rose in the east and set in the west. All magic waves eventually ebbed. We managed to distill rules out of chaos. These core beliefs kept us sane and we protected them at all costs, otherwise the house of logic built on these foundations fell apart and we tumbled into madness.

“An elder being can’t manifest unless there is a flare” was a core belief. A dragon was an overwhelming being, a creature of so much power and devastation that nothing in our arsenal could match it. It was like the idea of being hit by a meteorite. Theoretically, we were aware that a burning space rock could fall out of the sky at any moment and kill us, but we refused to dwell on this possibility. The idea that a dragon could manifest at any time and attack the city and there was no defense against it was so frightening that our brains stepped on the brake, rejecting the possibility. And this dragon wasn’t just manifesting. He was smart and cunning. He had an army and wanted to invade. We would need ironclad evidence to pull the Conclave’s collective heads out of the sand.

“I know the Conclave won’t believe us,” I said. “We’ll have to convince them.”

“It will take the entire city.” He stroked my arm. “We only have one chance to build this coalition. If we go with a fire mage, and Neig manifests as a dragon, it will come out that we knew and deliberately kept it hidden.”

“Then the alliance will fall apart.”

He nodded. “And when your father comes, there will be nobody to fight him.”

A Jeep drove away. The blond driver took the turn fast. Julie.

“Where is she going?” I wondered.

“Who knows.”

As we walked back to the scar, I turned to him. “You should give up and let your mane grow out.”

“Mm-hm. And then we can stay up late, and you can braid it, and put ribbons in it . . .”

“Don’t you want to show off your pretty hair, Goldilocks?”

“I’ll show you hair.”

I raised my eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be some kind of threat?”

“Wait and you’ll find out.”