Rise of the Magi (17 page)

Liam was right. The Goddess had prepared me for war, the greatest weapon to help me fight it standing before me, embracing me in a love I never thought I’d find even if given ten lifetimes. He’d seen me at my worst, put up with my temper and ignorance of just about everything, and still he loved me. He was the real deal. My one and only. A fantasy I’d never bothered to have because he was just too perfect. Too mine.

“I’m glad that Neve and Brígh had a good childhood even though they lost their mother.” I stared up at Liam, wondering what his early years had been like. “You don’t talk about your past much, and you always avoid the question when I ask, but with everything going on, I’d like to know now, in case …” I couldn’t say it. “Do you have any happy memories tucked away in that head of yours?” I’d never gone digging in Liam’s thoughts for anything like that. I figured if he wanted to share those pieces of his life with me, it should be because he wanted to.

His muscles hardened beneath my fingertips. “I suppose there were a few good times with my sisters when I was little. Rose and Clarice.” A smile stretched his lips up as he lowered to the floor and sat with his back against the cupboard, pulling me onto his lap. “Both had reddish brown hair like our mother, and both were as good at getting into trouble as you. I don’t remember anything specific, like an imaginary pirate ship, but my greatest joy was telling them stories before bed and brushing their hair while they told me their dreams. Rose wanted nothing more than to have dozens of babies, and Clarice was the tom boy who eventually joined the guard even though I didn’t want her anywhere near Parthalan, or my mother for that matter.” Liam released a sigh that sounded like it hurt. “Once my father left, mother took a consort, Xavier. I spent every waking second protecting my sisters from him.” Voice bitter and sharp, he added, “He and Rourke were two peas in a pod.”

“Oh, Liam.” I pressed my cheek to his, my appetite evaporating in the face of his pain. Rourke, a psychotic sadist I’d killed with my bare hands, had murdered Liam’s sisters when he helped me escape from Parthalan the first time. I didn’t like the journey that knowledge put my mind on. “He took you instead, didn’t he? Xavier, I mean? He hurt you instead of your sisters.”

Liam’s rough swallow was answer enough.

My fists tightened so fast my nails sliced into the flesh of my palms. “I’m sorry. I—”

“Don’t.” He held a finger against my lips before leaning in for a quick kiss. “That part of my life is over now. I’ve made as much peace with it as I can.”

“Is he … the consort … is he still alive?” A knot burned in my chest. If he was, he’d never set foot in Iress while I still drew breath. If he did, he wouldn’t be breathing for long afterward.

“Shortly after Parthalan killed my mother, Xavier challenged him for the throne.” Liam closed his eyes while strange expressions passed over his face. “Just before Parthalan crushed his throat—he’d decided the battle would take physical form instead of with power—the way he looked at me will stay with me forever. It was as if he knew every detail of what Xavier had done to us and was saying
this one’s for you and yours
. After Parthalan finished him, he dropped Xavier’s body at my feet and waited patiently while I kicked the shit out of it. It was strangely … emptying. It gave me what I needed to find closure, and probably one of the reasons I’m still sane.”

I couldn’t wrap my head around it. “I don’t think Parthalan had a civilized bone in his body. You must have been seeing things.”

“Yeah.” Liam chuckled without humor. “I thought so at first, too, but surprisingly it wasn’t the only time I felt like he had a conscience buried in his twisted mind somewhere. The day he told me we were going out to find you, I could have sworn he wanted me to stop him. Nothing he said, per se, just that same pleading look in his eyes when he told me I had to play on your loneliness to keep you at the farm, and that he’d give my sisters to Rourke if I failed. Outside of the Black City, his soul was as black as pitch, but while inside the walls … I just don’t know what to think. I guess it doesn’t matter since he doesn’t exist anymore, at least not as he was.” Liam shrugged.

Could the Glass Man really have had anything other than greed and lust in his soul? I supposed anything was possible. What had his childhood been like? Had something happened to change him along the way? If said something hadn’t happened, would he have been a good man? It stretched my mind too far to think he was anything but bat shit crazy. “You told me your sisters’ dreams when they were little but you didn’t tell me yours. What did you want to be when you grew up?” I couldn’t even guess what he’d say.

A long pause preceded, “I never felt safe enough to consider I’d live long enough to become anything. The three of us went day by day, not knowing what horror would come the next.” His lost-in-nightmare look disappeared, and a smile took its place. “Now, I dream about seeing the world anew through Garret’s eyes. I want to show him everything and see him have the childhood we all should have had.” Liam stared at me with shiny eyes, making me shift with discomfort. “And I would have still been brow-deep in alligators if it hadn’t been for you. That day you came down out of the woods and slammed Rourke into the ground”—his voice went bedroom dark—“that was totally hot, by the way. I could feel your potential. I just knew you were the one I’d been pleading to the Goddess for, the one who would turn our world on its ear and set us right again. I made a silent vow that very moment to help you do it.” Grinning, he squeezed me and nuzzled my throat. Hiding, I thought. “If it hadn’t been for my sisters, I’d have taken you right that second to Dun Bray and sworn myself to your service in whatever way you’d have me.”

He’d been pleading to the Goddess for help? Liam? I didn’t know what to do with the reverence in his voice, so I tucked it away for later when I could find a less mind-melting day with which to process it. Trying to lighten the mood, I nibbled his ear and whispered, “And I’d have had you every which way I wanted and then some.” At his gruff snickers against my throat, I hugged him tighter. “I’m not sure how much was me and what was dumb luck and the inevitable steamroller of change bowling us all over, but thank you for telling me all of that. I want to know everything about you, the good and bad.”

“Someday. Right now I just want to kiss you.”

Tilting my face up to him, I smiled. “Deal.”

“Lila—”
Gallagher’s voice shouted in my head before it cut off, sending a twinge of pain along my spine. Along with it came fear imbedded in a crippling explosion of light.

I flinched back, and Liam and I stared at one another for seconds, waiting for Gallagher to say more. Nothing came.

“Nix!” We said in unison.

After lifting me off of his lap, Liam raced out the door, and I sped after him, my heart damn near exploding out of my chest. Had Nix woken up? What had he done? Had Andrew been right about it being a mistake to bring him to Iress? I should have listened to him!
Goddess, please let Gallagher be all right!

Neve and
Brígh met us in the main hall, both panting. Before Liam and I made it to the infirmary door, Neve blocked it, her arms stretched from one side of the moulding to the other. “I can’t let you in,” she said through tears, her gaze switching between Liam and me. “I won’t let you do anything rash until we figure this out.”

Brígh sobbed into her hands.

Willa burst through the castle doors, mouth agape, pupils dilated enough her eyes appeared black. “Quinn,” she said. “They took Quinn.”

“Took him? Who? How?” I said, my heart plummeting through the floor as I turned back to Brígh. “You’ve seen it. What happened?” It was all I could do not to grab and shake the girl, to Will her to tell me, but I maintained enough sense to know why I shouldn’t.

Fingers fisted in his hair, Liam strode toward Willa, cursing to himself.

Leaving it to him to comfort my selkie friend, I held Brígh, but her hysterics didn’t relent. “Neve, what did she see?”

“She just said they’re all gone. She only saw it a second before it happened.” Neve’s chin quivered. “All of the men but Liam and Nix have disappeared from the city.”

“What?” All of the air seemed to leave the hall as I processed that, leaving me lightheaded and straining to breathe. I made a slow turn to find Liam’s eyes bright and horrified.

When my instincts connected the danger to him, and that he was standing so far away from me, I broke into a run. At the same moment, I screamed, “Liam!” a flash of light set the room ablaze, slamming Willa face first into the tile.

Liam’s spirit disappeared from my world. From my mind and body. As far as I could tell, from existence.

16

“Liam, God dammit!” I dashed, still half blind, to where he’d disappeared a moment before, blinking against the fading glow. My voice cracked along with my heart. “You answer me this instant!”

Nothing came back to me. No whispered assurances. No echoed thoughts. No tickling in my mind where our bond lived. No ha-ha, gotcha!

The hall stood empty, save for the four of us, Neve, Willa, me and Brígh. My mental halls stood empty of all but me, alone. Again.

“No.” The first came as a whisper as I stood like a lead statue save for the heaving of my chest. The subsequent utterances rose in volume until I screamed it. Fire and ice took turns inhabiting my center. Truths I couldn’t face ripped me open.

He was gone. Liam was gone from my world, leaving me staggering. Garret’s stirring within me and his turbulent emotions seemed to be saying “where’s Daddy”? I soothed him as best as I could, willing him to sleep so I could think well enough to function and find our man.

Not again. Not again!

Liam had tried to tell me the Magi would use him against me, but I’d blocked it out of my mind because I couldn’t accept it as a possibility. My heart shattered as I accepted the truth. Fury drowned me in fire. My hair whipped up, drawn into a hurricane of power flowing from me in all directions.

I whirled to face the girls, knowing I’d gone to that cold place I’d been a few times before, my eyes conveying imminent wreckage. The Magi had taken Liam. If my guess was correct, Nix had helped them. They’d taken all of our men right out from under me, and I couldn’t do a damned thing to stop it. He was mine.
Mine!
I’d fought tooth and nail to be with him, and I would get him back or die trying.

Thoughts about what they might be doing to him replaced my veins with barbed wire. Bile rose, but I swallowed it back down. I didn’t care what it made me, but someone needed to die, and that someone waited in the infirmary.

Fists drawn in tight, I went for the door to get my hands on Nix and make him bleed some more.

Neve stood her ground, hands stretched across the door. “No!”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said with enough steel to build a skyscraper. My voice echoed, as if several versions of me spoke at once from down in my depths. “How can you defend him after he took Andrew? He took Liam! Get out of my way so I can shred that fucking bastard until he begs me to kill him!”

“He didn’t even wake up!” Brígh scrubbed at her eyes as she helped Willa to her feet and ripped a piece of her T-shirt away to wipe the blood from the selkie’s nose. “I was standing in my kitchen with Cas when I Saw Gallagher just staring at Nix forehead-to-forehead, like they were going to kiss or something, then a burst of light, and they were all gone, along with everyone else in the room. A few seconds later, Cas flashed out of our kitchen.” She clutched her throat, gagging. “Tell me they’re not dead. Please!”

I shook my head, unable to speak the possible lie that would take the anguish out of her eyes. My heart—though it had frozen over harder and colder than a January puddle—didn’t seem to think they were gone forever, just for the time being, but that could have been denial or wishful thinking on my part. To believe otherwise might rip my soul from my body and render me useless to do anything about it, so I held the shreds of myself together. Barely. “I wish I knew for sure, but I don’t. I can’t believe they’re dead. The fae beyond that door could take me to them. For now, that’s going to have to be enough for you. For me. For all of us.”

“Give me your oath you won’t kill him unless you’re sure he had something to do with this.” Neve’s hands shook where they gripped the white moulding. “You would hate yourself—and me—forever if I let you do something terrible out of fear and anger.”

“She’s right,” Willa said, voice muffled by the crumpled cloth she held to her nose. Tears ran in torrents from her big brown eyes.

The logical part of me, the part that had gone into hiding, understood what Neve was doing, what Nix used to do for me once upon a time. He’d kept me from doing many a thing, some minor, some major, like almost killing Gallagher in a fit of rage. A small amount of control returned as I surfed the hurricane of anger and nodded my agreement.

Neve hesitated for only a moment before blowing out a breath and moving out of my path.

Feeling time slipping away from me, I shattered the door into toothpicks with my Force of Will and barged through. Nix lay exactly how I’d left him, swaddled in blood-stained blankets and still out cold.

Although I didn’t know how Gallagher had intended to reach Nix wherever he’d gone to hide in his mind, I had to try. When I jumped on him, straddling his waist, Brígh said, “What are you doing? If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, then you’re an idiot! It’s too dangerous. Did Gallagher not tell you how dangerous that is even for him? The one who knew what he was doing.”

“There’s no other way,” I said, fighting a growl, grabbing Nix’s face in my hands and putting my forehead to his sweaty one.

“You don’t even know how. You could get lost in there, and then we’d all be fucked. Fucked, Lila, are you hearing me?”

“Pretty much there in case you hadn’t noticed. Now, shut it so I can figure this out.”

Garret shifted in my belly.
Hush, little one, it’s all right
. I shut my shields down tight around him and willed him back to sleep, thankful he didn’t have to go with me into Nix.