Rise of the Magi (22 page)

I stood in front of the shifter that held Nix while my stomach complained about its emptiness.

“What will you do if he won’t lead us there?” Neve asked as she stepped in beside me. “I know you think he’ll cooperate because he’s behaving like a saint, but … I just don’t know what to think. I grew up with him, loved him like a brother, and last year he seemed like someone else entirely. Someone I hated. Now, he sort of seems like the old Nix, except dragged down by shame, but … I’m so angry I just want to punch him in the face. I’m having a hard time sorting through how I feel.” A pause, then, “I wish Andrew was here. He’d know what to do.”

That was the longest ramble I’d ever heard out of Neve. I had to agree with her, that Nix almost seemed like the fae from before he’d learned of his father’s murder. Maybe I needed to cut the guy a bit of slack. Once he’d taken us to the Magi. “He already agreed. Sort of. So, his not cooperating is not an option. He’ll do it because everything will hinge on our being able to find them, and I don’t intend to take no for an answer.” If they wanted me so badly, why make it so hard for me? Could their magic conduits not get to me for some reason?

Anxious to get on with it, I strode past the two guards at the door and went inside. The ward buzzed along my body as I passed through it. Shifters were made of awesome, no doubt about it.

I found Nix, still wet from the shower, sitting on a black leather sofa with his head in his hands. His white hair, darkened from the water, spilled over his face.

A twinge hit me in the chest at the lost soul before me. Even though a small amount of anger remained from the sting of his rejection, all I could manage was to feel sorry for him. Maybe I should have demanded answers about his beef with the Unseelie when I’d first noticed it, instead of giving him time to tell me. Maybe I could have made him understand them, himself, and his darkness. That we weren’t whole when separated from it the way we’d been before.

“Are you okay?” I asked, dying to know what was going on in that head of his.

In slow motion, he sat up and faced me with unreadable eyes. “I don’t know how to answer that. And I don’t think it really matters, does it?” His blank expression tightened into something I took for regret. “Do you know what you’re going to do about them yet?”

“Why would you care, anyway?” Neve asked, ice entering her tone. “You abandoned us.”

I put my hand on her arm. A zap of her power charged into my hand before it fizzled. “It’s okay; I’ve got this.”

She put her hand over mine and gave a little chuckle. “You know, it’s really scary when you become the cool head in the room, Lila.” Leaning to my ear, she added, “Looks good on you,” before taking up her guard stance beside a puffy chair I assumed she wanted me to sit in.

She didn’t have to twist my ear to get her way on that one—my feet ached. “Neve does have a point. Why do you care?”

Nix stared at me as if I was some wonder conjured out of the air, brow raised in question, lips parted. Pushing impatiently at his hair, he got to his feet and went to the far wall, propping his arm against it. “Even after everything, I don’t … Gallagher was a father to me when I lost mine, and nobody deserves to die like Talawen did. Not even my enemies.”

“Am I your enemy?”

Silence fell like a shroud as Nix turned to me again. “Honestly, I hated what you did to me at first, but I get it now. And no, you’re not my enemy. You never were, even though I might have treated you that way when … when I found out about Donovan. And I’m sorry you lost him. One of the guards told me.”

“Thank you.” Nothing about his defeated posture threatened me. He could have escaped the castle while I was trying to relearn how to breathe, and he hadn’t. He could have told me to go to hell and forced me to Will him into compliance, been difficult about the whole bad scenario, but he was cooperating. It would have been much easier if I could trust him to do what needed to be done. Could we could put aside our differences long enough to fight for the same cause?

“Gallagher’s been a father to me, too, since I lost Donovan. Can we use that as a temporary bridge? Work together and trust one another long enough to survive this thing? To get him and the rest back?”

“I want them dead.” A frigid shadow coated Nix’s stare. “For what they did to me, for what they’ve done to all of us.”

“We can’t just up and kill the Goddess’ daughters. You have to know that. I can promise you that if I fail in our little venture, they won’t walk away from this, either, but it has to be a last resort.”

“What are you going to do?”

Neve’s fingers tightened on my shoulder. I patted them, hoping she’d understand that I got it. We needed to tell Nix as little as possible, just in case. I probably shouldn’t have had guilt running through my veins for that, but I did. A little.

“A small party of us will go with you to confront them. The fewer Magi-fodder, the better. All I need you to do is get us to the right place, and the rest you can leave up to me. Do I have your oath you’ll take us to the spot where we can find this Alseides person and not screw us over by leading us everywhere but?”

Something passed over his face, annoyance, maybe, or indignance. It didn’t remain long enough for me to decipher. “Yeah, I’ll lead you to them. But once we find them again, you’ll set me free to relay my annoyance any way short of killing them, and if whatever clever plan you come up with fails, they’re mine. If they don’t mind-fuck me again, that is, and that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

The intensity of his eyes, and the emotion in his voice, suggested he meant every word. He was as furious with them as he’d said. I could use that. The Goddess would just have to deal with her kids getting a little roughed up and probably scared skinny.

“Deal.”

He smiled, the expression making it all the way into his new powder-blue fae eyes and putting a healthy glow there. I’d missed that smile—the one he’d given me often in better times. “Are we going now, then?” He rubbed his hands together.

“Not quite. I have to figure out who’s coming with us, so sit tight, and we’ll come back for you. Before I go, though, I need you to tell me everything you know about what we’ll find when we get to their realm.”

Rubbing his belly, he stood there for a while staring at his ragged shoes, while I felt like a shit for not having brought something for him to eat. “There’s one main one who does most of the talking. That’s Alseides. There are two other sisters who make up the direct daughters. Karyai and Sykei. The day they put their trap in me, they were going on about the other generations, about their lines being diluted with humans, having decreasing power the farther away from the Daughters the bloodlines get.”

“How many are a threat? Only the three? Thirteen? Three hundred?” Neve asked, taking the question before I could fire it off.

Nix picked at a thread on the pocket of his torn jeans. That boy needed to get himself some new clothes before we took him anywhere. “I don’t know that the two sisters have the telepathic abilities Alseides has, but in their dryad forms, they’re still deadly. The ten demon spawn they produced before they were imprisoned, with some poor human sperm donors they probably slaughtered after they were done giving to their cause, can’t seem to spell anything and make it work, but they have the sociopathic tendencies of their mothers. Killing someone registers no more regret than we’d feel over stepping on a blade of grass.”

Well, that’s just great.
Murmured curses filtered through the room from Neve. “We pretty much already knew that, so it doesn’t mean much,” I said to her. “Frankly, I was expecting him to say we had thousands to contend with, not three, or even thirteen, so I can live with that.”

“Oh, there are hundreds of the wild, tree-hugging freaks there. Just not all able to dunk you into your worst memory and keep you there until you’d do anything to make her stop. They’ve still got bows and spears that’ll skewer us well enough. That and the Unseelie, which I’d guess there are more than a couple of hundred, maybe three hundred.”

“Correction,” I said, “They’re all threats, just in varying degrees. Shitballs.”

“Weaknesses?” Neve asked, all business.

“Yeah, what she said.” I thumbed at her.

“Most of the time I was in some sort of stasis, not really asleep, but not awake, either. I remember Alseides coming to talk to me a whole bunch. She asked about you, what you were like, if you were as powerful as they hoped.”

I caught Neve’s gaze, wondering if she was thinking the same thing as me. Our boys might be knocked out, making the extraction process a hell of a lot harder.

“What did you tell them?” I sat forward in my seat, hoping he’d say
not a damn thing
.

His gaze lowered until his lashes nearly covered all of his eyes. “Thing is … I don’t really remember. I felt safe there, like she was my protector and nothing bad could happen to me while she was around. It was dreamy and euphoric. Whatever she said to me seemed profound and important, making everything else meaningless. Shit, I could have told her anything.”

Sighing, I grunted back to my feet. “Still doesn’t change anything.”

“At least you know what you’re up against now, Li … I mean, Lila.”

I nodded, finding no words to fill the emptiness for several seconds. “We need to go. I’ll have one of the guards bring you some food and new clothes.”

“Thank you. I’m starved.” His hand went to his belly again, and he smiled, confusing me even more about the little stirrings of guilt he caused in me. “I’ll be ready to go whenever you are.”

Neve and I left, walking toward the garden in silence. I still didn’t know what to feel about Nix. I wanted to believe everything he said, but I wasn’t ready to trust him completely. Laerni had met him and hadn’t mentioned any previous dealings with the Magi. She’d have seen it in that head of his unless the Magi had worked some magic—whatever—on Nix’s mind like they did when I was in there with him. In that case, he could have been concealing an army of zombie souls behind his mental walls, and none of us would have been the wiser.

Before we made it to the gates of the Court, Laerni caught up with us.

“You must sense Nix here now,” I said. “Is there anything in his head I should be worried about?”

“Alas, whatever they’ve done to his mind is impenetrable even to me.”

Neve sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“You must eat before they arrive, Lila Gray.” Laerni gestured toward the castle. “It would be my pleasure to prepare something for you and your child.”

Walking backwards, Neve said, “I’m going to check on the Dun Bray crew and my sister. You okay?”

“Yeah, go. Thanks.” I flicked a glance at the castle before shaking my head at Laerni. “I’m not hungry right now.” My growling stomach disagreed, but I didn’t want to break the composure I had a precarious hold on by going to the last place Liam and I were together. I hoped I could, one day, look back and laugh at myself for getting teary-eyed over a room and a dead bird’s tasty leg.

Laerni gave a sympathetic smile. “Ah, I see reason for your reluctance. Such a tender moment, a cherished moment. Go to your garden, and I will bring something to you.”

“Anything but turkey or chicken,” I blurted. It took a few swallows to clear the lump from my throat as I wrestled with my grief. I’d managed to outrun it for most of the day, but it nipped at the back of my mind with ravenous hunger. “And if you can have someone take some to Nix, too, that would be great.”

Head tilted, she let a long, slow hiss of breath from her throat. “You need to release it. Acknowledging how you feel is not weakness, only your body’s way of accepting and cleansing. In unleashing it upon the wind, you may also clear your mind and find your way out of this dark night.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” I muttered as I walked down the sloped aisle to the center mound, hating the utter silence there. Gallagher should have been pacing, or muttering to himself about philosophy or the stars or ancient history that could bore me to death. Andrew should have been making wise cracks or grouching about security protocol, or driving me nuts in whatever daily flavor he chose. I missed Cas’ warm smile. Was Liam as hungry as I was? What would he have said about everything Laerni had told me about the Magi’s methods? About Garret having a part to play in it? Something wicked and full of profanity, no doubt. Was he scared, too? Was he hurt?

Let it out
, she’d said.
Set it free upon the wind. Clear the mind.
Yeah, right.
Old habits tried to force it back down. It was weakness. The more I loved, the more I had to lose and the worse it hurt. Still, I should have been stronger than that. I had to be.

Never let the monsters see you cry, Lila,
I used to tell myself. They’d use it against me, exploit it, feed my fears until they consumed and broke me. I’d survived some terrible stuff and had never cried before meeting Liam. My nagging little voice told me that was before I gave a crap about anyone, before I knew what happiness really meant. There were no monsters in my city. They were my people. My friends. My family. None of them would hold my grief against me.

I broke into a run in an attempt to outrace the tears, but the pressure built and swelled until I thought my head might come off if I didn’t release it. As the first dribble crested my lashes, I collapsed to the grass on my knees and hugged myself.

This isn’t fair!
Liam should have been with me. What if the baby came early? What if he never got to see Garret grow up? How would I take care of him alone if we even survived the next few days? How would my heart survive the loss of what made it beat?

A wail let loose from my lips and thundered around the bowl-shaped theatre, giving way to sobs that shook my bones. As my soul emptied of its darkness, I accepted that none of it would matter if I couldn’t find the Magi, figure out what they wanted and deny it to them without losing anyone, especially not myself. But how?

As a tendril of mist descended and swirled around me, carrying a soft melody in my mother’s voice, I let Laerni’s words scroll through my mind. Clear my heart of grief, and I’d find answers. The dawn to the darkest night I’d know was there somewhere. I just had to look in the right place to help it arrive, concentrate on only that, or all the other worries on my mind would crush me.