Beauty [A Faery Story 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (49 page)

The guards hesitated. They were all here.

I’m ready
. She sent the message out to everyone, but especially to her loves.

And then Maris entered the room. Bron couldn’t believe it. She should have run the minute she’d convinced Torin to find her. Maris should have fled the castle or joined the bondmates. It had been her and Niall’s job to ensure their safety.

The hags began their threats and Torin his screams for vengeance. He didn’t even look Bron’s way. But Maris did. She moved in close. She still wore her thin, diamond-and-gold crown.

“Do it,” Maris whispered.

Bron shook her head. Despite all the chaos Maris had caused, she couldn’t kill her. She’d repented in her way. “I can’t. You know I can’t. Maris, you know what’s going to happen.”

Maris whispered. “I’ve protected the others with a spell and Niall is with them. Fire won’t touch them. And I always knew this was how I would end. I don’t want to live, Bronwyn. I want to go home, and my home is no longer here. Do it or I will tell them what’s happening. You will lose your chance. You will lose everything.”

Bron was weak again. So weak. She felt sick, her stomach rolling. She could barely move her fingers. How would she do what she needed to do? Misery swamped her. She had been so close, but she was going to fail. She was going to let them all down. Her people. Her brothers. Her loves. Herself.

Her vision was starting to fade.

A cool wind buoyed her and a familiar voice filled her head. “Then take my strength, daughter. It was always meant for you and Beck and Cian. My children.”

Her father floated in front of her, the hags and Torin ignoring him as they continued their argument. Her father kept his eyes on her. “Tell them I did love them. My sons. They will make great kings, and you are already a queen. You didn’t need a crown, Bron. You only needed your strong heart.”

He moved forward, his essence merging with hers.

The whispers died, but she was shot through with life. Her father had given her everything. He’d waited, given up his after, to give her one last gift. One last chance at life. She was suffused with energy. She brimmed with it. She could do this.

“What just happened?” the skinny one asked, looking around the room as though searching for a threat.

She took a step back, her will a palpable thing. In that moment, she felt like a queen.

The hags cackled and Torin yelled. The guards began to tap their swords looking for something to kill. Bron could hear her compatriots waiting for the time and the time was now.

Bronwyn did what she’d been born to do. She opened her soul and connected them all. A hundred bondmates, their power soaring and reaching out. The hag who had eaten all those souls gasped, and Bron realized the hag’s mistake. The hag was Bronwyn’s, caught in a net of her own making. Those souls that lived inside her wanted to be free, and Bronwyn gave them a way, a path to the after.

The large hag shook and her head fell back, all the souls rushing out through her mouth and eyes and ears, killing her in an instant.

Torin turned and tried to flee, but Maris caught him. She fell to the floor, caught in the power. Her mouth opened and a scream rent the air, but she held on to Torin, dragging him down, keeping him close. Bron felt her will. This was for her. This was for her love and the girl she’d been. Maris believed in vengeance and she was at peace with death.

But Bron believed in love. Vengeance had burned away in the face of love. Love for her family and her husbands. Love for her people. Love for what was right in the world.

She was the vessel and it was right.

Bron felt the fire. It sizzled through her soul. She pulled it from Shim, dragging his power into her hands, and with a great yell she sent it out. It raced from her skin. Heat, white and hot, flashed through her, a great wave of purity. She sent it to engulf the hags and Torin and Maris, sent it out further to every soul on the hags’ leash. There was no way to free those they had corrupted except to send them to the after.

Fire reigned, pouring from her every cell a cascade of purifying blaze that wiped clean Torin’s evil.

Bron let it rage and rage, the heat crackling around her and then, when she was sure it was enough, she let it go.

She slumped down, her body held up only by the chains that bound her. Her clothes had gone in the crisp of the flames, the fire burning so hot that there was nothing but stone and metal left in the room. Even the bones were ashes.

Weariness settled over her, but she needed to hear them. Feel them.

Nothing. The connection had burnt out as it had before.

Or was it something worse? Minutes passed and she struggled against the bonds. She needed to get to them. What if it had all been for nothing and they were dead and gone and she’d been left alone?

She loved them. Unabashedly, unashamedly, and now that she’d served her purpose she wanted nothing more than the life they had promised her. Their own kingdom and children to love, a lifetime to know her soul’s mates.

She needed that lifetime. She needed her forever.

Boot steps hurried along the floor, echoing through the hallways. “Bronwyn?”

“Lach!” Her voice was hoarse, but she called out anyway. She knew his voice. She opened herself and there it was. The connection was tenuous, but it was there. It would grow again. They would nurture the bond between them, and they would have it again.

His face came into view, his gorgeous, imperfectly perfect face, and then Shim was beside him, his eyes tired, but his lips smiling.

They held her, their arms encasing her and lifting her up.

“It was a close thing, love,” Shim said.

“Shim passed out again. You have to remind me that Shim passes out every time you reach into his head and pull his power out. He damn near killed me.” Lach kissed her.

Joy welled inside Bronwyn. It had worked. She was alive and whole and ready to live past this. “Get me out of here.”

Lach shook his head. “Not a chance. We like you just the way you are, love. Bound and safe.”

“We’ve decided keeping you locked up will keep you out of trouble.” But he was smiling and winking as he said it.

She grinned. They thought she was trouble now. Wait until they met their children. She was sure there was lots of glorious, amazing trouble to come.

Lach sat back and watched as Bronwyn bonded with her new sister-in-law. After a joyous reunion with her brothers, the two walked arm in arm, aiding all those who had survived. The vampires had brought tools and Alexander Dellacourt was already arguing with his son over how this current political state would affect the stock market back on the Vampire plane. The group from Aoibhneas had already put up tents and had begun tending to the wounded under the direction of a red-haired Fae healer with the worst disposition Lach had ever seen. Queen Meg was doing her best to make everyone feel comfortable, but it would take a while to get the palace back in order. After all, his bride had torched a good portion of it.

And Gillian. Gillian was gone again. She’d kissed him on the cheek and disappeared.

Roan and Harry were hot on her trail.

Bron laughed at something the queen said, the throaty sound making Lach’s cock jump.

“We should never have found her new clothes,” Shim said with a sigh.

Lach laughed. “She’s going to be a queen when our father heads off to the after. She can’t just walk around the Dark Palace without clothes on, Shim.”

“It’s a terrible shame and a waste of such beautiful flesh.” Shim sighed as Bron looked over and waved.

“I’m going to absolutely forget everything I just heard you say about my sweet sister,” Cian Finn said, looking very much the king. Everyone was busy cleaning up and burying the dead, but there was a general buzz that swept up every worker. Though there was mourning, there was also hope. Cian smiled as he watched his sister with his wife. “I can’t thank you enough for finding her or for loving her. She tells me she’s very happy and intends to put the Dark Palace to rights.”

She’d certainly charmed his father. King Fergus had taken to his daughter-in-law immediately, declaring his sons not good enough for her, but he’d said it with a smile and wink. “I think you’ll find everyone in our kingdom will be eager to accommodate her.”

Cian raised a brow. “And if they’re not?”

Shim showed off a hint of fangs. “We’re Unseelie, Your Majesty. We know how to deal with difficult subjects.”

Well, they would certainly know how to deal with anyone who fucked with their wife.

The Warrior King joined his brother. “Lachlan, we were wondering about something.”

Wondering about how well he’d pleased their sister the night before? Wondering how many times he and Shim had made her come?

“I hardly think they’re wondering that, Lach,” Shim said, laughing under his breath.

Beck made a horrible face. “Stop. I can guess. I don’t even want to know you think that. Goddess, she’s still fourteen in my head.”

She wasn’t fourteen anymore. She’d been a sweet girl, but what a woman she’d become. “Sorry, Your Majesty.”

Beck shook his head. “We’re family. None of that. We could end up calling each other by titles all day. So, did Bron tell you about our father?”

Bron had told him everything. About her father becoming a sluagh and her brothers’ ex-fiancée trapping Torin. He wanted to kill the one named Niall, but apparently he was some sort of hero in the Seelies’ eyes. “She told me her father had sacrificed himself to give her the energy to go on.”

Beck’s arms crossed over his chest, his eyes settling into a worried stare. “Does that mean he’s gone for good?”

Lach sat up straight. He hadn’t even thought about it. He’d been too busy holding Bronwyn and reveling in the feel of her against his heart. “He was a sluagh. He might have faded, but he’s still here. It will just take him a long time to gather enough energy to appear before us again. But he’ll stay here most likely. He tied himself to this place. Becoming a sluagh was a choice for him.”

Cian’s voice grew tight. “Can he choose again?”

Lach stopped, his brain wrapping around the idea. What had Duffy said? Death was a doorway. Death was nothing to be afraid of. What if Lach’s power was more than pulling corpses from the ground and playing the puppetmaster? What if his power could have meaning and true purpose?

Death was a doorway, and Lachlan McIver intended to open it.

Bronwyn was suddenly at his side, Queen Meg with her. “What’s going on? I felt Lach’s power stir.”

Shim took her hand. “He’s going to try something. Help us. He needs a bit of my power, too.”

Beck Finn put a hand on his shoulder. “Bron, take some of mine.”

“Mine, too,” Cian said, laying his hand on Lach. “Funnel it to Lachlan.”

Fire and earth and the storms above. And a doorway.

Lach let the power flow and reached out. Nothing was ever truly lost and Seamus Finn, King of Seelie Fae, was no exception.

Ashes and dust. That’s what his body was, but Lach found them and drew them to him forming a pile of what had made the man. Lach breathed his own unique power into it.

Seamus Finn stood, a ghostly apparition, but quite solid for a shade. He looked startled to be seen. “Beck? Ci?”

They moved away from Lach, toward their long-dead father.

“Father, Torin is gone.” Beck seemed solemn, as though reporting to a superior, not a son to his father. Cian simply stared.

Seamus shook his head. “He doesn’t matter, son. You do. You and Cian and your sister. Oh, Death Lord, I cannot thank you enough for this chance. I feared I had given it up to spare your sister. Beckett, I was a fool. You are a good man with a good soul and those needs of yours aren’t wrong. I had them, too, and my father beat them out of me. I pray I’m not too late to change that for you. There was a piece of me that was empty because I didn’t follow my heart.”

Meg smiled broadly. “I fixed him, Your Majesty. Trust me, he’s perfectly fine with all those needs now.”

Seamus smiled at her, reaching out a hand that couldn’t touch her. “Sweet Queen. Take care of my boys. Cian, I am so sorry. I didn’t understand you. I loved you, but I didn’t know how to handle you. Can you forgive me?”

Cian clutched his wife’s hand. “Yes, father.”

“I love you, Ci. My time is short. I feel the pull. I love you, my children. This kingdom is yours. Rule with wisdom and love and grace.” He stopped and looked at Lachlan. “What is that, Death Lord? I see a light.”

A deep sense of peace swept over Lachlan. This. This was his power. This was his calling. All of his life he’d hated the cold, dead power, but he’d been wrong. His power was about life. His power was a service to his people and all living creatures were his people. “It’s the after. It’s your time.”

“But I chose. I became a sluagh.” The words were a staccato protestation, but hope was dawning on his face.

“Choose again, Your Majesty.”

Seamus turned, looking at something only he could see. “My wife. She’s here. She waited. I didn’t deserve any of this, but I will take it with a grateful heart. Good-bye, my loves.”