Cast in Hellfire: An Urban Fantasy Romance (The Mage Craft Series Book 2) (17 page)

Something shifted in Konig’s face. “No. She doesn’t.”

Time held still between them. She stared up at him and he stared down at her, as though seeing Nori—again—for the first time. It wasn’t only admiration for her evolving thought processes in his expression now. He wasn’t thinking about how smart Nori was.

His thoughts were much more animal.

“She has no idea how many ways she could die in Sheol,” Konig said. “I’m the one who defeated Arawn. I’m the one who killed dozens of demons to free her from the tower.”

“She should be grateful,” Nori said.

“She should, but she’s not.” He clutched at her shoulders, gripping so hard that Nori was nearly wrenched off of her feet. She was short for someone of ethereal descent, and shorter still compared to Konig. “You’re grateful, aren’t you?”

Nori only had to nod.

He dragged her against his chest, and his lips crashed into hers, icy cold and desperate. Dana McIntyre’s papers tumbled from her arms. She wrapped herself around him—arms around neck, legs around hips. He lifted her effortlessly. She was giddy at his touch, dizzy with the promise of it.

A prince. A sidhe prince.

Of all the times that Nori had participated in Autumn Court parties, she had never joined with a sidhe who made her skin ache like Konig did.

She also hadn’t joined with a sidhe who was involved in an exclusive relationship with her cousin.

“Wait,” Nori said, breaking the kiss.

And he said, “No. It’s been too long. I won’t wait longer.”

The throne room bent around them, bowing from the position where the two of them stood. Konig jerked both of them through the ley lines into the bedroom he’d chosen for himself. He all but tossed Nori onto the bed and then collapsed atop her, his weight suspended on his elbows.

He bit at her neck. “Tell me you want me.”

“I want you,” Nori said. She’d never said anything truer in her life.

“Tell me you need me,” Konig said.

Nori wasn’t sure
that
was true, but she would tell him anything to get him to continue kissing her like that. “I need you, Konig—Prince ErlKonig of the Autumn Court.”

He made a savage, needy noise deep in his throat, and together, they rolled across the bed.

In the king’s bedchamber, the cold couldn’t touch Nori.

N
ori had never seen
a body as glorious as that of Prince ErlKonig’s, and never one in such a lush setting as the oiled skins and furs of the king’s bed. The prince was lying back on the pillows, head propped up on one arm as he languorously blew fog into the air, his hot breath creating billows above his face.

Sculptures dangled over the massive bed, like an elaborate chandelier made of icicles. Nori and Konig’s combined body heat was making them melt so that they slowly, steadily dripped chilly water onto her naked back.

She rested her chin on his chest, stroking along the lines of his pectorals with a fingernail. His skin still glistened with sweat and magic.

And it was hers. All hers.

At some point in the near future, Nori was going to have to think of a way to break this to Marion. She’d have to think about the implications that it would have for her relationship with the Autumn Court, the ethereal delegation, and Marion herself.

For now, she only wanted to rest on Konig and admire him.

“What are you thinking about?” Nori asked, tracing a circle on his ribcage.

“Marion,” he said.

Nori sat up, tugging the furs into her naked lap to try to stave off the chill. “Me too.”

“If you have any ideas of how to make her see reason, I’m all ears,” Konig said.

She laughed uneasily. “Reason? About what?”

“Marriage, of course.”

The warmth of the afterglow was gone so quickly that she physically shivered. “But…we just…”

“Yes, we made love, and it doesn’t change anything.” Konig pushed up on his elbows, gazing at her with violet eyes that seemed more like sapphires in the icy bedroom. “You don’t think that I’d endanger the Winter Court for this, do you?”

It seemed a hell of a lot like that was exactly what he’d done.

Nori slid out of bed. Her underwear was ruined, so she pulled her slacks on without them. “I suppose I assumed—”

“I’m unseelie,” he said. “Sex is only an avenue to magic, which you provided excellently. Thank you. I feel much better. It’s otherwise meaningless.”

“I wonder if Marion would agree,” Nori said.

“You’re not going to tell her. Pull the stick out of your ethereal ass, Nori. It’s only sex.” He rolled onto his belly, resting his chin on his hands. “Besides, you’re the one who pointed out that Marion and I needed to get married.”

But that was before Konig had done things to Nori that no man had done before—at least, not in those particular ways. She burned with humiliation to have thought it was special. Nori had hooked up with several sidhe in the Autumn Court without making that mistake. Why was it different with Konig? Especially when the stakes were so high.

She pulled her shirt on over her head. She was composed again by the time her head popped out. “You’re right.”

He was an asshole, but he was right.

“It’s a shame you’re not the steward,” Konig said as he watched her dress. “You’re so much more reasonable than Marion.” Nori wrapped herself in furs, pulling them around her chin to conceal her blushing. “My princess and I are lucky we’ll have you as our lead advisor when we rule together.”

Advisor to the rulers of the Winter Court? Well, there were worse things than that.

Better things too.

But she didn’t have better things. She didn’t have Konig, with the long line of his muscular back leading into his well-shaped posterior, which she had been admiring ever since she’d started working for the Autumn Court.

“I’ll talk to Marion,” Nori said. “I’m sure she’ll come to her senses.”

Konig swept the hair out of his face, shooting a smile at her that was pure sex. “Come here.”

Hesitantly, she obeyed, bending over the bed to reach him. Konig’s kiss sparked electricity over her lips. When she started to draw back, he held her in place with a hand on her throat.

“Thank you, Nori,” he murmured against her lips.

Her heart was pounding when he released her.

N
ori wasn’t
sure how she made it out of the king’s bedroom, and she wasn’t sure if anyone saw her leaving. Minutes later, she found herself in front of Marion’s door unaware of how she’d gotten there and too numb to feel when she knocked.

Marion’s voice echoed from within. “Enter.”

Nori edged into the room.

Konig had selected one of the smaller bedrooms for Marion—not a set of royal rooms, but a special apartment where seelie children had once lived. It was the one place where trees could grow, and the air was at least twenty degrees.

The mage girl was sitting under one of those magicked trees, knees hugged to her chest, her hair frizzed from the moisture in the air.

Nori stood a few feet away, waiting to see if Marion would know what had happened. Marion had read Nori’s mind more than once in the past.

Yet Marion seemed barely aware of Nori’s presence, much less interested in her thoughts. “Gods, Nori,” Marion said into her knees. “I’m so stupid. I’m so, so stupid.”

Nori sat beside her. There was a time that Marion would have recoiled at having an ethereal Gray so close, but this lobotomized version of the steward leaned into Nori’s touch.

Marion still wasn’t herself. She wasn’t the woman that the Winter Court needed—or the woman that Konig needed, for that matter.

Nori took Marion’s hand, trying to rub warmth into her chilly fingers. “Marion…”

She should have been talking Marion into wedding Konig.

It had been Nori’s idea in the first place, after all. And she’d promised Konig she would help convince Marion. Even now, Nori believed that getting Konig on the throne beside Marion was best for everyone.

So why was it so hard to speak?

Marion lifted her head. Her eyes were puffy, cheeks wet. “Did you know that Seth wants to kill me?”

That wasn’t remotely the direction that Nori had expected the conversation to take. “Are we talking metaphorically or literally?”

“Very, very literally,” Marion said. “Genesis changed him, and it’s given him these killing urges, which seem to be fixated on me. That’s why he’s so desperate to talk to the gods.”

“So he’s been using you,” Nori said.

“No. That’s the thing. He wouldn’t even
tell
me what he needed. He’s been keeping it a secret to try to protect me.”

“Protect you from…him?”

“From whatever the stupid gods did to him,” she said. “Why do you think he wouldn’t have told me what he was struggling with?”

Nori imagined that was a rhetorical question, but she ventured a guess anyway, erring on righteous indignation on Marion’s behalf. “Because he doesn’t trust you?”

“It’s not his fault. He’s been alone for so long—he doesn’t know how to trust anymore.” She lifted the statuette she had been using to contact Nori. “Look at what I’ve been working on.”

The statuette had changed. It no longer glowed with magic that spoke directly to Nori. It audibly hummed, glittering as though its surface had caught starlight.

“You changed the summoning spell,” Nori said, startled. “I thought you didn’t remember magic that complex.”

“I don’t, but the gods are guiding me,” Marion said. “This statuette—it won’t do anything from here, in the Winter Court. But if I get back to Sheol, I can use this to bring me here again. To my bedroom, specifically.”

“How do you know that?”

Marion shook her head. “I just
do
. I’m meant to be with Seth in Sheol.” She hurled her robe onto the bed and fumbled to grab her quiver. “If Konig won’t take me back, I’ll find someone who will.”

“I’ll take you,” Nori said.

Marion’s eyes filled with such hopeful light that it physically pained Nori. “You will?”

“Of course. I’m your assistant.” She smiled tremulously. “I live to serve.”

“Gods, you’re the best.” Marion slung her bow over her shoulders and crammed a pair of slender-armed spectacles onto the bridge of her nose. “But what about Konig?”

“Don’t worry,” Nori said. “I’ll take care of
everything
.”

S
eth’s path
through Duat was clear.

He walked on streets of crumbled obsidian, passing between buildings with empty windows. He sensed demons everywhere: behind the narrow alleys, within structures that might represent a marketplace, and lurking in the shadows beneath iron trees.

Duat had been recently filled with life. Trash blew through the streets, and lights extinguished in windows when he got near. The residents were hiding from Seth.

From the corner of his eye, he caught flashes of white. Every time he tried to focus, though, he didn’t see anything.

The only white things he’d seen near Duat were the Hounds.

They were following Seth.

Hunting.

None attacked or even approached.

They
wanted
him to reach the temple, and the Canope within.

The Hounds and demons weren’t the only ones who wanted Seth to reach the temple. He felt as though invisible hands were holding his shoulders. They pushed him ever forward, ensuring he couldn’t change his mind and go back.

It was destiny propelling him onward.

He was meant to be there, in that moment, walking that exact path.

The fact that the dark environment felt so familiar to Seth was more disturbing than the spindly arches of the demon architecture. He’d never been to Hell before Genesis, and he certainly hadn’t been to Sheol since. Seth had never specialized in demons. He’d been a werewolf hunter, and, eventually, a werewolf guardian.

Sheol should have been frightening.

It shouldn’t have felt like a quiet homecoming.

The only problem was how lonely he felt. Destiny was satisfied to have him there, but he shouldn’t have been on his own. Marion should have been locked to his side. Yin and yang, positive and negative, half-angel and…whatever Seth had become in Genesis.

But he didn’t regret sending her away.

None of Duat’s residents disturbed Seth on his long, winding path through the ghost town. Not until he reached the base of the temple.

There were seemingly thousands of crumbling black steps bridging the distance between street and temple, but he couldn’t start climbing. A figure stood in his path.

It was the gondolier again.

She lifted her hood, exposing a skull from which two curved horns grew. Shining opals dangled from the tips. Without the shadow of her hood, he could see that she had opals embedded along her cheekbones, too. A necklace of metal bones glimmered on chains looped around her neck.

He could now see her the way she may have looked in earlier days, before the illusion of a human form rotted away and left her a skeleton. She would have been a beautiful and noble demon.

Now she was a husk.

“Nyx, I take it,” Seth said. She was the other Lord of Sheol that Arawn had been talking to on his palantír, and she’d been following Seth around ever since he’d entered the Nether Worlds.

“Goddess of Night, Lord of Sheol, Daughter of Phlegethon,” Nyx said. “I am she. I’ve slept so long in wait for you.”

Seth imagined that news should have surprised him, but he could still feel the pounding of fate within his veins.

Everything was predestined and nothing was unexpected.

“This is your final opportunity, Seth,” Nyx said. “Turn back and leave. Leave the Canope. Forget its existence.”

“I can’t,” he said.

Nyx drifted from the stairs, settling on the ground before him with a wave of smoke billowing out from her robe. She flashed bony legs as she glided forward. “I’ll allow you to save the revenant if you leave the Canope.”

“You will? Isn’t Charity your prisoner?”

“She belongs to Arawn. My only interest in her is using the revenant as leverage to drive you from Sheol,” Nyx said. “You must trust me when I say you should leave the Canope for your own good. I have your best interests at heart, Seth.”

His name again.

It was like she knew him.

“Who
are
you?” he asked.

She flowed around him with the scent of brimstone. “You should ask who you are, not who I am. In the grand scheme, I am nothing.”

“You know what happened to me in Genesis. You have answers.”

“You wouldn’t be satisfied to know them. You’ll live in despair when you know the truth, lost in darkness deeper than any other within the Nether Worlds.” Her bony fingers slid down his shoulders, her left horn brushing his hair as she bent closer to whisper in his ear. “You don’t need to know the truth. You don’t need the Canope. Leave and be satisfied knowing ignorance is best.”

But then Marion would never have her memories back. She wouldn’t be whole again.

“Would that be terrible?” Nyx asked, swimming behind him to whisper in the opposite ear. Her breath was the heat of a forge lit by magma.

Seth didn’t think he’d spoken aloud. She was reading his thoughts in some way.

A powerful demon. Too powerful to trust.

He couldn’t help but wonder, though. He’d been wondering it ever since they’d left Dana McIntyre’s condo.

Would it be terrible to leave Marion without her memories?

He shook his head. “I need the Canope. It wouldn’t be fair to leave her like this. She isn’t herself.” He turned to survey Nyx. Up close, he could see himself reflected in the gems in her skull.

Seth didn’t fear her in the slightest.

In fact, strange feelings were stirring deep in his gut that resembled affection.

“I’m going to take Charity and the Canope to the Winter Court. It’s a Middle World in eternal darkness,” he said. “You might be able to survive there, if you wanted me to free you from Sheol.”

She recoiled an inch. Even without facial muscles, he could tell she was surprised. “You think I need to be freed?”

“Don’t you?”

“Sometimes I think I do.” Her bony fingers traced a line down his cheek. “You’ve always been too kind a heart for the soul you’ve been given.”

“You keep talking like you know me.”

“But I do,” Nyx said. “Surely you must wonder what became of us in the eternity of Genesis.”

“Genesis was a moment.” Seth knew she would argue with him, so he didn’t give her the opportunity. “Come with me to the Winter Court.”

Nyx seemed to consider the option. At least, it took her a long time to say, “No. It’s too late, and I’m too old, for that to happen. But I’ll show you to your friend. May she have the sense to avoid the Canope that you do not.”

She turned and drifted away.

Seth followed.

The halls of Duat’s temple weren’t tall by sidhe standards, but compared to the rest of Sheol’s structures, they towered. Seth’s footfalls echoed throughout the rafters even though Nyx didn’t make a sound. She had no feet to strike against the ground.

He practically bored holes into Nyx’s back staring at her, trying to figure out how he could have known her.

Seth wasn’t missing memories like Marion. He
wasn’t
.

He’d been born to a werewolf hunter twenty-some years before Genesis. He’d grown up learning his father’s business. Killed a couple werewolves before he started needing to shave. Dedicated his teen years to his werewolf girlfriend’s ranch, and then gone to college for a pre-med degree.

There were no gaps in those memories, nor were there in the painful years that had followed his return from college. That was when Abel and Rylie had fallen in love, after all.

And then he had died.

Every memory since his return after Genesis was intact, too—painfully so. Seth didn’t forget things the way he used to. He had no trouble recalling the most inane details of medical school and job-hunting while pretending to be Lucas Flynn.

Nyx was nowhere in those memories.

The only blank spot in his mind was that year between the Breaking and Genesis. But nothing had happened then. He’d been dead.

And Genesis had been only a moment.

Nyx led Seth to a door in the hallway. The arching frame had stone horns at its peak. “He’s put her in here,” she said, slithering backward to allow Seth to push the door open.

Inside, he found a spacious but empty room of stone. The walls were covered in murals depicting the Hounds.

Seth stopped inside the door. The only creature inside that room was tall, lanky, demonic-looking—a hideous thing facing the windows.

It turned at the sound of him. Though the features were frightening, he knew them, just as he knew the glasses that were tucked into the neck of the revenant’s shirt.

That was no demon.

“Charity,” Seth said.

“Oh gods, Seth.” Charity fell onto him, embracing him so tightly that he could barely breathe. It was nothing to do with revenant strength and everything to do with his relief at finding her whole. He’d expected to find her on a meat hook by that point.

“Are you okay?” he asked, holding her at arm’s length to study her vampiric form. “Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head over and over again. It was strange to see such a nervous gesture from such a monstrous creature. “I don’t think he ever planned on it. You shouldn’t have come for me.”

“I couldn’t leave you here,” Seth said. “Get the glamour on and let’s go.”

Charity’s monstrous face fell. “Put the glamour
on
? Why?”

She looked so crestfallen that he instantly felt guilty. “I mean…we’re going to the Winter Court the instant we’ve got our hands on the Canope. You’re not subtle like this.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be subtle anymore,” Charity said.

Seth had seen her like this before, and there had still been no bracing himself for her appearance. People who didn’t expect it would most likely scream and run. That was what everyone had done after seeing her outside of the United Nations, after all. She hadn’t even had to attack to cause a stampede in the crowd.

Even so, the Winter Court would be better equipped to deal with it than the mundane world.

“Okay, it’s fine,” Seth said. “We’ll talk about this later. Let’s go.”

“There isn’t anything to talk about,” Charity said.

That was up for debate, but a debate he didn’t want to deal with at the moment. He pulled her toward the door.

Charity stopped when she saw Nyx.

Seth rubbed Charity’s arm comfortingly. “It’s okay. She’s on our side—kind of. She wants me to get you out of here.”

Nyx remained floating silently in the hallway, watching them expectantly.

“But?” Charity asked without taking another step to the door.

“She doesn’t want me to have the Canope,” Seth said. “And she’s hoping you’ll agree with her.”

“The Canope is a trap,” Nyx finally said.

“Yeah,” Charity said, “it is.”

Which was when the trap sprung.

“Look at what we’ve got here.” Arawn emerged from the opposite side of the room, sauntering out of the shadows. He had changed into a corset cinching his body tight from underarms to hips, which Seth imagined must have been holding his shredded body together. He dragged a long leather train behind him, walking on boots with six-inch platforms. “You weren’t going to leave me, were you, Charity?”

Seth pushed the revenant behind his back. “We don’t have to fight, Arawn. I’m happy to leave peacefully.”

“You don’t leave at all,” Arawn said. “Not with her. She’s
mine
.” The demon surveyed Seth with opaque eyes. “You still haven’t gone for the Canope. Why not? It’s not far.”

“I brought him to save his friend.” Nyx slid in from the hallway.

What little good humor had been in Arawn’s face vanished when he saw her. “Are you such a miserable, petty asshole that you have to fight me every step of the way?” He turned to Charity. “And you—I thought we were getting somewhere.”

It was weird for Seth to have a revenant even taller than he was trying to cower behind his back. “You kidnapped me,” Charity said.

The demon lord’s face spasmed. “But…”

Rage came over him like starlight after nightfall. Arawn’s switchblade appeared in his hand.

He hurled himself at Seth.

Nyx billowed through the room, blocking both Seth and Charity from Arawn’s attack. Through her semitransparent body, Seth saw Arawn’s arm, knife and all, get caught in her ribs.

“You won’t hurt him,” Nyx said.

“Watch me,” Arawn said.

He wrenched his arm free and stabbed again. Nyx evaded the blow a second time, wrapping herself around Arawn so that he was consumed in shadow.

Seth was tempted to leave while they were distracted. But Nyx registered actual pain when Arawn stabbed her. She wasn’t merely an incorporeal puff of smoke. She was a demon who had been nothing but kind to Seth, and she was struggling.

But the two Lords of Sheol were only growing in power. For the first time, Seth glimpsed the true depth of Arawn’s abilities. He’d hidden them fighting Konig to humor the sidhe rules, but against Nyx, after such a long grudge, he held nothing back.

White flame crashed against shadow. Arawn’s presence erupted from his body, and it quickly became even more massive than Nyx’s. Seth recognized the shape of it: the long, spindly legs, the arching neck, the red-tipped ears. At his core, Arawn was the biggest of the Hounds, and his maw was filled with endless teeth.

The entire temple shivered. Obsidian groaned. Distant bells chimed discordantly, making the floor roll underneath Seth’s feet. He staggered and almost fell.

“You won’t control me ever again!” Arawn roared through a mouth bigger than the temple, bigger than the universe.

His jaw yawned wider, exposing the tunnel to his stomach. He bowed over Nyx.

And he began to swallow.

Seth struggled to reach Nyx’s side. He didn’t know what he could do—he didn’t think his guns would work against Arawn any more than they had worked against the Hounds. But he had to do something.
Anything
.

Nyx’s hollow eyes met Seth’s through the ghost of Arawn’s Hound form.

“Don’t,” she said. Despite Arawn’s growling, which was so loud that it drowned out even the bells, Seth heard her voice clearly. It was as though she spoke from within him. “Leave without the Canope.”

Those were her final words.

She stopped struggling.

Arawn’s mouth snapped shut on Nyx.

In a blink, the giant Hound vanished, and Arawn stood in the center of an empty room. He looked like a man once more.