Cast in Hellfire: An Urban Fantasy Romance (The Mage Craft Series Book 2) (21 page)

“What are
you
doing here?” he asked.

“Marion’s in Sheol and she…uh…she told me that she wanted help, but…” Were her words even making sense? And would Marion want Konig’s help if he was cheating with Nori?

His tone sharpened. “She’s in Sheol?” He strode toward the doors, and then he seemed to remember that Charity had seen him kissing Nori. He stopped dead at the end of the hallway. He turned to face her slowly, a dangerous calm settling over him.

What would he do to Charity to keep things quiet?

She was pretty sure he was wondering the same thing.

Neither of them got the chance to come to a conclusion.

Acid gushed over the mezzanine, spraying from a pinhole in midair. It blasted a gash into the icy palace floor. Charity leaped away to keep her feet from getting burned, hand clapped over her mouth with shock.

The flow gentled as the pinhole stretched. It extended to be eight feet tall, like a bolt of black lightning that had frozen into existence atop Niflheimr.

A torrent of demons followed once the acid had waned, blasting forth in a whirling mass. Limbs flashed. Insect wings buzzed. One after another, they erupted into the air and tore across Niflheimr.

The screams followed a moment later, coming from the encampment below.

“No!” Nori only got a few steps toward the stairs before Konig restrained her.

“I’ll take care of this.” He lifted a hand into the air. Shimmering light resolved into a sword—not the impressive demon blade he’d used in Sheol, but a proper sidhe weapon summoned through the walls of the Middle Worlds.

Charity wasn’t confident it would help. Not against this attack. Even a big sword was a sole weapon, and hundreds of demons had poured through—enough to blanket the camp in utter darkness.

Sidhe scattered, racing away, too slow to fend off an unexpected assault.

The portal wasn’t done producing demons, either. A human-like leg slid through the gash between dimensions, followed by a shoulder, and a striking face with glossy black eyes.

Arawn emerged from Sheol, and he didn’t look happy.

M
arion came back
to life reclining on a bed of dead grass, colorless and dried, to the point where a single spark might have made all of it catch fire. A bronze wall towered over her.

Then the pain registered.

It wasn’t the throbbing ache of having been attacked by the Hounds earlier. This wound was new. Ongoing.

There were teeth currently sunk into her throat.

Marion tried to pull away. She wasn’t in command of her body—not her arms or legs or any other part. Mind and soul had disconnected on the brink of death. It took every ounce of her strength to even rest her hands on the shoulders of the man who gripped her.

She couldn’t push him away.

The bridge of a nose pressed against her jaw. Lips were clamped to her throat.

Someone was drinking her blood.

She’d returned to life, but she was still fading.

“Stop,” she rasped.

The sound of her voice was as much a shock to the creature that attacked her as it was to Marion.

Teeth released from her throat.

Seth lifted his head, gazing down at her in confusion that slowly shifted into horror. He looked like he’d recently returned to his body, too. His spirit had chased hers into the Dead Forest, and he’d lost his sense of reality as much as she had.

They’d come back to Seth drinking her blood.

She felt so faint.

“Seth,” she whispered.

Her trembling hand lifted to his cheek, pressing against the side of his face. His lips were coated in her blood.

“Oh my God,” he said.

Marion wanted to make a joke about that—saying “oh my God” as though it were some kind of expletive instead of something very literal and very relevant. She was so exhausted that she could only sink against him.

“No,” Seth said, clutching her tighter. “Wait.”

Marion let her eyes slide shut. She pressed her temple to his chest. There was a heart beating under his breastbone, strong and steady, sending the blood he’d devoured coursing through his body.

Seth gathered her into his arms. She felt herself come off of the grass, which must have meant that he was picking her up. She couldn’t feel much aside from pain.

Marion peeled her eyes open. Seth was as injured as she was. He was dribbling blood from gashes carved into his throat and chest.

Yet he was standing.

“Hang on, Marion.” Eyes as black as the night bored deep into her skull.

He changed.

Seth filled the Dead Forest with an energy that exceeded any mortal form. He was beyond human, beyond doctor, beyond demon. Smoke peeled from the wounds on his torso and drifted into the night.

Blood dribbled from his chest, and every drop that departed his body seemed to make space for more power.

In his arms, Marion could see all of Sheol: the complexity of the hive tunnels, Duat’s temple, the dust that had once been the Canope. A million demons. A dozen rivers. So many trees. So much blood.

Seth expanded and kept growing.

Marion recognized what was happening—the extension of Seth’s form out of the boundaries of the Nether Worlds, reaching to the Winter Court with little more than a thought. It wasn’t teleportation, but something very much like ripping open the walls between dimensions so that he could slither between them.

She hadn’t experienced that kind of energy since waking up in Ransom Falls. But she had done it before.

It was the kind of effortless disregard for reality only a god could have.

Marion snapped back into human form in the Winter Court.

The Dead Forest was gone. She was no longer held by arms, but resting on the bed in her rooms, stretched out under the canopy of trees that crowded her bed.

Seth didn’t exactly stand in her room. He stood within it, and without. He existed within the Winter Court while also existing on every other plane.

She couldn’t quite make out his face, because there was no face.

Only essence.

“You’re going to be fine, Marion,” Seth said. “Damn it, you’re going to survive, whatever that takes.” His voice wasn’t something she heard with her ears, but within her skull.

Marion couldn’t remember ever hearing his voice quite like that, but she’d heard voices like it before.

God voices.

“You’re the third,” Marion said. “You’re like they are—like Elise and James.”

Seth reared above her, outside of rational existence, yet radiating utter horror. “No.”

“You’re the third god of the triad,” she said. “That’s what they did to you. That’s why you’re different.”

And he said again, “
No
.”

His denial was meaningless. The word itself carried throughout Sheol and the Winter Court. It rippled onto Earth.

No, no, no
…

Marion reached toward him, hands lifted in a gesture resembling prayer.

“Seth,” she said.

But he disappeared before she could make contact.

D
emons crashed
over Niflheimr’s refugee camp in a tidal wave of suffering. Nori was frozen by shock, unable to do anything but stare as a hundred creatures from the Nether Worlds destroyed everything she had spent days trying to build. They ripped through tents, smashed supply crates, and tore sidhe apart.

And Nori could only watch.

Her mind raced as her body remained immobile.

Niflheimr should have had safeguards against invasion. That was part of the reason that civil war had been devastating, after all. It had murdered most seelie sidhe who had come in from the Summer Court. And they were almost the same species. Demons should have been creamed the instant they set tentacle on the ice.

But they hadn’t been able to activate the wards on Niflheimr—not without a ruling sidhe to control them.

There was no way to stop the demons. Not until they decided to retreat or froze to death.

“Arawn,
stop
!” Charity Ballard raced toward the last demon to step through the portal.

Nori drew back, a strangled cry caught in her throat. She’d seen what Charity could do when she was angry, and she was currently in her revenant form—a thing of pure terror.

But Charity only clung to Arawn, and he clung back.

“Back off,” he said with shocking restraint. “I’m not here for you.”

Konig marched toward them, sword drawn. “Then talk to me.”

“Where is she?” Arawn roared, spinning in place to search the mezzanine with wild eyes. “Where’s that damn angel-spawn?”

Nori was certain he wasn’t talking about her.

“How did you get here?” Konig asked. “You can’t survive outside the Nether Worlds!”

“I can’t survive in sunlight,” Arawn snarled. “There’s no such thing in the Winter Court, and I have as many planeswalkers among my people as you do.”

“Get out of my palace!” Konig seized Arawn by the suspenders. Charity took a step toward them, and then stopped, as though she wasn’t sure what to do.

Arawn suffered from no such confusion. He gripped Konig’s wrists, digging his fingers in. “I’m not going anywhere until I get satisfaction. She didn’t take her memories back, and that means I don’t get to go to Earth! Give me that damn mage!”

“What are you even talking about?”

“I agreed to hold on to the Canope, lure Seth Wilder to my position, and restore Marion Garin’s memories,” Arawn said. “I
told
them I would do it, but only because they were going to make me immune to sunlight!”

Konig released the suspenders. “Who told you that?”

“Those cursed gods!” Arawn screamed it to the sky, as though trying to get their attention. “But she shattered the damn Canope, and now they’re gone—along with the promises they made!”

Refugees scrambled up the stairs, trying to escape the carnage below. Nori recognized Cyprian drenched in blood, cradling Ymir in his arms, with no sign of his daughters. They must have been lost among the camp.

Nori reflexively moved toward him to help, but the motion was a mistake. It drew Arawn’s attention.

And he got to Cyprian first.

Arawn’s fist slammed into the sidhe’s belly. He was holding a switchblade that Nori hadn’t noticed before, and it sliced right through the sidhe’s gut.

Cyprian fell with a gurgling cry, dropping Ymir.

Nori screamed. She screamed, but nothing changed. Nothing got better. Cyprian was dead, along with dozens of the refugees. Their cries mingled with hers and echoed through all of Niflheimr.

Arawn yanked the child off of the ground. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Ymir,” he croaked.

“Put him down,” Konig commanded, lifting his sidhe sword and stepping forward.

He stopped when Arawn shook the little frost giant.

“I’ll kill Ymir if you don’t let me have the mage!”

It was obviously a desperate move. There was no way that Arawn could think that some refugee child would be worthy of trading for Marion. But Konig looked alarmed.

Nori understood. Marion had taken a special interest in Ymir. A refugee child might not have meant anything to Konig, but to the woman he planned to have as bride…?

“Arawn,
please
.” It was strange to see such an earnest plea coming from Charity when she was in her revenant form. The ache in her gaze should have humanized her. She somehow managed to look even more frightening.

Arawn didn’t waver.

“If the Canope is broken, you won’t be able to give Marion her memories,” Konig said. “It doesn’t make sense to take her. It won’t get you anything you want.”

Arawn dragged the blade down the side of Ymir’s throat, pressing hard enough to draw a thin line that bled. The child cried. “Then I’ll just kill him!”

“Why not take something better?” Konig asked.

“There is nothing better!
Nothing
! Not when the sunlight has been stripped from me!”

Danger glimmered in Konig’s eyes. “You don’t need sun to have light in your life.” He flashed across the mezzanine, using his unseelie power to leap several feet and reappear behind Arawn.

He seized the back of Charity’s skull. Sidhe magic gushed over her.

The revenant didn’t have time to react before her eyes went blank. She collapsed.

Nori smothered a pained squeal behind both hands.

“Take Charity,” Konig said. “Leave Ymir.”

Now Arawn was faltering. He gazed at Charity’s unconscious form with adoration—not only unbothered by her monstrousness, but tempted by it.

Nori stepped toward him to save Charity. Konig shot a warning look at her. “She’s the only witness,” he said softly. This was how he would keep Marion from learning what Charity had seen. They’d all be protected from the fallout of the revelation.

But giving Charity to a demon?

Was that the best way to protect Nori and Konig from Marion’s wrath?

Arawn dropped Ymir. He scooped Charity’s limp body into his arms, stroking the scraggly hair back from her bulging forehead. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, I think that will work.”

He snapped his fingers. The remaining swarm of demons vanished from the courtyard.

“You can’t,” Nori whispered. She was too afraid to say it any louder, even though she was screaming inside.

Arawn carried Charity into the portal that one of his planeswalkers had opened. It slammed shut, and there was nothing left in Niflheimr but silence.

A
fter what felt
like many years of calm, Marion jolted awake again.

She found herself in bed in the Winter Court, resting under clean sheets, surrounded by a tangle of vines and blossoms. Konig sat beside her, head tipped back against the wall. He stirred when she sat up.

“You’re awake,” he said, pushing shining black hair out of his face. “Thank the gods.”

“What happened?” She remembered being injured—mutilated, really, pouring her blood out on the floor of the Dead Forest. She’d seen the Hounds shredding her flesh. Damn it all, she’d felt them
eating
her, and she should have been dead.

“I healed you,” Konig said. “Again.”

That was the second time he’d had to intercede with magic to save Marion from potentially life-threatening wounds. Or was it the third? She was losing track.

“What was wrong?” Marion asked.

“It looked like you got caught by the Hounds when you returned to Sheol.”

The rest of her memories came rushing back: her run through the Dead Forest, approaching the doorway among the trees, and then Seth.

Seth
.

She scrambled over Konig’s legs to try to get out of bed. She was so much stronger than she had ever been in Sheol. “Have you seen Seth around?”

“He was gone by the time I came to help,” Konig said. “He’d abandoned you to die.”

She shivered hard, hugging her arms around herself. “That’s because…” She didn’t really have a way to finish the sentence. Because Seth was afraid to talk about what had happened in the Dead Forest? Or because he didn’t want to explain why he’d been drinking her blood?

Marion’s hand flew to her throat. There was no sign of the bite wound that he’d delivered.

Konig had truly healed everything.

“Charity said that the Canope was destroyed.” The prince stroked his hand over her curls. “Marion, I’m so sorry.”

She suspected that she should have been sorry, too. She should have been mourning for the memories she’d lost and the personhood that would never be restored. Everything that had made Marion who she was before waking up in Ransom Falls had vanished the instant that she had chosen to shatter the Canope.

For the moment, she felt nothing.

“I’d like to talk to Charity,” Marion said. The revenant had seen things in Sheol. She might know if Marion had witnessed Seth becoming what she thought, or if Marion was going completely crazy from having her essence destroyed.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Konig said. “The news keeps getting worse, princess. While you were gone…” He sighed. “I’ll have to show you.”

Her heart jumped. “Show me what?”

“Come,” he said.

Konig wrapped furs around Marion and helped her down the hallway toward the courtyard where the refugee camp had been erected. She stepped onto the mezzanine.