Cast in Faefire: An Urban Fantasy Romance (The Mage Craft Series Book 3) (5 page)

It had been so long since she’d asked for Konig’s opinion that he didn’t realize she’d spoken to him. He was distracted by watching Marion glide out of the hall, a slender form whose gown was a crimson mirror of her chestnut hair. Marion was beautiful enough to be sidhe, but so much more special.

A god. She’d brought a
god
into their partnership.

Konig had hoped she would, of course. But before her memory loss, she had repeatedly refused to use her privileges as the Voice of God with anything related to Konig.

No longer.

The doctor Marion liked to pal around with was one of the gods, so her value had just increased exponentially. Impressive, considering that she was already priceless.

“What do you think?” His mother asked the question louder the second time.

“Hmm?”

“Oh, darling.” Violet cupped his cheek in her hand, blank eyes warming with genuine affection. “Transfixed by your bride, are you?” Even Violet, who had never been fond of Marion, appreciated what she perceived as desire between the two of them.

“She’s quite a prize,” Konig said.

Nori didn’t look at either of them. “I like the waterfalls,” she said, bustling around the new tree with a strand of witchlights. They’d be twined through all the branches to provide an unearthly glow to the ceremony.

“I didn’t ask you.” Violet turned back to her work on the hall. “I shouldn’t bother asking my boy, either. Boys never care about these things. You’ve much more important things to consider.” She cast loops of magic toward the roof, peppering it with blossoms of starlight.

“More important than my wedding?” Konig asked.

“Actually, we do have some important court business to talk about, if the queen doesn’t need us anymore,” Nori said. She tucked the last of the witchlights among the tree branches.

Violet dismissed them with another flick of her fingers. “Attend to the court.”

As if Konig needed her permission.

Much as it rankled to leave his mother in charge of anything, he really didn’t care about how things looked during the ceremony. And as long as she was busy with decorations, she wouldn’t be sitting on the throne. The woman was practically dancing on the bones of the Winter Queen.

Nori kept her head bowed as she led Konig from the hall, back toward the king’s bedroom. The hall was so much chillier that Konig couldn’t help but suck in a breath. He kept forgetting where they were.

But his blood burned hot enough to keep him warm.

As soon as the doors to the wedding venue swung shut behind him, he caught Nori’s wrist. “Court business?” he murmured, pulling her to his chest.

Spots of pink touched her cheeks. “Very important court business.”

Konig’s fingers glided up her ribcage. “Tell me all about it.”

“It’s Ymir,” Nori said.

That chilled his desire. “Again? Damn. Where is he?”

“I had him brought to our room by the Raven Knights.” Nori ducked her head, but not before Konig saw her flushing even brighter with embarrassment. “
Your
room.”

It was an easy slip to make. Nori had been spending more nights in his bed than anywhere else. The succor of her half-angel flesh was the only thing keeping Konig sane while he waited for Marion’s frigidity to thaw.

Two of the Raven Knights were guarding the door to the king’s bedroom. Konig made a mental note to have more assigned on that hall. With Arawn throwing Hounds at their doorstep, nothing was more important than ensuring Konig’s safety.

He was only days away from being king.
Days
. Konig would not let an uppity demon interfere with that.

Ymir waited inside the room, watched by yet another pair of Raven Knights wearing warm furred coats. The frost giant wore a t-shirt and jeans instead. Ymir seemed to find temperatures in the palace summer-like.

The child was munching on a candy bar—not his first, judging by the many wrappers around him. He looked as content as he ever did these days.

Every scrap of momentary contentment vanished when Konig strode into the room.

Ymir bolted to his feet. A strangled groan caught in the boy’s chest.

“You’re right,” Konig said. “This
is
urgent.” The frost giant shouldn’t have been able to vocalize through the force of Konig’s magic in his chest. Such groans meant he was shaking the magic again. It wouldn’t be long before he was outright talking.

And once he started talking, Ymir would tell Marion that it hadn’t been Leliel who killed the refugees.

“Come here,” Konig said with all the kindness he could muster. He sat the boy on the couch and took the spot beside him.

Ymir managed to say something that sounded like, “No.”

Konig swirled fresh magic around Ymir—stronger this time. The child didn’t make another sound.

“There,” Konig said, patting him on the back. “This won’t be necessary soon, I promise. I just need to be sure that you don’t go around spreading confusing lies about the attack you saw from an angel. I’ve got a very important day coming up, after all.”

Marion had only agreed to give Konig another chance because she thought the angels were a threat. If she heard Ymir’s side of things—and if she found out that Konig had lied to her—then their wedding would be wrecked.

“Why don’t you find somewhere for the boy to play that’s safer?” Konig asked the Raven Knights. “There are a lot of holes in this part of the palace. Take him down deep and make sure he can have fun where he won’t get hurt.”

Ymir was still shaking his head when they led him out of the room.

Konig and Nori were alone.

“That was close,” she said. “I think he was trying to find Marion to talk to her earlier.”

“It won’t be a problem.” Konig drew the half-angel into his lap, settling back to allow her to sit comfortably atop him. Nori wasn’t as beautiful as Marion, but at least she had many things in common with Konig. Like priorities. And a fondness for sex that Marion used to have, back when she’d been herself.

He allowed her to kiss him for a moment before drawing back. “This will have to wait, pet. I need you to do another kind of favor for me.”

“If it involves Violet, I’m not sure she’ll tolerate my presence much longer.”

“Then you’ll be happy to know this involves leaving Niflheimr.” He slid his hand into her furs, seeking the contact of warm woman-flesh against his fingertips. “I need you to dig up everything you can find on Deirdre Tombs. We need leverage against her in case our other bid for votes fails.”

“No problem.” Nori shook her furs to the floor to expose her lean body. Even if she wasn’t a particularly beautiful half-angel, she was still very much a half-angel, and that meant the statuesque elegance that came with it. “But what if there’s nothing to dig up?”

Assassination was on the table. “I will not lose my title,” Konig said, kissing Nori’s throat. “And the wedding
will
happen.”

* * *

M
arion used
the magic mirror in the throne room to arrange her hair while it was still reflective. Most likely it was sacrilege to use such a rare artifact for purposes of vanity, but it wasn’t like she could make business calls rumpled from traveling between planes.

A figure appeared behind her in the reflection.

“Your Highness? Do you have a moment?”

She turned to greet Morrighan, one of the sidhe refugees. “Of course I do.” For the people whose families she’d failed to protect, she had infinite time.

Morrighan approached the throne hesitantly. She was one of the gentry but shone with enough blue light that she would have needed to work to conceal her magical nature. “I was a witch who specialized in wards before Genesis. As a result, my sidhe talent is likewise ward specialization, and I’ve been feeling disruptions in Niflheimr for weeks.”

“Yes, I understand that the wards are failing,” Marion said. “Please don’t worry yourself about them. We have a plan.”

“That’s not what I mean. Someone seems to be testing the wards regularly to see if they’re still up, like calling a phone to see if anyone answers and then immediately hanging up.”

Prickles spread down the back of Marion’s neck. “Can you tell who?”

“It’s strong,” Morrighan said. “Other than that, I don’t know.”

It must have been Arawn—or perhaps even someone from the American Gaean Commission waiting for a chance to invade over the darknet.

The information didn’t change anything. They still needed to repair the wards as quickly as possible.

Marion would see if she could double the number of Raven Knights on the castle in the meantime.

“Thank you for warning me,” she said. “How have you been faring?”

Morrighan gave her a blank look. “How do you think?”

“Yes, I suppose that’s a foolish question.” Marion swallowed down apologies that would have been hollow. No words could return to Morrighan what had been lost.

“Rhiannon’s all I have left now,” Morrighan said. “The court doesn’t even look how it used to anymore.” She gazed at the Onyx Queen’s nymph tapestries with obvious loathing.

“I thought you came from Leiptr.”

“I fled to the forests after the civil war to survive. Anyone who didn’t leave Niflheimr died.”

But she had once attended court with the Winter Queen. Now she
really
had Marion’s attention. “Do you know anything of the darknet servers?”

“That was Hardwick territory,” Morrighan said. “They didn’t let anyone else interfere with it.”

“Hardwick?”

“Pierce and Jaycee Hardwick, two of the queen’s dearest advisors. They were secretive types. I knew that they were running the darknet from the Winter Court, but not from where. Nobody but them had access.”

“Tell me, Morrighan,” Marion said, “if someone were to search for the servers, where would you start?”

“I’d start by going back ten years and asking the Hardwicks. You’d never find the servers without them.” Morrighan turned to leave the throne room, the glow of the magic mirror reflecting off her shiny brown hair. “You could always investigate their bedrooms, though.”

Marion wanted to follow her and ask for more information, but the mirror’s glow intensified. She was being connected with the shapeshifter sanctuary. Her time to give a neglected refugee attention had passed because it was time for business.

It was
always
time for business.

Once Marion came to terms with the fact that her life didn’t belong to her, she would be a much happier woman.

T
he next day
, Nori took Marion to the designated arrival point outside the werewolf sanctuary’s wards, which was near the top of the waterfall. From that vantage point, Marion could see everything: the jagged lines of the valley carved into the Appalachians, forest so dense that it must have been eternal night under the canopy, the lake frothing gold with reflected sunlight.

At the nadir of the valley sprawled the sanctuary’s cottages ringing a humble downtown unlike any other in North America. It was the only settlement that exclusively housed preternaturals—and more than ninety-eight percent of them shapeshifters. Eighty percent of those were werewolves, like the Alpha and her mate.

For every summer when Marion had been a child, there had also been one half-angel mage who lived there. According to her journals, she used to play with the Alpha’s kids for days on end.

“Ringing any bells?” Nori asked.

Marion was forced to say, “Not really.”

An escort of shifters emerged from the forest. They resembled mundane wolves because they had four legs, fur, and lupine faces. But their sheer size would have given them away as something different. Something
wrong
. None of them was smaller than a very sturdy pony. The biggest of them could have fit a draft horse inside his belly.

They ringed around the half-angels and golden eyes pinned Marion.

“Maybe I should stay,” Nori whispered.

“That won’t be necessary.” Marion squeezed her cousin’s hand. “You’ll get in touch if Violet has questions about the wedding?” They’d made a new statuette that allowed them to communicate from different planes. Using the equivalent of a magical telephone was more convenient than summoning Nori every time Marion needed to say something.

“Yeah, I can call you,” Nori said. “If you really want me to go.”

“I do.” Marion would have an easier time sneaking around the sanctuary if she was alone.

Nori vanished into the ley lines, and Marion followed her escorts into the valley. The sanctuary was so small that there were no cars, and most shifters could travel faster on steep terrain on four legs anyway. But that left Marion trudging down steep trails into the cleft between mountains on foot. She thanked the gods—Seth in particular, with some amusement—that she’d thought to wear pants rather than one of her lovely-but-ridiculous dresses. She’d never have been able to make it down the slope on heels.

The path weaved in and out of trees, concealing the village for minutes at a time. The roar of the waterfall never left them completely, but it quieted by the time they’d walked for almost an hour. They emerged in a grassy field filled with frolicking shifter children.

A few of the bigger pups stopped to stare when Marion passed. She wondered how many of them she should have known.

Then the Academy appeared at the end of the road.

It was the tallest structure in the village, and the only one protected by tall fencing topped by spikes. The rest of the village was a socialist’s dream of communal living. Only the school where they housed the preternatural community’s treasured youth lived under higher security.

The gates were closed when Marion and the shifters finally stopped outside of them. Two names were picked out atop the arch in iron scrollwork: Gresham and Wilder. The sight of the second name made Marion’s stomach flip.

Someone must have been watching the security cameras because the gate swung open as soon as Marion approached. Nothing but lawn separated her from the gabled roofs and sprawling brick-walled wings of the Academy, and she waited for familiarity to set in.

Nothing struck except a faint sense of dread.

A man that Marion didn’t know was waiting on the front steps. He had skin the color of a latte and hard eyes—eyes that were not shifter gold, she was surprised to see. As soon as she hit the bottom of the steps with the wolves at her side, he spun and marched into the Academy silently.

She followed. The wolves didn’t.

“I’m here to see Rylie,” she said.

“I know.” His voice was so deep that it ached painfully within her chest.

This strange man took Marion to a room left of the entrance. He pushed her inside and shut the door.

Marion found herself in a tearoom with eleven people: ten shifters in their human forms ringing the walls, and a lone middle-aged woman on a sofa at the center of the office.

Rylie Gresham.

“Please, sit,” Rylie said.

There was tea on the table between them.

Guards ringing the room.

This wasn’t a social visit.

Marion sat slowly, even though she felt very strange being so stiff, so formal. She had described Rylie in her journals as “like my mom, except not as horrible as Ariane.” Marion had written that when she was eleven.
Eleven
. Teenage rebellion against her birth mother had struck early.

Not against Rylie, though. Marion and Dana had grown up alongside Rylie’s multitude of children. They’d spent every summer at the werewolf sanctuary. Marion had even attended the Academy for a year, though she’d done it more as a way to indulge Rylie’s wish that Marion would have formal education, not because she’d felt she needed it.

Now Rylie was treating her like a political guest, bringing out the good china and having their visit supervised. They were even holding the meeting at the Academy itself, which had the only formal meeting rooms in the entire sanctuary.

“How can I help you?” Rylie looked maternal, if not quite unassuming, in her nude-colored skirt suit. Her voice was pitched low, her hair brushed out straight, her vibrant golden eyes intent.

“It’s about Deirdre Tombs’s preternatural cooperative,” Marion said.

“I thought it would be. Tea?”

“No, thank you.”

Rylie poured a cup for herself and sat back. “You must be wondering why I agreed to Deirdre’s council. Right?”

The reasoning behind Rylie’s support of the council was unimportant. It was too late to undo any of that. “Actually, I’ve come to explain why you must vote for Konig to remain Prince of the Autumn Court.”

“I’m listening,” Rylie said.

“I’ve done what I can to protect the Winter Court refugees, but my control over the plane’s magic is limited. I was unable to stop Leliel from invading Niflheimr. Many refugees were lost.”

“I heard about that.” Rylie’s voice had gone softer. “I’m sorry, Marion.”

“Once Konig and I marry, he’ll be able to take over the wards,” Marion said. “He’ll be able to reinforce them and allow the unseelie to flourish in the Winter Court again. Also, the Ethereal Levant has a peace treaty with the Autumn Court. If we can extend the peace treaty to the Winter Court, then we can ensure that she doesn’t hurt us again.”

“I understand that extension of the peace treaty is the only reason why you’re planning to marry Prince ErlKonig.”

Marion was prepared for that accusation, gentle as Rylie made it sound. “I won’t deny it’s a factor, but Konig and I plan to marry because we love one another.” Never mind the fact she would have dumped him on his ass if Leliel hadn’t attacked. She was glad for the outcome, in a morbid sort of way. Things had never been better with Konig.

“I’m happy for you.” It sounded genuine. Maybe. It was hard to tell. “I got your invitation, by the way. Thank you. I’m thrilled to attend.”

“That’s assuming the vote doesn’t ruin our plans. Did Deirdre frighten you with the idea of a second god-scale disaster?”

“She tried,” Rylie said, “but I knew Elise and James as well as anyone. Elise is a true hero. She would never hurt anyone unnecessarily. In her hands, we’re safe.”

“Then why the vote?”

“I know Deirdre very well, too.” Rylie took a long drink of her tea, but it wasn’t enough to mask the lines of tension between her eyebrows and bracketing the sides of her mouth. She was upset about something.

Marion wondered if Deirdre had blackmail material on Rylie. What could the werewolf Alpha have done that would be worthy of such a drastic vote?

It was hard to remember that Rylie wasn’t as pure as she looked. This was the woman who’d cheated on Seth and fallen pregnant with his brother’s get. She’d left him at the altar. And he was still broken over it years later.

Rylie was better than Marion at pretending to be innocent, but Marion knew the truth.

“Help me protect the refugees. Endorse Konig and publicly bless our wedding.” Marion hadn’t meant to be as blunt about the request, but now that the moment had arrived, she didn’t know how else to ask it.

“Are you sure you don’t want tea?” Rylie asked.

“Very well,” she said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice and off of her face.

Rylie poured. Her graceful movements were most likely calculated, part of the same maternal image she cultivated in her dress and speech. As she took care of the tea, she said, “I can’t make a public endorsement. It isn’t shifter business. I’ve already planned to vote in your favor, though.”

“You have?”

“I told you that I know Elise well,” Rylie said. “The woman I remember wouldn’t cause another god-level tragedy over your wedding. She’d want you to be happy, Marion. She’d support your marriage to Konig if that was what it took to keep you happy.”

“I hope you’re right,” Marion murmured into her cup of tea. The sip she took was especially bitter.

A hand touched her knee. The last time someone had done that to her, it had been Seth, trying to comfort her after his inability to diagnose her memory loss. But this was Rylie. Their contact made the guards nervous. For the first time, they moved against the walls, rocking on their feet, reaching for weapons.

There was nothing but kindness in Rylie’s eyes. “It’s okay to be afraid. All the sane people are afraid to marry under normal circumstances. You’ll have the eyes of the world on you during and after.”

She clenched her teacup in both hands. “I’m not afraid.”

“Marion…” Rylie shifted onto the couch next to her. She wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You’re going to be okay.”

Unexpected tears plucked at Marion’s eyes.

Maybe this was why Marion had written that Rylie was like her mother, but better. Because this was exactly the kind of conversation Marion would have wanted to have with Ariane, if Ariane would have reached out to her. But Ariane was conspicuously absent and nobody knew how to reach her.

“How do I know if marriage is the right thing to do?” Marion asked.

“You don’t. Nobody does.” With one more squeeze, Rylie let her go. She stood and became formal again. Rylie glanced at the clock on the wall, positioned between the shoulders of two of her silent guards. “I regret to run so soon, but I have plans.”

“Can I stay for a little while?” Marion asked. “I’ve been trying to spend some time in places I used to know well to see if they’ll jog my memories.”

It was such a bold lie that Rylie must have been capable of scenting it, but the werewolf Alpha didn’t look at all suspicious. “I understand completely. Please feel free to explore. My people will be happy to get you back to the ley line juncture whenever you’re ready—no rush.”

* * *

A
fter Rylie left
, Marion wasted time by wandering through the Sanctuary Academy. The gardens were tended by young witches and were almost as lush as anything in the sidhe courts. Many students were already studying outside, lolling in the warmth, wolf among human, panther and deer curled together.

There was a quality to the air that exhilarated Marion—something that was not quite smell, nor was it the musical hum of magic from the Middle Worlds.

She circled the halls, trying to figure out what she sensed that so excited her. Marion’s fingertips tingled with it.

A voice caught her attention, and she stopped in front of a door, peering through its window. The students were seated in a circle of power. One of them was in the middle, caught mid-shapeshift, while the instructor lectured on what was happening.

The light of rapt attention glowed around the students.

Learning
.

That was what so enticed Marion. It was the heady buzz of knowledge blooming. Being exposed to it made Marion feel more refreshed than if she had slept twelve hours and woken to espresso and an hour of yoga.

If she hadn’t had an agenda, she could have lingered to watch the students learning to shapeshift for days without end.

Marion must have required little coercion to spend a year studying at the Academy. Between Rylie, the mother-who-was-not-her-mother that actually gave Marion the attention she craved, and an environment fertile for learning, it would have been relative paradise. Far from the lonely libraries Marion kept at her home on Vancouver Island, the Academy was vibrant and alive.

She must have loved being there.

Nothing looked familiar during Marion’s laps, but she hadn’t expected anything to. There were no memories to jog within Marion’s skull. They hadn’t been lost in some shadowy corner of her brain like books improperly catalogued in a library. They had been extracted and stuck into the Canope.

Now the Canope was broken. Those memories were gone. The best she could hope to accomplish was studying her journals the way a medical student studied anatomy and pretending that she knew what she was doing.