Throne of Fire (Celestra Forever After Book 5)

“Ma-ma!” He smacks me with a kiss, and Bree and I share a quiet laugh.

  She leans in with a suspicious gleam in her eye. “Have you noticed that a certain someone has been absent during this, the most traumatic time of your life?”

  I glance over at the throngs buzzing like bees, at the dozens of craft tables, and spot a familiar wicked witch taking cash from some unsuspecting sucker. Chloe Bishop. Her eyes snag on mine, and even from this distance I can spot the scars I’ve gifted her glowing prominent on her face.

  “Well, if it’s not Bishop,” I grunt. “What is she hocking, anyway? Bottles of poison? A little something to knock out the one you love for Christmas—permanently.” If it were true, I’d buy up the table and serve her one cocktail she would never forget. I’d pinch her nose shut to make sure it all went down the hatch, and I’d probably strangle her for good measure afterwards. Heck, I’m tempted to do it anyway. A brief smile bounces on my lips at the thought. “Who’s missing?”

  “Lakey Poo.”

  “Laken.” I close my eyes a moment as Nathan kicks me in the gut and snaps me right back to reality. “She’s sort of indisposed.” I fill Bree in quickly on what’s happened. “I tried to get back to the Transfer, but it seems Wes has put some kind of a hedge over it. I talked to Cooper, and he says he spoke to her several times, and each time she swears she’s fine and exactly where she wants to be.”

  “Oh my God!” Bree’s entire face lights up as if I just gave her the juiciest piece of gossip, and knowing Bree, I did. Anything that puts my friendship with Laken in jeopardy is Bree’s favorite subject. Yes—she’s that shallow, but only because she loves me. “I knew she’d choose Wes. She’s such a whore.”

  “Would you stop?” I whack her over the arm with Nathan’s hand. “Speaking of whores, what’s Chloe peddling?” I glare over at the queen of mean as she scores yet another sale.

  “Hats,” she says it so matter-of-fact I feel as if I should know this. I should probably know a lot of things but, to be honest, lately, there are things I’d much rather forget. “Her mom specializes in knitting baby chicks at Easter. They’re small enough where you stick a plastic egg up their ass, and it’s cute as all hell. Anyway, when we were kids, a bunch of us begged her to knit us chicken slippers and chicken hats, and it’s been all the rage ever since.”

  “Funny. I haven’t seen Chloe proudly sporting her mother’s chicken shit. Shocker.”

  “Oh, Chloe has the biggest collection, I’m sure.” She threads her arm through mine and speeds us in that direction. “Come on, we need to pick up a Christmas chicken for each of the boys. There’s nothing cuter, I promise you.”

  “I seriously doubt I’ll plant a Bishop-inspired chicken ass on either of my son’s heads. But I will mercilessly tease Chloe and maybe accidentally commit a poultry-based homicide.”

  “Oh, you.” Bree jostles her shoulder into mine, and both boys break out into giggles. “You girls seriously fight like sisters. I should know. Brookie and I have had our share of knock-down, drag-out somebody-call-the-cops, bust-a-lip-and-get-a-free-black-eye fights.” She stops cold once she sees Chloe’s newly deformed features. “Oh my God! Who the hell did that to you? I’ll teach them a lesson they’ll never forget!” Barron smacks her over the lips once she dispenses the diatribe, and I can’t help but wink over at him.

  Chloe openly glares at me, sitting there with her dark beauty, her freshly marred features—and, dear God, it really does look as if a T. rex had his way with her from behind. Surrounding her wickedness sits an entire flock of snow white knit chickens, each with a cheery swatch of mistletoe attached around its neck and a silver bell hanging from its beak.

  Chloe pets her scars. “Messenger did it,” she’s quick to rat me out. “Didn’t you, Skyla? And you should have seen the pleasure she took from it. Did you climax?” she asks casually while handing off a set of hats to an elderly woman who recoils at her words—as she should. “I see you’ve covered your wounds nicely.” She scowls at the left side of my face. It’s true. I put my MAC compact to the test, and let’s just say it passed with flying flesh-toned colors.

  Bree sucks in a wheezing breath. “Skyla Laura Beth Messenger Oliver!” she barks so loud both the boys straighten, and my stomach knots up in fear they’ll start to howl. “Did you do this to Chloe?”

  “It’s Laurel,” I correct the middle name malfeasance. “And would you please calm down, Mother?” I bite the words right back at her. “She had it coming.” I stick my tongue out at Chloe before breaking out in a smile. “She has a lot more coming her way, too. And as for the climax, you guessed right. There’s nothing more stimulating than bashing your brains in.”

  “Wow.” Chloe laughs as she rakes in the dough before our very eyes. My mother should take note—chickens are clearly the new vaginas. “I’m sure your many husbands would be interested to note that I held such prowess over your hormones. Quite frankly, I’m flattered. Now, if you two hussies would please move along, I do believe you’re holding up traffic.”

  “We’re buying,” Bree growls the words in my face, assuring me there will be consequences for my cat scratch fever-like actions. I can’t help it. Chloe is one pussy I’d love to drown. “Five hats, please. All the kids are getting one.”

  I glance back at my mother’s table where Misty, Ember, and Beau look bored out of their vaginal minds.

  “Throw in one more,” I say. “I’ll be seeing Tobie later. You do remember who she is, don’t you? That sweet girl you expelled from your body? I guess technically that would make you her mother. Too bad for you there’s someone new in the Transfer happily taking your position,” I grunt, just thinking about the disaster taking place. If Wes hadn’t put his haunted castle on lockdown, I would have gone over and kidnapped her myself. Laken is really going to kick my ass once she comes to.

  “Kres?” she retches her name out like vomit. “She’s such a twat. She deserves everything that happens to her in and out of that bedroom.”

  “Laken was taken by the feds to Raven’s Eye. And Wes, being the evil genius he is, had a clone ready to go. He made the nefarious swap last night. Laken has no memory of anything past her relationship with Wes growing up in Kansas. In the meantime, poor Coop is dying a slow death. Speaking of death”—I lean in and get as close to her evil eminence as I can—“who killed my husband, Chloe? Was it you?” Deep down, I know she’s that wicked.

  A dark smile spreads over her mauled features. It looks as if Chloe made out with a grizzly. Her skin actually layers upon itself as her left cheek rises, and Nathan is quick to bury his face in my neck at the sight.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “You are in servitude to me, lest you have forgotten the rules. If you know the name, you must tell me.”

  “Lucky for me, I don’t.” She gives a sly wink like maybe she does. “I bet that mother of yours knows. I bet that father-in-law of yours knows, too. And I’m pretty sure Gage himself is painfully aware. Whatever will you do to the soul who hacked his head off? I’m sure the Justice Alliance would forgive you. Your mother has them all licking her celestial-flavored ass crack.” A glimmer of lightning fills the sky, and the crowd gives a collective ooh. Chloe scowls and gives the sky the finger before snapping up five hats and flinging them at Bree. I blink in horror as Bree hands her a crisp one hundred dollar bill and tells her to keep the change.

  “Bree? You don’t have to do this, and you certainly need the change.” I pound the table until Chloe coughs up the green. “I know you don’t want anyone to know you’re hurting financially, but putting up a front like this can be fatal to your bank account.”

  “Ha!” Bree balks at my levelheaded advice. “My bank account has been freeze dried.”

  “Frozen,” Chloe corrects with a ghoulish grin as if she were the one holding a glacier to it.

  “What?” I squawk so loud both Nathan and Barron gleefully imitate me.

  “That’s right,” Bree growls out into the crowd. “Someone snitc
hed on poor Drake and me, and now we’re busted. All we’ve got left is what we’ve managed to sock away under our mattress.” She fans herself while bursting with a mile-wide smile. “And lucky for the big D and me, that’s just about everything. What Uncle Sam doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

  I suck in a quick breath. “Bree, that is tax evasion. You have to report all the money that you’re hiding.”

  “It’s too damn late, Skyla,” she snaps. “Besides, the businesses are aching so bad they’re on life support anyways. All those damn people who ended up with skin rashes and sepsis, especially those whiners who took my advice and used my fashion forward nail polish as lip gloss can kiss my shiny green ass.” She blinks to Chloe. “Don’t ask.”

  “My God, Bree.” I kick her shoe. “Ezrina created that polish to never chip. There’s virtually no way to remove it.” I should know. I own every shade in the Spellbound line. Brielle gifted them to me last Christmas.

  “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”

  I cringe because it’s sort of both. As successful as Drake and Bree have been, it seems they’ve been equally plagued with disaster.

  I clear my throat as Bree sinks a fluffy white chicken over the top of Barron’s head.

  “Anyway”—my thoughts digress back to my beloved husband and somehow landing him back on the planet—“talking to Demetri is on my to-do list. I think we both know I won’t get anywhere with my mother.” Another lavender flicker blinks through the sky as if she were winking at me. I lean in toward the demonic beast once again. “And don’t you think there won’t be consequences for desecrating my husband’s corpse. How dare you use him like a cheap dildo,” I hiss as low as a whisper, but three elderly women to my right all gag on cue.

  Chloe’s deformed cheek piques with color as if the mere memory of the vile act were enough to sponsor her own climax. And oh, gross, yuck.

  “Never mind.” I turn Nathan away and shield his face from her with my hand. “I’ll deal with you later. You get me that name, Chloe. Whoever did this to my husband might have achieved a pat on the back from Demetri, but they sure as hell won’t from me.” The last few words peter out to nothing as reality hits home. “It was ultimately Demetri, though.” I sag with the reality. “I hate him as much as I hate whoever did this,” I say, staring off into the woods, dazed by this horrid reality. I’ve understood since the moment I saw my headless husband that night—that it was his evil father who had commissioned the job. Gage in his old form was never really worth much to him.

  Nathan wallops me right in the eye, and I let out a yelp.

  “Atta boy,” Chloe quips as she tends to a flock of preteens that just trafficked over like a mob.

  Just past the booth, in the dark verdant woods, I spot a scary loner boy I once knew so well, and butterflies dance in my stomach at the sight of him.

  “Thanks for the hats, Bree,” I say, taking Barron from her and heading toward Logan out in the field.

  “We have things to discuss, Messenger!” Bree snips after me. “Like how to treat your friends.”

  “Chloe’s no friend,” I whisper to Barron without taking my eyes off that dirty blond prince headed my way. Something about Logan warms me unnaturally. Yesterday as well as today. It’s as if I’m seeing him for the very first time. Although I can’t quite put my finger on why.

  “Here they are.” Logan takes both Nathan and Barron from me. “My two favorite nephews. Don’t tell your daddy I said that.” He winces my way a moment before offering a chaste kiss to my cheek.

  “I know what you meant. And he will be back.”

  Logan leads us deeper into the woods, away from the celebratory noise and holiday music my mother is blaring so inconceivably loud. I’m sure half the island is praying for an electrical short right about now.

  Logan sheds that signature grin of his, and the long vertical dimple I gifted him inverts in a way I haven’t seen in a while. But that devilish grin, that gleam in his amber eyes glows ten times brighter than before. “There’s something I wanted to share. Yesterday just wasn’t the right time. And before you lose your mind, I spoke with Ezrina. She’s spending the afternoon with Laken trying to figure out how to get her memory back.”

  “Oh, thank goodness.” I pull him into a quick embrace, and the boys both grab fistfuls of my hair. “And this is what we do all day.”

  Logan carefully jostles the boys until they grip onto his own hair instead. But Logan doesn’t take his gaze off me. That silent ache he carried for so long in his eyes looks as if it’s vanished.

  “Skyla—I’m back.”

  I swallow hard. Back? As in Gage is gone, let’s move on?

  I bite down on my lip, unsure of what to say.

  “Me—my body.” He lifts those broad shoulders, and my eyes widen at what he might be trying to tell me. “Your mother lifted the Treble Lock. I went to paradise, stood before the throne. There was a big procession. The whole nine yards.”

  “Oh my God!” I launch at him so hard, encompassing both the boys in our joyous embrace. “Logan!” I sob into his neck, my body seizing and trembling from shock and relief. “My God, you’re back. You’re really, really back.” During the last round of the Faction War, Chloe took a spirit sword to Logan’s precious neck. Suffice it to say, it’s her preferred method of sending a soul to meet its maker. Regardless, my mother’s love for the fair-haired Oliver won out, and she gifted him several more years to live out on the planet so we could procreate. Yes, that was her rationale. In fact, she gifted him a few extra years on top of that because Gage so kindly offered to give him his share of time as well. But neither my mother nor Logan took Gage up on his offer. She simply bestowed him the extra time on the planet. I have a feeling my mother will allow Logan to live forever.

  My heart aches as I pull back to inspect this beautiful being. “You’re back from paradise then.” While Logan was in his own personal Treble, there was another version of him up in the heavenlies, the officially dead one.

  He gives a single nod, his eyes glossed with tears. “But she wiped my memory clean of my time spent there. One thing I do remember is the ceremony. Gage was there.” He bears hard into my eyes as the world seems to still around us. The evergreens stiffen, fighting the wind as if they too were stilling themselves to hear all the details.

  A single bright blue butterfly appears from nowhere and floats between us, unreasonably large and completely charming. The boys grow still, their gurgles reduced to a whisper. I hold out a finger, and it lands steady over the tip. The faint tickle of its presence warms me to my bones. It was Gage who filled the butterfly room with blue winged creatures. They were made from tissue paper for so long, and then as his power increased they became real.

  “They were dead, and now they’re alive.” I blink back tears while finishing my thought out loud. I look up and meet Logan’s sparkling eyes. “Just like you.”

  “Just like Gage. I’m sure of it.”

  Barron clamps down on the butterfly so fast and fierce, Logan and I gasp. But no sooner does he remove his hand than the butterfly dances up out of his reach as if she were undisturbed.

  “Logan.” I cup his cheeks and pull him in, just drinking down his blessed by God features. I don’t hesitate bringing my lips to his and pressing them tight for a few solid seconds. “I love you so much. I know that you were here for me in the Treble, but knowing that you’re fully here, once again”—I press my lips together to keep from losing it—“I can’t express how very thankful I am. I love you. I love your body. I love that your spirit and your soul have reunited once again here on Earth. I love that my mother and the Master Himself have given you another chance to live out your days.”

  Logan twists into my palm and buries a kiss in it. “Skyla”—he says it low, quiet—“this is not my first or second go-around.” His features morph to something just this side of worry. “Your mother isn’t letting me off this spinning rock until I’ve completed her mission.”

  We both look simu
ltaneously to the sky, but nary a lightning bolt waits for us. The boys kick and squirm, and he lets them down to toddle around our knees.

  “Gage looked good. He felt solid. I don’t know whether or not he’ll be back. We didn’t talk. At the end, I shook his hand.” He looks up and catches a breath.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Logan sags, as his affect falters. I can read his every expression, and I have to. Logan and Gage have both been known to keep things from me.

  “Emily gave me a vision. It was a picture of Gage and me shaking hands—lightning beaming from us, to us—hell, it was an electrifying event.”

  “So, it’s already happened?” I search his features frantically.

  “Yes.” Barron socks him repeatedly over the knee, and Logan picks him up. “It was the last thing that happened in the throne room before I was sent back to Earth.”

  “What did Emily say it meant?”

  His Adam’s apple rises and falls. “She said it would be the beginning of the end.”

  “The beginning of the end.” My gaze falls to the loft of pine needles that Nathan is busy kicking and singing to. “My God, the end of what?”

  Logan’s mouth opens as if to give the answer, but he swallows it down. “I don’t know, Skyla. And to be honest, I’m afraid to venture to guess.”

  “It wouldn’t be Gage and me. We’re done as far as the covenant of marriage goes.” I shake my head at the thought because Gage Oliver and I are far from done. “Celestra? Our people?”

  His cheeks flex with the idea of a smile. “Bigger. Gage isn’t coming back as Wesley’s sidekick.”

  “No,” I pant with a heaviness in my heart that has the power to kill me. “He’s coming back as the king. This is bigger than Gage and me, bigger than our people. It will encompass all of the heavenlies and all of its powers.” I nod to Logan because we both know what this means. “The Sectors and the Fems. I have to find Marshall.”

  “Last I saw he was in paradise.”

  “He’s been there. He left with Gage. I’ll find him. He’ll come back for me.”