“Kim,” Julian said. It registered as much in my thoughts as in my ears—not that I actually had ears here. His voice rippled through my spirit, carrying with it a breathtaking sense of joy and wonder.
In a blink, I flashed a little distance away from him. My gaze searched his face. “What is it? What happened?”
His smile was faint, as if he didn’t quite believe yet in his own delight. “I did it, Kim. Or rather—they did it. They freed me.”
The space around us had been vague in that dream-like way, but now it flashed to a forest. Not a specific place: just an imitation, cobbled together from the memories I tried to ignore. The Otherworld, with its spreading trees and deep shadows below. “You got the Seelie to remove the geas? How?”
The smile faded. “Not the Seelie, Kim. She was telling the truth.”
A cold wind snapped through, external manifestation of the sudden chill in my bones. “Julian . . .”
“The Unseelie,” he said. “Her name is Ravel. Kim, everything she told us is true. About the geas, about the Seelie—everything.”
The dream stuttered and caught, like a badly-streaming video. His meaning was there, but my mind wouldn’t let it in. Julian, unshielded . . . but it was the Unseelie, not the Seelie, who had done it.
He had put himself in the hands of our enemies.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “It isn’t possible. You would never go to them.”
“Because of the geas?” he asked. “I didn’t trust them, Kim. I still don’t trust them. But I didn’t have to. If the only option you have is a bad one, then you take it. I asked myself whether I was willing to risk the Unseelie taking me prisoner again, even killing me, if there was the slightest chance they might free me instead. And the answer was, yes.”
His grey eyes were alight with some inner flame, glowing in the dark forest of this dream. They weren’t gold. If they’d turned him—they couldn’t, could they? It had only worked on me because they caught me in the moment of transition, when my blood and flesh and bone were rewriting themselves from human toward sidhe. But if they had, surely he couldn’t disguise it here. He wasn’t one of them.
It didn’t matter if he was. Back then, he’d freed me; now I would free him in return.
“Kim, listen to me,” Julian said, his voice low and urgent. “You won’t believe this—you can’t. But I have to tell you anyway. It’s lying to you. The geas is. No, the Unseelie aren’t our friends. They’re incapable of compassion, of empathy; friendship is impossible for them. But the same thing is true of the Seelie. It isn’t our allies versus our enemies, the kindly ones against the cruel. There’s no difference between them, not in any way that matters to us. I absolutely believe the Seelie attacked you, made you look unstable so you’d be gutted. Without it, you were a wild card: as strong as any of us, but free. So they betrayed you. They aren’t our friends, and if we let the world go on believing they are, that is going to put us in more danger than I can imagine.”
A drumbeat pulsed through the air, low and accelerating. It was my heartbeat, spiking with horror. “For gods’ sakes, Julian . . . think it through! You put yourself in the hands of the Unseelie, and then you come here and tell me you know the truth? They’re manipulating you! They’ve put their own compulsion on you—can’t you see?”
“I would know,” he said, with all the certainty of a born wilder, trained from birth to know and control his own mind. “They couldn’t do that without me noticing.”
Just like they couldn’t sneak up on us during the most heavily-guarded public event in the last decade. Just like they couldn’t cross the planar injunction without alerting our watchers. There was nothing I would put past their skills.
But it was a mental effect, an influence on his thoughts. I knew how to deal with those.
In the dream, it manifested as me taking his head between my hands. Julian didn’t flinch back. He opened his mind to me, inviting me to search every corner. I didn’t bother trying; they could easily hide something like that from me. Instead I flooded his spirit with my own feelings: my fear for him, my love, my hatred of the Unseelie and my determination to root out every last vestige of their touch.
He shuddered beneath my touch, overwhelmed by the onslaught he didn’t even attempt to defend against. When I released him, he caught my wrists and kissed each of my hands in turn. A ghostly pressure, indistinctly felt. “Nothing’s changed, Kim. Because it’s true. We cannot—we must not—trust the Seelie.”
I wasn’t even thinking about the Seelie anymore. With his mind so open to mine, I’d picked up a trace of thought, even though I wasn’t looking for it. “There’s something more,” I whispered, staring at him. “I almost saw—what aren’t you telling me?”
He wasn’t holding my wrists anymore. Between us, the ground began to fall away.
Julian said, “I made a promise. To you, and to Neeya. In my heart, I promised all of the Fiain. Now, finally, I can fulfill it.”
To get rid of the deep shield. To get rid of the geas on which it rested. But that prospect should have made Julian fierce. What I’d felt in him was something else: a quiet acceptance, tinged with sorrow.
How would you go about removing a geas from thousands of people around the world?
The forest faded into darkness, leaving just the two of us, and a chasm between. The words didn’t come from my mouth, just echoed out of my mind. Julian—no.
There were tears in his eyes, and a painful smile on his lips. “I’m sorry, Kim. I wish I could have come home, said goodbye properly. But you would try to stop me. I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me for this . . . but understand that I love you, more than I could ever say. I’m doing this so that you can be free.”
I lunged on instinct, trying to catch his spirit in a net like Grayson had taught me. But I was too slow, and Julian was ready for it. My power flared sun-white in the darkness, too late: he was gone.
Chapter Fifteen
My port was on speakerphone and ringing as I grabbed the clothes I’d left on the floor and dragged them on, swearing when I realized my shirt was twisted half inside-out. The call went to voicemail; I hung up and redialed as I grabbed my athame and headed for the door. Voicemail again. I called a third time, and then my shoes were on and I was off down the stairs as fast as I could go.
Then a click as she picked up. “What part of me ignoring you the first two times didn’t translate?”
“Neeya—Julian’s in danger.”
The exterior door banged shut behind me. I wasn’t running to the Metro, because if I tried I wouldn’t make it there before I wheezed a lung onto the pavement. But I was moving as fast as I could. I had no idea what time it was, but the streets were dark and almost deserted.
All her annoyance vanished as if it had never been. “What’s going on?”
“He went to the Unseelie. They offered to remove the deep shield, and Julian believed them. They may have even done it—he certainly thinks they have.” I should have tested it. But I hadn’t gutted him when I was Unseelie and fighting him. I didn’t know that I could have brought myself to try, now that I knew what it felt like. “He’s with them now.”
She swore, and sounded like she could have gone on for quite some time. Then she cut herself off. “Where?”
“In the Otherworld. I’m on my way to headquarters. Once I’m off the line with you, I’m going to call Grayson. We have to find him before the Unseelie follow through with their plan.” I only prayed they weren’t ready yet.
The Metro loomed up ahead, lights out, gates locked. I swore under my breath. I would have to find a cab, and might just resort to calling one telepathically.
Neeya started to say something, then cut herself off. “Wait a second. You haven’t told anyone else yet? Why the hell are you calling me?”
No need for telepathy; there was a cab idling near the station. I ran for it, answering as I went.
“Because you and I would burn hell itself down to save Julian’s li
fe.”
~
The Aegis Building wasn’t dark. Guardians existed to deal with emergencies, and those were no respecters of normal working hours.
Grayson was already there when I arrived. I’d spent the cab ride rehearsing the facts in my head, so I could deliver a coherent report; Neeya showed up just as I finished, making me wonder if she’d just flown straight there under her own power. Grayson didn’t even ask why Neeya was present. She only led us down toward the basement rooms, saying, “I’ve already put in a priority request for SIF to track him. While they’re doing that, you and I—and Neeya—will talk to the Guardian Ring.”
I’d been studying Corps procedure; I knew who our Ring Anchors were, and knew they were scattered across the United States. “By the time we wake them all up—”
“They don’t have to wake up,” Grayson replied crisply, and opened the door on an empty ritual room. “Sit down, and put yourselves in light trances. I’ll show you the way.”
Neeya and I both complied without hesitation. Training paid off; despite my agitation, I was able to center myself. When Grayson extended a mental hand, I took it, and found myself dragged free of my body.
I’d never done much astral projection, apart from the time Julian and I used a form of it to contact the Otherworld. Grayson didn’t seek that new dimension, though, the path leading away from our world to the one beyond. Instead she executed a swift maneuver I didn’t recognize—some form of ceremonial magic—and then we were floating in darkness.
A roundel of flooring appeared beneath us, grey stone inscribed with a complex ritual circle. Eight nodes decorated an arc along its edge, and as I turned to look, people began appearing in them. Four wilders and four ordinary bloods: the Ring Anchors were always evenly divided between the two groups. Sarabhai was the one who reported to the Secretary of Psychic Affairs, but this was the actual governing body of the Corps.
“Alicia.” That came from a tall, thin black man near the center, a wilder I recognized as Mathieu. It took me a moment to realize he meant Grayson—who did, after all, have a first name. “You of all people wouldn’t summon us without good cause. Report.”
Grayson prodded me forward. “Kimberly Argant-Dubois Fiain is the field agent for this incident.”
Thank all the gods I’d prepared myself to report to Grayson. I took a deep breath and said, “A few days ago, Julian Fiain and I formed a theory that the geas is the foundation on which the deep shield is built. One of the Unseelie sidhe told us this theory was true, and offered to remove the geas. She claimed it compels us to trust one Court more than the other, and this is why the Seelie would never remove it. At some point between last night and this morning, Julian went missing. I don’t know the specifics, but he appeared in my dreams tonight and told me he went to the Unseelie in the Otherworld, where he asked them to remove the geas and the shield.
“He claims they’ve done both. The shield may indeed be gone, but I have strong reason to suspect the Unseelie have used his vulnerability to influence him, compelling him to view the Seelie as his enemy. Furthermore, they intend to use him against us. Julian believes they’re going to perform a ritual to remove the geas and the shield from all wilders at once. Whether or not that is among their aims, I fear the Unseelie will also use the ritual to influence the rest of us, via sympathetic magic.” I had to pause; what came next cut deeply enough that it threatened my control. “Either way . . . they’re going to kill him. He will be the sacrifice they use to power the ritual.”
The Anchors didn’t exchange looks, but I had the impression of a quick telepathic conference that served much the same purpose. Then Mathieu said, “Show us.”
Letting them into my mind . . . I’d done it after leaving Welton, and hadn’t much liked it then, either. But it was possible they could glean something from my memories, some minor detail whose significance I had missed. The problem was, they would almost certainly end up seeing more than just Julian’s dream visit. And then they would know he and I hadn’t made a full report of our encounter with that Unseelie woman, Ravel.
What the consequences for that would be, I didn’t know. Some kind of disciplinary action, certainly, but how severe? Would I be expelled from the Guardians, before I even became one in full?
The real issue was whether my nascent career mattered more than Julian. Which wasn’t even a question.
I thought back to the dream, then extended a mental thread to each of the Ring Anchors. Since nobody told me not to, I included Grayson and Neeya in it as well. Lasia, one of the other wilders, took charge of running me through the memories. Under her guidance they blitzed by at high speed, hopscotching around to follow associated links like she was doing research online: everything from the night Julian failed to recognize my transformed self to that conversation on the shore of Roosevelt Island. I knew she noted the omission there, but she said nothing about it right then. We had bigger problems to handle.
When she was done, I cut the connection, and my head was my own again. One of the Ring Anchors asked, “Do we know his location?”
I looked at Grayson, who flickered, as if most of her attention went elsewhere. Then she said, “The scrying office reports no success. High probability that he’s in the Otherworld, but warded against our efforts.”
“We need a link,” Lasia said.
Someone or something connected to Julian, which would give the scryers a sympathetic connection to use against the wards. When I turned to Neeya, she was already shaking her head. “Use Kim,” she said. “She’s more tightly bound to him than I am.”
Short of a blood relation, that was probably true. And given that Julian hadn’t seen his birth family since he was an infant, I might be the stronger candidate anyway. But I hadn’t expected Neeya to admit it.
“Get to the scrying office at SIF,” Mathieu said to me. “We’re assigning a divinatory team to create a tactical plan, and preparing passage to the other side. Should we approach the Seelie for assistance?”
That last was directed at his colleagues, not me. One of them shook her head. “Diplomatic talks are still in progress. Until those are complete, that kind of open alliance is inadvisable.”
This was almost certainly stuff I wasn’t supposed to hear. I sent a quiet, wordless query to Grayson, who nodded at me and Neeya both. We were done here.
I snapped back into my body so fast it made my vision swim. Across from me, Neeya opened her violet eyes. They were solemn, but full of hesitant wonder. “Do you really think he’s free of the shield?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” I said. Then— “I think so. Maybe. Now let’s just make sure he doesn’t die for it.”
~
At this hour of the night, the scrying office at SIF headquarters was running on a skeleton crew, which didn’t fill me with confidence. Judging by the flurry of activity, though, a lot of people had been roused out of bed, and would be arriving soon.
One of the junior aides pricked my finger with a sterile lancet and collected a few drops of blood while the duty officer ran me through what sounded like a list of standard questions. When he got to “relationship with the subject,” I told him Julian was my boyfriend. He noted that and asked, “Is your relationship sexual?”
Everybody and their third cousin seemed to think my private life was their business. But I couldn’t argue the relevance here; that kind of connection made me a better link for scrying. I told him it was, and didn’t look at Neeya.
They were about to take me into a ritual circle when someone more senior arrived on site and nixed that. “If they’ve got him warded,” the new woman said, “then we have to assume they’ll notice when you break through the wards. At which point they’ll move him to a new location. We have to hold off on scrying until the strike team is ready to go.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “Without a target site, the strike team can’t make as good of a plan. Divination will only get you so far; you’re asking them to guess at the rest.”
&nb
sp; “I know,” she replied grimly. “But the best plan in the world won’t do them much good if he’s gone before they can hit the place.”
I ground my teeth, but didn’t argue. She was right. Besides, we had to move fast no matter what. My impression was that Julian had come to me in secret, without his captors’ sanction, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t figured out what he’d done. In which case their timetable might have just gotten compressed. We needed some information before we could go, and that meant waiting on the divination results.
The delay left me standing in the middle of the ops room, indecisive and useless. I wanted to help the divination team, but I’d left my cards at home, and was far too close to the matter to achieve any kind of clarity in the first place. Unless—
I grabbed the nearest agent. “Who’s leading the strike team?”
“Grayson,” he said, not even bothering to look up from his screen.
It was the best answer he could possibly have given me. I scanned the area and found Grayson near the door, carrying on three conversations at once. She really didn’t need her attention further divided, but I took a deep breath and dove in anyway. “Grayson—if you put me on the strike team, I can help the diviners out.”
She signaled for me to wait and told the woman in front of her, “So get the authorization you need. If there was ever a time to test them, this is it.” Then she turned back to me. “Explain why.”
“They can use me as a focal point. The Unseelie will have warded themselves against our seers, but they can’t ward me. If I’m on the strike team, our diviners can look at my future instead of Julian’s.”
“The same is true of anyone on the strike team,” Grayson said. “You’ve acquitted yourself very well in the past, Kim, both at Welton and here, but you aren’t ready for this kind of thing.”