This time, it was Cain that was separating from the rest of him – as Darryl’s powerful spell went to work and ejected the son-of-a-bitch from William’s form.
William had forgotten all about that mark. Completely forgotten.
Now everything he’d planned was for nothing. He felt the pain of that disappointment right along with the rendering of his body and spirit as Cain ripped away from him and was thrown. The world shook a second time, lightning cascaded to the crystalline ground in a cacophonous curtain of green and blue fire, and the thunder of two worlds colliding once and for all filled every space of every place where sound could reach.
Chapter Forty-one
Helena looked on in stunned, immobile silence as Will’s form dissolved into green light. That green light shot into Liam so fast, she barely witnessed it. And then the world was exploding and she was being thrown. When she made it to her knees and shoved her damn hair out of her face, it was only to find him watching her with hard, determined, and infinitely sad eyes.
He was William again. She knew him now, in that moment. But then he raised her gun, put the barrel to his head, and she knew what he planned. He was going to take himself out of the game, and Cain along with him.
She cried out and reached for her power to stop time. But her reach came up empty. It was no longer there. It was just gone. There were other things there instead. She recognized some of it as the same power to manipulate space the way she had when she’d brought them here to Lapis. But her control over time was gone.
He’d taken it.
It was the worst realization in the world. The absolute worst.
She couldn’t stop him from ending his life. She could not stop this runaway train.
For that brief moment of undiluted misery, Helena felt like Fate was exacting upon her a kind of revenge. She felt as if this utter helplessness and impending loss was due her. Had she earned it somehow? Had she caused this kind of anguish to someone else?
She couldn’t remember. And really, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was in hell.
She watched his finger tense and the trigger begin to give beneath its pressure. And then the strangest thing happened. The mark on his arm, the same one she possessed on hers, began to glow a bright, fiery red. William froze and closed his eyes, gritting his teeth. Almost at once, he dropped to his knees in obvious agony, and the gun fell to the ground along with him.
William clutched at himself as though he were trying to hold his body together, and before her eyes, his strong form split into different pieces. They weren’t equal. Only one was solid, and that was William’s form, tall and whole and beyond beautiful.
But peeling apart from him like the film on a sticker was Cain. He was also tall and beautiful; his form was however transparent, like a slide in an old projector.
In a eureka moment, Helena realized what she was seeing. Maelstrom’s mark was ejecting Cain from William’s body! Ha! she thought triumphantly, even as lightning began to strike the earth like a barrage of heavenly green and the ground beneath her shook once more. He forgot about that, didn’t he?
Helena had never felt such joy at something potentially evil in her whole life. If Cain broke free, he would still be alive to wreak havoc. But at the same time, William would have no need to destroy himself. She was more than willing to make that particular trade.
She rolled when she hit the ground again, and had to keep herself from dumping headlong into a crack in the crystal-covered plain as it yawned open and threatened to swallow her. She maneuvered to the side, got her feet beneath her, and stumbled to the nearest stone, the one William had been sitting on earlier. She fell onto it when the ground bucked, and held on for dear life.
By the time she half stabilized herself, she figured she would be deaf forever. The thunder was immense. Her ears had both started and stopped ringing already. Now there was just silence. But damn it all, she barely cared.
When she finally felt steady enough to look back up at William, she saw the oddest thing. It was not only Cain’s form that was separating from William’s in that moment. There was another. A second form that was pulling away, wispy and see-through like Cain’s but also recognizable.
William didn’t notice this second form. His head was bent, his teeth clenched in agony, his hands clutched at his chest. But she saw it. This one was a touch shorter than William and Cain, had shorter hair, and was built thick and strong. Liam, she thought in confused wonder. What the….
But the sky split open with the dark of clouds that made it look as if an actual tear was forming in the fabric of space above them. Sound again broke through Helena’s awareness, a deep, hard, terrifying sound that restored her hearing and then threatened it once more.
Helena gripped that rock and stared wide-eyed at the sky, then wide-eyed at William. He was still bent, absolutely trapped in the grip of Maelstrom’s spell – and never had Helena felt the man was more aptly named than in that moment. Maelstrom, indeed.
Green lightning struck all around William in absolute chaos. He was the centerfold in a magazine of magic and might. But it wasn’t just him. It wasn’t just the spell. Helena had the sense that something vital was happening to their world.
She had the sense that it was ending.
Within seconds, both of the spirits pulling away from him were completely separate from William, and just like that, they were swallowed up by the flashing emerald and gathering dark of the unnatural rip-in-the-sky storm. She lost sight of them and returned her attention to William, wishing she could just make it to him without being picked up and blown away or sucked through the ever-widening hole above or struck by lightning or swallowed up by the splitting ground. She tried to stay where she was, breathless and numb, and waited for world to finish ending.
The turbulence grew more unsteady, more violent, and she was eventually knocked to her side. She couldn’t help the exclamation of pain as she landed on her ribs.
Just like that, she felt William’s eyes on her.
She rolled over and met his gaze. His head had snapped up, but between them was another tear of gathering dark.
William gritted his white teeth, shoved himself to his feet, and ran toward her, against all odds managing to balance despite the wayward bucking of the realm beneath them. He slid into first beside her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and pulled her close just as the gale became so incredible, both of them were lifted from the ground. Dust and debris slammed into them from all sides, but Helena’s face was spared damage where it was safely tucked against William’s chest.
I won’t have any hair left when this is over, she thought unwittingly. It would be yanked right out of her skull, she was sure of it. But this was one of those thoughts that floats hysterically around a person in the midst of possible if not probable death. Like the woman in the car accident who is trapped by the door embedded in her side but only wants to know where her shoes went when they flew off her feet.
Everything was crazy.
It remained that way for some time, too. And then finally, she felt William tense further around her, and she knew something different was happening and he was preparing for impact. She followed suit, gripping him tighter than she thought she could, tucking her head in further, and making sure her teeth were already clamped together so they wouldn’t slam shut and break.
The impact came a half a second sooner than she thought it would, but it didn’t matter. They hit thick wild grasses and soft earth. They struck the ground and rolled, and when they stopped and Helena pulled away enough to look up, she found that it wasn’t just the surface that had protected them. William’s green protective cocoon of magic was wrapped around them again, a dual armor that held damage at bay as they’d made contact with their new destination.
It took a moment for them to gain their bearings. Helena didn’t want to move. She was afraid of what she would find, of what it all meant, and her mind was a mess.
But his voice sliced through the fo
g of her haphazard thoughts. It was deep and crisp and his words were accented by something ancient and from everywhere. “Are you okay, Helena?”
He pulled away a bit more, and his magic dissipated around them. He looked down at her. She peered up and nodded out of reflex even though she had no idea whether or not she was okay.
She tried to feel her feet. They were both there and they were both functioning. Then she felt her fingers. They were there too. And she’d heard him talk to her. So she hadn’t gone deaf after all. That made no sense, but she was happy about it.
She remained wrapped in the safety blanket of his arms as a new reality gradually made itself known to her.
And then Helena Bonaventure Dawn remembered.
Chapter Forty-two
Katrielle’s eyes flew open at the sound.
KNOCK, KNOCK
It was the same sound her spell had caused in the empty space between dimensions when she’d tried so hard to breach the Time King’s walls and make her way to the Queens. It was like the rapping of something heavy on a solid wood door in the dead of night, amplified by the power of distance and time. But now she wasn’t the one making the sound; she wasn’t the one casting the spell.
A hard and sharp aura radiated from this magic, and a distinctly masculine note emanated from the sound. It was a hollow crashing from somewhere beyond, angry and desperate and completely out of patience.
“Your Kings have found you,” she said.
Beside her, Poppy the Winter Queen sat up straighter. “You sense them?”
“You will too. Any second now.”
KNOCK, KNOCK
Now the magic and its furious sound moved out of Katrielle’s internal vision and into the real world, slamming against the walls of Evelynne D’Angelo’s bubble. The women around Katrielle cried out in surprise and then scrambled to their feet. She hastily joined them, getting her boots beneath her as the second round of banging sounds emitted from the very sky above them.
The ground began to shake. The five powerful women reached out to one another for stability, grasping each other’s arms in firm grips until they found themselves in a circle of strength amidst a crumbling world.
None of them had to be told to use magic to ensure their safety. The four Queens seemed to come to the decision as one, somehow in sync when they most needed to be. Katrielle watched each of them develop a glow in their vivid eyes. Then they closed those eyes and lowered their heads.
All five of them slowly lifted from the ground to levitate safely several feet above it. A second later, a glowing purple-blue bubble of warlock legerdemain began to cocoon them, shimmering and opalesque. It started on one side, traveled in a sphere around their forms, and drew together on the other side.
They hovered in this glowing crystal ball as the make-believe world the Time King had created for D’Angelo began to fall apart. Katrielle was the only one who saw it happen. The others were working their magic, in tune as one.
The illusion shimmered first, as the ground beneath it bucked and split apart. Then little by little, the shimmering made way for the nothingness that existed between the dimensions. Katrielle was intimately familiar with that nothingness. She’d barely escaped it the first time.
She realized that as the only one with knowledge of what they were about to encounter, and the only one not working a different kind of spell, it was up to Katrielle to get the four Queens and herself back to the world they’d come from. But more alarming than that was the fact that what was happening with them was probably happening with the other eight safe bubble worlds Solan had created and stuffed the other Queens into.
Which meant if they didn’t know what was happening and how to prepare for it, they would be ejected into the nothingness and would disintegrate entirely in short order. Unless she found them first.
Chloe, the Warlock Queen would probably be able to construct a protective shield around herself in time. As one of the first Akyri ever created, she was literally composed of stardust. She was familiar with the needle and thread of the cosmos, deep down in her core. She was also the Warlock King’s wife, and as such she was consistently full-to-the-brim with dark magic. She would recognize what she needed to do to survive and have the power to do it.
Siobhan the Phantom Queen was a warlock herself, and one of renowned esteem. She, too, would probably manage to protect herself from the discordant effects of her shattering world.
The Seelie and Unseelie Queens, Selene and Minerva, would have to be creative. As Wisher sisters, their magic was devastatingly powerful, but limited to the knee-jerk reactions of revenge. Kat wasn’t certain they would have anything to exact revenge for upon being protected in a safe haven bubble by someone who only wished to keep them out of the hands of evil. But she had faith in them. There was a lot of injustice in the world. Knowing those two, they would pull on stored resources of anger. She was pretty sure they would be okay.
Evangeline the Dragon Queen was half Nomad. The other half was legendary dragon.
At the thought of the man who’d provided her with that second half, Katrielle’s heart skipped so hard it hurt. Eva’s father had been the Great Black dragon, Bantariax. He was and always would be the first and strongest love of Katrielle’s life. Eva was their daughter.
Eva was likewise very strong. But she was only half Nomad, and even Katrielle had begun to dissipate in that vast emptiness. Evangeline wouldn’t make it without help.
For that matter, neither would Diana the Goblin Queen and Adelaide the Nightmare Queen. It was possible – just possible – that there existed some kind of creature that naturally roamed the vast nothingness of the space between worlds in the fabric of the multiverse. And if that were true, then Samantha O’Neill the magishifter may be able to shift into that creature. As such, she might stand a chance at adapting to the environment. She possessed the unique and innate ability to shift into any magical monster. So there was hope.
But not nearly enough of it. Too much was up in the air. Too many lives were at stake, and in that moment Kat had no real idea how to find any of them.
And then suddenly, as if in answer to the simultaneously raised inner voices of a dozen desperate magical beings, Katrielle felt a very powerful wave of magic wash over her and the women with her. It moved the protective bubble they were in, but did not shatter it. Instead, it seemed to be acting like a remotely controlled guidance system; the bubble jerked gently to the side, and then rose further just as the last of the Time King’s illusion fell completely away.
Katrielle was reminded of a movie she’d seen once as Lalura Chantelle. It was the most ridiculous and most fun movie – The Explorers. A group of children rigged a space ship out of a carnival ride and old computer parts. More or less. A shield much like this one surrounded the “space ship” and took it light years into space.
This wasn’t space. This was the place between spaces, between universes, which were each composed of countless galaxies that possessed countless solar systems which contained countless planets. This was the nothing that held it all together and simultaneously attempted to tear it all apart.
But the image remained, and she couldn’t help but smile when she saw the same kinds of bubbles – four of them – containing all eight of the remaining Queens. Their heads were all bent, and their hands were clasped. They were in pairs; they’d managed to find one another and breach their own walls with either magic or perhaps sheer strength of will. Whatever it was, it was clear to Katrielle that the Queens could not be contained.
Her vision of the Thirteen Queens on the chessboard facing off against an oncoming evil flashed before her mind’s eye. But for the first time since she’d begun seeing it, Kat wasn’t filled with dread or worry. Instead, she felt hope. These women were immensely gifted and colossally powerful. This right here was proof. Without even meaning to, without spoken or written communication of any kind, they’d cast the same spell. They’d simply known what to do and had acted as one powerful weapon against happ
enstance.
As they passed within close proximity to one another and as a group changed course, Kat noticed that the emptiness looked different than the last time she’d been in it. There seemed to be fissures of energy moving through it, dark and jagged. It was also a touch lighter than before, the way material became lighter in color at its edges when torn.
It concerned her, but what did she know of the emptiness between worlds?
She turned her attention to the women and took note of which of the Queens had joined up together. Selene and Minerva were of course together, but that was no surprise. As twins, they were already very connected, and becoming Queens in strange courts had only made them more so. Katrielle imagined that their worlds had consisted of happy places where they had at last managed to locate their birth mother, a Wisher they had been tirelessly attempting to find for several years. It was their greatest wish and highest goal since becoming Queens. The search was ongoing and fruitless thus far, but Kat would bet good money that at least for a little while, the two had experienced family reunions inside William Solan’s protective worlds.
Chloe Septeran the Warlock Queen and Samantha O’Neill the Shifter Queen were together. That was a bit of a surprise, but when Kat stopped to consider it, it also wasn’t. Chloe was an outcast of sorts as one of the first Akyri ever created. She’d always been special and she’d always been hunted because of it. As for Samantha, until recently being hunted and running away was all her life had been composed of. She was the magishifter, a legendary shifter with capabilities that the world would hastily exploit if it got its hands on her. Because of this, and general misunderstandings, she’d always been on the lamb. The two women had a lot in common. And already, Kat could feel a strong friendship forming between them. It was Chloe’s store of warlock magic, boosted by Samantha’s innate power, that formed their spherical shield.