“I know you hate the heat,” said Avery in a voice that was fairly mystified. “But… is this you?” Despite their souls’ bonding and despite the fact that she was magically drained, and despite the fact that he could read her mind and vice versa, she couldn’t blame him for not being certain. This was pretty miraculous. It was the kind of thing only a granted wish could bring.
Selene shook her head. She did hate the heat, and she would have loved it if it had naturally done this in the middle of the heat wave that Oxford had been “enjoying.” However, she knew better than to mess with nature. And despite her bitterness about the smoking and the pollution, the high prices of pretty much everything, the prejudice so many seemed to have against Americans, and the number of drunks that flooded Oxford’s streets at night, Selene knew that a lot of people here depended on that warmth – they missed it desperately. They were good people. A few good people did exist here and there, after all. And she wouldn’t have denied them their thaw.
No, this wasn’t her.
But she had a feeling she knew who it was. And that feeling filled her with another feeling – a deep, dark dread.
“But I think I know who it is,” she said softly. “We have to get to my parents’ house.”
“Selene!” Selene jumped a little and blinked when the female voice called out to her from across the street. Avery drew closer, his strong presence supporting her as fear coursed its way through her system.
Running across the snow-packed street toward them was a young woman with light brown hair that appeared naturally highlighted with honey streaks. She had gray eyes, which Selene had always found uniquely beautiful despite her own eyes, she was curvy, and she was so very short. Sofia was 5’2”, which to Selene and her sister was just plain midgety. The petite woman was grinning like a Cheshire cat and trying to keep her oversized tote bag over her shoulder as she ran through the snow.
“Sofia!” Selene returned by way of greeting. It was sort of hard not to smile at the site of her, no matter how tired or scared she was; Sofia Isanne was one of those people whose energy and presence just made you happy.
She was a fellow American who possessed a doctorate in mythology, of all things, and was visiting for the summer to do research at the Bodleian library. Things hadn’t exactly gone the way she’d thought they were going to go when she’d planned the trip, having had bad luck with her Visa and with apartment specifics, which Selene could identify with, but that was one of the things that had drawn the three together as friends. Sofia was stuck in the UK until her next quarterly pay day by the publishers of her latest book, since she made virtually nothing at her “day job” as a professor of mythology at a small college in Washington State.
That Selene could recall, Sofia hated the heat even more than Selene and Minerva did, and she could just imagine this mysterious snow storm was not only confusing Sofia, but making her soul dance with glee.
Sofia stopped in front of Selene, breathless and pink-cheeked, her white teeth lighting up the place the same way the snow had lit up Oxford.
“Can you believe this?” she laughed, shaking her head. “I actually had a dream of this happening last night, but I never would have expected it to come true! It’s unprecedented!” She looked from Selene to Avery, blushed a little, and said, “Oh, sorry! I’m Sofia.” She held out her hand for him to shake it.
“Uh…” Selene was a bit taken aback, but recovered quickly. “This is Avery.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Sofia, as Avery shook her hand.
“Likewise.”
Then, without waiting for Selene or Avery to say anything further, Sofia pulled her tote bag off her shoulder and whipped out a pair of bright white ice skates. She held them up for Selene and Avery to see. “I carry them with me wherever I travel on the off chance that some mall somewhere will have a rink. I love the ice!” She laughed. “I can’t tell you how disappointed I was that the rink here doesn’t open until September. But right at this very moment, the River Thames is literally freezing over!” She shook her head, put the skates back in, and returned the bag to her shoulder. “I know it’s a long shot that it’ll be frozen enough to actually skate on, but,” she held out her hands and looked up at the gray, snow flake-filled sky, “this doesn’t seem to be anywhere near to stopping, and, holy shit it’s so awesomely cold!” She laughed out-right, clearly overjoyed.
And she was right. If anything, the temperature had dropped further since Selene and Avery had stepped through the portal.
“So, I gotta keep moving,” Sofia finished, before she gave them a quick little wave, and was gone, half-walking and half-running down the street in the direction of the river.
“Wow,” said Avery as they looked after her. “That happened.”
“I hope she doesn’t fall through the ice,” Selene said distractedly. But she knew she wouldn’t. The way things felt just then, that river was sure to freeze clear through.
Avery turned back to Selene to face her fully, and gently but firmly grabbed hold of her upper arms. His eyes caught and held hers. “Take us to your parents’ home,” he told her. “You can open the next portal yourself, or even snap your fingers. You have that power now, and as my queen, probably more. Take us directly there.”
Selene wasn’t the kind to shy away from a challenge, so instead of denying she could do it, she simply nodded and closed her eyes to concentrate. She almost wished to see them, but remembered that wishing would further drain her. So instead, she envisioned just being there.
There was no movement, no portal, and there were no streaming lights or shifting time – instead, all there was to indicate that anything had happened was a change in temperature. She was no longer freezing, and snow flakes were no longer landing on her eyelashes to melt against her upper cheeks.
She began to open her eyes. But before she had them completely open, Avery was grabbing her and turning with her as if to shield her from something. There was a loud sound that she only partially heard, as her eardrums slammed shut directly after it went off.
A numbing, ringing noise moved through her head, and she felt removed from reality – separated from it by that lack of sound and sight.
She thought she cried out when her back slammed into a hard surface, and the air was knocked from her lungs. Avery was a hard weight above her, for a moment unmoving, and the world tilted at her beneath her.
Little by little, it ceased its ship-like rocking, and Selene opened her eyes. Dust fell into them, at once stinging like nettles. She blinked, still stunned, and tried to inhale. Avery shifted on top of her, slowly rising up on his arms, and allowing her chest to expand. When it did, she coughed, choking on the same dust and debris that were falling around them.
She could see it now, like clouds of white.
“What… what happened?” she asked, her voice scratchy.
Avery didn’t answer. His starkly colored eyes, illuminated with power and perhaps emotion, seemed more shot through with shards of amethyst than they ever had before. It seemed to be taking them over. It was… as if the purple in him were his darkness. His pain.
And it was bigger now.
Alarm shot through Selene. She turned her head, trying to get a look at their surroundings. She recognized them at once; she was on the ground of her parents’ bedroom.
“Oh God!” Selene tried to push Avery off her, but of course it was impossible. He grabbed her wrists and pressed them to his chest. “Selene, please!” he begged her. “Calm down.”
“Let me up, Avery. Or I swear I’ll do something horrible to you.”
Avery could have said a hundred things then. He could have even reminded her that if she tried, if she actually cast a wish spell that influenced him that badly, the backlash effect of its weakening would probably be her undoing. But he didn’t say any of those kinds of things, probably because she already knew them – and he knew she didn’t mean it anyway.
“Selene,” he said softly instead. And then he paused, his brow fur
rowed, and his eyes clouded with more purple. “I’m sorry.”
It was a whisper, no more. And it was the most painful thing she’d ever heard.
She shoved him off her, perhaps fused with so much strength, such a thing was suddenly possible. Or maybe he just let her up. It didn’t matter.
What mattered was that when she managed to get to her feet again, it was to find her mother and father lying on their marriage bed, their eyes closed.
Selene waited. She waited in what felt like frozen time – waited for them to move, to breathe. She waited for her mother’s eyelashes to flutter, or for her father to brush the dust off his face and say, in that charming way he did, “Oh boy… that was a doozie,” before he smiled and rolled over to sit up.
But for a woman with the imagination that allowed her to paint such vivid landscapes, such fantastical realms, and such impossible wonders, she was dreadfully grounded in that moment.
They were dead.
Selene had already felt the worst pain a woman can feel. She knew it was worse for those whose children had actually been born and had a chance to grow up, to grow close to their parents, to develop personalities and smiles, to grow ringlets of hair, to have freckles and sunburns and scraped knees…. She knew that. But to her, and to any woman who had ever lost a child that they’d placed hope and dreams into, no matter what age, it was hell.
So now, as she faced this new loss, here, in this moment, she felt oddly – blessedly – numb.
But then again, a lot of people felt that right after loss. Maybe she was in shock. Maybe it would sink in later. Late at night, when she was just drifting off to sleep. It would hit her like a sledgehammer, right in the solar plexus, right where it hurt worst. And she would die a little then too.
“Was it me?” she asked, and her voice sounded like it was coming through a tunnel. She wanted to know if it was her arrival, the arrival of a Wisher, that set off whatever spell this was and killed her adoptive parents.
“No,” said Avery. “No.” He pulled her into his embrace, and though a part of her felt stiff and unyielding, for some reason, she melted into him. “They were already gone. This last spell was a trap for you,” he told her, his lips at the top of her head. “Your parents have been here for some time.”
“Who… why?” Selene found herself asking. She couldn’t even be sure what it was she wanted to know. Because, she was pretty sure she knew everything already.
They’d been killed by whoever it was that wanted her and her sister dead. They’d been killed because they were harboring Wishers. Just as Selene had feared.
“Minerva,” Selene whispered next. “She… must have found them here.”
That must have been why it was snowing. Minnie was the quiet one. But Selene had always known that oceans of something rode beneath the surface with her. Now the sky was frozen, and the city that was once uninviting to the sisters was being covered – being changed.
“It’s Caliban’s influence,” said Avery as his arms continued to contain her, to hold her up, and to absorb her pain. “It must be bringing out the darkness in her.”
But Selene pulled away, shaking her head. “No.” She refused to look back at the bed. Something was coming anyway, something thick and murky, something that threatened to block out everything. “No, Avery, it’s not just your brother. I mean – ” She shook her head, trying to focus through that coming darkness. “I don’t know about him. Maybe he’s not making it any better, but you don’t know Minerva. She… she has plenty of darkness in her already.”
Avery frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Remember when I told you about the psychiatrist and the drugs that almost made me take my own life?” She paused, a little surprised when a very physical pain arced through her chest, temporarily stealing her breath. She gathered herself and continued. “I didn’t exactly tell you the truth. That wasn’t me I was talking about. It was Minerva. She was the one who developed the anxiety disorder, and she was the one who was given the medication.”
Avery’s expression clouded, just as the amethyst continued to cloud his eyes. But he said nothing, allowing her to continue.
“She’s far more sensitive than I am,” Selene said, and then laughed – harshly – because such a thing seemed ludicrous. “The world not only scares her, it hurts her. And now….” She finally managed to look back at the bed, at the thing that would have certainly sent her sister over the edge. It was a mistake. “Now I think she wants to hurt it back.”
She might have tried to say something else, but a sob rolled up her throat just then, choking off her words. She hadn’t even known she was going to cry. It racked through her like liquid pain, drowning her.
And for a while, some indeterminate amount of time, that pain was all she knew.
Until Avery finally pulled back, just a little, and used his thumbs to wipe the tears from her cheeks. “Take it away,” he told her urgently, cupping her face in his hands. “You have the power to end this pain, so you can think through this.” He hugged her again, squeezing her tight. “You can mourn later,” he told her. “I promise.”
Selene was not the kind of person who felt that people would get better with vitamins, and that exercise, ice packs, and salt tablets cured all ailments. She knew that medicine had been invented for a reason. The other stuff simply didn’t work well enough.
It was the same way with magic. It was wrong that the animal brain had grown so developed, it could experience loss to such horrendous degrees. There was no point to it, after all. It didn’t make anything better.
And now she had a way to get rid of that pain.
So she didn’t hesitate in using it.
“I wish the pain would go away,” she whispered through another sob.
That black, murky, cloud that had been rolling ever closer finally closed over her then, and the last thing she knew was the comforting warmth of Avery’s strong, sure embrace as he once more bent, picked her up into his arms, and held her tight against him.
Epilogue
Avery moved with long, sure strides down the diamond path that led to the front gates of his castle. Up ahead, a massive double door strewn from threads of platinum and diamond began to open. On either side, there appeared to be nothing but rolling hills of thick, green grass. They went on forever, as far as the eye could see. There appeared to be no castle, no great fae city, nothing but those hills and that grass, even behind the fifty-foot double doors, which rested alone and unattached to anything.
It was an illusion, of sorts. And more. Time and space simply moved differently in the fae realms.
Between the doors, in the gap formed as they opened, there was movement.
Night had fallen in the Seelie realm. The queen, new though she was, had lost something precious. The land would now mourn with her. It was simply the way things were done.
Beyond the opening gate was the castle at last, more grand than even Selene’s beautiful paintings could have imagined. And somewhere up above, someone had punched a billion holes in the sky, framing the castle’s majesty with the cosmos. Avery looked upon it, and even after the thousands upon thousands of years that he had ruled from its battlements, he experienced a sense of pride.
Then he looked down at the woman in his arms. She was its queen. And she had yet to see the castle from the outside, from down here at the humble levels one must stand in order to truly fill the heart to a soaring degree. It was one of the many things he was going to show her in the years to come.
If they lived that long.
As he moved through the gates, his people greeted him, bowing low and offering to help. They worked around him with smooth efficiency and grace, a court of capable and loyal fae that he’d gathered together with care during his sovereignty.
He could have released Selene into their care, and they would have died before allowing the smallest infraction to befall their queen. But he couldn’t let her go – he wouldn’t let her go – and they accepted this, moving away, and
allowing him room.
He took her to the library, where furniture befitting a king waited with promised comfort, and books in every language, mortal and immortal, from every realm “real” and beyond, lined the walls and shelves of a room that seemed to defy dimension. There, he lay her down on one of the sofas and sat down next to her.
Gently, he brushed a lock of her shining, black hair from her face.
“Raven one,” he said softy, speaking only to himself.
She would be fine when she awoke. Relatively speaking.
The pain would be gone, and she would be able to think. She would need several days of rest and food to recover from the amount of magic she had used up in her wishes over the last few days. But once she did, she could cast another.
To find her sister.
And they would head as king and queen into an unknown destiny. “Whatever it is, raven one,” he whispered, “we’ll face it together.”
Avery looked up toward the arched, gem-hued windows when movement there caught his eye. A massive ginger cat uncurled itself from the window pane, stretched, and jumped down from its perch to make its way toward them.
Avery blinked. He had never seen the animal before, much less had he any idea how it had gotten into his castle.
But something about the calm of the situation, his experiences with Damon Chroi and Diana Piper, and something about the animal itself, put Avery at ease. He watched quietly as the cat made its way across the carpet to jump onto the couch beside Selene.
There, it looked down upon the sleeping queen’s beautiful features before and purr-meowed before curling up into a ball behind her left leg. From there, it blinked lazily up at Avery.
“Then I suppose she has two guardians,” said Avery.
The cat purred and flicked its tail.
*****
“I’ve been meaning to ask you. Do you have a fae creature that looks like a big snow white stag but with horns covered in gemstones?”