Chapter Six

 

Shy’s chest sighed, the movement so familiar though the body was different. “You haven’t changed at all. Is it true it’s only been a few days for you?”

I was talking to my dead father. He was dead and hiding in another body. I forced myself to let that sink in. It wouldn’t stand. I would find a way to fix all of this, but I had to start handling things better. “We were gone for roughly four days. I don’t understand what happened. The painting was enchanted.”

“The painting was meant for Marcus. It was spelled specifically for him,” my father explained. “I know all of this because I spent the first year of my death in the Council building, following Myrddin and learning about his plans. He never meant for Daniel to go through that painting. He was perfectly happy to lose Devinshea and you and Kelsey, but he wanted Daniel around and properly under his influence.”

“Under the thrall stones.”

Shy’s head nodded. “Yes. He knew where he was sending Marcus to, knew that if you went through too they would likely figure out what he’d done. The stones are much more easy to obtain on the outer planes. It’s where he got them. When Devinshea disappeared, he knew he couldn’t keep Daniel. That was when he allowed the two of you to go through. He knew Daniel would never stop searching for Devinshea. The trap was for Marcus and Kelsey. Devinshea was what he hadn’t counted on. The wizard came in and quickly assessed the threats to his absolute control over Daniel.”

“Marcus and Kelsey. I’m insulted I wasn’t on that list.”

“Ahh, but he never gave you enough credit, my darling girl. He thinks you’re nothing more than a wife and mum. He doesn’t understand the most dangerous of all creatures is a mum whose kids are threatened.”

“Why go after the kids?” I asked. “They couldn’t challenge him. Why not allow Declan to come for them? Miria would have taken them and they wouldn’t have been any trouble at all.”

“When he came for the children that day, I think that’s what he might have done. The hours after you went missing were quiet. No one had a clue you were gone because Danny was supposed to help with the locator ceremony.”

Myrddin had planned to hold a ceremony in the dark temple at midnight that night. Danny and I were going to attend, and it could have gone on for hours. “He told everyone we were in the temple?”

“That was what I believed,” my father agreed. “I stayed over because I wanted to talk to you when you got back from the business with Daniel. When you didn’t come back, I went to look for you. I overheard them talking, and Myrddin decided the best way to deal with the situation was to lock down the crown very quickly. Honestly, I think he panicked a bit. He’s not used to his plans being upended. I know he came into the penthouse that morning and fed me a line of bullshit about how you and Danny had been attacked and he needed to get the children someplace safe. Albert was already on the move, getting the children ready. Trent had spent the night with Fenrir, so he was back there, too. I held him off as long as I could.”

“How did he kill you?” I wanted to know everything, every single reason to punish the wizard when the bill came due.

“When he realized I was giving Albert and Eddie cover, he stormed back into the kids’ rooms. He quickly discovered that Eddie had transported them, and he took it out on me. The great Merlin packs quite a punch when he wants to. I’m not sure if he was trying to kill me or trying to hurt me and send me a message, but when that bolt of lightning from his hands hit me, my heart gave out. The world went dark and when I came back to consciousness, it was several weeks later and Myrddin had done his worst by then.”

“His worst?”

Evan took that one. “He’d consolidated his power by killing everyone he could. He put out the story that the royals had been killed by a rogue group that had embedded members close to the royal family.”

“Let me guess. Trent and Sasha,” I concluded.

“And Marcus,” Evan added. “He used Marcus’s disappearance to make the vampires look particularly bad. Not that there aren’t a subset that work with Myrddin now, but it was a good way to sway the supernaturals who don’t like the vamps.”

“It was a good way to get rid of all of our allies.” The political situation had been tenuous at best. It always was in our world. Daniel’s coalition had held, but there were always factions fighting, millennia of bad will and betrayal among the different tribes. The wolves didn’t trust the vampires, and the witches are wary of the Fae. There was often some sort of rebellion to put down. “I take it he invited the demons in.”

“Yes. By that point he’d brought in the demons, and the witches had taken over the Council,” my father explained. “I had no idea where the children had gone then. I stuck close to Myrddin and learned a lot about his plans. In those first months, he simply struggled to secure the throne. He didn’t bother to go after the children. He tried to figure out why the painting hadn’t worked the way he thought it should. It went blank after it took you and Daniel.”

I had so many questions about that. “Did he enchant it himself?”

Shy’s hands expertly poured the tea as my father spoke. “He painted it himself, but the enchantment was commissioned. It was a particular form of magic that wasn’t of this plane. He feared if he used his own, one of the witches would have sensed the purpose. He couldn’t use demonic magic since there were wards against it at the time. So he was forced to use a witch from another plane.”

I had to laugh because I knew what had happened. The trick had been on freaking Myrddin. “He tried to lay a trap for Marcus and perhaps Kelsey, but Marcus was needed by the outer planes. Twelve years ago did anyone sense a…” What to call it? “A disturbance in the force?”

Shy’s head shook but the expression was pure Harry Wharton. “My daughter the geek. What do you mean?”

Evan had a thoughtful expression on her face. “Are you talking about the days when the veil thinned? I don’t remember it well but Albert talks about it. It was how we moved so easily across the planes for a while. Even when it settled down, there were still places where it thinned from time to time. Albert thought Myrddin was doing it.”

So they’d felt the convergences on the Earth plane as well. “No, it was because the Night King was dying and the Day Queen needed her successor to take over the job of fueling the planes. The outer planes exist basically on top of one another. Like Shy explained your relationship, those planes share a space and they require a unique magic to keep the walls up and the planes separate. Summer is made from that magic. She is that magic. But as with all things in our universe, she works best with a balance. Night to her day.”

“Marcus Vorenus,” Evan said with a sigh. “She was Marcus’s mate. The prophecy wasn’t about me.”

“Not you.” I had so many thoughts on how the universe would do its will, and nothing we do could thwart it. Myrddin had tried so hard, but someone had tricked him. “So someone from the outer planes found a way to get their Day Queen the king she needed. Summer couldn’t take her place without Marcus at her side, and Myrddin gave them a perfect way to tempt him through.”

What I didn’t say was I doubted Summer took her place at all unless things had gone the way they had. Daniel had been the one to convince her to unleash her power. Without meeting us, I don’t know if she would have found the peace she needed to finally come into her destiny.

And if we hadn’t gone through, we wouldn’t have been able to bring back Dean, who Kelsey now thought was absolutely essential to taking down Myrddin.

“Perhaps the painting went blank because it had done its job. The outer planes were saved when Summer and Marcus took their crowns,” Evan mused. “But the academics came to believe that the object itself wouldn’t close until someone came back through. They thought it was a fail-safe in case someone got trapped by accident. A way to keep the portal open so Marcus could still go through. Even though it went blank, we still believed you could return.”

“Why didn’t Myrddin destroy it?” I asked.

“Because I stole it, of course,” my father admitted. “Well, I tried to. I wasn’t good at the ghost thing at that point, so I convinced someone else to steal it. It wasn’t hard. She was looking for a way to kill the man. I convinced her to be a spy instead. Turns out my little love is pretty good with death magic. She was trying to contact me shortly after I died, and she didn’t stop until she called me to her circle. She’s the one who found Shahidi for me.”

“Christine?” Was he talking about Christine? Christine was my father’s girlfriend for years. She was a witch of medium power, and she was roughly my age. My father might have gotten older over the years, but his taste in twenty-year-olds had never changed. Christine would be almost fifty now. Was she still loyal to my dad even after he’d died? I’d kind of always thought she’d go to the dark side in a heartbeat. Way before I would have said Liv would go all Dark Willow on us.

“Yes. I know you never liked her much, but she was a good woman. She still is. She’s been in the Council headquarters for years now, quietly working with the rebellion,” my father announced with obvious pride. “She’s the one who saved the canvas from being stored on the Hell plane when they couldn’t destroy it. She worked with a Planeswalker, who smuggled it back out.”

“A Planeswalker?” I asked the question, startled that they even knew that name.

Evan frowned. “Those are creepy dudes.”

The fact that my daughter knew what a Planeswalker looked like scared the crap out of me. I’d never seen one until I went to the outer planes. What had Evan and the boys been exposed to? What had they been forced to survive?

Shy’s head nodded. “Yes. He said he owed the royals and that we should tell you his debt is now paid.”

We’d encountered those specialized demons when we were in the outer planes. They were like the bees of those far-flung worlds. They helped spread the energy by walking the planes in regular rotations. When the old queen’s magic had started to fail, so had the Planeswalkers’ magic. We had protected them, and then Summer had taken her place. Now it appeared they’d returned the favor or we might have come through the canvas and straight onto the Hell plane.

“We’ve been trying to figure out when you would come back for years.” Evan reached out and grabbed a cookie. “Trent’s consulted with all kinds of psychics, and Christine gave us the dates the dark coven came up with. As we approached this first date—today—we realized how much magic it would take to get through all the wards and into the building. We stored magic for years.”

“We also tried to take the canvas out of the building, but that didn’t work. It wouldn’t make it through the wards. The best we could do was store it, and then when we thought you might come through, put it someplace you would recognize and we would be able to get to.” Evan sat back. “We knew we would likely get one shot. There was some disagreement on which date to try.”

“I knew it was today,” my father said. “Shy did, too. We felt it deep in our bones. Her bones. Rhys did, too. He’d seen some signs that convinced him it was time. Sasha is a good male but a bloody stubborn ass. Russians. Trent is honestly every bit as bad.”

“I thank you for trusting your instincts, Dad.” It was easier now to look past the oddness of my father speaking to me through another body. I reached out and took Shy’s hand. “And I thank Shahidi for giving you a place to stay.”

“Thank Shahidi for convincing Rhys, Momma.” A glint came into Evan’s eyes. “I doubt he would have been confident enough to go against Sasha if it had just been Grandad talking. But he’ll do anything for Shy.”

Shy’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you tease them, girl. You know it’s hard on your brother.”

“Yes, every time he starts flirting with Shy, Grandad shows up,” Evan pointed out.

“It was only the one time,” my father said.

“It was enough.” Evan chuckled. “I can’t help it. He deserves it. Rhys acts like he’s my dad. He’s the one who made Fen promise not to touch me.”

“Evan, you’re only seventeen,” I pointed out.

A brow rose over Shy’s warm brown eyes. It was an expression I knew well. “And what were you and Danny doing when you were seventeen?”

“Is there anything stronger than tea?” I groaned. “Damn it. I can’t drink.”

“You’re really pregnant?” Evan asked. “I thought you and Papa decided to not have more kids.”

We had. We’d decided the three we had were enough, but then we’d had a chance I never thought we would. “It’s not Papa’s.”

My father gasped. “What happened to you, girl?”

“It’s what happened to Danny. I won’t explain all the weird magic that went into it, but for a while on that odd faery plane, Danny was human and he was capable of having children.” It had been a magical night and one where the three of us had been closer than we’d ever been before. “It’s okay. He’s a vampire again, but I did get pregnant.”

“You’re having another child with Dad?” Evan seemed to let that sink in. “Well, congratulations, Mom. I’m going to go find Fen. We need to get ready to go in the morning. This is my room. I’m sure Albert’s gotten yours ready. Like I said before, there’s supper for you when you’re hungry.”

She left before I could get another word out.

“What did I do?” Evan hadn’t been happy with news of my pregnancy. Except she had when she’d thought this child would be with Devinshea.

“You didn’t do anything at all.” My father settled back in his chair. “Evan hides her insecurities well most of the time, but I think you touched a sore spot. She’s always been closest to Daniel. I’m afraid even though you weren’t here, those divides still held. You loved Lee most.”

“That’s not true.”

“You all worried more about Lee, and in a child’s world that translates to love,” he explained. “You think back to how you felt about me and Danny after he turned. How I worried about him and took his side in most things. You were an adult and you were still wounded by it. I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I did. In Evan’s mind you were Lee’s, Dev belonged to Rhys, and Daniel was hers. Now you’ve told her she’s got a rival. She lost twelve years with you because you were with Summer, Daniel’s child. Now you’re giving him a biological child who will likely replace her.”

“That’s not true.” Had I favored Lee? I hadn’t meant to. I loved them all.

“Of course it’s not, but it feels that way to her. Part of this is Shy talking. She’s close to Evan. We’re both worried about her. Not because of Fen. I know Evan will talk about how reckless Fenrir is and how she’s got to keep him in check, but she’s every bit as brash as he is. She’s not wrong about Rhys trying to take her father’s place. They’ve fallen into roles as they’ve gotten older. Rhys has gotten more serious. Lee is Devinshea’s near twin, from what I can tell, and Evan, well, Evan’s had to fight for her place. She’s the only girl here, and the boys are overly protective, to say the least. It was good when Shy showed up and she had someone to talk to.”

She should have had a mother figure with her. And a sister. “What happened to Sarah? I can’t believe she would leave my kids.”

Shy’s shoulder shrugged. “I don’t know. I wish I did. Like I said, I died and by the time I came back to consciousness, most of it was done. Sarah and Felix and Mia were gone, and Christine doesn’t know where they went. She believes they found a way to flee the plane. She thinks if Myrddin had killed them he would have made a show of it. I wish I had a better answer for you. Now ask me what you’ve been afraid to ask.”

Tears sprang to my eyes because he was right. I was afraid to ask, terrified at what I could have lost. “Is Neil dead?”

Neil, my best friend. He’d been at my side through everything. I didn’t think he would leave my kids.

My father stood and sat beside me. “No. He’s alive and well. He still works with us whenever we need him, but after the Council fell, some of the wolf packs went back to their old ways. The worst of the packs turned on what they considered weak members.”

Weak meaning any member who didn’t hold the reproduction line. With Dev gone, they would have spent years struggling with fertility again, and that meant attempting to force mating within their packs. “He’s really okay? Chad’s okay? What about Zack?”

Chad was Neil’s vampire husband. Zack had been a part of our family since almost the beginning. He was Daniel’s “servant” and had been for years. He was Kelsey’s uncle, and I trusted Zack with my life and my family.

“Chad is with Neil, and so is Zack and his family. They’re a few miles away in a small town on the coast. They welcome all wolves who’ve been abused by their packs. Neil and Chad have two children now. They adopted two wolves who’d been shunned by their families.”

My tears were for another reason now because all Neil had ever wanted in life was to have a family, to love and be loved without conditions. “I can see him.”

“Yes,” my father said. “You should go tomorrow because Zack needs to see Daniel. He’s…unwell.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “Unwell?”

“He hasn’t had vampire blood in years. You remember how much weaker Neil was when he stopped taking Danny’s blood? Well, Zack was on it for far longer. He’s never gotten his strength back, and it’s gotten worse.”

“We can go now.” I started to stand.

Shy’s hand reached out and stopped me. “Tomorrow is soon enough. I assure you they’ve been informed that the royals have returned. They’ll be here in the morning. You need to stay in Frelsi. It’s safe. You need to work on your relationship with the kids. Now that you’re back, things will heat up, and we’ll have that all-out war I’ve feared for so long. You know what we need to do, right?”

“Yes, I need to find someone who can get me back to the day we went missing.”

“Why would you do that?” my father asked.

“This is wrong. This whole place is wrong, and we can fix it.” I already knew who I needed to talk to. “Summer can help. She’s so powerful, and she can find a way to get me back to that moment. I’ll change everything. I’ll save you.”

My father stared at me. “I don’t think that’s possible, and even if it was, it wouldn’t turn out the way you want.”

“I’m the nexus point. I make reality.” I’d learned long ago that I was different. I am the odd being who has no written fate. I can change the fate of the people around me. I intended to change all of our fates.

“No. You don’t make reality.” My father’s tone had gone harsh. “You make choices, and this one could have hard consequences. You don’t know that you wouldn’t fuck things up more.”

“I’m willing to take that chance. Can’t you see that the kids shouldn’t have had to go through this? I have to try.”

“No. What you have to do is find a way into the Council building and take what we stole all those years ago,” my father said. “Myrddin’s grimoire is still missing, but he comes closer to finding it every single day. When he does, he’ll have more power than you can imagine. He’ll have his book of spells and he’ll have the Sword of Light, and he’ll be able to do what he’s been planning for over a decade, maybe longer.”

“And what is that?”

“He’s going to permanently close all doors between the Earth plane and all Heavenly planes. He’s going to give Earth to Hell.”

Well, it looked like I had a job to do.