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We hadn’t hung pictures.
That was my first thought, when the room shook to the point where the walls creaked and groaned. We hadn’t hung any pictures, hadn’t indulged in those cozy touches that took a space from cold and impersonal to a real home.
A flash of regret sliced through me when nothing fell, no framed glass photographs of me and York. Nothing that had left an imprint on us beyond the book still tucked into my waistband, out of sight.
Through it all, Xanthe smiled. “Tick, tock!” she called out to us above the rumble.
I didn’t need a reminder that our time grew short. That the Unseelie King waited for us.
With no room left to maneuver, I hurried to York, determined to do whatever it took to break the magic’s hold on him. He fought against it like a wildcat with its leg in a trap. Twisting his body every which way to no avail.
“Hold on,” I told him. Then went down hard, using my chin for a landing pad, when the ripple effect from the shaking loosed a board beneath my feet. I felt skin split, teeth going through my lip from the impact. I’d had worse.
“Bean...”
A glance over my shoulder showed me Crius with another ball of light in his palm. Calling down the stars trying to get to my grandmother.
My spell hadn’t worked.
Worse, I’d wasted precious time trying something I should have known not to use. I’d never displayed any kind of magic power. What made me think I could use my mother’s spell against Xanthe?
Pride? Foolishness?
Turning my attention to York gave me another worry. Fear for my family. Fear I wouldn’t be able to protect them the way I needed to.
“We need to move now,” I called out to York. Reaching for him, my palms seared as they came into contact with the sparking whip of magic power keeping him in place.
He winced. “You don’t need to tell me twice!”
Such raw energy. I’d never felt its equal before, pushing past the pain in my face, my hands, my ankle. “I’m going to make her pay for this,” I promised him. “Mark my words.”
“We don’t have time to talk about retribution.”
“She’s getting away!”
Crius’s call cut through my haze of anger and when I looked up, I caught a flash of blond hair heading away from us. Signaling my grandmother’s exit.
That nasty bitch.
“Grab her!” I yelled.
With my attention torn between desire for retribution and York’s safety, I wasn’t sure where to turn. How to force my body to move in a way that would benefit us the most. I stood rooted for more time than I cared to admit with my head swiveling left and right. Fight, or stay?
I turned to York, decision made.
No doubt. No doubt Xanthe would run out. Any lingering respect for my grandmother that hadn’t been extinguished the last time she’d tried to kill me died a horrible death.
Grade A bitch. If I had the chance to get my hands on her a second time, magic or not, family or not, I would kill her.
The knowledge settled in my heart like a stone.
“She’ll be back,” Crius stated. Completely unnecessarily. He stared at the empty spot in space where Xanthe had stood, with the chaos finally calming. The room settled, the shaking dissipated until we stood in a cloud of smoke and rubble. The floor had been thrown out of alignment and stray boards rose like broken bones.
I watched her wall of magic slowly fade until nothing remained.
At least this time she hadn’t brought her entire army with her. Which left me to wonder why. Why she’d come alone, and what she’d hoped to gain from the situation. She always had an ulterior motive up her sleeve. A secondary reason to anything she did. Like the mirror, I thought. The same tool she’d had me steal only to use against me.
How much power did she have left in there? And how long would it take her to recharge?
“She will, yes,” I agreed. I straightened my back, limbs shaking. “Luckily we have each other. Whatever death we face now, at least we’re together.”
I grabbed York’s hand and whirled him around to face me. I saw only the haunted gleam in his eyes before I threw my arms around his shoulders and crushed his body to mine. Even though it hurt me to do so. After a moment, his arms came around my waist to keep me close. Close enough that I shut my eyes and breathed him in, unable to tell where he began. Where I ended.
His breath was warm on my skin as he bent to nuzzle against the side of my neck. Calm stole over me for the span of a second.
I could have stayed there forever and let the world fall to ruin around us. Crius took a giant step forward, evidenced by the crash and bang of his footsteps as he walked. “We need to go after her.” His voice sounded from the doorway.
“Bean!”
It wasn’t the name that garnered my attention, but the tone. The aching syllables and the way his breath struggled on the exhalation. I pulled away from York so fast that I nearly tumbled.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, squaring my shoulders in an attempt to look tougher than I felt.
The answer came when I noticed the blood. Noticed the way York dipped his chin to stare at the gash in his side.
He had his hand outstretched to keep him from stumbling back when he lost his balance, the lamp on the floor and the table knocked over. Blood everywhere.
No time to catch my breath, I rushed toward him, catching him seconds before he fell beside the lamp. The air had turned cold around us and my skin prickled with the remnants of whatever magic Xanthe had used on him. Along his skin, a trail burned from his wrist to his side, the heat melting through his clothing and skin.
“She got me...” York moaned roughly.
“What do you mean, she got you?” I probed the area and tore at the last shreds of his clothing to get a clear view. To see what the hell had happened in the infinitesimally small space between our struggle and Xanthe’s disappearance.
“I—fuck!”
His cry of pain cut through whatever sanity I had left. Whatever nerves hadn’t been stripped raw and flayed after the last few days. My finger came away smeared in crimson. The wound had been forged with magic and cut deeper than any man-made steel or blade. Deeper than I wanted to admit.
I maneuvered him onto his back with whatever grace I could muster. Avoiding the loose boards and shards of ceiling that had fallen in our scuffle. I thought I’d gotten him free in time. I was too late. “She couldn’t resist a parting shot at the one person in the room who is killable. York, talk to me.” My hand moved to his cheek to steady him when his eyes rolled back in his head, skin pale.
No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. I refused to let this happen.
“York? York!”
Blood geysered out of his stomach, coloring his shirt and anything in the area. I pressed a hand against the wound until he groaned.
Trying to mask my fear became a feat I wasn’t strong enough to accomplish. Turning to Crius, I found his frantic gaze with my own. Begging him without speaking to do something. Anything. I didn’t care what price had to be paid, because I knew, inherently, this was one wound I would not be able to heal. I would not be able to sew it shut or burn the edges of his skin to stop the bleeding.
Not without magic.
“Bean...”
“I’m here.” I crouched next to York, placing my hands over the hole in his stomach. “It’s going to be fine. Hey, look at me. It’s going to be okay. It’s barely a scratch.”
His skin a pasty white, he tried to nod, the action sending a burst of blood through my fingers. “Oh, sure. I’ll have to take your word for it,” he groaned.
“You might have a scar on the other side now.” I tried to joke. Tried to tug the corners of my mouth upward to show him, physically, that I believed we’d come through this.
His eyes closed. “That’s fine. At last I’ll match.”
Crius stared down at us with golden-brown eyes that held the wisdom of centuries. Right now, they bored a hole through me, willing me to accept that this might be impossible. “I know a healer,” he said slowly. As though the knowledge might cost more than we’d gain. “The best I’ve ever seen. She’s located in the Shadowlands. She’s—”
“Are you serious right now?” I interrupted.
“There is no one better and we don’t have the time to waste.” The look he gave me hardened until I threatened to become stone under its weight.
No, we didn’t have the time to waste, he was correct in that matter. But... “There’s one problem. I can’t travel between dimensions. No power, remember?”
“You forget who you’re talking to.”
“Then we’ll consider the second problem. The war I’ve started with the Unseelie King. The one you said you would help me win? We can’t exactly walk into the Shadowlands and expect him to roll out the red carpet. ‘Oh, yes, hi. We’re here to find your greatest healer to help save the life of my vampire slash werewolf boyfriend. Point the way! And then we’ll be back to kill you all.’”
Did I really have a choice?
“Vienna, I know the healer. However, she might not even be alive,” Crius said, considering. “It’s been a thousand years since we’ve seen each other. She might be a million miles away across dimensions and lifetimes.”
“Take us.” I made the decision in half a heartbeat, although I didn’t do it lightly. “You have the power? Do it.”
Stepping foot in the Shadowlands while the king searched for us was akin to a death sentence. But it was either risk his wrath, or lose York.
I couldn’t take him to a normal doctor. They wouldn’t know what to do with him, wouldn’t have the equipment to deal with him if his body reacted and he shifted on their table.
I wasn’t even sure he’d make it there in time. The way his stomach pulsed, ejecting blood...I could almost hear his organs shutting down. Feel the link between us growing blacker. Thinner. Weaker.
No, no, dear God, no.
The magic Xanthe used had shredded through York’s muscles. His blood wouldn’t clot until we figured out how to lift whatever spell she’d used. If we ever found a way.
This was one problem I couldn’t solve with might alone. “Crius, we have to hurry. He isn’t going to heal like this.”
Crius glanced toward the door and refused to look at me.
I opened my mouth to argue. To scream at my father to take me where we needed to go. Where both of us could be killed on sight if the guards found us before we found the healer.
The healer who might not even be alive, my mind reminded me.
Everything shut down when York reached out to place his palm over my hand.
His pupils had narrowed to tiny pinpricks of black in a sea of white. “You don’t have to. Bean, look at me. Don’t go there. We can’t trust anyone right now. You have a destiny. Don’t put yourself in harm’s way because of me.”
Oh yeah, great. Perfect. Just what I wanted to hear. He couldn’t be serious. “York. I am not going to let you die,” I insisted.
I prepared to do whatever it took to pull him through this. One day, I’d look back on this and wonder if I’d made the right choice or the smart choice. Was this the end of us?
Sickness curled inside my stomach. Maybe I would have been better off dying at the hands of the king, moments after my birth, instead of fighting my way to this eventuality. If I’d been better off dying, then York would not be lying here on the floor bleeding out.
“Do what you have to do,” I told Crius through gritted teeth and clenched jaw. “Track down this healer.”
York tried to shake his head and ended up coughing, blood now dotting his lips. “I’ll be okay. I’m...notoriously hard to kill, remember?”
“Yes, except this is magic, so I doubt you’ll be able to transform or heal until we find a way to break whatever backlash Xanthe caused.” My voice broke and I lowered my head to his. After everything we’d been through, everything we’d fought past, it came to this? “I can’t do this alone,” I whispered. “You can’t leave me.”
I couldn’t risk not doing anything. Not when it came to someone as important to me as York. I knew now, without a shadow of a doubt, I was so in love with him I knew I would not be able to come out of the other side of this the same woman.
“You cannot leave me.” I took his hand with my free one, the other pressing against his wound to keep him from bleeding out. “Do you understand?”
Too pale, he tried to nod. “I understand. I just can’t make any promises right now, Bean. Not without risking a lie.”
I swallowed hard. My skin had gone sweaty. My grip tightened on him until I knew it hurt. I couldn’t help myself.
“We need to get him to the Shadowlands now. We don’t have much time,” I announced. “Which is going to be a problem, Pops, if you refuse to agree. Because I can’t teleport.”
He took hold of my arm, dragging me away from York. “Then it’s a good thing I can,” he growled.
I had no idea if we were making the right decision, I thought, finally releasing York. I stumbled back, my boots slipping on the broken floor as I straightened myself. Lightheaded and weighed down at once, I faced my father.
I opened and snapped my mouth closed. This late in the game, I’d be foolish to trust Crius implicitly. However, given the circumstances, I didn’t see another choice. Everyone knew my weakness: I would do whatever it took to keep York safe. Even if it meant diving head-first into enemy territory. Head-first after Xanthe.
Was I willing to put my life, York’s life, in Crius’s hands?
Did I have a choice?
“Take us there immediately,” I demanded, then added softly, “Please.”
Crius stared at me for a moment before squaring his shoulders. He held his arms wide and then slammed his palms together. The resounding boom shook my bones through and had my vision exploding into white light.
This was much different from the last time I’d traveled with Xanthe to the Shadowlands. Her magic felt heavy, a weighty blanket pressing down on me and when I could finally breathe again, we were in a different dimension. She’d ripped open the portal with the last of her big magic, taken by me on an IOU promise from her.
This time I’d gone blind, yes, but warm through and through. Instead of being wrapped in a weight, I’d become the blanket. It felt familiar. Comforting in all the right ways.
There better not be an ambush waiting for us on the other side.
This was no portal, no tunnel or gateway leading to the land of the Unseelie Fae. This was a hop and a skip. At first in one place and then the other.
The power of a Titan. The original movers and shakers of this world. Where might we have been, I wondered in the brief moment between stars, if the Olympians hadn’t worked with the Fae to imprison these mighty beings.
Slaves, a part of me murmured. Humanity would have been slaves to their might.
Then I felt dazzling sunlight on my face. The slight twinkle and chirp of birdsong in the distance and the hum of magic along my skin. Real magic, not the kind of borrowed and bombastic might Xanthe had bought or stolen to store in her mirror.
My vision slowly returned, and when it did I saw trees in full autumn dress. Leaves of orange and gold and red shone underneath a round sun. The sweet scent of apples filled the air.
I had no time to admire. No time to acknowledge the rush of joy causing my heart to come alive.
We were in the Shadowlands, home of the winter and autumn Fae. Home of my mother.
And my father had brought us here.
“Take us to the healer,” I said. We had no time to spare. “I don’t know what you have to do to find her, but do it now.”
Crius stood, taking me in, his imposing shoulders the width of the oaks he stood beside. “I’m afraid it’s not so simple.”
“What isn’t?”
I felt rather than saw the magic closing behind us. Keeping us bound here, to this place, in this time, with no hope of returning.
“What did you do?” Striding toward him, I slammed him in the chest, a blow that would have ordinarily sent him flying. “What did you do?
A spear of pure ice entered my heart.
“Crius...”
I’d done exactly what I’d set out to do. I’d gotten my father out of Tartarus, the first step in standing against the man who’d ordered my mother’s execution. And yet the satisfaction never came. Inside, I still felt broken. Incomplete.
With York dying behind me, I knew one thing. We were trapped.
THE END
* * *
Continue the adventure with Vienna and York in the last full-length Vienna Blue novel, Until Forever Ends.
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