Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

I sat with my legs hugged to my chest, my sight fixed on Andas’s immobile form. I hadn’t sat this way since childhood, but the seismic feeling of rightness and wrongness within me had insisted on this position.

Andas was alive.

And he…might have something to say about what I’d done.

“Excuse the strong language, but are you fudgin’ crackers? Why did you do that?” Kik exploded for the umpteenth time.

I did shift my sights from Andas then. If only to absorb another dose of the strangeness that was my best friend returned from death. “Fudgin’ crackers,” I repeated.

Kik shrugged a shoulder, eliciting a ring of icicles. Where once he’d been a glory of shining, pure whites and blues, now he was mottled with blacks and grays. His icicle mane had changed from a crystal-like appearance to one of dripping ink, though it still rang the same way. His hooves were cracked and veined with black.

And yet there was no trace of darkness in him that I could detect.

It was as though his outside finally reflected his insides.

Except…

“Kiddo, one day you’ll meet Gaia, and you’ll find the inner strength to get rid of all the bravado and curse language and shirk everyone’s expectations to find who you really are. And who I am is a love-spreading, kind-talking individual who supports those he cares about.”

Kik had found Gaia.

At first I’d thought he’d lost his mind, but the use of ‘fudgin’ crackers’ had me convinced that Kik was telling the truth. “Right.”

Kik hoofed the ground. “Hey, thanks for murdering all those gray fae so I could get through the last bit.”

I blinked. When I’d seen Kik in the stars after the kraken attack, apparently I’d tried to drag him back to the world of the living. He’d been in some kind of limbo for a time, but the death of however many hundreds of gray fae I’d slaughtered had paid the price for his life. “Andas sent them to me.”

My focus returned to Andas. Had he known such a sacrifice would complete Kik’s journey back? And how had he even known Kik was in limbo? I blinked as the answer came to me. The scale realm. Andas had been able to access that realm for a while after Kik’s ‘death’.

He’d known Kik could come back under the right circumstances.

Why did Andas do that for me?

I whispered to Kik. “Losing you was like losing part of myself, and it doesn’t feel real that you’re back. I’m scared to believe you’re really here.”

He butted me with his nose. “You think a little thing like death could separate us?”

I swallowed and lifted a hand to scratch his head. “My mistake.”

“I love you, kiddo. I’m sorry I called you fudgin’ crackers. I didn’t mean it.”

“I think I can handle it,” I muttered back. “You need to see Peggy.”

He tossed his inky mane. “You think she’ll dig the new look?”

I was Balance, and even I could only see so much of the future. Still, I knew what he needed to hear. “Yes.”

Kik jerked his head at Andas. “You’ll be okay with this?”

“Well, he’d hardly kill himself, would he?”

“Suppose you’re right. He’ll be pissed, though. He wanted to go.”

I grimaced. Yep. Andas might have something to say about me binding myself to him. “If you see Sigella and Orlaith, let them know what’s happening.”

“I’ll be busy, kid. I haven’t been reborn that much.” He opened a portal, and I heard Peggy’s gasp before Kik stepped through the opening and promptly closed it.

My lips twitched, but my smile was quick to fade.

Then there was me and Andas.

He rolled onto his side, and my heart leaped into my throat. He hadn’t moved in two days. I’d had all that time to explore the new power I’d gained from the bond.

Enough power to make one thousand castles.

I’d had two days to foster an impossible thought that no one would ever understand, maybe not even Andas.

All I knew was that when I’d pushed my essence into Andas, I’d felt how Cormac and Aaden were balanced within him. I’d felt how they couldn’t merge because Andas’s essence unbalanced the entire equation. The greater forces had given him so many different powers to merge in order to become Unbalance, but then they’d left him incomplete.

They’d left room for a fourth to enter the equation.

And so I’d entered myself into the equation, and then each soul within him had balanced perfectly. Rather than widen the rift, I’d eliminated it. Cormac and Aaden truly were him now. Their essences had faded into the black, although in the right light, I could still see glimpses of green and amber in his eyes still, just like I could see different parts of them in his physique and mannerisms.

And yet the heavy weight in my chest wasn’t quite grief.

By healing the rift, I’d said goodbye to them—and also welcomed a permanent connection to them that I’d long felt was our fate. But if I could bear that, if I could find more inner strength and endurance for suffering than I’d ever thought possible for one being, then maybe there was a messed-up, never-before-anticipated future for us.

A future for Unbalance and Balance.

My mind trembled at the very unhinged thought. Had desperation pushed the confines of my mind too far at long last?

I had a failsafe, I reminded myself. My life was tied to Andas’s, and his to mine. If I’d doomed us all, then at least there was a straightforward way to end this.

“What have you done?” His terrible voice filled the courtyard. Taking him inside hadn’t felt right. I’d kept him warm with my magic instead.

My pulse tripled, and I waited for it to calm before answering, “Bedding you wasn’t the answer, after all. Though I would’ve liked to try.”

He asked again, and his calm didn’t fool me. “ What have you done? ”

“I bound myself to you.”

“To gain power,” he hissed. “You have reset the scale between us.”

He was right, though that was never my intention. Historically, Balance and Unbalance had always been at war for dominance over the realms. Whoever had more power tipped the realms into darkness or away from it. I’d always seen the powers of balance and unbalance as two separate entities, but now I could see those powers fought for the greater share of a single power, constantly tugging opposite ends of a rope. I could also see that while I’d reset the scale and Andas and I were bizarrely and impossibly equal and opposite in our powers right now, this reset wouldn’t last. One of us would tip the scale soon enough and the eternal war for power would start all over again. “I did. To save you.”

“I didn’t wish to be saved. I didn’t wish to be chained to you.” He blurred to his feet and roared, “What have you done?”

I stood, too, and closed the distance between us. “There’s a chance we can figure this out.”

“You!” His eyes bugged. “You think there’s a happy ending to this. Are you?—”

“Fudgin’ crackers? Yes. There’s no happy ending, but there could be an existence together.”

Andas ran his hands through his black hair, and his eyes glinted with amber and green. “You had it in your grasp. I was dying. Balance was yours for the taking.”

“Just as Unbalance was yours for the taking when the kraken killed me. Why didn’t you take it?”

“Because I feel what they felt for you,” he growled in my face before whirling away.

Yes, he did. And he’d been able to cast that aside in part when there was a rift in him.

Now he couldn’t. Just as I never could.

Cormac and Aaden were in him forevermore.

“You have doomed us both,” Unbalance said. “You have ensured doom for all.”

“There is a chance,” I replied. “I would gamble on that chance. I would ask you to gamble on that chance too.”

And there it was. I’d never had the chance to ask Cormac if he’d be mine. Aaden had known what he meant to me, but Andas had already started to claim him by the time we’d reached Unimak. I’d never had this conversation with either of them.

Andas was silent. “You have made a fool’s gamble. There is no future where you and I can be. You know this. I will not torture myself in that way, and I will not torture you in that way. You made the choice to bind us, and I will hate you for it, Silver.”

“Hate is the easy choice,” I whispered.

“Hate is what we have left,” he answered.

Sulphur. I could’ve stopped him from passing through the portal or followed him with ease. But that wouldn’t help matters.

I absorbed the devastation he’d just caused. I swallowed it like a bitter-tasting herbal tincture that would help me grow stronger.

Andas intended to continue spreading darkness as usual. We were anything but usual now, but I couldn’t force him to see my way. I could only hope that he would come to it on his own.

For now, I had a tribe of people who’d be worried over my whereabouts.

I cast out my awareness to Sigella and Orlaith. They were both in the Irish court. Kik and Peggy were…

I pulled back from that immediately.

I opened a portal to Sigella and strode through.

She wasn’t here alone.

I inhaled the strong, spicy scent of incense, a cloying aroma that dulled my ability to smell anything else. Exactly the scent I’d expect the sense-dulled ruler of the Irish court to burn.

“U-Underhill,” I heard him stutter from behind me. “Mistress of Underhill. You weren’t expected.”

Had anyone ever expected my mother while she lived? Did Underhill usually send a letter of warning?

I glanced back.

The Ríchashaoir didn’t bow, but he did dip his head. “Welcome to my court. Let me apologize one thousand times for the nature of our first meeting. I was operating off the Oracle’s information at the time, and I hope you won’t hold your kidnapping against me.”

I didn’t, truthfully. It was a tiny thing in the scheme of things. A little kidnapping. I studied the Ríchashaoir’s future pathways and no matter what I said or did here, he’d have the same bland existence—eat, cheat, repeat.

I didn’t answer him, instead staring past him at Sigella and Orlaith who sat on a small couch beside the fireplace.

Keefe sat between them.

“How did you get on?” Sigella inquired, taking a sip from a dainty teacup.

Keefe hiccupped, and Orlaith glared at him.

Trouble in paradise?

“I bound myself to Unbalance and healed the rift in him. Cormac and Aaden are now part of him in truth—they are all of one essence. I feel there is a way forward through this, however Andas doesn’t agree, and in the end, I might need to kill myself to take him with me.”

Silence met my words, and Sigella’s sip was painfully loud.

“I might have to side with Andas on this one,” she answered.

The Ríchashaoir gasped. “You bound yourself to Unbalance? We’re all doomed!”

Shit, I’d forgotten he was there. And why did everyone keep saying that word?

Orlaith had immediately locked gazes with Keefe, but she turned to me and said, “You listened to me and screwed his brains out, didn’t you?”

I shook my head. “No, but I bound our essences together. Permanently.”

Sigella set down the teacup that was shaking in her hand after my news. “Is that all?”

All I was willing to divulge for the time being. “Mostly.”

Keefe sprawled back on the small couch, a bottle of absinthe dangling from his fingertips. There was a sharpness in his gaze as he studied me. “You’ve leveled the playing field.”

Sigella focused on me. “You stole his power?”

“Just a consequence of the bond,” I answered.

Keefe thumped his head on the back of the couch. “This changes everything.”

Tell me about it.

“Yes, it does,” Orlaith said in a sharper tone.

Sigella narrowed her gaze on them as the Ríchashaoir blurted, “What does it change?”

Before I’d fully turned to look at him, my mind registered a sudden change in the Ríchashaoir’s future paths. A new one had formed out of nowhere. No, not nowhere. Keefe had formed this future for the Ríchashaoir, and it led to a dead end. A dead end that was already upon us.

Keefe sure moved fast for a drunk.

I turned to find the shards of the absinthe bottle shoved under the Ríchashaoir’s ribs. Blood and alcohol dripped from the tips of the glass, and the magic Keefe had daggered into the court ruler in tandem with the bottle attack had already ensured his fate.

Orlaith screamed, “Father! That wasn’t the deal. He was mine to play with.”

Keefe regarded her with a serious expression. “Peace, daughter. My role has changed.”

Father. Daughter.

I let the shock pass over me. Keefe swept a flourishing bow, and when he peeked up at me, there was a shimmer. He became a hunched old man, the same version of him I’d first met when he’d gifted me Orlaith on my mother’s orders. “You.”

He straightened. “A pleasure to meet you again, Underhill.”

“You’re in Andas’s power.” And he was Orlaith’s father. That explained a lot.

“His power? Not as such. I was his last henchman, the Trickster. And I find I am trickster still, but am I still in his power? That remains to be seen. These are unprecedented times indeed.”

Orlaith threw herself in front of him as I lifted a hand. “No, Silver, please! He’s my father.”

Sigella’s voice was ice cold as she rose to her full height beside me. “And what plan did you have for Silver at the Lake of Jealousy? You didn’t overhear anything in the Alaskan court, did you? You were told to lead her there. By him. ”

“I did overhear it!” Orlaith retorted, but she paled, and my heart plummeted at the sight.

I thought she’d set me up while an unwilling and unaware slave to Andas’s darkness. But she’d done so at the mere bidding of her father, who had been a henchman of Andas at the time.

Orlaith rushed to say, “I was unsettled. I had my body back, and then my father showed up. I thought he was on our side, and when I realized he might not be, I tried to stop you from going to the lake.”

She’d sent me to the kraken.

“Lies,” I boomed, my fury bursting outward. “You knew what he was asking. You urged me to go to the lake, and only later did you try to reverse what you’d done with further subterfuge. You could have confessed the truth many times, but instead you decided to keep your betrayal a secret. You nearly killed me.” My voice had come out in a whisper. “I nearly died , Orlaith.”

“I wanted to tell you the truth,” she said, wringing her hands. “I didn’t know how, and then I…I didn’t know if I should.”

I felt myself harden. There were few people I trusted and let in. Keefe hadn’t ever made it to my inner circle, and Sigella was still on her way there. But Orlaith…I’d trusted her. I’d let her all the way in.

“You didn’t know if you should try to keep me alive,” I said hollowly. “How didn’t you know the answer to that?”

Her voice cracked. “I don’t know, Silver. I didn’t know what to listen to. I could only see some of the picture.”

Keefe had already opened a portal, but I didn’t budge my gaze from Orlaith’s shimmering eyes to look at where he was going.

Her voice trembled, “I don’t know what I am anymore, Silver, but my choices aren’t as clear as before. I don’t want to hurt you, but there are other considerations for me too. I can’t tell those things not like I could before.”

Before, when she was a bat and imprisoned away from darkness by my mother. Orlaith’s sentence had ended too soon, and the consequences of that were becoming clearer by the second.

“I don’t know who you are either,” I replied coldly.

Keefe held out a hand to his daughter. “But I do. Daughter, your place is still with me.”

Orlaith didn’t immediately take his hand, but after another look at my cold face, she did. The sight made my stomach drop.

Her action felt permanent.

The trickster stepped through the portal first, and even the sight of the scale realm on the other side couldn’t penetrate my hurt and shock. Then again, Keefe had closed the scale realm in the first place ‘with Sigella’s help’—and the prison realm inside of it too. By doing so, he’d freed Orlaith from her bat form. And apparently he could still access the realms, unlike me.

True to his name, he’d tricked me and Sigella well and good.

“I do love you, Silver,” Orlaith warbled and broke our stare to turn away.

Then the trickster’s daughter, a trickster and a traitor herself, moved through the portal after him.