Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

T hey were all drowning right in front of me.

“Motherfucker,” I growled as I continued pulling water from the lungs of the humans around me. “How are the fae, Sigella?”

“They’re mostly taking care of each other. Few will be lost,” she said as she mirrored what I was doing, pulling water from the humans in the Alaskan court.

When the last of them were done, I sprinted for the palace.

We had to move fast if we were to save any more humans than those directly in our path. Given the water in their lungs, we had minutes at best. Minutes.

And an entire world of humans to somehow save. Impossible. Once more, that word was there, as if waiting for me to deny it.

“Silver!” Cinth cried out from across the courtyard as she raced over to us. She clutched a viewing orb in both hands.

“The humans inside, are they okay?”

“We’ve helped all we could.”

I took the ball from her and studied the humans within. They were bathing in the river and drinking their fill. I sagged in relief. “It was just an attack on the courts.”

“Yes, the Irish Court too. I’m waiting for an update from them.”

“I’d feared we had an entire world to try and save.”

Cinth leaned closer and began to whisper at the orb. It showed different places—humans in tall buildings and in fields—many of them had congregated at waterholes.

“Stop,” I said sharply. “Go back to the last one.”

Cinth whispered a command and the boat filled with humans appeared again. They were falling to the ground.

“They’re drowning too,” Cinth said. She changed the location. “But other humans are okay.”

“He’s toying with us,” I said, then swore. “Portal fae to these humans now. They’re under orders to pull water from lungs and put it into the earth. Sigella, ask Kik to help with the portals. Cinth, send word out to leaders without delay. We need to be alerted as soon as an area is targeted and humans start to drown. Tell them we’ll send help, but we need to know immediately . I want every orb in this palace and the other courts in the hands of a fae so they can scan the realm for signs too. We’ll only have minutes to respond. Go now!”

“Understood,” Sigella said.

Cinth was hurrying back into the palace.

I opened a portal to the humans I’d seen in the orb. “Every fae who isn’t helping a human right now must go through this portal. Empty the humans’ lungs into the earth! Work fast. They need our help.”

Bewildered fae ran through the portal at my command and I held it open.

This wasn’t war; this was triage. And we could expect that Keefe would continue this attack until the very last drop was returned.

Peggy galloped up to me, Kik following with Sigella.

A fae raced up to Kik, an orb in hand. Kik wasted no time opening a portal for more fae to race through and face the fresh threat.

We couldn’t possibly keep up with these threats, as Keefe would well know. Which was the reason he was releasing water this way instead of in one large load. He wanted to torture us for as long as he could.

There had to be something else I could do.

“Fly with me, Silver,” Peggy said. “Try drawing the water to you. That is the only possibility I can see working.” She bent her head, and I leapt onto her back without a pause.

Hope. I had to hope.

“Hurry the fricky deedle dum up, ladies,” Kik yelled his strange new brand of encouragement at us as Peggy powered us above the Alaskan court, high into the cloudless sky.

I recalled Andas’s words as we rose higher. Gaia has blessed you.

I sure as hell hoped he was right.

I held my hands out wide and reached for the strands of power that tied me to Earth and Underhill and the water within them.

Whatever I was going to attempt, it was now or never. Death crowded me, and for a split second, I thought I heard Keefe laughing from realms away—howling that he’d finally won. A being with his character would like to watch the fallout to his subterfuge.

To be entertained by our despair.

Peggy slowed her wings, and we coasted on a current.

“You can do this, Underhill. Each of the five elements should speak to you, just as Earth and Underhill can speak to you. Call the water back home. Once it’s away from Keefe, then he can’t release it into the humans.”

Her lilting voice was a song, and the warmth and reassurance and surety in her tone resonated in my bones like the vibration of a tuning fork.

“Earth below me, water within me,” I whispered.

I imagined the realms’ waters. I imagined billions of dusty, amber bottles—a replica of the bottle I’d selected to ‘save’ them. I imagined those billions of bottles were killing them now, bucketing too much water into their cells.

I held my hands wide to connect to the sheer size of what I was attempting, and then I called the water to me.

The amber bottles I’d imagined shook and rattled around—many of them inside their hosts. The bottles fought my call to return the water to its proper place. Keefe had guarded his despicable act with magic to prevent anyone from tampering with his efforts.

But the water would come if Keefe’s magic could be disrupted.

That was the only way.

“Andas!” I screamed his name, hoping that he would hear me. I opened a portal swiftly to him, blindly following the connection between us. He was still on earth.

Peggy flew through it, trusting in me.

Andas stood at the edge of a city. Cars had pulled over in a mess of bonnet and boot. Sirens screamed and whined over the chorus of wailing, gurgling people. At least Cinth had managed to reach leaders to raise the alert.

Unbalance said, “They’re dying. This doesn’t benefit me any more than it does you.”

“His magic is guarding the water.” My voice was calm, too, and strange to hear as panic crashed against my ribs. “I can call the water back, but not with his magic in the way. He’s blocking me, and he’s fucking strong.”

Andas frowned. “Perhaps…perhaps I understand him better now. Count to sixty. Then try again.” He portaled away from me.

“Do you trust him?” Peggy asked. She landed where he’d stood, on top of a rolled truck.

“Yes. Count for me. Tell me when time’s up.”

All around me I could feel the humans dying. I could hear them drowning from the inside, as if they were my creatures too…but that didn’t make sense. They weren’t of Underhill. I’d never felt them like this before.

Though if they were somehow connected to a realm, then…then shouldn’t they fall under my protection too?

I slipped off Peggy and pressed a hand to the ground, but Gaia answered my question before I even asked it.

She said gently, They have never been tied to the powers of balance. Like reluctant toddlers, they believe they can do it all on their own. But if you save them now, they will become yours to protect. You will forge a tie between them and balance. They will not want your help, so your guidance of them must be careful.

I closed my eyes and leaned into the sensation of the humans’ essences. There were so many of them. Like specks of snow in a blizzard, or insects in an Alaskan summer. Their lives were so very fragile…

Yet for all our magic, we fae had still been forced out of Underhill. My people may not be drowning today, but we could drown tomorrow through a different attack.

“I can’t even look after my fae, let alone these stupid fucks,” I muttered. And yet, how could I let them die? Mere minutes ago, they’d had smiles on their faces. Hopes and aspirations. Children.

“Ten seconds,” Peggy said.

Their hearts, an entire city’s worth of them, began to falter. One at a time. Some slipped away faster than others. I’d lose some—the newfound connection was tenuous—but I’d save more than we lost.

Peggy tapped a front hoof in time with her words. “Ready yourself. Three. Two. One.”

I yanked at the water in the humans, those closest to me first. I dragged the water out of their lungs as quickly as I could. Brutally.

I opened myself to the world of the humans then, and I tied them to the cluster fuck that was me and Unbalance and whispering goddesses.

As I connected to the humans, their sensations, languages, and fears crashed into me. They’d nearly burst from too much water, and I was about to burst from fusing to them. I felt the seams of my body and mind explode outward.

I went to my knees and buried my hands into the earth below, digging my toes in for traction as I submitted to what could be my death. I clung to the only thing I could. The efforts of my magic to drag water from the humans. Fast. Faster. Over and over, water out, water out, quicker than I could think.

The tearing strain was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.

A scream built in my throat as my magic grew hot like an overworked weapon, but I couldn’t stop. It had locked on its course, and I was no longer in control of the result, or of stopping.

I felt it was going to kill me. I couldn’t fathom how my body was still intact and not sprayed across the earth.

There wasn’t room for fear or rage.

I was one with this, and at the mercy of this.

With the Earth.

With its water and life.

With its occupants.

The brutal forging between me and an entire realm calmed suddenly, like a door shut against a storm. My body started to tremble and shake from the shock of what I’d experienced. My mind buzzed. I knew what had happened, but also couldn’t have conveyed it to myself or anyone else.

“Those who could be saved have been saved,” Peggy said. “The water is returned to its proper place.”

“I need. A moment.” I slumped forward, my face hitting the ground, dirt shoving its way into my nose. I breathed through my mouth for seconds or minutes or an entire hour as my mind stopped trembling and my new connection to the humans settled into my essence.

I groaned. The sensation was akin to one of having eaten far too much. I was holding too much inside of me.

“Fuck you, Keefe.” I muttered.

The full feeling got worse. And worse.

I gasped. “It’s not over.”

“No.” Peggy agreed.

How the fuck wasn’t this over? My last thought was that this reminded me of the bow I used to have. The one that never missed its mark but would drive me to my knees with the power it demanded in payment. With great power, came greater consequences, and this one was a fucking doozy.

“I didn’t die the first time,” I wheezed.

The world swirled around me, wind and earth, and tangled my silver hair in my face. I struggled to make heads or tails of where I was. I mean, I could literally see a tail—I was staring at Peggy’s rear end.

Were we flying?

I vomited off her side. Then again for good measure. Fuck, I was dying.

“Silver, do not die,” she commanded.

Shit, I hadn’t actually believed I was dying until she’d said that. I focused on the surging, catastrophic waves of emotion and awareness crashing through me. Losing some of Underhill’s creatures had nearly undone me, and now the humans were overwhelming me with their grief and fear. They’d lost many, and their collective hearts were broken. They were screaming inside. And I felt every bit of that.

I struggled to make their pain smaller within me. The scale was hundreds of thousands of times larger than what had happened when Underhill’s creatures had been lost to Andas’s darkness. And I couldn’t cut the humans off. I’d only just tied them to me.

“We need a portal,” Peggy was saying over and over.

“Portal,” I slurred.

“To the court,” she said.

A portal to the court.

I waved a hand and created a sluggish portal, not even sure I’d fully achieved the task. I really was dying. Shit. After all that.

“Here,” Cinth yelled from somewhere below.

Were we back at the palace?

Peggy did a nosedive, and only the jutting cartilage of her wings and her skill were keeping me on her back. My face was by her ass. Which I’d vomited all over.

“Mother never would have arrived like this,” I groaned.

The Pegasus landed lightly, and I toppled off her side to the cobbled ground.

Cinth ran forward and heaved me upright. “You did it, Underhill. You did it. The fae we portaled helped as they could, but it never would have been enough. The humans have stopped dying.”

“She needs help, not an update,” Peggy snapped.

Cinth tightened her hold on me. “What’s wrong with her?”

But the full feeling was dissipating. I belched. “Think I’m okay now. It was just the last… bit.” I fucking hoped.

The queen waved a hand in front of my face. “Are you sure? You look unwell.”

Peggy walked around me, helping to prop me up with one of her wings. “She had to connect to all the humans in the world. It nearly overloaded her capacity.”

There was no nearly about it. I could attest to the fact that my capacity had certainly been overloaded.

Strength flowed into me, however, and the bloating feeling settled. I felt fuller in general, but my magic was working to give my connection to the humans its place within me. I’d grow used to the feeling soon enough. “I couldn’t save all of them. Many died.”

“But most were saved.” Her face was pink. “That disaster could have eradicated them to near extinction.”

I nodded. “No animals were affected?”

Ronan, never far from his queen, joined us. “No. The returning water only seemed to affect the fae and humans. Nothing else suffered.”

“The ones worth controlling were the ones he attacked.”

Cinth fell into step beside me as I marched toward the war room. I could feel Kallik there.

“We need to be prepared,” I said to the queen as we strode through the palace to the war room

“For what?” Cinth puffed.

“I’ll tell you when we get to the room. No one else should hear this.”

She paled, which made the burn marks on her face stand out. “Of course.”

“Queen Hyacinth,” said a fae, racing up to us. “European leaders have united in support of us in light of the aid we granted.”

A woman tapped at an orb, falling into stride behind us. “Leaders in most other continents are calling for a summit to decide our fate.”

Another sprinted to catch up. “Five countries are threatening immediate repercussion and eradication of fae on Earth.”

Hyacinth’s breathing was shallow. Rapid.

I didn’t stop. “Do nothing. The queen will give orders presently, once she has time to assess our position and needs.”

The fae erupted with questions, and I stopped in my tracks, facing them.

“Do I need to repeat myself?” I asked.

“That’s not really a question,” Ronan said. “Just stop before you piss Underhill off even more.”

The woman squeaked and dropped her orb and it floated away. The picture within was a room full of shouting humans dressed in the rigid clothing important ones seemed to favor.

I resumed walking and shoved into the war room a beat later.

“You okay?” Ronan asked Cinth behind me.

“I’ll be okay when I’m not queen,” she said, tears in her voice. “What if our babies were human, Ronan? What if next time, whatever despicable act Keefe or Unbalance take, hurts fae?”

“Our children are safe,” he soothed us. “We won’t let anything happen to them.”

“Yet I should be by their sides now, not here,” she said sadly. “They’ll be afraid. They’ll feel what happened, even if they were lucky enough not to witness anyone dying today.”

There was a heavy silence, then the queen took a steadying breath, asking, “What do we need to prepare for?”

I waited for Ronan to shut the door behind us, nodding at Kallik, who already sat at the other end of the room with Faolan.

“He’ll attack again,” I said. “Keefe won’t go down quietly. We beat him this time, but the guy has an issue with being controlled. His vanity must’ve taken a hit, which means he’ll have something worse waiting for us next time.”

“Perhaps he’ll be content with the chaos for a time,” Kallik said.

Faolan sighed. “He’s created it in droves. That’s for sure.”

Chaos had been embodied in a few of the ancient darker gods long since departed from this world. Then again, Gaia liked to chat to me, so presumably those powers weren’t as long gone as fae had always supposed.

“You still can’t see his path?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“When the paths ended, I thought we were all meant to die. But they haven’t returned. They’re shadowed, kind of like when I look at your path or Andas’s. Nothing is showing until the last possible second.” Kallik’s lilac eyes were piercing. “Do you know why that is? Why am I losing my sight?”

I had my suspicions, and I also suspected Andas might have something to say about that. “Keefe is fighting both Andas and me. He tried to kill Unbalance. He keeps switching sides, which would make his path volatile. Perhaps that’s why the paths are shadowed.”

She said quietly, “And what of the billions of other paths I should be seeing?”

Ronan, in the act of sitting at the table and encouraging Cinth to do the same, didn’t hear Kallik’s comment. “Is it not a good thing if Keefe is switching sides?” he asked.

I shook my head. “He’s not assisting either of us. He’s just switching who he attacks. We cannot live in a world without Unbalance, any more than we can live in a world without Balance.”

Sigella slipped into the room. “There’s always more to a war than what’s obvious.”

As if on cue, the orbs hovering around the perimeter of the room lit up and turned to face Cinth. They were filled with humans in rigid clothing.

Ronan cursed under his breath and stood abruptly to leave. Who the fuck had okayed this call?

Hyacinth, queen of the fae, did not look particularly confident as she stared back at them. She clutched her hands on the table, and when she asked, “What do I tell them?” I garnered they couldn’t yet hear us. From their glares, I was assuming they could definitely see the queen.

I put my hand on her shoulder. “I will help you.”

She looked at me and a sigh gusted out of her. “You’ll help me. How?”

“They need to understand this fight is not against them, but for them. That we are on their side,” I said.

“I tell them that all the time. They won’t believe me. Not after what Keefe has done.”

I could’ve dived into her body to speak through her, the way I had done with the Naga queen. But this wasn’t a time for tricks or subterfuge. Not with humans I was bound to protect.

“Then let me speak to them.”

“Please do,” she said, her relief very apparent. I saw guilt flash over Kallik’s face. She’d put Cinth in this position, after all. She hadn’t had a choice at the time, but it couldn’t be easy for her to see her best friend living a life she hated.

Cinth slid out of the chair, and I moved into her spot. My legs were tired, my body exhausted, my mind spinning. But I wouldn’t sit. I stood, straight backed, and probed within for my bond to Andas.

Not for power.

For confidence and reassurance.

I felt him there with me. And Gaia propped me up too. My connection to my helpers strengthened me also. The words would come, they had to. I couldn’t be foul-mouthed Silver. I had to be Underhill of the silver tongue.

I blew out a breath and nodded. “I will speak to them now.”

The orbs lit with a soft, pale green light.

I dipped my head toward the humans, grounding myself, and then let the words flow. “Leaders of the human realm, I am Underhill. Protector of all realms, mother to all lives.”

“Doing a damn poor job of it,” snapped a man in a suit, his tie loose.

Anger, loss, grief, revenge. “We moved as quickly as we could against an enemy who sought to destroy human and fae alike. Saving as many of you as I did nearly killed me. And I am one of the most powerful beings in all realms.”

A murmur rippled through the orbs.

“You saved us by yourself?” asked another human.

They understood my power now. They understood that they should listen or at least think before speaking. “We portaled fae to as many cities as possible. They saved several of you with their magic, and I worked alongside them to help the rest who were still capable of being saved.”

A woman dressed all in purple, a crown on her head, stared at us. “And the fae? What losses did you have from this enemy?”

I could have lied, but I needed to forge a bridge of trust and truth. “We lost many to the water being removed, just as your peoples did. Fewer of our people died when the water was returned, as we have innate magic. In this we can be glad, as if we’d both been incapacitated, we would have shared extinction.

Not that Keefe would’ve killed all of us. Where would the fun in that be? I had no doubt he would have left a hundred million or so alive to toy with later on.

Another round of murmuring erupted.

The same man who’d first spoken did so again. “Why shouldn’t we just bomb you? Why shouldn’t we eliminate a threat that has been on our doorstep for years? I said so after that giant declared war on us, and fae have proven time and again that they can’t be trusted.” He banged his fist on his table. “When do we say enough?”

There were many who agreed with them. What animal wouldn’t want to better its survival prospects?

I turned to him. “The threat is not fae. The threat to human life is from the monsters that would remain even if we were gone. If every fae from every court was destroyed, no one would remain to stop evil from growing. We are what keeps this world in check. We are what ensures your survival. Destroy us, and your last line of defense disappears if you manage to succeed. Then you will have to face the next monster on your own.”

“We could face monsters. We have all the weapons?—”

“Hush your fool mouth!” A woman in a deep blue sari held up her hand and glared in the man’s direction. “You think monsters respect bullets? Have you not seen what this single monster can do? Stealing every last drop of water from the entire world…This is the time to learn more about fae. We need them more than they need us. They weren’t the ones drowning. We can fear them, or work with them. And it seems an obvious choice to me.”

Her words caused a flurry of people shouting over one another. My connection to them flared, and I used it to silence them.

Some blinked, and the eyes of others bulged. They recognized their silence had been an unnatural one. They felt their smallness.

I said, “I have chosen to protect you all and claim you as creatures of balance. As such, we will continue to fight the monsters and do all we can to keep them from your doorsteps.”

The leaders stared at me, and some of their mouths hung open. Perhaps stealing their voices hadn’t been the smartest move, and yet I needed them to hear me and hear me well. “The human and fae share this. We exist together or we die together.” I leaned forward. “I would prefer that we do not die.”

I released my hold on them but no one spoke.

My words had hit the mark.

I snapped my fingers, and the orbs went red.

“Holy shit, that was…” Cinth swallowed hard. “Do you think that was wise?”

Kallik nodded, a soft smile on her face. “They’re afraid, Cinth. They were listening. Not all, but enough. Each of them had a brush with death, and that should humble them instead of driving them to unite against us.”

“I’d stopped hoping that they’d see sense,” Cinth whispered, but hope was plain on her face.

A freezing breeze announced Andas’s arrival as he portaled to my side.

Cinth gasped, and Ronan burst back into the room, his hand on his sword pommel.

Andas ignored them—and Kallik, who hadn’t reacted in the slightest to his arrival.

“You heard?” I asked him.

A grunt. “That was necessary. They needed an ass kicking. I don’t know if humans are capable of holding themselves together, but they’ll need to while we deal with… Keefe. ” He spat out the Trickster’s name as if it tasted foul. There was something in the way he said it that tugged at my instincts.

“I take it you feel the humans too?” I asked him.

He threw me a look. “Yeah, thanks for that. I thought I was going to die. Twice.”

“Did you vomit everywhere?”

Andas grimaced. “Tied to fucking humans. I was happier without them, even the really fucked-up ones.”

Cinth’s eyes were as big as saucers as she glanced between us. The stiffness in Kallik’s body informed me that she was also struggling. Then again, she’d battled the last Unbalance while tumbling through a never-ending chasm in the Earth. That would naturally leave an impression.

Unbalance and Balance shouldn’t be able to exist in the same room. We shouldn’t be able to chat. We were oil and water.

Except, because of me and because I’d bound myself to him, we weren’t.

And because I’d bound to him, Keefe had received the power to kill millions of creatures. Yet I could stand beside Andas and not be driven to kill him, or to be killed by him. I could be Underhill and share love with another.

How many would I sacrifice for that? Unease stirred in my gut, probably because the answer to that question was decidedly blurry.

Unbalance held out a hand to me. “Silver, are you ready?”

I said to the others, “Send word to me via Kik if Keefe makes a move. We’ll try to form a plan to remove him for good.”

Cinth darted a look between me and Andas.

I took his hand, feeling the bite of Unbalance against my skin, no worse than a thorn. Which is how this had all started anyway. “I’m ready.”