Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

“ K eefe doesn’t do anything without reason,” I said to Andas. “He’s a trickster, not a fool.”

Andas had set the human soldiers loose in every direction, and I tried not to consider what they’d been ordered do. Balance tugged gently at my feet, urging me to go rather than stay. Stopping Keefe would affect the balance more than intervening here.

Andas was watching me when I managed to tear my focus from the soldiers of darkness.

“You won’t act?” he asked.

“Not in this.”

“You said Keefe doesn’t do anything without reason…He took a cutting from the tree of life.”

I nodded. “And why would he do that? The tree of life is what anchored me to Earth. Keefe has already claimed the prison realm, but the scale realm eludes him.”

“You believe he’ll use the cutting to attempt to anchor a second realm to him.” Andas’s gaze met mine. “You’d have me use that cutting to anchor to Underhill.”

“Yes, but you’ll need to change the name. I’m Underhill, and I’m going to call Earth that in time.”

The corner of his mouth quirked. “Deal. Plan to get the cutting?” He barely got the question out before he started laughing.

I narrowed my eyes. “What?”

“I just realized that I asked you what the plan was.”

Scowling, I said, “I can plan.”

He tilted my chin. “You could. But the plan wouldn’t work, and you’d end up doing something else. So you’ve learned not to waste time on planning at all.”

Couldn’t argue with that.

I stole a kiss from him. While it wasn’t nearly enough, it was far better than the alternative of nothing. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“To grab a cup of tea.” I walked a short distance before turning. “Put on a disguise, please. The court fae will explode and get glitter everywhere.”

Andas cocked a brow, then I watched as his features morphed into Aaden’s face.

“You have a messed-up sense of humor,” I informed him. “Someone else. Not Cormac.”

He grinned, then his black hair burned to orange, powerful muscle turned lean, and he grew taller.

“That will suffice.” I dragged us through a portal to Sigella’s side. She was in the palace gardens where we’d first said goodbye after I’d finally freed her. She’d planned to explore and enjoy her freedom.

She hadn’t gotten far with that.

“Not done yet,” she snapped.

I grimaced and retreated a distance with Andas, who watched her stirring and mashing intensely. Sigella was flashing between her prim form and her more savage form. A chunk of flesh shot out from under her mortar and splatted on the manicured tree beside her. Something wiggled under her palm before she shoved it in her mouth, then spat the chewed remains onto the grass, only to scoop the pulp up again, dirt and all, then add it into the teapot.

“To be clear, Keefe will drink this tea, correct?” Andas muttered.

“I’m almost certain.”

I felt his gaze on me, but I couldn’t give him more reassurance than that.

His focus shifted upward, and a second later, a rumbling shook the very air. A long and thin object fell from the bottom of a human plane. It shot against the palace barriers, and I gasped at the ball of fire and smoke. A series of the same weapons exploded against the barrier, and there was a shattering like glass as the barriers gave way.

How strong were these weapons? They were already through.

I drew up my magic to create new barriers.

“Stop,” savage Sigella snapped in my face as she gripped my throat. “Not your place now. Look inside.”

Andas drew his magic hard and fast, but I lifted a hand to stop his attack on my helpmate.

Deciphering the carnage of tendrils surrounding the palace took a moment, but I could see that while hundreds of essences were tangled in the fate of the Alaskan Court, I wasn’t. I couldn’t be.

The humans were attacking my fae creatures.

And yet…

Humans were also my creatures now.

As a mother, how did I decide which of my children should be favored? The answer was that I could favor neither. I could simply direct them away from darkness where possible and hope better times waited ahead. Sigella was right to intervene.

“You’re right,” I told her.

She snapped her teeth in my face, then retreated to her tea making.

Andas released his power. “You allow your henchmen too much leeway. I would not tolerate that.”

Maybe that was why he only had two baby henchmen on his side, but I didn’t tell him that as another plane moved in overhead.

“No,” I whispered. “Get a new barrier up.”

There were at least thirty planes in the sky.

Beside me, Andas breathed in the heady rush of power he’d be receiving from the dark acts of the humans, but I was focused on the lines of uniformed fae appearing from within the palace. And at the head of their ranks—my sister and Faolan.

They held hands, combining their magic into a bomb of their own. I jerked forward a step with Andas as they released it.

The plane exploded.

I sucked in a breath, and the ebb and flow of power between me and Andas was almost as startling as the confirmation that the humans had made their decision to go to war against fae. With each attack from the humans’ planes, I grew weaker as darkness rooted in them. But with every plane that exploded, strength returned to me as dark acts were prevented and their vessels destroyed. Had my mother known that such a give and take of power existed between her and the previous Unbalance?

“They can’t have truly known,” Andas said, answering my thoughts. “Balance and Unbalance have never been bound as we are.”

Perhaps so, but my mind was occupied with how constantly the state of power would change between us, and how we would ever manage to navigate that and not hate each other in time.

More planes.

More fae.

More planes exploding. More bombs hitting the palace.

Kallik would win this round for me, and Andas clearly knew it as well as I did. Balance would emerge the victor today.

“Nearly there?” I asked Sigella.

When I looked at her, she was sitting at a small breakfast table that hadn’t been there before, sipping tea and watching the battle between fae and humans.

“Yes, it’s ready.” She hesitated, then pushed a teapot forward.

I walked over but didn’t pick up the pot. “Is it Keefe or the act that makes you hesitate?”

“The act.” She took a breath. “I have felt how it is to be trapped in a place by men. Several times now. To do that to another…” She took another, larger breath. “Feels incredible. I wish I could pour the tea down his throat myself.”

Right. No remorse or guilt then.

I picked up the pot. “You can spend a few hours by his side gloating once the deed is done.”

“I anticipate it.” Sigella flashed briefly to her more savage persona. “I will eat his soul for supper.” She flashed back to her normal form and didn’t add anything more.

I cleared my throat. “Great. See you later.”

I’d connected that when Sigella felt particularly bloodthirsty, her savage nature was more likely to appear. That version of her was someone to avoid. Beyond that, I still knew little about Sigella’s powers or where they came from. I also expected that centuries would go by and I’d still know little. Sigella was too smart to make her power easy to figure out.

Once we’d left the garden and Sigella’s earshot, Andas said, “A little unpredictable, but I’d love to get hold of that one.”

“She’s mine. You got the one with a skull horse and lethal corset.”

“Looked the part, but she was limited. The hunger distracted her.”

Peggy stood with Kik under the tree where they’d rested together when I saw Kik’s death. His first death.

“It’s time?” she asked.

I frowned at her essence as she moved forward to meet me, and then my heart leaped into my throat.

She was with foal.

I glanced at Kik. My best friend would be a father. Peggy, a mother.

And their foal…

Andas’s shallow breaths confirmed he’d spotted the same path for him—darkness and a long, long life.

But Andas wouldn’t ride the foal, and the identity of its rider remained shrouded.

“Underhill?” Peggy said, and I gathered it wasn’t the first time she’d called to me.

I forced a smile. “It’s time. You mentioned once that Pegasai limit their riders because their riders become family. You can sense my distress. Does that include future stress?”

“I can sense what will aid in your overall sense of wellness.”

“Now or in the moment?”

“At each turn,” she answered.

I nodded. “I thought so. What I must navigate next is complex. I’ll need your aid.”

Peggy drew her wings tighter. “Wellness for you might not mean wellness for others. In some situations, you might choose personal suffering to accommodate the wellbeing of those you love. This is why I rarely tell you what I sense.”

“Send a pulse through our connection whenever you sense happiness for me,” I told her. “I will decide the rest, and I understand what you say of suffering.”

Andas stiffened beside me but didn’t venture a comment.

I took his hand. “Let’s go. Once you have the cutting, the wound will require your essence. And we must plant it in your realm without delay.”

“His realm?” Kik asked.

“Earth is mine now,” I told him. “What was Underhill will become the home of darkness.”

“Now that’s a renovation,” he replied.

Peggy snorted, then lowered so I could climb onto her back. She didn’t stay lowered for Andas, and he didn’t seem to have expected it.

I nestled between her wings, gripping the teapot that I hoped would make a god sleep.

“You’re sure about this?” Andas said, his dark eyes wary and…scared.

For me.

For us.

We both knew this was liable to explode in our faces.

I opened to an essence in the prison realm. Orlaith had helped Sigella while also making it clear her loyalty was to Keefe…though the proof that her essence was still open to me seemed to contradict her declaration.

I touched her essence to Peggy’s. Andas was already attached to me.

Peggy sent a pang of her power into me. “I see a future with Orlaith that benefits both of you but the purity of your friendship will never return.”

Vague…Hopeful. Hurtful.

“Hold on,” I said to Peggy and Andas. “This could hurt. I’ve never done it before.”

“Fuck,” Andas mumbled.

I’d entered Sigella’s essence to take over her body and open a portal, and I’d invited the naga king into my body also, but I’d never created a portal inside of someone’s essence to physically move through a person. What could go wrong?

I seized Orlaith’s essence and pushed myself, Andas, and Peggy inside of it. I’d only have seconds. One being was not meant to hold so many, especially not Balance, Unbalance, and a Pegasus. Plus a half-kelpie and half-pegasus foal.

I opened a portal in her essence to the scale realm, then forced our bodies through the other side.

Toward a dangerous being more powerful than myself.

I stumbled into the scale realm and managed to steady myself against Peggy.

Andas glanced at me and exhaled in a way that suggested he’d doubted my ability and was quite shaken.

Chuckling sounded, and I blinked through the spinning in my head to focus on Keefe sitting on a jutting rock, swinging his legs. Orlaith rested unconscious in his arms, overwhelmed by having Balance, Unbalance, and a Pegasus forced through a portal within her. Her essence was all over the place, obliterated. I’d taken too long to move us through, but she was salvageable yet.

Andas circled away from me and Peggy.

Keefe kept us both in his gleeful sights, amusement putting a wry twist on his lips. “I wondered when you would team up. How convenient for me.”

I hadn’t been sure how I’d convince Keefe to drink Sigella’s tea. But from the way he cradled Orlaith in his arms…even though he was chuckling and smiling…

What had worked for Gaia could surely work again. His glee could just be a show, but Orlaith’s obliterated essence might work in our favor.

I tightened my hold on the connection that still existed between me and Orlaith. I drew all one million specks of her essence into my grip.

Then, ignoring the pleading of my heart, I began to strangle her essence.

Orlaith thrashed in Keefe’s arms, foam appearing at her mouth.

Keefe stopped chuckling.

“I hold her existence in my hands,” I told him, though he already knew.

Andas stopped opposite me and crossed his arms. “I suggest you listen to her. She’ll hound you until you do.”

Yes, I fucking would.

I held up the teapot. “Let’s have a drink.”

“Wine,” Keefe said on a breathless exhale. “Sigella’s wine.”

Huh. I’d missed that.

Then again, I supposed tea wouldn’t have appealed to the god of intoxication.