Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

K eefe’s focus shifted from me to Andas and back again, then to the tea pot I held, and finally to Orlaith in his arms.

The dark power that was Andas rippled around Keefe before he could move and wrapped both Trickster and Traitor inside, binding them tight. But that wasn’t enough to keep Keefe in place while we convinced him to drink Sigella’s wine.

I opened myself to Andas, and he drew on my power—silver to offset his darkness. He wove my power around them both, too, and the flex of his hands as he tossed it like a thick rope had my heart fluttering.

Shaking myself, I adjusted my firm hold on Orlaith’s essence. Seeing her as she had the potential to be without darkness—smart, feisty, and determined. Loyal, yes. But only when her humanity had been stripped away did her steely core of loyalty shine. I studied how her essence sparkled and glittered against my skin. She’d clung to me in part because I had power, or at least she’d believed I had power. Maybe she’d known all along that I’d become Underhill.

That thought hurt more than I wanted to admit.

But I did understand that as a bat, Orlaith had been different. She hadn’t been able to hold the darkness that had earned her a spot in the prison realm, in a similar way to how Aaden and Cormac couldn’t have held the power of Unbalance alone. So maybe everything I’d shared with Orlaith had been true. Perhaps I could mourn the loss of my bat friend while knowing that Orlaith had never wanted to become this version of herself again either.

I pinned Orlaith’s essence to the scale realm and to me, so she couldn’t float away and escape.

Keefe flexed against the magical rope that Andas had tossed over him. I expected him to fight, or to truly lose his mind and batter abuse at us. There was no escaping our combined power, and we could all see that. Now he’d be forced to listen.

All he did was let out a low groan, without so much as trying to break a sweat. “Damn…you guys got me good. In all my years, and there have been a great many of those, I’ve never seen Unbalance and Balance work together. You could take on Gaia herself.”

I rolled my eyes. “We have no issue with Gaia. She’s not the pain in our asses.”

Keefe laughed, but the sound was hollow. “I thought…No, it does not matter what I thought. I see that I cannot loop my way out of this path. I thought this day would end differently.”

I’d noticed how he circled his pathways into a maze before. If he couldn’t do that now, then Keefe must really be trapped. I was just surprised he’d accepted it so easily. Which made me feel this was yet another trap.

“And that is?” Andas growled. “Dead, I hope?”

“I would be as good as dead if I were stupid enough to drink that down,” Keefe stroked Orlaith’s face gently. “Sigella’s wine…I would never wake from its power. She made it strong enough for Lugh himself to sleep.”

I narrowed my gaze. “So you’re just…giving up.”

Keefe looked at me, and behind his drunken facade, I saw the god Sucellus peering back at me. Calculating. Careful.

“Give up?” he mused, still stroking Orlaith’s head. If that wasn’t a sign of balance working its magic, then I didn’t know what was. As invincible as Keefe had seemed, he’d had a weakness. We all did.

“Depends,” Keefe said after a moment. “Can you stand here forever? I can simply outwait you.”

Andas flexed, and the magic we’d combined bore down on Keefe, who just smiled.

“You can hold me here; but you can’t kill me,” he said. “We’ve already learned that, haven’t we? And Silver will never kill her friend, her one true friend whom she’s already saved so many times, will she? Because what if Orlaith realizes the error of her ways? What if the darkness in her recedes?” Keefe rolled his head from side to side, the rest of his body trapped, then laughed. “So. Now what?”

Two images came into view, next to Orlaith’s limp body. One of the bat Orry floating in the air, and one of Orlaith the woman. No one else seemed to notice the images but me.

Her voice whispered through her essence and into me. It wasn’t like that, Silver. I love you still, as a friend and as my family. You see both sides of me, as no one else ever has, not even my father. But I am, and will always be, bound to traverse between light and dark. That was who I was before, under your mother’s rule. It is who I am now, under your rule. It’s Gaia’s bidding. The bat…those were the best parts of me, and I am glad you saw those pieces first. Maybe you, unlike your mother, will choose to see something different in those creatures who walk between Balance and Unbalance. I have a purpose. I know it.

I frowned, wishing I could read her better. Like any creature, she’d do anything to save herself—I’d seen that as fucking clear as day. The rest though…the part about walking between Balance and Unbalance and having a purpose…

She hadn’t intended the meaning to be literal. She was saying that good people could still do dark things and hold onto the good in them. She was saying that life wasn’t as clear as light and dark.

But I found my mind dwelling on what she’d literally said.

Keefe sighed again, drawing my attention from Orlaith. “A moment is all I ask, then. Bring her back so I can say my goodbye.”

“You think we’re fools. That we’d believe you’d do as we command for a simple goodbye?” Andas snorted. His power wove tighter with mine, holding Keefe in place, though the old god hadn’t so much as flexed his neck muscles. “There will be no last-minute escapes this time, Sucellus.”

Something tugged at me.

I’d said goodbye to my heart not once, but three times. Once for Cormac. Once for Aaden, and again when I’d realized they’d become Andas forevermore. While I’d gained from those goodbyes, I’d still lost hope that I’d ever have my men back as they were. What would I have given to have been able to say a final farewell, or to have touched them one last time?

Anything.

Everything.

My heart constricted, and I struggled to breathe around the emotions swelling inside me. Sadness, pain, and grief were chief amongst them. I might not fully understand, Keefe and Orlaith’s bond, but they were tied together. By choice, and by bonds they’d woven themselves. There was great power in choice and intention when it came to love.

“You can say goodbye,” I said.

Andas whipped to look at me. “You can’t be serious. They’ll try to escape. Right now he isn’t fighting, and do you know why? Because our power is unstoppable when combined, Silver. Even for a god.”

I stared hard at him, needing Andas to understand there was more to what I was doing. We needed to sort out some kind of hand signal system. “I know what it’s like to wish for one last touch from the one you love, and then to have that taken from you.”

Andas’s eyes locked on mine, and I saw a softening at the edges. Would anyone else have spotted the way his face smoothed? I didn’t think so. I loved him, for all that he was, but I’d been through a fuck ton of dragon shit to get to this point.

He nodded.

He trusted me, and that felt monumental. Because it was . Unbalance trusted Balance, and she trusted him right back. Maybe that wouldn’t prove enough to keep us at peace with each other, but I’d remember his nod for the rest of my days.

Keefe sighed, and I turned as he spoke, a careful smile on his face. “As always, your kindness and compassion?—”

My voice was cold. “I’m no fool. Though I know you think I am.”

Keefe believed he knew what I was capable of, and what I would and wouldn’t do. Which was foolish because even I didn’t know my limits any longer.

But I couldn’t see pain—even in Keefe and Orlaith—and not try to restore harmony. That was the curse of my power, and the curse of being Underhill.

Even so. It didn’t mean I’d be easily walked over.

I kept staring at Orlaith’s limp body and the vision of the woman and bat hovering over her. The vision was her very life waiting on my next choice. Her essence clung to my skin, as if she intended to soothe me regardless of what choice I made.

Or soothe me into lowering my guard and letting her trick me once more. Her body twitched,

and I saw her eyelids lift as she peeked at me from Keefe’s arms.

Everything I’d pushed down since Orlaith betrayed me burst to the fore.

So much for letting compassion lead the way. Snarling, I tightened my hand on her essence, bearing down on it without mercy to take her to the brink of extinction. Her body bucked, and her eyes fluttered. For real this time.

“You…can never be trusted again, Orlaith,” I hissed. “It’s best for you to be gone. Better to keep the memories of you than to make new memories of your treachery and deceit. I will say the last goodbye, to a friend who never was.”

I drew myself together and kept my eyes on Orlaith as I plucked away one droplet of her essence at a time. I let all my hurt and fury and shock guide my hands.

Her body began to fade in Keefe’s arms.

Tears streamed over my cheeks as I let my heart break at last. Let it be the last time I’d ever see the friend whom I’d thought would be with me through so many of life’s adventures.

“Goodbye, Orlaith,” I said, and lifted my hands to disperse the last of her into the world. “May you be reborn into a gentler path.”

I paused, however, at a soft nudge in my back. Peggy , I realized, and the thought was enough to interrupt my rage.

She was letting me know this might not be in my best interest. My hurt heart definitely thought Peggy was wrong, but my heart was just one part of me.

“Don’t!” Keefe shouted. “Don’t! Please, she is all I have left.”

But could I leave her alive, knowing she had such power over me, knowing that my heart would always want to protect her, even when I shouldn’t? The answer was no. Her image slid away as I drove the pieces of her further apart, plucking them from her physical body. “I am the Underhill that my mother was,” I growled. “I will make the hard choices—the ones that cause suffering, if it is the right thing to do.”

I was as strong as my mother had been.

Keefe tightened his hold on Orlaith’s limp body. “I…I can see that, Underhill. I deeply regret that I didn’t see that quality in you before now.”

I raised an eyebrow, holding the last of Orlaith’s intact essence in my hands. “Then you have a choice to make.”

“I will drink.” The words slid out of him on a great exhale. “I will drink the wine. That’s what you want, yes? To put me from your minds for the rest of forever? To bind me to the uselessness and permanence of sleep.”

Well, if he was going to offer.

I was shocked that he’d sacrifice himself for Orlaith. Shocked, but gratified, because this was the reaction I’d needed from him.

Andas took the teapot full of wine and produced a goblet, creating the vessel out of thin air as Sigella did with her teacups.

“You drink of your own accord,” Andas said as he poured the goblet so full the dark red wine spilled over the edge. “Every last fucking drop.”

I didn’t trust Keefe, not one bit. I stepped forward to grab Orlaith’s hand and pull her from his lap. I could have used magic, though I was occupied with containing Orlaith’s essence. Besides, there was some satisfaction in seeing the back of her skirts drag in the mud.

I could almost hear her sniff at me in irritation.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I threaded her essence back together and carefully lowered it into her body. The soul of who she was felt…not greasy, not dark, but exactly what I’d expect a trickster to feel like. Surprising, she felt surprising. Like every time I looked at her, she was someone slightly different, playing the part she thought I wanted or needed. Ultimately, she wanted power. Because in the darkest part of her life, she’d had none, and she’d sworn to herself that she’d never be in that position again.

Keefe cared far more about Orlaith than she did about him, if I’d guessed right, but she was smart enough to never let him discover it.

With one last push, I shoved the last of her into her body and sent a spark of lightning from my fingertips to her heart.

Orlaith jerked and sat up, gasping. “What…what happened?”

Keefe sighed. “You led them right to us, my Orlaith. Your connection to Silver goes between your hearts, so she followed that path as only she could have. It gives her much power over you. You weren’t supposed to love her, Orlaith.”

“But I did,” she replied to him. “And I do in the capacity I still can.”

My jaw ticked as I stared down at Orlaith. I did not want her to know how much it pained me to see her as an enemy, battling me instead of standing at my side.

Orlaith’s eyes were wide and watery. “And you didn’t kill me?”

“Almost.” I bit the word out. “Keefe is right. We are bound. Things are more complicated now you have returned to this form, but there was a love that was family found and chosen when you were a bat. We did share friendship then. What we share now will be different, but I do not believe we are done with each other yet.”

Her throat bobbed, and she lowered her head, a sob ripping through her. “I cannot help what I am, Silver. Any more than you can throw down the mantle of Underhill, I hold the title of Traitor, do I not? That is my calling in this life, and the next, much as it is my father’s title to trick.”

I hated how much my heart ached with her words—understanding and sadness were a terrible beast to deal with when I needed to be strong. “Keefe. We’re done with this. Say your goodbye.”

He stood as if to move toward Orlaith.

“No,” I said. “You can see her. You can hear her voice. It’s more than I was given. Take the gift you don’t deserve.”

Keefe swallowed, staring at Orlaith. “You’ll be fine; I’ve taught you well. I was never meant to find a daughter. You were a surprise, even to me. The most wonderful surprise.”

Orlaith trembled, her eyes locked on him. “Thank you for becoming my father. For showing me my strength.”

Was I the only one who’d forgotten their history? I glanced at Andas, whose face was screwed up.

Not the only one.

I waited, but that was all they were going to say apparently. I’d have made an endless speech if it had meant gaining one more second with those I loved. “One more thing, Keefe. Where’s the cutting?”

Keefe smiled then; a slow-burning smile that made me want to smash his face in. “So you figured that out too. My, but I did underestimate the pair of you. You have underestimated me as well. Now you want two things from me, but only offer one in return. Which is it? Do you wish me to drink the wine or give you the sapling cutting for Orlaith’s life?”

Another time I would have fought like a mountain cat, trying to secure both, but a soft nudge in the middle of my back turned me toward Peggy, who stood behind me. What was she telling me with her nudge this time? Which was the better choice?

Her gentle eyes were dark and sad.

“A soul that is all trick and no loyalty for one that is all loyalty and no trick. That would be a trade, would it not?” the pegasus whispered.

A chill swept through me. “No.” I wouldn’t lose Peggy. Not for me, and Kik…“It would break Kik’s heart. There’s no way.”

“This serves your best interest,” Peggy told me.

Her eyes weren’t sad because she wondered what I would choose…

She wanted me to trade her life for his?

Keefe laughed. “Oh, this I like. Yes, I see what you are offering, Pegasus. I see, and I accept on Orlaith’s behalf if I am no longer present to benefit from this deal.”

Peggy tipped her head.

“Peggy, stop!” I cried out. “You’re with foal.”

But one of her feathers had already fallen to the ground. And my magic failed to grasp it as it floated on unseen currents to Keefe. He scooped it up and held it high as the feather darkened to a mottled black and white. “Lovely. Yes. I accept indeed.”

“That wasn’t the deal,” I boomed. “Her foal wasn’t in the deal. You will release the child.”

“I disagree,” Keefe said, peering past me to Peggy.

Andas shook his head, but I saw the sorrow in him—not for Peggy, but for me.

Keefe pulled the cutting out from behind him. But I knew it had not been there moments before.

He set it on the ground at his feet. The leaves were more black than silver, as the tree of life had been when he’d yanked it free.

“Drink the wine,” I snapped. As soon as he did so, I’d rip the foal from Peggy’s body. I had no idea how it would survive outside of her, or if I could find a mare strong enough to carry and birth the foal, but I’d figure it out. I had to.

I’d lost Peggy.

Kik…Kik would break on this news. He’d defied death to get back to her. I reached for Peggy and tangled my fingers in her silken mane. “This was not the way,” I whispered. “Why did you do this?”

“It is the path, Underhill. I saw it clearly, even if you could not,” she said unsteadily. “Worry not. This is what is best.”

“You said that I had a choice about what was best for me. You took that from me.” My words were angry. Hurt. Bereft of hope.

“Yes, because you should not have to bear the weight of some choices.”

Furious tears stole down my cheeks as Andas handed Keefe the drink. “Wayward trickster of mine, drink up and say goodnight. Forever. Some fucking help you were.”

Keefe looked to Orlaith, then lifted the goblet in a salute and brought it to his lips. There was a moment, a pause, when his eyes met mine. As if he were trying to see if I were serious about this. Like perhaps it was all a joke on my part.

But I wasn’t the trickster.

Gaia’s touch rippled through me.

Balance is more than balance, child. Think of how the fae looked to their last queen, and now their new queen in a different time. There is a need for light and dark. Look how a common threat has united two forces that have always been opposed. Time is a predator you have not yet observed.

I frowned. What did she mean?

Keefe had been granted power to balance the alliance and relationship between Andas and I. Then, we’d united more and more to oppose Keefe after our individual efforts failed.

If Keefe was asleep, Andas and I would continue to be .

Surely.

I was missing something. Something big.

Time is a predator you have not yet observed.

“There’s a need for light and dark in different times,” I said aloud.

Andas shot me a look, but I could feel a truth pleading with me to find it, one that he couldn’t find. Because the instability of this situation called to him.

The instability called to me to fix it.

“Cheers, Underhill, Balance and Unbalance. You’ve won. Also, fuck you, Gaia. You condescending bitch.” Keefe tipped the goblet and began to drink, his throat working as he swallowed the wine down.

No. The word reverberated through me. We needed Keefe!

Without thinking beyond my instincts, I leaped toward Keefe and knocked the half empty goblet from his hand.

“What are you doing?” Andas roared. “He won’t sleep if he doesn’t drink it all!”

I stared at him, panting hard. But what could I say? I still had no idea why I’d just done that.

“You…damn it, Silver.” He shook his head at the tea pot in his hand. “That was all of it. That will only weaken him.”

He won’t drink more now. I blinked. No, he wouldn’t. He shouldn’t. He’d had enough to loosen his power. I straightened as the answer blinked into my mind and warmth and peace trailed after it. My lips curved. “He won’t drink more.”

Andas studied me intently.

“Trust me,” I told him.

Keefe wobbled in his seat. “Tricky, tricky. You caught me, Underhill. Not for the first time, but perhaps this was the most important time. Going to sleep for a while would have been worth destroying the love between the two of you.”

“What does he mean?” Andas muttered. “That was a trick?”

I nodded. My error was in thinking we could put him in an endless sleep to control him with no repercussions. The whole point of Keefe’s existence was that he couldn’t be controlled. He was a third player. His power had to be awake and alive for the love between me and Andas to be awake and alive.

The only remaining solution to the pain in the ass that was Keefe was that we had to regulate his power; trimming it when needed while knowing that he would always be a nuisance. That would be the price of love between Balance and Unbalance.

He wasn’t the only one we’d need to manage.

Orlaith was part of his team. While Keefe might lean more toward Andas, Orlaith leaned more toward me, but they were a father-daughter team.

I motioned to Orlaith. “Take him and go. You two will have the prison realm. We concede it, knowing that you must anchor your powers, but none of us have a claim on the scale realm any longer. That realm is without a ruler, and its time in this war is done.”

Andas growled but didn’t interject further.

I looked at Peggy, my heart breaking, knowing I’d not only lost her, but Kik as well. “Kik will come to you.” I gathered my power, setting my intention on the feather she’d drifted to Keefe.

I was getting that foal.

“Stop, please.” Peggy shook her head, her white mane catching the light of the realm. “I did not give him myself, Underhill, but the foal that I carry. Only once he is old enough.”

My jaw dropped and I spluttered my outrage. “You paid Keefe with your child ?” The child they’d thought impossible. The child Kik didn’t even know about.

Nausea swam in my stomach. “Peggy?—”

She said in undertones. “He was always meant to be more like his father than me. My foal will walk in darkness, Underhill, and I saw that path clearly when the conversation turned toward the cutting. If I do not do this now, then Keefe will still introduce my child to darkness, but Kik and I will die, and our foal will not meet his true rider in life. Though dark, he will be a force of unity and exist in great joy with his true rider if I make this choice.”

My stomach swooped because I’d seen some of this too. I’d seen that the foal would walk a dark path.

Keefe clapped his hands and took a wobbling step back. “Orlaith, you help me. I need to sleep for a good while. This has been the most exhilarating…fun times…I’ll be seeing you both.” He gave an overexaggerated wink toward me and Andas.

Orlaith ran to his side and caught him around the waist. Then she looked my way. “Thank you. You…you could have taken him from me forever, and you didn’t. You could have killed me, and you didn’t.”

She cared about one of those things far more than the other, but I had to commend her forethought in including Keefe in her tearful thanks.

“Remember that,” I said quietly. “When you stand against me again.”

“I won’t stand against you.”

I laughed, my heart strangely light considering the weight of my awareness of Orlaith’s shortcomings. “You will. It is what it is.”

She frowned, and I knew she didn’t understand. Maybe she never would fully. But it was enough that I could see what we needed to do.

Finally, finally, I could see what the future would be.

A twisted, unprecedented future.

A painful, joyful future.

My path with Andas had cleared, and now I was finally strong enough to walk it.

Orlaith and Keefe slid away, and Peggy walked away a distance as Andas whirled to face me.

“What in the actual fuck was that?” He grabbed at his own head. “We could have been rid of him forever, Silver!”

I scooped up the cutting and handed it to him. “You have a tree to plant, my love.”

He stared at me, jaw clenching. “You know something that I don’t.”

I smiled. “Nothing new. But yes, I may have figured a few things out. Peggy, go to Kik. We must close this realm without delay.”

I opened a portal for her and without a backward glance, she left me there, alone with Unbalance.

The scale realm had been used by my mother, her counterpart, and their predecessors for all time. Doing without it would be difficult, and yet we’d managed well enough so far. If we couldn’t access it, then neither would Keefe and Orlaith. Everyone would be at the same disadvantage.

Andas frowned. I lifted a hand and smoothed it down the side of his face. “You’ll give yourself wrinkles if you keep doing that.”

That only deepened his frown. “I don’t age. I’m immortal.”

We both were. And our common enemy was immortal too.

I’d explain everything to Andas, but first…“Take me to your realm, Master of Unbalance. Let us close the realm we leave forever and give you a home.”

I leaned into him, and his arms wrapped around me as he fell backward through a portal and into the realm that had once been my home and now would be his.

There is a way for us.