Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20

“ I s it done?” Andas asked from where he’d crouched behind me for the last ten minutes.

I’d drawn on his power and twisted our essences together to seal off the scale realm, much as I’d sealed away the cave holding the tree of life, though without the naga or health of trees to consider, I hadn’t left any holes in the seal.

Not for Keefe or Orlaith.

Not for Andas.

Not even for me.

And now an entire realm would exist for the rest of time without anyone to witness its evolution. It saddened me that I would no longer walk where all the Balances before me had ventured, but leaving it open was too risky even if neither me, Andas, or Keefe and Orlaith were anchored to it. “I would have collapsed the realm, but I couldn’t be sure of the cost. Likely, it would have gone your way.”

Andas smirked. “Likely.”

Andas stood and dusted the black dirt from the base of Dragonsmount off his pants. “Are you going to tell me everything yet?”

“Not until the cutting is in the ground. Have you picked a place for it?”

He rolled the black cutting between his fingers. It had synced with his essence upon our arrival in Underhill. “Home. An anchor. The thought is a foreign one.”

I inhaled slowly. “I’m going to have a one-hundred-year tantrum if you’ve decided not to plant that.”

Andas cracked a grin, which faded. “I plan to. I’m just not sure how to go about it.” He extended the cutting to me. “You know what a home is. Do this for me.”

While scanning his serious expression, I took the cutting from him.

Home.

I never could have envisioned a day when this realm wouldn’t be my home. For me, home had always depended on who surrounded me. My creatures were on Earth, therefore Earth was my home now.

Andas was solitary. He didn’t view his creatures in the same way I viewed mine. His home was his power.

And his power was endless and dark, mysterious and unexplored.

“Keep up if you can,” I told him.

Breaking into a sprint, I blurred from the base of Dragonsmount toward the plains. Creatures that used to be mine dove for me, their eyes blood-streaked and rabid now that Andas had made his claim.

None of them could harm me.

Andas matched my strides until I stopped abruptly, my toes curling over the edge of the ground.

“You are a sight to behold when you run in that silver dress,” he told me. “Like moonlight.”

I extended the cutting back to him.

He took it, a question in his gaze. I lifted my finger and pointed down, and Andas tore his focus from me to peer down into the ravine. I’d been down there once with my mother’s most trusted servant, a blood fae named Lilivani, but thinking back, I wasn’t sure whether she had taken me to the very bottom. It might be the only place in this realm I hadn’t fully explored.

An echoing groan rose from the ravine, and Andas’s breath hitched.

“This is it,” he breathed out.

I nodded. “I’ll wait here. This place is yours.”

Andas stepped off the edge, and I kept him in my sight until the blackness swallowed him whole. My ears tracked him for another minute, but after that, Unbalance disappeared from my senses.

I definitely hadn’t been to the bottom before. I would have remembered a drop like that.

I sat cross-legged, trying to gather my thoughts and theories. What I’d done with Keefe, knocking the wine out of his hands, was just that…a theory. My whole existence ran on theories. Perhaps I’d learn more with a few centuries of experience, but I could finally admit that my mother had prepared me for what she’d seen I would become.

I’d grown up with constant unpredictability.

I’d grown up with peril.

I’d grown up without anyone to depend on but myself.

But she hadn’t counted on the love in my future. As powerful as mother had been, she’d been overly rigid in what she’d defined as the boundaries of balance. And I could feel those same boundaries trying to assert themselves within me, in the tug on my feet and the warmth in my chest when balance reigned.

But I was willing to forgo some of that warmth in my chest and to ignore somewhat the tugging at my feet. For love. For a different path through this eternal rift between Balance and Unbalance.

I had to wonder…

Had every Balance and Unbalance been designed for one another? Had each couple failed to see past what they thought they were meant to be?

I could be wrong.

I could be right.

I was willing to find out.

Pitiful screams echoed up from the ravine. When the sides began to collapse inward, I pushed my essence under me until I hovered a distance above the imploding ravine. So I had a perfect view as the ground continued to crumple and then smoothed over, the definition between plain and the volcanic territory of Dragonsmount was lost.

The ravine was gone.

A portal opened, and I floated through it to join Andas back at the top of Dragonsmount. He stood on a jutting rock, taking gulping breaths that expanded his chest. His face was pale, his eyes wide with shock. He clutched at his heart, driven to one knee as he continued gulping breaths down.

“Give in,” I told him, resting a hand on his shoulder. “That is the tie between you and your creatures, between you and this place. That is the feeling of home.”

A great shudder vibrated through him as he heeded my advice.

The only other option was to cut all ties, and I doubted the cutting he’d planted would allow that.

Sweat dripped from his jawline as he rested forward on his closed fists.

I perched on the edge of the rock, letting my feet dangle. There was a fang bat looking at my feet, but it quickly decided against the risk of lunging in to snack on my toes.

Andas, still panting, lay down on his side next to me, propped up on an elbow. “So. A cutting. Spilled wine. A foal. And freeing the most powerful being—one who’s more powerful than each of us individually. Talk.”

“It was simple really,” I said.

Andas snorted.

I continued, “Keefe was granted power to balance us when I bound to you, so killing him would have destroyed our bond. Removing his power by placing him in endless sleep would either have created a new power to balance us—which might not have been possible considering he is a god and such vessels aren’t easy to find.”

Andas snorted again. Perhaps he was remembering that he was two people forged together by a tree and a bond to Underhill.

“Or…” I hedged. “If another power was not born, then the bond between us would have broken or put into sleep also. Considering Keefe’s reaction when I knocked the wine from his hands, I assume we would have returned to mere enemies as Balance and Unbalance have always been.”

“He was going to take us down with him,” Andas said grimly. “That’s a lot to put together on the spot. I’m glad you did.”

As was I. “Gaia had a few words for me.”

Unbalance pursed his lips, glancing out over his realm. Screams and groans had replaced the birdsong and roar of dragons. He seemed to enjoy it. “I need to get a Gaia.”

“You might get one when our power balance shifts to me again,” I told him. “Until then, I get goddess help. And the coolest team.”

Andas’s lips curved. “Don’t hold your breath. You know I’ve got at least fifty years of a lovely war between fae and humans to enjoy.”

I did. The future had become clearer and clearer since I’d bonded with Andas, especially since I’d figured out Keefe and Orlaith’s roles in the realms—and since they’d figured out how they would use their powers.

I wasn’t sure how to feel or think about the certainty of war yet—that Andas would strive for battle, and that I’d strive against it, and that we were supposed to still love each other at the same time. How did I find peace about such a thing? I hoped that time would make these things even clearer. “And I’ll do everything I can to stop it.” Not that it would change anything. The war would last for fifty years. After that, I’d reign again. For a time.

Gaia had said there was a need for light and dark, and I believed her. Time really was a predator that I had yet to learn.

But I’d learn it like any other.

“If we’re constantly opposing each other, then I don’t see how a relationship between us can work,” he said quietly, his eyes searching my face. “You’ll hate me, Silver. How can I stand that when I’ve felt how it is to have your love?”

“It’s simple really,” I repeated.

Unbalance rolled his eyes, then rolled onto his back. “This should be good.”

I joined him, and we both stared up at the black, sooty sky of his realm.

“The bond was crucial,” I said. “Keefe had to live, but he couldn’t be given access to the scale realm. Which means none of us could have it. And yet without the scale realm, you and I would constantly be clashing in the realms, each trying to best the other. Like you, I didn’t see how that could end in us having a future together.” I took a breath. “So the scale realm had to close, yet the purpose of that realm, the information it provided, needed to be preserved.”

Andas turned his face to me, and from his ajar jaw I could tell he’d finally put the rest of it together.

I smiled. “Keefe and Orlaith. Keefe drank just enough wine to loosen his power. He is weaker than us again. For now.”

“I feel him, yes. I’d planned to torture him for a time.”

“That he’s anyone’s creature again will be torture aplenty for him, my love. We must focus on maintaining power over them, while also using them. They have a Gaia-given purpose. Keefe is your creature, and Orlaith is mine. Orlaith has a little darkness in her, and Keefe has a sliver of love for Orlaith that prevents him from embracing darkness completely. They exist somewhere between us, and they can be used to keep the balance between us over centuries and millennia.”

I could already feel how many lives we would save by doing so—and that relieved a deep guilt of mine that had originated when loving Andas started to claim so many lives. Keefe’s power was only given to him to balance us, after all. But our love wouldn’t be selfish. I wouldn’t need to choose between my duty and my love as centuries went by.

Andas looked up at the tumultuous sky again. “Keefe knows what his role will be. He will work against us.”

“And Orlaith will learn very soon. Keefe will be telling her right now. We will have to watch them carefully.”

“Neither can be trusted.”

I shook my head, then admitted the hardest thing yet. “No, they can’t. Because both will need to betray us often to play their role of dealing out just enough balance or just enough unbalance.”

Sometimes Orlaith would need to hurt me and my plans to swing power between Andas and I. Sometimes Keefe would need to do the same to Andas. The darkness in Orlaith would allow her to betray me where the bat version of her never could have stomached doing so. I couldn’t be friends with Orlaith any longer, but I could respect her role. And I could love her for what she would do, in that it would allow me to share love with my enemy.

Really, Orlaith and Keefe had walked a perfect path to this day. Orlaith, with her networking ability and the way she made the rich and powerful her puppets. Keefe, with his trickery. And, most of all, the strange loyalty and love that existed between them. They belonged to us, but with the amount of wine Keefe had taken in, I felt sure he’d never thwart us on this level again. If he did, it would take him a millennium.

“We will wear the crowns and they will be our general. They’ll navigate the acts and deeds that switch the realms between light and dark over the decades and centuries to come, but we will give the orders and be responsible for unleashing our power.”

“Along with watching the greater path,” I replied. “They will give us distance between fighting each other and loving each other. In time, I believe they will grow skilled at identifying acts of balance and unbalance for us.”

I didn’t say so to Andas, but I believed a time might eventually come where we could exist in a nearly equal power state. Not for a long, long time though.

“Middle men,” Andas mused. “I see the future now—the way has cleared. This path will have its challenges, Silver.”

“Nothing between us will ever be without challenge. The question is…are we willing to meet it head on and accept that what we share won’t ever be as unconditional and pure as the love of others can be?”

Andas rolled to face me and cupped my cheek in his hand, resting on his bent elbow. “I cannot exist without you. We cannot exist without Keefe and Orlaith. Our life together may have challenges, my love, but for as long as I can see, I will choose to love you through all of them.”

“And I you,” I whispered, a lump rising in my throat. “Is this really it then? Is the worst done?”

He kissed my forehead. “Not nearly, Silver. Yet the path is clear, and you’ve made us possible. I can’t fathom how the hell you did any of it. But you did.”

Andas tilted my chin, and I pressed my lips to his.

As long as we could keep doing that—as long as we chose each other every single day—then Balance and Unbalance might love each other until the end of time.

Without half of the suffering I’d feared.