Chapter 17

T he gates stand a hundred feet tall, and my maya-filtered eyes see countless threads of magic woven into the wood, warding it, strengthening it, making it impervious to just about everything short of a nuclear detonation.

How are we going to get past it?

Nerves and fear rattle in my chest like bones in a cup. I just got free of this place, and now I'm trying to get back in. On the other side—assuming I can get us past the gates in the first place—wait who knows how many immortals, armed and armored and trained for war.

Caleb, on my right, rumbles in his chest. "Time is short. Their sickness will claim them soon." His amber eyes find mine. "If they die, I will go feral. I will not be able to find my humanity again, Sparrow. You must destroy the doors."

"How?" I whisper, the weight of pressure crushing me. "Look at them."

"You are the WorldBreaker," he says, his voice charged with power and with pride. "You are the Once-Mortal Queen. All the world is yours."

Caspian, on the other side of me, takes my hands. "You can do it, Little Sparrow."

I thread my fingers into Caleb's, and now, for the first time, I have both of my mates beside me. Fury pounds in my veins. Maya boils at the core of me, all the magic I've extended having barely scratched the surface.

I close my eyes and focus, centering myself, using my mates' hands as anchors to reality, to the earth. I root myself in the now, in the dirt and the stone and the spirit of all things.

I feel the doors, a thing of such titanic weight and density that it overwhelms me—generation after generation of fae glamourists have woven their magic into the wood of the doors until they are more magic than organic material.

Which gives me an idea.

Perhaps, as with the mage-cuffs, the very density of power itself is its weakness.

I need to overload it. Pour power into it until it just…goes boom.

I inhale as deeply as I can and hold it. Open my eyes and focus on the doors, picking out the infinity of threads. I reach within and call on my ocean of maya. Not just a thread or a stream or a river…all of it.

I grit my teeth and exhale slowly, forcefully—pushing the magic out of me in such a magnitude of volume is like trying to blow enough air through a cocktail straw to move a sailboat.

My ears ring, and my pulse hammers in my throat.

I push.

The wards flare in resistance, and I push harder than ever. Light blasts on my closed eyes, heat washing over me as if I'm back in that cell again and trying the ward.

No.

No.

I feel my throat scrape and realize I'm screaming.

I feel my mates, their hands in mine, Caspian's prana flowing into me, Caleb's mana. Their faith in me flows like a river, and I bear down, screaming, teeth clenched so hard I feel my molars creak.

The first ward flares brighter than the sun, and I feel the heat tightening my skin, and then it crumbles and the heat abruptly vanishes.

No rest. Not yet.

I catch my breath and push again, summoning more magic from within, calling on the ocean to rise, to flow, to flood.

I pour it into the doors, send it rushing along the ley lines of old glamours and new, pushing, pushing.

My knees shake, and my mates catch me and hold me up.

Pain surges in my skull with the agony of a thousand migraines all at once. I feel bloodtears on my cheeks, taste them on my tongue.

If I had anything in my stomach, I would throw it up, but all I can do is retch, dry heaving.

My whole body shakes with exertion, and I push, push, push. Force my will upon the magic, bend it to my purpose.

Fill the lines.

Expand.

Spread.

The doors creak, massive timbers shifting, swelling.

The ocean within is shallow, now, the light of the prana dull and sallow.

I feel Caleb's pain, the agony of his bond-sickness flaring—a packmate's pain.

I scream again, a wordless howl.

Catch my breath, and every muscle tenses, and only my mates are holding me up, now, my legs unable to bear my weight.

The pain in my head is like a hot knife digging into my brain, splitting and cutting and tearing it apart.

But the doors are weak, the last remaining wards thin and fragile.

Within, my prana is nearly depleted.

Once more.

I feel blood leak out of my nose and ears, the pain in my skull compounding and multiplying, pounding, throbbing, stabbing, white-hot.

PUSH .

A concussion of titanic proportions throws us all backward a hundred yards.

I feel darkness pooling around me, reaching up for me. The Dreaming is angry—it wants me.

Wolf curls around me, snarling, snapping, and I feel the touch of his mana on my soul, cool and strong and deep.

His tongue laps at my nose and mouth and ears, and I smell blood on his breath.

"Maeve." A voice. "Come back, Little Sparrow."

Cas?

I feel him, the slow deep dark beauty of his being coiled around me in the darkness, a familiar guardian in these black waters.

Something loud chatters, and I hear a vampire's snarl. Fin. Bone crunches and I feel a life snuff out.

I feel prana. Warm, soft, and delicious. Fae. Full of magic and life.

I hear a groan—my own?

Pull.

I need the prana.

"Bring the dead fae, Fin," I hear Caspian say.

I'm somewhere between awake and asleep, on the cusp between Waking and Dreaming.

It's such a thin veil.

I taste prana in the air, close and thick and pungent. Blood—sweet fae blood.

Something wet touches my lips. I taste the endless night of a far northern winter, nights and days interchangeable, books and puzzles by firelight, a child playing with wooden blocks—

My body acts without input, and I feel my fangs bury into flesh and blood flows—cooling blood, the life ebbing. Prana glitters behind my eyes, winking, like a lightbulb on the verge of going out.

Pull.

Warmth floods me, and darkness recedes, the cold waters of Dreaming subsiding. I groan.

"She's coming around," Caspian says.

I blink. Light—too much light. I scent blood, old, cold blood. Dead blood.

Caleb's face swims into view. "Sparrow. You did it."

I feel pain, not my own. Look past Caleb to see Fin, dear beautiful playful Fin, blood spurting from a wound to his neck, watching me with a sloppy, pained grin.

"Never doubted you, babe." His voice is tight. I clamber to my feet, wobbling. Caleb and Caspian hover on either side of me, holding me up, helping me limp to Fin.

"You're hurt," I say, and my voice is hoarse, raspy, and painful.

He claps a hand over the wound and the blood gushes between his fingers. "It'll stop when I run out of blood." His eyes darken, black bleeding into them. "Plenty of blood in there," he says, jutting his chin at the place where the doors once were.

Now, there is only a gaping hole, a black chasm blasted into the mountainside. I scent fae blood, shifter blood, and vampires—all dead. Their spirits still hover close, not yet returned to Death.

I totter away from my mates and collapse in Fin's arms, and he holds me. I smash my cheek against his broad hard chest. "I missed you, Phineas."

He grins down at me. "You light up the world for me, Maeve. I may not be your bonded mate like those two grouchy assholes, but goddamn, I do love you."

I can't help myself—I'm weak, prana depleted, my veins nearly dry. And there, just pouring out of him, is blood.

I pierce his neck around the wound and drink—it's passed through him already so it's not as good as fresh blood from a fae's veins, but it tastes like him, my sweet, handsome Fin.

He groans as my venom hits, and his hands go to my ass and lift me, and I wrap my legs around him and drink and drink and drink until his veins run dry and his skin hardens to marble under my hands.

I feel Stirling behind me, and I turn in Fin's arms.

"What about me?" he murmurs, in that low dark mysterious voice of his. "Miss me too?"

I leap from Fin to Stirling but grab Fin's hand and yank him to me, press his mouth to mine and kiss him and lick his tongue, and fuck, if I didn't sense the mountain behind us humming like a kicked hornet's nest, I'd take these hard handsome sexy males to the ground and fill myself with them, my coven-mates, my lovers.

I feel Caleb, and his energy is amused, aroused. I feel him shift, and Wolf's mind touches mine, and then he's trotting way into the mountain.

Caspian is there, too, and his hands weave into my hair and yank my head away, claiming my mouth even as Stirling's hands find flesh—I'm naked yet again, I realize with a start.

When I poured my magic into the doors, my unconscious hold on the glamours binding the clothing and weapons vanished, taking them with it.

Hands cover my breasts and fangs pierce and Caspian's kiss becomes Stirling, and his mouth is hard and slow and hungry.

I reach out a hand, and he knows, Alistair knows what I'm asking. He grasps my hands and I pull him into the tangle of my coven; Fin's lips are on my throat and Stirling is still kissing me and Caspian is petting my sex and Alistair—

I snag a hand into his blood-soaked shirtfront and haul him closer, feeling his mental resistance, his hesitancy.

"I need you too," I whisper, and my mouth finds his, and fuck, he tastes like Death and Life and the blood of a dozen vampires and starlight and darkness and high tea and pipe smoke and Alistair .

I bury my hands in his hair and feel his hard ancient body wrap around mine, holding me close and my coven surrounds me, sheltering me, giving me this moment with him.

I pull back from the kiss, feeling the kicked hive hum reaching a crescendo, knowing this reunion with my coven has to wait.

"No more holding back, Alistair," I murmur, lips moving on his lips.

I find my feet, and my coven towers around me. I look up at Fin. "I love you too, Fin." To Stirling. "I missed you more than I can say."

I look at Cas, then, but there's nothing else to say.

"I know," he rumbles, his voice dark and unblooded. "I just need you."

I reach up and touch my lips to his, lifting on my tiptoes, and then whisper in his ear. "You have me. Always." I turn away and face the Tribunal's fortress. "The mountain awaits."

They spread out around me, Caspian on my right, Alistair, Fin, and Stirling in a line behind. We march together into the shadows of the yawning cavern.

Wolf appears from the darkness, his jaws locked around the throat of a thrashing, kicking fae female, an ancient. He brings her to me and drops her at my feet. I feel the weight of millennia in her prana.

"I…curse you…World…Breaker," she gurgles.

"Zirae." It's a demand.

Her eyes cast upward. "In the…highest place." To me, then, and her eyes spark with hate. "Take my soul…and…to—to hell with you…World…Breaker."

I call her blood to me, and the song it sings is soured with age and dense with old, old, old power. Her prana flows with it, dissolving into golden-white light as the blood wraps around my flesh like a second skin, coating me in crimson.

I feel my prana reserves swell, and my veins flush with new blood as the ancient's life soaks into me, seeping into my pores and veins.

Wolf is sitting at my feet, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, looking for a moment like nothing so much as the world's largest puppy.

I wrap my arms around his neck and bury my nose in his fur. "Thank you, Wolf."

He rumbles in his chest, a pleased, happy sound, and his tongue flips against my ear and jaw, tickling and wet and hot.

And then the rumble becomes something else, low and fierce, throbbing with ferocity.

I turn, rising, and face the new threat.

A band of enforcers marches in a wedge formation, a shockstick in each hand, one as a weapon and one as a shield. In the open V of the formation is a male fae glamourist about Alistair's age, garbed in a red robe with a white belt, prana swirling around him in a golden aura that crackles with deadly threat.

The formation marches toward us, and the glamour swells in power as the fae male pours his prana into it, adding layer after layer, working it into a complex weapon of destruction.

I'm too much of a technical novice to grasp the complexity of the glamour, but I can get a sense of it—fire, and a fucking lot of it.

"Behind me," I order, and everyone rays out behind me in a line abreast, Caspian on my right and Caleb on my left. Caspian rests a hand on my shoulder and Wolf leans against my thigh, and I feel the link between us surge, opening to let our energies—the Three Sisters and the Fourth god—flow between us.

I remember what Andreas told me about Mom, and her temper, the story about the old drunk kicking his donkey.

My prana is a wide, shallow lake, nowhere near the oceanic levels it should be, but it's better than being bloodless and locked out.

I feel a twinge of worry about how I'm going to face Zirae in this state and then force that worry aside for later.

I focus on the Enforcers—six fae and two vampires. I feel their blood and the water that is the essence of all human life.

I call it to myself.

Prana pours out of me in a thin bright ribbon, coiling around each body in turn. With so little prana to work with, this takes focus, and I feel myself shaking. There's a twinge of pain in my skull, but nothing in comparison to minutes before. I grit my teeth and force the prana to my will, send it into them, calling upon their body water, the liquid in their veins, in their flesh, in their bones and marrow and gray matter and cells.

I call it all.

With a great roaring rush, a wall of water surges out of the Enforcers just as the fae caster finishes his glamour.

A wall of flame fifty feet high billows out of his hands and screams toward us, heat shimmering off it, melting the rock around us to drip orange blobs of molten stone on the walls and from the ceiling above and the floor underfoot.

I haul the water wall forward, forcing it with my will to stand firm against the onslaught of the fire. The two titanic walls of destruction meet with an ear-splitting roar and a blast of steam that washes over us, leaving us drenched and scalded—a mortal would have been cooked alive.

Caleb bounds through the steam on silent feet, and I hear bones crunch wet and a soft dying gurgle.

He trots back to me, his jaws stained red—he licks his chops, shakes his fur, and yips once.

Time to go.