15. Game

15

GAME

T he past three days setting up the new Summer Fae High Council have been grueling but fulfilling, as I finally return to Quinn’s rooms at the Red Letter Hotel Florence. With my Livingtree destroyed, I’ve been staying in my old rooms at the Palace of Light as all the Magistros, Generals, rebellion leaders, and Dark Summer Fae met repeatedly to hash out what a High Council for the Summer Fae would look like.

But without Quinn and Ariana, I haven’t slept a wink; I asked Quinn if I could come be with him and Ariana tonight. Though all my things are still in my rooms at the palace, it just isn’t my home anymore.

Gently closing the door to Quinn’s cathedral suite in the late midnight hour now, however, I see an enormous pile of my bags, trunks, and personal items inside. My eyebrows lift; I hadn’t planned on having all my things moved into Quinn’s rooms from the palace. Of course, he’s ten steps ahead of me like always, knowing what I need now that my Livingtree is gone.

And knowing I need to be with him and Ariana—now that my revolution is done .

Quinn rises in a quilted maroon silk dressing robe from where he was sitting before one massive lit fireplace in his living area beneath the loft, his shirt and pants from the day still on beneath. He swirls a brandy, sips it, then sets it aside and comes to me. I had thought no one would be awake at this late hour; but of course, Quinn is a night owl and always will be, thanks to the magic of Night that runs so strongly in his veins.

He sets his hands on my shoulders as he gazes deep into my eyes.

“How are you?” Quinn asks, never one to mince words when it counts. His dark onyx eyes search mine, but flicker with his Fae fire as he feels through our bond how much I’ve been through in the past days and how exhausted I am.

“Tired.” My answer is honest, as I know there’s no hiding my bone-deep fatigue from Quinn. We’re bonded for life in so many ways now that Ariana has brought us together again. Those bonds strengthen me now, as Quinn pours his loving fire inside me, bolstering me.

Even as he sends a soothing wash of his coolest darkness through me, calming me.

“The fatigue of triumph is the best there is.” Quinn massages my shoulders, and his words make me smile. Nodding at the living area, Quinn ushers me over to the velvet settees before the fireplace. He pours me a brandy and we sip; it’s nice, calm in the late midnight hour, after the never-ending chaos of the past few days.

“So, you’ve moved me out of the palace.” Jutting my chin at my stuff cluttering Quinn’s foyer and dining hall, I lift an eyebrow at him.

“It seemed best, yes.” Quinn nods, more than aware that I’m sort of a nomad right now. “I would have offered for you to stay here with me at the Hotel, indefinitely. But of course, you would have declined. So I moved you in, for as long as you might like.”

“I suppose I can’t refuse.” A smile quirks my lips now, though something inside me soars at Quinn’s sweet gesture and forethought.

“I assume our Livingtree is gone?” Quinn’s next words are softer, however, and I feel how he hates to ask. Valorhome was as much his tree as it was mine, once upon a time. He still cares for it, though he hasn’t spent any significant time there in ages.

“Decimated by the fighting. And whatever the Gold Eyes’ magic did to it,” I say now, a deep heaviness in my heart for our tree. “A casualty of war, I suppose. I’ve sent Alleno there to claim any of my things that can be spared. And find a good cutting from the tree, or a sapling, if he can. We’ll see.”

“Some things don’t survive war.” Quinn’s tone is sober as we both watch the fire and sip. I know he’s talking about my father now, killed by the Gold Eyes right in front of me.

It still hurts, even though I knew what a bastard my father was. By all counts, he deserved death for everything he’d done to me and others over the years, not to mention for his alliance with the Gold Eyes.

Still, I couldn’t do it when the time came. Staphylogenes killed my father for me, and something about that last and final betrayal by the creature will always pain me. My father was a bastard, but once, he was a man I cared about.

Someone I hoped could be saved before the end—too late.

“It is good he is gone, Lucca.” Quinn sets a hand to my knee, squeezing it. His dark eyes search mine. “Archivolio Bellari only would have continued making your life hell, and all of us, had he lived.”

“Yes, but to have the Gold Eyes kill him…” I take a sip rather than voice whatever I might have said next.

“I know. It hurts.” Quinn rises from his wingback chair, moving over to sit beside me on the couch. He heaves a deep breath, watching the fire as he cradles his glass in his hands. “The Gold Eyes will ever be our enemy until he is vanquished. And to have a mortal enemy kill someone we love, no matter how much of a fiend they had become… it’s hard.”

“It is,” I say, though to have Quinn’s recognition of what I’m feeling eases my heart now, untying it from its knots. At last, I heave a deep sigh as something unwinds inside me. I feel it as my aura loosens, knowing my story with the Summer Fae is finally at an end.

A good end, all in all.

“We won, for the Summer Fae,” I say now, voicing it, which is something I haven’t had a moment to do in the past three days. “They’re free from my father’s tyranny and your father’s before that. They’ll be free of any king or queen’s whims now, setting up a council as they are doing. Our rebellion did that for them. Now they will open their borders and come into a modern age, at last. One that includes the Dark Summer Fae who are their kin and forges a new understanding with the Vampires that share our city.”

“A magnificent outcome.” Quinn smiles as his dark eyes beam with pleasure at how all this turned out.

“They want you on the High Council, you know, along with me, Alleno, Bello, Junius, and Ariana’s parents.” I give Quinn a pointed look as I regard him. “You’re still Fae—Summer Fae, Quinn. Your people recognize that, even though you’re now a Dark Summer Fae.”

“My time leading the Summer Fae has passed, you know that,” Quinn says now as he gives a sad smile. “My old lineage helped us win over Junius and his army when we came to save you, nothing more. I haven’t been a part of their lives for hundreds of years. No. My Vampires need me now, and my Dark Fae. Though I will always have a special place in my heart for the Summer Fae. Like you.”

I nod now, knowing Quinn speaks from his heart. I look around then, not sensing Ariana nearby. “Where is our faeadonna ?”

“Upstairs. Conked out and sleeping like the dead.” Quinn chuckles now as his dark eyes shine. “Our Sleeping Beauty has been through nearly as much as you these past few days. She’s been meeting with our Dark Fae allies from Britain, Novakitsk, and Venice, besides many who were previously hidden amongst the Summer Fae. It seems a Dark Fae movement is happening to re-integrate those who used to live here, back into the city. I am pleased, and it seems to be going well.”

“Any word from the Vampire Council?” I ask, hating to speak of them but knowing we need to address it .

“Radio silence.” Quinn shakes his head, though his visage is troubled. “I could see how they might not want to attack us immediately after our big win, taking back Florence, Pisa, and Monaco. That they’re waiting so long now to even send a messenger to me, after their initial pronouncement of open war on this United Haven, makes me uneasy, however. They’re planning something… we’re past the window they might need to regroup. And the darkness of their plot is hidden from me… even from my deepest spies in Rome, and the few allies I have there.”

“Not good.” I frown now, knowing we’ve won one battle, but still have so many more we have yet to face. “I have heard nothing from the Gold Eyes, either. You?”

“No. Nor Ariana.” Quinn shakes his head, swirling his glass as his gaze darkens further. “It seems our Descendant nemesis is content to wait and see what we do, trying to find his heart with the key he gave us.”

“Will you give it to him? His heart, if we find it?” I have to ask, as I glance at Quinn.

“I have to,” he says as he stares at the fire. “I made a blood-oath to Staphylogenes at the Palace of Light, Lucca. You know how those things hold their maker, no matter what. It was the only thing I could do to convince him not to kill us all, right then and there. He was about to; he was only a hair’s breadth from wiping the slate clean of us and starting a new Ascendant’s Triad a thousand years from now, or whenever he could finally reproduce it. Though we gain power, we are still nothing but pawns to him. Only a pawn that holds the prize is worth keeping in the game.”

“Until we give him that prize,” I say as darkness churns inside my heart now, and I sip my brandy. “You know he’s going to off us the moment he gets that heart.”

“I have to trust that Iris knows something we and he don’t, about what his heart can and can’t do.” Quinn is alert now as he drains his brandy, setting his glass on a low coffee table before us. “She put that map in our minds for a reason, Lucca—so we could find that ancient object, hidden for ages from this world. I can only surmise she believes it to be a powerful adjuvant to the Music, which may help us get everything we want, before we turn it over to Staphylogenes. I’m banking on that.”

“And if it can’t?” I ask, though everything inside me hates to do it.

“Then we are dead.” Quinn looks at me. “But we were dead anyway, up on that dais, if I did nothing. I suppose we get to live just a little longer now, enjoying each other before we are finally snuffed out from this world. Make a little more light in it, before it’s our time.”

That thought sobers us now, as we watch each other on the couch.

“So what do we do?” I ask, wondering if we’re about to die soon, despite everything we’ve been through and accomplished lately. “How do we fight a god of the ancient world?”

“Well, we must start with where we are, right now,” Quinn says as I feel his mind move a thousand miles a minute through our bond, his plotting beginning as my words spark it. His dark eyes light with his Fae fire as he turns towards me on the couch. “We start with what we know, Lucca. We know that our trio’s Music can be shared in some kind of incredible multi-way sending now, with those we are bonded to, but also with those who share a common heart-goal with us. This is a tremendous power, and I can only imagine how amplifying it might serve us against the Gold Eyes. It may even be what the Gold Eyes wanted us to do for him originally, to bond every Vampire, Fae, and Dark Fae to us with that massive, multi-way Music, yoked to his own power of the Night. Perhaps so it could use that gargantuan power to attain its heart in the first place. But I suppose we’ll never quite know what a fiend like that truly wants?—”

“Even if we confronted him with that, I doubt he’d ever tell us,” I say, rubbing my neck as a late-night exhaustion takes me.

“Mmmm…” Quinn gazes at the fire now as he laces his fingers, his thumbs rubbing his knuckles as he thinks. “We can also manifest simple, one-word Ascendant Sigils from the otherworld ; and you proved at the Palace of Light that we can do more complex phrases now too, pulling them in from the ether with our heart’s deepest truth. If we can do that, I surmise we can do more—I see those far more masterful phrases of the Ascendants before me in the otherworld now, and believe we could reach them with a little practice. And perhaps, a magical adjuvant like the heart.”

“Staphylogenes said we would need to manifest a phrase of Ascendant Sigils to illuminate the path to its heart,” I say, remembering our fiend’s words at the palace. “ Find the way to the tomb of Staphylogenes’ heart . That’s the phrase of the Music we have to create, to decipher the map Iris gave us.”

“Indeed.” Quinn is still now as he thinks, his marble-chill motionlessness as he watches the fire. Then he rubs his knuckles again. “We have freed ourselves of the Gold Eyes’ Night; our Night magic is our own now. We are now fountainheads of our own magical Dark Fae Lineage… not a small thing, which even Master Vampires dream of doing, to be their own Master separate from their Sire. We have liberated ourselves from our Maker; you have liberated yourself by cleansing your heart of your father. I have liberated myself by cleansing my mind of my vast self-hate, and Ariana has liberated her soul by cleansing it of the hate she had for the Gold Eyes himself. Our freedom has put us at both an advantage and a disadvantage now against Staphylogenes; we are not powerful enough yet to face him, but neither are we his pawns anymore. We are free agents, and we may move across the chessboard in ways unknown to him now. It is no small thing, though our power is not yet great enough to face him in truth.”

“What about the Vampire Council?” I ask, glancing at him. “Do you think we have enough power to best them when they come calling?”

“I do not know.” Quinn darkens again, rubbing his knuckles more viciously now as he stares at the fire. “Vampires are not like Fae, Lucca, though we share common traits and ancestral blood. The magic of the Night makes many Vampires far more than cold in their deepest hearts, especially those who are the most ancient. I fear we cannot win them over with the Music of our love , not like we could with the Summer Fae. Fae love to be in love; it is their Light that makes them so. Vampires hate to be in love, because to feel any love at all, for them, is a weakness. Such Music from us will not sweep them. Just like when your father had the Gold Eyes’ Bloodsigns twisting deep inside him, I fear the oldest and most heartless Master Vampires on the Council will be immune to our bright Music. If they are, we need something more to vanquish them. Something I’m hoping Staphylogenes’ heart may provide…”

“You want to use the heart to march on the Vampire Council before we give it back to the Gold Eyes.” I suddenly understand Quinn’s plot.

“Bingo.” He looks at me. “For though I promised to give the fiend back his heart in my blood-oath, I did not specify when I would do so. An hour, a year, or a day, there is no time limit on what I promised him.”

“Until he comes for it,” I snort, lifting an eyebrow at Quinn. “Smiting us for our delay.”

“Perhaps.” But Quinn’s dark eyes sparkle now with intrigue, and that old Summer Fae recklessness he always had. Because although Quinn is a master of plotting, something in him was always a renegade. He can’t help that part of himself, just as much as I can’t; the both of us always were passionate, prone to getting into deep shit because of it.

We’re in the deepest shit of our entire lives now, though my own enemy has already been vanquished. We have two more big ones to go, however; the Vampire Council and the Gold Eyes himself.

Until we can be free to live our lives as we wish.

Quinn rises now, taking up his glass and pouring himself a new brandy before heading over to his massive ebony dining table. I follow, pausing for a refill before I come. A massive clutter devours the table; as we approach, I realize that hodgepodge of papers and diagrams are all the maps we’ve been pouring through for days since Iris put her own map inside our heads.

Quinn peruses it all now, taking a deep breath as he thinks. He looks at me, lifting an eyebrow .

“Care to see if we can raise our Music and manifest that phrase… and find the heart?”

Blinking, I move to his side in the midnight hour, a strange exhilaration taking me now as I think about it. “We’ll need Ariana if we’re going to raise the Music.”

“I’m already awake.” I hear her voice as she steps down Quinn’s winding staircase. Dressed in a blush silk night robe that goes all the way to her feet, tan Italian lace dripping from its sleeves, she lifts an eyebrow at us as she smiles. “You both are two peas in a pod. Plotting to take over the world this late, when we should all be sleeping.”

“We’re not plotting to take over the world,” Quinn says with a mischievous smile as he opens his arm now, pulling her into him as she arrives and giving her a brief kiss. “We’re only taking back what’s ours.”

“Our freedom,” I say as it sings in my heart.

Ariana gives me a deep look, understanding, as she frees herself from Quinn and comes to me. She reaches up and cradles my face in her hands. “Are you ready for this?”

“I was born ready for this,” I say firmly as I take her hands down, winding her into my arms. “Because though my people are free now of the Gold Eyes’ taint, we aren’t. We’ve cleansed him from our veins, but his power still threatens us. He will not stop, and the Vampire Council won’t either, until we beat them. So let’s beat them. No time like right now to get started.”

As Ariana gazes deep into my eyes, I hear Quinn’s soft hum of agreement. He comes to us; Ariana gives me a soft, lingering kiss, which I return with a song in my heart before we both turn to Quinn and the map table.

“Let’s get started. Shall we?” Quinn says.

As he opens his hand to the table, like he’s inviting us to dine.