Chapter 19

Ihad trouble digesting all the twists and turns unfolding around us as Natisha's scheme came to fruition. I had never loved a man before Midas, but I could imagine the world of hurt I would be in if he pretended to love me, knocked me up—twice—and then kidnapped our children to build his own empire without me.

I'd had a small taste once, of living without him, and it almost broke me. How much worse had it been for Natisha? She lost so much more than me. For good. There had been no reconciliation for them.

History didn't always get it right, everyone knew that, but Archimedes's slander campaign against Natisha was impressive in how widely accepted his narrative was among their descendants.

Natisha's was the only firsthand account remaining, but it belonged to the injured party. There was no way to tell how accurate her perception was of those events. After centuries of replaying them, picking them apart, she wasn't a trustworthy witness.

A victim she might be, but she had crafted herself into a villainess too.

Ultimately, I couldn't let myself care about the reasons behind her actions. I couldn't let myself side with her. I was in no position to judge her or Archimedes, or to assign guilt to one party over the other. If even a fraction of what she said was the truth, then she had a right to her anger. But she had taken it too far.

Now my hands were tied. I couldn't help her. I had no choice but to do my duty, and that meant protecting innocents from a fae gone mad with grief and heartache. I might sympathize with her, but that didn't mean I wouldn't do everything in my power to stop her.

As we reached the knot of enforcers ringing the portal, Ford and Hank jogged out to meet us.

"Thanks for ditching us." Ford scowled at Midas. "We got all dolled up with no place to go."

"Bishop gave me time-sensitive information I had to act on." Midas clasped hands with him. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, yeah." Ford yanked me into a hug. "Neither of you have a lick of sense."

"Don't hate." I squeezed him back. "Someone's got to save the world."

"Doesn't always have to be you," he grumbled. "I'm glad you fell in love with Midas instead of me."

"Okay, I'll bite." Pulling away, I frowned up at him. "Why?"

"I don't have the heart or the nerves for it." His expression softened. "Lisbeth is a much better fit for me. She's kind, beautiful, intelligent, funny, and she hardly ever almost dies."

"Gee," I said flatly. "Thaaanks."

Midas, I noticed, didn't rush in to fish my reputation out of the frying pan.

"You might want this back." Hank passed Midas his phone. "The screen was cracked when we found it."

Out of time to play catch up, I gathered them around me. "I'm going to bring down the circle."

As it stood, it wasn't much of a deterrent for paranormals, but we needed any advantage we could get.

"What's the objective here?" Ford watched them a minute. "Why set up camp around the portal?"

"Long story short," I began, "Natisha is targeting Tisdale and her family with a bloodline curse."

An immediate growl bubbled up the back of Ford's throat, and Hank was right there with him.

Their agitation brought Ambrose creeping out of my shadow to study the field and the players.

A stabbing pain pierced my skull, making me wince, but it dispersed into less agonizing waves.

"Oww. Oww. Oww."I massaged my temples. "Anyone else feel that?"

"No." Midas pivoted toward me. "What's wrong?"

"The circle is broken." I checked with Ambrose, who confirmed. "The feedback hit me, that's all."

"If your circle is down," Ford said, stepping forward, "what's that?"

Lightning crackled, illuminating a transparent dome that shielded the portal, and I had to shut my eyes.

The information flowed through me, as if Ambrose stood beside me and whispered it in my ear.

"I was wrong." I studied the area again. "She didn't break my circle. She built her own on top of it."

"Why…?" Midas angled his head. "She's using it to power her own."

The feedback hit me harder for it too. Instead of a warning tingle, it had zapped me between the eyes.

"The coven loves its concentric wards," I reminded them. "That circle is now a double layer of bad news we can't cross."

But all Natisha had to do was smudge the circles from the inside to drop them and unleash their foul curse.

"How do we get in?" Hank anchored his fists on his hips. "There must be a way."

There was, goddess help me, and I ran to find Bishop before it was too late.

Tisdale spotted me and tapped Bishop on the shoulder. He turned, saw me, and met me halfway.

Swallowing my fear, I asked, "Can you do what you do and get me in their circle?"

"Are you sure?" He found places other than me to look. "You want to risk it again?"

"Yes." I glanced back, unsurprised to find Midas had followed me. "I'll do anything to save him."

"Hadley," Midas said softly, so much love packed into two syllables it made my heart squeeze to hear it.

He extended his arm, his fingers within reach of my cheek, then his eyes rolled back in his head.

A cry of fear and outrage rose from a dozen yards away, and I knew Tisdale had fallen too.

The curse…

…it was striking at them through the circle, its focus was so powerful.

"Midas."I fisted his shirt, but there was no time to pull on Ambrose for strength, and Midas's weight fell on me. "Wake up." We hit the dirt together. "Do you hear me?" I dragged him into my arms. "Wake up."

A slight angling of his head toward me confirmed he could still hear me.

"You can't die on me now. I haven't seen you in Spock ears. You owe me that much."

The heavy rise and fall of his chest was his only response.

"Hadley." Bishop rested a hand on my shoulder. "We have to go."

"I can't leave him." Tears stung my eyes. "He's… He's…"

The word hung in my throat, kept me from swallowing, and it cut me each time I tried.

"You can save them." Bishop dug in his fingers. "But you can't do it from here."

I wasted precious seconds indulging the war between my head and my heart.

"Okay," I exhaled, knowing he was right, but I didn't budge from the spot.

"Go." Remy reappeared after fetching my swords from her car and stood over him. "I'll protect him."

Heart thundering in my ears, I shook my head, unable to feel my legs. "I can't do it."

"He'll die if you don't." Bishop hauled me upright. "You can do this, kid, but you have to do it now."

"I won't let anyone touch him," Remy promised. "I'll slice off their fingers if they point in his direction."

"Thank you." I wiped my cheeks dry then turned to Bishop. "Let's do this."

Linking our fingers, he dragged me into the deepest shadows, through a thin membrane of resistance, and into the icy heart of Faerie in winter.

The path might have been the same, or it may have been different. With no landmarks to dot the way, I couldn't tell. That disconcerted me, but I took comfort in Ambrose's companionship. He had shifted into a dog again and frolicked around us like he was exploring snow for the first time.

Amusing as it might be, I couldn't focus on him when my heart kept pounding out a single word.

Midas. Midas. Midas.

"Just there," Bishop said, his voice arctic. "Brace yourself."

Expecting the sculptures again, I goggled up at an enormous manor built from bricks of ice using snow as mortar. The shadows it cast were deep, alive, hungry. Bishop jogged toward them, hauling me after him, and leapt, feeding us to their waiting maw.

We burst through to the other side before I could do more than wonder at the enormous house or who lived there and hit the ground on my side hard enough to jar my teeth.

Impact knocked the wind out of me, and I nearly got my head stomped in for emerging from a shadow cast by one of the witchborn fae. Her sister kicked me in the ribs, but I rolled out of range before she did any real damage. They had to keep their hands linked and their voices raised to fuel the curse, which limited their range of motion.

Spry as a cat, Bishop had landed on his feet. He offered me a hand up then placed himself at my back.

The angle gave me a clear view of Midas, crumpled in the grass, with Remy standing over him.

A few pack members kept an eye on her as she watched over him, but they didn't risk getting any closer.

"Natisha." I forced myself to block out the sight of him. "I'm giving you one last chance to stop this."

Eyes holding mine before they closed, she lifted her chant higher in response.

She had come too far to back down now.

Pride wouldn't allow her to stop before she got what she wanted, the rest of us be damned.

"Ambrose." I waited for him to appear. "Drain off as much of their magic as you can."

He couldn't break the spell that way, not a casting on this scale, but he could slow it down and give Midas and Tisdale a fighting chance.

Zipping around and around the circle through their joined hands, Natisha included, Ambrose noshed on their magic, but they had gathered too much.

"Break their concentration," Bishop barked at me, "but not their grips."

The order brought to mind Remy's earlier warning, and a cold sweat settled over me.

"You do know spells can go boom if you set them off ahead of schedule?"

Darting in, I waited for the same woman to kick at me then caught her ankle. It forced her to hop on one foot, which couldn't be good for her focus. Her lips kept moving, but her attention wavered along with her balance. Only her sisters' ironclad grips kept her from being torn free.

"Hadley," Bishop cautioned as he positioned himself across the circle from me. "Have a care."

"I'm caring," I assured him, dragging my prize. "I'm caring."

With a snort, Bishop grabbed a different woman's ankles and yanked her legs clear out from under her.

Now two women hung suspended from their sisters' clasped hands, and the others began to strain.

"Bish," I tsked him right back. "Have a care."

"Oh, my bad." He faked contrition. "I thought you said carry, not care."

The power inside the circle grew in intensity until it blistered my skin. The air steamed, and my vision wavered in the heat, making it impossible to see beyond the perimeter. The circle was about to be dropped, the curse was about to be flung, and I only had one plan left.

Goddess, I hoped it worked better than plans A through D. Or were we all the way on F now?

Adjusting my grip on the woman's leg, I dragged her bouncing toward the portal.

Bishop took his cues from me and started hauling his that way too.

The circle bent into a U shape, but it didn't break.

Judging from the wide eyes of several practitioners, they were all in a panic over what might happen if it did.

Ambrose appeared beside me and mimed helping me haul the woman into the portal he'd created to get us home. Sadly, the only way to ensure she didn't pop right back out again was to go in with her. I stepped in, and the sense of vertigo swamped me. The nausea returned, and I would have collapsed if Ambrose hadn't caught me.

Between the meal he had just eaten and the power of Faerie, he was growing substantial again.

Grateful we had set our circle in a wide-open field and not in the tangle of woods where the original faegate leading into the archive from Faerie stood, I dug in my heels and heaved until my arms twanged with the strain.

The coven had a choice to make. Either they quit the curse, damned the consequences, and remained in Atlanta, or they got ripped through the portal and unleashed their hard work on thin air.

They didn't keep me waiting long for their decision.

After I hauled my faeborn witch into the Faerie field, another arrived, and then Bishop stepped through.

Ambrose placed himself between Bishop and me and captured a third woman's legs, turning our U into more of an M.

Between the three of us, we got a fifth and sixth witch through. Then the seventh and eighth. Then the ninth and tenth. Natisha was eleventh, and she fought tooth and nail to hold her ground until we won by virtue of them refusing to stop casting.

Once we had the ten women, plus Natisha, in the field, I shouted to Ambrose. "Close the portal."

Releasing his witch, Ambrose planted himself in front of the circle and set about devouring it with gusto.

As it collapsed, my ears popped and began ringing. Nausea overwhelmed me, and I hit my knees. A headache made holding my eyes open difficult, but I kept my attention on the enemy as they fell silent.

And then dropped dead.