Chapter 9

Chapter

Nine

AGATHA

W ood groaned beneath Agatha's boots as they walked through the door into their Achlys manor. It was all dark hues and baroque accents, bespoke lamps and myriad novelties. Even just walking into the great room, her breath was taken away by the beautiful art and myriad books stashed absolutely everywhere.

" Je suis chez moi ." The words escaped her in a rush at the same moment she was assaulted with memories, flooding her senses until she thought she would choke on them.

"Papa!" a little voice squealed. "You can't catch me!" Thanasim ran past, nearly bowling into Asteria. She laughed as she spun out of his way, cradling a tiny babe in her arms. Thanasim pivoted, darting back to plant a kiss on her cheek, then the baby's head, before launching back into a run. He'd barely made it around the corner into the dining room before two shrieks of surprise and delight erupted.

Agatha clutched her chest. It felt like her ribs were caving in. Grimm came to her side, his hand on her lower back and tears in his eyes.

"It's such sweet torture, isn't it?"

Spice. The aroma of peace in Asteria's mind. It filled their home. The new manor Thanasim had built for them. She watched as he bounced Monarch as she cried, cooing at her until she fell fast asleep, her tiny head on his broad chest.

"Lord Night," Asteria murmured, delighting in the mischievous grin that spread across his face at her tone. "Everyone is asleep."

Thanasim gently laid Monarch in her bassinet, rolling it around the corner. "They are indeed."

He had Asteria in his arms in one swift movement, carrying her to the rug before the hearth and its roaring fire. She was undressed in an instant, and Thanasim was kissing a line down her stomach when she burst out laughing.

He pulled back, bemused. "And what has caused this hilarity?"

Pointing to the tray of floating spiced biscuits, she snorted. "I'm not the only treat you desired this evening, now am I?"

Gliding to press his body atop hers, he grinned against her lips. He kissed her, and the tray settled itself on a side table. "No, you are not. But you are more delectable." He darted between her legs again, and she stifled a gasp.

Agatha couldn't breathe. " Déesse. Je ne peux pas supporter ?a ." Another memory came and she swayed. "I can't." She couldn't handle the memories. She could hardly even speak Seagovian, her mind was so addled.

"What would you have me do!" Thanasim's voice boomed through the great room. The glass panes rattled in the windows, shielding them from the fog as far as the eye could see. "She's making a fucking mess of that realm. I have lost my patience with her, Asteria."

She came forward, resting a hand on his chest. Instinctively, his came up to rest on her belly, just beginning to swell with the life of their fourth child. "Would you not manipulate wars to keep me safe, were you the one in her place?"

Thanasim sighed, backing away to take up pacing. "This was her choice, to give up everything for a mortal general."

"Talk with her again. Just help her to see that. Though she is helping Igor and Orford, she is harming the balance of the realm."

The memories were coming in quick succession. She couldn't choose them, couldn't select which to entertain. Couldn't breathe. They were ripping her asunder .

"We can do it, Mother. I swear it."

Belfry stood before her, just on the cusp of being a woman. Asteria was so utterly proud of this spitfire—proud of all her daughters.

"Sweetheart, it is not your battle to fight ? —"

"Like Hades!" Belfry shouted, every bit the temper of her mother and father. "You've seen what she's done to mortals! To us! And you know what she could further do."

"Enough." The word came out sharper than she intended, but Belfry stood her ground.

"It's the only way."

"No, it's not."

"So you'll just leave us here without you, then?" Tears were building in Belfry's eyes, threatening to spill every time she raised her voice.

"It's the only way to keep you safe. You and your Sisters are not immortal ? —"

"Can't you see! None of us are safe if she makes it back here!"

Here…here…

" Ici ."

Everything spun.

"Grimm, please," Agatha begged. " Faites-les arrêter . It's too fast. Make them stop. Make them stop."

He scooped her up just like he had in one of the memories, rushing out a back door and into a gnarled, decrepit garden. The moment his feet touched the cobbles, he sucked in a great, pained breath, nearly dropping her.

"Grimm!"

Using her magic to aid her, Agatha leapt from his arms just before he collapsed to his knees. With the heels of his palms against his eyes, Grimm cried out in agony.

GRIMM

Fuck . Too many memories. Agatha was right, it was too much. He couldn't even fucking see.

He was trapped in his mind again—times, worlds, realms warring.

"I told you," he growled, stalking toward Athania, "that I would not have mercy on you again."

She had the audacity to simper, looking up at him from where she sat at a bistro along Aureland's Viridian Bay. "What have I done this time, dearest Lord Night?"

His hand locked around her bicep, hauling her up roughly from her chair. An onlooker gasped, putting a hand to her mouth. Thanasim dragged Athania around a corner into the shadows of an alley, releasing her with such force that she backed into the granite wall.

"You know all too fucking well what you've done," he hissed. "Did you think you could hide what you're doing from the Queen of Aureland? Did you think I wouldn't find out, even if she hadn't told me?"

Athania inspected her nails in the thin shaft of light tunnelling through the dim alley. "Did you know this place you sent me to has a portal into Orford?"

Of course he did, but he hadn't expected her to figure that out. "What is your point?"

"My point," she snapped, her consonants as sharp as daggers, "is that I tried to retrieve my quill from where I left it within the Orford Castle. That is all that happened."

"You murdered innocent people along the way, Athania."

She gave a little disinterested shrug. "It wasn't my fault the new Queen of Orford had already taken over and given my rooms to someone else."

Squeezing his hands in and out of fists, Thanasim worked his jaw. "Do you think me a fool?"

"I'm not certain you want me to answer tha ? —"

Her words were choked off by a dark coil of his power shooting forward to fit itself in her mouth like a gag. "Aside from the castle massacre in search of the goddess quill, that, by the way, is not yours, you've only targeted those of magical origin. Witches, Mages, Elves… Even a Papien scholar for goddess' sake. Leaving them fucking husks . What are you doing to them?"

One of her hands came up, a sharp fingernail tapping at his power that was gagging her. Baring his teeth, Thanasim tugged the coil, silently commanding it to bind her wrists instead.

When it did, she blinked up at him innocently. "Would you like to see?"

A gleaming dagger of blood-red magic snaked out from behind her, taunting, toying with Thanasim's hold on her. He watched in fascination and fury as it descended, bent on slicing his vine of shadow to free her arms. Cut, it did, but it was no match for his strength, and the binding held, though it burned like Hades. Just to remind her who he fucking was, Thanasim shifted into his reaper form, something he rarely did since being blessed by Hespa as a god. But his decayed, skeletal form was far more grisly and terrifying than the handsome face and night-sky eyes Hespa had given him.

Athania looked more impressed, more lust-filled than anything else. Revulsion made him nearly take a step back, but he would not be toyed with by this half-witch fallen goddess any longer. "Are you trying to tell me you're somehow using these creatures to grow your own well of magic?"

The burn of her magic dagger was increasing at an irritating rate. With a growl, he sent another ghoulish vine darting out to wrap around the hilt, crushing it to red, glittering dust that dissipated into the dirt and sand beneath their feet.

"Fucking tell me. Now."

"Find me my quill, and I'll tell you what I'm doing with them."

Thanasim wrapped another coil around her, thicker this time, binding her arms to her sides and letting it slither up and up, threatening her throat. "It's not your quill."

A little gasp popped out of her, the sound so light and airy despite her predicament that it was disturbing. "You retrieved it before I could, didn't you? You still have it."

Thanasim remained silent. Waiting.

"Well, it's no matter," she said, unbothered. "I will get it back, and I will be everywhere you look, but nowhere to be seen until the moment I defeat you."

"Ravings of a mad woman." He spat on the ground at her feet. "We have killed menaces like you for far less than the atrocities you have caused."

"Oh, please. And risk your daughters?" She clucked her tongue.

White-hot rage coursed through him so quickly that he felt Asteria begin to panic within their bond. What in Hades did their daughters have to do with a godsdamned thing?

Thanasim picked her up by the front of her bodice and slammed her against the wall, bringing his decrepit face to hers. "Give me," he hissed, low and menacing, "one fucking reason I shouldn't kill you right now and be done with this."

The laugh that emanated from her was bone-chilling. "She didn't tell you, did she?"

His skeletal grip on her bodice tightened and Athania tsked.

"Your darling wife never told you how I got any magic at all? And to think, we all thought your union to be perfect."

His rotting heart was beginning to slam against his ribs. Athania had been a goddess. Lady War. Power was innate… Unless she gave that up, too, when she'd chosen to leave The Primordial. Oh, goddess… No.

Asteria , he whispered through the bond. Tell me you didn't …

Athania tipped her head back and cackled as if she was enjoying his vice-like grip of shadow clasping itself around her neck just as much as she was enjoying his torment and confusion.

"That's right. Our kind, caring, fool of a goddess, Lady Magie de la Nuit, gave me a vein of her own power. And we both know where that came from."

This monster of a woman carried a kernel of Primordial magic, not just power bestowed upon a witch bloodline. No. NO.

Thanasim shifted back into his godly form, hands shaking. It couldn't be. Asteria would never have trusted anyone with that kernel of magic given to her by Hespa. She couldn't… Because if she had, if what Athania said was true…

"Utter pandemonium," Athania whispered as her heightened magic—stolen from creatures imbued with power that came from Asteria—gathered around her in a sea of red sparks. "We both know that when your darling Asteria was reborn as Lady Magic, Hespa set all magic within her. The Goddess Three gave it to her to bestow from that point forward."

Athania walked a circle around him like he were the prey and she the huntress. Never had he wanted to rip someone's throat out more. But she was right, he could not. It would have cataclysmic effects…

"And sweet Asteria gave me a vein of that original, Primordial Source of Magic." She tipped her head back and breathed deeply before exhaling and smiling with cruelty. "I don't have what she does. I cannot be reborn and keep it. And she no longer houses the entirety of the Source under her protection. That means if I die, so does magic. And all the creatures with that power wrapped around their souls will die too." A crack echoed down the alley as she clapped her hands together. "A pity, really."

Despite his vision going spotted with rage, Thanasim only let cool calculation play across his features. He knew exactly what must be done. Goddess help him.

Thirteen coils of his power leeched from the shadows, swimming toward Athania too quickly for her to react. They seeped into her eyes, nose, mouth, choking her screams out.

Asteria , he bellowed in the bond, bind this witch to us. Hurry. Do it now.

With Athania gagging and thrashing, Asteria appeared next to Thanasim, aglow with all the magic she possessed. He knew she could see his plan with stark clarity, just as easily as he could see her rapid pulse at the hollow of her neck.

You're certain? She looked at him with tears glistening in her eyes.

I see no other way.

Asteria lifted her hands, light shooting forth to twine around his shadow vines, chanting her spell until the alleyway glowed.

"Throw her," Asteria hissed when the spell was complete. All their fates sealed like a fucking tomb.

Thanasim roared, launching forward and plunging his hand into Athania's sternum. Together, they half-materialised in the space between the Netherrealm and Life, and he threw her into another realm, where magic was already all but extinct.

"Grimm!" She was shaking him. He was sitting on the ground, covered in dirt and dead leaves. "Thank the gods," she breathed when his eyes met hers.

Woozy, he stood, taking Agatha's hand to centre himself. "I know what happened." The words sounded far away. He felt far away. "And I know know what we have to do next."