For Whom the Spell Tolls (27 page)

Of course there was no response. Dropping his eyes back down to my face, he gingerly placed some strands of my hair behind my ears. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered. When he brought his lips to mine, he kissed me so softly, I could barely feel it.

With the thought that I had barely felt his kiss, in the here and now, I ran my fingers across my lips and glanced up at my mother in shock. “I felt his kiss,” I said in utter surprise.

She laughed lightly. “Of course you did. You are still there, Dulcie, but only a very small part of you. Your fight isn’t over but if you decide to return to that space and time, you
will
have to fight for your life.”

Instantly, I knew that there was no decision or choice for me to make. Why? Because it had already been made for me. My mother was right—Knight needed me and I needed him. “I have to leave you,” I said softly. My tears choked me as I realized I wouldn’t see my mother again for Hades only knew how long. The very thought tore my heart out and snapped it in two right in front of me.

“I know,” she said gently, her voice wafting into the breeze as her own eyes filled with tears.

“I love you, Mom,” I told her as my voice cracked and a deluge of tears flooded my eyes.

She held me tightly in her arms and we both wept as we hugged one another. Finally, she pulled away from me and rubbed her sleeve against her eyes. “I love you so much, Dulcie,” she said. “And you have no idea how proud I am of you, and everything you have accomplished so far.” She cleared her throat. “Just remember that I’m always here if you need me. You might not be able to see me or hear me, but I’m always with you, right here,” she finished. She leaned over and brushed her hand against my heart.

I clasped her hand and squeezed it tightly, knowing I couldn’t waste any more time. Now that I’d made my choice, I had to move forward. I had to fight for what was rightfully mine—my life. I now knew that I did have a lot more to do, especially now that my father was out of the picture. A brand new life awaited me just beyond the horizon. Really, a new life awaited all of us. And I didn’t want to miss out on any of it.

“You need to go to him now, Dulcie,” my mother said with a bittersweet smile. “It’s time for you to leave this place.”

I nodded as I stood up and beheld my mother one last time before I was shrouded in darkness again, just as I was after my father shot me. My body still felt strangely buoyant as I floated through the darkness. I tried to sort through the blackness to find the way back to myself, and back to Knight.

As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I saw the tiniest glimmer of light, barely the size of a grain of sand in the distance, far, far away from me.

Go toward that light,
I heard the words but was unsure whether the command issued from my own mind or someone else’s. I forced my arms to swim through the nothingness surrounding me, but it was a difficult chore. I found myself getting nowhere, while the light stayed just as far off as ever.

I closed my eyes and flapped my arms and legs even harder. I focused only on reaching the goal, placing every ounce of energy in my body toward achieving it. Opening my eyes again, I found my effort was useless. To my horror, I was beginning to float even further away, disappearing further into the ether and nothingness that already had a claim on me.

“No!” I said out loud. Tightly clenching my eyes shut, I screamed at myself to resist the darkness and find the light.

My hands flailed as I gritted my teeth and kept swimming through the vacuum surrounding me. Despite being unable to see the light, I imagined it in my mind’s eye and moved stridently toward it. With Herculean effort, it felt like trying to swim through thick sludge. My arms suddenly became incredibly heavy, as if weighed down by anvils, but I still forged my way forward, ignoring my intense exhaustion.

You are almost there!
Hearing my mother’s voice in my head was all it took. I bit my lip as I concentrated solely on reaching the tiny speck of microscopic light. The weights on my arms and legs were now excruciating, but I didn’t care. Throwing whatever strength I still possessed into my fight, I refused to fail. This was a fight I had to win. My entire future depended upon it.

When I opened my eyes again, I was surrounded by light, just as when I first saw my mother. I blinked and found myself staring up at Knight.

“Dulcie?” he asked as a tentative smile illuminated his tear-stained face. He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe I was alive, as if he thought he was just imagining me. “Dulce?” he repeated.

The sudden heaviness I felt gave me cause for pause. It was so different from the buoyancy of my spirit, which I experienced earlier. I was speechless for a few seconds, and could only look up at the Loki I loved with all my being. I smiled.

“I … I don’t understand how you,” he started, shaking his head as if the reasons really didn’t matter. He pulled me up to him and enveloped me in his large arms. I could hear the acceleration of his heartbeat, and the warmth of his body made me want to close my eyes and just absorb his heat. He pulled away from me, but continued to hold me in his arms. He just stared down at me as if half expecting me to vanish.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered, his voice pained and his eyes glassy. “I thought I’d lost you and the agony was so terrible, I didn’t think I could go on.” He took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to go on without you.”

“I’m here now,” I managed, still finding it difficult to speak. Tears leaked from my eyes and tickled me as they trailed into my hair.

He held me to him again and I relished the feel of his soft hair as it brushed my cheeks. I inhaled deeply, feeling suddenly drunk on the scent that was so uniquely his. He pulled away from me and just smiled down at me. “I love you, Dulcie.”

I felt myself beaming as a bright light just behind Knight’s head arrested my attention. It was maybe the size of a small plate and glowed incredibly brightly before it simply disappeared into nothing. 

Thank you, Mom,
I thought to myself before I brought my gaze back to Knight’s stunning sapphire eyes.

“I love you,” I whispered and then closed my eyes as he kissed my lips.

FIFTEEN

Three hours later, I felt a block away from as good as new. Maybe two blocks away. Yes, I was exhausted, mentally and physically, and my lower back ached like an SOB, but at least,
I was alive
. And being alive made me want to celebrate. As to why I was alive, I had no clue. It wasn’t within the realm of fairy magic to die and see your deceased mother who offers you the chance to live again, then “poof!” you’re alive. I just chalked it up to another of life’s many mysteries, the answer to which I would never know.

Even now, part of me half wondered if the whole Mom thing was a hallucination, while the other half firmly believed I had a vision of the afterlife. Either way, a sense of bittersweet contentment grew inside me, which wasn’t there before. Whether my mind fabricated her or she actually came to me was beside the point. All that really mattered was that I could finally make peace with my emotions. My former feelings of anger, depression and abandonment at losing my mother were all stripped from me.

The other situation which gave me an inordinate sense of pride, accomplishment and relief was that we defeated my father. The Resistance prevailed and the time for a new Netherworld order was currently underway. That single feeling, in and of itself, was enough to put the wind back into my sails.

Speaking of my father, we managed to capture all of his remaining thugs, along with the few Netherworld Guard soldiers who happened to still be on my father’s estate. Afterwards, we secured them in the holding cells of my father’s dungeon, intent on delivering them to a longer term prison in the near future.

Meanwhile, Knight phoned Caressa and informed her she was now officially the Head of the Netherworld. In order to ensure her safety, Knight arranged for fifty of our remaining soldiers to travel to Caressa, lest she become the victim of an assassination attempt. She, however, assured Knight that there were Netherworld Guard forces under her command who weren’t corrupt. And she would be quick to instruct this loyal Guard to fan out and infiltrate the various bases throughout the Netherworld, informing everyone of the new order. Anyone who questioned or defied her authority would be instantly arrested with no questions asked.

“Dulce, maybe you should rest for a little while?” Knight suggested as he glanced over at me with concern knitting his brows. After agreeing to use Willoughby House as our ad hoc base, we turned to the enormous task of rallying the rest of our troops, triaging the wounded from the dead from the unharmed.

Knight sat behind an immense desk in the drawing room, with Sam and Erica on each side of him. The three of them examined a list of the names of our soldiers and recruits. They had the unfortunate task of notating next to each name whether that person was wounded, dead, unharmed or simply unaccounted for.

At last call, the only people from The Resistance still unaccounted for were Rachel, Fagan and Trey.

I leaned against the pane of the window seat on which I was sitting, directly across from Knight’s desk. “I’m fine,” I said with a look that warned him not to argue with me. Then I flashed Sam the same expression as soon as I saw her making “Mom” eyes at me. Usually, those eyes meant a batch of her famous chocolate chip cookies, but now all they said was that I should go to bed and rest. And for me, that was
no bueno
.

Knight glanced at Sam who looked back at him, both of them wearing the expression of “gotta love her but she’s stubborn as hell.” Turning his indescribably handsome face back toward me, he smiled as he stood up and walked around the desk. He motioned for me to bend down so he could check the bandage he’d affixed to my lower back. I leaned forward, groaning involuntarily, but allowed him to play nurse.

“Looks good,” he announced before fluffing the pillow behind me. He was careful to avoid my sore side as he helped me get comfy again. Since my gunshot wound, my wings hadn’t flapped once. I actually hoped the bullet might have severed whatever was telling my wings to go Tasmanian Devil all the time. But maybe that was too much to hope for.

“Is Quill conscious yet?” I asked. After my father died, our soldiers quickly removed Quill from the dungeon of Willoughby House. And just as my father mentioned earlier in the library, Quill wasn’t dead. He was merely in a trance, a victim of the warlock’s magic. Sam did her best to break the warlock’s spell and later informed us that Quill would be fine. He just needed to sleep it off.

Knight nodded with a sigh. “Quillan is fine, Dulce,” he said, but added hurriedly, “however, you are in no shape to see him. So get that thought out of your mind until your health improves substantially.”

I frowned at him, but felt a burning sensation as I shifted and my lower back demonstrated his prognosis. Honestly, I doubted if I could have walked the distance to the doorway, let alone to wherever Quill was recuperating.

“I second that!” Dia called out. She walked through the drawing room entry, her hands on her hips while her neck moved in that diva way, which meant I better not argue with her. “Girl, you need ta take care of yourself, you hear me?”

Luckily, our soldiers had been able to locate Dia about two hours ago when they started their recon missions to recover our missing soldiers. Dia wasn’t too far from Squander Valley and had about twenty soldiers with her. As for Christina, she’d managed to get in touch with us over the radio. That was maybe twenty minutes ago. Now Dia was on her way to retrieve our leader. Well, that is, Dia and the jaw-droppingly sexy man who had been by her side from the moment the two were located.

“Don’t you have someplace to go?” I grumbled, not liking the idea of one more person playing the part of advice giver. Although I knew I could put Sam and Knight off, when it came to Dia, I wasn’t so sure. 

“Seems to me that someone got shot on the wrong side of the bed, y’all,” she said with a frown, alternating her gaze between Knight, Erica and Sam before she looked back at me as her frown deepened.

Hoping to change the conversation, I drew her attention back to the sex god who stood beside her. “So are you going to introduce me to your stunningly handsome friend or what?” I groaned.

Dia eyed the man standing beside her and flashed him her huge smile, a smile which lit up her entire face as her eyes settled on his. “Oh, him,” she said dismissively. She even waved at him with indifference before pretending to examine her fingernails.

“Yeah, him!” the man threw back at her, a smile cresting his sumptuous lips as his eyes told her in no uncertain terms just what sort of carnal appetite he had for her.

Dia grinned at me. “He’s just some hot Loki I happened to pick up somewhere along the way,” she said, sighing as if it were no big deal.

“A Loki?” I asked with a smile and then looked over at Knight. He wore the same amused expression I did.

“That’s right, girl,” Dia continued, alternating her gaze between Knight and me. “I mean, there’s only so long a girl can wait, an’ that Loki (she pointed at Knight) was takin’ his sweet ass time.” Then she said to me. “This diva was gettin’ hungry!”