Night's End (27 page)

“Cicely . . . pardon me . . .
Your Majesty
. So we are going hunting together, are we?” The jibe hit, but even though it pissed me off, we had more important things to focus on. “Your friends have filled me in on your plans, while you were
occupied
.” Lannan could imply a world of innuendo with a single word, and the whisper of disrespect behind the word promised everything and yet nothing.

His voice brushed over me like a rough shirt, one that irritated just enough to arouse, but not enough to hurt.

Beside me, Grieve bristled, but I quietly touched his arm and he stood down. “Now that you're here, we should start out.”

Lannan sobered. “First, word from the outside.” His abrupt change of mood made me nervous.

I motioned for everyone to sit down. “What's going on?”

“The electricity? Several major transformers have gone down—nobody knows why—and Seattle is black. And from what I've been able to ascertain, the Shadow Hunters are moving into the city.”

Fuck. A major city, dead in the water. Seattle never fared well in snow anyway—a few inches of snow was enough to grind the wheels to a halt. A blizzard was bad enough, but now without power, and with an influx of predators? Things were going to get very bloody, very fast.

“The Consortium is over there. Can they do anything?” I glanced at Ysandra. “What will they do?”

She paled. “Whatever they can. They may be able to take the city into a magical lockdown, but it will take everything they have, and they have to know what's going on in the first place in order to plan out anything.” Turning to Lannan, she asked, “Is there any way you can send someone in to contact them?”

He considered her question for a moment, then a slow smile crept across his face. “I already did, Ysandra. When we realized what was happening, I contacted some of our people over there and asked them to get the fuck
into
Dodge and take care of alerting everybody who had any possibility of helping. It's up to them now—the cell towers over there went down shortly after. We have no idea what the fuck's going down now.”

“If Seattle falls . . . If she turns all the magic-born there to help her . . .” Just like Myst had turned Heather. The Vampiric Fae could turn the magic-born and control them, and they would retain their powers while under Myst's control. A city that had several thousand of the magic-born in it? Taken by the Mistress of Mayhem? Her armies would be unstoppable. And what if she managed to overpower the Consortium? With the best of the best under her control? The world really
could
fall to her rule.

“Exactly. But that's not all of the news.” Lannan was looking bleaker by the moment.

“There's more? Worse?”

He nodded. “You know the Indigo Court has pockets of Shadow Hunters tucked all over the place, right? They've had thousands of years to breed.”

I didn't want to hear this. I knew that I didn't want to hear this.

Ysandra pushed to her feet. “They're launching unified attacks, aren't they? If so here—on several cities at once—why not in several areas of the country at once?”

Lannan gave her a nod as the silence in the room thickened. “Not just several areas of the country, but several countries. Several of the other regional Fae Courts are under siege. They are fighting to their best—”

“And so the long winter extends her grasp.” Grieve stood. “We'd best be off, then. The sooner we discover her heartstone, the sooner we can end this.”

Lannan inclined his head to me. For once, there was no sense of animosity between the two men. “We await your lead, Winter.”

I inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly. Turning to the others, I scanned their faces, one by one. “So, we are here at last. Ysandra, you and your crew will surround us with protection for as long as you can. Luna, you and Dorthea send the dead through the town to take down Myst's forces. Rhia—you and Chatter will oversee our forces heading out through New Forest. Peyton, work with the guards here to watch the house.”

And then it hit me. This might be it—anything could happen through the night, for good or ill. We might not all come through tonight, and tomorrow either Myst would stand triumphant, or we would have destroyed her heartstone. Because if she won this battle, chances were she'd win the war.

By the looks on the others' faces, they knew this, too. We stood, staring at one another in silence for the better part of a minute.

And then, slowly, Rhiannon reached out and took Chatter's hand. He took Peyton's, then Ysandra, Luna, Lannan, Kaylin, Grieve, and I joined in. As I took Rhia's hand, completing the circle, we stood in silence. I wasn't sure who started it, but a line of energy began to snake through our fingers, linking us strong, linking our hopes, our goals, our fears, and our prayers.

As the energy increased, swishing through us like a whirling snake, Ulean joined in, and for a brief moment, we were one—linked by a common goal, linked by our pasts, linked by our hopes for the future. With a swift
whoosh
, the energy spiraled up into a cone, and I realized I was holding the tether. I focused it on Myst—on driving the force toward her heart. As it peaked, with a sharp break, I cut it loose and let it fly.

Dizzy, I stumbled back, as did the others, but then Lannan stepped away while the rest of us cheered and cried and held one another.

I held Rhia by the shoulders. “You know I love you.”

She smiled, the summer sun beaming through her eyes. “I know. We'll win this, Cicely. We'll win this because we have to win this. And then . . . the future will take care of itself. You and I will guide the Barrows into a new day.” She leaned in, gave me a kiss on the cheek. “We are fire and ice.”

“Amber and jet.”

“Summer and Winter.”

As I slowly pulled away, I turned to Chatter. “Take care of my cousin . . . just in case I don't make it back.”

He gave me a soft smile, so strong in himself compared to the Chatter I'd first met a few weeks ago. “No need, Lady Cicely. You will be here to do that yourself.”

“I hope so.” Sucking in a deep breath, I called for my owl cloak. “We'd best go now.”

Ulean swept in close to me, and Grieve took my left side. Hunter and Lannan guarded the right. The guards—nine total, including three vampires, and six of my men led by Check and Fearless—surrounded us. They were helping Kaylin, who couldn't walk atop the snow. The vampires were light on their feet when they wanted to be—and so we headed out the door, into the blinding storm, silently moving into the swirl of white that had become the night.

The shadow of the Golden Wood helped protect us from the storm to some extent, though the drifting dunes left our world a barren landscape of white mounds against the black shadows of the trees. The silence was punctuated only by the hiss of the falling snow, and the scent of ozone crackled in the air. I caught my breath—the temperature was icy, but it didn't bother me, not now.

Whatever animals made the woodland their home were gone—in hiding from the storm or hunted down by the Shadow Hunters, and the forest felt empty, like an abandoned house; but the abandoned house was a trap and we knew it. The woods weren't really empty. Myst's forces were out here: Shadow Hunters and snow weavers and, no doubt, goblin dogs. She still managed to control some of the Ice Elementals, too, the ones who hadn't fallen out from her spell and under my rule. So the forest wasn't empty by any means, but full with our enemies.

Ulean swept ahead of us to help keep us on track, since the path was buried far beneath the snow and landmarks were almost impossible to read. As we silently passed through the trees, I fell into a light trance, moving forward on autopilot, as my thoughts drifted into the slipstream. And then . . . I was standing on a hill, in another snowstorm, and once again, I was running from Myst.

The hilltop was exposed under the night sky, but the storm was raging around me, and I anxiously looked for Shy. He was here somewhere, waiting for me. We'd made the agreement some time ago. There was no choice—no other option, and we had to go through with it now that we'd both run from our people.

And then, stepping out from a huckleberry bush that was covered by the snow, he came. Shy, my love. My one connection with Summer. This was the man who kept me from spiraling into the depths out from which I'd dug myself. My heart leaped, and I rushed forward, into his arms, as he wrapped me in his embrace and kissed me.

“Cherish, my love, you were afraid I'd change my mind?”

I didn't want to admit it, but the fear had been there. We were from such disparate backgrounds, and our natures were an antithesis of the other. He was the morning light, and green grass, white wine on a summer night, wanting to play and lounge in the fields. And I was the night sky during winter, blood on snow, ready for battle, willing to destroy and maim. My hunger was fierce, and the drive to carve through flesh ran deep in my veins, but somehow, this son of the Summer had caught me in his web, and I had lost my heart to him.

I kissed him, edging his lips with my teeth—the needle-sharp edges severing skin till drops of blood appeared on them. Licking them off, I let him slide his tongue in my mouth, probing deep, unafraid of me. And that was one thing I loved most—he didn't fear me. He accepted me, all of me, my bloodlust included. And that lack of fear had become an aphrodisiac. He danced with death and loved it, and in turn, he had sparked in me emotions I never knew I possessed, and I'd offered him my heart on a silver platter.

“Oh, my Cherish. Are you ready? We can't linger long here. They'll be after us soon.” Shy's eyes were haunted. It had taken everything he had to turn his back on his people. I was far more fickle; it was easier for me because cunning and deceit were born and bred into my blood, but I understood what this meant for him and that made me love him all the more.

“I'm ready. Whatever happens, Shy, we'll face it together. Whatever the future brings, we'll walk into it side by side.”

And with that we were off and running.

It took two days of us racing through the forests for the slipstream to fill with whispers that we were being followed.

I'd hoped for a longer head start. Sometimes I was gone for a week at a time from the Barrow, and Myst, my mother, knew that I would return. But she had been watching me closely as of late. A few weeks back, she stumbled on my secret and ordered me to end the relationship. To be exact, her orders were harsher than that. She'd demanded I bring Shy's heart to her; that I destroy what I loved the most to prove my allegiance to the Indigo Court, and to her.

And Shy had been ordered to put an arrow through my heart.

The Court of Rivers and Rushes had known about my people for some time now. They had been watching us as we swept through and hunted the yummanii who inhabited the area. We were cautious in our culling. You just don't decimate a herd, or you destroy your easiest food supply. So we took animals and Cambyra Fae to supplement our diet. But after years of hiding out, we came to the notice of the Summer Queen, and she'd been quick to alert the Winter Court.

Which meant the Indigo Court was preparing to go into hiding. Before, when it became necessary to escape before we attracted too much notice, my mother had left a few of our people to populate a small nest in the area as we vacated. And so we managed to create a network through this new land that had become our home not so very long ago. We had pockets of allies strung across the continent, left behind as we worked our way northwest across this massive spread of land we'd discovered when the Great Fae Courts had forced us to take to the ocean and leave our old world behind.

And now we'd reached the edge of the ocean. But we still weren't strong enough to take the locals, so my mother had planned our next move—to retreat into the shadows and build our strength. But she wasn't about to let me keep any ties to the Summer Court. My love for Shy was a weakness.