Pickup Styx (5 page)

Approaching my father was delicate though. Whether or not he would help depended on the approach. If he knew this had to do with Selene, there was no way we could trust anything he said. The mission needed to be important to him personally. I hadn’t mentioned my intentions to Selene before she headed to her cousin’s bar to meet with the necromancer. Given their history, it was best not to involve her. She wouldn’t trust anything she knew came from him—not that I could blame her. He had tried to kill her. However, he’d also been the most powerful man among the fae for centuries. He would have the answers I needed.

I sank into the leather chair in my office, weary. My father cared about me. I was certain of that, but was I certain enough to bet Selene’s life on it? I did take the crown from him—

Katrina burst through the door in a flurry of human emotion that made me blink. It was no wonder humans had such short lives.

“You can’t let her go,” she said, brushing a piece of dark hair out of her eye.

“She has to go.”

“No. I don’t accept that and neither should you.” She shook her head, hands perched on her hips. Sebastian slipped into the room behind her, stoic as ever. “Have you read about the Underworld? That’s pretty much a nice way of saying Hell, isn’t it? There has to be another way. No one could survive that stuff.”

“Would you rather she die permanently in a week’s time?”

Katrina’s brows pulled together and she swallowed several times. I knew exactly what she was going through. I had been through this same argument in my mind more times than I cared to count. It always ended the same way. Selene had to go.

“It might be for the best,” Sebastian said.

His words took a second to register. I closed my mouth and looked at him. Katrina slapped the side of his face, hard. Then she burst into tears and left the room. Sebastian didn’t follow her.

His fingers drifted up to the red hand print on his cheek as if he couldn’t believe she’d hit him. He shook his head and looked at me. “I read the same pages she read. I don’t know how Selene can do it. I am still not sure where Charon is located. Every text, every map has Styx in a different location. Sometimes it marks the entrance to the Underworld. Other times, it separates the Underworld from Hell. If she has to go through it, then…” He shook his head.

“So you want her to give up and die?”

“Of course I don’t want Selene to die. I would never want that, but it would be more humane. We don’t even know what the pole can do or why they want it. Doesn’t that bother you? She could be bringing anything back here. ” Sebastian shifted. “And even if she somehow succeeds, there’s no saying that
your
Selene would come back. The Underworld is designed to work off the sins of those who enter it. I don’t know exactly what will happen to her, but you can be assured it will be designed to test her past the breaking point.”

“She survived being a changeling, she survived a curse that should have killed her, and she has survived Jaron. Selene is stronger than she looks.”

“You’re just like your father.”

I glared at him. “If I were like my father, you wouldn’t be here.”

He took my veiled death threat in stride. “You are too stubborn to listen to what anyone has to say. Do you remember what the kingdom was like before your mother died?”

I shook my head. What did my mother have to do with anything?

“Well, I do. After she died, your father became obsessed with protecting what he loved to the detriment of kingdom and everything else around him. He has passed that trait to you. The end of keeping Selene alive does not justify any means to get there, but you are too damn stubborn to listen to me. Maybe your love story is a short one. Did you ever think of that? You cannot tie yourself up in so many knots with Selene that they cannot be undone.”

“And what does any of this have to do with Selene?”

He sighed, some of the fight draining from him. “You need to prepare yourself. There is a very good likelihood she will die. You cannot fall apart like your father did. We need you.”

“Careful, Sebastian,” I warned. I was in no mood to take advice from traitors. “I still haven’t decided what to do with you.”

He folded his hands behind his back—his usual stance. “I know things haven’t been the same between us, but I do want what is best for the kingdom. I always have. I hope you can trust that.”

“Wanting what you think is best and being willing to do what I think is best are two different things.”

Sebastian met my eyes directly. “The choices I made were for both of you. I enabled what neither of you could do on your own. You could never have given her up nor could she have left you. Yes, I helped Selene maneuver you into a position where you were forced to act, but it was the only way to help you get past your own emotional barriers against a change that was inevitable. You father had clouded your judgment.”

“You can weave whatever tale around it you want. Betrayal is betrayal.”

“Ensuring you and Selene could be together is betrayal?” He raised an eyebrow. “Yet now she is the most important thing in your life? You can’t have it both ways.”

I didn’t have time for this argument with Sebastian, but my simmering resentment wouldn’t let me walk away. “How many times did you look me in the eye and lie to my face? You are not here to decide what is best for me. You are here to present me with all the options. You were supposed to be my advisor.”

“Would you have left her?”

“No.”

“Would you have taken a stand against your father?”

I glared at him. Being betrayed and made to look like a fool was bad enough. Sebastian being right was insufferable. “I guess we will never know.” I started for the door. “You were my friend, Sebastian, and I trusted you. I won’t make that mistake again.”

Massive trees towered around me, blocking out the light with their thick canopy. I hadn’t set foot in the Smaragdine Forest since the day I imprisoned my father there. It was the land of my mother’s people and the only place I trusted to hold my father. With its ancient magic, they could keep him without causing him harm or discomfort. I approached the small home that housed him. I didn’t see the guard I’d assigned in case the magic failed. A knot of worry formed below my ribs. Within ten feet of the door, still nothing happened to prevent me from approaching. I quickened my pace, my senses on high alert. Every creak, every shuffle of leaves filtered through my ears. The hum of the magic that should have been surrounding the house was missing. The mossy, rich smell of the forest didn’t betray outsiders except for me. The ground around the house hadn’t been traveled on for weeks. I opened the door to nothing. No magical kickback, no people, just silence.

“Fuck.”

I headed for the diminishing clan of forest elves who still lived here. They were the direct descendants of the high elves. Having Adan’s support, as well as being my mother’s son, I thought their loyalty couldn’t be compromised, but obviously I’d been wrong. With every step I took, my anger transformed into cool rage. Crossing the Erlking was a mistake they wouldn’t make twice.

The community was just as empty as the cabin. Everyone had disappeared. I searched through the homes. Meals were half eaten, letters half written, chores stopped in the middle of completion. An eerie silence hung over the area. No fresh tracks marked the ground. Just like the cabin.

I went back to the castle and got Sebastian because, despite our personal differences, he was still my second-in-command, and right now, with everything going on, I couldn’t take the risk of bringing in anything new. He inspected the town the same way I had, but I hoped his military eye could catch something I’d missed. Any clue to what we were dealing with. He came back, calm but with a tick of worry in his eye.

“It had to be magic,” he said.

“But there is no trace of it.”

“I know.” He nodded. “But it had to be. Your father is gone too?”

My head snapped in his direction. “How do you know my father was here?”

“Because I know you. And why else would you be here? You were going to ask him for help.”

“He is missing as well,” I said, not trusting Sebastian’s reasoning but curious where he would go with this. I had known Sebastian my whole life. I had trouble believing he would kill an entire community, no matter what he thought it would accomplish, but I couldn’t completely discount the idea either. He’d deceived me for years. Maybe I didn’t know him at all.

“Could he be behind this?”

“He couldn’t have done it on his own.”

“If your father is free. Selene is in danger. We should tell her.”

“She has enough to worry about. I want her focused on coming back from the Underworld.” I glanced around again. “There aren’t even crickets chirping. What kind of magic can do this?”

“Old, dark magic. But I don’t feel it. Not even a trace.”

“They could have left, moved for some reason.” It wasn’t likely. Why would they move without taking any supplies or their things? My gut said this was an attack, but I clung to the hope that there was another possibility.

He nodded. “It’s possible. We can’t set up a search without causing a panic. Can you find any tracks?”

Circling the perimeter, I found nothing. If anyone left from here, they must have transported.

“This is bad, Cheney. The people are already upset about Selene. If they find out an entire community disappeared and you don’t find them or bring their killer to justice in a very public fashion, they will lose faith in you.”

“I know. We’ll find out what happened.”

“You should make an announcement and get in front of this. Let people know you are looking into it. If you wait and they find out on their own, it will look like you either didn’t care or were covering something up.”

“I don’t want that kind of attention drawn to my father. Not yet. Not until we know what’s going on.”

“You still think he will change his mind and come around to what you are doing with Selene, don’t you?”

“We should go back and see what sort of spell could do this. It might narrow down suspects.”

Sebastian and I headed to the Elven Archive, though we had no idea what we were looking for. It was like trying to isolate a single drop of water in an ocean, but somewhere in the ancient history of the elves, something like this had to have happened before. After hours of unsuccessful searching, I leaned back in my chair with my eyes closed. Selene would be leaving soon and I might never see her again. I didn’t want to spend all of my time seeking something I may never find.

“I could ask Adan.”

Sebastian looked up. “Do you trust him not to tell others?”

That was a good question. I trusted Adan, but would he keep this from the other high elves and give me time to figure things out? I didn’t know, but I also didn’t have much choice. “I trust that he will have the answer we need and asking him will waste less time—time we already don’t have.”

Sebastian tossed a scroll to me. “That’s your choice. I found this.”

I unrolled the tanned hide to reveal a crude map spotted with what I could only assume was blood. I looked closer. The Underworld. Every bit as daunting as Katrina and Sebastian had made it sound. Desert and mountains, physically and emotionally taxing.

“Are you sure this is accurate?”

“Of course not. How can anything about the Underworld be verified?”