Alasdair didn’t say anything. He just smiled up at Deirdre, surrounded by the people who loved her, and his smile seemed to glow.
Deirdre’s cheeks were hot. “You’re wrong. You’re all so wrong. I’ve been getting into fights, killing people, doing things that are… No.” She shook her head, again and again. “I don’t deserve it.”
“You died saving someone who wanted you dead,” Gage said. “If that’s not heroism, I don’t know what is.”
“She is very principled,” Marion agreed, looking over her shoulder again. “She reminds me a little bit of you—but much nicer, most of the time.” She wasn’t speaking as the Voice now, but addressing the Godslayer directly.
“My girl doesn’t need to be nice,” Alasdair said. “There’s no room for being nice when things need to get done.”
“And a lot of things still need to get done,” Marion said.
Fear lodged in Deirdre’s gut. “You’re not wrong, but I don’t know that I’m the right person to do it. I need help.” She reached for Gage again.
He stepped out of her reach. “I don’t want to go back—I can’t wait to be rerolled into something new, where I don’t have to be afraid of my own anger.”
“They all need to move on,” Marion said. “I’ll make sure they all get to be reborn, even those the sluagh took. If you want to talk about mistakes, the sluagh is the biggest of them all. But it would be an even bigger mistake not to fix it—and to end Deirdre’s lives here.” She directed that last statement directly at the sun.
The voice that responded said,
Fuck it. Whatever. Just this once
. It might have been a female voice, or a male voice, or both. It filled Deirdre’s marrow and vibrated through the entirety of her soul.
Don’t make a habit out of asking for favors.
Marion’s tinkling laugh danced through the afterlife.
The sun crackled as it bore down on her.
It was only a few inches away, right above her head. The grass was going to catch fire. They were all going to burn, remade into new lives.
Everyone but Deirdre.
“I want to go with you,” she said. She wasn’t sure if she was speaking to Gage, to her father, to Niamh—to all of them. “I don’t want to go back alone.”
“You won’t be.” Gage kissed her again, more briefly than before. He cupped her cheek in his hand. “Someone like you, Deirdre…you’ll never be alone for very long, so long as you keep hanging on to what matters. And I know you will.”
The brambles grew around her legs. They crawled up her hips, and the thorns didn’t pinch at all.
The blackberry bushes pulled her away from the sun as everyone she cared about was taken away. She fell into the trembling thorns, thrashing in a wind she couldn’t hear, and Deirdre screamed into the sun. She screamed and she screamed and then it was all over.
An ending.
A new life.
Again.
“Wake up. You have a visitor.”
Everton Stark kept his eyes closed.
He wasn’t asleep, but he also wasn’t interested in anyone who might be visiting him.
In the weeks that he’d spent incarcerated, he’d had a lot of visitors from the Office of Preternatural Affairs. He had entertained the first couple of them. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do in the detention center. But it turned out that being antagonized by OPA officials was far more infuriating than being merely bored, and now he rejected everyone who came to his cell.
There wasn’t much by way of entertainment in the detention center, so the boredom truly was endless. They didn’t allow Stark to enter the common areas. He couldn’t avail himself of the library, the weight room, or even the mess hall.
The fact that they had secured an enchanted muzzle on his face that prevented him from speaking, much less compelling other shifters, didn’t seem to matter.
His life had been reduced to the space between the walls of his cell.
Stark imagined that the fact he was in a typical cell rather than solitary confinement was intended to be a show of good will from Rylie Gresham—proof that she wasn’t the monster that everyone knew she was, proof that she could treat a rival Alpha well.
They weren’t going to risk treating him
too
well, though.
He wasn’t allowed to communicate with the outside world at all. He slept, he ate, he did bodyweight exercises in his cell. That was the majority of his life.
The rest of the time, Stark watched the news.
He watched as a conference held by Rylie Gresham unfolded. The coverage was near-constant and January Lazar was enjoying the attention. She relished the dramatic negotiations between the Alpha, the sidhe, the covens, and even the vampires.
Many of the sensitive details of negotiations were private, but Stark could always tell when things were going well. January acted disappointed that nothing had gone wrong.
Meanwhile, Rhiannon went to trial. That got far less coverage than the conference. It was hard to piece together what was happening with her, as it seemed that Rylie didn’t want to give the witch more publicity than necessary.
He knew when she was declared guilty, though. Guilty of killing Rylie Gresham’s Beta. Guilty of manipulating the election. Guilty of so many more things that the public would never know about.
It was infuriating to watch the news and be unable to influence it, but he couldn’t make himself stop. Any time Rylie Gresham gave a speech, or any time the cameras caught her outside the United Nations building, he was glued to the screen. Watching her every move.
Watching the people in her entourage.
Watching for
her
.
A baton rattled against the bars of his cell. “Hey! I told you to wake up! You have a visitor.”
Stark ignored the voice.
The OPA secretary had asked him multiple times to make a public statement declaring his submission to Rylie Gresham. In exchange, Stark would be given library privileges. Though access to the library would have been worth almost anything, it wasn’t worth
that.
The offer was insulting. He didn’t want to hear it again.
The guard moved away from his cell.
“Sorry, seems like he’s being stubborn. Can’t let you in.”
“But I’ve got special permission to visit him. It’s not up to the prisoner. Hey! Stark!”
The sound of a woman’s voice made his eyes fly open.
He was still in the cell where he was meant to spend the rest of his life. A metal ceiling covered in runes hung over him, marked with such elaborate magic that even he couldn’t decipher it well enough to cause damage.
The woman’s voice echoed against the metal cell.
“C’mon, let me in, Stark.”
Stark sat up, turning to face the door of the cell.
Deirdre Tombs stood on the other side of the bars. She was looking good. She had obviously been showering more often than she had as a terrorist on the run. Her clothes were new, probably purchased by Rylie Gresham: a denim skirt that hit mid-thigh, low-heeled sandals, and a snug shirt that lifted her breasts. She looked like bait for the prisoners in the detention center.
Bait for Stark.
Vidya stood behind Deirdre, offering silent support. She showed no signs of recognition when Stark looked at her. His former compatriot had no interest in him anymore. Her loyalties were clear—and those loyalties rested with Deirdre.
The OPA agent in charge of Stark for the day was trying to guide the women back through the door, making them leave the hallway, but Tombs was making a show of resisting. It was only a show. She could have incinerated him where he stood.
“He’s up,” Tombs said, pushing the agent away from her. “Now let me in.”
The agent turned to Stark. He looked surprised to see that the prisoner had actually reacted to something. Stark had been earning a reputation as stubborn.
“You want visitors?” the agent asked.
Stark’s eyes narrowed. He couldn’t respond through the enchanted muzzle.
“Trust me,” Tombs said, curling her fingers around the bars of his cell. “You want me to visit.”
Something in her tone told him that she was serious, though she was smiling and relaxed.
He drank in the sight of her, healthy and alive. The long expanse of skin on her inner forearms was smooth, unbroken. She wasn’t wearing an intake bracelet and probably hadn’t been on lethe since he’d last dosed her. The phoenix had risen from the ashes and was above all influences.
He finally nodded.
She conferred quietly with the OPA agent for a moment, and then the guard activated a rune on the wall.
The enchanted muzzle clicked.
For the first time in weeks, Stark felt the metal around his mouth loosen. It had unlocked. He peeled it off. The air stung against the itchy beard growth underneath, where he was sweaty and sore from so much exposure to silver. He worked his jaw around. It hurt. But he could speak again.
Tombs entered his cell alone, leaving Vidya outside.
“Hi,” she said.
He tossed the muzzle aside and didn’t respond.
The OPA agent shut the cell door behind Tombs.
She strolled around his cell, inspecting the runes with interest.
“Nice work they did here,” she said. “I’m pretty sure Marion invented some new magic specifically for you. No way you’re ever getting out of this.” She rapped a knuckle against the wall.
Stark folded his arms across his chest, watching her circle the cell.
Her shirt was cut low in the back to expose the pale birthmark that spanned from shoulder blades to the base of her spine. It looked like she was preparing to whip her wings out and fly away at a moment’s notice, the way that Vidya was known to do.
“You been watching the news?” Tombs asked. When he didn’t respond, she picked up his muzzle. A line formed between her eyebrows at the sting of silver on her hands. “I bet you have been watching the news a lot. And I bet you’re wondering how my job as the shifter liaison to the gaean council’s been going, huh?”
He had been wondering that, but he wasn’t going to admit it. Not to her.
Stark didn’t know what kind of relationship they had anymore. Whatever it was, they were not close enough that he could allow her to hear his thoughts. Anything could give him away.
She was allied with Rylie Gresham.
They were not Alpha mates. They weren’t even friends.
Stark wouldn’t show any weakness in front of her.
“Well, you should know that I turned the liaison job down,” Tombs said. “I don’t want to work for the system. It’s still broken. And, honestly, I’m not patient enough to sit around through months of bureaucracy when I know that people are still suffering out there. We still need change.
Real
change. I’m not going to wait for Rylie, Fritz, and all those other people to make it happen. I can do a lot more to help on my own.”
“Like what?” Stark asked, finally speaking.
A grin blossomed over her face. “Breaking down the bad schools and getting the kids out. Through legal methods, of course. Finding them new guardians that I know are safe. And I’m working on organizing smaller packs—a little civil disobedience to try to get power distributed more widely throughout the shifter population, even while we get ready for another big election in five years. Lots of stuff like that. Got tons of work to do.”
“It sounds like difficult work,” Stark said.
“I’ve got help.” She lowered her voice. “And financing from a few sympathetic souls. There are a lot of people looking for a new leader to follow, now that you’re gone.”
Tombs must have tapped into his network of contacts. Lucifer was probably helping her. Maybe even using profits from the sales of lethe.
“If you’re looking for an apology for what I did…”
“Nope,” she said. “I don’t need you to act all contrite. I’m sure you feel like a big enough jackass for almost getting your daughters eaten by the sluagh. I also don’t expect you to thank me for saving them, but you are welcome, for the record.”
He had never seen her in such a good mood before. He liked it—this happiness, this attitude. Stark gave a small, grudging smile. “It’s nice to see you, Tombs.”
“I’m pretty happy to see you too, boss man.”
“I didn’t say I was happy. I’m in here because of you. I’d rather be dead.”
“I know,” Tombs said. “Which is why I lobbied to have you detained instead of executed. It makes me feel good to think of you rotting in a cell, after everything you’ve done. You don’t deserve a fast death.”
Stark stepped forward an inch. His chest brushed hers. “I could kill you before the agent opens the cell.”
“Nice to know some things never change,” Tombs said. “You still think death threats will drop my panties.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Won’t they?”
“Not gonna happen, Stark. This visit isn’t conjugal. Anyway, you can kill me all you want, but I’d be back to annoy the hell out of you in a few hours. Where’s the fun in that?”
Gods, but the woman was infuriating.
“What do you want from this visit?” Stark asked. “Is it just to gloat?”
“Actually, I’ve got an update from the girls. I thought you’d like to know that they’re attending a school overseas. They’re doing really well. They’re very popular in school. Nobody has any idea who they are, so they’re not dealing with the stigma of the Stark name.”
“Where do they live that nobody has heard of me?”
“Somewhere hidden,” Tombs said. “But don’t worry about them. They’re safe.”
“How do you know that, if they’re hidden?” he asked.
Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled. “Your brother’s looking after them. He keeps in touch, and he lets me visit whenever I want—which I do, a lot.”
He was startled. “You’re helping Sascha raise my daughters?”
“Someone has to keep the Starks out of trouble.”
The warmth that unfolded in him was unexpected, but not entirely unpleasant.
Stark had wanted Tombs for his mate. They may not have ended up Alphas together, nor had they ever mated, but she was still taking care of his children.
It was a satisfying outcome. He liked the thought of his daughters with her.
“Are they giving you trouble?” Stark asked. His voice came out hoarse.
“Me? You kidding?” She pushed his chest lightly. “I dealt with you for months. Your girls are angels in comparison. Well, a lot better than angels.”