"Arianna, please," Trixie said.

I frowned at the queen. I didn't need a reminder of the danger my presence posed to Trixie. "I believe you mentioned something about needing my a.s.sistance."

Arianna chuckled lightly, a soft, dancing sound that somehow pushed aside my anger and growing tension. She was smiling again. Some of the earlier cold I had seen in her had melted away, making her look even younger and lovelier. How had her husband so easily tossed her aside? f.u.c.king moron.

"Then again . . . maybe he isn't such a bad choice."

"You can't have him," Trixie warned.

"I know. For better or worse, my heart has made its choice," she said absently, then turned her attention back to me, her expression growing serious. "As I'm sure you've been made aware, the reason my husband and I parted was that we couldn't have children. The royal line needs to be protected, or we will face a dire threat from both the Winter Court and the Svartalfar. That is part of the problem. The larger issue is that most of our people are having trouble bearing children, and we've not been able to determine why or even trace it back to see if it is an issue with the mother or the father."

Resting my elbow on the arm of the chair, I leaned my temple against my fist, trying to quiet the knots twisting in my stomach. "And you want me to help you conceive in hopes that it will result in helping the rest of your people as well?"

"It would go a long way to healing the wound caused by the Towers," she added.

I was out of my depth with this, but the request wasn't unexpected. Sure, I knew how babies were made. I was quite fond of that act and firmly believed in regular practice, particularly with Trixie, but all the other stuff that went into conception and whether it worked I didn't know. With magical creatures like elves, I had a feeling a little more went into it than introducing a h.o.r.n.y sperm to a s.e.xy egg.

"I'm guessing that you tried the usual route of potions, prayers, and special herbs," I hedged while I mentally dug through the knowledge I did have about childbearing.

"No, my husband and I didn't try everything as he wasn't interested once the difficulty was discovered," Arianna said stiffly, but then added, a little more softly: "But others have and they still are childless."

My eyes fell shut, blocking out the look of worry on her face. "I need some time to think, to research. I don't think this is something I can fix with a quick spell and I'm not interested in being there to hold together a spell while you try to make a baby."

Arianna gave me a smile that had me blushing a bit and Trixie clearing her throat. Yeah, didn't need that mental image.

"If you've got any notes or research your own people have done, anything listing what has changed since you could have kids, it would help."

The queen turned and reached behind a large pillow on the bench, pulling out a white book that she handed to Trixie. "It contains all the notes we've made. The problem started shortly before the Great War. It's written in elvish, so Rowena will need to translate."

I nodded. I spoke several languages, both human and other. The only words I knew in elvish were what Trixie occasionally shouted during s.e.x and I didn't think I'd find those in the queen's little white book.

"I need some time."

"Unfortunately, that's something I can't give you," Arianna said, her tone once again becoming cold and brisk. "It's now early September. In a few weeks, it will be the fall equinox. I will need to be with child before then so the baby can be born with the summer. My husband knows that I am meeting with Rowena. If something is not arranged soon, I am quite sure that he will make another grab for her."

"Fine. A few days, then. Leave us with some way of contacting you in case we find something," I said with an irritated wave of my hand. "I'm a.s.suming that you have a . . . consort chosen should I come up with a solution."

"I will have someone." She was sitting up so straight that her spine could have been made of steel.

At the same time I slouched a little lower in my chair, balancing my left ankle on my knee as I turned over the situation. It didn't feel fixed to me, not completely.

"If I come up with a solution, your problem is solved, but I'm not sure Trixie's has been. Say you conceive with your consort. What happens to your husband?" I asked.

Arianna frowned a little. "He will remain king, but his line within the royal family will end. My consort's family will rise in standing."

"Would he be free to pursue a consort?"

"Yes."

"So you would have a child, and he would be able to chase Trixie." I shook my head. "I need a better fix."

Trixie sighed. "Short of his death, I don't see how we are going to get him to stop." Her head then snapped up and she glared at me. "Not an option."

I threw up my hands. "I didn't even consider it." Her frown deepened and I dropped my head back. "Okay, I didn't consider it for long. I'm trying not to destroy the Summer Court."

"There is one way," Arianna said softly, drawing my eyes back to her face. She hesitated as if she didn't want to say the words out loud. "If he was the father of the child, then he couldn't have a consort. We would be bound to each other again."

"You would take him back?" Trixie asked before I could.

"I would if I could be given some kind of a.s.surance that his gaze won't wander. I know he doesn't love me and I can accept that, but I need the a.s.surance that he will remain faithful to me."

Trixie looked expectantly over at me and I shrugged. "We could tattoo them with the infinity heart, binding them to each other." I looked over at the queen, whose delicate eyebrows had drawn together in question. "I've only ever used it on goblins, but it's a type of binding tattoo. It doesn't create feelings of love, but more of a deeper sense of connection and a need for unity. You'd both have to be tattooed for it to work. Just a small one on the interior of your left wrist."

"And he won't stray?"

"The thought would never cross his mind. Of course, you couldn't either."

"Very good. You will make it so that we can conceive and then you will tattoo us so that he will no longer pursue Rowena," the queen said with her regal tone as if she was handing down a royal decree.

"And when all this is accomplished, Trixie can come back to her people without fear? She can stay with the Summer Court and then would be free to return to her other life if she wanted?"

Arianna nodded with a small smile. "She would be welcomed back. She should have no fear of being hara.s.sed or fear reprisals for all that has happened."

Sitting up, I sighed with relief as I reached across and squeezed Trixie's hand. That was what I was hoping for. I wanted her to no longer feel like she had to hide when she was in Low Town, but I also wanted her to be able to return to her people if there was trouble in my world. I looked up to find Trixie smiling at me, but there was something in her eyes, a question that made me wonder if she saw the direction of my thoughts as well.

I looked back at the queen, who appeared to be relieved by all this as well. "We need to be going. I've got a lot to work on. But before I go, I would like to pa.s.s along this warning." I paused, licking my lips as I sorted through the information that I had. Arianna needed to know something, but I didn't want to start a panic. "I'm sure you're aware of yesterday's destruction of Indianapolis." Arianna had gone completely still to the point that I doubted that she breathed. "There is much I don't know, and what I do know I am not comfortable talking about yet. There is a belief within the Towers that secret information has been stolen and the Towers feel threatened. There is also a belief that an elf is the culprit."

Arianna became deathly pale before my eyes and I heard Trixie gasp as her hand tightened around my fingers.

"We've done nothing-" Arianna started, but I held up my hand, stopping her.

"I know that. But we both know that the Towers aren't going to concern themselves with details like finding the ident.i.ty of the true culprits, whether they are members of the Winter or Summer Courts, or if this is a lone Svartalfar acting in his own interests. For now, they are searching for the real culprit, but if the search stretches too long, if panic sets in, they will start killing indiscriminately."

"What do you advise?" Arianna asked. The panic was gone from her voice, but she was still frighteningly pale as she clenched her hands in her lap.

"Stay calm and stay hidden as best you can. If you disappear completely, they will take that as a sign of guilt and will search in earnest for you. Until this is settled, stay alert and be ready to act at a moment's notice." I shook my head, feeling like s.h.i.t. Her people were already struggling to survive, as they fought to simply bear children, and now I was dumping this in her lap. "I'm sorry that I can't help you more."

"You have already helped my people more than any other warlock by simply pa.s.sing along this warning. I thank you."

I looked over at Trixie, who seemed to be digesting this information. "Do you have a way of contacting her quickly and safely?"

She gave a jerky nod. "Yes, I can contact her."

"Good." I pushed to my feet, pulling Trixie up with me. "We'll be in contact. I will try to find something as quickly as possible, but as you can see, I've got my hands full."

"I understand," Arianna said, taking a deep breath as she seemed to rein in the last of her emotions. "Gage, again I am sorry. I have sorely misjudged you."

I frowned down at her, taking in her quiet strength and elegant poise. "You're not the first, but you are one of the first to apologize, and I appreciate that." I started to turn away with Trixie, but stopped to look at the queen. "And for what it's worth, he doesn't f.u.c.king deserve you."

Arianna smiled at me while Trixie laughed. "Maybe so," the queen agreed coyly. "But nevertheless, he is a good king and cares for his people. If he had known there was a warlock who might help our people bear children, then he would have already spoken with you. Maybe not for the two of us, but definitely for our people."

With a smile, I gave Arianna another of my stiff and awkward bows before ushering Trixie out of the gazebo, her body pressed close to my side. She was safe for now from some of the Summer Court elves, but I needed to feel her close. The end of that conversation had only reminded me that while I was one step closer to helping her, we were also one step closer to the whole world going to h.e.l.l in a big f.u.c.king handbasket.

13.

AS WE STARTED across the parking lot toward her car, I could feel Trixie relaxing beside me. She had met with the queen of the Summer Court and walked away unscathed. What she felt like now, after running for nearly three hundred years, I couldn't imagine. Of course, we weren't out of the woods yet, but at least we were headed in the right direction.

"Are you going to ever tell me what Sofie told you about the Towers and Indianapolis?" Trixie asked in a deceptively calm voice. I cringed. I had known this question was coming but I'd been hoping that she would stay focused on her problem with the elves for a little longer. Did we need to heap the Towers on her list of things to worry about?

"What about that conversation we had about me not telling you everything because I wanted to protect you?" I said, flashing a hopeful smile at her.

She didn't smile back. "I said I understood your reasoning, not that I accepted it. You need to tell me what's going on."

I sighed. "I know." Pulling her close, I leaned over and brushed a kiss against the side of her head. There was a part of me that wanted to tell her. I wanted to pull open my chest and spill out everything that I had been hiding from the world all these years, but that desire to bare my soul was outweighed by a fear that the truth would send her screaming from me, as any smart person would.

"Well, isn't this a surprise!" declared a c.o.c.ky voice from behind us. Trixie and I stopped walking and turned toward the speaker. My heart lurched in my chest as my eyes fell on the warlock standing a few dozen feet away in the middle of the parking lot with his wand pointed at me. "It seems we've found the elf we were searching for, and she's strolling with the one person who would most like to see the Towers fall."

"You're insane, Billy," I called back, shoving Trixie behind me. "You've got the wrong elf and you know it. I might not like the Towers, but I wouldn't be stupid enough to try to attack them like this. It's suicide."

My mind scrambled for protective spells that would shield both Trixie and me. I didn't have my wand on me and I had dropped the stick I grabbed from Demoiselle Noire's in the gra.s.s when I returned to the park. f.u.c.k. I didn't even have a weapon. Heading to a meeting with the queen of the Summer Court armed to the teeth hadn't seemed a good way to convince her that I wasn't a threat.

"No one believed you to be particularly smart." The warlock laughed.

I ignored his taunts, focusing on drawing energy toward me. William Rosenblum was old, but not too old. Maybe in his fifties. We had had a few run-ins while I was living with Simon in the Tower. He was an arrogant p.r.i.c.k and had never thought too much of me, which I was hoping to use to my advantage.

"Trix, when I tell you to run, I want you to head straight for the woods and don't stop," I said in a low voice.

One of her hands rested on my side, her fingers tightening in my ragged T-shirt, while the other pressed the edge of the white book she was carrying into my wounded back. "I'm not leaving you." Her voice wavered with fear. A couple months ago, she attacked Simon, but then she had been lucky enough to sneak up behind the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d while he was busy attacking me. This time she was staring down the wrong end of a wand with no defense.

"You have to. I can't protect us both. Now go!" I shouted. At the same time I threw a ma.s.sive bolt of white-hot energy at Billy, sending it crashing against the shield he had barely created in time. The energy bounced off his shield and shot out, crackling through the air as it slammed into nearby trees and lampposts. Limbs crashed to the ground and sparks jumped. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Trixie running for the tree line to my left.

Billy knocked away the last of the energy with a wave of his hand and shifted his stance so that he was facing the direction in which Trixie had run. I ended the first spell and quickly wrapped energy in my hands while shifting my thoughts to a second aggressive spell. I wasn't trying to kill him. Well, at least not yet. For now, I would be content if he would keep his attention on me, giving Trixie some time to put some distance between this b.a.s.t.a.r.d and herself.

With a grunt, I whipped the second spell loose. The energy caught up the wind, sending it sc.r.a.ping along the ground before it pummeled Billy so that he was forced to shield his eyes against the dirt and gravel that was thrown in his direction. His shirt and protective cloak flapped in the fierce wind, plastering against his thin, frail frame before dancing behind him like a pair of black wings. While I was good at it, I didn't like f.u.c.king with the weather. Spells like that tended to get out of control fast and cause ma.s.sive amounts of collateral damage-not that the Towers were worried about a little thing like that.

I took advantage of his brief distraction to close some of this distance between us. My movement didn't go unnoticed because as Billy dropped his arms, the wind died and I was pummeled in the chest by a surge of energy. I rocked backward, struggling to regain my balance while I instinctively raised a new protective shield against another strike.

"What brought on the sudden decision to attack the Towers?" William called while his hands moved before him, weaving strands of energy together as he cooked up a new spell to rip my face off. "You kill Master Thorn and then decide that it's now safe to take down the rest of us?"

A ring of fire sprang up from the concrete around me, the flames reaching more than nine feet in the air. The heat was intense, baking the air so that it was becoming hard to breathe and making it feel like my skin was melting off. a.s.shole. I hated fire spells. They weren't difficult, as aggressive magic went, and were, in my opinion, the lazy man's go-to magic when he didn't want to be bothered with something that took a little effort and originality.

"Come on! Don't even pretend that you're sorry Simon is gone," I said, forcing out a laugh. Sweat was pouring down my face, leaking into my eyes, so that it was becoming difficult to see. My body was screaming for me to get out of there, but my mind was torn between maintaining my protective shield and dissecting the fire spell. I had always thought that William was a decent warlock, so he had to be up to something else.

Just as I finished unraveling the spell and was dousing the flames, a pair of blades shot through the last of the fire. The first bounced off the shield while the second embedded itself in the barrier, stopping a bare inch away from my stomach. I grabbed the blade from where it hung in the air with my left hand.

William frowned to see me unharmed. "It's not about being sorry that Master Thorn is dead," Billy began a bit stiffly, as if insulted by my saying that he might be concerned about Simon's well-being. "It's that someone like you succeeded in doing him any harm."

"Yeah, should have lain down and died," I said while strengthening my protection spell.

"Exactly." William smiled as he switched to an ice spell. I had been expecting it. It was like he was thumbing through a teaching syllabus for a new apprentice. There wasn't an original thought in his little brain. I was beginning to wonder if he had come after me to earn himself some street cred in the Towers, because I couldn't imagine that he was all that well respected. f.u.c.king puss.

With a wave of my hand, I blocked his new spell before it could jump from his fingertips and then smiled when a new sound entered the area. Gritting my teeth, I pulled in as much energy as I could before shoving it at William. The warlock's eyes went wide as the force hit him from the side rather than head-on as he was expecting. Still on his feet, he slid several yards to the right into the street and into the path of what turned out to be an approaching pickup truck.

Tires squealed as the driver slammed on the brakes before the sickening crush of steel hitting flesh and bone echoed through the park. Switching the knife to my right hand, I ran over to where Billy was groaning on the ground. The truck couldn't have been going more than thirty-five, so Billy wasn't killed by the impact, but he was in pain. Dropping to one knee, I raised the blade and hesitated. Could I do this? My gaze flashed to his blood-streaked face and in his eyes I saw blazing hatred-not fear. If I didn't kill him, he'd come back. He'd kill me. He'd kill Trixie.

The blade arced downward, fast and straight, plunging into his chest. Billy gave one last cry and died. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. My hand flashed out and the figure was thrown against the side of the truck, trapped. When I looked up, I saw the driver watching me from where he was pinned against the side panel. The large man's face was sickly white and his brown eyes were so wide I was afraid they'd fall out of their sockets.

"You okay?" I asked, pushing to my feet while releasing him from the spell.

He nodded, cringing back into the crumpled steel. I paused to look at the front of his truck. It looked to be one of those diesel-guzzling monsters that sound like a semi. It took a little more damage than I would have expected, but then he hadn't had much time to stop.

"Sorry about your truck. Your insurance cover acts of warlock?"

He nodded jerkily, still looking dazed and terrified.

"Good. If you could wait a few minutes before calling the cops, I'd appreciate it."

"You're . . . a . . . a warlock?"

I frowned. "Yeah."

"You gonna kill me?"

"No."

The fear didn't completely ease from his face as his eyes jumped to Billy's body. "Was he a warlock?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure he's dead?"

"Yeah."

"And you're not going to kill me?" he asked again, with no small amount of skepticism filling his deep voice.

"No, I think I've done enough of that today," I muttered as I started to walk to the parking lot and Trixie's car. Behind me, I heard the large man whisper a relieved thanks. I started to raise my hand to wave off his thanks, but immediately dropped it to my side. In this world, when a warlock waves his hand, everyone s.h.i.ts their drawers in fear of the spell. This guy had been through enough for one day.

I was sick to my stomach. It wasn't bad enough that I had killed another creature, but I had scared the c.r.a.p out of another person when he had done nothing more than happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. To make it all the more sickening, I wasn't sure if he was thanking me for killing a warlock or for not killing him. How much longer could the world survive living on this edge of fear?

Stepping onto the sidewalk, I walked into the nearby gra.s.s, crossing to where the woods started. With a couple whispered words, I waved my hands as if scooping up air. Seconds later, water bubbled up. It drifted into the air until it collected into an orb about the size of a bowling ball and hovered about waist-high. I dipped my hands into the water, rubbing them together to wash away Billy's blood. I shouldn't have been performing magic, but after being forced to fight Billy with magic, I didn't care if I was being watched by Gideon. I needed to find Trixie, to hold her, but I wasn't going to search for her with another man's blood on my hands.