Nick

We knew the end was coming. Kiran told me to add as many books as I could to the bond between us, burning them into our shared memory, but also weakening him. I’d only taken the ones I thought most important, leaving things like the histories of royal lineages. I didn’t care who had fucked whom to get what prince or princess to be used as pawns. Most of the high fae were dead, or in the human realm, where we would be if I could open a door between worlds like Sebastian could.

The castle was little more than a single room these days, held up by Kiran’s waning strength and a child who had become a lure for the maddened remains of Underhill. Attacks came daily. Kiran could only do so much to hide our presence as the ghostly remains of Underhill sought to feast.

Before the last of the exterior had fallen, I’d been lost for a while. Going outside to breathe but finding myself screaming into the void, madness darkening everything within me as anger raged, seeking an option other than our inevitable death. I had lived a long time in Underhill. Some might have called it a good life, a long life, and welcomed death. Only I’d never had the chance to make some dreams reality. Mostly the ones that involved my bondmate and me, since the moment he bound me, he began to fade.

Liam spent every waking moment studying and practicing magic, trying to open a door to free us, but without the link to his mate, he hit wall after wall. I suspected the only thing keeping him sane was the child, living magic shaped into a tiny being.

Kiran had been the one to teach the babe to hide the power, which kept us safe, but as the child grew, sometimes the power raged like a beacon to the collapsing world around us. Kiran could not teach them how to open a door between worlds. He thought he might have once accidentally ripped a hole in the veil when he’d been young, but did not know how he’d done it, if it could be repeated, if it was something he’d done at all, or was simply misremembering from his long life.

Liam suspected that time had sped up in our world compared to the mortal realm, meaning that Sebastian wasn’t even awake in the other world yet. Their bond was stretched and sort of muted, as he said it did sometimes with unnatural sleep. Which sounded ominous. Had Sebastian been injured? And if so, how badly? Would he awake in time for us to escape, or sleep through the final collapse of Underhill? I tried not to dwell on the rising anxiety, though it rolled off everyone in waves. All except Kiran.

It was rare to see Kiran sitting in his chair, doing more than staring into the distance. Today the child, Ari, sat on his lap, snuggled tightly to my bondmate, as if he feared Kiran would take his last breath. It was a terror we shared, though I could feel Kiran’s strength. He’d burn himself out completely, waiting until the end. He had joked more than once that he should go devour some of Underhill’s remaining monsters to regain a nibble of strength. Even those were little more than a shadow of a memory now. Sometimes the ground would shake, but there would be nothing outside. And if Kiran took the last dregs of Underhill?

That would be a disaster.

Both because that was the little remains of this world holding around us, and each time Kiran fed on the fae, he further deteriorated. The blight, as Liam and I identified it, expanding as Underhill died. Would he survive its final collapse? How long could anyone feed on madness and remain whole? Which meant Kiran went hungry.

That sensation was a well of growing terror inside him. An actual churning abyss of heavy darkness, with a dozen wards and barriers within Kiran’s mind, keeping it confined. He knew it was there, likely felt it like daggers every moment of every day, but said nothing. Only sat with Ari on his lap, rocking the babe.

Liam had been frantic all morning. The walls were closing in. He could feel his bond with Sebastian opening, Sebastian finally waking in the other world, where time passed much slower. Liam thought he could use Sebastian’s kitsune magic to open a door between worlds. We would have one chance, and would have to move fast. I didn’t know what to expect, but we couldn’t carry anything but ourselves across the veil, and everything in this small dwelling was part of Kiran’s power. Anything left behind would be more of his strength lost.

Do you have a plan to gather the little that remains before we step through the doorway? I asked him, mind to mind, not wanting to scare anyone. The few remaining fae kept to the opposite side of the space as though fearing Kiran would eat them, even though he’d gone years touching none of them, no matter how much it weakened him and shrank our sanctuary.

It took him a moment to respond, his movements and thoughts slow, head turning my way, as though the question confused him. I crossed the room, picked up Ari, giving the child a kiss and a hug, then a little shove toward the opposite side of the room. “Go find papa.”

Ari hesitated, eyes glowing with power. “It’s almost time. Daddy is waking. I can feel him.”

“That’s why you need to go to your papa.”

The child didn’t move for another minute, focused on Kiran. “Uncle Kiran…”

Kiran gave the babe a slight but exhausted smile. “Listen to Uncle Nick. He’s strong and will keep you safe.”

Ari clenched tiny hands into fists and floundered as though trying to find words to say, but looked up at me instead. I patted the child on the head. “It’s okay. Go find papa. Get ready. Your daddy needs papa, right?”

Ari’s eyes filled with tears, but they flung themselves away toward the group gathering, and where Liam paced, a half dozen books spread open at his feet.

“Making babies cry,” Kiran grumbled, turning his gaze from the group and back to the wall. I had bundled him in every blanket we had left, many of them made by Liam or Ari’s magic, but it wasn’t enough. Human methods to a fae problem. His death couldn’t be prevented with fabric or heat. I wasn’t certain feeding him a dozen high court fae would help anymore. Not with the entire world closing down around our ears.

“Nick,” I heard Liam call, felt the shift in magic, and glanced back to see the door forming, the fae racing to line up for freedom. Kiran didn’t move.

I set my jaw in a firm line, the walls around us getting smaller by the moment. Without the rest of them, we’d have maybe a few more weeks, stuck in a room with barely the space to breathe. Not that Kiran was living a life, existing maybe, like a zombie, scarcely breathing for fear of taking an ounce more of magic than was necessary. I sat down at Kiran’s feet and put my head in his lap to rest. The door opened, and the fae rushed through. I hoped it went to the right place, though I could feel it like an old familiar ache in my bones. Whatever lay on the other side of that door was part of my past; it was okay to leave it there.

Kiran gasped, “Nick, you can’t.”

But there was absolutely no point in me going through that door. We were bound. Without him, I would die. It might not be right away, might even be long and slow, but it didn’t matter. He was my life. Had been for over two centuries. “I am not going through that door without you.”

“You’ll die here.”

“I’ll die either place I go. I’d rather be with you. Please come with me.”

“I’m a curse to everyone.”

He wasn’t. The fae used him in any way they could, draining energy and life from him until all that remained was this withering shell. “Then let them go.” I could feel Liam’s rising anxiety. He was holding the door, Ari’s hand grasped in his, but he said nothing, letting us make that decision.

“And it was you who made the baby cry. Ari thinks you’re going to die here.” I said.

“Temporary pain. The child is young, will forget this tiny portion of their life.”

“Losing both Uncle Kiran and Uncle Nick? That babe has known us their entire existence, will they forget so easily?” I asked. Was it too much to ask him to live for me? Whatever time we had left, he was mine. It didn’t matter where we were when the world collapsed on our heads.

Kiran sucked in a deep breath, and I looked up to see his gaze filled with tears, chest tight as he tried to breathe. “I’m not worth your sacrifice.”

“We will agree to disagree.”

“Are you coming?” Liam called. “I can’t hold it much longer, and Seb needs me…” I didn’t look back to see the strain, fear, or worry on his face. I could hear it in his voice.

Kiran pushed himself to his feet. He wouldn’t have the strength to cross a room anymore, the rot taking a lot of his mobility.

“You’ll come?” I asked.

He sighed. “I will do whatever you wish.” He said it like it didn’t matter, but I took those words for what they were, permission to take him to the other world, keep him, and give us more time. I wrapped the stash of blankets around him and lifted him, gathering the remaining strength of our tiny realm and shoving it into our bond as Liam led Ari through the door, holding it open for us. We were the last through, my heart racing in my chest as I clung to Kiran, praying the collapse of Underhill didn’t rip him from me when I shoved the last of the sanctuary magic into our bond.

I felt it crumbling behind us, the final pieces of magic torn away; it was like racing through time. The power slammed into the door as it closed, the portal cutting off that quest for power, and snuffing out the remains of Underhill like a dagger to the chest.

Kiran gasped, and the sensation slammed into me. Pain, loss, fear, and finally a void, like where Underhill had been, was nothing now. I struggled to hold Kiran and keep moving. He pressed more of his magic into our bond, his own strength fading. My grip on him tightened as I refused to let the magic take him from me in these last moments. On the other side, through the veil, and in the mortal world, other fae have survived. I needed Kiran to survive.

The portal between worlds was a flash of that dark chaos, a few steps and then an opening to a world that actually was nighttime. A battle raged around us, a house nearby, wolves everywhere, and some humans? Were they wolves in human form?

A young human female approached, and Liam guided Ari to her side, saying a few things I didn’t catch, before launching off in the direction he probably sensed Sebastian, as I set Kiran down. Kiran trembled, and felt like a glass doll in my arms, fragile and breakable. Even taking the last bits of our sanctuary back did little to ease his fade. He stood carefully on his own two feet, unsteady, and leaning heavily on me, gaze wary of our surroundings, a very different world than anything he remembered, and my memories of this place were tainted with pain and loss.

Organized chaos expanded around us. Definitely wolves in human form, I caught a glimpse of the glow of their beasts though Kiran’s eyes, clearing the area surrounding the house, gathering up remains of…vampires. I listened hard to learn a lot more about the world I’d been born to than I ever had before. The young girl was the alpha’s human daughter, and she kept Ari close. Most giving her wide berth as they knew who she was, but her tone became frantic as everyone ignored her while continuing with battle or cleanup.

Liam had vanished into the distance, off to save Sebastian with an army of wolves, and several years of heavy magic under his belt. I wasn’t at all worried about his safety. He had survived this world for centuries, and I’d been five when torn from it at the choice of death or escape into Underhill. I suspected it would take some time before I could learn how it worked.

“Can I help?” I asked the girl, unsure why she was upset. Worried about her father, or something else?

“Toby is hurt. He’s not healing. Carl wants to…but I won’t let him. I have the pack guarding him…but Carl is second…”

None of that made any sense to me, but Kiran moved, stepping, almost falling, but I steadied him. “If you will guide us?” he asked.

The girl nodded fast, racing around the side of the house. We followed slower with me keeping Kiran up, the scent of blood intensifying as well as the rank odor of something else…

Fae magic, Kiran muttered through the bond. I breathed in the scent, dark fae magic like I hadn’t smelled in years. How long since the last of the unseelie sidhe had vanished from Underhill? A century or more? We had thought for a time they’d all been devoured, but more likely were hiding in this world. That didn’t bode well for this world, or us if they came calling.

A wolf lay on its side, torn up like something I hadn’t recalled seeing in a living being, guts half spilled out the side of him, but the beast’s chest still rose and fell. Alive. Mostly. A dark swirl of energy seemed to roll around it. Did anyone else see it? No one reacted. There was another human wolf, male, near this small wolf’s head, stroking his ears and whispering soft words.

“It would be kinder to let him go,” a big man with an angry scowl said.

“You only want that because you did this,” the one touching him said.

“I wasn’t myself.”

Kiran knelt beside the wolf. “Hey, little wolf,” he whispered, running his fingers down the side of the wolf. The dark ooze stuck to him, and Kiran wadded it up, yanking it free as though it were a physical thing. I could feel him sucking in the energy, some of it usable, the rest he added to the raging mess of darkness behind his many barriers within.

The last of the energy peeled away with a pop, like it had been suctioned hard. Feeding on the wolf? Strange for fae magic to have any interest in a mortal creature. The wolf began to heal. Wound’s visibly knitting themselves as we watched. Slow, but better than the gaping wounds they’d been moments ago. The one touching him carefully pressed organs back inside, the power of the wolf fascinating at the sheer level of healing it could offer. That wound would have killed most anything I had encountered in my extended life.

I settled myself into the bond with Kiran, trying to feel what he felt when he examined the wolf. But he focused on healing. Something I didn’t know he could do. A shifting of energy really, but inside the wolf’s head there was a war waging. The wolf responded by growling, both inside his head and from strained lips.

“The wounds are healing. Slower than I would have expected from all my reading. Is this normal?” I asked the others, thinking that the amount of internal magic this wolf possessed should have healed it before the damage got this bad. The wolf was strong, and yet broken somehow. A bright wrapping of colors swirled around it in chaos, but none of the other wolves had the variety of color, or the storm of them.

“He should be healed already,” the growling male said, kept away by a handful of others and the alpha’s daughter. This small group cared for the injured wolf, that was clear with their gentle touches and the rising worry. He was healing, but it was at a creeping slowness in which he still seeped blood. I didn’t think it was good for any creature of this mortal world to bleed that much.

Kiran wasn’t looking at the mortal body. He was sinking beneath a weight of mental barriers, open because of the near fatal wound, and finding his way inside the wolf’s head. I rode along, remembering my first dream of him had been much the same. Me on the verge of starvation, but him coaxing me to him with the temptation of food, warmth, and safety. What could he offer the wolf? How would he know? Sometimes the magic of the fae was both fascinating and terrifying.

Inside the wolf’s head, a storm raged. But we floated through it, me holding tight to my bond with Kiran to ride along. We stood on the shore a moment, observing what appeared to be madness. Things existing side by side that didn’t seem possible: an ocean, distant shores swirling with wind whipping in tornados, endless muddy banks, and floating stones that somehow withstood the constant assault of the waves while the surrounding sand washed away.

The water rippled with glowing bubbles, faces, or even pieces of people. In some places it bubbled like lava, while others were frozen solid, and many spun in whirlpools containing chunks of things. Memories? Was this what insanity looked like? How did anyone live with this?

A wolf paced on one shore, a human lay on the other, not moving. Both shores grew narrower as the water raged, tearing away the sand.

Kiran analyzed the distance and the swirling madness of everything. No wonder the wolf couldn’t heal, he had been sundered from part of himself.

A conundrum, Kiran muttered, examining the area with glowing gold eyes. Why rest in such gloom, little wolf? He raised a hand, power forming a glowing ball of energy, though I sensed very little pulled from the reserves in our bond. Kiran began to reshape the landscape, filled with hurricane-like wind and tidal waves, to a forest with a calm pool. Adding layers of sand and silt over the top of the many rising memories that seemed to stir up the trouble within the wolf. Even pressing one particularly large whirlpool of sand together into a hard boulder that sat in the middle of the water, rising above it. He took more of those darkest floating bits and forced them together into stones as well, forming a sort of bridge of rocks.

The water finally stilled as the worst swirling parts became stones. The water barely brushing the sides of them, and no longer the churning waves of an uncrossable ocean.

They will eventually erode, and he’ll have to face them, Kiran told me.

Face them? Memories? The wolf raced across the boulders to the human form on the other side, throwing itself down over him, as though trying to act as a blanket. It was then I realized how cold everything was, possibly from the storm, or from the wounds as deep as they had been, or even the lingering edge of the spell cast by some unseelie sidhe. We needed to get him warmed up, speed the healing, and hopefully mend the tear in his soul. I didn’t know if any of it was possible, but if asked ten minutes ago, I wouldn’t have known Kiran could heal the wolf as much as he had.

Dreamwalking…learned from the best, or the worst if you look at it that way. A memory flickered through Kiran’s mind, a face that he remembered, that brought a lot of pain and memories with it. I knew the name that went to that face, but not all the backstory. Kiran had always been good about tucking away the worst of his past. Not all that unlike the wolf, I thought, though his memories had not become a chaotic mess of broken puzzle pieces like the wolf’s had.

I blinked, pulling myself free of the shifting chaos and back into the mortal world. “Let me carry him,” I offered to the others. His wounds were healing enough that I could pick him up without breaking him further. All the guts back on the inside were a plus, but I didn’t like how cold he was to the touch.

The girl nodded and pointed toward the house. I knelt and carefully lifted the wolf, adding heat to my touch to go with anything Kiran was doing in that mental space. Kiran always found the heat comforting, and that world of whirling wind and water had been freezing. How long had he lived there? Ice slowly chiseling away at his sanity? I could only barely recall those last days before I’d found Kiran, and how cold and hungry I’d been. This felt a thousand times worse. We had to get him warm and fed.

The girl led us into the house, Kiran clinging to my arm as we made our way to a small bedroom, and I set the wolf on the bed. The girl rushed away, promising water, food, and a first aid kit. Though I suspected few of those mortal things would help the wolf if he couldn’t heal this on his own.

I wrapped the blanket around him, rising only to settle Kiran on the other side, his eyes closing in exhaustion. He shouldn’t be using his waning strength for this, but neither of us tried to break away. There was something about the wolf, and I knew little of them and their kind, as the few stories that found their way to Underhill had mentioned the beasts of this world, but as Kiran continued to reshape and focus that chaos inside the wolf with the soothing and gentle brush of a painter, I fed bits to him from our remaining reserves of power.

Kiran turned to lay his head beside the wolf’s snout, sinking into sleep. It was actually the first time I’d ever seen him truly sleep. The years in Underhill had always been a battle. In the beginning, he hadn’t needed to rest, and in the end, it was a draining event just to breathe. But I understood the constant battle to keep a sanctuary around us exhausted him, and I prayed I was strong enough to hold us both to sanity while we learned to exist in this new world. I would have to feed him. The small bite of fae magic he took from the wolf wouldn’t be enough, and none of the fae that had gone through the doorway before us seemed near enough to track.

Would there be other fae monsters? Would they be different in this world? Less like monsters and more like people? Was there another way? Even in sleep, he held close to his glamour, hiding from everyone how far he had faded. Like those walls inside, keeping the darkness at bay, it was something he never let me touch, and rarely glimpse.

I didn’t sleep, letting my consciousness twine with Kiran’s, and looping with his thoughts about the wolf. Bent, but not broken, he told me. Both of them lay together looking like the world had ravaged them, and spit them back out. Wolf beaten and soul sundered, Kiran, a fae prince who’d been bound and fed upon until nothing remained but a shadow. Was I strong enough to protect them, help them heal and live in this new world? Since strength was the only thing I had, it was all I could offer. I kept up the warm pulse of heat, wishing I could build an actual fire, but surprised when the young girl reappeared with food that smelled unlike anything I could recall experiencing in my entire life.

“Hungry?” she asked me. “Ari says it’s been a long time since you had mortal food, so you should probably eat slowly. Start with soup?”

I sucked in a breath, afraid to leave the cocoon of warmth, but she folded two small legs out of the side of the tray and set it carefully in my lap. “I’ll bring more blankets and water. The bathroom is right there.” She pointed to an open door to the left. After gazing at me a moment longer, she turned and left the room and I stared at the plate, trying to make sense of the food and a lot of long faded memories from my childhood. A sandwich? Soup? A broth that smelled spicy?

I took a careful sip from the water bottle after figuring out how to get the cap off, surprised at how clean and fresh it tasted, not green or gritty like the few trickles we had left of real water in Underhill. The first bite of the sandwich shocked me, not only with flavors, but a punch of magic. I gasped as it whirled inside for a second, leaving me floundering, but as if on instinct, Kiran reached up with metaphysical fingers and pried it away. Devouring the magic like the starving being he was.

The food sat like a weight in my stomach for a moment, and I took another careful bite, observing his spin of the magic, his need for it frantic. I ate with slow calculation, pulling out the bits of magic, studying the weight and feel of them, and handing them to him. Some swirled within him, an edge of darkness floating, though eventually he tucked it away behind the barriers he’d been holding for as long as I knew him. I gasped as some of the dark rot faded from his face. The patchiness of his glamour easing to smooth lines of skin too pale to be his usual tone. Was this real? Could we heal Kiran here?

I devoured the rest of the food, not caring if it tore me up. Kiran never completely closed his mind to me, and I used the opportunity to dig into his memory, sorting the magic we’d been given, using some to heal him, more to fuel the bond and the heat of protection I could create, and cast the rest into the dark cage he hid, not sure what else to do with that mess.

Tears filled my vision until snot ran from my nose, and I just wanted to lay over the duo and cry. Hope wasn’t something I’d had in a long time. It almost hurt to have it back, and I feared someone would rip it away again.

His face looked peaceful in sleep, and the wolf shifted to a human form, scars forming where the many wounds had been. I traced my fingers over his skin, fascinated at how different everything in this world was, but draped myself over them, to add heat and protection as sleep dragged me down too, while I clung to hope with everything I had.