I’d always known I wasn’t the one for Marcus. Marcus had a prophesized love—one woman who he would love so much their souls meshed and he would die with her. He’d known it would be a woman of the queen’s line, and I’d heard at one point he’d thought it might be the queen herself. Turns out there was another Zoey walking the planes, and Marcus was going to claim her.
Although it seemed she didn’t want to be claimed and Marcus and I might need to discuss the word consent. Vampires can go crazy over a truly bright companion, and though I couldn’t see a companion’s light, I was betting Summer Donovan was off the charts.
“I saw her.” They should know that I had vague memories of possible futures where Marcus was with a companion. I hadn’t thought about it then since I’d had about a million possible futures shoved into my brainpan at the time, but now I knew it deep in my gut that it had been Summer I’d seen. “Can I talk to Dev? Or will he immediately attempt to murder Marcus?”
“He can do as he wishes,” Marcus said with a frown. “But he should know I will fight back this time. I’m going to find Summer. She’s in danger and I won’t leave her alone to face it.”
He started following the path the trees had left us, and I took a step to go after him.
Bris stopped me. “Give him a moment. We can easily catch up and I don’t sense any danger in the woods right now. I need you to talk to my host. He’s frightened and angry. He has problems with Marcus that go beyond Evangeline. It’s sad because they’d been making progress before. They’ve been here for hours and they’d managed to work together to try to figure out the problem of how to get home.”
“Do you really believe Summer is the king’s daughter?” I still didn’t understand how a baby had come out of some magical box.
“My host believes it with all of his heart, and he wants to protect her,” Bris explained. “But there’s something wrong. She is not human, Kelsey.”
“She looks pretty human to me.” She’d fought like a human, too. She was well trained, but she hadn’t shown a hint of supernatural strength or power.
“That’s exactly what’s wrong. I can summon the memories of her first day. She is not merely magical. Summer is magic, and yet I sense none coming from her. We have to discover what’s gone wrong. And we have to figure out what’s happening with the planes. I sense a deep disturbance in the fabric of the universe and it has to do with that void that opened up before us,” Bris explained. “We are here for a reason.”
Yes, Gray had said as much, though I rather thought we were here for different reasons than solving a mystery. We were here because someone—Myrddin Emrys—had set a trap. The question was why.
But before I could say anything, Bris’s eyes were suddenly back to Quinn’s, and I was left with a pissed-off faery.
“Where did Summer go?” Quinn asked. “We can’t lose her. I’ll kill Marcus if he touches her.”
It was obvious why I was here. I was the ref. “And I’ll put you down if you don’t stop acting like a possessive asshole. She’s an adult, you know. You would think you and Marcus are fighting for her hand.”
Quinn’s expression turned distinctly shocked. “She is my daughter, Kelsey. I know I had no real part in her conception, but she is mine in the same way Lee and Rhys and Evangeline are Daniel’s. She is my family and she doesn’t even understand that yet. I have to protect her as I would protect Evangeline from a vampire who sought to take her.”
“She is Marcus’s fated companion.” I didn’t get it. “You know the prophecy. I would think you would be thrilled she wasn’t Evan.”
“I would prefer he kept his hands off the women of my family. She hasn’t even met her parents and yet Marcus is jumping on her.”
“He’s waited two thousand years for the woman.” I took a deep breath because maybe I didn’t understand what the guy was going through. Maybe I would get all hypercritical when the she-wolves started sniffing after Fen some day in the distant future when he hopefully had learned how to eat with a damn spoon and that it wasn’t funny to put toothpaste up his nose. Maybe I could help ease Quinn’s doubts with some universal truth. “You know I helped Gray transition, right?”
His eyes came up and he seemed to understand me. “You saw Summer when you had your vision?”
“Visions. A ton of them.” Most of the time those visions were watery and far away, but when I was confronted with one in the real world, I could often remember. “Summer is at the center of Marcus’s every potential future. Loving her or losing her or never having her is what will define who Marcus Vorenus is. I have to think it’s the same for her. Would you take that away from them? How did you feel when Zoey’s father actively campaigned against you?”
Quinn had the good grace to look away. “It was horrible to be on the outside. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but this is different. I courted Zoey. I earned her love. He took one look at my daughter and said she was his. Zoey had a choice and I will ensure Summer does as well. Marcus was born in a time when vampires stole companions, when companions were commodities.”
Oh, he couldn’t use that argument on me. I’d studied a bit of recent history. “And he helped ensure that will never happen again.”
He was silent for a moment. “You know Marcus campaigned against me, too. He called me Lancelot and told Daniel I would ruin everything.”
Quinn could hold a mean grudge. “That was over a decade ago. You won. Move on. He’s a good guy. What does the fertility god inside you say about Marcus and Summer?”
Quinn’s features shuttered. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to allow him to walk in and claim my daughter. I just found her. Do you know how long I’ve looked for her? Years. I’ve done everything I possibly could to find our first daughter. Goddess, she’s grown and we missed all of it. Time is the most precious thing we have with our children, with our lives, and I’m the reason we lost it.”
“What does that mean?” I didn’t even really understand how Summer was truly their daughter, but sometimes the mystical crap goes over my head and I have to let it go.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is convincing Summer to come home with me. And figuring out how to get home in the first place. Who could have guessed that painting was a doorway?”
I stared at him. “Uhm, the asshole who put it in the king’s office as a trap.”
There was zero question in my mind who the hell to blame for our current predicament.
“But that was a gift from Myrddin,” Quinn said with a shake of his midnight-black hair. It was longish, brushing the nape of his neck. He was a gorgeous man, utterly befitting his designation as a sex god, but he could be slow about some things.
“Yes, that’s my freaking point.” If anything came out of this, it would be that Donovan and Quinn would have to acknowledge that Myrddin wasn’t the kindly mentor they pretended he was. “He put that painting in there. Do you honestly believe the wizard of Camelot wouldn’t be able to see that the fucker was a magical trap?”