The voice from the fog…
All eyes were on me once again, and I tried not to shrink under their weight.
“It would have been helpful if you’d been a bit more forthcoming with the directions, but yes, I guess I did.”
Merc’s lips were at my ear as he whispered. “Perhaps now is not the time to anger the one who holds us captive.”
“I do not recall asking you to bring others, though,” the voice continued, his annoyance plain in his tone.
“We’re a bit of a package deal, I’m afraid. There was a zero percent chance of them letting me hurtle myself into the unknown without jumping, too—once my magic let them.”
“Which is precisely why I called you out alone.”
I shrugged. “Alone time is kinda hard to secure in a mansion full of supernaturals. Anyway, I’m here now.”
“You would not heed my call before,” he said, suspicion in his tone. “What changed?”
“I heard Bea begging for help. I called for their location to be revealed, and a big old cyclone of water extended toward me, showing me the portal—or at least I think it must have been a portal—so I jumped in. Now, time for you to answer a question for us: what the fuck is the Ether and where is it? Where are we?”
The voice laughed, and not the amused kind. More the kind someone lets loose before they completely snap and start killing everything around them. Not a good sign.
“You are inside me,” he said, as though that made any kind of sense at all.
“Could you maybe be a wee bit less abstract than that?”
“You are in the Ether,” he replied with another laugh.
Great. Like that was helpful.
“Could we skip the process of elimination breakdown and just tell me what that means?” I shouted in frustration.
“Ether…” Knox mused. The way he said that word made me nervous; more nervous than I already was. There was a knowing edge to his tone that made my hackles go up. And judging by the looks on the faces of Brunton and Foust, they shared Knox’s concern.
“It can’t be,” Foust said softly, stepping to Knox’s side.
“Or could it?” Brunton flanked Knox’s other side. “That was so long ago. He was little more than a ghost of a memory when we came to be, but maybe—”
“Well, good news, boys. ‘He’ is listening to every word you say, so maybe you should just fucking ask him and find out,” Kat said, pushing past the others. She pinned them with a look of irritation that I recognized well. It was the one she wore when her nerves ran high. When she feared that she was outgunned and in a whopping pile of shit about to go down.
Knox took a breath and searched the ceiling again for the source of the voice. “Etherian, is that you?”
His question was met with a long silence that did nothing to set the group at ease.
“Who is this male who knows my name and dares to speak it?”
“I am one of the four Originals—the first werewolves,” Knox answered.
“The Originals,” Etherian mused, as though he had not heard that name in some time—or possibly ever. “You are Phineas’ creations.”
“Three of them, yes. He has many others now.”
“I know he does. I have been collecting them as he casts them aside—just as he did me. He has a penchant for that—for discarding things that are no longer of use to him.”
“We know all too well what he does with things he no longer desires,” Merc replied.
Silence fell upon the cave yet again.
“I want to know why you’ve called me here, Etherian,” I said. “Why you sought me out. What you want…”
“I called you here, bastard child of Larken, because I want something. Something you can help me get.”
My blood ran cold at the thought because, let’s face it, whatever he said next wasn’t going to be good.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“The fey king’s head on a platter.”
Chapter Eleven
Laughter, wild and inappropriate, bubbled up from deep inside me until I couldn’t keep it down any longer. It erupted with a ferocity that visibly disturbed those around me. But really, of all the things he could have said, all the wrong turns that conversation could have taken, the cryptic and creepy whatever-he-was had landed on something I couldn’t have been happier to deliver—unless he’d asked for the fey queen’s instead.
“Why does the bastard princess laugh?” he asked. The menace in his voice stopped me short, and I cleared my throat to give myself a moment to pull my shit together.
“I laugh because I’d already planned to do what you ask anyway. Right after I kill the fey bitch that ordered my death in the moments following my birth, I will kill the fey king who endeavored to kill those I love most. I plan to do whatever I must to make them pay, and I will burn Faerie—or my realm—to the fucking ground if I need to in order to do it, consequences be damned.” I took a step forward, emboldened by my rage. “Because you see, Etherian, when you use the ones I love to come after me, I will move heaven and earth to see justice done at any cost. You’d be wise to remember that.”
More fucking silence.
“She ordered your death?” The voice was quiet this time. Thoughtful. Surprised.
“She’s a bit of a cunt, if you haven’t had the pleasure,” Kat said from behind me. “Though it’s not altogether surprising.”
“No,” he replied dryly, “it is not.”
I bit my lip for a moment, pondering something—a possible answer to our dilemma regarding the fey royals.
“So, are we actually in Faerie now?” I asked him. “I mean, can the fey king or queen detect us here?”
“That would presuppose that they could find here, bastard princess, and they most certainly cannot. I am a void that exists within their realm without their knowledge.”
I shot Merc and Knox a look, and the two nodded in unison.
“If you want me to do as you ask, then I need to know if you can help me in the process.”
“You wish for me to prove myself to you?” The condescension in his tone was hardly lost on those present, and the huddled fey looked as though the world might come to an end at my affront. But fire and brimstone didn’t rain down upon us, so I answered.
“I want to know if you can help us get to the fey king and queen unnoticed. If you can help us figure out where they are so that we can attack with the element of surprise.”
More silence.
“Perhaps…”
“How?”
“Why does the bastard princess wish to know? To try to find a way to trick me?” he asked, an edge of madness rimming his tone. “To betray me?”
The walls shook with his growing rage, and I wondered if we’d soon be crushed to death, Star Wars style, if we didn’t get out of there.
“I have no reason to betray you!” I shouted over the trembling stone.
“You have every reason to betray me, just as they did,” he snapped back, his anger now plain. “You have claim to the throne.”
“But I don’t want it!” I shouted. “I hate Faerie! The last thing I want is to rule it.” The quaking walls quieted, and I swore I could feel Etherian’s presence move closer to me, assessing the veracity of my claim. So I did what most stressed-out women did when they wanted to defuse a situation: I kept rambling. “I want my mother dead to satisfy my own vengeance, not to replace her. Same with the fey king. I already told you this, but if you need me to swear it or some other medieval shit like that, then fine. I swear I have no interest in ruling Faerie.”