His eyes were glimmering now, a triumphant expression on his face, and he drove down, his cock sliding deep inside me, penetrating to the hilt. As my cunt expanded to welcome him in, he brushed against my clit, and I came, sharp and hard, not expecting it yet. I let out a sharp cry, and then he was fucking me quickly, driving deep with each thrust.
“Fuck me. Fuck me hard. Do anything you want to me.” I shifted as the feel of his body against mine once more began to send me spiraling. He was my prince, my lover, my deadly protector, and he had died for me—with me. I began to come again, the waves of orgasm spread through me in long concentric ripples, and once again I lost myself in the love of my wounded king.
Lannan was waiting in the living room as Grieve and I came out of the parlor, a smug look on his face. I stared at him, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I had a love-hate affair going on with the vampire, and he was in my life for good or ill, regardless of how I felt about it.
He stepped forward, stopped inches from me, then gave me a faux bow, his lip curling up at one edge. He was so close that I could have felt his breath on me, if he were to breathe. But he was cold, still, no pulse, no beat of the heart. I raised my eyes, stared into his face. He caught my gaze, leaned down so a mere fraction of space separated our lips.
“Cicely . . . pardon me . . . Your Majesty. So we are going hunting together, are we?” The jibe hit, but even though it pissed me off, we had more important things to focus on. “Your friends have filled me in on your plans, while you were occupied.” Lannan could imply a world of innuendo with a single word, and the whisper of disrespect behind the word promised everything and yet nothing.
His voice brushed over me like a rough shirt, one that irritated just enough to arouse, but not enough to hurt.
Beside me, Grieve bristled, but I quietly touched his arm and he stood down. “Now that you’re here, we should start out.”
Lannan sobered. “First, word from the outside.” His abrupt change of mood made me nervous.
I motioned for everyone to sit down. “What’s going on?”
“The electricity? Several major transformers have gone down—nobody knows why—and Seattle is black. And from what I’ve been able to ascertain, the Shadow Hunters are moving into the city.”
Fuck. A major city, dead in the water. Seattle never fared well in snow anyway—a few inches of snow was enough to grind the wheels to a halt. A blizzard was bad enough, but now without power, and with an influx of predators? Things were going to get very bloody, very fast.
“The Consortium is over there. Can they do anything?” I glanced at Ysandra. “What will they do?”
She paled. “Whatever they can. They may be able to take the city into a magical lockdown, but it will take everything they have, and they have to know what’s going on in the first place in order to plan out anything.” Turning to Lannan, she asked, “Is there any way you can send someone in to contact them?”
He considered her question for a moment, then a slow smile crept across his face. “I already did, Ysandra. When we realized what was happening, I contacted some of our people over there and asked them to get the fuck into Dodge and take care of alerting everybody who had any possibility of helping. It’s up to them now—the cell towers over there went down shortly after. We have no idea what the fuck’s going down now.”
“If Seattle falls . . . If she turns all the magic-born there to help her . . .” Just like Myst had turned Heather. The Vampiric Fae could turn the magic-born and control them, and they would retain their powers while under Myst’s control. A city that had several thousand of the magic-born in it? Taken by the Mistress of Mayhem? Her armies would be unstoppable. And what if she managed to overpower the Consortium? With the best of the best under her control? The world really could fall to her rule.
“Exactly. But that’s not all of the news.” Lannan was looking bleaker by the moment.
“There’s more? Worse?”
He nodded. “You know the Indigo Court has pockets of Shadow Hunters tucked all over the place, right? They’ve had thousands of years to breed.”
I didn’t want to hear this. I knew that I didn’t want to hear this.
Ysandra pushed to her feet. “They’re launching unified attacks, aren’t they? If so here—on several cities at once—why not in several areas of the country at once?”
Lannan gave her a nod as the silence in the room thickened. “Not just several areas of the country, but several countries. Several of the other regional Fae Courts are under siege. They are fighting to their best—”
“And so the long winter extends her grasp.” Grieve stood. “We’d best be off, then. The sooner we discover her heartstone, the sooner we can end this.”
Lannan inclined his head to me. For once, there was no sense of animosity between the two men. “We await your lead, Winter.”
I inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly. Turning to the others, I scanned their faces, one by one. “So, we are here at last. Ysandra, you and your crew will surround us with protection for as long as you can. Luna, you and Dorthea send the dead through the town to take down Myst’s forces. Rhia—you and Chatter will oversee our forces heading out through New Forest. Peyton, work with the guards here to watch the house.”
And then it hit me. This might be it—anything could happen through the night, for good or ill. We might not all come through tonight, and tomorrow either Myst would stand triumphant, or we would have destroyed her heartstone. Because if she won this battle, chances were she’d win the war.
By the looks on the others’ faces, they knew this, too. We stood, staring at one another in silence for the better part of a minute.
And then, slowly, Rhiannon reached out and took Chatter’s hand. He took Peyton’s, then Ysandra, Luna, Lannan, Kaylin, Grieve, and I joined in. As I took Rhia’s hand, completing the circle, we stood in silence. I wasn’t sure who started it, but a line of energy began to snake through our fingers, linking us strong, linking our hopes, our goals, our fears, and our prayers.
As the energy increased, swishing through us like a whirling snake, Ulean joined in, and for a brief moment, we were one—linked by a common goal, linked by our pasts, linked by our hopes for the future. With a swift whoosh, the energy spiraled up into a cone, and I realized I was holding the tether. I focused it on Myst—on driving the force toward her heart. As it peaked, with a sharp break, I cut it loose and let it fly.
Dizzy, I stumbled back, as did the others, but then Lannan stepped away while the rest of us cheered and cried and held one another.
I held Rhia by the shoulders. “You know I love you.”
She smiled, the summer sun beaming through her eyes. “I know. We’ll win this, Cicely. We’ll win this because we have to win this. And then . . . the future will take care of itself. You and I will guide the Barrows into a new day.” She leaned in, gave me a kiss on the cheek. “We are fire and ice.”
“Amber and jet.”
“Summer and Winter.”
As I slowly pulled away, I turned to Chatter. “Take care of my cousin . . . just in case I don’t make it back.”
He gave me a soft smile, so strong in himself compared to the Chatter I’d first met a few weeks ago. “No need, Lady Cicely. You will be here to do that yourself.”
“I hope so.” Sucking in a deep breath, I called for my owl cloak. “We’d best go now.”
Ulean swept in close to me, and Grieve took my left side. Hunter and Lannan guarded the right. The guards—nine total, including three vampires, and six of my men led by Check and Fearless—surrounded us. They were helping Kaylin, who couldn’t walk atop the snow. The vampires were light on their feet when they wanted to be—and so we headed out the door, into the blinding storm, silently moving into the swirl of white that had become the night.