People liked to recount where they were when horrible cataclysms happened.
It wasn't their fault, really. The recollections are a natural little foible that psychologists term flashbulb memories. Autobiographical recollection centered on the self, and what a person was doing during the time in question. The heightened emotional arousal cemented the memory into your brain forever.
I was midway through painting a cubist monstrosity that would have made Picasso cry and Dali lean in a little when the Red Court was obliterated.
I shouldn't have been up so late at night, but Lily had claimed need of my company. She'd watched me paint Fix rather inexpertly and hummed a happy little tune. It was peaceful. At least, until the screaming started. I couldn't remember when I'd collapsed, I just suddenly found myself on Fix's lap, his strong hands cradling me, turning me onto my side as I had the next best thing to a seizure.
I would probably have felt it, no matter where I was, even if I had been just a wizard-in-training, as I ought to have been. I was born with an unfortunate amount of magical empathy. It made me good at practicing the finer aspects of magic. It also made it hard to hold onto a sense of self, when I was constantly under the siege of other people's emotions.
After I'd dropped Lasciel's coin, it had gotten infinitely worse. Even what felt like a year in faerie—though I was told it was closer to three years outside of my little bubble—I still wasn't recovered. I'd barely managed to leave faerie with Fix to visit my family for Christmases or birthdays at the Carpenter house, where most of the emotion was friendly. I still sensed...resentment or disappointment from Daniel. He took what had happened with Lasciel personally when no one else in the house had. The talks with my father had been hard but not as hard as dealing with Daniel's scorn. There was a reason I didn't visit often.
Nowadays I could sort of mimic what Lasciel had done for me. Erect a soundproof barrier between myself and others, but only do it judiciously. As Harry told me once, you ignore pain at your own peril. Half the reason I'd stayed with Lasciel had been the fact she'd given me blessed relief.
The other reason was a lot more embarrassing to admit out loud. I'd never confessed it. But Sanya had guessed.
Lasciel's touch, and probably Anduriel's too, had made me hyper-aware of other things. I sensed things on a more cosmic level, had a barometer for the things going on just outside of mortal awareness. Summer was a balm, most days. Quiet, sturdy, beautiful, and strong. But it couldn't block out everything. There were things undulating in the dark. A river of black beating against stone that continued a slow drip-drip, oozing through cracks in our reality. Occasionally a searing, feathered wing would brush me as an angel entered my vicinity.
So I felt it when the Reds were scooped out, obliterated in one decisive blow. I heard the panicked screams and then...silence. A sucking void of sound that seemed to be a scream all its own.
It took almost five minutes for me to unlock my muscles and sit up. I was shaking like crazy, unable to stop the trembling for more than a few seconds at a time. The inside of my skull felt like it had been rubbed down with sandpaper. Sandpaper made out of shark teeth. Tears streamed out of my eyes, dripping onto Fix's fingers as he placed bracing hands on my back and just above my navel to keep me upright.
"Oh God," I breathed. "They just...they're gone."
I'd become somewhat accustomed to the energy of the Red Court. About seven months after accidentally touching Lasciel's coin I'd gotten myself into a scrape, taken up the coin in earnest, and sought out refuge with the Fellowship of Saint Giles, a terrorist group that fought the Red Court. For some time after that, I'd been apart of a specialized cell that got really up close and personal with the biggest and baddest of them. I was attuned to their energy.
And now they were just...gone. Maybe I shouldn't be weeping about that, but it meant that, in some small way, I was party to genocide.
After most of my cell had been killed, I'd done the one thing I'd never dreamed I'd do. Jumped on the freaking Denarian bandwagon and gone full Darth Molly. I'd been able to be rescued but it had been a close thing. It made me shudder to think what I'd be up to now if I hadn't dropped Lasciel's coin that night.
During my tenure as a Knight of the Coin, I'd handed Nic his answer to the Red Court. A bloodline curse performed on a ley line and fueled by mass murder. Now the evil bastard had done it. He'd killed them all in one fell swoop. And it had been all my fault.
I was so busy trying to digest the horror of it that it took me almost ten minutes to calm down and another three to begin to think rationally. Finally, after minutes of gasping like and shuddering like a fish in its death throes, I turned streaming eyes on Lily.
"You knew," I accused.
She had to. Why else would she have lured me away from my last archery lesson before bed with Kenelm the centaur and insist I join her in the garden? Lily had many responsibilities to deal with as the Summer Lady. Hovering over me day and night was hardly one of them. Except that a close personal attendant to Lily had owed Wizard Solis a favor. She and Peabody checked in often to make sure I was well. Peabody was even working on repairing some of the mental damage.
Lily had known this was coming. Had known I shouldn't be alone for it.
Lily stared back at me, regret in her large, soulful eyes. Her face, so often given to mirth or secret smiles, was entirely sober. I'd only seen that expression a few times since coming here. She uncrossed her long, slender legs and walked over to me, movements deliberately slow, as though she were approaching a frightened animal. Then she crouched in front of me, placing one gentle hand on my cheek.
Almost at once, the hard knot of guilt in my chest eased. The echoes of many dying vampire screams faded entirely and an involuntary sigh of relief trickled out of me.
"We suspected," she said after a moment. "Queen Mab christened Harry Dresden her knight not so many hours ago. He was seeking to retrieve a child from the hands of Duchess Arianna of the Red Court. They were planning a powerful ritual of some sort in Chichén Itzá. There was almost certainly going to be feedback. I just hadn't expected it on this scale."
So the ritual hadn't been performed by Nic. Had he handed the plan to the Red Court instead? Pointed them at one of his enemies, deciding their destruction was worth more to him than the death of the Reds?
She peered closely at me once more. "How do you fare, Molly? Would you prefer sleep?"
Lily had done that for me once or twice when the pain was at its absolute worst. I'd woken days later from a magic-induced coma. It was always discombobulating. I shook my head and leaned back a little, away from the soothing balm of her magic.
"No," I croaked. "I just need to...to go home."
A petty sense of betrayal stirred within me. I knew Lily was trying to help me the only way she knew how. It was in a faerie's nature to misdirect and deceive. If she'd told me, I'd have probably tried to dash off to Chichén Itzá, no matter how catastrophic the damage it would deal to my poor, Swiss-cheesed brain.
Still. I couldn't be here. I had to know if Daniel was alive. Harry would have dragged him along. No choice in that, really. My brother was probably one of the most feared warlocks in the entire Western Hemisphere. The first necromancer outside of Kemmler's disciples, and he'd been growing in power over the last few years. You didn't leave your heavy hitter at home.
Dad would know. Harry wouldn't have left without talking to him.
I stood jerkily, every muscle screaming in protest. Just how badly had I thrashed during the magically-induced fit?
"Molly-" Lily began, warning in her tone. "You are spiritually vulnerable. To step out into Chicago now would be-"
"I'll take Fix," I snapped, cutting her off. I fixed my eyes on the stone pathway out of the garden rather than on Lily's wounded expression.
She took a while to answer but eventually I saw her incline her head to me in my periphery.
"You may borrow my knight, Miss Carpenter. See that you both return unscathed."
Her voice came out a good deal cooler than it had been. It was inadvisable to piss off the Summer Lady of the Sidhe. But I just couldn't seem to help thumbing my nose at big, scary supernatural entities.
Fix gave me a sour, sidelong glance but did as he was told, offering me his arm in a courtly gesture pulled from a more genteel era. I took it, barely resting my hand on his armored forearm.
We'd been staying at the Rothchild Hotel, a favorite temporary residence for many of the supernaturals who visited Chicago. Maybe that was why we'd traveled here a week ago. Maybe it was a happy coincidence. Whatever the reasoning, I was grateful. It meant I didn't have to brave a trip through the Ways as well as the brunt of the magic and mundane energies of Chicago night to reach my father.
We'd almost reached the lobby when Fix went incredibly still, dragging me to a halt beside him. His arm tightened on mine so violently that it actually hurt.
"Fix!" I hissed. "Let go! That really..."
But I trailed off, pain momentarily forgotten as I caught sight of his expression. He was staring straight ahead, eyes wide, a look that was very close to fear on his face. My blood sloshed like ice water in my veins. If something was scaring Fix, it should definitely scare me.
I followed his gaze to the lone figure that had just staggered in the front doors. She was tall, lean, and graceful and brought the image of a cat immediately to mind. No...maybe not a cat. A lynx. One could tell at a glance the woman was all predator. The hair was a coppery red, instead of the brown-gold of the animal she so reminded me of. One half of her was perfect. Glowing skin, inhumanly beautiful features, golden eyes with a vertical pupil.
The other half was a ruin of burn scars. Most of her hair on that side was gone, the form-fitting green dress she wore mostly singed off, leaving only a scrap at the hip and over the breast. It almost seemed as if whoever had attacked her had made sure she was censored like an adult cartoon character. With all the damage done to her otherwise breathtaking visage, it took me a moment to place where I'd seen her. Then it hit me.
"The Leanansidhe," I breathed.
One of the most powerful fae in the Winter Court. In Lily's estimate, she was their third most powerful member. No wonder Fix was petrified. She looked like someone had jumped her, beat the stuffing out of her, doused her in gasoline, and then flicked a match at her. He was probably thinking exactly what I was.
Who the fuck could have done this to the freaking Leanansidhe? And were they still out there?
The faerie woman staggered through the lobby, eyes fixed on me. Her gait was difficult. Skin peeled off of her as she moved, dropping to the floor in flesh-colored streamers. Nausea pelted me hard.
"Margaret Carpenter," she managed to groan.
Then her steps faltered, her eyes rolled back enough to show white, and she collapsed a few feet away from where Fix and I stood.
I craned my neck to look at him, and we exchanged matching looks of bemused terror. He looked as if his tongue had been glued to the roof of his mouth. Only one thing truly sprang to my mind and it escaped me in a breathy whisper.
"Hell's fucking bells."
AN: I have just finished Peace Talks! Woo! I will say I'm glad Battle Ground also comes down this year. I'm probably going to update this one/the next fic in this series slowly so I have all the information I'm likely to get. I get why some people are frustrated with it since it is half a book and reads like it. Still, I liked it. I'm also pretty stoked that some of the things that I already had planned for this fic are going to work fantastically with what I know happens in Peace Talks (which would be way down the road in terms of fic.)
It also goes without saying that these fics are going to veer pretty wildly off canon. I hope you all like it regardless. :)