17
Nauseating pain and a splitting headache greeted Sera when she woke gradually from unconsciousness into her own personal hell. Her arms were brutally bound behind her, elbows drawn in toward each other with a length of rope that was suspended from the chains that ran up to the high ceiling above. Every breath was a struggle, and she tried to find better footing to relieve the stress on her shoulders, but she could only just reach the floor to stand on her toes. Short chains snaked around her ankles to a ring in the floor to keep her in place.
She felt a claustrophobic panic seize hold of her as she strained to find a position that would ease the pain, and her breathing quickened, increasing her terror as she fought to take a deep breath in the restrictive bonds. Don't freak out, she berated herself. Break out.
The cell was all too familiar as she tried to focus on taking in her surroundings to distract herself from her suffering. A pair of torches burned in brackets on the wall, illuminating the same prison she had shared with Rayce on her last visit to Alicante.
Idiot, she swore at Everett. I already escaped from this place once. Although her wrists were tightly bound, she was still more than capable of laying her hands flat to use iratzes to take care of where she had been clubbed. Then... vengeance.
Her head continued to pound and the searing pain in her shoulders didn't lessen as she waited expectantly. What the hell? She put aside all of her more inventive murderous thoughts for Everett and focused on the healing rune as she pressed her palms down again. She didn't feel any of the usual heat that came from applying Marks. Her heart sped up as another wave of panic surged through her. No, no, no!
Eyes wide and frightened in the torchlight, she whipped her head from side to side and fought down the rising sense of helplessness. This isn't happening. This isn't real. At the very edge of her vision, she caught sight of something etched into the floor, but she couldn't make it out.
She pulled at her bindings and screamed as agony shot through her body, and she started to seriously worry about dislocating her shoulders if she didn't get free soon. She panted anxiously, no longer able to hold the panic at bay, and her chest heaved with effort. Sweat glued her hair to the back of her neck as she writhed, and she felt her body overheating as dread consumed her. Trapped!
The heavy cell door unlocked behind her and she heard it open and then close. Straining to put as much weight as possible on her toes instead of her shoulders, Sera held still and vowed not to let anyone see her suffer.
"Sera, Sera, Sera." Everett clucked his tongue as he walked around into her line of sight. "Look at what you've gotten yourself into now." He wore a crisp, clean set of black Shadowhunting gear, and the winged hilt of a sword rose up over his right shoulder.
Pure, unfiltered hatred filled her golden eyes as she looked up at him from under the sweaty tangle of hair matted across her forehead. "I swear to God, I don't remember crawling into these chains myself, you twisted son of a bitch."
A wide smile spread across his face and he threw back his head to laugh out loud. "You're exactly the way I imagined you would be!"
Sera grimaced as she shifted unsteadily, but forced it to look like a smile instead as she breathed shallowly. "Sorry, am I supposed to know who you are?"
Annoyance darkened her captor's eyes before he recovered himself and reached into the heavy vest he was wearing, slowly pulling free a very battered, and very familiar, notebook. "Forgive me, it's just that I feel I've come to know you so well through these pages that I forget that we have not yet been formally introduced." He paused teasingly, watching as her smile was wiped away when she recognized her dream diary in his hands. "Everett Whitelock, though I can't say that I'm at your service, as I had rather hoped to put you at mine."
Fear flashed through Sera and she felt as if she had been splashed with ice-cold water. This is exactly what my mother was trying to protect me from! Her gift, harnessed and placed at the disposal of the Clave. Every sarcastic retort that came to mind died before it could pass through her lips, and for once in her life, Sera held her tongue, allowing him to continue.
"I'm afraid I must tell you that this cell has been specially treated to nullify seraphic rune magic – our Marks won't work here." When she remained silent he nodded, satisfied.
"Very good," Everett mockingly congratulated her. "This gives me hope that you can be trained."
Trained. Like a dog. Anger flared up inside her, melting the icy shock. "Whatever you think I'm going to do for you," she puffed laboriously, "you can just shove it up your ass." It was hard to sound threatening when every breath made her muscles scream, but she tried her best. "I won't tell you shit."
He seemed excited by her resistance, tracing his tongue along the inside of his bottom teeth as he continued to smile sickeningly at her. "Sera," he said gently, pushing a hank of limp hair out of her eyes. "I'm not really going to give you a choice."
The false Consul drew back and flipped open her notebook, clearing his throat before he read, "I dreamed about my father again tonight, but this time the way he was before my mother knew him..." Bitterness and shame burned through her as she listened to him read the dream about her father's true nature, but she couldn't do anything to stop him.
"...And what bitter insight it was. Was this the vaunted love of Heaven? To cast down an angel who had suffered so terribly and for so long? What happened to divine forgiveness? It fills me with so much anger. What became of my father after his mortal death?"
Everett snapped the diary closed and slipped the cover under her chin to raise her head, forcing her to look at him. "What do you think of the vaunted love of Heaven now, Sera? Do you believe there's anyone watching over you? Are you still angry?"
"What's your damage? You're a Shadowhunter, you're supposed to be one of the good guys."
"So are you, sweetheart," he replied sarcastically. "But I'm willing to bet that you have more blood on your hands than I do when it comes to getting what you want. Don't you see?" He lifted her notebook and shook it in front of her face. "We're the same. You spent years of your life planning and mapping out how to get what you wanted. You didn't care how much it cost or who got in the way. Your own words, Sera – Whatever it takes. Now I'm doing the same thing."
Cramps were seizing up the muscles along her spine and her deltoids were on fire, but she shook her head and gritted her teeth. "I was trying to save someone."
"But I'm trying to save everyone, Sera." His eyes shone with intensity, and he began pacing back and forth in front of where she hung. "You are living, breathing proof that angels exist – but where are they?" He stopped and jabbed the notebook at her. "Alicante has burned to the ground and still they forsake us!"
Manic energy filled Everett. "No one has given more in service to Heaven than the Nephilim, and in our hour of need, Heaven gives nothing back." He stared at her intently. "Don't try to pretend that you've never resented that our divine patrons have never once tried to help us – we all go through that phase."
Sera coughed and immediately regretted it as pain rocked through her. "Yeah, but the difference," she gasped, "is that the rest of us don't go bat-shit crazy about it."
He grabbed her chin roughly with his left hand and pulled her face closer, squeezing her cheeks painfully with his thumb and index finger. Reaching over his shoulder with his right hand, he grasped the winged hilt of the sword he wore strapped across his back, and Sera's eyes widened. He's going to kill me.
"You're as much a Shadowhunter as I am, Sera, and I'll have the truth from you one way or another. Shall we test it?"
Maellartach's silver length flashed in the firelight as Everett spun the blade and pressed the adamas hilt into her bound hands behind her back.
It felt as if a thousand tiny hooks immediately dug into her flesh and Sera's entire body stiffened in response, clashing horribly with the knotting cramps in her back, shoulders, and legs. She tried to drop the sword, but her hands refused to obey. It dangled impotently behind her, utterly useless as a weapon against Everett.
"Has your father ever reached out to you, Sera?" The Consul watched her breathlessly, thrilled with the power that he held over her now.
"Go fu-" Sera screamed as the invisible hooks jerked tight and cut off her profanity. Tears leaked from the corner of her eyes as she thrashed in her bonds, worsening the agony and threatening to dislocate her shoulders as she had feared earlier. Her breaths became ragged gasps, and the flat of the blade banged off her leg as she bucked.
"I'm waiting," Everett reminded her as she shook helplessly, still unable to answer. "Yes or no, have you spoken to Ithuriel?"
Sera sucked in a shuddering breath. "No." The pain did not return.
"Does it make you angry?" He was obsessed.
Every bit of her concentration was focused in forcing air in and out of her lungs, and she could only stare into the light of one of the torches on the wall. The flames blurred through her tears and she squeezed her eyes shut to try to block out everything.
Everett leaned in on her left side to whisper in her ear. "Do you feel abandoned, Sera?"
She couldn't help it. She felt a small sob escape, and then another, until they just kept rolling out, shaking her tortured shoulders and sending new flares of agony rocketing through her nerves.
"Do you feel alone?"
"Yes," she breathed, defeated. Hot streaks tracked down her cheeks for a lifetime of feeling unwanted. Ithuriel had known that he was going to be a father, and he had still given up. She hadn't been enough for him. And after... her diary had never provided answers. She still didn't know what had happened to him after his mortal death. Had he gone back to Heaven? Was he there now, watching her suffer in the hands of an enemy? Would he not even step in to save his own daughter?
"That wasn't so hard, now was it?" Everett asked cheerfully, prying Maellartach from her numb fingers and re-sheathing it. "I'm so glad that we've established that you can tell the truth."
"What do you want?"
"I told you, Sera," he replied earnestly. "I want to save everyone." He held up the diary again to emphasize his point. "You can find solutions to impossible problems. You can look into the future to find answers, and now you're going to do it for me."
She started to shake her head, but he casually backhanded her, sending her screaming to the edge of what little slack there was. Her knees buckled for a moment, dropping her full weight onto her shoulders for half a second before she bolted upright again, unable to even make noise as she choked in pain.
"You spent years selfishly looking for him. Now you'll use your gift to look for our salvation, Sera. Because the demons are coming through the wards worse than ever, and we can't stop them forever." He cupped her face with one hand and stroked his thumb across her tear-stained cheek. "You can't really tell me that you'd rather die than help your fellow Shadowhunters, can you?"
"I can't-" she gasped before he pressed his thumb over her lips to silence her protest, cutting it down to the only part of it he wanted to hear.
Everett whistled sharply and then looked over her shoulder to where the door was opening again.
Sera heard the rattle of heavy chains and then saw a flurry of movement as a skinny body hurtled past her to land in a heap at Everett's feet. Raziel, no.
"Steven..." she said weakly when the Consul dropped his hand to twist it into her friend's mousey brown hair and jerk him upright. The pale face she had once teased Steven about being so white that it quite possibly reflected sunlight was now covered in blotchy bruises and scabs where the skin had broken.
"You may call him Steven, but I, personally, like to call him motivation," Everett said lovingly, gently slapping Steven's cheek. The boy's milky white eyes were almost swollen shut from the beating he had taken, but he had never needed them to see her.
"Sera..." he gasped. "Don't tell him anything."
Everett effortlessly shoved the mostly-Mundane against the wall of the cell and locked a collar around his neck that ran on a short chain to a ring in the stone. "Please, Steven, a sense of self-preservation would be well-advised right about now. You, more than anyone, should be praying for her success."
The Consul stepped behind her and tapped the bangle bent shut around her upper arm. "Your friend told me that not even she would be able to track you while you were wearing this, so I hope you aren't expecting any sort of rescue effort from that avenue. No one's coming for you now."
He moved out of Sera's line of sight again and she heard a release lever click just before the chain holding her suspended fell slack and she went crashing to her knees and then down to her side with a hollow feeling in her stomach.
"Sleep on it, Sera," Everett called over his shoulder as he left. "You have all day to try. I'll be back tonight to check on you." The door slammed shut and locked with a sense of finality.
The cell was filled with the sound of her laboured breathing and the occasional whimper as she fought against the crippling spasms ripping up and down her back and through her arms.
"Sera?" Steven asked tentatively, feeling around the collar with his chained hands and finding the thick padlock.
"I'm here," she groaned. With her elbows bound in addition to her wrists, she couldn't wiggle her arms back out in front of her. She lay uncomfortably on her side for a few moments before giving up and just rolling onto her belly. Her face pressed into the cold stone floor, and she felt the gritty filth and grime of the years clogging her pores. Zits for sure when I get out of here, she lamented. Blackheads of demonic proportions.
"Can I be really honest with you for a minute?" Her friend's voice was quiet, but a thread of courage wound through his words.
"I don't think I'm going anywhere any time soon," she replied with a grimace as her feet tangled in the short chain still attached to the floor and she kicked a few times to untangle the mess. "Have at it."
"The dreams that I had about you involving dungeons and chains and stuff never went like this."
Sera snorted into the floor and laughed. "God, I hope not, Steven." She tried flexing her hands to get some blood flowing to her numbed fingers with limited success, and she abandoned the thought of being able to twist free of the ropes. Apparently, Everett was shockingly good at this. From this vantage point, she had a better view of the complicated spell circle that had been cast to nullify runic magic. The markings were burned right into the stone floor, and reminded her uncomfortably of the ritual site on Wrangel Island.
"I'm scared, Sera," Steven said softly after a minute of silence.
She shifted on the floor, trying to find a more comfortable position without success. "I am, too, Steven." She sniffed, feeling tears welling up again in frustration at her situation. "I promise," she said, her voice cracking half-way through, "I'll go out on a real date with you when we get out of her, okay?"
Steven gave a weak snicker of approval. "Somewhere fancy," he demanded half-heartedly.
"So fancy," she agreed automatically as her tears trickled down to mix with the filth on the stone. "I'll wear a sexy dress and everyone will think you must be unbelievable in the sack to have bagged a girl like me."
"How do you know I'm not?" He challenged her.
"Spider-Man sheets. Dead giveaway. They scream virgin."
Steven's voice grew more serious as he shifted the conversation away from the embarrassing oversight of letting her see those sheets on one of her visits. "You can't do what this guy wants, Sera. He's a total nut bag. Can't you just like," he wiggled his fingers, "do something cool to get out of here?"
She sighed. "Apparently, he's gotten rune magic nulled in this cell somehow. I'm as Mundane as you are right now."
"Nah," Steven objected confidently. "You'll always be something special, Sera. And if he wants you to use your dreams, then you've still got that, don't you?"
"Fat lot of good that's going to do us," Sera said sarcastically. "I'm so sorry I got you into this mess, Steven."
"Bullshit," he said. "I'm proud to be your friend Sera, and I'm glad I'm here right now, because otherwise you'd be alone. Don't even think about playing the self-pity card; you're way too badass to get outsmarted by that douchebag. You just have to think. I'll even shut up."
Easier said than done, she thought to herself as she tried to relieve the tension in her muscles without success. No runes, no fighting, just dreams. How does that help me right now?
She thought of the last time she had been here, and how easy it had been to escape. She knew that she took her abilities for granted, but this was a bitter lesson to swallow. All of her grand plans to save Rayce would fizzle and die if she couldn't get out of here.
He'll think that I gave up, she thought with a sinking feeling. That I forgot about him.
Sera slowed her breathing, concentrating on inhaling as deeply as possible through her nose, despite the smell, and exhaling through her mouth. She needed to be calm if she was going to deal with this.
As she relaxed, she felt her mind drift back to Rayce, as it always did. She had been on the opposite side of the same problem when he had vanished after escaping this cell. She couldn't track him while he wore the bangle, but she had been able to catch sight of him with her gift.
That doesn't help if he can't see me. She closed her eyes and Rayce's smiling face was replaced with a more recent image of Zeke, his grey eyes serious, and she grew confused before his voiced floated to the surface of her memory. "I believe in you, girl. I know he dreamed about you the night before all of this even started – he's always been out there waiting for you, even if he didn't know it."
Her heart sped up. Or can he see me? She rifled back through her dreams, feeling the same sucker punch that always accompanied watching him being whipped, and she remembered his eyes widening in surprise when they had made eye contact as he had counted the tenth lash.
Their connection was completely unique. It reached all the way back to her first true dream, when she had been only a girl in a fantasy land of beautiful monsters come to revel under the stars. From the moment she had locked eyes with Rayce as a child, she'd felt it, known that she had to find him. From the moment we locked eyes... Sera's head jerked up before she remembered her uncomfortable position. Holy shit.
"Steven," she called out. "I need to run something crazy by you."
"I'm all about that crazy. What's up?"
She quickly gave him the relevant details about the two dreams and passed on Zeke's odd comment before asking, "Do you think it's possible to... dream at Rayce?"
He looked sceptical. "That's next-level crazy, Sera. You honestly believe you could reach him in a dream?"
"Maybe," Sera said excitedly. "The first time, only one of us was asleep, and the second time, I got sucked into a vision even while I was awake, like he was reaching for me and I had to go." She swallowed thickly, wishing for a drink of water. "If we were both asleep..."
"You think you could talk to him?" Her new-found energy was infecting him, and he felt hope growing in the darkness.
"What do I have to lose for trying?" Sera rolled her eyes.
"That depends. How serious do you think that asshat was about getting results? 'Cause he seems like the kind of guy who would take any excuse to cut off a finger or two," Steven answered with a brave face.
"Then I'll have to do both. I'm pretty sure he'll ask if I even tried his brand of insanity, and as long as he can use Maellartach against me, I can't bullshit him."
"Maellartach?" Steven looked awestruck.
"The Mortal Sword. It forces Shadowhunters to tell the truth." Sera closed her eyes again, falling back into the familiar routine of relaxing herself back to the brink of falling asleep.
"Okay, first, that is a awesome name for a sword. And second, it's a pretty big warning sign that you guys need something to force Shadowhunters to be honest. Don't you think that's a big red flag for your kind?"
Sera felt the first tugs of sleep on her mind and she dropped all of her ties to her body, leaving Steven and the suffering behind so that she could drift away on the current as it pulled her away from the cell and into the world of dreams.
The ashes of Alicante blew across the cobblestone streets of the city, fluttering in the wind as Sera opened her eyes to a deserted ruin. Some buildings had collapsed, the rubble spilling carelessly down into the walkways, while others stood silently with broken windows like dark eyes that watched her pass. The demon towers still stood tall, casting down their soft light to illuminate the devastation. Sera wasn't sure if the destruction was a true reflection of what had happened, or if it was simply magnified by her dream, but it saddened her to see the once-beautiful city destroyed.
She moved slowly through the streets, uncertain of why she was here. She had bent all of her focus toward Everett's impossible task in the moments before sleep had claimed her, but she had awoken in an empty city.
Thick fog rose slowly from the canals, creeping upward over the walls to begin carpeting the boulevards in every direction. The sky dimmed overhead and twisted toward night in moments, bringing a chill that seeped up from the stones under her feet. Her breath puffed in and out in tiny clouds and she shivered at the sudden change, but continued walking through the eerie tableau.
A shadow appeared in the fog ahead of her, or perhaps it was born of the fog, and it quickly materialized into a sleek figure dressed in a stylish suit. Wide, black eyes stared out from an exotic face that had been untouched by the centuries, and then she heard Jiahao's mocking laughter roll out around her.
"I think you'll find that there may be a great change in the world on the horizon," his image taunted her again as she approached, but she did not fear shadows in her dreams. She was a Shadowhunter. He vanished just as she reached him, melting away back into the fog.
Her search for answers had taken her from one end of the world to the other without success, and she felt shame burning in her cheeks as she was reminded of her failure by the exiled Faerie Lord.
A cascade of broken stones slid down a shattered staircase inside a home that had lost its entire front facade, leaving the rooms exposed. Sera spun around in a crouch and a seraph blade sprang to life in her hand.
Zeke descended slowly, his black gear coated in a thin layer of ash. He clapped his hands together to knock off some of the dust, sending it up in a puff. His dark hair was streaked grey from the flakes, and he nodded at her encouragingly as he crossed his arms and leaned against what was left of the wall at the bottom of the stairs.
"Rayce needs you," he said again seriously. "And I think you need him, too, even if you don't understand why yet." His words from the Rift echoed back at her. "There's a reason you found him, Sera, and I don't think it was just so that you could lose him."
"I'm not going to lose him," Sera promised the Stripped Shadowhunter just before he faded away.
She reluctantly pushed Rayce away from her thoughts – she couldn't afford to be distracted now. She had to focus on what was important.
The boulevard she was following dead-ended at an enclosed playground, and she slipped through a wrought-iron gate in the fence with a feeling of apprehension. The swings hung silently in the rising mist, and swirls blew across the pavement of a disused basketball court to reveal two figures crouching in the brume.
Clary's red hair shone in the strange, washed-out light of the demon towers when she looked up to see Sera nearing. She held an oversized piece of white sidewalk chalk poised in her right hand, like the kind that Mundane children used on their driveways during the lazy months of summer.
Sera saw that the court had been transformed by her work, covered over with an exact replica of the ritual site markings on Wrangel Island. The runes stretched out in the same dizzying pattern that had sent Sera to her knees when she had stared at it too long, and she felt the world tilt again at the unnatural, forced combination of demonic and angelic glyphs.
"The smaller circle represents us, the Mortal world," Clary repeated, sketching around the runes at her feet. "The ring around it symbolizes the protection laid down by Heaven's hand to protect us from the Void." She gestured out toward where Tessa had recreated the third ring in red chalk. "The theory goes that the ellipse of demonic power pressing up against our happy little bubble is allowing corruption to seep over and create raw spots where the demons can force their way through."
Relieved to see that her dream had brought her back toward Everett's twisted mission, she knelt down with the two women once again.
"I don't understand," she whispered.
The half-warlock smiled obligingly and drew the red chalk in her hand across her palm. "For someone to take control of the circle once more, they would need re-draw the sigils with the mixed blood of Sammael and Lilith."
"But that's impossible," Sera protested. "You said it yourself. Sammael is dead, slain by Michael himself."
The mirrored ritual site flickered around Sera, switching between the chalk drawings on pavement to bloody sigils drawn on ancient stone between one heartbeat and the next. Clary and Tessa vanished with the playground and firelight crackled to life around her to burn through the murky clouds of rolling fog that parted to reveal the private room on the upper levels of the vampire bar in the Rift.
Cassius dropped like a stone from the night sky above her and Sera fell back onto the curving couch in spite of herself at the sight of the Greater Fey with his missing wing restored leaning casually against the pole in the centre of the raised platform. He was clothed exactly as she had last seen him when he bore away the Unseelie King's body, promising that it would never be found. The twin torahk-na rested easily on his hips.
He lowered his great, black wings and revealed a ghostly image of Rayce reclining in the Cajun vampire's arms. Blood trickled down Remy's chin as he turned to look at her with ecstasy in his eyes. "Such a rarity... it's been too long since I've had the taste of one of Sammael's brood. And that hint of something else... something dark. Absolutely exquisite – I've never had anything like it."
"Rayce…" Sera breathed, dazed as the pair disappeared as suddenly as they had come.
Cassius held out his hand to her and pulled her into an embrace, his strong arms hard and unyielding. She could feel his warm breath stir her hair as he whispered playfully in her ear, "Have you forgotten my lesson so quickly? Many of the Greater Fey derive part of their name from that of one of their parents; it was a common practice."
She saw again the page that chronicled the children of the Seelie Queen, and read the header with fresh eyes. Sammaradriel. And at the bottom, Rayce Morgenstern. Son of Sebastian Morgenstern, a Shadowhunter blessed or cursed to have been given the blood of…
"Lilith." Sera covered her mouth with her hands when Cassius melted away, leaving her to drop to her knees in shock. The bloodlines of Lilith and Sammael had been joined… in Rayce.
Her heart started pounding as she grasped the immensity of the memories that were being knitted together by her strange gift and a more desperate need that she had ever felt. Pieces of the puzzle had been scattered across the world, but no one had ever held them all at once, as she did now.
One demon slain by Heaven's hand, the other cursed to never bear a living child; it should have been impossible for their blood to ever mingle, but fate had twisted to give the Nephilim a chance to unlock the poisonous ellipse of runes that lay upon their world's wards like a crown of thorns. Sera was breathless just thinking about it. Rayce!
The dream responded to her heart's desire and spun her around faster and faster, dragging her down into a haunting forest filled with the same thick fog as her vision of Alicante. Faces frozen in horror screamed silently from just below the surface of the bark on the trees, and Sera backed away from them hurriedly. She stood in a small clearing marked by a cairn of carefully-stacked stones that trailed thick chains. Nothing looked familiar, and the dream continued to spin slowly around her through the forest.
Clary appeared around the edge of one of the trees, her brows furrowed in thought as Sera's mind reflected back another piece of a memory.
"Something about paths to Heaven and Hell, or something like that..." she muttered again, trying to remember the story of Thomas the Rhymer for Sera once more.
Eyes in the trunk of one of the monstrous trees next to Sera flicked open, black orbs that burned with hatred as they saw the Shadowhunter girl once more. She recognized the hiss of the Unseelie King's voice as a split opened in the bark and he said slowly, "At Hell's maw and Heaven's gate."
Pulse racing, Sera's eyes widened. The rings of runes at the ritual site glowed in her memory, flaring white and red where seraphic power did all that it could to hold back the demonic threat.
Mark Blackthorn dropped down from the branches of another tree like a cat, landing silently at her side with sadness in his eyes. He took her hands gently in his own. "I am only Unbound, Sera. I do not believe that even the Hunt knows how to reunite the two halves of a Hunter's soul from beyond the veil."
The King's face in the tree snarled at the half-Faerie before continuing, "Gamble all to undo fate."
Faint strains of eerie music drifted through the fog to herald the approach of the sepulchral form of Veralysia. The wasted Faerie glided forward through the twisted Forest in her tattered robes until she reached the trunk that bore the likeness of the Unseelie King. Her spectral hands curled into fists as she stared down at the wooden visage.
"No power on earth can bring back the dead," she whispered despairingly even as the King hissed, "Trade away one final breath, close bitter eyes and embrace death."
Sera felt the weight of the dream pressing down on her, and she struggled to absorb everything she was seeing and feeling, trying to process it while it was still fresh.
Two silhouettes materialized in the fog and resolved into Hunter and Aspen holding hands like frightened children in a fairy tale forest of monsters, and Sera had to admit that it wasn't far from accurate in a dream like this. Aspen's golden hair shone like Sera's own in the misty blue-white light of the forest and she took a deep breath, squeezing Hunter's hand in her own for strength, and Sera heard her own voice echo in the space between herself and the two strange parabatai, "Basically, Aspen, it sounds like you made a parabatai bond with a guy who was almost dead."
The split in the Unseelie King's face trickled blood as he repeated the last words of his long life,"Chain death to life and heart to soul; entwined as one to be made whole."
Sera shook her head slowly, but dared to believe, even if she had no idea how it was possible. Heat blazed through her chest, filling her with hope as she looked up to see Cassius reclining comfortably in the branches of the tree, gently swinging one barefoot lazily beneath him.
He called down to her one final scrap of memory that hit Sera like a punch to the gut. "Even Luchareon would not have been able to anchor its power alone. It binds those who are split between the worlds. He could tether its power in this world, but not in the next. I think he called upon his father for help."
Sera's eyes snapped open, dropping her back into her cell with a sharp dose of agony as she became aware of her body once more. She panted shallowly as she struggled to keep the dream fresh in her mind, her mnemosyne rune potentially compromised by Everett's gambit. Cassius' voice was fading. Called upon his father for help.
The torches had burned down in their brackets, and Steven was snoring gently against the wall. She thought about waking him up to tell him what she had seen, but she wasn't finished yet. Wild energy raced through her from the revelations and filled her with confidence for the next step.
No one's coming for you now, Everett had promised her, certain that Seraphine's enchanted bangle would work against Sera now that she was his prisoner, but she silently vowed to prove him wrong. She knew what she had to do.
The strange air of deep Faerie rushed through Rayce's hair as the Wild Hunt soared over the endless fields of purple and red grass that whispered softly below. The sky remained unchanged from his last visit, clouds of orange, red, and yellow scudding across the sky as if to mirror the flames of the Mortal realm he had left behind.
Far more wary on this trip than the last, Rayce rode at the rear of the Hunt, watching his brothers carefully for any sign of betrayal. He knew it was only a question of when, not if, and he sighed tiredly. He couldn't even remember when he had last slept. Had he? Something had to be done. Soon, he told himself, before I slip any farther away.
Guilt gnawed at him for the dead firefighters and the scattering of other unfortunate Mundanes the Hunters had found, now borne by those ahead of him, but no matter how many times he replayed the scene in his mind, he didn't see how he could have done anything differently to save them from their grisly fate. How long would the Forest be satisfied this time? Hours? Days? The seams of time pulled at him as he passed deeper into Faerie and he reminded himself that it was irrelevant here.
They followed the meandering river of sluggish water that churned lazily through the hills toward where the Eternal Forest waited, and Rayce felt a growing sense of apprehension in his chest. Would his father find him here again? A headache began to pulse gently in his temples and he closed his eyes against the exhaustion he was feeling as his steed bore him down toward the edge of the Forest.
The other Hunters touched down gently with their grim harvest and many turned back to watch him land with malevolent eyes. He sat up straighter in his saddle and looked over them imperiously, trying desperately to mask his fatigue with the lessons he had learned from Bael long ago. He could see his brother near the edge of the group, watching him carefully.
Rayce lifted his arm and pointed deeper into the Forest. "Give them an honourable end." The trees at the edge of the forest were still gluttonously filled with their most recent feeding, and the Hunters would need to venture deeper to find trunks still awaiting fresh victims. That would give him more time away from the dangerous Fey warriors.
"None of you are to come find me. You will wait in the Forest until I return. No one leaves until I give the order." He fixed a hard look on a few of the Hunters whom he felt certain had slipped away while he had descended into the Unseelie Court. Azad met his gaze fearlessly, an expression of amusement playing across his features as he accepted the unspoken accusation.
Rayce could see Vindictus shaking his head slowly as he heard the clumsy commands. The tall Faerie tilted his head to one side to listen to one of the Hunters muttering quietly in his ear, and he laughed softly in agreement with whatever was said. Kieran's eyes held a deadly promise in their silver and black depths. Bael stood apart from the others, but Rayce caught several quick looks shot in the former Crown Prince's direction. Suspicion crept into his heart as he saw those furtive glances. What game, indeed, brother?
Wrenching the reins of his mount around firmly, Rayce lifted away from the Hunters before the tension rose any further.He couldn't think of any other safe way to escape from them, and at least they would be too busy for a while to cause any trouble. He soared out over the queer sea of grass until he found a small rise capped with a slim-branched tree that resembled a willow, though its trunk was bone-white and its hanging boughs dripped with blooms of sapphire and azure.
Far away from the other Hunters, Rayce let his mount vanish and then he collapsed heavily into the odd grass of deep Faerie, burying his face in his hands. I can't do this. His life had narrowed down to a three-way contest to see who would kill him first; the Hunters, the Forest, or his father. He was so tired.
A lump was digging into his side painfully, and he reached down to tug the offending object free only to find that he was holding the worn witchlight given to him by Mark Blackthorn. He could still see the burning intensity in the Unbound's eyes when he had pressed it into his hand and reminded him that he was not forgotten. Tears welled up and he let them come.
Sleep, Rayce, a voice whispered on the wind. His head snapped up in response, searching for his father as if his thoughts had summoned him. But the voice wasn't right. His mismatched eyes swept over the immediate area, and he craned his neck to peer through the cascade of blue flowers flowing down along the branches of the odd tree, but there wasn't anywhere to hide, and no hint of a scarlet jacket. This is it, he thought. I'm truly mad now.
Please, Rayce, trust me… the voice was feminine, and if he wasn't certain that it couldn't be Sera, he might have thought it was her. His heart sank as he cast a glance back down to where the very edge of the Eternal Forest was visible in the distance, and distrust flared up. He jumped to his feet once more and screamed at the trees, "Just leave me alone!"
His voice cracked, and he sank back to his knees weakly, leaning forward on his hands as his head fell forward. "Just leave me alone," he whispered, breaking inside.
Rayce! Sera's voice in his mind was unmistakable this time and he could almost feel her displeasure. I need you to sleep…
"Sera?" he whispered, daring to hope. But there was no answer on the wind. He waited, straining to hear her, and was left disappointed. A fluttering breeze brushed across his face lightly, and he could almost imagine her touch. He exhaled slowly.
Do I dare to sleep here? His head throbbed in response, but he couldn't deny that he wanted to. If it was just the wild fantasies of a man losing his mind, did he really have anything left to lose in trying? But if it really was Sera... and she needed him...
Rayce rolled over onto his back to look up at the sunless sky above and watched the clouds drift by lazily on their way to nowhere. He lifted his right hand and looked at the witchlight stone again. You are not forgotten. The words echoed in his mind and he squeezed the stone gently, coaxing it to life.
Bathed in witchlight, Rayce brought the stone down to his chest and folded his left hand over it, closing his eyes. A tiny smile curved his lips upward as he felt exhaustion claim him.
I'm coming, Sera.
Rayce opened his eyes to the same strange sky of deep Faerie as if he had only blinked instead of falling asleep. He stood up slowly, marvelling at how light he felt. The cloak had vanished from around his shoulders, and instead he wore the black leather gear of a Shadowhunter, the ancient sword gone from his waist so that only his staff remained, slung across his back as always. The gear was familiar and comfortable, and he wished he could keep it.
"Rayce," Sera breathed softly from behind him, and he turned, unable to believe that this was possible. His eyes travelled up her body, past the black jacket that was nearly identical to his own, drinking in every line until he reached her face and forgot how to breathe. Here, in the dream world, her angelic heritage was more clear than ever before. This was her world.
Spills of vibrant blue flowers from the odd tree created an unearthly backdrop for her as she stepped toward him hesitantly. She lifted her left hand and he mirrored the movement unconsciously, reaching up to twine his fingers into hers, still in awe that she was really here. The feel of her hand in his made his pulse race, and she ducked her head down for a moment, overcome by the simplicity of the connection.
Unable to help himself, he gently stroked her cheek and lifted her face to kiss her at last. It was selfish; they couldn't be together anymore, but he just couldn't quite bring himself to accept it, not here, not when she was so close. Her lips were achingly soft on his own, and he breathed in deeply, his free hand sliding around the back of her neck to tangle in her hair. His sister's words came rushing back to him, ' To be loved by one of the Nephilim is as close to the love of Heaven as one may get.' And who was more truly Nephilim than Sera? He reeled in her hand and held it to his chest, needing her so badly it almost hurt.
"Rayce, wait," she whispered against his lips, pulling back. "I need you."
"I need you, too," he whispered back, renewing their kiss with a slow-burning passion that drew a startled gasp from Sera. How could he have ever thought he could live without her?
She pushed back against his chest gently and broke away again, breathless, with a crooked smile. "You're making this way more difficult than it needs to be," she scolded him. "I don't know how long I can keep this up."
Rayce's eyebrows drew together. "How are you doing this?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. We've always been connected, ever since you first saw me when I dreamed of you in the tournament. I never really thought about it until you saw me again from the Unseelie Court." Her face darkened and she punched him in the arm lightly. "Which reminds me - why didn't you listen to my warning? I told you not to be stupid!"
He shook his head in confusion. "What warning?"
"I left you a message on some godforsaken field after cutting my way through about a dozen Hellhounds," she answered slowly. "I saw you there in a dream – you were standing right over a Mundane with a bright red jacket. I left my mother's stele for you. There's no way you could have missed seeing it."
Rayce closed his eyes and tried to picture the scene again in his mind. He remembered kneeling down, finding a child curled in the arms of her father, and making the decision that would lead to his eventual punishment in the Unseelie Court. But before that... he clenched his teeth. Baelerithon.
'Satisfied with your spoils, brother?' Rayce had asked harshly, disgusted that his brother had stooped to pillaging amongst the dead.
'Very,' Bael had answered.
The truth, but twisted by a Faerie tongue. There was no doubt in his mind that his brother had intercepted Sera's message and withheld it from him to further his own designs. He remembered again the confrontation with Bael in the tunnels of the Unseelie realm, meeting him alone on the way back to the other Hunters.
'Oh dear, brother. It looks as though you've let your temper get away from you,' Bael had mocked. He had known exactly what Rayce was walking into before it had happened.
But why? Rayce asked himself. What does he get out of this? He couldn't see his brother's game yet, but he felt a familiar anger flare in his chest just knowing that he had become a pawn once more, and his eyes snapped open again, filled with simmering rage.
"Stop taking chances," Sebastian warned him from behind Sera, but he ignored the scarlet-clad Shadowhunter. Time enough for him later.
"Rayce?" She could feel the change that had come over him as he had pieced together his brother's duplicity, and she sensed the rising darkness even if she couldn't see his father standing behind her.
Rayce pulled her back into his arms, crushing her against his chest tightly as he buried his face in her hair to breathe her in again. "Sera..." he murmured gratefully. "You're saving me again even if you don't know it yet." It was time to deal with Bael before the broken prince could bring whatever he was planning to fruition. Rayce's eyes narrowed dangerously over her head, and Sebastian nodded in silent approval.
The sky rumbled ominously with the roll of thunder, and the bright clouds that had filled the sky when he fell asleep began to darken, bruising to hues of blue and purple. He felt Sera's arms tighten around him quickly before letting go, and he drew back in confusion.
"Rayce, this can't last much longer, and now it's your turn to save me," she said desperately. "The new Consul has me chained under the Gard in the same cell we found ourselves in last time, but he has it spelled to cancel out runic magic. I can't get out alone."
If he thought that he had been angry before, he had underestimated the full range of his emotions. Molten fury crashed through him at the thought of her imprisoned. Black lightning streaked down from the sky and Sera fell away from him as his furor ripped apart the delicate fabric of her dream.
Sebastian howled with wild laughter as the storm broke over the sapphire willow and Rayce screamed his wrath into the whipping wind as he was swept back into the waking world.
Rayce snapped awake with a fire blazing in his chest, all of his exhaustion and melancholy from before burned away with a frenzied clarity that showed him the way. He knew what he had to do. The cloak of the Hunt swirled around him as he swung himself up into the saddle of his dread steed.
"I'm coming, Sera."