Page 23 of WitchCurse

That wasn’t true, but I took that strength and sank it into Zephyr’s glamour, drinking it down like I did Sebastian’s tea. I had never been easy prey. They had required spells from this world to bind me. Decades to drain me until I was too weak to fight. Had he forgotten?

Zephyr gasped and ripped away his touch and his magic. I might be weak, but I was still kitsune, cursed among the fae. For a few seconds the blight tingled away as my skin erupted with sensation, but then his magic was out of reach again.

He slammed his fist into my face, pain exploding in my jaw. “I will never be your food,” he snarled, claws raking down my side and tearing me open. The world vanished, blinking out, and then returning as pain came and went, but now I was in a real cage, no longer a royal room. The walls nothing but stone without break. Part glamour? I couldn’t sense it. In fact, the space added to the ache in my bones, as if it were part iron? Was that possible? Could I still be in some fae court and locked in an iron box?

I lay on my back, heart barely beating, everything numb, yet somehow still hurting. What an anti-climactic end. Turning to a dragon and eating them all until my head was severed from my body would have been a glorious finale to this chaotic existence.

Even that had been stolen.

CHAPTER9

Nick

Toby burst out of the bakery and changed to wolf faster than any of the other wolves I’d ever seen, even faster than Liam. He raced after Kiran before anyone could react, and Liam had rushed to change to try to catch up. We followed them halfway through the forest, finding a trail of broken branches and squashed leaves that seemed to be from Kiran’s maddened flight.

Liam tracked them with scent, their line jagged through the trees, as if running from a monster. But I knew the monster Kiran feared was himself.

Dylan kept Ari back at the bakery, comforting the child as the babe had been feeding Kiran magic without permission. “It was just a little,” Ari had sobbed. “I just wanted to make Uncle Kiran better.”

Dylan had scooped the child up and taken them inside. The pack magic pooled over the area of the street with the bakery and the tea shop to give everyone a sense of normality.Look away, nothing to see here,flickered over the area, sending everyone back to their day. Liam’s power within the pack but also the third’s control of it, astounding. The lines of power filled with structure, though he cast no actual spell. If only I could use magic as easily in this world to find Kiran.

I tried to open a door. It appeared, a giant thing of solid wood, giving me a half second of hope, until I yanked it open to find a wall. Sebastian had a similar frustration when he’d been in Underhill, but I hated his pitying look.

Liam was at his side in wolf form, searching the ground for a trace of Kiran or Toby’s scent. “I left a message for Wesley. Why doesn’t he ever answer when I call? Isn’t he supposed to be one of our court?” Sebastian asked. I suspected his court wasn’t developed enough yet to really garner loyalty from a being like the Stag. The undefined chaos of it was a growing thing, not unlike the child. But who knew for certain how courts worked in this world? Would theirs be a lesser place specific to a smaller frame of time? Or would it replace one of the lost larger courts, like spring or summer? Sebastian frowned, staring at the door. “The lines are right.”

Of course they were. It was my mix of magic that was wrong. Much like in Underhill, Sebastian needed Liam as his scion to perfect the focus of his magic. But as Kiran’s scion, now unable to open doors to follow him, did that mean I was useless to him here? I snarled, waved the door away and tried again. Same result, and I worried about wasting too much of Kiran’s strength.

Sebastian could open a thousand doors, but without a tie to Kiran, he’d be unable to find him, especially if Kiran had been taken to one of the courts, which left questions about the strength of these courts in the mortal realm. More like Underhill in pockets, rather than an entire other dimension, as they all had boundaries, and firm walls. And since we’d followed their scents until now, when every trace of them vanished, I suspected that’s exactly where they were.

We found signs of a battle, the sludge of decayingHuntbeasts blowing on the wind, and the strong smell of blood in the air, both Kiran’s and Toby’s. Liam had howled in rage, but their scents stopped here, like they’d been dropped into a black hole. The fae had them, it was likely they actually had been deposited into some dark abyss somewhere. Would I ever get Kiran back? Would they bind him up to drain him again? My heart flipped over at the thought of losing him.

“Can you sense him at all?” Sebastian asked. He drew symbols in the air, his new skills in alchemy asking the wild magic of the forest for something. The area lit up with swirls of purple, the ghosts of several shapes appearing, one which might have been Kiran in his enlarged form, and the other possibly Toby? But the swirls didn’t go anywhere. It was like a snapshot in magical residue of the last moment they had been in this spot.

I knew they weren’t there, but I extended my senses outward, searching for Kiran, hoping for something. Reaching through the bond was strange. Normally it was as easy as opening my hand to stare at my palm, a world in front of me, Kiran firmly in my mind, though often curled in on himself as he instinctually tried to protect himself from harm. This time it was like hitting a wall of amber. I could sort of see through it, only everything was skewed, and the barrier seemed several feet thick.

I could hear voices, but not understand the words, as they were too faint. And I caught the unmistakable outline of Zephyr, fae lord and monster who should have died in Underhill, and I reached for Kiran. Was it his mind that was keeping me out? Or other magic?

“Seb, can I borrow some power to help Kiran?” I asked, turning his way.

“You can sense him?”

“It’s strange. I don’t know if it’s a spell or a ward. It’s like he’s stuck in a vat of honey that has solidified. I can sort of feel and see him, and Zephyr is there.”

Sebastian put his hand on my shoulder, and I felt the burn of power. He was getting very good at the mix Kiran needed and I tried to press that power through the bond. I felt him for a few seconds, disoriented and hurting.

“Kiran?” I called sending him power, trying to help him heal. He threw a barrier up as suddenly someone was pulling power out through me, out of Sebastian. I got a brief moment of panic from Kiran, and the image of Zephyr’s hands on him. Kiran trying to shove me out of his head like he only did when the worst was about to happen.

I grabbed Sebastian’s power with metaphysical hands and slammed it into Kiran. Transferring power was the only thing I was good at since being dragged back into this nightmare of a world.

You are kitsune, I growled at Kiran, pouring the magic into him and demanding he not fall prey to Zephyr. He refused to share those memories, though sometimes had nightmares that I had to free him from. We didn’t speak of that darkness, Kiran often hiding his worst pain. But he was mine now, and no one else could have him.No one’s toy. Fight back!

I wasn’t certain he heard the last part as there was another barrier slammed into place between us, and then an explosion of pain that rippled from Kiran to me. I blinked back stars, but lost him. Unconscious?

“Fuck,” I screamed.

Sebastian ran his hand over my back, comforting, his omega strength working even when I wanted to force him to stop. “We’ll find him.”

Liam completed a change back to human, and pulled on his clothes, which Sebastian had gathered in a hurry. Liam didn’t appear any calmer than I felt, despite the waves of soothing omega strength pouring over the area.