Page 61 of WitchCurse

“Umm?” Toby squinted at him.

“Like choices aren’t really choices?” I said, thinking about it. He could tell us what he knew and we might interpret it wrong, much like a seer’s vision. I hated the fae and their roundabout way of doing everything.

“Fine, whatever,” Toby said. “You have a bargain. My vengeance for origins, whatever the fuck that means.” There was a ripple in the flow of magic around us, and it was the first time in this world that I’d seen a bond of words form. The few times I had thanked someone, it hadn’t created a tie, but this, a true bargain did something. I really hoped we hadn’t screwed ourselves further.

“In the human realm there was a mighty god who oversaw his people, giving them rice and grains, wind and rain, sun and stars,” Robin began. “He loved all his creatures, the mortal humans, the beasts of the forests and the fields. Thousands of little foxes ran about, eating up the little things that would have damaged the harvest or brought plagues among his people. He was a kind god, worshiped by the humans, and loved by all.”

It sounded like the very limited story I’d found in a lot of human novels about kitsune, but I didn’t say anything, waiting for him to continue.

“One day a beautiful goddess came from another world. Filled with light and warmth, she wandered the fields of the god’s lands finding it joyous and beautiful. The god sensed her presence and sought her out, shocked by her beauty, and he fell in love.”

“Poor shmuck,” Toby muttered.

I held back a smile.

“They had a few months of wild romance. A bounty of life bestowed on the god’s lands. Massive harvests, a spanning of a thousand species, and growing humanity living in happiness and love. The goddess even bore a child, a fox such as the god had never seen before, filled with fire, wind, and the rolling power of growing life. But the winter came, unexpected, like a thief in the night. Cold and brutal, the land was suddenly blanketed in ice and snow, death spreading quickly with everything it touched. The goddess was ripped away, unable to exist in the cold dark place the lands had become, and the god did his best to shield himself and his people from the onslaught of winter’s sudden grip. Many died, and the god grew weak with the death of his followers and his lands as it was a winter unlike any they had ever seen.”

Magic invaders from another world, I thought. The fae fucking up more lives. Toby nodded.

“Heartbroken from the loss of his love, and his people’s destruction, he dragged himself back to the den in which he’d hidden the fox pup, hoping to protect the babe and rebuild the land once winter slunk away as it always did. Only the pup was gone, vanished with no sign remaining that it had ever existed, and the god howled in pain, cursing the winter and all that came with it.

“Wind and water poured over the land, drowning everything, washing away all the ice had touched, banishing the nightmare from the land, but leaving everything barren, much like he had been stripped of all, so were all of his lands. And he laid down to rest, nestling into the grief of his loss, never to wake again.

“But spring always comes. And the land began to wake, life stirring beneath the ground as the god’s body fertilized the land. The goddess found her way back to the land, devastated by the destruction that had been wrought, and seeking her lover and the babe. When she found her lover, he was long passed, body feeding life back into the earth. And no sign of the pup she had been forced to leave behind. Stricken with grief, the goddess knelt and called to the last few remains of her lover’s fallen body. Pulling life from the earth and shaping it into a litter of little foxes like her pup had been. And the foxes were sent out to rebuild the lands, and give life and warmth back to the earth to honor the memory of the fallen god and the missing baby,” Robin said. He stopped and didn’t continue.

I let all that process a minute. “Winter stole the fox, which was Kiran?” I tried to clarify. It made sense. Sebastian’s powers had been bound in ice to help him control them when he was a child. Kiran shouldn’t be ice either, though they bound him in ice in Underhill. All the books I’d tracked down over the years had little more than mentioned kitsunes. Always a creation of wind and fire, which was why the depictions had them flying on clouds, colored in white and red. They devoured energy, giving life to stories of the kitsunes being beautiful women luring men to their death in mortal literature. Not exactly accurate, but not completely wrong either.

“The goddess created the kitsune in his image?” Toby asked. “Then shouldn’t he be super powerful? He’d be a demi-god or something? Child of two gods.”

“They bound him in ice because he is life and warmth,” I said, thinking out loud. Stolen as a child meant he wouldn’t know his real parents at all, but in his few years in the mortal realm he had actually had a taste of being what he was meant to be, a god of the land? Not all that unlike the elemental spirits. “What about the darkness?” I asked, trying to work my way through the story again.

“The god destroyed his own land in grief and rage over the loss of the goddess and the baby,” Toby said. “Wouldn’t Kiran have the same power? Destruction? Isn’t that why the fae have feared him for so long? Not because of some seer prophecy, but because he’s the descendant of a couple of gods, and they treated him like he’s just some ordinary fae?”

Well that made a lot more sense than my many years of searching for information on how to fix him. Kiran wasn’t sidhe at all, not really, though his mother might have been seelie sidhe? He was a god. An earthen born god who had been bound by the fae so they couldfeedon him. No wonder their world went mad. Toby met my gaze with wide eyes.

And the kitsune were created by a fae goddess of the light court? To spread life and love across the land. They were the energy of a god, which meant again, life and death, destruction and creation. No wonder Sebastian’s supernova of power had spawned a realm. He was supposed to be funneling the magic into growing the earth. Did that mean Kiran was too?

“If they kept Kiran in Underhill for thousands of years, how would he funnel the energy back into the earth?” Toby asked.

“He wouldn’t. They suctioned the magic from him, trying to use it themselves. And it drove Underhill mad.” The memory Kiran clung to, of the man he sometimes dreamed of, that had turned into a dragon, it made much more sense now. That was part Kiran’s power. They’d shared a bed for a weekend before the battle, and the fae shared magic as much as their bodies, at least those who weren’t high court sidhe. What if Landon, who later became a dragon, had taken some of Kiran’s magic? Had it changed him? Was that the darkness that Kiran hid? Why he feared anyone touching it? He blamed himself for giving it to Landon? Kitsunes were rumored to have godlike power, and Sebastian had certainly come out swinging when his powers were unbound, but they’d always been treated as lesser beings by the fae. Because they were creatures of the human world, not of Underhill.

“That’s why the fae have such a hard-on for Sebastian,” Toby said. “And Kiran. They are creatures of this world, not Underhill. Without the kitsune’s magic, will there be any fae left?” He looked at Robin.

“Many fae were born of this world, dragged back to be useful,” was all Robin said. He turned and headed toward the door. Leaving to seek vengeance maybe? I tried not to linger on the thought and upset Toby.

“The sidhe were never as powerful as they let people think they were,” I said, thinking about the thousands of stories I had read, but everything now beginning to fall into place. We needed to finish unbinding Kiran. Whatever remaining ties were likely limiting his ability to do as his god powers were supposed to. Whether that meant filling something with life or tearing it all down, I didn’t know, and thought in that moment, it didn’t really matter. The balance had been broken long ago, mortal gods ripped from the world, it might be time for them to roam free again.

* * *

Kiran

Iwandered along the border of their realm, vigilant for more lures, or any sign of more fae beasts. Their territory had expanded a great distance, as the alpha funneled strength into wards, not as a barrier exactly, but an early warning system. Their intent didn’t seem to be keeping anyone out, but an alarm for those within to be cautious. Was it different closer to their mortal dwelling? The area the camper sat previously had throbbed with energy that I had thought belonged to the fox, but it was more than his haphazard wards and mishmashed bindings.

The breeze blew cold and bitter, but the heat of my kitsune burned strong. I could have saved energy by containing it, or even easing my glamour, only I rather enjoyed feeling the rippling strength of fire again. Too long starved of the heat, it was delicious and delightful, even with my nerves still awakening and sometimes flickering with pain as they roused.

A heartbeat echoed in the distance, someone, likely mortal in the woods. Too slow to be wolf, but faster than fae, and theHuntdidn’t have heartbeats at all. And this one I recognized from afar, and I followed the sound, gliding through the trees as though pulled by a string, not by a spell, or binding of any kind, but curiosity.

That thought made me pause for a half second. How long had it been since I’d been curious? A side effect of being mostly unbound or healing?