War Of The Alphas: Alpha - War of the Alphas: Alpha Part 16
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War of the Alphas: Alpha Part 16

There was no sign of Melchior, Niamh, or any other unseelie assassin.

The dragon had told Deirdre that returning to Earth would mean her death at Rhiannon's order, but the early morning had been suspiciously quiet. Maybe she was safe out on the ocean. Or maybe Rhiannon just hadn't caught up with her yet.

"Coming?" Trevin asked, holding the door open. He hadn't stopped smirking ever since he'd found Deirdre in her room. He most likely thought he'd caught Deirdre on the walk of shame through the ley lines. At this rate, everyone was going to think Deirdre was skanking it up with all the Alpha candidates.

She brushed past the sidhe, head held high.

The doorway to the Summer Court was kept in a locked room at the back of the airship's gondola. It was a rather ordinary door, identical to the others on the ship aside from its golden frame. And also the fact that it stood open to expose brilliant golden light rather than another room. It was so bright on the other side that Deirdre couldn't make out any details of the Summer Court.

Friederling was waiting for them. Unlike Deirdre, he looked like he'd rested well overnight, and he wasn't leaning on his cane quite as hard as usual. The golden light radiating from the Middle Worlds made his blond hair look white.

The sight of the secretary made a hard lump lodge in Deirdre's gut.

She hadn't had time to consider what refusing Melchior might mean. But now she had a reminder shoved in her face.

Friederling had given her a deadly ultimatum, and Deirdre still had no idea what she was going to do about it.

"Good morning, Miss Garin," Secretary Friederling said.

Marion waved. "Hi Fritz. Is everyone ready to go?"

"Whenever you're ready," Trevin said. "I need to keep this side of the door secure, so I'll be waiting for you when you get back."

"You're not coming?" Marion asked. The girl's eyes seemed bluer than usual, as though proximity to the magic flowing from the portal was making her power glow, too.

"We aren't allowed to bring any guards with us. You ladies will have to trust that I can keep you safe," Secretary Friederling said.

Rylie laughed. Deirdre laughed too, a little bit too loudly and without any real mirth. Rylie might not have been insulted that that some human man would joke about being stronger than an Alpha and a mage, but Deirdre could be insulted enough for the both of them.

The secretary climbed onto the dais that held the doorway. Rylie paced herself to walk alongside Friederling despite his exaggerated limp. He looked like he could have used a walker more than a cane. Maybe even a wheelchair.

The two of them passed through the door and vanished into the light. There was no change in the humming that emanated from the door.

Marion finally stuck her phone in her back pocket. "So how's Everton Stark?"

"Murderous," Deirdre said. "As usual."

"Cool."

"Not really." Deirdre climbed onto the dais, but didn't step through the door. She still hadn't shaken the chill of the Winter Court. She wasn't eager to see what terrors the Summer Court held.

"It's okay," Marion said. "Nothing is going to happen to you. This is just a door." She rapped her knuckles against the golden frame. It echoed hollowly.

Deirdre squared her shoulders. Maybe she'd been spending too much time with Stark, but having the girl recognize Deirdre's fear spurred her on like nothing else could.

She hated the idea that Marion would think she was afraid. Weak.

Deirdre passed through the doorway.

The air tightened, squeezing gently like a blanket wrapped around her body. Deirdre shut her eyes against the bright light.

When she opened her eyes again, she faced rolling green fields.

For an instant, she was convinced that she had died again and found herself in that nowhere-place between life and oblivion, where the sun was always on the brink of rising and it never rained. But she wasn't alone in this place. Rylie and Friederling had arrived before her, and when Deirdre glanced over her shoulder, she saw that Marion had come too.

There was an archway behind Marion that matched the one on the airship, all glistening gold and gems. It stood on its own at the peak of the hill without any walls to hold it up.

The mage checked her cell phone. "Merde," Marion said. "No reception."

"We're in the Summer Court," Secretary Friederling said with thinly veiled irritation. "They don't have satellites here."

Deirdre stepped away from the others to the edge of the hill to look down upon the Summer Court for the very first time.

The rolling hills were carpeted in forest, much like the Winter Court. But while the place she'd visited the night before had been trapped in the icy depths of darkness, this place was...well, it looked like summer. The trees grew tall and twisting, with roots that thrust from moist, fertile earth that smelled of wet leaves. The dirt roads were lined with golden vines that hung with heavy grapes the color of rubies.

A postcard village sat in a clearing between the trees, its paths leading to a white-sand beach and sapphire ocean. There was a chateau on that beach, made of sprawling gold brick with green roofs. The windows reflected sunshine as though the chateau were on fire.

That was where the queen of the Summer Court would live.

A vehicle was approaching their hillside. It took Deirdre a moment of hard staring to process what she was seeing. "That's a carriage, isn't it? Do the Middle Worlds not have modern technology or something?"

Rylie stepped up beside Deirdre. "No, they do. It's personal preference of the queen. She's kind of a romantic." The Alpha looked like she belonged in the fairytale land, blond hair blown back from her face by a warm wind that smelled faintly of fruit. "Technology doesn't reliably function somewhere with this much magic, though. Animal propulsion is more reliable."

The carriage looked like it belonged at Disneyland. It was a white round thing covered in golden spirals and led by a team of four horses.

As they drew nearer, Deirdre realized that the horses emanated an aura like the sidhe, inhaling all light that touched them and emitting their own gentle glow.

They weren't horses. They were something magical.

They reached the top of the hill in seconds, then they stopped a few feet away, nickering in greeting.

Deirdre's eyes widened as she looked them over.

The horses had horns thrusting from their foreheads. Long spiral horns as long as Deirdre's arm.

"Kind of cool, isn't it?" Rylie asked. "I think I went into seizures of Lisa Frank joy the first time I saw them."

"Are those...?"

"Unicorns," Marion said. "They don't bite."

Deirdre stretched her fingers out hesitantly. The unicorn at the front butted its velvety nose into her palm and exhaled a warm breath over her fingers. A leathery tongue lapped at her wrist.

She stroked its neck. The unicorn's hair was soft, almost more like a foam. Its long beard glistened in the sunshine.

It nudged her harder, pushing its face into her hip.

"They like candy bars," Marion explained. She produced fun-sized Snickers bars out of her pockets, and she instantly had the attention of all four unicorns.

"That can't be healthy," Deirdre said.

"They're unicorns." She unwrapped the candy bars one at a time and let the unicorns eat out of her palm.

Deirdre felt numb all over watching it.

After all the horrible things that she had lived through in the last few weeks-heck, in the last ten years-it was more of a shock to come across a place full of perfect, beautiful things like the Summer Court than it was to be exposed Stark's asylum or the endless chill of the Winter Court.

"When I retire, I'm moving here," Rylie said. She was probably joking, but it made anger twist anew within Deirdre.

If Rylie wanted to move to the magical unicorn paradise, she could.

Deirdre didn't have that option.

Marion had run out of candy, but the unicorns inspected her clothes for more, nosing the small of her back and underneath her long, curly hair.

Secretary Friederling checked his watch. "The king consort is expecting us soon. If you ladies are done...?" He wasn't impressed by unicorns. Deirdre hadn't needed another reason to hate him, but if she wanted more, then that was a pretty good one.

The door to the carriage swung open of its own volition. Rylie climbed in first, and then the secretary followed.

Deirdre waited for Marion to finish petting the unicorns before joining them.

She hesitated only an instant before climbing into the plush body of the carriage. It didn't look like a trap. It was a glistening cage of gold and jewels being pulled by unicorns, for the love of the gods-like something Deirdre might have imagined if someone had asked her to design her perfect vacation when she was six years old.

But that was exactly why she felt so suspicious.

The deadliest threats were the ones she didn't see coming.

Secretary Friederling had asked that Deirdre protect him for a reason, and it wasn't because he thought the unicorns might nuzzle him to death. There was more to the Summer Court than she could see.

Whatever dangers might have been lying in wait for Deirdre, they weren't obvious as she settled into the comfortable seat of the carriage. It jolted into motion as the unicorns trotted back down the hill. Their hooves made a sound against the dirt path like wind chimes.

When they came down the hill and entered the trees, Deirdre got a better view of the village through the window of the carriage. The seelie lived in structures that looked like they had been grown out of the trees. They were covered in grass and soil and flowers, much like the memorial at Rylie's sanctuary.

What Deirdre didn't see were the seelie themselves.

It was a beautiful village all right, but it might as well have been a ghost town. The open windows with their fluttering curtains were portals into empty cottages. Fountains gushed in a town square that looked like it had never seen a single footfall. They trundled through a market that sold nothing at all, its carts and storefronts empty.

The Summer Court looked to be just as empty as its chillier counterpart.

Where were all the sidhe in the Middle Worlds?

"You said we're meeting the king consort, right?" Deirdre asked. "Why not the queen? Does the consort have much power?" She wasn't really wondering what the supposed "king consort" could get away with. Her mind was back in the frozen forest with Melchior-consort to a queen, offering to make her his favorite concubine.

"The king consort has a lot of power in the Summer Court," Rylie said. "Before Genesis, Donne was a werewolf. Not a member of my pack-a different kind of werewolf."

"There's only one kind of werewolf," Deirdre said.

"Two, actually," Friederling said. "Cursed werewolves and wolf shifters. But they all got jumbled up after Genesis and we don't bother differentiating between them. However, in the beginning, Rylie only led the cursed shifters."

"When he was still a werewolf, Donne mated with a powerful witch," Rylie said. "She became sidhe once the world was remade, so once she took over as queen, he became de facto king. The queen isn't a fan of business or politics. We probably won't even see her."

"So we're talking a queen-led monarchy where the queen doesn't have anything to do with business?" Deirdre asked.

"Must be nice, don't you think?" Secretary Friederling asked. "All the prestige, none of the hassle."

"Donne's better suited to leadership than his mate," Rylie said. "If we can convince him that it's in their best interests to participate in the oath, Leah will do whatever he recommends."

"Titania," Marion said.

Deirdre frowned. "Come again?"

Friederling gave a long-suffering sigh. "Leah and Donne are the informal names of the queen and king, but the queen prefers that they be called Titania and Oberon, as in Shakespeare."

"I did say she's a romantic, didn't I?" Rylie asked.

A romantic or insane.

They were leaving the unsettlingly empty village behind, but the forest road through to the oceanside chateau wasn't less creepy. The space underneath the trees was strangely dark, considering how sunny the Summer Court seemed.

Deirdre didn't see a single living thing. No birds, no squirrels, not even gnats buzzing around the piles of rotted leaves gathered among the roots.

Yet she felt like they were being watched.

She shrank back from the window. "Since the king consort used to be a werewolf, does that mean he defers to you?" Deirdre asked.

Rylie laughed. "Wouldn't that be convenient?"

"The seelie are allies of the pack," Secretary Friederling said. "Politically equal if not equal in power. They don't defer to anyone."

"Probably for the best," Rylie said. "If their king deferred to me, I'd have to make decisions for them too, and I've got enough of that going on at my end of things."

A queen of the seelie who didn't like to do queen things and a werewolf Alpha who didn't want to be Alpha.

Deirdre would have laughed if it weren't terrifying.

People who didn't care about their status had been put in positions of great power by fate, popularity, whatever-not because they wanted that power. They were the begrudging recipients of power. Reluctant leaders.

It wasn't a surprise that someone like Everton Stark had arrived to try to seize authority. It was more of a surprise that it had taken so long for civil war to break out.

Scarier still, Stark might have been the first, but he would hardly be the last. The election would destabilize everything if Rylie lost. Once people saw that her control was tenuous-that she could be replaced-other gaeans would surely take the opportunity to jump on the conquering bandwagon. People like Chadwick Hawfinch, who had no morals and high aspirations.

The war wouldn't be over once Stark took the lead. It would only be the beginning.

The carriage reached the chateau a few moments later. A sidhe with shining golden skin opened the door to their carriage and stepped back.

Rylie slipped gracefully out of the carriage, taking the attendant's hand for balance. She couldn't have needed it. Werewolves were preternaturally surefooted. But it looked to be some kind of seelie thing, judging by the way the seelie guy bowed over her hand. Some creepy modern chivalry thing.

Marion took his hand too. Even Secretary Friederling touched the sidhe's hand, although he declined to hold it for longer than an instant.