But she clung to the window, adjusted her grip, held firm.
There was no time to consider what a precarious position she was in. The wind was shockingly strong now that she was dangling from the belly of a dirigible, maybe even stronger than a shifter's muscles, and it felt like it was going to pluck her right off of the airship.
She slammed her fist into the porthole. One good blow was all it took. The latch broke, and she wedged it open, squirming inside.
Deirdre tumbled to the floor of the airship.
There were people around her instantly. They radiated with magic, distorting the ship around her so that it looked like the walls were twisted into curlicues, blurring everything beyond Deirdre's arm's reach.
She'd seen that aura too frequently to be able to mistake it.
The pair standing over her were seelie sidhe, members of the Summer Court. Both crackled with magic. One of them was Trevin, a member of the Summer Court who protected Rylie Gresham. Both looked like they were prepared to kill Deirdre.
"Don't hurt her!" Rylie Gresham pushed past her guards to stand between them and Deirdre. Her hair was a mess and she only wore a slip and pantyhose. She must have still been getting dressed for the meeting at the UN building. And for the first time that Deirdre had ever seen, Rylie looked angry. "Don't hurt her until we get a chance to talk."
They didn't dock with the United Nations building. The airship remained suspended a few hundred feet away, far enough that Deirdre wouldn't have been able to leap the distance safely.
She was taken to a meeting room decorated with the sanctuary insignia. It was like sitting in a really nice hotel that just so happened to be hanging over New York City. If not for the soft hum of the engines and the gentle rocking of wind, Deirdre never would have known that they were in the air.
Trevin approached her with silver chains. "Hold still."
Deirdre lifted her hands in a defensive gesture, though she wasn't sure if she wanted to attempt to set fire to him or punch his seelie face. "What are you doing? You can't tie me down."
"Really?" Rylie asked, planting her hands on her hips. "You expect us to trust you after everything you've done?"
"You have my word that I'm not going to try to attack." The seelie sidhe had taken Deirdre's guns. Without silver bullets, she was no match for Rylie.
The seelie guards stood back against the walls, not so far that they couldn't be on Deirdre in an instant if she moved. There were about a dozen OPA agents in their black suits, too. More than enough security to take down Deirdre. Maybe enough security to take down Stark himself.
She was being treated like a serious threat.
That was nothing new. Deirdre had always been a big question mark-someone that other shifters feared.
At least she had earned the reputation now.
But Deirdre definitely wasn't going to try to attack against these kinds of odds.
"Can we talk alone?" Deirdre asked.
"No, I don't think so," Rylie said. "You took something from my sanctuary. I trusted you, Deirdre."
"I trusted you, too," she said. "I thought that you were someone else, and now I'm thinking..." She glanced up at the OPA agents again. They were watching her closely, faces blank. "Are you sure you want to talk about this where other people can hear it?"
"What are we talking about?" Rylie asked. "I don't think there's anything left to discuss. You've made your allegiances clear, and you've left us with no option but to arrest you."
"Arrest me? But you sent me to work with Stark."
"I didn't send you to help him kill people. Your allegiance is supposed to be to me."
Deirdre searched Rylie's face for any hint of guile.
Rylie had to know that Deirdre had figured her out. That finding the Ethereal Blade implicated her as the Godslayer. And that because the swords existed-because the Godslayer existed-it meant that everything else mythology said was true, including the part where Rylie would have killed the gods to make the world the way it was now.
It meant that Rylie was responsible for Deirdre losing her father.
"How could I ever give my allegiance to someone like you?" Deirdre asked. Her voice came out hoarser than she intended. It made her sound weak. "You never gave me what I asked for when I fulfilled my obligations to you. The least you can do is not arrest me."
Rylie sank onto the chair across from her, massaging her temple with two fingertips. "Deirdre..." She sighed. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to talk to you about the election. You've set it up because of that last conversation we had. Didn't you?"
"Not just because of you. I've been thinking about it for a long time. The nature of my office, the responsibilities that I hold..." Rylie gazed out the window at the clouds, which were heavy with rain and the color of steel. "I was bitten by a werewolf when I was fifteen years old. I became Alpha when I was sixteen. I was a kid, chosen by fate. I'm not sure I ever deserved this much responsibility."
"Then you should yield," Deirdre said. "Don't run for reelection. Stark's in second place. He'll win even if you drop out."
Rylie gave a tiny laugh. "Do you really think I'd do that?"
"You said it yourself. You don't deserve the responsibility." She bit out the words, flinging them at Rylie.
"I didn't deserve it when I was chosen. I've earned it now. I think the voters will agree with that, and that's why I'm running." Rylie folded her arms. "If you want me to drop out, then I take that to mean Stark's not willingly participating in the election."
Damn. The Alpha wasn't stupid. "Yeah, Stark's pretty pissed about it."
"The man's not easy to please."
She had no idea how much that was true. "He thinks that offering to pass your privilege on to someone else is political theater. He says that shifters don't elect Alphas and nobody would obey the winning candidate."
"I expected that reaction, which is why I'm taking steps to legitimize the election," Rylie said. "You met Marion when you were at the sanctuary-the mage girl."
"The one who's half-angel and half-witch," Deirdre said.
"Yes, that one. Mages can cast spells that human witches can't, and they can make their enchantments stick to anyone. That includes all kinds of gaeans. Shifters, seelie, unseelie..."
"Vampires."
"Vampires don't have Alphas and they're not in the running for the election," Rylie said.
"Don't you think that's kinda jacked up?"
"It's not within my power to change the nature of gaean breeds. Marion will bind all of the Alpha candidates together. Her spell will guarantee the outcome of the election. If I win, the other potential Alphas will be forced to submit to me. If the King of the Summer Court wins, I'll be forced to submit to him."
This must have been the oath that Darryl had mentioned.
"And if Stark wins?" Deirdre asked.
Rylie pulled her robe tighter around herself. "He'll have to take Marion's oath for it to be applicable to him."
"But if he took the oath and then won, would you let him?" she pressed.
"If that's what the popular vote decides, then yes. I was coming to the United Nations to pick up the Secretary of the Office of Preternatural Affairs. Fritz Friederling will be taking the oath, too. Even the government will have to recognize whichever Alpha wins. It should prevent civil war after the election, since the Alphas who lose will have no choice but to obey the winner. And the oath forbids Alphas fighting before the election, too."
"So the candidates won't be able to send assassins after each other? Nice," Deirdre said. "Too bad Stark won't take the oath. And arresting his Beta isn't going to make him want to participate, either." She was bluffing. At this point, Stark probably didn't care what happened to her.
Rylie's voice took on a hard edge. "Arresting Stark's Beta wouldn't be an issue if you hadn't attacked the United Nations building."
"You didn't answer my call and I needed to talk," Deirdre said. "What was I supposed to do?"
"Write a letter? I have a lot more demands on my attention than waiting for you to call!"
That stung more than Deirdre expected. Rylie had let Deirdre believe that she was important to her-or at least, important to the cause. But whatever was between them, it couldn't have been that important.
"What demands?" Deirdre asked acerbically. "Sending an army to try to slaughter Stark's people?"
"Secretary Friederling and I have been trying to arrange meetings with the sidhe. We've got an appointment with the King of the Summer Court. We haven't been able to reach the Winter Court, though."
"That's because they're in the middle of a coup."
The Alpha's eyebrows lifted. "What makes you say that? We haven't heard about a coup, and we have a lot of informants among all of the gaean factions."
"Who do you think killed the army that the OPA sent to the asylum? That wasn't Stark. It wasn't me. It was the unseelie on a vendetta against Stark."
"The unseelie wouldn't kill OPA forces. We're allies." Rylie bit her thumbnail, falling silent as she thought for a moment. "I'm going to need more than your word on this. Good thing we're going to the Summer Court-they'll have a way to contact the Winter Court."
"Aren't the seelie and unseelie enemies?"
"You can't bitterly loathe someone you don't love a little bit. Trust me, the two factions talk. A lot."
Deirdre made up her mind in an instant. If the meeting with the seelie king was a critical part of the election, then she wanted to attend it, too. Stark was going to win the role of Alpha, dammit. Even if that meant Deirdre handled all of the campaigning and negotiating without his help. "I'm coming to the Summer Court too."
"That's going to be hard to do when you're in an OPA detention center," Trevin said. The seelie guard was lounging against the wall, bouncing sparks of magic between his fingertips.
Deirdre's hands balled into fists atop her thighs. "Cutting me out of election proceedings means cutting Stark out. That's bad politics."
Rylie looked exhausted. "I'm not trying to cut anyone out, but Stark doesn't need to be involved in negotiations with the sidhe."
"You need someone from his side to testify to your good intentions," Deirdre pressed. "You're not going to get Stark to play along with this election if you get hostile with him. Making deals under the table with the seelie, putting his Beta in prison-"
"Fine," Rylie said. "You can come as a representative of Stark."
Trevin stood up straight. "You can't let one of those people into the Summer Court. You're exposing the king and queen to a massive security threat."
"The king suggested I bring a liaison for Stark's camp anyway." Rylie finally dropped her hand from her temple, composing herself. "But you have to understand something, Deirdre: You're going to have to face consequences soon. Not just for what you're doing with Stark, but what you did today to the guards at the UN."
Deirdre just couldn't let that rest. She couldn't let the Alpha turn things around on her like everything was her fault. "You're the one who was hiding the Ethereal Blade in your stupid enchanted mausoleum. Which one of us is really the bad guy here?"
Finally, Rylie seemed to understand why they might need privacy. She glanced back at the OPA agents. "Let's take a walk."
-VII-.
Hiking through the Appalachian forest with shifters at Stark's back felt right. It was so mammalian, so very natural, to move through the trees with the whisper of furred bodies sliding through leaves shadowing him. He had maintained his human form but compelled the others to shift, giving him an escort of beasts. More than an escort-an army.
For those few hours where they hiked, the world felt right. This was the world that shifters were meant to live in. A world where they followed the strongest and weren't confined to cities, fed kibble by government agencies, registered and tagged like dogs.
They were wild animals of the forest, and this was where they belonged, unconstrained by bureaucracy and rules.
But reality had to return, and it did.
By the time the sun rose, Stark had led his people to a familiar location. There were signs of a small camp there: flattened soil, broken branches, even a wrapper for shifter-branded jerky. Stark had been there with his team only a week earlier, and the forest had yet to wipe away all traces of their presence.
He stepped up to the edge of the canyon.
The chasm where Holy Nights Cathedral had sat was empty. The grass was untouched. Trees were growing where a huge building had been only days earlier-trees that must have been growing for years, as though there had never been a cathedral there at all.
"Impossible," Stark muttered, turning to inspect the camp again. He could see no sign of his shifters, but he could feel them among the trees, waiting and watching.
He must have gone to the wrong place.
But that was impossible, too. Stark was an excellent tracker. He had never gotten lost in his life.
The trees were identical. The curve of the canyon was identical.
So where was Holy Nights Cathedral?
Stark put the binoculars away and searched his pockets for his GPS device.
Even with the rustling of cloth and zippers, the approach of footsteps didn't escape his notice.
He wasn't alone in the forest with his pack.
Stark acted like he hadn't heard anything. He riffled through the bag, found the GPS device, and left it at the bottom of the pocket. Instead, he wrapped his fingers around a small handgun and removed the trigger guard.
The footsteps were growing nearer. The stride was short, but heavy-a man attempting to navigate the steep incline of the mountains without falling. He sounded clumsy. Definitely not a shifter.
Stark's nostrils flared as he scented the air. His senses weren't as acute as a werewolf's, but he picked up the faint odor of cherries. It wasn't a smell he recognized.
The man was behind him.
Stark turned and lifted the gun in one smooth gesture, aiming it at the place he knew the newcomer's head would be.
"Freeze," he said.
The man stopped a few hundred feet away. He was ill equipped for hiking, draped in heavy black robes that accounted for his clumsy motions. One hand clutched a staff that shone with an internal glow, as though the wood were translucent and held fireflies captive within its core.