“Sea Fortress. It seemed . . . appropriate.”
“But I named him Emrys.” She clutched his hand. “Immortal. Don’t let it be a lie!”
“I don’t have my power here—”
“You are Prince of the Incubi! And you are his father. Rosier! Bring back—” The voice hitched and went silent, and the lovely eyes fixed, unseeing. And just that fast, she was gone.
“Our son,” Rosier finished for her.
* * *
“Cass! Cass!”
I looked up, tears streaming down my face, to see a hazy version of Billy’s red shirt dodging through the images. I stared around, suddenly afraid, but there were no murderous fey in sight. Just Billy, looking frantic and furious. And then vastly relieved when he spotted me.
“You’re in here?” He zoomed over and started shaking me. “Why are you in here?”
“I— It’s hard to explain—”
“Never mind. Just get out! Get back inside you!”
“I can’t. I think I ended up in one of the leaders, and he—he has some kind of communication spell on him.” I stared up at Billy’s freaked-out face, and the pieces finally came together. “Billy, I think it might be Seidr!”
“So?”
“So Seidr doesn’t just let you see what’s happening.” I looked around at all those images, all those minds. And remembered Mircea saving Rhea’s life from a few thousand miles away. “It lets you influence it.”
“Cass!”
“Just listen! I’ve been stepping into minds that are linked by the spell. I possessed this guy, kind of by mistake, and now I can leap into any of them! I don’t have to fight the fey for dominance. I don’t have to burn through shields with power I don’t have. I don’t have to do anything—”
“And I say again—so?”
“So I think that’s why Ares cut Mircea’s Seidr connection to me on the drag. I’d blundered into the spell he was using to communicate with the leader, and it made him vulnerable. He was afraid Mircea would use it to hurt him—”
Billy shook me some more. “Ares isn’t here!”
“But someone else is. If I can find the right mind, I may be able to help—”
“Help yourself! You—” He broke off, staring around wildly. And then pointed at a nearby image. “There!”
It took me a second to realize that he’d found this body’s eyes. Which were showing me another battle between witches and Svarestri, only this time, they were in the great hall. And they were fighting over me.
Literally.
A bunch of Svarestri were near the door to the right of the hall, maybe trying to rescue their beleaguered captain. Only instead, they’d run into some witches coming through the door to the left, from the stairs leading down from the royal suite. The predictable had resulted, with the battle taking place over my and the fey’s prone bodies. And knocking us about every time the floor shook from a deflected spell, which was pretty much all the time now.
Something that was not great news to a person hanging precariously over a massive gap in the floor.
“Come on!” Billy yelled, to be heard over the sounds filtering into the fey’s ears from outside.
I shook my head. “Not yet! There’s something I have to do first!”
“Yeah! Not die!” Billy screamed, and then screamed again as the body we were in was hit by a spell, causing it to flop around all over.
I guessed that was what had distracted the fey from searching for me—a greater threat. Only it had just become great enough to convince him that he couldn’t deal with the problem outside until he solved the one within. Because a second later, he appeared out of nowhere, standing over me, sword in hand. It was a shadow, too, but that didn’t matter. It was made from his own energy, which meant—
It was deadly, I thought, looking at one just like it suddenly sticking out of his stomach.