2
Maeve
Iscrubbed a hand down my face, pressure building in my skull from logging artefacts from the destruction of the Phoenix Compound. It was taking far longer than it normally would, but Dante’s army had set off explosions at every level of the structure. It was a wonder—a miracle actually—the mountain hadn’t collapsed from the attack.
But it became my job as interim director of Phoenix to ensure the vaulted magic—items we’d locked away over the last several centuries—were tracked, warded, and then placed in a new location and vault.
We had over a thousand years’ worth of items just from Avalon alone. Not to mention the pre-war magic that needed to be catalogued, most of which hadn’t been touched since Phoenix was created.
I sat back, the office chair creaking, and glanced out the window. My office on the first floor—the same office we’d found when we first entered the manor—overlooked the courtyard of the house, where Ivy had gotten her large outdoor table set up. With the sun out and skies clear, she and the children were at the large wooden table with paint and glitter while Eloise lay ona sunbed reading a book, likely waiting for them to go down to the lake.
My heart twisted at the sight of them; the smile on Ivy’s face made a warmth swell within me, a feeling I was slowly getting used to, but still startled me occasionally.
I was so used to the tension, the fear. Looking over our shoulders and expecting an enemy—Dante, one of his High Council, a soldier, the mythical Order—ready to attack. I wasn’t used to the quiet.
But slowly, I was. Gradually, I found myself more open to the slow mornings—not the ones where I spent an hour in the gym training, then in an office with paperwork. But mornings where I helped Adrian with breakfast, or afternoons where I joined Ivy in the living room and we sat together while she worked on her next book, and I filed paperwork.
There was no rush here. Sometimes, it was like we were frozen in time, in our own safe little bubble where the outside world couldn’t touch us.
And I enjoyed it more than I expected to. I thought after a month I would get antsy. Would want to return to work at Phoenix, assuming some new position. I’d reworked my expectations to become a knight of Ivy’s rule, her loyal mate while she ascended as Queen. But now that she’d stepped back from the crown, from the palace and everything that had to do with being a Queen of Nyx, I had to dosomethingelse. Something useful.
I supposed it was why I’d volunteered to log the artefacts, even though I had no desire to lock myself away anymore while my family was beyond the window enjoying the world.
I pulled another box out, this one marked asSTOLEN. There had been many artefacts taken from Phoenix and stored in the compounds we knew belonged to Dante, so it didn’t surpriseme I was being tasked with identifying, cataloguing, and putting them with the rest.
The box was filled with small items, most of which emitted a familiar, powerful magic. Nyx’s magic. He must have found the section of the vault dedicated to artefacts of the previous Queens.
Some were daggers, a few pieces of jewellery, rune stones and crystals imbued with magic.
But to my shock, at the bottom of the box, was my mother’s ring. And with it, the dagger I’d gifted Ivy.
Tears burned my eyes as I freed them. Phoenix had no use for these, but I knew my mate missed them dearly. She thought Dante had stripped her and destroyed them when she’d been taken. But he’d saved them, likely thinking they held more magic than they did.
They would be the perfect gift for what was to come and easily hidden in my desk where she wouldn’t look.
Before I could set the current artefacts away, a knock sounded at the door to my office. I sat up, hitting a rune under the desk to unlock it. We’d needed to put some protections on certain areas for the children’s sake. Maisie was a curious creature, and Eloise had a terrible habit of taking things she thought werecool—unfortunately, those items were dangerous. Two rune stones had gone missing while she’d been in Griffon’s care, both charmed to set off explosions.
She hadn’t known that, of course. She’d simply wanted to know more about them.
As the door opened, I set the artefacts I’d been cataloguing away in their warded chest beneath the desk, glancing towards the door to find Rhadamanthus entering. He slid into the office as if he didn’t want anyone to know he was here, and that had my brows furrowing.
He—other than Ivy—could just shadow jump into this room. So why would he knock?
The demon closed the door behind him and leaned against it, a stiff smile on his lips. “The plan is in motion,” he stated.
My gaze flickered to where Ivy and the children still sat outside basking in the late morning sun, before finding his stare. “How soon can we do this? Ivy is growing weary, and she is struggling deeply with how she feels regarding this pregnancy—and us.”
The stiff smile turned sad as his gaze went to the window, too. “I sense it within her, but she won’t speak of it.”
“I tried getting her to open up last night,” I said, folding my arms over my chest. “But she feels as though it is somethingshemust deal with on her own. I think it has something to do with her mother and her relationship with her stepfather.”
Even after months of searching, there was no news on the male who’d fathered Ivy’s sisters. We had a name for him now, Aalto, but it was common amongst the Fae of the Abyss and Summer Courts, so it barely helped us. Greer’s mate, Leith, and his son were under the assumption the siren male knew we were looking for him and was running away from his responsibilities—and the new laws in place for Fae who abandoned their young.
Since Ivy returned the magic to Faery, there had been changes. An effort to bring back systems and ways that’d been lost over the last three and a half thousand years. Especially regarding Changelings. It was a practice only one or two courts practiced, and only ever rarely, but abandoned young in the human world—especially knowingly—fell under those laws.
And if Andrew—Aalto—was caught, he would have to face not just the Fae council, but us.
Rhadamanthus shook his head sadly before pulling a piece of paper from his breast pocket. “Sao has confirmed for me thesupplies we need. I will be shadow jumping them directly into the basement.”
