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"He wanted you to keep him out. To protect him from being sent into the Maleficium."
She nodded. "This I would do for him, although he was not fae."
I was so close; I could feel it. "How did you help him?"
"I offered him the only boon I had to give. We cannot make magic; it is part of us. We are beings of magic that connects us to this world and the next. You know he is a twin?"
I nodded. "Seth and Dominic. The messenger of peace and the messenger of justice."
"In your parlance, yes. They were conceived into this world as one but split apart from each other at birth. He believed, he hoped, that he might make use of that bond again. That magic, if powerful enough, could reconnect him to the brother of his birth and bind him to this world instead of the Maleficium."
A memory sharpened into focus - a memory of Celina and Ethan in a park beside the lake, Celina insisting things were changing in Chicago. That was before Malory had begun her quest to reunite good and evil magic. She'd said the bonds were breaking between angels and demons.
She'd been ahead of her time, but she'd been right.
"And you offered to help him rebond to Seth?"
"I offered, and I helped. There was a mage who believed in his cause. His name was Endayel. The only magic I could barter was that which connected me to the green land, but Endayel took it and used it to save Dominic, to rebind him to his brother so that he might have a chance to live again. And so I was relegated to my tower, apart from time, apart from green meadows, apart from the immeasurable sky."
"A prison," I muttered. "Did other messengers try the same method?"
"I know not, but messengers were powerful things; I doubt they went wilingly into confinement."
"Why are you teling me this now?"
"At the break of day, I summoned him to the tower. Centuries have passed since last I have seen his face, or him mine. He is so handsome. So powerful. Even his wings - defiled as they are - sway me not. I offered my body to him." She looked back at me, her expression fierce, and magic lifted. "I gave him everything. And now, finaly, he has escaped his bondage, and how has he repaid my boon? He has rejected my sacrifice. He has rejected me."
She may have been a centuries-old fairy queen, but the despondence on her face was the same as that of any other woman who'd been rejected. No matter the species, human or supernatural, we al had emotions in common.
"How do we stop him?"
Her expression went fierce, and I imagined her a modern-day Boadicea, leading her troops into war. "You control the terms of the battle. It is the only way to fight his ilk."
"How do I do that?"
"Summon him. Each demon has a sigil - a symbol - a secret name assigned to him. If you draw his sigil correctly, Dominic must appear." She reached into the pocket of her cape and puled something out, then handed it to me.
It was a circular disk of wood about two inches across. A symbol had been burned into it - a triangle containing smaler figures. "This is his sigil?"
She nodded. "His brother wil know how to use it for the summoning. When he appears, you'l only need a sword."
I definitely had one of those. I tucked the sigil into my pocket.
"Thank you, Claudia."
She nodded and took a step forward but nearly stumbled. I reached out to grab her arm before she could fal and caught a whisper of her flowery perfume. But beneath it, a subtle smel, cloyingly sweet. Decay, I thought. She was dying even as she stood here because she'd left her lair.
That's why she wanted to meet me here. She wanted me to know - to understand - what she'd given up for him. The entire world outside, al for the chance that he might survive the making of the Maleficium and escape his bonds.
He had, and although that victory could be laid entirely at Claudia's feet, he'd rejected her.
"I wil see him punished," I said, using words she might have.
"I wil see your boon colected."
"So it is done," she said, walking to one of the stone ridges and taking a seat, the fabric of her dress and cape spreading out around her, the moon on the rise behind her.
I walked silently back to the car, and the fairies drove me silently back to the House again.
As soon as the door opened, I dropped to the ground and ran into the House. I found Ethan and Malik in Ethan's office.
He jumped up as soon as I entered. "Thank God."
"I'm fine. They were teling the truth, and I think I know how to stop Dominic."
Eyes wide, Ethan sat down again. "I'm listening."
I made him wait until Seth, Luc, and Paige had joined us in person, and Jeff and Catcher had joined us on the phone. If we were going to discuss battle plans, we needed the entire team.
Everyone was too nervous to sit, so they stood around Ethan's desk, awaiting the rest of the fairy tale. I sat on the edge of his desk, and I wove my tale.
"Dominic and Claudia, the fairy queen, had an affair. Things went south when he got violent, but that wasn't enough to shake her affection. When he found out what the sorcerers were trying to do, he went to Claudia for help." I looked at Seth. "Claudia realized Dominic could use his bond with you to keep him in the world. So Claudia used her limited power - her connection to the fairy world - to power the spel that linked Dominic and Sethback together."
"That's why she can't leave her tower," Ethan said.
I nodded. "And Seth was the anchor that kept Dominic out of the Maleficium. That's why it hurt. He was, quite literaly, ripped away."
"It makes a kind of perverse sense," Luc said. "You'd been twins before. It probably wasn't difficult to reimagine the magic that made you twins again."
"Did you feel anything when it happened?" Paige asked.
"When the Maleficium was completed and Dominic would have tried to rebond himself?"
"There was pain," Seth admitted. "Weakness. But we althought that was the result of the separation of magic. Of good and evil. That division was artificial, and al supernatural beings felt the sting."
"Dominic undoubtedly wanted to lie low," I said. "If he popped up too often or tried to control you outright, you'd have known what was up."
Seth nodded. "And I would have immediately found a sorcerer to rip him out again and force him into the Maleficium."
"And that would have put Dominic back at square one," I said. "He had no incentive to make himself known." It also explained why Dominic was so eager to let Malory do her thing.
