Page 33 of Midnight Kingdom

“Then you always look like someone just shot your dog?”

“Shut the fuck up,” I grumble as I follow Noni’s directions to the portal leading to the Unseelie Kingdom. “Noni, how often do you listen in on the court’s discussions?” I ask.

“Noni listen all the time.”

“What do you hear?”

“Lots and lots of stuffs, Mr. Dragan. Noni hear the Unseelie Court talk about the naughty king. They say he a pawn, but Noni don’t know what that means.”

I stop in my tracks. Thoradin’s words echo in my mind—that Variant may not be the real enemy. Noni’s words all but confirm my old friend’s suspicions. If the Unseelie see Variant as a pawn, then there might be much bigger players on the board than we suspected. If the gods or other primordial beings are dipping their grubby little fingers into the swirling vat of bullshit that has become the realms, we seriously need to reevaluate our priorities.

“When we get back, we need to gather the others,” I announce.

“Why?” Revenant questions.

“Because there’s more going on here than any of us thought.”

“You? Thinking? That doesn’t sound good.”

“I’m serious, asshole.”

“So am I,” the vampire retorts dryly. “But I admit there is some weird shit going on with Eilish, too.”

“What the fuck do you mean?” I demand, not appreciating the fact that he’s close enough to Eilish to know something ‘weird’ is going on with her. Something I clearly didn’t know.

He gives me a dry expression. “Did you know she has nightmares?”

“No. How do you know?”

“Maybe because she wakes up screaming and clutching at the bed linens?” Revenant quirks a brow in my direction and I shake my head. When did he develop a personality?

“Does she ever say anything about these nightmares?” I ask as I wonder to myself why the fuck I’ve never noticed her crying out in the middle of her sleep.

“No. She just calls out names I’ve never heard before.”

“Probably memories,” I reply with a shrug. Then I turn to face him. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“How are your memories? For a minute, we thought we lost you to Transmutation Stone.”

“Yeah, so did I,” he answers with an unconcerned shrug. “But the stone didn’t really reveal anything. Yes, some of my memories were returned to me, but not enough to make me actually feel like I’m Baron again.”

“You aren’t Baron,” I say almost reflexively.

He faces me with surprise but then covers the emotion with his usual callous expression. “You seem to be the only one who recognizes that.”

“Cambion suffers from wishful thinking,” I say with a shrug. I turn back to the subject of Revenant’s missing memories. “I thought Pyre was attempting to help you with your memories?”

“He says he can try to restore my memories, but he wants me to focus on the person I am now and not the person I was.” He grows quiet for a second. “He understands.”

Part of me envies Eilish and Revenant. They both seem to have found a good friend in the necromancer. There was a time when I almost considered Cambion a friend, but that died when I allowed myself to be seduced by Lamia.

Thoradin is right. I have to stop thinking about the past or I’ll never have a future. But something has been nagging at me since Baron returned as Revenant.

“You said the Midnight Queen raised you from the dead, right?”

“Yeah,” he grumbles.

---