Page 65 of Immortal Sins
Cole bows again, the set of his shoulders a bit more relaxed. He warned me that his father’s angle would be selfish, but I didn’t expect for it to resonate so deep inside my heart. Joke or not, the infernal magic was a deciding factor in Cole’s decision to marry me.
The Fae King glitches out of view.
“He took it well, I think.” I mask the hurt with a healthy dose of bravado.
Without a word, Cole whisks me down the tree, back into the tunnels to the entrance of the chapel.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
The sight of the obsidian stone dries my mouth, but there are no kinky ghosts spicing up the air, and Cole leads me past it to the back of the chapel, to a patch of earth no different than the other nooks and crannies. Cole dashes directly for the solid wall, which upon closer inspection possesses a rainbow-coloured gleam that catches my eyes at just the right angle. We both glide through the hidden doorway.
On the other side, the passage appears as solid gold, and the dissimulated room dizzies my senses.
Above our heads, a circular brick dome with perfectly round holes that let a bit of moonlight shine through reminds me of Ancient Greek temples. The hypnotic patterns created by the forced-perspective quicken my breath.
On the ground, a dozen portals are set in a circle around an elevated rock pedestal. Faerie alphabet signets are carved into the stone above each of the portals. The closest Fae-made glass mirrors only my reflection, and I walk up to it.
I graze the polished surface, surprised to find real glass under my fingertips. “They aren’t active?”
“Not yet.” Cole holds his palm up to the empty altar, and immediately, a crack forms in the fabric between realms, right above the pedestal. “A tear as big as this is easy to open. When Izappedout of Faerie, I came here.”
“A well-traveled path between worlds can never be totally mended,” I whisper, remembering Beth’s explanation about the Underworld portal near the heart of Dark Falls’ power.
“Exactly.”
I check the portals again, each of them now betraying hints of the worlds beyond them. “Where do they lead?”
“To Earth. We call this place the Hall of Mirrors. The portals function as a series of magnifying glass, if you will. They allow us to travel from here to all these places, and from each of these places, we can create smaller, one-time-use paths to return through what we call Faerie’s main channel.” He points to the tear between worlds. “But we didn’t create the main channel, we just built a castle around it.”
I marvel at the eight-foot-high shimmer. “I’ve seen something like it before.”
Contrary to the one Beth and I opened, blue-tinged margins frame a well-lit crack, and the void between them radiates with warmth. A soft heat glides along my cheeks.
“It’s a big Seelie secret. The science behind the magic that allows us to travel between your realm and mine at will, as long as we are within range of the main channel’s magic. We can bring people along, but we’re not supposed to.” He caresses the edges of the tear. “Nobody is supposed to know that anyone could have this, that we aretaughthow to use the channel. They need to believe it’s a sacred power we’re born with.”
His poise hammers at my anxiety. The black linen shirt sticks to his chest and highlights each of his ridges.
“Why are you telling me?”
“If you’ve seen something like this before, it means Beth showed you the one in Dark Falls. The one that leads to the Underworld.” He turns to me. “How did she open it?”
I scoff. “Why? You fancy a honeymoon in hell?”
He rakes his dark curls back. “Onyx was not the first demon to wander accidentally into Faerie. More and more lesser demons are being found stuck between worlds. Unseelie use these cracks, these anomalies, to bridge our defences and murder our soldiers and citizens. The King believes they asserted control of a similar hub in the underworld. One hub in Faerie… According to our ancient texts, there used to be one on Earth, too, but it was destroyed. It seems logical that a third hub, the one that allows the Unseelie to disappear from a losing battle and later pop back out on another battlefield, would be located in the Underworld.”
Three hubs. Three realms. I’ve paid enough attention in History of Magic to believe it.
“We need to find a way to close these breaches. Either your mother came from one of these tears, or your father travelled to the underworld. How?” He encircles my waist, his hands resting on my hips.
I rap an absent-minded pattern on his chest. “Did you marry me for my magic, or my brain?”
“I love you for both.”
My stomach squeezes, and I glance back at the main channel, the mother of all Faerie portals, and shiver at the pulse of power emanating from it. “You’re only asking because you want to save your people?” Cole is many things, but an idealistic Prince Charming, he ain’t. That much I’ve known from the beginning.
If I’m about to confess my undying love to him, I better do it with both eyes open.
“How can I become king someday if there’s nobody left to rule? The realm needs infernal magic to get the upper hand on the Unseelie.” He gives a rogue smile, full of cockiness and affection, a mix only Cole Desirys could pull off so beautifully. “I simply needyou.”
