Page 58 of WitchCurse
I smiled, enjoying the bantering. Life, I realized, I felt light and alive for the first time in ages. Yes, there were still things burned into me that tugged and threatened to tear every time I moved, but I could feel the wind on my skin, and beat of my heart. “When your mate dresses in magic, did you know others with magic can peer through the veil?”
He blinked. “You mean, the wholeEmperor’s New Clothesthing? Like he thinks he’s covered but everyone is staring at his bare ass?”
“Only those powerful enough to see beyond.”
Sebastian narrowed his gaze at me. “Are you staring at Liam’s naked butt?”
The alpha would eviscerate me for such a hubris, but teasing the fox about it was enjoyable, and I smiled, leaving him to make his own conclusions.
“You’re a jerk,” Sebastian said. He squared his shoulders.
“As you will,” I said. He cast off heat like a raging fire. I tried to stay in his bubble, without invading his space.
“My kitsune is strong, even if sometimes it just wants to eat everything in sight. Liam says it’s because our pack isn’t big enough. He’s trying to keep away from the direction you three went to help settle Toby’s wolf.”
The memory of the wolf brought a rise of anger in a seething flash of heat I hadn’t let loose in ages. Sebastian took a step back, his eyes glittering with his kitsune magic, unafraid, more assessing. The little fox was learning control, in a century he would be the most powerful force across many worlds.
“You don’t want Toby?” Sebastian asked.
“I want freedom. How will binding more mortal creatures give me that?” I waved a hand at the glittering walls of the realm. “Was this what you wanted?”
“I only want Liam,” Sebastian said. He shrugged. “A home. He is my home, wherever he is.”
“And the child?” I prodded where I knew their trouble lay. Nick said Sebastian wasn’t as naïve as I thought he was. Truth, or self-delusion? Kitsunes were better at the latter, though I’d never thought myself all that blind to my faults.
His shoulders tightened. “Not a choice I would have made, though I understand it. The power had to go somewhere, and Underhill had become a monster.”
“You fear the child?”
“Don’t we all? Aren’t they essentially the reincarnation of Underhill? And what did Underhill become? A mad and unstable thing that devoured everything it created. Is that Ari’s fate? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” Sebastian sighed. “I love that child, even if they are not a child at all. Sometimes I forget and treat them only as a child, and then think that is probably a bad thing? Like when Carl pisses me off and I get mad and forget they are watching, absorbing everything like a sponge and making their own judgments. What madness am I bringing the next generation? How can Liam and I possibly raise a god?”
“You need but look in the mirror,” I reminded him.
“I’m not a god.”
“A creator and destroyer of worlds, what would you then call us? Why do you think the fae seek to cage us? Is it our beauty that stuns them, and causes them to seek to adorn their mighty halls with our presence? Useful decoration?”
He made a face. “I forgot about your snark.”
“Nick says I am a master.” Thought of him stirred my anger again bringing rise to my internal fire, a smoldering of warmth that reflected off me in waves. I had missed that heat, but it was a bit wild and uncontrolled, even after being bound for ages?
“Why does thinking of him make you mad?” His gaze glowed bright with his kitsune sight. At least he was fearing that part of himself less. “Or maybe you should be mad all the time to keep the fire going? Nick did something?”
“Betrayal burns deep.”
“How did he betray you? Weren’t you the one who bound Toby?”
It wasn’t that simple. “He wishes to unleash the monster.” Would he understand?
Sebastian thought about that for a minute, gnawing at his lip. “I survived it.”
“And now have a child you fear will devour the very world on which we stand. You and I are similar, stronger than other kitsunes I’ve met in the past. Most of them became a beast…” I waved my hand, “not unlike the enlarged things we can become when we feed too deeply. It was the madness that took them in the end.”
“The hunger,” Sebastian added, “when changed like that, I had no control.”
“The choice then is to burst, setting the beast free to rage, or funnel the power elsewhere. The courts tried to control kitsunes, to everyone’s detriment. We are where we are now due to them trying to manipulate fate. I am hopeful that your pack will save you.”
“At the cost of having to keep growing the pack, or giving more strength to Ari. Was Underhill ever…childlike? Uncertain? Young?”
