Chapter Fifty-five
Minerva Trystaine’s head snapped up where she had landed on her hands and knees in the dirt, her attention captured by the exacting call of vengeance. She found and zeroed in on the new Time Queen across the field, then watched as Helena Dawn pulled the trigger of her oddly older modeled gun, taking down the monster in front of her.
Then she shot him again.
As a Wisher, Minerva instantly recognized the acquisition of revenge, the doling out of long-awaited justice. She recognized it even at this distance. Even as she rolled to avoid the sharp ruby-like horn of some kind of wicked unicorn as it shoved its horn into the ground beside her, Minerva managed to scramble to her feet and turn back around.
She refocused on the Time Queen. Her gaze slid again to the gun. Minerva felt something special coming from that weapon. There was more to the revolver than met the eye.
It was not of this world. Minerva was a fae who had been living in the human realm for years before she realized who and what she was. As a changeling, so to speak, she recognized the sensation of matter existing in one place – when it was formed in another.
That gun in Helena Dawn’s hand was from the alternate dimension, the one that had collided with the world they were in now and freed the Queens from their safe world bubbles. Minerva was sure of it.
She ducked and rolled again as the unicorn-Pegasus with the pretty and deadly horn rushed her. Then she turned her attention again to the gun. Yes. The gun was perhaps in fact the only thing from that by-gone world that had made it into the new one completely unaltered. In that respect, it shone like a light in the darkness.
And it gave her an idea.
It was a wonderful, hopeful, barely and probably not possible idea. But it was worth a shot. And what was more, at the moment it was all they had. The Thirteen Queens somehow needed to work together to end this fight once and for all and defeat Amunet and Ahriman. That gun might just be the way.
She wondered how many bullets were left in it. Don’t use them, she thought desperately at Helena and wished she could somehow get the message to her new sovereign sister.
Suddenly, Helena Dawn turned her head slightly as if she’d heard Minerva.
Holy shit, Minnie thought. But… did…. Either her wishing power was no longer solely revenge-based in this new world, ooooor – and this was far more likely – Helena possessed the same ability to read minds that William did. It was most likely limited when it came to powerful minds like those of the sovereigns or Nomads, but if she wanted to hear someone? And if the person trying to reach her wanted to be heard?
We have contact, Minerva thought with an almost-smile. The smile never fully formed, though. Her arms were bleeding in too many places, and she could feel the poison from the purple gas beast she had fought earlier still trying desperately to work its way into her fae body. The poison would fail; she was immune to poison. But it fucking hurt in the process. And before she could even get once more to her feet, yet another Dark World monster was all over her.
She spun to face her new foe. But as she did, Minerva simultaneously sent out messages to her other sisters, hoping they too would hear her.
*****
Helena heard a voice in her head, desperate but kind. It was a voice she instantly liked, even though she’d never heard it before. She immediately knew it was one of the other Queens.
Her name is Minerva, she told herself, coming by the information as Time continued to slowly feed her the history of the multiverse. Minerva was the Unseelie Queen, sovereign of the Dark Fae. And she’d told Helena not to use her remaining bullets.
Before Helena could understand why Minerva wanted this, much less respond to the request in any capacity, the Unseelie fae was gone from her mind, no doubt caught up in yet another battle with the monsters that continued to pour forth from the Dark World.
That door that she’d inadvertently opened in the alternate dimension was still open. The dome above them here covered their fight, shielding the raucous from the rest of the mortal world, but that shield and the power they were all exuding only acted as a beacon to the supernatural, drawing ever more Night Terrors to their location as they escaped.
We need to shut that damn door, she thought manically. The monsters would just keep coming and coming. But more pressing at the moment was the monster standing in front of Helena.
And she’d thought facing the Terror would be bad. The Nomad was absolutely petrifying in comparison. And she’d just asked Helena a question.
Helena struggled for a moment, trying to process what the ancient evil woman with the crazy glowing eyes had asked her. She wanted to know how it felt to have closure, Helena reminded herself. Closure, she thought, glancing down at the dead Terror.
Ah. I see.
If only to buy herself and the other Queens more time, she answered. “I’m… honestly ambivalent,” she said.
Amunet’s brow rose. “Oh?”
But Helena offered no further information, forcing the Nomad to ask another question instead. “How so?” Amunet asked. It was clear she truly wanted to know. “You’ve just destroyed the man who ruined your childhood. How can that be anything but satisfying?”
Helena waited a beat. Then she lowered her gun – she wasn’t supposed to use the last two bullets anyway – and actually thought about it.
The truth was, she didn’t feel any different. Her mom was still gone. She’d still suffered. Her father had still died. She’d still been orphaned and raised by her sentinel. Nothing had changed. Hell, she’d always believed the Terror was already dead. She’d only learned differently a few short minutes ago.
“Everything’s the same,” she admitted. “Whether he’s dead or not. It all still happened.”
*****
Evelynne D’Angelo looked up when Chloe Septeran called out her name from across the field. The moment she made eye contact with the blue-eyed Akyri, information was magically passed from one of them to the other.
They were playing telephone tag, in a way. That was the impression Evie had as the line of reasoning filtered into her brain, followed by instructions to pass it on. She almost laughed at one point, when she recalled playing telephone tag with classmates in fourth grade. If tonight’s message turned out anything like the message that had been botched in that class, then Minerva’s instructions to Helena could sound something like donuts snooze fast mullets instead of don’t use the last bullets.
So for all their sakes, and for mullets everywhere, Evie desperately hoped that wasn’t the case.
Chloe had been charged with contacting Evie because Evie was a warlock and Chloe was an Akyri. It was natural for things to pass from Akyri to warlock, especially magic things. So Evie absorbed the magical stream of communication as she struggled with the half-vulture, half-wolf looking thing that was determined to pull out her liver. When the message was fully sent and received, she tried her best to send back a mental nod. An affirmative of sorts.
Then she began casting a spell to help her with the monster she was fighting, and at the same time she reached out to the next Queen.
*****
Amunet regarded Helena for a few piercing, tense, and silent moments. All around them, discord reigned. Lightning began to eat away at the dome overhead, and Amunet spared a withering glance at her sister, the redhead, where Kat sat hunched and closed-eyed behind the tree a few feet away.
Amunet was well aware of the other Nomad’s shielding spell. And Helena could tell Amunet fully planned to do away with it. But at the moment, Helena and what she had to share were just interesting enough to be more pressing than that.
So Amunet turned back to Helena and asked, “Why didn’t you set it right?”
Helena blinked, her brow furrowing. “Set what right?”
Amunet looked truly confused. And that confusion seemed to feed her anger because her voice steadily rose as she talked. “You had Time in your grasp. When you became Queen, you had the power to go back and re-write history. Just once! You could have saved your family. You could have stopped this monster then and there,” she said, gesturing to the dead Terror at their feet. “But instead, you took my son from me.” She shook her head. Her tone dropped to something barely more than a whisper. “Why?”
Helena felt slightly stunned. Amunet’s question rolled through her, and she realized that the answer was even more stunning. The truth was, it hadn’t even occurred to her that she could change things for herself. It hadn’t been important.
“Because it wasn’t about me,” she said with the same honesty she’d shown Amunet all along. “It was about Cain.”