Chapter 8: Just My Imagination - The Shadow of a Vicious King

POV: MAX

I’m spread naked on a rock. Not just any rock, but one perched at the edge of the world. A waterfall plunges into an ocean of mist far below. Clouds drift past, brushing soft, fleeting kisses against my skin. The air is heavy and sweet, laced with honey and sunlight.

A man holds me to him, his breath warm at the nape of my neck, his arms keeping me from tumbling into the abyss.

“Don’t be afraid, little fox. I’d never let you fall,” he whispers.

His voice gives him away. It’s low and husky, threaded with that impossible mix of tenderness and hunger that could only belong to E. A voice made to soothe and ruin in equal measure.

“You’re safe with me, Max.”

Each word vibrates along my spine, pulling at a place inside me that aches to be touched. A molten glow lingers behind it, a predator’s lullaby that strips me of the will to run. It’s meant to both worship and devour me, but I don’t care.

His voice burns with the kind of desire that shines so bright you can’t look away.

His large hand finds mine, fingers lacing together in a perfect fit that makes my chest ache. The heat of his skin grounds me against the cottony haze of the dream. Every inch of him feels solid, real, while the clouds around us dissolve into smoke.

I spin around in his arms, but the sunlight shines a little too bright for me to see his face. His body is a study in light and shadow. Broad shoulders catch the sun, the lines of his muscles defined and smooth like silk drawn taut over stone. The light behind him paints his edges gold, and my skin prickles. Not from cold, but from the deep-sated yearning that coils low in my belly when his lips graze my ear. He smells of rain falling over hot stones—a rare scent that promises both ruin and renewal.

“You were meant to be bathed in sunlight,” he murmurs, shifting above me.

His weight presses me down into the cliff at my back, the smooth rock hot enough to sizzle.

“Why are we here?” I ask.

“You’re dreaming, Max,” he says soothingly.

His fingers brush my collarbone, light as wind, and that single touch ripples across every nerve ending, awakening a burning need that hums through my bones.

“I know,” I whisper. “Don’t wake me up.”

When I reach for him, the world tilts. My hand meets air first, then warmth, then skin. I sink my hand into his golden locks and drag my nails across his scalp.

He leans into the touch with a low hum, caressing the path between my throat and navel back and forth.

“Who are you? What’s your name?” I croak.

He kisses the hollow of my neck. “You already know who I am.”

“I don’t.”

I move to trace his features, but he catches my hand and kisses the underside of my wrist. “Whatever you do, don’t let me fall for you.”

“Why not?”

He tucks a strand of red hair behind my ear. “I only break the ones I love.” His hand travels down the path between my breasts, past my navel, and down to the gap between my open thighs. “I’d break you, too. In tiny little pieces. Just so I could make them fit with mine.”

I’m so incredibly ripe for him, for his touch, I could burst.

He leans closer, sunlight bending around us, the world spinning slower to make space for this moment. Our lips touch. The taste of him—of salt and sweetness—fills my mouth.

My back arches off the hot stones as his fingers finally reach my opening. Bliss bubbles in my blood, each stroke sweet and perfectly placed, like I’m an instrument he already knows how to play, and play well.

Then the sunlight flashes, and darkness takes over the sky. He fades—leaving only warmth in his wake, and the echo of a touch I was never meant to know.

A wounded whimper slips past my lips, the hold of the dream vanishing and catapulting me back to my body. To my bed.

I wake with a hot flash burning across my chest. The loose shirt I slept in has ridden up to my hips, and the sheets are tangled around my legs like I wrestled monsters in my sleep.

I rake my hair back and groan, eyes still closed, trying to breathe through the shame clawing up my throat. Sex dreams about a ghost I just met—while I’m engaged. Brilliant.

It was a dream, I tell myself. Just my imagination running feral. It could never happen in real life, and I had no control over the scenario.

But what if it wasn’t just a dream?

The doubt gnaws. The supernatural is complex and mysterious, and dreams can bleed into flesh when you least expect them to. Witches have a special relationship to the Dreaming. We can catch glimpses of the past there, or the future, but it’s dangerous to trust such visions. There are thousands of possible futures, and most of them are already out of reach.

If E curling up next to me sparked all that, then I’m going to need stricter boundaries, because I’m still wet from the echo of his voice. That’s unacceptable.

I wallowed in self-pity last night, about Lachlan, about the guilt of dragging him down into my world. That’s what brought this on. It’s not prophetic or anything. I was only having cold feet, that’s all.

“Good morning,” E whispers.

Heat floods my cheeks. I focus on the sunlight streaming through the open curtains and licking my exposed toes.

“Err—morning. Did you sleep?”

The question tumbles out too fast, my breath catching as he draws near, the dream still pulsing under my skin.

“I can’t sleep. I’m a ghost.”

I pick at a loose thread on the duvet. By the Dark One, why did I let him stay here? It seemed harmless—two lonely souls surrounded by monsters—but it wasn’t.

I clear my throat. “Did I…talk in my sleep? I do that sometimes.”

“No. But you smiled. Pleasant dream?”

Fuck. Is he teasing me? Does he know? Did he slip into my dream? My gaze snaps to the foot of the bed, searching for him, but he’s invisible, of course.

I’m still trying to pinpoint his exact location when the sound of the front door slamming freezes the blood right in my veins, and I leap out of bed.

“Maxine? Maxine, it’s me!” Mabel’s voice booms up the staircase.

“Mabs!” I run out of the bedroom and grab the railing, my knuckles whitening.

She’s here. She’s safe. Relief pierces my chest, spreading through my limbs.

Loose hairs stick out of her white bun, the familiarity of her wistful frown blowing all thoughts of the dream out of my mind as I rush down to greet her.

Her wrinkled hands cup my cheeks. “I was terrified for you, my darling. Are you alright?”

Tears flood my eyes. “I’m okay, but Kerri⁠—”

Mabel’s lips purse. “Kerrigan is dead, I know. I feel the ache of her absence in my bones. It took some scheming—and a great deal of luck—to get back to you in one piece. The sceawere is no longer safe.”

She’s breathless, I realize, and wearing black, form-fitting clothes. I’ve never seen her feral form, not since I’ve known her, but she clearly had to shift to get here.

“You were in Faerie?”

She nods, and I gape at her sheepish grimace. Mabel hasn’t set foot in Faerie in decades and practically vowed never to go back. Beneath the joy of her return, an undertow of anger stirs. I was too scared for her before to dwell on my resentment, too terrified to be angry that she’d left me here without a word or an explanation.

A white feather sticks out of her bun, and she’s a little pale, but other than that, she looks perfectly healthy.

“Where were you?” I croak.

“I couldn’t get to the Shadowlands, but I confirmed that Devi is back in Faerie. She set off on a foolish mission to Storm’s End before I could reach her—may the Dark One guard her soul.” She rubs my arms down to the bandage wrapped across my palm. “Who attacked you? What did he look like?”

My mind flashes back to the gardens and the phantom beyond the iron gates. “I couldn’t see much. His clothes were torn, and he had a white mask covering his face. A bunch of faceless men came for us, but they were obviously his lackeys. And, oh—he called them his reavers.”

“By the Dark One,” she whispers, sinking into a dining room chair. “He’s truly back.”

I turn on the stove to brew her some tea as I recount the attack as best I can.

Mabel shudders. “What you saw was the Mist King, but he wasn’t truly there. He sent a version of himself that exists only in the mind.” She exhales slowly. “My husband, Armand, spent years chasing immortality and taught himself how to slip into dreams, sometimes even into waking thoughts. He’d linger, whisper, and make his victims doubt their own senses until they bent to his will—or broke entirely.

“When the magic of his realm was released from the Eternal Chalice, I assumed a new Mist King had risen, but that was naïve of me.” She meets my gaze, and her voice breaks. “It’s Armand, or rather what’s left of him. He’s back.”

My stomach sinks. “How is that possible?”

“Some fragments of his soul survived in spite of our efforts to destroy him. The melting of the Chalice must have restored enough of his power for him to reach beyond the Islantide.”

I swallow hard. The only Fae supposed to master death is the Winter King, and even then, his ability to survive the harshest treatments sounds more like a curse than a blessing. Winter kings don’t escape death—they endure it. Their hearts keep beating, but the stories say ice slowly consumes them from the inside. They get a little more frigid each day, and a little less human. Whatever power allows them to survive slowly hollows them out.

“What about the faceless men?” I ask.

“The reavers are flesh and bone,” she says. “They’re the result of countless failed attempts to bring the dead back to life. Armand never found the missing piece that would let them truly return. They have no souls, and whatever he did to them warped them into that shape. Thank God you made it inside the house in time.”

I pour us both cups of steaming tea and pass her one before sitting at the table.

The warmth soothes my racing heart. “What does he want?”

“He wants the jewels I stole from him. The Mist King used precious stones to amplify his power. He experimented with corpses and dark souls in his pursuit of true immortality—and came frighteningly close. The Summer King and I suspected he couldn’t be killed, not completely, so we stripped him of his jewels and buried them deep at the heart of the Islantide. The jewels were sealed away, but we told the world they’d been destroyed.”

She exhales, her shoulders sagging. “I hoped that, given enough centuries, the shard of his soul that had survived might have withered into nothing.” Her eyes lift to mine. “I was wrong.”

“If he isn’t dead,” I say slowly, “how did you remarry?”

Fae marriages are until death.

“I didn’t,” she replies. “Not truly. It was a pretense, agreed upon to secure alliances. Shadowlands unions aren’t as public, so no one knew. Before you.”

“Me?”

“You’re the only one I’ve told.” She grips her cup tighter. “If something happens to me⁠—”

My heart slams. “Don’t say that.”

She cups my cheek. “If I don’t return before the next moon, you need to find a mirror and summon the Shadow King. Tell him about Armand. Tell him that only the last drop of Bloodsinger blood can open the jewels’ tomb.”

My stomach plummets as she goes on. “Armand thinks that means my blood and my children’s blood—any and all of my descendants bearing the name. Let him believe it. It will keep him occupied and buy us time.” Her gaze sharpens. “But you must tell Damian Sombra that Morrigan bore a child. He must protect her at all costs. She is the sole key to Armand’s cursed treasure.”

“But you’re Mabel Bloodsinger,” I whisper. “The last Dark Queen of the Red Forest. The most powerful witch to ever live. You can tell him all of this yourself.”

That earns me a thin, weary smile.

“Be that as it may, I’m getting old. And I can’t protect you outside this house, not until I find some answers. I have to go back to Faerie. You should stay here until I return.”

A boulder of nerves crushes my chest. “I have a job. A fiancé. A wedding to plan⁠—”

Mabel pats my shoulder. “You won’t have any of that if you die, my darling. I told you the day would come when we’d have to fight for our lives. I just didn’t expect it to come so soon. The reavers tasted your blood. If you go home, you’ll lead them straight to your mortal lover. You’ll endanger him and his family. They have no idea Faerie exists, let alone how to defend themselves against its magic.”

My heart races. She’s right, and I hate it. She’s been trying to pull me deeper into coven affairs for years, and now I can’t go back to my life at all. Funny how that worked out.

“Nick texted me,” I say. “He plans to fly home next week.”

Nick should be the one to take over the coven. He’s hungry for it.

Her lips press together. “Nickolas must stay put until we know more.”

The knee-jerk reaction to deny it all rises again. I understand what she’s saying, but I desperately, maddeningly don’t want it to be true. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

The corners of her eyes wrinkle. “Then you need to stop drinking your Angelica tea—and cancel that wedding for good.”

Both parts of that sentence floor me, so I tackle them one at a time. “You said I should never stop drinking it.”

Truth be told, I haven’t been as disciplined in drinking it the last couple of days. I skipped it the night Kerri died and the next morning, too. Is that why I was able to cast the spell? Because I didn’t have as much Angelica in my system?

Mabel gathers my hands in hers. “The time has come for you to choose: do you belong here, with mortals? Or are you ready to embrace your magic? Because you can’t accompany me to Faerie without it.”

“Me? Going to Faerie?” I take a step back, shaking my head. “I barely have any magic at all.”

Not long ago, I would’ve said none, but the effects of the séance shook me to my core.

“Maxine, you have more powers than you remember. I shielded you from them to protect you, but I can’t coddle you anymore. I’ve done you a disservice letting you think you belonged here with mortals, because I desperately wanted something else for you—a simpler life. That was foolish of me. You’ll wait for me here while the tea works its way out of your system. I’ll explain everything when I return.”

“You said I could choose to stay here.”

Her face wrinkles like she swallowed a mouthful of myrtle seaweeds. “You could stay, that’s true. But what happens after you marry an architect you met a few months ago? When he sees who you truly are, and what your blood howls for, he’ll run a mile.” Her eyes soften, and she squeezes my upper arm. “We can only hide from ourselves for so long, darling.”

The spotlight above our heads bursts into sparks. I want to say she’s wrong—that she misread the situation, that I’m sure about my decision to marry Lachlan—but she always knows when I’m lying.

Her gaze drifts past me, her tone shifting as if addressing someone else entirely. “And you… You’ll have to decide if you belong to the light or if you’ll vanish into the dark.”

She’s not speaking to me anymore. She’s speaking to E.

My pulse swirls.

“So he’s not involved in all this?” I ask.

“Oh, no. He’s just…lost.” She frowns, the way she does when she’s weighing something heavy, or even doubting herself. “What’s meant for you won’t walk past you. It was only a matter of time before you two met.”

“Why won’t you tell me anything about who I was?” E asks quietly. “At least tell me my name.”

Her expression softens, her eyes creasing with a mix of warmth and regret. “Even when you knew your name, you didn’t know who you were. You hurt a lot of people trying to figure it out. No matter your past, you need to decide who you are now, and what you mean to do with your life.”

“Do ghosts have a life?” he huffs.

That faint trace of annoyance I remember from the day I told her I was getting married shines in her eyes. “Do you want a life, my starlight?”

Starlight… The tenderness in her tone quickens my pulse.

“Who would choose this empty existence over the alternative?” E mutters begrudgingly.

Mabel takes a careful sip of tea. “That’s the question, ain't it?”

I’m not sure if I’m relieved or freaked out that E isn’t just a construct of my mind—or a fever dream sent to prey on me. Mabel likes him, I can tell.

She gulps down the rest of her fortifying tea and sets the cup aside. “I have to go.”

Walking to the sunlit window, she slides it open, letting the late autumn breeze rush in.

I spring to my feet. “Already?”

She leans in and presses a kiss to my forehead. “You two be good. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Wait—”

In the blink of an eye, Mabel shifts into a white raven and takes flight, wings catching the light as she disappears into the wind with a sharp caw.