Chapter 1: Aurelian CHAPTER 1 Aurelian

Florida, Present Day—January

A BUMP IN THE ROAD made the back of Aurelian’s head smack the metal wall behind him, but it was Ten throwing up the contents of their stomach that made him huff out a curse.

“That’s so fucking gross!” Rosalie, the pretty blond lesidhe at Ten’s side, whined as she lifted her boots off the ground to save them from the puddle of bile.

Aurelian’s footwear hadn’t been so lucky.

“M’sorry,” Ten groaned, dropping their head between their knees to draw great, gulping breaths and grip the short length of their rainbow-dyed hair like a lifeline. The way their impressive ogre bulk shuddered through waves of nausea told Aurelian they weren’t over the worst of it yet. “It’s the hells’ damned truck—why do we have’ta drive everywhere? Couldn’t we at least use a normal vehicle?”

Tiffin, the ebony-haired violet goblin seated at the far end of the bench she shared with the quarrelling two beside her, snorted. “Pretty sure the hint’s in the name, Ten—armored truck. The iron in it protects us.”

She didn’t look to be faring much better, though.

“It makes me want to claw my fucking guts out.”

“Grosser,” Rosalie chimed in, and despite how she clearly looked ill right now too, her eyes danced with glee. “Fifty dollars to see you try.”

“You can keep your Canadian fucking Tire money, harpy—you only get to fool me once with that,” they growled, turning to send a kick in her direction, which made Rosalie cackle even more delightedly, and Aurelian heaved out a sigh.

It was Ivandril who rose to his feet, however, his silver hair bound in a knot atop his head. A sharp turn in their journey made him place a hand on the roof of the truck they were stuffed in to keep him steady.

Between his enormous height and thick strength—both incongruous with the standard for lesidhe builds—Ivandril was almost too big for this space on his own, let alone with the six of Aurelian’s team. Aurelian wondered vaguely if there was ogre blood somewhere in his family line to account for that.

“All right, everyone, settle down.” Waving his free hand in the direction of the vomit, Ivandril sent a pulse of blue-sparking lesidhe magic dancing over the floor and Aurelian’s boots to wash the both of them clean. “None of us likes being in this thing, but as we’ve discussed many times before, it’s a necessary evil. We’re nearly at our destination—we need to focus. Ten,” he added, calm and measured, deep and soothing, but by no means lacking command. “Will you be okay to fight or do you need to hang back?”

“Fifty real dollars if you vomit on a demon,” Rosalie challenged under her breath, a waggle of her brows to add enticement—as though Ten needed encouragement to take their girlfriend up on anything.

“Deal!” Ten cried, not instantly recovered, but certainly far less miserable.

Honestly, the newly minted pair was the oddest couple Aurelian had ever met—and curiously perhaps also the happiest.

Too used to this team by now to pause over any of their antics, Ivandril merely shook his head, then turned his attention to Aurelian.

They’d been busy these past four months, all of them.

Aurelian had been working closely with Ivandril to rebuild the Market; to reinforce its protections; to train anyone who was willing to offer themselves up for combat, and himself in this potential role of leader Celadon seemed determined to place him in. It was a role he still wasn’t sure he really wanted. Ivandril would be a far better choice, in his opinion. But Ivandril wanted the job even less, and someone had to fill the enormous vacancy the Madam had left in her departure. Between Aurelian’s personal relationship with their new Night King, Vehan’s magnetism bleeding through their bond, and the efforts he’d been putting into the Market lately, the folk there weren’t entirely opposed to the idea of his command.

Four months—Aurelian hardly recognized himself when he looked in the mirror now.

Four months’ worth of hard, physical labor and fresh air and the Hiraeth’s magic. He was healthier now, stronger now, taller and sturdier and far more powerful. He still kept his hair the same, still maintained its lavender hue. There were still his rebellious iron piercings, and the tattooed sleeve of Autumn foliage running from his fingertips to his shoulder blade. And he would probably never lose his slender, lesidhe build completely to his new lifestyle. He was still Aurelian, and with Vehan here at last beside him, neither of them any longer trapped under Riadne’s thumb, he would almost say he was happy.

Hard to be fully happy though, when the world was beginning to unravel.

When a queen gone mad with power was on the rampage, and one of his best friends was caught in her clutches in the precarious balance between life and death.

When the very earth was beginning to crack apart, and the demons had begun to spill out in droves. No longer did they lurk in shadows, yipping and snarling along the fringes of their world, slinking through the Hiraeth for scraps. Now they prowled human streets, night or day, in full view of human witnesses.

“Coming up on the Magic Kingdom. I would remain seated—road quality is poor.” Jaxon’s quiet, steady voice floated back at them from the driver’s seat, where he sat with Leaf—the woodsprite Aurelian had picked up in the forest—perched daintily on his shoulder. Seventeen years old and so pale he was nearly translucent, with short, shaggy gray hair and a wolf’s tail and ears, Jaxon was the youngest of Aurelian’s personal crew, a boy of very few words and somehow better manners than the rest of them combined.

Ignoring Jaxon’s advice, Tiffin and Rosalie both lunged for the divide between the truck’s cabin and hull to press their faces to the open grate and goggle in eager anticipation of today’s destination.

“I’m surprised you’re not up there with them,” came a soft voice from Aurelian’s right—a voice that could still send a shiver through his system whenever he heard it, even after all these years. A voice he knew just as well as his own, one that he would never grow tired of hearing in all their years to come.

Aurelian’s attention snapped to Vehan almost of its own accord.

Like magnetism; like a flower to the sun; except it was something even stronger than nature or magic that stole Aurelian’s time, affection, and focus so completely.

The soulbond between them—just as months spent in the Hiraeth had made Aurelian stronger, so too had it strengthened the connection between him and his boyfriend. The pair of them finally able to be together helped significantly, of course, but to have at last the chance to knowingly, purposefully nurture this incredibly rare gift that tethered them to each other?

It was this more than anything that had helped Aurelian to flourish.

Did Vehan have any idea how thoroughly, nearly obsessively Aurelian loved him? Vehan sat slightly folded in his seat, one leg casually over the other and arms crossed against his chest. The way his chin was tucked just so toward his collar meant Aurelian couldn’t see his shocking blue eyes but could admire the sight of coal-black bangs brushing that golden-tanned nose.

Vehan sat like the very portrait of a romantic figure in human paintings, a fae prince to the letter. And though his comment had been joking, though his posture suggested perfect ease, there was no fooling that thread that tied them together, and no fooling the years of familiarity between them, as well—there was pain in that tone.

There was pain in Vehan, constant.

“Every summer vacation, you always wanted to go to Disney World,” he said, looking up at Aurelian.

Did he have any idea? It was ridiculous that they’d known each other for so long, that they’d been boyfriends for half a year now and rarely out of each other’s sight these last four months, and still those eyes made Aurelian’s breath hitch every time their gazes met.

And Vehan whined that Aurelian was unfairly pretty.

“Mmm,” Aurelian hummed, leaning back once more against the wall and turning his head to close a more private distance between them. “What can I say, it is the most magical place on earth.”

“You just like when they march Kylo Ren through Star Wars Land.”

“I am absolutely certain that’s not what they call that section, but all right.”

It was almost normal.

Almost Vehan, like nothing was wrong…

Except everything was wrong.

From the world quickly cracking apart to spew out hell from its depths, to Vehan’s own mother as the villain orchestrating the entire thing, to Arlo—Arlo, who was Aurelian’s friend too, but Vehan adored her. She’d brought him back from the damned dead, and he loved her like a sister. Every word that Nausicaä had hurled at him four months ago in Toronto had been a knife, and Vehan was the sort who didn’t need any encouragement to shoulder failings, even the ones that weren’t his.

It had gutted him, tormented him, broken him down to his core to take responsibility for what had happened to Arlo.

He’d cried for days after Nausicaä had left, spent half his time trying to get her back on their side, to make things right between them, and the other half—at least the majority of it—consumed with his mother and Arlo.

Vehan was spiraling, and it terrified Aurelian to see the effect this was having on his boyfriend’s mood, his health, his sanity.

Vehan, the boy he’d loved from childhood, was hurting, and nothing Aurelian tried to do could make it better, it seemed.

A low whistle from Tiffin interrupted their moment. “Oh, the humans are going to have a hell of a time cleaning this up.”

“Looks like we might be a bit late to the party,” Rosalie added, far too mildly for Aurelian’s liking.

There was nothing else for it—he had to look too, to gauge what he was about to drag his team into.

Peeling away from the wall once more, Aurelian waved the two faeries back to their seats and took their place at the grate; Ivandril came up beside him—in the front seat, Jaxon huffed out an exasperated, “No one listens to me.”

True to word, the roads themselves were terrible.

Great fissures had cracked across the otherwise meticulously maintained pavement, some enough to cause whole chunks to jut up like stone glaciers Jaxon had to swerve around to avoid colliding with.

The more difficult obstacle was the mass exodus of park-goers fleeing Disney World’s main attraction as fast as congestion would allow.

Honking and beeping and swearing and shouting filled the air; cars were hopping lanes and veering off right into the grass to get around the bumper-to-bumper stream of vehicles on the road leading out of the park. Some people had abandoned their cars completely in favor of booking it out with their families as fast as they could run, and Aurelian didn’t blame them.

“Damn,” he swore under his breath, peering through the grate up at the park entrance’s iconic MAGIC KINGDOM sign, metal twisted and warped and bent this way and that, half of it severed and smashed against the pavement. “I thought the pit was supposed to be up at the castle? How are we seeing destruction out here?”

Since Ruin’s resurrection and Riadne’s triumph, the Market’s tactical teams had been extremely busy chasing what they called “pits”—by-product portals from the Infernal Realm opening up around the world in result of Riadne’s dark magic.

There was no clear pattern behind where these portals chose to open, but the team had gotten good at reading the warning signs that tended to crop up beforehand—spontaneous sinkholes and odd changes in weather and complaints of the scent of gaseous fumes.

Unfortunately, once this collection of signs was reported, it was usually too late to do much besides damage control. Most of the time, their teams couldn’t get to these sites before those pits sank enough to bleed demons.

And then there was the matter of what—or rather, who—was quick to follow the pits’ opening.

“We’ve got eyes,” Jaxon noted, and Aurelian bit back a groan.

The human news teams were here—because of course they were—circling up overhead in their helicopters, peeling down the grass just behind their truck. Which meant the human police force wasn’t far behind either.

Four months had given birth to a flurry of articles, television specials, and hashtags; posts and reels and TikToks.

Aliens are real—and the monsters are too!

Lions, Tigers, and Faeries—Oh My!

You Won’t Believe Which Legends Are True

A magical community that conformed to order, control, and concealment, they could keep well enough from discovery, but masses of demons popping up from holes in the ground and devouring everything in sight tended to draw just a bit of attention.

“So, this is bad bad, then,” said Tiffin, reaching beneath her seat for a case of weaponry and adding a few more daggers to her supply.

It was bad bad, then.

Jaxon, who was suspiciously good at high-tension, fast-speeds driving for someone so young, pressed his foot to the gas and sped them ahead of their tail.

There was no real point to glamours anymore, but they kept one on the truck to prevent unnecessary interruptions. Thus disguised, it sailed through the Magic Kingdom’s already decimated entrance toll and wove expertly around both debris and traffic, which had abandoned all rules of the road.

Parking was almost laughably easy once they made it around all the congestion. The news reporters on land and the sirens just behind in the distance would take a little bit longer to catch up. “Let’s make this quick,” Ivandril said, and Aurelian nodded in agreement.

Doors swung open—Tiffin, Rosalie, Ten, Vehan, Aurelian, and Ivandril jumped one after the other from the back. Jaxon prowled around from the driver’s side to join them.

Moving to the front of the group, Aurelian turned and fixed them with a steady look. “You know the drill,” he said. “We go in, we take out as many demons as we can neutralize on our way, but our first and main goal is—”

“Hey, Kyle’s here! KYLE! HEY!” Rosalie called across the lot, waving joyously at another truck that had just pulled up a short way off.

A rebel group—a few had cropped up here and there across the Courts, made up of folk who didn’t like what their new High Queen was doing and had taken it upon themselves to do what the Falchion now ignored at her order.

Kyle was an independent sidhe fae here in the Summer Court, whom they’d run into a few times along with his small team of three.

For reasons best known to her, Rosalie liked him a lot—possibly because he hunted down demons in brightly colored Hawaiian vacay shirts with a massive hot-pink crossbow and heavy metal blaring from his iPhone like a soundtrack.

Kyle pretended to shoot his crossbow in Rosalie’s direction, winked at Aurelian, then proceeded to unload an absolutely massive contraption that looked a lot like a shoulder cannon.

“I feel underprepared now,” Rosalie huffed. “Kyle has a… rocket launcher? I want a rocket launcher.”

“I want one too,” Ten agreed, nodding fervently, and Aurelian sighed through his nose. “Focus,” he reminded them. “Our first and main goal is to locate that pit in there and contain the situation as best as possible. We’ll give Arlo ten minutes on arrival to show—if she doesn’t, I want that pit sealed. And I have a feeling it’s going to need everything we brought if the fissures ran all the way out to the main gate, so don’t pack light.”

Sealing pits was the Market’s specialty, the thing that set them apart from the independent rebel groups. It involved a very complicated alchemic concoction that Rory Flamel had designed for them that was essentially a grenade filled with a liquid that would expand and solidify into six-feet-deep solid iron.

It wasn’t a perfection solution, but they didn’t have running communication with Arlo these days. The pits she showed up at, she sealed on her own once she was done with them, but they never had any warning which pits those would actually be. Rory’s grenade was enough of a deterrent for the demons to find a different entry point, and that was just about the best they could hope for right now.

“Everyone armed?” Ivandril inquired, to a round of grunts and nods and you bet, handsome. “All right, then. Aurelian, on your signal—”

“Let’s go rescue Disney World!” Rosalie whooped like a battle cry before turning to run for the park entrance.

Ten took off after her, their massive axe held aloft as they screamed their way to the entrance as well.

Aurelian’s team.

They could… use with a bit more training, really; a little more deference to leadership, maybe; a little more practice fighting as a unit, for sure. But then, most of the folk tended to forget themselves when it came to this theme park, so Aurelian could only shake his head and follow.

At least they didn’t want for enthusiasm, and he had a feeling they were going to need a lot of that too, tonight.

“This has to be the weirdest fucking mash-up of vibes I’ve ever experienced,” Tiffin commented as the group of them pressed through the ticket booths for the Magic Kingdom’s main courtyard.

He had to agree.

There was still a decent amount of people fleeing in terror around them. Cast members were armed with all manner of objects for self-defense, screams and cries and curses coming from all of them. It explained why they hadn’t run into any demons until this point, not with so much enticement to keep them right here. But Ivandril let out a low whistle, and Aurelian could only gawk—the sheer number of them. Humanoid creatures of rotted flesh and fungi and pustules, skittering around, shrieking high-pitched, shrill sounds as they chased down anything that moved to rip and tear and break it apart, gorging themselves on the gore.

Blood splattered garishly across the smooth pavement.

The demons that weren’t busy feasting were climbing, roaming, and wreaking general destruction on their surroundings.

Several fires had erupted here and there, spewing smoke into the air, all of this to an ambience of cheerful Disney music, with a backdrop of pastel pinks and yellows and greens, stylized storefronts waving their American flags and their Mickey Mouse banners and winter holiday decor.

Center to it all, off in the distance, was the iconic Cinderella Castle against a cotton-candy sunset.

It was Rosalie’s heave of a roar that broke Aurelian from his stupor, drawing his attention to his right, where she’d aimed a powerful blow at a group of demons cracking limbs off a man like a roasted chicken. The massive hammer she carried strapped to her back glinted as it swung through the air, big enough that one worried she’d topple over.

“Three for me!” she crowed.

“The castle!” Aurelian growled, shaking himself out of his head to resume command of the party. “We get to the pit—that’s our only priority right now. Get to the pit!”

And get to the pit they tried.

This was so much more than Aurelian had been anticipating.

So much more destruction, more danger, more demons—they’d never contended with something on this scale before.

Rosalie and Ten weren’t the only ones to get waylaid by distraction. It was impossible to make it even a few steps without a demon or five bursting out through broken shopwindows, lunging from meals they were only half through, all rotten teeth and blackened claws outstretched for the kill, clicking and screeching and snapping and crunching.

From the depths of a candy shop off to Aurelian’s right, a demon tore from the wreckage.

Swift and hurtling directly for him, it advanced in the sliver of Aurelian’s blind spot.

Too busy dealing with two other demons that had decided they’d rather a fresh kill than the one they’d been working on, this third he noticed only in time enough to turn…

But was saved by a thunderous crack that seared the air, shaking through the very earth below his feet.

An enormous bolt shot from Aurelian’s periphery, and in an instant, the demon was a scorched silhouette on the pavement.

Nothing but dust.

“Your boyfriend’s really fucking scary, Rel,” Ten hollered across the street, but that was definitely praise in their voice, along with a little bit of awe.

Damn if they weren’t absolutely correct, though.

With no time to spare save the quick kiss he blew Aurelian on the way by, Vehan streaked past him, already pulling more stored-up electricity from a core that was at least a level higher than the Three he’d been classified as on his exam.

Four months in the Hiraeth.

Four months of training—proper training, not the torture Aurelian was horrified to learn Riadne had been putting her youngest son through on a daily basis back when they’d been separated.

Four months of a die Vehan was quite good at utilizing, almost as though he was always meant to have it—a Class Four lightning wielder, possibly Five, with a tool that allowed him to exceed even those bounds? Yes, Aurelian was very glad it was their side his prince fought for.

Especially today.

The spill of demons here seemed endless, grew more concentrated the closer they managed to advance on the castle.

Main Street, U.S.A. felt like an endless gauntlet, where they swung their swords, their fists, their lightning, their weapons, and for every demon they felled, three more crawled out of the woodwork to attack them.

BOOM.

Aurelian cast a wild look over his shoulder behind them…

And caught a burst of streaming fire—Kyle’s team tended for hard and heavy hits, with things like their launchers and flamethrowers and bundles of dynamite. It made a mess, but it was usually effective. Today, though, even all that didn’t seem to be making much of a difference.

“The flare!” Ivandril shouted over the curved dagger he pulled from a demon’s throat. It crumpled to the ground at his feet and was instantly replaced by two more. “Aurelian, send up the flare!”

The flare—right. Aurelian should have thought of that first, should have already sent it up, to be honest. He’d been so absorbed in trying to keep his party alive, himself alive, that he’d forgotten protocol.

Another of Rory’s inventions, the flare shot red light up into the air, burning like a dying star, and would immediately signal to the others that monitored each mission to send reinforcements.

A precaution, really. Aurelian’s team was one of the best they had. They never needed the waiting assistance, and smaller parties meant less human attention drawn where they didn’t need it.

But Ivandril was right.

This was bad.

The demons didn’t usually pour from the pit in these numbers. They didn’t usually attack faster than Aurelian and his team could cut them down.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out the crystal vial of blazing red light, and was just about to dash it on the pavement to release their beacon when—

“AURELIAN, BEHIND YOU!”

The bolt of lightning came too slow.

Rosalie’s hammer flew through vacant space where a demon’s head had just been.

Both Jaxon’s and Tiffin’s daggers sailed and missed, embedded in the tree beside him.

Aurelian lifted a hand—blue sparking magic formed a humming shield that caught only just in time the demon that had lunged for him, knocking him flat to his back.

Normally, lesidhe magic—connected as it was to the soul—would have burned the demon enough to deter it, but this one was set on its prey.

It gnawed on the shield, snarled and shrieked and clawed around it, swinging wildly.

A hefty thing too—this demon was bigger, solid muscle pinning Aurelian to the ground, its claws caught his arm.

Aurelian drew on the bond between him and Vehan; his shield began to crackle, to charge with his boyfriend’s channeled electricity, the humming now an angry agitation that spit errant tendrils of sparks.

Aurelian aimed a blow around the shield, and though it connected, though it had been backed by lesidhe strength and months of training… the demon didn’t budge. It barely seemed to register the electrified shield or being struck at all.

“AURELIAN!” Vehan yelled in warning.

When Aurelian looked, Vehan was already forming another sizzling electric bolt in his hand.

Aurelian pressed himself as close to the ground as possible and sent a quick prayer up to any god that was feeling generous that Vehan wasn’t about to scorch him to dust in collateral, another that those teeth didn’t snap through his shield entirely…

… so close…

… just one more crunch and it…

The demon stopped.

It paused, almost comically, blinking down at him. Gradually, it closed its mouth. It lifted its head to scent the air—and just like that… it disintegrated, Vehan’s electricity raining the demon down on Aurelian as ash.

Carefully, Aurelian pushed himself to sitting and looked around.

A moment ticked by… followed by two…. All around them the demons began to stop what they were doing and lift their heads as though in consideration of something even Aurelian’s senses couldn’t pick up.

The park wore down to sounds of crackling flame and ambient music, the scattered moans of the wounded and dying…

An absolute standstill—

Then the demons began to shudder.

Began to whimper, to keen, to cower.

One after the other after the other after the other, the hordes of them began to yield, to tuck themselves up almost apologetically and slink back to the pit they came through.

Instantly, Aurelian’s veins filled with ice.

He looked first to Vehan, whose eyes had grown wide with a mixture of anticipation and dread. “Rel,” Vehan whispered—they knew what this was.

Demons acted like this only around one particular presence.

A presence that hadn’t been a threat to them in the beginning, even if her cohort made everything so much more difficult than it needed to be. But four months had changed quite a lot for them all. Aurelian, Vehan, their bond, his team—all had become so much stronger in this short span of time… including the monster that grew inside their girl.

Drawing a breath, Aurelian pushed himself up to standing, about to issue an order for a tactical retreat to the sidelines. Sometimes it was Arlo that turned up in control, and things were… fairly depressing, because Arlo was very far from okay these days, but her petrifying detachment was vastly preferable to the alternative…

To the thing she was rapidly devolving into and remaining for longer stretches of time…

He opened his mouth—

And that was when Aurelian heard it: the distinct sound of metal scraping through pavement.

A blade being dragged behind the sauntered steps heralded the promise that events were about to go from dangerous to viciously ugly.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Weather Boy and Grumpy.”