Cast in Balefire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Mage Craft Series Book 4) Read online

  Cast in Balefire

  The Mage Craft Series

  S M Reine

  Red Iris Books

  Contents

  About Cast in Balefire

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Dear Readers

  OTHER SERIES BY SM REINE

  The Descent Series

  The Ascension Series

  Seasons of the Moon

  The Cain Chronicles

  Tarot Witches

  Preternatural Affairs

  War of the Alphas

  The Mage Craft Series

  Dana McIntyre Must Die

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  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This book is sold DRM-free so that it can be enjoyed in any way the reader sees fit. Please keep all links and attributions intact when sharing. All rights reserved.

  Text and design © SM Reine 2016. Original cover art by Gene Mollica.

  tmcs04-v1.0v

  Published by Red Iris Books

  1180 Selmi Drive, Suite 102

  Reno, NV 89512

  About Cast in Balefire

  Half-angel mage Marion Garin has become Queen of the Unseelie, but she can’t hold the faerie courts without convincing everyone she’s in love with her cheating, abusive husband—the beloved King ErlKonig. Rumor says Marion’s in love with the God of Death. The unseelie are revolting. And it wouldn’t be so hard to fix if the rumors weren’t true…

  Dimitte nobis debita nostra,

  libera nos ab igne inferni,

  conduc in caelum

  omnes animas

  1

  January 2032 — Myrkheimr, The Autumn Court

  Things begin to change five minutes before Benjamin Wilder met his uncle for the first time.

  Until that change, the day had been ordinary enough. It was the first sidhe wedding he’d attended, but it wasn’t his first wedding between royalty. His mom, Rylie, often used him as a plus-one at state functions. Benjamin was a great dancer, unlike his dad, who was violently opposed to anything that required dressing up, making small talk, and not shooting things.

  “You’re making faces.” Rylie rearranged his curls with her fingertips, even though he’d already put things the way he liked them. “Are you still upset Marion didn’t invite you?”

  Benjamin had been friends with the bride-to-be for years. Marion’s older sister used to babysit them, which had generally involved actual sitting on babies. The two of them had smothered under Dana’s merciless butt a dozen times.

  That had been a long time ago. Before Marion had become Voice of God. Before she started dating the Prince of the Autumn Court. And also right before tests confirmed what Benjamin had always known: Benjamin was a mundane. Two werewolf Alphas had produced a son whose greatest skill was making his mom look good at fancy events.

  About five years earlier, Marion had shot up in fame while Benjamin had started thinking about college options—as in, ordinary colleges, not the kind where students hunted deer on four legs every moon.

  They’d drifted apart. She hadn’t even been in the same room as Benjamin during pre-wedding events.

  Marion was an adult now. She was almost a married woman and an honest-to-gods queen.

  Meanwhile, Benjamin had been accepted at UC Davis under an assumed name so he’d stop getting teased for being the human son of a werewolf pack.

  “Marion doesn’t owe me anything,” Benjamin said.

  Rylie’s eyes went misty. It was the same way she looked at Benjamin’s older siblings, Summer and Abram, when they visited with their spouses. The “you’re still my baby even if you’re too big to baby” sort of smile.

  Benjamin rolled his eyes. “Mom.”

  “Sorry. Just let me…” She adjusted the lapels of his suit.

  He let her keep prodding him. She was going to be a mess when he went across the country to study, so he owed her some last-minute mother henning.

  “Do you hear something weird?” he asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

  Rylie’s ears perked. Her eyes sharpened with lupine focus. “We’re in the Middle Worlds. Everything sounds weird.”

  In order for non-faeries to be able to remain sane amid sidhe magic, visitors needed protective wards. As a result, everyone mundane perceived the exact same fake version of reality. All non-sidhe saw the same altar, witchlights, gauze draped between pillars, fountains of honey mead, and the orchestra growing from the wall.

  It was all an illusion, though. None of it was real.

  Benjamin might have been hearing something weird, but it was most likely a side effect of the protective wards. He rubbed the back of his neck again. Scratching didn’t help whatever itch he felt.

  “What did you think of the vote?” Rylie asked, quickly undoing his tie and smoothing out the wrinkles.

  Benjamin had gotten to sit in on the new council’s vote to strip Prince Konig of his title. He’d been the only ordinary human among the group. Even for a human, he wasn’t entirely ordinary—he’d grown up sitting in on those kinds of meetings, playing quietly between his mother’s feet.

  Ignored by others and dismissed as insignificant, Benjamin had learned to see things nobody else did. And Rylie had come to rely on his interpretations of events as much as his ballroom-dancing ability.

  “The vote shouldn’t have gone that way.” He adjusted his mom’s shirt so her bra strap wasn’t showing. It was tastefully flesh-colored but the news had a field day with every whiff of costume malfunction. “Early polling suggested wildly different results.” As in, Prince Konig should have no longer been Prince Anything.

  “Were the unexpected results due to polling error? Or voter manipulation?”

  “Manipulation,” Benjamin said. “January Lazar can tease the truth out of even the most closed-lipped demon. She called your vote correctly.”

  Rylie’s eyes wrinkled at the corners when she smiled. “She also has no problem making things up for the sake of page views.”

  “She didn’t on this. I double checked her work, and she should have called the election correctly.”

  “Who do you think performed the manipulation?”

  A simple question for which Rylie would need a complex answer. “A lot of people were pulling strings. Deirdre Tombs threatened at least half of the voters personally.” The body language of people who felt threatened was as obvious as having a marching band form into the words “she’s gonna shoot us” on a football field. “The Oceania Witches wouldn’t stop staring at you, so I think you’ve got a deal pending with them. They wanted to vote how you voted to sway your opinion.”

  “Don’t you hate
that?” Rylie asked.

  That was life. “My money’s on Adàn Pedregon of Los Cambiasformas Internacional being the primary impetus of the vote.”

  “You think he has the reach?”

  Much more than his mother realized. Rylie was great at a lot of things, but blind to manipulation, especially when it came from a peer.

  Adàn Pedregon’s reach was arguably greater than Rylie’s outside the North American Union, and people were more afraid of him than Rylie too. Feared and loved. The leader of LCI had surrounded himself with veterans from the Basque Shifter Rebellion, and they would slit their wrists on his command.

  That kind of talk would go over Rylie’s head. He spoke in a language his mother could understand. “Did you hear Adàn Pedregon has a new girlfriend? She’s a witch.”

  Rylie didn’t get manipulation, but she understood love. She’d done some stupid things for Dad before. “You think Adàn’s new girlfriend enchanted people?”

  “I think the Alpha has someone new giving him advice. He’d have to, for a move this bold. He’s never messed around this close to you before.” Benjamin itched the back of his neck again. He was starting to feel so restless. “We should leave right now. It takes big guns to interfere with people like Adàn, and the wedding’s going to go south.”

  “Honey, our life is nothing but big guns making things go south. We’ll be fine.” Her eyes focused over his shoulder. “Speaking of big guns.”

  Rylie brushed past Benjamin, leaving him to follow her up the stairs to a balcony overlooking the wedding venue.

  There was a man waiting on the balcony. Benjamin catalogued the sight of him for later reference, estimating a height of five foot ten and body fat around eighteen percent. His muscle was well developed for a guy who should have been…well, dead. He was missing most of his thorax. His organs were exposed.

  And he looked pissed.

  This was the man who had been introduced as Death before the council’s vote. As in, the god of death. One of the big three.

  When Benjamin asked, Rylie had attributed Death’s involvement in the vote to his functional relationship with Marion. But the god hadn’t seemed interested in the wedding for godly reasons.

  Talk about big guns making things go south.

  Rylie walked up to Death without a hint of fear. “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out by the time Konig shows up,” Death said.

  Hey. Ben. Over here.

  Benjamin glanced over his shoulder to see who was speaking to him.

  He saw a white guy standing at the bottom of the stairs. He was probably about Marion’s age. His skin was similarly olive, and his eyes were the exact same shade of blue.

  “Are you ready?” asked the new guy. His mouth didn’t move when he spoke. The words entered Benjamin’s mind directly. It’s almost time, Ben.

  Benjamin opened his mouth to ask who he was—but then Rylie grabbed his elbow. “Did I introduce you to my son, Benjamin? Benjamin, this is Seth Wilder.”

  She steered him around to look at Death.

  Also known as Seth…

  “Wilder?” Benjamin asked.

  “Seth is your uncle,” Rylie said. “You might have heard mention of him around the sanctuary.”

  Summer and Abram mentioned Seth occasionally, but they stopped talking about him whenever Benjamin came into the room. Benjamin had inferred that Seth was, like many things in the pack’s past, some kind of dark secret.

  Seth looked grimly upon him. Was that severe expression a Death thing, or was he displeased by the sight of a gawky mundane nephew? Benjamin knew he looked stupid in the tie. He’d told Rylie he looked stupid wearing a tie, but she’d still insisted, and now he was meeting his god-uncle looking like a choked penguin.

  Benjamin glanced over his shoulder. The guy who looked like Marion was gone. The only presence on the balcony stairs was Trevin, a sidhe from the Summer Court who had been Rylie’s bodyguard since forever.

  The other guy must have been a weird artifact from the sidhe magic. Benjamin would have to ask Trevin about it later.

  “You look young to be my uncle,” Benjamin said, returning his attention to the task at hand.

  “It’s nice to finally meet you.” Seth’s voice was surprisingly pleasant, and not as deep as Abel’s. When Benjamin looked into Seth’s torso, he could see the diaphragm making his lungs expand. That was another way he was unlike Benjamin’s dad.

  Seth reminded him quite a bit of Abram, actually. Abram was Benjamin’s favorite brother, so the similarity would have settled him if not for the sudden screaming.

  And also Myrkheimr collapsing.

  That was not settling.

  Big guns? Check.

  Things going south? Sigh. Check.

  Benjamin would have told his mom “I told you so” if he hadn’t blinked to find himself halfway across the courtyard, flat on his back, surrounded by rubble and pinned down by Death.

  He came up gasping in the dusty air. Benjamin’s lungs couldn’t fully expand because there was too much debris.

  Gods seemed to be even faster than werewolves. Benjamin hadn’t even felt Seth relocating him from danger.

  “Mom?” Benjamin asked, wide eyes searching the rubble.

  The pristine wedding venue at the heart of Myrkheimr was ruined. Pillars were still toppling. The roof had flattened several people to the pews.

  Screaming, crying, blood everywhere.

  Most of the people looked like they should have been dead, but they were beginning to rise again. Zombies or something. Popular demon trick. Between the zombies and the wedding guests trying to run, Benjamin was pinned.

  No escape.

  Seth reached through the crowd toward Benjamin. The tide of bodies had been pushing between them, but Seth was a tree rooted in the flood. Benjamin clutched his hand.

  “Hold your breath!” Seth snapped his fingers. Everything went dark.

  Benjamin smelled brimstone.

  The rapid leap between dimensions was dizzying, even with the wards protecting Benjamin’s mind. The trees pinwheeled around him, sparkling crimson and gold. He hit his hands and knees on pillowy grass that felt wet, even though it looked dry. A pair of foxes exploded from the bushes and vanished into shadow.

  “Stay here,” Seth said firmly.

  Benjamin tried to focus on Seth—a semi-familiar face that was reassuring in its similarities to Abram’s. “What?”

  Seth vanished. Benjamin was alone in the forest without his mom, without his personal guard, without any pack.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been alone. Really alone.

  Benjamin got to his feet, raking his fingers over his short curls as he spun to orient himself. He’d entered the plane through a ley line near the archery range. He could get back to Earth if he found it again.

  This section of forest seemed to be on the opposite end of Myrkheimr. Benjamin would need to cut through the burning, smoking wreckage of the Autumn Court to get there.

  “That would be such a bad idea.”

  Benjamin wasn’t alone after all.

  The young man was there again, tall and charcoal-haired with pale eyes. He wore a button-down untucked over jeans with no shoes. His rumpled hair made it look like he’d slept on it wet.

  “Who are you?” Benjamin asked.

  “Oh.” He smiled. “Why don’t you call me Nathaniel?”

  “Is that your name?”

  “Sometimes. It used to be.” Nathaniel circled Benjamin, and the forest yearned toward him, as though the branches wanted to embrace him.

  Benjamin felt the changing again. Trees whispered urgent requests to Nathaniel with near-human voices, even though none of these trees contained dryads.

  “How do you know my name?” Benjamin asked.

  “Because sometimes that’s my name too,” Nathaniel said.

  Which brought Benjamin right back to that first, baffling question. “Who are you?”

  “I’
m everything,” Nathaniel said.

  He reached a finger toward Benjamin and touched him between the eyebrows.

  For one endless instant, Benjamin was everything.

  He was in a different world, at a beach different from the one where he’d vacationed with Gran. A blond woman was calling to him—his mother. But not Rylie. Another blond woman without golden eyes who shouted his name with fear.

  Nathaniel.

  Benjamin was standing in a small town he understood to be in Russia. A hotel sign in Cyrillic was framed by ash-grayed trees and stormy skies. The town was burning.

  There was a city in the sky. He was going to fall into it.

  Not yet.

  Benjamin was sitting on the floor of a motel room at the center of the desert. A woman sat on the mattress behind him, her knees framing his shoulders. Her fingers occasionally brushed the bare skin of his neck.

  Benjamin.

  “Benjamin,” she said out loud.

  He turned to see a total stranger—yet another woman, this one in her late twenties, with the wild mass of her auburn curls tied into a sweaty braid. Freckles marked her tanned cheekbones. She held a knife in her gloved fist.

  “I can’t get your collar off,” she said. “But you don’t want it off. You came here on purpose.”

  His hand flew to his throat. He was collared by metal and wires. It was a heavy piece of electronics that squeezed too tightly around his throat.

  Benjamin couldn’t breathe.

  “Help,” he gasped.

  “You’ll have to help yourself. Ready or not, it’s time for you to come back.” She stood and pointed at the wall with the knife. The muscles in her bicep rippled at even that small gesture.

  A shining gold door appeared where none had been before. He blinked and the door was plain white wood. Another blink, and it was stone.

  The woman stood over him, pointing at the door, without moving to get his collar off, even though it was shrinking. His vision was fading as oxygen left him.

  “Come back, Nathaniel,” she said. “Come find me. Help me. It’s time.”

  The last thing he saw were her combat boots before his eyes blurred and he asphyxiated.