Into the Fire (The Unseelie Court Book 4) by Gwen Rivers (latest ebook reader .TXT) 📕

And from some dark corner inside me, there is a burning. I stare at the house, door hanging off its hinges, one wall blown out from some sort of magical discharge. Pictures from Sophie’s album scattering in the gale. My hatred for Hanson feeds the flames. The inferno erupts from me in a great torrent.

Fireballs explode from my hands, streaking down to ignite the other two vehicles.

“Nic?” Sophie calls my name but I barely hear her. I am beyond hearing. Aiden is here, he came for me. Chloe helped rescue me and if that vision I’d seen of Underhill is true, Laufey was only helping the FBI because Underhill had her lover. I won’t let these people take my friends and family away.

They are mine.

It is then, in the heat of battle, that I feel her for the first time. The One True Queen. It isn’t movement I sense but intention.

Ours. she whispers.

More power surges through me. It’s as though I am a conduit of fire, a lightning rod pulling the blaze from all over the nine worlds to this space and time. The flames meld into streams of fire, bending from the house and encircling the group. My toes don’t touch the ground as the wind propels me down the hill. Still more flames spurt out of my hands, causing the conflagration to rage higher and higher.

No more.

I see Hanson first, crouching over Chloe’s slumped body.

She looks up, and her lips part, but she recovers quickly. She props my aunt in front of her as a shield.

When I speak I don’t recognize my own voice. “Release them or I will kill you all.”

Though I see the eyes of several of her task force members go wide, Hanson doesn’t flinch. “You had your chance to talk to me and you squandered it. Now I’m going to cut your friends open and see what makes them tick.”

“Nic.” The cry comes from far behind me. Sophie is scared for me.

She should be scared of me. They all should.

I hold out my hand and skew a fireball directly into the chest of one of the unprotected FBI agents. He shrieks and goes down, rolling in the snow to extinguish the flames.

“Lower. Your. Weapons.” Each word speeds from me like a bullet.

This power coursing through me….it isn’t mine. Nor does it belong to any of the Unseelie Court. No, this is magic much older and stronger. God power, from the Trickster born of flame and wielded by a fey. My magic is still out of reach, but my daughter’s….

Agent Hanson’s eyes go to my midsection and I see the unholy light in them. “That child. It’s not you, it’s the babe.”

I see the wolf twitch. Aiden’s awake. This isn’t how I wanted him to find out.

No time, there is never any time for us. The rage I feel is endless, spiraling down into the dark. My gaze turns to the woman who’d tortured me, held me captive. Held Astrid captive.

And now she’s dead.

Because of people like Agent Hanson, full of fear, wanting only to spread their misery.

I raise my hand, ready to kill them all where they stand.

“Nic, what is this?” Behind me, I hear Sophie pleading. They’d take her too. The woman who gave me life, who’d opened her home and her heart to me.

It’s come down to us or them. And it isn’t going to be us.

Aiden looks up and sees Nic hovering above the ground. Her toes are pointed down several inches above the sand. Fire is reflecting in her icy eyes, rage deeper than the water at her back.

Beside him, her aunt moans. On her far side, Laufey’s chest rises and falls. They are still alive.

His shock at discovering his grandmother in the vehicle that had been tailing Liam’s had nearly made him materialize in the car instead of on its roof. When Laufey had opened the doorway to the mortal realm, he’d gone right through, trusting Harmony and the werewolves to follow.

He’d hung back, ready to strike. Never imagining that the FBI would have the means to take down one of the Fates, even temporarily. And whatever that weapon was, it made his knees buckle and his mind check out for a few minutes.

And he’d woken to chaos. And talk of a…baby?

He shakes his head, his ears ringing from the explosion from when he destroyed the SUV.

No, it can’t be.

But Nic, the reincarnated queen of the Shadow Throne, is wielding fire. And not fey fire. God’s fire pouring out of her.

The change in her scent. It is an addition, but not of another male. Of a child.

She’s carrying my child.

But they hadn’t…it couldn’t be.

Yet in his heart, he knows the truth.

Fear pierces Aiden’s heart even as the wolf surges to the surface, making a grab to be in charge. Protect her. Protect them.

He will. The rest will be sorted out later. He tries to focus all his energy on shifting back to human.

“Nic,” the small older woman says from behind his fearsome mate. His eyes turn and he looks at the mortal. “Nic, don’t hurt them, baby. Please.”

“They want to kill us,” his mate spits. “It’s us or them.”

“If you kill them, they will never stop hunting you,” the female says. Her voice is choked with emotion. “Please. I just got you back.”

Aiden shakes off the last of whatever that magical stun weapon did and shifts. There are gasps from the outmatched federal agents. Calling his own fire, his palms alight and they fall back. He moves swiftly to the center of the circle, where the agent, Hanson, is fumbling with her weapon. He kicks her arm from behind and the thing goes flying. Angrboda dives for it and plucks it up.

He releases the flames and grasps the woman in charge around the throat. With the enemy secure, he turns to face Nic. “She’s right, love. You can’t kill them all. They aren’t yours.”

She lets out a shuddering breath, shaking her head so her blonde hair falls