The Queen of Hearts

[Mallory]

February 10th, 2018

Ishmerai's beacon home was lost, and with it, Jewell and the remaining Summer girls seemed to have given up any hope of victory. But in spite of this, Mallory came to the sanatorium as soon as she heard that Belladonna had been captured. There was work to do, and if and when Ishmerai finally came home?

The witch would have to be ready to perform the Rite.

She followed Almast down a long, narrow stone staircase into the sanatorium's lower level, following closely on the heels of the petite Summer girl. It was cold down here, colder than the witch had imagined, and her foggy breath lit up as the string of faerie lights flickered to life along the cramped brick corridor ahead of them.

Despite the gravity of their situation, Allie blew out a little puff of breath just to watch it condense in the air. "We're basically inside the mountain now. It helps keep it cold and Jewell has other ways, but I don't know that it's ever this cold."

That elicited a frown from the witch. "It feels like a tomb," she breathed in reply. Her gaze sought out the doorways to either side of the hall, little alcoves of impenetrable blackness cut into the slick, time-worn bricks. There were torches resting in sconces to either side with recent scorch marks on the walls, but every one of them was damp and unlit, which only deepened Mallory's unease.

"This one," Allie nodded to a solid, iron door that looked fairly new. "Ishmerai laughed at her when she said she wanted this installed. Asked who she planned on locking up." She jangled a set of keys and unlocked the door, grunting as she pushed it open, "Careful. She's batshit crazy."

Mallory's eyes flickered to Allie's fingers as they touched the door, and back to her face with concern, but whatever the iron did to bother her, the Summer girl was too tough to let her discomfort show. "I won't be long," she whispered, and paused by the door to give her a nervous smile. "And if I am, punch me in the tits as hard as you can. That should knock out any glamour." Never mind that last time had been an (alleged) accident.

"I might just do it anyway... just to be safe," the girl grinned through her nervousness.

"Tch." The witch stepped through the entrance and pressed her hand against the heavy door. It was uncomfortably cold, painful to touch for more than a moment. She pressed it shut, replacing the iron barrier between what little magic Belladonna might still muster and the world outside her cell, sealing herself in the darkness with the evil queen imprisoned within.

She held her breath, catching in her throat in a soft gasp, and listened.

Belladonna's breathing was a raspy, labored thing in the dark but her voice was still like honey, "Ahhh I was hoping you would come, darling."

Mallory narrowed her eyes but did not utter any reply. Instead, without warning, she flexed her fingers, drawing a lambda in the air, and a blinding golden light appeared at the apex of the small, circular chamber. Its brilliance dimmed in the space of the single breath the witch finally released, casting long shadows around Belladonna and the three heavy iron chains that wound around her body and bound her to the floor.

The faerie flinched back initially at the brilliance, but was otherwise sitting as comfortably as she could. In fact, her demeanor was of a person completely at ease and in control of her surroundings. "That's much better. I did so want to see your pretty face."

"Why?" The witch indulged her baiting words with a one-word question as she stalked over, dropping her bookbag just outside of the loose circle formed by the three points where the chains were bolted to the floor. She tugged her gloves off with her teeth as she came to a kneel by Belladonna's side, only a few feet away from her at most.

She smiled, all sharp teeth. "Because I want us to be friends, of course!"

"Friends with the nameless mortal girl who's going to oversee your doom?" the witch murmured, doing her very best to mind those teeth as she pulled Belladonna's long blue hair back from one side of her neck.

Bella didn't snap at her. Not yet. She was still smiling, though it had a pitying quality to it. "Oh little Nadya Volokhov, you think much of yourself."

Mallory's fingertips paused on Belladonna's neck, just as she located the faerie's pulse. Potent and powerful, moreso than she anticipated. Oh, the magic she could work with such blood flowing through her veins... Her gaze moved to Belladonna's. "Who told you that name?"

"Did she tell you I wasn't that dangerous, darling?" With Mallory so close, she whispered now. "Did she tell you that I was crazy? That I don't know things? I know things."

The witch scowled, shifted her eyes to her wristwatch as Belladonna's veins moved subtly underneath her pale skin, and counted heartbeats silently to stop inwardly chastising herself. It wouldn't do to let this woman into her head, literally or figuratively. "I'm so very happy for you." The words came tersely, through her teeth, as soon as she had her heartrate pinned down.

Belladonna's wicked laugh echoed off the walls of the small room. "I knew we would get on if we could just sit and chat with each other. We're going to be good friends when this is all over. I can tell. I won't even let that nasty old demon play with you again. Oh no no. It'll be just me and you," she sighed dreamily.

"I don't like to keep up relationships with the dead." She adjusted the simple shift Belladonna had been given to check her unglamoured chest for any signs of scars. "Nothing personal." Whether she meant invading her privacy like this, or their future non-friendship, she left unclear.

"Don't you, though? How is little Larkin? And dear Beckett?"

There was a single wince from the witch, an expression she did not mean to reveal to the prying faerie. She turned away quickly, rifling through her bookbag for something.

"That good, huh? Oh love is hard, dear Mallory!"

The knife came down quick across Belladonna's arm, the copper blade biting deeper than needed to spill blood into the little glass vial Mallory kept pressed to the base of the fresh wound. "I'll be taking some hair, too," she added, deciding to warn her about the less painful of the two samples.

The faerie hissed at the unexpected wound, but not much could deter her. "You going to keep a little for yourself? Maybe take a little taste?"

"Not really my style," Mallory said as she took a small lock of her hair with help from the same knife, dropping the little cluster of wavy blue strands into a second vial. She replaced both in her bag, zipping it shut, and turned to stare at the faerie, squatting at the edge of the circle a few feet away from her. She studied her face, the line of her bones, the fine features that reminded her of the Jewell she knew, and silently wondered at Belladonna's state.

She tilted her head and studied her right back. "Shame you chose the wrong side in all this. I could have made you great."

"You're an unmoored sociopath stranded far from home, with such poor impulse control that you can't possibly foster the relationships or hoard the resources necessary to bring you anything of real value." Mallory gave her a pitying look and a slow shake of her head, not unlike the one turned on her earlier. "There's nothing you could have offered that would have put me on your side."

Bella pouted a little, "Such cruel words. But come now, darling. You know that's not really true. You dream of the things I could offer you." Her grey eyes were sharp in the dim light. "You know... you call me a sociopath, but I prefer to think of myself as enlightened. You're still playing their games. Playing by their rules. Stuck by their rules. Limited by their rules. I make my own rules. I play my own game."

The dim golden light of Mallory's cantrip went out, plunging them both into darkness. The witch swore and tore her glass pendant away from her necklace as the horrible sound of wrenching iron filled the tiny space. Chains rattled along the slick, freezing floor and snapped taut, and the fire that leapt from her fingers illuminated the narrowed grey eyes and sharp, pearly teeth of Belladonna, stopping just short of the witch's face. The iron door clanged open, silhouetting Almast in the entrance, but Belladonna paid her no mind.

She only had eyes for the witch, holding her gaze as she backed out of the cell, gracing her with a wicked grin, paired with a promise:

"And I only ever play to the death."

((Written in collaboration with Belladonna's player, with thanks!))

[Mallory]

February 14th, 2018

Eri and Mallory stepped into the sanatorium's courtyard together, stopping to let their eyes adjust to the bright orange glare of sunset. Mallory had only her bookbag, packed with enough components to perform any of the spells she knew, and detailed notes on every ritual she didn't already have memorized; but the delinquent had one bag of spare components, and another packed with the weapons she'd been carrying with her everywhere for the last few weeks.

Whatever happened tonight, they wanted to be ready for it.

Mallory realized she'd stopped in her tracks a ways short of the portal, and found a smile for the delinquent when she felt her uneasy gaze on her, giving her a look somewhere between reassuring and apologetic -- though the witch herself did not feel reassured in the least. Ishmerai was far away, on a deadly errand Mallory herself had largely devised, and the doom of Jewell's heart was almost at hand. While the Sight sometimes veiled or obscured the truth, it had never lied to her: the fae's heart would beat its last at the stroke of midnight.

She curled an arm around Eri's for a gentle squeeze and broke a few steps ahead, stopping to kneel before the portal to Faerie in the dry, frozen grass. Her head was heavy with guilt and sorrow, too clouded by the emotions to sense even the potent ebb and flow of magic through the brick archway right in front of her. She shut her eyes and counted to ten, and when she was done, her eyes were brimming with tears but her head was clear.

"Katto," she murmured to Eri with a soft smile, opening her left hand.

Eri nodded, managing to form a smile as she reached for the witch's left hand. She produced the same small knife she had used in the Samhain fight on hand for the purpose, and used it to make the needed cut on Mallory's palm.

The witch didn't even wince at the pain, too used to it now after so many castings. She cupped her palm to pool the blood, holding it up to the diminishing rays of the sunset as she peered through the archway. Then she blew out a long breath, rippling the surface of the little crimson pool and sending one, two, three glimmering drops sliding along her fingers, ready to carry her messages into the realm beyond.

* * * * *

In the time it took for Mallory to complete her spell, the sun dipped behind the mountains, draping a deep shadow across the courtyard; within moments, the vampires of the Night Court finally launched their attack.

The ripples of a horrible tear vibrated across the Weave and flooded Mallory's senses with its violent disruption as the sanatorium's carefully crafted wards and barriers were shredded apart, and the rose-tinted fireflies fluttering near her hand turned an angry shade of red. Glass shattered up and down the halls of the sanatorium, on every story, but the witch's gaze was on the rooftops, where dark shapes prowled towards the courtyard, barely visible in the fading orange light of dusk.

She felt Eri press her back against hers defensively, and heard a rattle and a rhythmic whiff, whiff, whiff as she started swinging her meteor hammer -- a length of chain with an iron ball on one end and a stake on the other. At least she had come prepared...

Mallory caught the fireflies with a swipe of a hand, breathing whispered words into their wings. Lorelei. Ishmerai. Find them! Warn them!

By the time Mallory had released her messengers, sending them fluttering through the portal to Faerie, several of the dark shapes were loping across the courtyard. One bounded ahead of the others, rolling its head as it called its kindred on with a feral shriek. Its long, pale fingers lengthened into claws, and it used them to find purchase in the ground and leap off, pouncing at the witch with preternatural speed.

Eri checked the motion of the chain, suddenly shortening the swing of the iron. The inertia sent the weapon hissing through the air and crashing into the head of the leaping assailant. Eri pounced as soon as it fell, seizing the stake and driving it through it chest, and it shrieked and burst into a dust cloud. "We have to find some cover!" she shouted.

Mallory nodded as she scattered a spray of blood across the ground, conjuring three crimson hounds that sprang up to defend them, snarling and snapping at the approaching vampires. The witch did not wait to see how her summons would fare against these creatures; the spell would buy them precious moments and little more.

"This way!" she cried, grabbing at the delinquent's shoulder to turn her before bounding for the nearest way out of the courtyard, racing against the half dozen vampires crawling spiderlike towards the doorway from above...

((Adapted to Mallory's p.o.v. from a scene with Eri, Jewell, Sapphire, Cane, Sal, and Isuelt!))

[Mallory]

Mallory and Eri hid together in the cramped confines of a servants' staircase. The witch was backed into a corner, hidden protectively behind the delinquent, faintly illuminated by the glow of her phone in the darkened space. Eri pressed close to the nearby doorway and listened to the sounds of cracking doors and shattering glass, the arrhythmic thump of their loping footsteps and the deep huffing breaths of their trackers attempting to pick up the scent of mortal flesh. The blood was still flowing from Mallory's left hand, albeit slowly. They wouldn't remain hidden for long.

Mallory texted as quickly as her shaky fingers would allow.

Text to Team Awesome from Mallory: sanatorium vampire attack
Text to Team Awesome from Mallory: help

The witch shared a nod with the delinquent and they broke from cover together, racing down the corridor towards the living quarter and their allies, pursued by the wraith-like shrieks of the undead behind them. They'd been made.

* * * * *

Mallory and Eri were on their way to the grand foyer from the second floor when the first wave of fae arrived.

They burst from one of the doors to RhyDin, blasting open the flimsy wooden barrier between the sanatorium and the Dockside portal not ten feet in front of them, flinging the door off its hinges and out one of the broken windows. What emerged were the motley crew that Belladonna usually employed, creatures that greeted the pair with cruel laughter behind their bared teeth as they laid eyes on the delinquent and the witch, fanning out into the corridor to block the way to the staircase beyond.

"Pray tell, pretties, where are you keeping our dear lady?" one of them sang, loping forward as a pair of glimmering silver knives dropped into her hands. She didn't make it far -- only a few steps towards them before Eri's meteor chain whiffed through the air and collided with her chest, knocking the wind out of her as contact with it sapped her power and seared her flesh.

She screamed in anguish and rage, but Mallory screamed louder, splitting their skin and boiling their blood as her eyes turned black.

* * * * *

It took precious minutes for Mallory and Eri to finally reach the wide staircase into the foyer, and their progress was slow and hard-fought. For every foe that fell before them, they heard the battle turning against their scattered allies: the whiff and crack of Betel's heavy hammer, and the pained cries of the Summer girls defending the sanatorium's basement; the bellowing roar of a wood troll as it crashed through the front door and into the fray; and soon, the shrill laughter and taunting songs of the faerie who called herself Belladonna, ringing down the halls from their destination.

The tired and bloody pair stumbled out onto the landing at the top of the stairs, finally free of the wave of the fae that had tried and failed to stop them, only to face new foes from the Night Court. A ghoulish creature wrapped in damp, filthy grave linens came crashing through the window to grab for a fistful of Mallory's short hair, but she reacted as soon as she heard it, digging a writhing belladonna vine deep into the palm of her hand -- three larger black vines erupted from the floor to constrict it, and she glared into its wide, panicked eyes as she unleashed a torrent of flame from her cracked glass pendant to consume it.

There was a thump and an abortive shriek, and she whirled to face Eri, her stake held aloft and her free hand clenched around an empty shirt sleeve, showered head to toe in grave dust that had been a Night Court vampire a moment ago.

A new sound caught the witch's attention, wet and sickly like raw meat slopping out of an opened seal. She found its source at the foot of the stairs, in the midst of enemies and allies both living and fallen, as the body of Abene slumped away from Belladonna's claws as her organs hit the floor.

Another Summer girl, Lavanya, was at her feet and attempting to crawl away, but a pale, darkly dressed figure -- wealthy enough to be the Earl Tenebres -- stood between them and spoke, though she only caught the end of his command.

" -- for now? If you would be so kind as to take care of your cousins at the portal, please."

Belladonna kicked Lavanya in the ribs and skipped away towards the courtyard, but the witch didn't plan to give her that chance. She saw red the moment Abene hit the floor, and tore her pendant free from her necklace as she advanced down the stairs to intercept the mad queen. Eri was shouting a warning behind her, but the sound didn't make sense to her as it failed to pierce through her rage.

Then long, claw-like fingers dug into her scalp and curled vicelike around her bicep, throwing her off balance and sending her rolling down the stairs with the weight of a vampire on her back. Her pendant skittered away across the marble tiles, and the words of retribution that formed in her throat died in a gasp when the heavy weight of the creature's knee struck her back, knocking the wind out of her.

There was no breath left for a scream when sharp fangs tore into the skin near the base of her neck, blinding her senses with fear and pain...

((Adapted to Mallory's p.o.v. from a scene with Eri, Jewell, Sapphire, Cane, Sal, and Isuelt!))

[Mallory]

When Mallory's vision cleared, she could no longer feel the fangs in her neck, though she did feel the searing pain of torn muscle near her collarbone and the hot blood flowing from her wound. The lifeless face of her vampire attacker blocked her vision until Eri dragged his torso away from her, sailing across the foyer to thump into the corner where she'd thrown the rest of him, behind the ruptured remains of what must have been a wood troll at one point.

She took stock of her surroundings as she retrieved her glass pendant, now badly damaged, in one blood-slick hand. Sapphire was at the edges of the fray, protected against harm by Cane's spellwork as she fought three ravenous undead back from Lavanya's wounded form, flanked by the Scathachian -- Isuelt -- warding them off with her blades, dripping with the blood of vampires and fae. Almast and Abene lay near the top of the stairs, ruptured by ice and sundered by claws, but she could not see or hear any of the other Summer girls. The space was still crawling with fae creatures and vampires, one of whom retched and vomited blood as he staggered away from --

Jewell.

The faerie was unsteady on her feet, fresh claw marks spilling blood down her arms as she shoved the nauseous vampire away from her and crossed the foyer with tears in her eyes. Waiting at the other end was the man she had surmised was the Earl of the Night Court, beautiful and enraging in his flawless poise among the bloody chaos the rest of them suffered through. He greeted the faerie with a slowly growing smile, stretching out a hand to welcome her as she closed the distance...

"Jewell!" The witch's voice was hoarse, strained by the recent bite as she pulled herself to her feet. An elegant vampiress snarled and snapped her teeth at the sound of her voice from the base of the stairs, but the delinquent growled in kind, holding her in her lantern-like gaze as she moved into the vampire's path. "Jewell, is the portal blood-bound?!"

The Empress slowed her steps, blinking as if waking from a dream as she looked to Mallory. The Earl just stood there, patiently waiting for her to come to him, but the witch appeared to have the faerie's attention. "Yes."

Mallory squeezed hard on the glass pendant as she strode over to Jewell, deepening the growing fractures in the fiery token. "Thought so," she croaked, and swiped her left hand through the air -- three thorny black vines erupted from the floorboards, two to wrap up around her legs to stop her in her tracks, while the third lashed out and pierced her right shoulder, sending blood cascading down her back.

The faerie's sharp cry of pain was nearly lost in the Earl's roar of rage at Mallory's attack. "No!" But she heard his rapid progress across the room and simply cast the pendant aside into his path. It broke apart right in front of him, roaring into a fireball that set the grand foyer's massive rug ablaze, leaving a flaming barrier in his way.

It bought her only a few moments, but it was all the time she needed. She pressed her hands around Jewell's wound, soaking them in her blood, and hissed into her ear to be heard over the din: "He is coming. Keep alive." She gave only a split-second for her words to register with the faerie before she stepped back, casting a look between the two powerful vampires pacing rapidly across the grand foyer, their elegance diminished by their clear desperation as they searched for a path through the rising wall of flames...

She called out to Eri: "Ready to take Belladonna head-on?!"

Eri's glowing eyes reflected the flames of the blazing rug with particular ferocity. She looked over when Mallory called to her, her glowing eyes reflecting the flames of the blazing rug. "I'm ready!" she said firmly as she hurried over, weapons in tow.

Mallory mustered a laugh of delight to counter the mounting fear over what she was about to do. She clapped a blood-soaked hand to the side of Eri's face, and in a flash of crimson light, the pair of them vanished from the foyer.

* * * * *

Mallory saw Belladonna's barrier stretched across the portal to Faerie as she and Eri both hurtled across the howling darkness of the Veil towards its reverse side. She reached out her hand, coated in Jewell's blood, and slapped it against the ghostly grey side of the brick archway that contained the portal.

The violet barrier pulsed an angry shade of red, like ripples spreading across a lake, then shattered as loudly as the breaking of the wards at sunset had been, tearing open a temporary portal in the space left by the sudden absence of Belladonna's spell. She and Eri squeezed through before it could snap shut, quickly replaced by the steady power of the connection to Faerie and leaving fading crimson scars in its wake.

The bodies of fae, both Belladonna's and Lorelei's, by their livery, littered the overgrown gardens around the portal, along with a trio of newly slain ghouls and a fine coat of grave dust over everything. There was a young fae knight slumped over, his olive throat and mithril shirt both coated in his blood, being dragged by a wounded, sobbing woman in identical armor.

And in the middle of it all was Belladonna, thrown to her hands and knees by the backlash from the portal, Mallory's magic still crackling across its surface in bold, angry lines. "Ahh the little witch," Belladonna growled playfully at Mallory as she picked herself up out of the snow. And she was not alone: there were several of her surviving minions in the courtyard and more of the Night Court's undead soldiers and hirelings that hadn't perished in the fight, rapidly tightening their loose perimeter now that a pair of strangers had appeared in their midst.

Mallory's eyes ticked away from the dangerous faerie and the circling minions to meet Eri's lantern-like gaze, and her lips curled into a fond smile for the delinquent. "The one with less kills has to buy dinner," she said.

Lengthened and misaligned canines flashed in the delinquent's return grin to Mallory as she heard the challenge, and her eyes flashed a bit brighter as she nodded. "You're on," she accepted with a characteristically unbalanced-sounding giggle, before setting the chain of her meteor hammer into motion as she bounded off to meet their foes. The first one to dart in caught the full weight of the iron ball in the chest, but with that the chain finally snapped, and Eri drew her old cavalry sabre to contend with the others, dancing among them with quick defense and precise footwork. "Burgers -- definitely burgers!" the witch heard her say with a giggle, as she turned back to face Belladonna.

The faerie seemed to be keeping her distance from the witch, backing away while Eri tore through the minions surrounding them. She hadn't needed long to recover, and when their eyes met, she struck out with vibrant purple bursts of energy, a spell meant to inflict searing pain and shredding wounds.

Mallory rolled forward as the first blast disintegrated a brick in the archway behind her, and the pair that followed were met by the shadowy mantle that flared up from her shoulders to deflect them, guided by a quick swipe of her hand.

The next bolt hit home, a lightning-fast spell that crackled across the witch's side, seared her skin and threw her onto her side, but she snarled as her hands dug for purchase in the snow-covered grass to pull herself back to her feet. Keep moving. Always keep moving. If you get hit, move faster. Driven on by the long, arduous lessons of Ishmerai and the Summer girls, she lunged forward again and hissed: "Vindicta."

A matching wound flashed into place on Belladonna, leaking steaming blood down her ribs with an unexpected shock of pain. She followed it up with a deep exhale, a cold sigh from the depths of winter that carried a dozen icy shards with it. The faerie threw up her hands to deflect them away to either side, bending water much like she'd seen Jewell do, though a few still managed to get through, leaving razor-thin slices along her face and throat.

Then Belladonna reached out a hand, and Mallory felt the familiar feeling of her blood being pulled. Her heart fluttered dangerously... but it was her heart, and the deep wince of pain twisted into a sadistic grin as she took hold of where her blood was anchored in the Veil, and the next mighty beat wrenched it out of the faerie's grasp.

She didn't give her foe a chance to counter, capitalizing on Belladonna's surprise immediately by seizing the glowing orange vial from her back pocket and splashing it into her mouth. The breath that followed was beyond her control, a long, bellowing roaring as fire rippled out of her mouth in waves, searing through Belladonna's defenses in places, augmented by the snow the faerie bent defensively into its path, dissipating in a roiling cloud of steam.

The witch's next strike was just as malicious, another icy breath once the last of the fire had erupted from her mouth, but these frozen shards stopped mid-flight... melting into water that commingled with the gathering steam clouds, joining the long, watery tendril that she felt curling around her torso a moment too late.

The sidhe smiled.

The massively powerful tendril squeezed her limbs painfully together as it lifted her up off the ground, and wound its way around her neck to squeeze the life out of her. It inched its way around her, slowly but painfully cutting off her air, and Belladonna circled in and out of her darkening vision like a cat with its quarry, in clear enjoyment of her suffering.

She saw Eri slide her sabre out of a fallen fae's body and rush over double time to reach them, but halfway there a column of water rose out of the melting snow, stopping her short as its tendrils wrapped around her. Her struggles were violent, but without footing on the ground it seemed to be of little use.

"Let... let her..." The witch's words were cut off with a desperate gasp as the tendril tightened around her throat.

"What was that, little witch?" Belladonna crooned, stepping into Mallory's darkening field of view, and missing what she saw: a ripple in the portal behind her as the last of Mallory and Belladonna's magic faded from it, the shadow of a tall figure stretching out across the Veil to emerge from it.

Ishmerai. Mallory caught only a glimpse of his gaunt face and his wild, tangled hair before Belladonna gasped sharply, and the witch fell to the ground at her feet, the water splashing around her as it fell free of the faerie's hold. She was coughing hard and struggling to clear her vision when she heard the knight ask her, "Do we still need her alive?"

Do we?

Mallory looked over at Eri, visually confirming that her girlfriend was still alive, the delinquent crawling over to her as soon as she was free. Then she looked up at Belladonna, with Ishmerai's short sword plunged into her back and protruding from her belly, wide-eyed, gasping helplessly at the immense pain of the wound. The knight behind her was a fearsome sight to behold, an angry light in his green eyes as the sidhe twisted on his blade, weighing her death on the answer he received. A bag dangled from his shoulder, a slash of a copper, rune-etched basin poking out of the opening.

"Yes," the witch answered finally, meeting his gaze.

Ishmerai nodded, the tip of the sword disappeared from her belly, and Belladonna fell to the ground with a sharp scream, passing out from the pain. He stowed his bloody blade without wiping it down, reaching out to grab a fistful of blue hair to drag the beaten faerie behind him. "Come," he said, already starting for the broken doors of the sanatorium as Eri took hold of Mallory's arms, helping her back to her feet. "My lady is still in danger."

((Adapted to Mallory's p.o.v. from a scene with Eri, Jewell, Sapphire, Cane, Sal, and Isuelt!))

[Mallory]

The witch was unsteady on her feet, waves of exhaustion crashing over her after the adrenaline of the fight, and a few minutes of steady blood loss since that vampire had bitten her. The coppery smell of her own wounds, the thick smoke from whatever remained of the rug she'd set ablaze, and the stronger odors of the dead and injured strewn about the grand foyer filled her nostrils and compounded her dizziness.

Three of the Summer girls that she could see were dead: Abene and Almast, the latter ruptured and broken by icy crystals that could have been Belladonna's, and Philomena, her broken body cradled in Janel's arms as she limped into the foyer. Lavanya still lived, casting a weary look between her fallen sisters as she pulled herself along the railing of the grand staircase to meet Janel.

None of their foes (besides Belladonna) remained, though the remains of the minions of the faerie queen and the Night Court littered the space. The Earl himself had been sundered, his porcelain features locked in an expression of shock and anger as cold blood pooled around him. The fight hadn't gone in his favor in her absence. The elegant vampiress that had accompanied him was nowhere to be seen, though her eyes passed over another familiar figure: the broken, bloody, carapace-armored body of Betel, discarded beside a molten pool of metal that could only be Cane's handiwork.

There were also less bodies in here than she expected, which may have been Sal's doing.

The witch scrubbed her face, thoughtlessly smearing her and Jewell's blood across her cheeks as she silently worked through the static that filled her head when she was confronted with the faces of the fallen a second time. She was aware of the rhythmic rattle of Isuelt's blades as she followed Sapphire, who called out to her mother as she raced across the foyer, and a passing thought of good, I couldn't handle her dying that made her feel sick to her stomach. She hunched over beside Eri, easing into the delinquent's comforting hold as the rest of the survivors gathered around Jewell at the base of the stairs.

There was no fight the witch had been in that had turned out like this before: with friends and allies ripped away from them, and conscious for the terrible aftermath. She heard herself asking Eri, "Can you get my bag? It's in here somewhere... it has the sedatives for Belladonna, if, um... if you could administer them."

She felt the delinquent release her hold and move away, heard her poking through the debris and rifling through her bag, and assumed she would take care of it. She caught a worried glance from Eri, but her gaze quickly moved on to the others. She slid past the delinquent, past Sapphire and Ishmerai without a word, standing before Jewell and looking her up and down as the faerie rested her head against the wall. The blood on her clothes, and how much of it was her own. Her visible wounds, and her pallor. How long can she remain conscious?

Despite closing her eyes, Jewell still seemed aware of the witch's presence. "What do you think, Mal? Better or worse than last Valentine's Day?"

"Nnh." It was difficult for Mallory to come up with an answer for that question, so she didn't. Sanctuary was one of the many things her brain had decided that it wasn't going to process right now. She cast a long look over her shoulder at the rest of the grand foyer, gaze ticking away, quietly assessing. "Sapphire..." She looked at her friend. "Do you have enough mana left to heal anyone?"

"What? Oh--oh yeah." The younger faerie deactivated her armor and fruitlessly wiped her bloody hands off on her jeans. "I've been practicing. Who first?"

"Belladonna, Jewell, myself, Janel, Lavanya." The names came out mechanically, in order of importance to the ritual and least to most likely to die; with a second glance, she confirmed that Eri's wounds were already regenerating, a blessing of her father Roka's demonic blood; and that Isuelt seemed battered and winded, but not seriously injured. "We can move into the atrium and start the ritual as soon as we stop bleeding."

"Got it. Worry not!" she replied with affected bravado. "You are all in the capable hands of Sapphire Ravenlock D'Artainian." Mallory heard her making the rounds but barely listened, looking around the foyer and stopping on Eri. The delinquent gave her a reassuring smile that she did not return.

"I'm alive enough. Hurry up and tend to the others." The witch's gaze moved back to Jewell at her words, spotting the slowing trickle of blood from her shoulder, with Isuelt applying a compression bandage. What little Sapphire had done for her seemed to have helped enough, for the time being.

Jewell and Belladonna were both alive, and they had the Basin. There was only one thing left to do.

((Adapted to Mallory's p.o.v. from a scene with Eri, Jewell, Sapphire, Cane, Sal, and Isuelt!))

[Mallory]

Mallory wasn't sure if anyone said anything, or if they simply silently agreed as one tired, haggard, bloody unit to proceed to the large, empty atrium for the ritual. One of Ishmerai's first commands in the sanatorium had been the restoration of the massive windows that lined this space, though they had been shattered once more by the Night Court's invading vampires. Tiny shards of glass commingled with the ashes of a slain vampire, but there was no blood to be seen. "Tch." Mallory unstoppered a small glass jar from her pack, and a howling wind erupted from it and whipped along the floor, sweeping the debris away to the walls and out the open windows.

Her gaze wasn't on any of the others, though she spoke distractedly as she sighted the moon and stars through one of the broken windows in the span between her thumb and forefinger. "Put her here," she said, tapping her foot in place, "eleventh row from the window, center tile... and Jewell... stand on the opposite tile." They moved to obey as the witch orchestrated the ritual. Ishmerai dragged Belladonna to the first tile and Sapphire momentarily stood with Jewell opposite them to make sure she didn't just fall over.

"And I'll take this..." It was a shame she was handling the relic under these circumstances, because in any other situation, she would have been awed and breathless to have the Starlight Basin in her hands; instead she simply wiped her hands clean with an alcoholic cloth from her backpack before prising the basin out of the knight's bag.

It was beautiful in its crudeness, tarnished copper hammered by a smith, uneven in places, adorned by row after row of hand-etched runic inscriptions so lost to the aeons that even the royal libraries of Faerie could not begin to decipher them. But it held no luster, nor did it spark when the witch's bare fingertips first touched it; the only hint of its power was the hum that set her nerves alight and filled her heart with an uneasy lightness as soon as she held it. She set it carefully in the exact center of the room, within reach of both Jewell and Belladonna's dazed, drugged form, and then spread her hands as she backed away from it:

"No one step any closer than three tiles from the wall until I say so. Also, take their shirts with you when you go," she added. She passed her backpack to Eri and shared a single, minute nod with her as she withdrew a pair of simple obsidian blades from her pack.

Mallory caught the incredulous looks from both the knight and his lady, and heard Sapphire snicker when Jewell muttered, "Oh you have got to be ****ing kidding me." She elbowed Sapphire away when she tried to help her pull her dress up over her head--"I've got it!"--but ended up needing her assistance in the end when she made her shoulder start bleeding more. Ishmerai kept his distance from the pair, moving instead to relieve Belladonna of her shirt with a swipe of a knife before exiting the ritual space. Mallory wasn't surprised to find that Jewell was wearing nothing beneath her dress. Without her glamour, it was clear how badly the iron had laid waste to her body--she was all sharp angles and protruding ribs now, pale and shivering uncontrollably but standing tall.

"There is no shame in nakedness," Mallory echoed Ishmerai, a memory from last spring that felt much further away in the moment, though revisiting it gave her a shot of badly needed levity. Her smile was slight and short-lived, her expression no less solemn as she returned to the center of the space. "Place your hand like hers," she commanded Jewell gently as she took Belladonna's hand and set it, palm up, over the edge of the basin. The violent sidhe could only murmur in protest, beyond both the necessary physical strength and mental faculties to fight her doom any longer. The Empress followed Mallory's directions, though she struggled to stay upright as death nipped at her heels.

"This will hurt," the witch whispered, her voice still soft, though she slid the black glass blade into Belladonna's palm first so that Jewell could see what to expect.

That provoked a sharp cry from Belladonna, one that dissolved into mad laughter as she rolled her head from one shoulder to the other, giving an unhinged grin to Jewell. When Mallory dabbed her right thumb in the blood welling from her hand and into the basin, she fixed all of her malice on the mortal girl who thought to preside over her death. "We could have been such friends... but too late. I curse you, little girl. May you--"

"Tenebris," Mallory hissed, and the nascent curse returned to oblivion as she pressed her thumb to the center of the sidhe's brow. With an unearthly croak Belladonna rolled her head back, her eyes went white, and she spoke no more. Then the witch withdrew the second knife and, after a brief look at Jewell's eyes, pressed the blade into her palm.

Jewell jumped back at the sharp pain, but still smiled at Mallory through her wince. "Don't know what she was complaining about," she remarked weakly. "It's not so bad."

The witch returned her smile, however faintly, and pressed her blood-soaked red thumb into the center of her brow. "Lux," she whispered, willing Jewell's vision to fill with the shape of her magic.

Faint, windblown lines flickered away from a brilliant emerald star that could only be the Starlight Basin, surrounded by rippling, dueling coronas of the bright silver of Jewell's magical essence, and the striking shade of violet that could only be Belladonna's, as both faeries' blood slowly but surely began to fill the basin. And as the witch dabbed blood from each of them and began the tedious, hour-long process of intricate linework away from the center of the circle, stretching away from each of them, across both the short distance of the atrium and the vastness of the Forest of the World, over house-sized roots and under a canopy higher than the sky as their amorphous shadows bled in and out of their shared vision.

And each line inevitably circled back, Belladonna's to a brilliant diamond, bright white like crackling ice, shining at the center of her being; and Jewell's to a rapidly growing darkness, its searing tendrils poisoning her dying body. And as Mallory carefully, meticulously crafted each line, she could feel more and more of what Jewell herself felt.

Within the shattered atrium, Jewell was just a child in the Forest of the World and felt both awed and chilled to the core by what she saw--the blight that was slowly eating away her pure light and life; the brilliant diamond of Belladonna's heart (had her own been that bright once or perhaps even more vibrant?) that she wished to take for her own; and this power that her little mortal friend harnessed and possessed. As the lines circled back again and again, connecting the three of them more and more, she saw the fast-approaching moment where they would become one, and Jewell in turn felt Belladonna's pain and loss as clearly as her own.

Stretching this far between them the witch saw only glimmers, snatches of sound and image through the gargantuan trees that erupted out of the darkness surrounding the atrium to tower over it, her head dutifully bent to the intricate linework that mapped the vital essence of Jewell and Belladonna across the atrium floor and intertwined them; even to Jewell, with her Sight opened to the magic that would reshape and redefine her, the images were innumerable and dizzyingly fast, all of the experiences of her lifetimes compressed into a single hour. The blood-soaked cellar of Sanctuary flashed by in an instant, but other images repeated: the Ta-Neer estate in Faerie, the old scarred bar at the Red Dragon Inn, the caller's couch and the rings of the Arena; her old home; her old lovers; her children. Stephen Kidd singing a song, Amanda running through a field of fireflies, Kalamere offering her a branch of magnolias, a house on the cliffs aflame. There were alien images, too, of her children lost by more violent means than Jewell had experienced, and of the rest of her kin torn and sundered by her own hands in a night of bloody vengeance; of a cell in Gulshan, and the ruined glory of La Mer, and orgies of flesh and murder that were never easy to tell apart. But as time dragged on, the line between the two participants and their diverging timeline became less and less distinct...

...and when a needle-sharp belladonna vine struck through the witch's outstretched hand with a strangled scream, all boundaries vanished. The moment had arrived.

Samuel Adder, sneering while Patrick Richie twitched and writhed, dangling in the middle of a small library. Betel, filthy and naked, falling to her knees and sobbing tears of joy in a lonely iron cell. Ishmerai frowning uncertainly at the music on the radio as Sapphire laughingly pulled him away from the kitchen wall to dance. Tara happily explaining her day to her friend while perched atop her favorite barstool, surrounded by friendly and half-remembered faces. Stirring a pot of macaroni and cheese in a dirty old kitchen, and turning to shout at a familiar gaggle of teenagers sprawled out in the living room. Beltane, its younger trees dwarfed by the Forest looming over everything, but far brighter for its light and love and merriment. A withered vampire, supported on either arm by mortal women, shuffling across a green glass floor to reach his claw-like hands into a mother's arms, with a smile of wonder on his wisened face. A treehouse. A smoky lounge. An unlit hearth. Home.

Every image vanished when the obsidian blade that had tasted Belladonna's blood pierced her chest.

Jewell screamed and the sound echoed, torn from the throats of the other two. The pain of being remade was both unbearable and beautiful, as an iron knife tore a jagged path as it left her chest, and the aching hollow that remained filled with the blinding light that emanated from the center of her being: the beautiful and terrible power that burned in the heart of every sidhe. The Forest of the World writhed in anger and ecstasy, its roots plunging ever deeper into the earth, tearing massive crevasses into the ground until there was nothing left for Jewell to stand on, and she fell, and Belladonna plummeted beside her, screaming her way through the abyss.

Ahead of the mad sidhe, centuries ahead but racing closer in seconds, was a faint and flickering violet light, enveloped in a deepening shadow that threatened to consume it. As she drew closer she could see her cell in Gulshan lurking in the dark place in her heart, and chains of cold iron whipped out of the walls to sear and bind her as the tower's sadistic guards advanced on her, knives in hand...

But Belladonna and Jewell and Mallory, a momentary trinity bound by the magic of the old gods, were diverging once more, and Belladonna's path vanished from her, and the witch's Sight could barely be felt. Jewell was alone, naked in the dark, plummeting through oblivion with nothing but a pinprick of silver light aeons ahead of her and countless stars fading into the far distance around her; and the deep, building drumbeat of a rhythm thudding away ahead of her, impossibly far into the future, keeping time even as the last of the stars went out.

((Adapted to Mallory's p.o.v. from a scene with Eri, Jewell, Sapphire, Cane, Sal, and Isuelt!))

[Mallory]

The Forest was gone, the atrium stood in its place, and Jewell was no longer alone. Belladonna curled onto her side a few feet away from her, afflicted by deep, wracking coughs that drove iron-blackened blood out of her lungs and onto the cold stone floor. Mallory knelt in between them, a pile of tiny obsidian shards in either hand, taking frantic breaths as she stared wide-eyed between the ritual's various pieces and participants, her gaze ticking back and forth wildly as she grappled with the building evidence that she was back in the mortal realm, and that she experienced time as a single straight line once more.

The Starlight Basin was empty. Faint burns along the tiles hinted at the labyrinthine ritual circle that had been there moments ago, mirrored by the star-shaped scars that had burned their way into the chests of both sidhe; but the blood itself had vanished, save for the poisonous essence that Belladonna vomited onto the floor.

Jewell was kneeling on the floor, greedily eating up deep, gasping breaths of air. "Mama? Jewell? Jewell? Are you alright? Can you hear me?" Mallory heard Sapphire scrambling across the ritual space to her mother's side, heedless of Ishmerai's warnings.

While Isuelt remained rooted to the wall, too awestruck to move, Eri seemed to have forgotten the warnings like Sapphire, charging forward to Mal's side and calling out: "Mal? Mal! Are you alright?!"

The witch reached out and latched a hand around Eri's arm, fixing her with a desperate, wide-eyed look for the span of two breaths... and broke into a relieved smile for the delinquent. "Yeah... yeah, I'm alright," the witch managed, the voices and faces around her finally anchoring her in the here and now. "It's alright," she muttered, shaking her head at the others' concerns as she climbed back to her feet.

"Ow," Jewell groaned. Everyone else was looking at her expectantly. "My shoulder is killing me."

Sapphire groaned--"Ma-ma!"--and Ishmerai shook his head. "Your heart, Mira," he reminded her impatiently. "How is your heart?"

Jewell's grey eyes sought out Mallory's green ones. "It's fine."

* * * * *

The only time Jewell had really spoken up since the ritual had been complete and they had all been reassured that her heart was fine was when the subject of what to do with Belladonna had arisen. Sapphire and Isuelt seemed eager for her death immediately, but Jewell had agreed with Mallory when the witch had pointed out quietly: "We're already killing her. We could kill her sooner... but portents like these find new ways to transpire when thwarted. I'd rather not fuck with Fate twice in one night. Let her die at midnight."

The last heartbeat of the very last second of the Feast of Saint Valentine.

It was how it should be.

They passed a bottle around. Jewell had dug out something special from Faerie that spread a pleasant warmth through Mallory's flesh and brought back her happier memories about Beltane. She shared wine and a few quiet smiles with Eri as they waited for Belladonna to pass on.

At half past eleven, her breathing became shallow and more labored.

At a quarter to midnight, her eyes fluttered closed.

At five minutes to twelve, her chest ceased to rise and fall.

At midnight, she died.

((Adapted to Mallory's p.o.v. from a scene with Eri, Jewell, Sapphire, Cane, Sal, and Isuelt!))