Battle With Fire (Demon Days & Vampire Nights)

A few things stuck out, though. “They were hard to kill, but they went down eventually. The elves nearly bringing down the dragons, though…”

The guys fell silent in time for me to hear Karen rattling on. “I’m not sure I trust her, honestly. Sometimes the magic reveals a few paths to choose from, and she’ll just throw in another one willy-nilly. It’s almost like she just wants to throw everyone into danger so that the bad guys win. It’s madness. I’m starting to wonder if she is losing her faculties.”

I shook my head and looked away, my guts churning. Then I put down my fork. I would give my house to not know what came next. I had this sinking feeling that it wouldn’t be great.

Because in today’s battle, only the first few strikes had felt good, like I was seeking vengeance against the elves. When the dust, or in this case soot, settled, I hadn’t felt vindicated. I hadn’t felt better about what had happened to me. If anything, I hadn’t felt anything for myself at all. My only emotion was relief that my friends had made it through safely. The worst they’d been dealt was Dizzy’s pulled hamstring (the older dual-mages had stayed on the outskirts of the action, thankfully).

Sadly, though, in this last skirmish, people had gotten hurt. No one I knew, but three fae and two shifters had gone down. It could have been much worse if we hadn’t outmatched and outnumbered the competition. In the final showdown, I doubted we’d outmatch either of the other forces. And if today was any indication, I wouldn’t be worried about vengeance; I’d be worried about protecting those I cared about.

Emery’s words from the beginning of our journey came back to me. Why should we go into this with an agenda about preserving the elves’ rule? Why not just tear down everything and let them build it up?

Sitting here, now, the answer was frustratingly simple: because you couldn’t leave an entire world unstable. The Mages’ Guild was basically a corporation of magical people. If it weren’t around, there would be instability, sure, but the mages would still exist within a greater framework of law and order. They would have the shifters to keep them in place, and the Magical Law Enforcement, and the non-magical government. Those overarching systems would help avoid a complete clusterfuck. Plus, the corrupt leaders hadn’t been replaced with individuals from a different species, just a more solid organization of the same type of magical person.

This was a different situation. The people battling the elves mostly didn’t live within the greater part of the Realm. They didn’t know the unique challenges and trials involved in leading such a place. They would have to learn it all from scratch.

In the meantime, the world would plunge into lawlessness. Without direction, the fae wouldn’t know how to police. The Realm was also impossibly vast, and they couldn’t watch every nook and corner. In the shadows, the demons and vampires and whoever else crept into the open borders would take advantage of the lesser species that couldn’t defend themselves. The strong would take advantage of the weak.

And sure, that was already happening, but at least right now the people of the Realm only had to worry about the elves. Take away their heavy-handed leadership, and you had a vacuum. So what was the answer?

Balance.

It was like the word had been whispered into my ear, and it kept pinging around my head.

Balance.

The worlds needed balance.

I had to protect my friends and family, make sure the Underworld didn’t wipe out the elves, or vice versa, and force balance into the worlds.

How the literal fuck was I supposed to do all of that, though? We were going to get crushed in the middle of those two forces.

I held up my hand. “Karen, all due respect, but Penny isn’t going to help you pull your weight with the Red Prophet,” I said, cutting into her chatter and realizing Cahal’s eyes had been boring into me this whole time. He could look really creepy and stalkerish sometimes.

Karen swung her head around with slightly widened eyes. My stomach flipped. She was a woman you really didn’t want to mess with. Magical or not, you always needed to watch your six where Karen was concerned. I’d just excited her crazy.

“Is that right?” Karen said quietly. Too quietly, like she might plan on finding some scorpions and putting them in my bed. “And what do you know about it?”

“Well, she probably knows that you recently sent her to the elf castle to be taken and tortured,” Penny said, shocking me mute. She didn’t usually stand up to her mother. “Then taken again and trapped. That’s what she probably knows about it. Mother, honestly, you’ll just have to do the best you can. We’ll all have to do the best we can. You can help Roger, Romulus, and even Darius, but when it comes to Reagan, I doubt you’ll get very far.”