Ever After

up, shaken as we looked across the space to see that Ku’Sox was staggering but upright, grim faced and determined.

“You don’t really think water made the Grand Canyon, did you?” Al smirked. His circle fell as he flicked a ball of energy at Ku’Sox. The demons watching grudgingly applauded when Ku’Sox just as easily absorbed it.

“Throwing stones at each other is getting us nowhere,” Trent said, his expression more annoyed than anything else as he tugged his lab coat straight.

“And apparently the ever-after has an expiration date?” I prompted, looking at the east.

Al sighed dramatically. “You have a better idea?” he said, slipping into our bubble to sidestep Ku’Sox’s next attack. It hit with a muffled thump to make the earth tremble, and our circle quivered.

Trent frowned. “I do. Listen,” he said, and my eyes opened as wild magic blossomed in my thoughts. With the memory of drums and wildly dancing lithesome shapes, I felt Trent’s magic spill into me. It tingled to my fingers, and Al gasped. My hands clenched so I wouldn’t move as the foreign memory of an intoxicated swaying to a greater will filled me. It was magic from the elven war, magic that demons had never been able to best.

I felt Al’s stark terror melt into understanding, but Trent was lost to it, pulling everything to him, shaping it with no thought other than to build. I could feel the power growing with the strength of the sun, the certainty of the tides. A wing-lidded eye opened, purple and stark. It found me, and I shook.

“Bind it,” Al whispered. “Rachel, bind it! It’s wild magic! I can’t!”

But I could. The wild magic had acknowledged me. I owed it, and it would see me through so I could pay my debt. With the energy of the lines, I wove a resonance about Trent’s charm, binding it in a form that would find the one it was intended for and no other.

“Now,” I whispered, feeling it grow. “Now!” I shouted, severing Trent from the magic and shoving it at Al.

“Ex cathedra!” Al shouted to give our curse strength, and Ku’Sox cried out as it blew through his circle unimpeded. Ku’Sox fell to the earth, the elven curse crawling over him like a thousand green snakes, eating his aura, his magic. In my mind, I heard a chiming laugh.

“Bind him!” Trent called out, springing forward through our joined auras as if he had done this a thousand times before, and perhaps in his mind, he had. “He has no magic, but he can still run!”

I ran for the unmoving slump of fabric, not wanting Ku’Sox to turn into a bird and eat us, but I slid to a stop when Al popped into existence right over him. Expression harsh, he put a foot on Ku’Sox’s neck and leaned over him.

Trent was beside me. I could feel the auras of the surrounding demons, hear their harsh cries for revenge, taste their desire on the gritty wind. My heart pounded, and I watched as Al’s face twisted and he bore down, choking Ku’Sox with his foot. Elven magic had downed him, and I felt a growing fear in the demons, even as they urged Ku’Sox’s end.

Appalled, I watched as Ku’Sox pushed at Al’s foot, pounding at his leg, his face becoming red as he arched his back and struggled.

“You were a mistake!” Al exclaimed, and Newt’s androgynous form shoved another aside so she could see. Dali was beside her, and they served as stone-faced witnesses as they killed one of their own. “You were a mistake . . .” Al said again as Ku’Sox struggled, his fingers clawing Al’s leg until they bled.

“Trial!” Ku’Sox rasped, his eyes fastening on Dali’s.

I fixed my horrified gaze on Dali, seeing the demon clench his teeth. Could he claim that?

“Trial! I have a right . . .” he choked out, hardly audible over the surrounding din.

Dali grimaced and bent his head toward Newt’s. “I think he said trial.”

Al’s teeth showed, and he bore down harder. Someone jostled me forward, and Trent pulled me back before I fell.

“I did!” Ku’Sox got out. “I have a right for a trial by demon!”

“He dies!” Trent shouted, his desire flowing through me by way of the slavers. “Now!”

I looked to the east, frightened when the angry mob of demons at my back began to subside into frustrated mutterings. “We don’t have time for a trial!”

But Al was moving his foot.

“Al! You want them to put him in jail?” I shouted, and his eyes met mine, shocking me with their hatred. It would have been better if Trent’s spell would have killed Ku’Sox directly, but elves apparently liked their prisoners alive.

“No.” Al backed up a step, Ku’Sox lying between him and Newt and Dali. “I want to fucking kill him. Slow had been my intent, but fast would have been acceptable.”

Ku’Sox was smiling wickedly as he sat up, scooting backward into the surrounding demons when Al made motions to kick him. “I’m a demon,” he said, his voice smoothing out as found his aplomb. “I have a right to a trial.”

“Let go of me!” Newt cried, wiggling in Dali’s grip. “Let go! I will kill him myself if you are all too afraid, and then you can put me on trial!” she shouted.

“Be still, Newt!” Dali exclaimed, but the haze in her eyes scared me, even as I wanted to see an end to Ku’Sox.

“Ah, I have an idea,” Trent said softly, his voice both musical and hard. “That is, if you are willing to listen to an elf. The one whose magic caught him.”

I turned to Trent, wanting to protest that it had taken all three of us to catch him, but I held my tongue when I saw the harsh light in his eyes, the chilling bone-hard expression of dealing out a harsh death. I’d seen it once aimed at me, and I’d almost died.

Newt jerked from Dali, breathless as she faced us, Ku’Sox slowly getting up between us. “I’ll hear the elf,” she said bitterly.

“An elf?” a demon from the back called. “We should kill him, too.”

There was a muttering agreement, and I stiffened. Trent’s chin lifted. The wind shifted his stringy hair in the moonlight, and Trent said, “If he was a thief in my house, his actions stealing the space I claim, the air I breathe, I would do a trial by Hunt.”

A chill lifted through me. Trent wouldn’t meet my eyes as he stared at Dali. Al was shifting foot to foot, and a murmur of discontent was rising around us like a hot wind. “You would hunt him down?” a demon at the front of the circle said. “As an animal? As your ilk did before we beat you off?”

It was true, then. The demons had been the slaves of elves before the tables had been turned. My new alliance between the elves and demons was falling apart before it could even form, and my heart pounded. On my shoulder, Bis tightened his grip, promising a quick escape, but I didn’t want to escape. I wanted justice. I wanted . . . the Hunt?

“I think it’s a good idea,” I said, my palms going sweaty as the memory of hate swirling in the demons landed on me.

“As they hunted us!” someone cried out, and Al winced. “Like animals!”

I stiffened when someone pushed me, and I stepped into Ku’Sox’s space. “Yes. Yes!” I said again, louder, and they quieted. “Like animals. And you proved them wrong.”

They shut up, and I turned to look at them, finding all eyes on me. “You are demons,” I said forcefully, “not animals, and the elves stand at the brink of extinction from the force of your correction. Is it not enough?”

Trent stood unrepentant in his lab coat. He could have been in a T-shirt and flip-flops, and he still would have looked noble—proud, determined, harsh, and taking the blame of an entire people that came before him.

“Let me go,” Ku’Sox said, his voice oily. “I’m a demon. I deserve a trial, not by some perverted elf tradition, but by my peers.”

I looked at him as a scuffling arose from the unsure demons ringing him; then I walked over to stand before him, my hands on my hips. “But you’re not a demon, Ku’Sox,” I said, smiling beatifically. A sense of satisfaction grew within me. “Every demon here, every demon still alive has been a slave, has been hunted, even me. And you have not. You have never felt the anger of being made powerless, controlled, bought and sold.” I stood, speaking now to those around me. “You have not,” I said softly. “You have not felt the unfair lash, been pissed upon by those who call you animal, underling, an object.” Al was thinking. They all were, and my