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When the question was put to him so bluntly, the answer was obvious.

Star wanted Dandelion there. 

It wasn’t just his own wants, though. He could overcome that in his fear for Dandelion, that much he knew. He did want to keep Dandelion safe however he could—but Dandelion was powerful. He was strong, much stronger than Star would ever be, and in a situation like this, it wasn’t just that Star was in danger. (Though he was, he thought helplessly, he was being personally targeted. He didn’t know what had happened with the nixie that they went with using Vayne to get Star instead of her, and that felt like a mine buried and ready to explode if he put too much weight on it). It wasn’t even that Dandelion or Dom were in danger. 

This whole city was in danger. He couldn’t afford not to make use of Dandelion, and if it meant he would have the comfort of being able to see him, being able to reach out to and touch him, to die with Dandelion at his side if this all went badly—well, that wasn’t selfish when it was for a good cause, right? 

“Come, please,” Star said, and squeezed Dandelion’s hand between both of his own, raising it and jamming it awkwardly against his own chest. “Please. Please. I need you there. We might all need you there. I just didn’t want—I just wanted to explore the option, in case it was best, but…”

Dandelion’s expression warmed again, and he seemed to relax into the touch, swaying forward toward Star. He winced almost absently as that put strain on the injury to his shoulder, and Star panicked, digging around and pulling out the remainder of his loaf of bread. “Eat some bread,” he ordered. “It’s healing bread. Speeding healing. Fast. Injury go away more quick.”

A blink, then Dandelion laughed. Eyes glittering, he took the bag from Star, then leaned in again insistently and kissed him.

Star made a whiny little sound as fireworks went off behind his eyes, and he wound his arms around Dandelion, holding on hard until the kiss broke.

Dandelion licked his lips, then drew a piece of bread out of the bag and handed that bag back. “You eat one too, then.”

“I was gonna,” Star complained, taking one out before putting the bag away again. “Don’t tell me to do things that I was already going to do, then I don’t wanna do ’em.”

“Okay,” Dandelion said gently. He wrapped an arm around Star’s shoulders, and they walked the rest of the way to Beanheadings like that.

It was much busier at this hour, which tracked with Star’s memories of the place. It was always doing some kind of business, but the evenings and early night were when it was the most active. Matthias was back on the till, or maybe still on the till—Star had to wonder if he ever left or if he lived here, and what kind of deal he’d made with Kearney Dillon, if he did—but he’d been joined by a human and a glaistig as servers, replacing the ‘get orders from the counter’ service by having them run to various tables as the coffee shop opened up the kitchen for slightly larger food orders and got the bar open for drinks that had a touch of something extra in them.

Good. What they needed right now was cover; if someone were to glance into the window while passing, it wouldn’t need much glamour to hide that they were there if the place was bustling. Star gestured to a table for Dandelion, then headed up to the front. “Hey, Matt! How’s it going?”

“Oh, can’t complain,” Matthias said back, equally cheerful. “What can I do you for?”

Star did not miss the innuendo. Now was not the time for reciprocation, though. “Just three americanos; a friend’s meeting us here but we can’t stay long.”

“Will do. Looks like you’re at table 8, I’ll have someone drop ’em off.”

Star inclined his head, then headed over, sliding in next to Dandelion, who was getting his phone out. “Ready for your first prank call?”

“I am always ready for a prank call,” Dandelion said. His phone shimmered as he shifted his outgoing number to Vayne’s, and he dialed. “Hey, boss.” Suddenly his voice was rough, Vayne’s kind of slimy tone sliding through. “Deal’s done, I have a freaky horse in love with me. I’m just gonna keep him in this form and hope he doesn’t get too frisky if it’s all good with you.” A pause. Star strained to hear the demon’s voice on the other end, but couldn’t make out any words. “Yeah, yeah. Okay. You better keep your end of the deal. See you.”

He hung up and let out a breath. “Good?” he asked Star, winking.

“Sounds like the guy I know,” Star agreed. 

Dom slid in across from him right then, brows lifted. “Why are we pretending to be Vayne?” he asked.

Star upped his glamour so the sound of the crowd would cover his voice, and nodded to the human—whose nametag said Gray (they/them)–as the coffees were dropped off. “One of these is yours. We need you to be alert,” Star said, and then threw himself into it, explaining everything they’d learned and found so far that he hadn’t been able to cover in previous messages.

Dom let out a wincing breath. “Well, I came dressed in dark colours for a stealth mission, but I gotta say I’m a bit nervous about getting caught breaking into the track,” he said. “You sure this isn’t gonna backfire on us in mundane ways?”

Star shook his head. “I mean, anything can happen, but Viv’s gone right to the Twilight Council to explain what’s happening and that we’re heading in first to try to defuse it. It’s as close as possible to getting permission in advance. But… I’m glad you came,” he added, putting a hand over one of Dom’s. “You know the place really well, and besides, there’s ways to ward against fairies. There’s no way to ward against humans.”

“I’ll help however I can,” Dom promised. “I’m just grateful you got me involved. If I sat on the sidelines while you were putting yourself at risk… I don’t know, it’d suck. They tried to use me to start all this and get at you and Dandelion, you know?”

“Yeah. I know. You said you wanted to,” Star said softly. “I listened.”

Dandelion shifted, and Dom abruptly cleared his throat and lifted his coffee with his free hand, downing it. It had taken awhile to explain everything, and it seemed like it was now cool enough to chug. Star shrugged, and did the same.

“Shall I do the last call?” Dandelion asked. “Once I’ve checked in as Yuree, we’ll just have to wait for a few minutes to give time for the demon to head out, and then we’ll want to head in ourselves as soon as possible.”

Star’s heart was suddenly pounding too fast. Maybe he shouldn’t have slammed the coffee after all. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

Dandelion’s phone shimmered, and he called again. “Heyyyy, babes,” he said, in a flirty feminine voice that wasn’t his own. Star wondered what kind of power Dandelion had where he could do that—had he met Yuree sometime before? If she’d dated Adrien, he may have. Or maybe he was just picking her voice and speech up through his own strength of glamour. “All good here, the satyr is just taking a liiiiiittle nap now. Looks like we got all three of that bard’s bitch babes tied up nice and tidy.” A pause for an answer. “Yuuuup, just like that. You probably wanna come out here asap, though, babes, Queef or whatever her name is, she’s looking kinda sick from the iron cuffs, and Vayne might be in danger from too much stallion.” Another pause. “Yeah, uh-huh, see ya in a few, then!”

Shoulders relaxing, Dandelion hung up. “They should be on their way in just a minute. They seemed eager to get out and get control of the situation,” he said mildly. “Now, we wait.”

It turned out that waiting—for a demon lord that you couldn’t see leaving the premises of a place you couldn’t directly watch on a timeline of their own choice—sucked. The three of them sat in silence but for Dandelion’s occasional sips of his coffee, which, after about half a cup, he handed to Star. Star drank the rest, even while regretting his first coffee. No point letting it go to waste.

Whatever happened, Star decided to embrace it. He was going with two people who, if they weren’t his boyfriends, were something to him. Beloved of him. And soon there’d be no more waiting at all.

He tried to plan in those few minutes they had before leaving, running over his mental map of the track. The clubhouse was on the immediate west side of the track itself. It was a 10,000 square foot building with a large dining hall, event space, and kitchen. There were terminals all over the building for the betting, with large windows overlooking the patio that then faced the track.  To the north of the building were the conference rooms and offices. The offices were the place that Star considered most likely to have the spells set up in them as the most private areas; plus, he remembered finding several of them locked and smelling of sulphur. That probably wasn’t unrelated.

Detached from and just north of the clubhouse were the stands: the grandstand and the judges stand. That’d overlook the track, but as an outdoor space visible from a bunch of angles, he doubted much would be happening there.

Annexed to the south side of the clubhouse was the enclosed paddock, with temporary holding space for the mounts, various places to clean and pick and saddle up and all that, and of course the main indoor exercise area for warm-ups and teaching lessons to students. This was where Star and Georgio had been when Star had seen Ramullin walk by on the clubhouse side and the track had flooded just outside.

To the east of all that was the track, a long oval space that was now fully flooded. From what Star had heard, it sounded as though it were currently standing water and had not yet drained. 

On the far side of the track, again further to the east, were the on-site stables where horses could be boarded and cared for. Halle, who couldn’t leave the area and thus would definitely be at the track somewhere, usually stayed at the stables so she could watch the horsies, but since the horses who stayed there would probably have been moved elsewhere after the incident, it was hard to say if she would be there or somewhere else on-site. Unless she’d been enchanted or bound by the enemy somehow, she’d probably be on their side and willing to help.

Entrances to the clubhouse were: the main public entrance on the west, a side entrance near the grandstand to the north, and then the patio entrance from the east, overlooking the track. It could also be reached through the attached paddock, which had two entrances of its own: one from the side to the south and the larger barn-door style entrance to the east near the track. 

What was the best way to enter? Where should they go first? Was it as simple as going in through the front door and heading right to the offices, Star wondered.

And was there anything else he could reasonably do or prep in the last couple of minutes before they headed off to the track?

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Obviously, Star had to be really sure of the situation before deciding any of the specifics. He shook himself again, uneasy. “Éabha, you didn’t answer Dandelion directly. They are setting up at the track.”

“Yes,” Éabha said. She tensed as Dandelion approached with his sword, but he was carefully cutting a gap in the fallen shelving so she could step out of the ring they’d formed. Still, she waited until he offered her a hand before letting herself be guided out. “It’s in a good position in the web of magics. Part of why the magical leagues are held there, apparently? And then after flooding it, they’ve created a connection through the concept of ‘flood.’ They have to set up some destructive demonic magics before they can do anything with it, but then they can trigger it. Like a fuse.”

Star thought, cartoonishly, of a pump on TNT getting pushed down and then water exploding out of the dynamite instead of fire. Ah, yeah, there was the hysteria, he thought. “Cool. Great. And the timing is… you said soon. How soon is soon.”

“I don’t have that information,” Éabha said. “I wasn’t exactly in close with my captor. But it sounded like, if this attempt at a hostage situation failed, they’d step it up and do it ‘as soon as possible’. It could be tonight at the earliest. It could be later if we’re lucky. You still have a few hours before they decide it’s failed, and then it’s up to whatever ‘as soon as possible’ means to them. Once they have it set up, I imagine they’ll contact Dandelion to show their threat.” She slowly dropped Dandelion’s hand, standing awkwardly holding her harp, which seemed to thrum softly even without the tuning pegs.

Caoimhe croaked, “A few hours?”

“Well, they were giving their agents time to bring everyone in,” Éabha murmured. “I checked in once I captured you. Vayne wouldn’t have, since he failed to capture Star. I don’t know whether or not Yuree got a chance to call after capturing Adrien.”

“She didn’t,” Miette said, putting their fingers up in a V.

Adrien let out a weak laugh. “You know, you’re pretty cool,” he told Miette. “Saving me like that. If the world doesn’t end tonight, I’d like to get to know you better.”

“Hey now,” Star said. “We’re talking about the city, not the world. Don’t go heaping even more pressure on.”

It was bad enough as is, especially if they had so little time to act before Ramullin moved on to worse things, as Éabha was implying. He eyed the rest of his group. Everyone was tired and some degree of injured. He and Dandelion were the best off, but both had several wounds from the bone pegs. Adrien and Caoimhe were iron-burned and iron-poisoned. Éabha was battered and burned from the iron shelves collapsing as Dandelion had corralled her. Viv was uninjured, but at the end of her magical reserves. Miette was fine, but hadn’t been volunteering more help than taking the injured back to the Lindwyrm.

If they had more guaranteed time, Star would for sure suggest everyone just go back and rest, contact the authorities, get other people better suited to it to act. But there wasn’t enough information there. If it could be so soon, they couldn’t rest.

Well, if they didn’t have strength to lean on right now… “What about deception?” he wondered aloud. “Maybe we could use Éabha to bring us all in as captives and then we… I don’t know, attack while they think we’re harmless?”

“I don’t think… I mean, perhaps,” Éabha said dubiously. “But there was a set plan. Without the others checking in, it’ll look very suspicious, and I imagine they’d want to make sure you’re all well and truly helpless when I brought you in. Besides, the plan was for the demon to come here to deal with the hostages. Not for me to bring the hostages there.”

“It might still be possible to use this whole thing as a base for trickery,” Dandelion said, warming visibly to the idea. “With my illusions and glamour, I might be able to set up a distraction rather than an ambush. If that demon lord plans to come over here after you all call in, we can make you all call in. That way, we guarantee Ramullin’s out from their headquarters for a short time, which might give us a chance to undo the magics they’ve set up.”

“But even if we woke Yuree and convinced her, Vayne is gone, and his phone with him,” Star pointed out. “Unless—”

“I can magically spoof a phone number,” Dandelion said. “That’s easy. Simple fairy trickery. Star has Vayne’s number, and we can certainly get Yuree’s phone off her. And you must have that demon’s number yourself, Éabha.”

“…I do,” she agreed. “So your plan is to pretend to be Vayne and Yuree, call in as them, and send the demon here to make sure they’re away from the track when you have to go in?”

Dandelion nodded. “It might give us a better chance. Turn their own plan against them.”

“You’d have very limited time,” Éabha said, “before Ramullin realized that it was a trick, and headed right back to the track.”

“We would,” Dandelion said. “Which is why I wouldn’t suggest we actually make it an ambush—that’d put whoever we left in grave danger, and besides, the goal here is to get rid of their leverage by undoing their spells and rituals. We have a few hours still, as you said. So I believe that Star and I should go to a safe place near the track, and call in then. It maximizes our time at the track while the demon’s away. We just go in, find the setup, erase the magic circles. In and out.”

Star brightened. This was starting to seem workable. “Maybe we CAN use this as a chance to get some additional power, too. We get Miette to take our injured out and to the Lindwyrm for protection, as planned. But, Viv, instead of going with them, can you go to the Twilight Council? I think they’d have a pretty strong reason to get involved here ASAP.”

“They’re infamously slow-moving,” Viv said. “But yeah, if I can impress on them that some demon is actually trying to put the whole city under threat, I imagine I can call an emergency all-hands. They’d still have to vote, but I imagine they wouldn’t want to take too long doing that. I wouldn’t wait for them, you should go in anyway, but I hope I can convince them to move in to support you after you’ve gone in to erase the magic circles and all that.”

Star nodded. “And the Twilight Council are involved with the Branwin governing forces, right? They can decide if it’s worth going to the human police or if it’d just raise new problems.” The humans in the city above the Valley found them dangerous, so sometimes things like this were better swept under the rug. But with the city at danger, they might risk it. Regardless, if the Council was in the know, they could make that call, not Star.

“In the meantime,” he continued, “Dandelion and I can go down to… hmm, Beanheadings, maybe. It’s just like a 10 minute walk from the track. Faster on horseback, and it’s relatively protected and neutral. A good place for it. Dandelion can call pretending to be Vayne. I’ll get Dom out to join us; he knows the track really well, and knows the offices and so on better than I do. I don’t usually handle that side of things. Then, after we’ve waited for a bit and caught Dom up, Dandelion can call pretending to be Yuree. Say all the prisoners have been got, and encourage the boss to come on out. Then we wait a few minutes for the demon to leave, and we head over.”

“Got any bruisers in case there’s guards?” Viv asked.

Star had one in mind, and he pulled out his own phone, dialing the stable again. They picked up quickly, sounding harried. “Hi,” Star said, in a chipper voice. “I wanted to see if Georgio had been sent back?”

“Well, about that,” the stable-hand said, tense. “We told him that he’d been asked for and he just… hauled ass and began running down the road. Hopefully he knows what way the city is. And hopefully you have a place to put him up for the night.”

Star winced. “I’ll deal with it,” he said, and hung up. “We might,” he answered Viv. If Georgio showed up, he showed up. There was no contacting him if he was busy running in a random direction on the freeway. “But we might not even need a bruiser. The two of us have glamour, and the stables have way less iron than a warehouse. Plus, since it’s shut down, it should mostly be empty. I’m confident we can sneak better without a bruiser anyway.” 

“The plan sounds good to me,” Dandelion said. “You go ahead and call Dom, Star. I’ll get the phone numbers I need and see everyone else to the door.”

Star did, and his heart leaped when Dominic picked up on almost the first ring. “Hey.”

“Hey. Everything okay?” Dom sounded worried.

All of a sudden, Star felt weak and tired. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. He could have a meltdown later. Just someone asking after him so sweetly didn’t need to be a cause for one now. “I’m good. Things have kind of got more intense, though, and we have to break into the track tonight. I could use your help. You know, knowing your way around, not being a fae in case there’s anti-fairy traps, being moral support. Come meet us at Beanheadings, if you still want to…? I’d understand if you didn’t. If you couldn’t—”

“I’ll be there,” Dom said softly, his voice low. “Thank you for asking me.”

“Okay. I lo… love… that… you’re doing that,” Star said, and hung up.

He practised mindful breathing, and soon enough Dandelion rejoined him. “We’re leaving the guards locked in the truck,” he told Star. “We don’t want them getting out and warning that demon, and we decided against executing them; it’s likely more than one of them was coerced. Maybe the demon will stop to get their story and it’ll buy us a little more time than if they got here and simply found the whole place empty and trashed.”

“Fair enough,” Star said. “Ready? Dom’ll meet us at Beanheadings.”

“Ready,” Dandelion said, and took his hand. “The others have all headed off in a group. Viv will peel off to go talk to the Council and call for an All-Hands. The rest is up to us.”

Star swallowed. Dandelion’s hand felt cool in his, fragile, almost tacky with silvery blood. Together, they carefully picked their way around the fallen shelves and headed for the door; Dandelion had somehow left them a path out. He was almost too skilful, Star thought.

For a long while, they walked in a tired silence, Star occasionally stealing glances up at Dandelion. It was getting dark, and the street lights were coming on; they caught in the white hair haloing his head and lit it up. He really was uncannily beautiful. 

Star found himself squeezing Dandelion’s hand a little too hard. “Do you think you should actually come with me to break in?”

“That’s… the plan, isn’t it?” Dandelion looked at him a bit askance, glancing down at him out of the corner of his eye. “My powerful glamours and all that.”

Swallowing hard, Star put his head down and kept plunging forward. “Yeah. But there’s a chance it’s a trap. We’ll do the phone calls and all that like we planned, but maybe you should stay in Beanheadings? What if they set up something for you personally if you came? On the other hand,” Star found himself babbling, distressed at the way Dandelion’s hand tightened on his, “I want you there. You’re so strong. Your ability with magic is real, too, you don’t just have glamour like me, you actually have magic. And you’re cool. And you’re… comforting. Of course I want you there.”

“I do not want to stay behind and let you and your human go on without me,” Dandelion said, voice falling into a more formal cadence, which was a surefire sign that Star had hurt him. “In a worse case scenario, I should be there, because if Ramullin can activate those spells already, I might be the only one who can stop them. And… if everything went to the dogs, I’m the one they want.”

“That’s true,” Star said, grabbing Dandelion’s hand harder as if to reassure him. “And I do want you there.”

“I doubt it would be a trap. After all, this was a trap. Why trap both places, but keep them separate? And they know you’ve been sniffing around the track, probably, so there could be a trap there for you. If there is, I may be able to defeat it. But… the truth is, I might be too close to the situation to say what the best option is,” Dandelion said, tone aching.

“Dandelion…”

“Should I leave it in your hands, Star?” Dandelion asked, voice low and rough in his distress. “What does your heart say? Should I go with you when it’s time, or wait nearby for your return?”

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The others were looking back at Star. He closed his eyes, for a moment wondering how it ended up like this. Dandelion was his leader, the one Star was used to making all the decisions. But Star was the one who’d met her previously, so of course Dandelion was leaving this up to him.

Though actually, Star had only met her in passing before this, he realized. Caoimhe was her friend, and might either feel very strongly about saving her for their friendship, or killing her for the betrayal. Star didn’t think it was passing off the responsibility to at least ask her which should be done, not when speaking over Caoimhe would be a betrayal of its own.

The fact that he didn’t have much more of a stomach for killing other fey than he did for killing humans… that had nothing to do with it.

Regardless, he was hardly going to kill Éabha in front of Caoimhe, unless she wanted that. Which she might. She wasn’t the least murdery fairy Star knew. He knelt down beside her, wincing at the raw sight of her wrists, and brushed her hair back. “Hey. I know what I want, but what do you want done with her? She clapped you in iron, and was going to use you to sell Dandelion to his enemy. But she’s desperate, and is bound herself to do what her master would wish. So what do you say?”

Caoimhe winced as she half-sat up, still straight-backed and serious. Her gaze searched over the fallen, bloodied Éabha. “I should want her dead,” she murmured.

“Do you?” Star asked softly. If Caoimhe wanted it, he’d do it.

But after a long moment, Caoimhe shook her head. “She’s bound. If he has her skin, she belongs to him no matter what else is true. If she wants to be her own again, she must find her skin and get it back. She’s hopeless. Desperate. Let’s help her if we can and see if she can re-earn my trust again after.” She pointed at Éabha, flesh flaking from around her wrists. “And if we cannot help her, let her die on her choices, not ours.”

It was a relief. Star he nodded, rising, spinning around and clapping his hands together. “Well, there you have it, then,” Star told Éabha. “We’re not going to kill you, so instead of falling into despair over that, let’s find your path to freedom.”

She blinked slowly, tears making wet tracks in the dirt on her face. “My path…?”

“What series of choices can give you that kind of chance?” Star asked. “Here’s what I think.”

He spun and began to pace, feet making slapping sounds against the concrete floor. He knew she could hear it, and imagined it’d have the same dramatic effect as watching would. “We have to take on the demon. We don’t have any other choice, you get me? They’ve decided to target Dandelion, and maybe we could run, or maybe we couldn’t. Either way, they’re clearly focusing on emotional damage, given this whole hostage scenario. They want Dandelion to hurt on more levels than just the physical, so running away wouldn’t prevent that. We brought my friend to the Lindwyrm to keep him safe, but he’s got a life to live and so do we. So we have to take on the demon sooner rather than later. More to the point, we’re not going in assuming we’re going to lose. We have to go in assuming we’re going to win. With me so far?”

Éabha made an annoyed, confused noise.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Star said. “So, we’re going to beat the demon. If we find your skin, we’ll bring it back to you. In this case, it’s in your best interests to help us beat the demon. That’s the surest way to get your skin back.”

“But if you can’t win—”

“Going to,” Star said. “But if we can’t win, you might as well go out for a big betrayal of the demon instead of a small letdown. If it’s a ‘you’ve failed me for the last time’ scenario that’s just kind of embarrassing, right? Might as well have it be a ‘You? YOU turned on me?’ moment.”

Slowly, Éabha began to frown. “I feel like you’re not taking this all that seriously.”

“You have no idea how seriously I’m taking it. This is my defence mechanism,” Star retorted. “But can you say I’m wrong? One’s a path to your freedom. Why pick a path that’s a guaranteed dead end?”

Unlike other monsters, unlike humans and witches and even vampires, fairies didn’t have souls. The end was surely the end. It’s why when they made that ancient pact to tithe souls to the demons, they had to trick and gather humans for it. The nobles likely wouldn’t be unwilling to harvest from the fairy host to pay their debts, but they couldn’t. A fairy lived as long as they weren’t killed, and when they died, that was known to be the end.

“But then what happens after?” Éabha asked. “The Lindwyrm…”

“Right,” Star said. “I don’t know if you know this since we didn’t talk all that much, but you didn’t turn on any of the Lindwyrm‘s people. A friend, yes, an ally, and I don’t think he’d be happy with you if he found out, but not someone he’s sworn to protect.”

Miette made a little scoffing sound, and when Star glanced over at her, they just kind of shrugged. 

Star shrugged back and added, “and, like, of course he’s going to find out. Even if one of us didn’t say it, and Miette here didn’t say it, it’d probably come out at some point. So isn’t your best bet to actually work with us so we can in good faith say how you helped us solve the problem in the end? I don’t think he’d kill you if we spoke for you, not when he’s offered you protection. And even if he kicks you out, or you leave on bad terms, well, that’s not great but if you have your skin back, you don’t need his protection anymore! The demon would be gone and you wouldn’t need the Lindwyrm to live.”

For a long moment, she was bitterly silent. Then she began to laugh; not a particularly humorous sound, but nevertheless, there was an edge of relief to it. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. You’re completely right. Why give up when there’s still a chance? I don’t remember what hope feels like, and I don’t think I’m feeling it now, but I would like to feel it again sometime.”

Star did not let his legs go weak, though he stopped pacing. “Good, okay,” he said.

“That was very attractive,” Dandelion called over to him.

Star felt himself go scarlet. Just because Éabha could hear it regardless didn’t mean he shouldn’t have whispered. “COOL! Cool. Anyway, uh.” He shook himself all over. “We have questions. Then we’ll need to get you somewhere safe…”

“We don’t need to tell the Lindwyrm right away,” Dandelion said. “I think Miette could take Éabha, Caoimhe, and Adrien back to the Lindwyrm and tell him that I up my donation to protect my band-mates while they recover. They’re in too much pain to do anything now anyway. Yes?”

Miette scratched their chin. “No fur off my tail. I can do that.”

“Great. So once we have some answers, and in exchange for your phone number so I can ask you other questions if I think of them later,” Star said, “we’ll get you to safety before we go to deal with the demon. Now: What’s the demon’s name? We weren’t even sure until recently that it was a demon, not a witch.”

He supposed it still wasn’t 100% confirmed, but Éabha fixed that a moment later: “Ramullin of the Wastes. They believe you owe them many years of torture, Dandelion, and their legions were decimated in exchange for their part in failing to retrieve the tithe. It did not affect the other two so badly because they were not as eager to go to war; Ramullin invests in their legions.”

Dandelion grimaced. “Ah,” he said. “Politics. And there’s nothing I could do to bring that army back, so what’s left is for me to suffer.”

“Yes,” Éabha said. “To my understanding, a year ago they learned not just that you were alive but what gate you came out of.  I’m not sure how they learned it, but they did. So they spent some time digging up connections you had—rather, not just the connections that you’d made, but finding those who’d act against them. ”

A year ago was when they’d met Ferthur, as part of Viv’s whole incident, and the demon had been furious to see ‘the exile’ moving around between worlds instead of staying in the human realm. He must have gone back to the others and complained about it or some such, and Ramullin was the one who’d decided to do something. Star glanced aside at Viv and found her looking stricken and guilty—as if it were her fault, but Dandelion had insisted on helping her. 

She swayed abruptly, and Star revised at least some of the reaction to sheer exhaustion. He remembered that she’d been actively casting over and over since getting in here, turning off alarm spells and cutting through metal, over and over again. She probably was almost out of her reserves.

He turned back to Éabha, putting that aside as a worry for a later Star. “By the people connected to those connections, you mean yourself for Caoimhe?”

“And his succubus ex Yuree for Adrien, and your sister for you,” Éabha said off-handedly. “Though I think there was an issue with the sister or some such? At least, they switched to using one of your rivals at the track, yeah?”

Star almost didn’t hear the last. He was reeling with the thought. The nixie in the water on the track had looked like him, as they’d said, but he hadn’t recognized her. 

Then again—perhaps it wasn’t his older sister. Perhaps it was his younger. She’d just been a chubby little filly when he’d left, centuries ago, and he didn’t think he’d recognize her now if he saw her. Perhaps he already didn’t.

“Star—” Dandelion was next to him now, sliding an arm around him. He collapsed gratefully against Dandelion’s side, fully gearing up to throw a big tantrum, and drew deep breaths to try to get himself back under control. “Star.”

“I’m here,” Star whined, butting his head into Dandelion’s shoulder, hard. Only the wince reminded him Dandelion had just injured that. “It doesn’t change anything. I don’t know her, and if I did, she clearly bears no love for me.”

Dandelion didn’t answer, just squeezed him briefly. Star tried to breeze past that, put that echoing your sister, your sister into the past instead of the present. “And where are they now? Weren’t they going to come check on their hostages?”

“Yes,” Éabha said. “But no. We were all supposed to check in, and they’d come here after we all had. I did, I don’t know if Yuree did or didn’t get a chance to, but obviously your jockey did not. Once enough time has passed and we haven’t checked in, they might nevertheless come check it out themselves.”

“You don’t think they will?”

She shook her head. “I think they’ll consider that one a failure and stay at the track, where they’ve set up their main base. Instead, I think they’ll speed up their plans, since they’d know you’re onto them if you’d managed to deal with the hostage situation so quickly. I think they’ll go after the other thing Dandelion loves, and do it as soon as possible.”

Star glanced up at Dandelion, but he was also looking confused, a frown between his brows. “I don’t have any people I care for more than my three vassals. Who would it be?”

“I didn’t say person,” Éabha said. “I said thing. Perhaps I ought to have said place?”

The confusion only lasted a moment longer before Dandelion’s eyes widened. “They’re going after the city?”

“The city’s still not entirely stable,” Éabha said. “Physically, the damage from the Valleys sucking the geography down has left a number of instabilities under the ground. Magically, the gates themselves destabilize land masses; that’s why streets move around in the deepest part of the Valleys. It’s not something that could happen accidentally, but someone deliberately going in and setting up nearish to the gate to pinch and tweak and divert energies, yeah, that could get in under the city, couldn’t it? That’s on the magical side. And on the physical… they have a fuath.”

It wasn’t a term from the area of the world Star himself was from. There was a reason he called himself a nixie; he was the exact sub-breed of the brook horse fairy that had grown up in the area of Faerie closest to Germany. One who grew up close to Scotland might be a Kelpie, one near Orkney a Nuckelavee. They had slightly different appearances and abilities, but they were all essentially the same thing. 

But he nevertheless knew what a fuath was to the Scottish and the Irish fairies, and that by their reckoning he would count among them. Fuath were malevolent water fairies: drowning fairies like merfolk or like brook horses, river weepers like washerwomen and banshees, manifestation of water weeds like fideals, river-cursers like beithirs. Somehow, Star didn’t think Éabha was talking about the beithir they currently held captive in the truck. A nixie had a closer tie to river water since they actively drowned others.

Still, there was no major river that ran through Branwin, and it was pretty far from the Great Lakes or anything like that. Some streams, sure, but not enough to be a major threat. “What does that matter?”

“The geography, like I said,” she said. “What’s under the ground everywhere on this whole human planet?”

“Groundwater,” Dandelion answered for Star.

Éabha nodded. “The track wasn’t just to give that nix a place to hide out, or to eliminate guilty witnesses. It was a test. From what I heard, they made tens of times the amount of water the trucks were supposed to carry gush out of them. Now, what if they get themselves deeply embedded enough into the magical webs coming up from the gate and running through this town and then made ten times the amount of water there? What do you think would happen to the Valley? Or the city above, if its precarious balance shifted when the Valley did again?”

Star shook his head. He was imagining it, unfortunately, and didn’t like what he saw. He’d survive a flood, but who else would? At what costs?

“And they’re setting up at the track?” Dandelion murmured. “…Then we have to get there. Make sure we can stop them.”

Star had to agree. It should be done, they needed to get there and kick the shit out of whatever magic circles they were setting up there, whatever rituals they were doing. 

Was there anything that needed to be done first? How much time could they afford to take?

Who should he bring along for this? And what kind of advance planning could they even do?

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I did NOT want to take a break again so soon but

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Maybe they could negotiate with her. Knowing that she was tracking them by sound, Star shifted away from the group a little and raised his voice: “Hey! We’ll do everything we can to retrieve your skin if you just let us go. Besides, won’t the Lindwyrm be furious if you hurt an ally?”

Pain blossomed in his leg, and he yanked the bone peg out before he could even remember that it was sometimes better to leave a dagger in the wound to keep it plugged. Well, whatever, he thought to himself as he staggered a few steps to the side, making himself keep moving so he wouldn’t be as good a target. He had bread. That’d probably fix this, right? 

“It’s no good,” she called out in answer. “I’m caught between a rock and a hard place, aren’t I? The demon lord can treat me to something worse than death, the Lindwyrm won’t easily forgive that I’ve gone after your group right after he made a deal, and you all might kill me if I surrendered.” She sounded bitter, miserable, but also unyielding.

An arm wrapped around his waist and pulled him sideways; it was Dandelion, blood dripping down his arm, leaving a silvery smear against Star’s stomach. “What’s going on?” he whispered. “You know where her skin is?”

Another peg came flying; this one bounced off a shield that Viv threw up, frantically trying to split her attention between the truck and her friends. She’d managed to get Caoimhe out of the truck and had clearly turned just in time. 

“I was told that a demon has Éabha’s skin,” Star whispered back to Dandelion. “I assume it’s the one who’s after you.”

“Yes, that one’s after your lord there,” Éabha called from the stacks. “Not that your lord must care about the plight of the host of fairies such as ourselves, hm? I have no choice but to do this, but don’t underestimate me because of it.”

Dandelion made a face against the accusation, but didn’t respond verbally, jerking his head toward the stacks, a clear, What do you want to do?

Star let out a careful, quiet breath and leaned up to murmur into Dandelion’s ear, soft as he could. “Can you lead her astray? Trap her? Maybe we can use her tracking by sound to our advantage.”

A nod at that, almost grim, and Dandelion stood, drawing his sword out of the air like a flower blossoming, unfurling into his hand. He ignored his own trickling blood—what a fortune witches would pay for it, Star thought near-hysterically—and approached the stacks on the balls of his feet, moving cat-silent. 

His voice called out from the wrong side of the stacks: “We could help you. Get your skin. Free you.”

A peg flew off after it, marking her position, and Dandelion lunged forward. The thrust of his sword at the stacks was accompanied with a gust of wind; he cut through several supports, and the iron beams of the shelving collapsed to the side with a horrendous crash. Éabha let out a cry, somewhere in the maze.

It might block their path back—but he had faith in Dandelion not to make that error.

Star forced himself to tear his gaze away from the compelling, beautiful sight of a bloody Dandelion dancing with his sword, voices and sounds echoing around where they ought not to be with the power of his illusions.

His abilities were needed elsewhere, so he ran as quietly as he could over to Viv. She was working on the second truck door, sawing at it with a focused magic light that seemed to be some kind of laser. It broke open just as Star arrived, and he watched with bated breath as she hauled the rolling doors up, only to reveal that that truck was empty.

“One more,” she promised him, soft, and he ran to the third truck before she could even hop off the tail and join him. It stung as he lifted the lock, his fingers blistering and a sense of revulsion washing over him, but he didn’t want to waste any more time to get Adrien out.

The lock popped open, and Viv was there to help detach it from the door and haul that door up too. This one wasn’t empty—but it wasn’t Adrien back there.

It took Star a moment to parse what he was seeing: a bunch of people, barely active, knocked out or drained. They made an odd group; it was a couple of imps, a succubus wearing some kind of cocktail dress, a beithir-nimh, and two thin, undead people who stank of the courts and of the abyss both. These last two Star realized must be sluagh: unforgiven dead who had been claimed by the fairies, then offered up to the demons as tithe. 

But why were they there? They weren’t bound in iron as Caoimhe had been, and they were certainly nobody that would be a reasonable hostage. Plus, almost all of them were demons or tied to demons. His gaze, searching over them, saw a key ring on the belt of one of the imps, and he realized that these must be the remaining warehouse guards.

“What the fuck,” he whispered, the sound almost fully covered by the crashing of the shelves and another wail from Éabha. He made confused eye contact with Viv, then gestured for her to roll the truck door back down. Without knowing for sure why they were there, he wasn’t willing to let them out.

There were no more trucks in the bay, and no sign of Adrien. Viv shoved the rolling door down and tossed another shield up as that sound drew a bone pin their way, then hauled Star close to whisper to him. “Maybe in the offices after all? It was Éabha who said there was nobody else there…”

That didn’t track with using the trucks for the three hostages, but he had no other explanation. They turned to try to sneak past the horrible mess Dandelion was making of the shelves, only to see Miette, of all people to randomly show up, dragging Adrien toward them from the direction of the offices. “A little help here?” Miette called out, then yelped as a bone peg flew their way.

Confused, Star dashed over, going to scoop Adrien out of the cat-sìth’s arms and yelping as the iron bands around Adrien’s wrists almost touched him. There was another huge crash, and he glanced back to see that Dandelion had collapsed another shelving unit; the fallen ones now formed a huge, near-complete circle; if he led Éabha there successfully, one more would surround her in a circle of iron. 

Star buried his face in Adrien’s neck for a moment, huffing; his sweat was a familiar smell, but it was twinged with fear and pain, and he hated it, hated feeling it on his friend, his sometimes-lover, his herd-mate. “Fuck,” Star muttered. “Viv, can you use that laser magic on his handcuffs?”

“I’ll try,” she said, as Star lowered Adrien. 

He rose again to look at Miette, whose tails were lashing, ears pinned as they watched Dandelion circle the disaster he was making, illusions calling out and taunting from different angles. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Star demanded. “Are you with them?”

Miette shook themself, looking back at Star with their pupils barely just slits. “No,” they hissed immediately. “I thought it was super suspicious that sketchy Éabha had left the Lindwyrm’s right after your boss and you all showed up for refuge. I followed her, and overheard a plan to go after Dandelion’s underlings. Did not much like that, so I checked out Adrien’s social media—easy to find a band member’s socials, did you know that?—and joined the party he was at. He was dragged off by a succubus, and then she clapped him in iron. Followed them here and got him out of the truck. I’ve been spending a while taking all the guards out and piling them in there.”

“The guards??” Star asked, glancing back at the truck. Miette had done that?

Tails lashing, Miette said, “Why do you think there weren’t any here?? But then Éabha showed up with the elverpigen, and I had to hide and stay silent. She’s too fucking good at tracking by sound. Then when I heard all the ruckus out here, I figured it was my chance to get Adrien out of here, get free, and be declared a hero and all that.”

As if to punctuate her sentence, another shelving unit came crashing down. A moment later,  Éabha let out a wail. It was so loud and so desperate that Star thought for a moment she’d been pinned under the iron, but as he and Miette came closer, he realized it must simply be a reaction to realizing that she’d been trapped. She sat with her harp, now emptied of pins, surrounded by a ring of bent iron shelving, boxes everywhere; she was bruised and bloodied, and dirt and dust streaked her face and clothing. Dandelion, too, was not unharmed; he had several more injuries and his outfit was liberally spotted with silver, a few pools of powerful blood dotting the area in the semi-circle he’d been moving in while cornering the selkie.

“Just kill me,” Éabha sobbed, voice rough, hugging her harp to herself with a desperate helplessness. “What the demon’ll do to me is worse than death, and it’s not like you’ll win if you take them on.”

“No bartering for your freedom at all?” Dandelion murmured, standing straight despite his injuries.

“And what then? Would you speak for me to the Lindwyrm and ask him to continue hiding and protecting me?” Éabha said grimly. “Just kill me.”

Dandelion glanced aside at Adrien and Caoimhe, laid out on the floor with Viv bent over them, trying to remove their bonds, at Miette with a raised brow, then met Star’s gaze. “Your thoughts?”

It felt bad to kill a crying captive. And even if they were going to, surely they should have some questions for her first…?

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