Glamoured (Shadow Beast Shifters Book 6)

After some time drifting in a meditative state, my thoughts returned to Len and Tabitha. In spite of my death, I hadn’t distanced myself from them. I never could, even if I were forced into the deathly plane. How could one let go of two fae so fundamental to their being? To their all.

It was fucking unfair.

Why did I have to be sacrificed on the mantle of another world I didn’t even remember? Why did the Great Queen choose to have offspring, spell us, and then abandon us into the worlds?

I kind of wished she were here right now so I could yell at her a little.

As if thoughts could become reality here, there was a burst of power, and before me stood a ghostly image, almost like a projection of a person, hovering before me.

At first I thought it was the Great Queen, until I looked closer and realized it was my reflection.

“Sammia,” the visage said in a voice the same as mine. “You have made it to the World of Creation and the Great Origin. What I most feared has come to pass.”

Excuse me, what? “Who the hell is Sammia?”

The visage smiled, and it was creepy to see myself like this. It wasn’t really a reflection since there was no reversal of image. This was how everyone else saw me, right down to my long flowing hair, large emerald eyes, and skin that hovered between golden brown and bronze. In the image, I looked strong and sure, filled with the sort of confidence and power I’d never demonstrated in real life.

This version of me had not been abandoned as a child, shuffled between packs, always different and alone. This version of me didn’t know the pain I’d experience, and for that, I was a little resentful.

“You are Sammia,” she replied. “I am Sammia. We are one and the same, only I’m a memory that has been stored for you to learn when needed.”

I was dead, but this conversation was still weirder.

“A memory,” I shot back derisively. “Of what?”

“Of your life before.”

Simple statement, not so simple meaning.

“What question do I ask to get the most straightforward answer?” I finally said, done with the cryptic bullshit.

“I have only the answers that were left in this memory,” the other me said. “And we are running out of time, so let us hurry.”

Fine by me. “Okay, so I was Sammia before my memories were taken by the Great Queen?”

I was smart enough to try and assemble the pieces of the puzzle, but the whole was still missing.

An extended pause. “I hated removing our memories,” she finally whispered.

The sorrow in her tone almost broke me.

Wait! Seriously…

“You hated removing our memories?” I said slowly, as more pieces of the puzzle fell into place. “The queen didn’t spell us?”

She drifted closer until I could make out the deeper green flecks in her… our eyes.

“You are the Great Queen,” she said.

The words made sense, but my brain rejected it immediately. “No,” I snorted, laughter spilling from me. “I mean, come on… the Great Queen is like thousands or more years old. She’s the most powerful fae that ever lived. I’m a damn shifter who’s not quite three decades old.”

You’ve got the wrong person, sister.

Why was my other freakier self messing with me like this? Like, come on.

“I know it doesn’t make sense to you yet,” the dumber Sam said, “but you don’t have all the pieces.” It annoyed me that she somehow knew I’d been thinking in puzzle analogies. “There’s a reason that we made the decision to hide on Earth, and everything was going along just fine until our mate showed up.”

Len’s face flashed across my mind. “What did Len have to do with any of this?” I asked.

The ache whenever I thought about him was growing stronger, the longing enough to destroy me if I wasn’t already dead.

“He showed up. He finally found us and ruined everything.”

“Stop it,” I snapped back. Was there anything more ridiculous than arguing with yourself like this? “Len has ruined nothing. He’s been a victim in this entire shit show. Thanks to your stupid spell, we both missed out on time with our daughter, with Tabby.”

The memory version of me faltered. Shorted out for a beat. “We have no daughter,” it said, when it reappeared again. “That does not compute with our memories.”

That had me pausing. “You don’t know about Tabitha?”

That meant, if her story were true, I’d spelled myself before becoming aware of my pregnancy. Tabitha had not been the catalyst for our memory loss, for the glamour that I’d created.

HOW DID ANY OF THIS MAKE SENSE?

“Explain to me how I’m the Great Queen?” I said, still trying to wrap my brain around it. “I was hiding on Earth the entire time?”

The other me nodded. “Yes, and this is going to be a difficult story for me to tell you, but we must return to the worlds and set the right path in motion once more.”

Great, more ominous and cryptic talk.

“We left Faerie to save the worlds. We spelled the fae to forget who we were, since we knew we’d never set foot on our world again. But now that you’ve returned to Faerie, what I was attempting to stop will have returned in full force. We’re lucky that you remembered enough to return to this Origin Sphere, which was the only place safe enough to store the memories.”

“I didn’t remember,” I said drily. “It was just an unfortunate series of events that led me here. A fae cut the Great Queen’s line, which almost killed me. We had to venture into the Deep to try and restore it, only for a shadow guardian to drag me down to die. I landed on the golden cord, and it brought me here.”

She blinked. “They cut the line? Why?”

“To appoint a new queen,” I said. “Faerie has been weakening for years, and they’re done with it.”

The projected me laughed. “Appoint a queen? Are they kidding themselves? We were not born, but created from the energy of the Origin. We cannot be replaced, and we cannot truly die.”

Great, that wasn’t freaky or anything.

She paused as if rerouting the information and deciding how to proceed from here. “Firstly, you need to restore the line between the Deep and Faerie above. That will give you back all of your power and memories. I can’t do that from here, but I can explain enough to help you on your way.”

Okay, well get the fuck to it.

Was I always this long-winded?

There was a degree of self-hatred hovering within, now that I knew I was the one to blame for everything that had happened. Especially since I still had no idea why I’d made the choices I did.

“We were created as a conduit between this Origin and Faerie,” the other me said. “We are, for all intents and purposes, an Origin god.” She paused heavily, and I knew those last words would probably mean something to a being with fucking memories.

When I didn’t comment, other me continued: “There are fifty of us, one for each of the worlds. Some in the Solaris System, and some in other systems.”

If a dead mind could be blown, mine would be in pieces. “I’m barely capable of being a basic-ass shifter and now you tell me I’m a god.”

What in all the fuckery…?

Other me nodded. “You are, and not just any god. I have used my limited energy to investigate your memories, and I see you are friends with some other godlike creatures. They’re what we would refer to as tier two gods, the level below the Origins.”

Great, I was going to win Shadow’s annual dick-measuring contest. Perfect.

“If I’m so powerful, why did I run away and hide on Earth like a little bitch?”

Her expression grew darker, and the energy inside the sphere was colder too. “A very long time ago, one of the Origins lost sight of their place. Dalmia, from the world of Traylor. He wanted the Origin of more than just his world, he wanted the Origin of all the worlds. During one of our annual meetings of power, we tried to reason with him, to stop him from carving out more than his slice of the energy grid.” She sighed. “We thought he was listening, only it turned out each of us were deceived. While we were there, Dalmia placed a spell on all Origin gods. A dark energy that we took back with us to our worlds.”

She shook her head, as if this hurt, even though she was just a memory.

“Darkness and light exist together. Origin gods are testament to that, but he threw us all off balance.”

She paused again, and I was desperate to know what happened next. “The darkness hurt Faerie?” I pushed.

I got a slow nod in return. “It did. It tainted the source of our original power. Our energy. As soon as I saw the darkness seeping into the gold, I hurried back to the Origin. One by one, the other gods also returned, each with the same story. It didn’t take us long to figure out that this was Dalmia’s darkness seeping into each of our worlds.

“It was a spell, that if completed, would give him total control over every ounce of original energy. He would have no equal, no balance, no blockade against destroying it all.”

Each sentence hit me like a blow, and even without memories I could no longer deny the truth of these events. “What happened after that?” I asked her.

I still couldn’t quite figure out why I’d left Faerie and rejected our mate. Because clearly this time I’d done the rejecting by sending out a glamour strong enough to erase anything to do with Len and our bond, including our daughter.

“Knowing there was limited time before his spell was complete, we decided the only option was to remove the source. The majority of us left our worlds, since his spell would slow without our energy bulking it up. Once we were gone, the strongest ten gods would hunt Dalmia down.”

“They never hunted him down?” I burst out. “We’ve never been able to return to our world?”

She shook her head. “No, they destroyed him. But it took the combined power of all ten to end his existence. An Origin can be killed by another Origin god if they have enough power behind them. They bonded their energy together and wiped him, and themselves, from existence.”

I was vibrating, this memory creating a visceral reaction in my body. “Did that kill their worlds?” I whispered.

“Yes.” Sorrow creased her face. “Ten worlds sacrificed to save the many. It was a choice we all would have made.”

I was not capable of understanding what she was saying. My current brain was young, and we thought like a young being. “I couldn’t sacrifice my people.”

“Then all would have fallen,” she said simply.

True, but what a choice to make. “If Dalmia is dead, why did you never return to Faerie? All of this had to have happened long before the memory spell.”

“I was eleventh in the power scale,” she said simply. “One being from going after him. Upon their deaths, I became the most powerful Origin god. I ordered everyone to leave their worlds and hide on Earth, the one planet that had no real power grid. Here we hid and waited, until such a day came that Dalmia’s tainted energy was destroyed.”

It was starting to make sense, all in a super fucked-up way. “Killing him didn’t stop the spell?” I said with a shake of my head.

Other me shrugged. Fucking shrugged. “No, it didn’t, but it allowed us to halt the spread, providing we stayed away and didn’t add our power to the Origin any longer.”

She shrugged again, and I had the sense that other me was a real cunt at times. “It might have weakened our worlds, but they still survived.”

“Barely,” I bit out. “I’m sure there’s been a ripple effect from this weakening through all the worlds. I mean, is this the reason the Solaris System has had so many issues lately?” My pack had spent the last few years saving the worlds on a regular basis. “Did your abandonment of the worlds allow new darker energies to emerge? New gods?”

“Yes. The Origin gods not returning to their worlds has led to gaps in their protective shields. It’s allowed other gods to step forward in power. Your friends are the prime example of that. It allowed a beast to create new life on Earth and be the catalyst for the strongest pack of supernaturals that we’ve seen in a long time.”

Other me might believe she only had memories, and information that she’d lifted from my mind, but I sensed word was spreading about Shadow and his pack. About our strength. Which created the worry that we’d soon be fending off attacks on the regular, as others sought to test their strength against ours. Not that we couldn’t handle it.

But first… I had to figure out how to fix this situation and get back to my family.

Before it was too late.