Ever After (Rachel Morgan)

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 stomach quivered.
    “I think you need to be a demon before you can claim the right to a trial as one,” I finished, and Ku’Sox scoffed.
    “You want us to let him go!” someone shouted. “He nearly destroyed the ever-after!”
    I held up a hand. “You all nearly destroyed the ever-after by your cowardice. I can fix the lines with Bis. You’ve seen it. Ask your gargoyles. They’ve taught him the resonance of your lines. The proper resonance, not this jagged purity. I can have them whole by sunup. And I say, yes, let him go, but as you once were, not as you are now.”
    The soft hum of decisions-yet-unmade started, and turning back to Ku’Sox, I reached out in my mind for Trent and Al. This was going to take all my finesse, and I didn’t have a clue how to do it. It would take wild magic to fix it to him, and ancient demon wisdom to find it.
    You want to do what to him? I heard an echo in my mind, the shock of understanding tagging the masculine emotion as Al’s.
    Like this, I said, eyes closing as a shimmer of my aura fell over Ku’Sox, tainted red from the ever-after. Ku’Sox stiffened, and as the memory of wild magic spun around and around in my head with the sound of fluttering wings, I showed Al a vision that he had shown me, a figure somewhat small, black as midnight, long fingers and toes, leathery wings, stretched like moonbeams. He would have an angular face, and wide black eyes, like Newt and Al now had. There would be long eyelashes, a small mouth, and whiskers, like a cat.
    Al wove the charms at my direction, his shock and amazement making his attention skip and jump in mine. “My God!” whispered a voice, and I opened my eyes as the last of the charm melted away to leave Ku’Sox blinking up at us with large black eyes, looking exactly like I’d seen Al in his dream of blue butterflies.
    “I had wings,” someone breathed. “I remember they shone in the sun and how cool they felt in the sand.”
    “Black nails,” another said.
    “I remember the taste of clouds,” came a voice from the back, soft and full of wonder. “Stardust in my