“What?”

Tony woke up to someone shaking him. His hand reached out to push them away, but then he opened his eyes and there was darkness.

A cold shiver ran down his spine because he never slept in total darkness. JARVIS always left a light on, whether it was the dim light in the corner or the bathroom door cracked open. But he could only see broad outlines of the furniture from the moonlight peeking from beneath the curtains.

“JARVIS,” Tony called out, but there was no response.

“JARVIS is offline,” Kendis said from right beside him. “I’ll have to use my wand.”

“Fuck,” Tony hissed. “JARVIS!”

But there was no response. JARVIS was the most advanced AI in the world, and Tony had made him near-impenetrable. His firewalls alone would make a would-be hacker cry. If someone had managed to disable not only his electricity but also his generators, that was a really bad sign.

“Do it,” Tony said. “We can’t get anywhere by stumbling in the dark.”

“Lumos,” Kendis said, and there was a bright light from the tip of her new black walnut wand.

Tony’s eyes traveled around his room, taking in the bed, his dresser, and the nightstand as his heart pounded in his chest. There was none of the usual destruction that usually happened when Kendis used magic at his house. No flickering lights, no shorting out of devices, and no power surges.

It should have comforted him, but instead it filled him with a creeping dread.

“It’s magic,” Kendis said grimly. “I can feel it in the air.” She quickly scrambled out of bed, bonnet still on her head, as they summoned one of his T-shirts and a pair of sweatpants out of their dresser.

“You can’t really be thinking of going out there!” Tony called out, scrambling out of the bed after her.

“Tony, you’re a Muggle,” Kendis said. “You’ve no protection against wandwork.”

“I’m not letting you go out on your own!” Tony hurried to his nightstand and took out a revolver. It was not as elegant as the other guns he built, but it would do the job against a magical threat.

Besides, Tony was a damn good shot. His old man made damn sure of that.

Tony checked the chamber, took the spare cartridge loops, and hurriedly followed Kendis out of the bedroom and into the hallway. The mansion was eerily dark and quiet with only the dim light of their wand to light the way.

“Stupefy!” a voice bellowed, and suddenly Kendis shoved Tony onto the floor.

“Petrificus Totalus!” And Tony looked up in time to see a red beam of light shoot from their wand.

The red beam tore through the darkness, crackling as it slammed into the nearest wixen’s magical shield. The impact lit the hall in a violent flare as shadows jumped along the walls.

“Protego!” another wixen barked as a shimmering barrier snapped into place.

Kendis didn’t stop moving. They should have looked ridiculous in Tony’s T-shirt, sweatpants, and a bonnet, but the wand in their hand made the whole thing terrifying instead.

“Tony, stay down!” Kendis snapped, already pivoting as her wand sliced through the air. “Expelliarmus!”

A green jet of light shot from her wand. This time it was sharper and faster as it clipped the wixen’s wand clean out of their hand, sending it skittering across the marble floor.

“Yeah, okay, wixens, got it, very flashy.” Tony scrambled behind a pillar, gun raised, heart hammering. “I’m still shooting them if they get close.”

“Stupefy!”

She ducked, the spell grazing past her shoulder and exploding into the wall behind her. Plaster rained down all around them, but Kendis kept moving. They rolled onto one knee and fired again.

“Petrificus Totalus!”

This time the spell landed, and one of the wixens froze like a statue mid-step and crashed to the ground.

There were only two red-robed wixens left. Kendis kept their wand raised. The air was so thick with magic that even with Tony being non-magical, he could almost feel it.

“You’re outnumbered,” one of them said, voice steady but tight. “Stand down.”

Kendis laughed, sharp and humorless. “You broke into my home, attacked first, and you reckon I’m the one surrendering?”

Tony tightened his grip on his gun as he kept his eyes on Kendis in front of him. She was panting for breath as she stared at the red-robed figures surrounding them.

The man flashed his badge at her. Both Tony’s and Kendis’s mouths dropped as they stared at it in shock.

“What?” Tony shouted. “They’re cops?”

The wixen cops just ignored him as if he wasn’t even there and said, “Kendis James Black, you are under arrest.”

Tony felt his heart clench in rising panic as he immediately thought about Chester Coil. Kendis had told him that she had disposed of the evidence, and Ron and Hermione had gone back to the ruins of the theatre to make sure. Maybe they missed something.

“On what charge?” Kendis demanded.

“For resisting arrest and violating the Statute of Secrecy. Now, are we going to have to use lethal force, or are you going to come with us?”

“She is not going anywhere with you!” Tony said as he started to charge over to them. Kendis stepped back until she was pressed against him. They gripped his hand, their nails digging into his skin.

“Tony!” Kendis said. “No!”

Tony spun on her. “You can’t be serious.”

“I have to go,” Kendis said with a grimace. “And I don’t want you hurt.”

“Kendis—” Tony spluttered because had she forgotten that he was holding a gun? Despite Coil kidnapping him, he was not a damsel in distress.

Kendis turned then and kissed him quickly. Tony felt like the world was closing in all around, as if they had stumbled into a trap that was slamming shut.

“Kendis—”

“On the ground!” the wixen cop demanded.

Kendis’s dark green eyes met his own. “Trust me.”

“On the ground,” the wixen barked again, and Kendis turned to face their intruders and got down on her knees. A moment later, the wixen cop was shoving them to the ground and wrenching their arms behind their back.

“Hey!” Tony protested, but he was once again ignored.

“Tony, call Hermione,” Kendis said as they were picked up off the ground. “Tell her to owl Draco!”

Tony and Hermione had exchanged numbers before she left, but Tony could never have anticipated that he would have to call her over this.

The wixen wrenched Kendis upright, and with a loud crack, his spouse was gone.

***

Tony hated feeling helpless. There was very little that his brain, name, or money couldn’t get him out of. But he could only watch as a bunch of robed guys marched into his house that was supposed to be safe and took his spouse from him.

Tony had promised Hermione and Ron that he would look after Kendis, that he would do everything in his power to protect her, and Tony had failed.

The first priority was getting his place back online so he could figure out what the hell they had done to his systems.

It took more courage than he would admit to pick up his phone and call Hermione. His heart was pounding in his chest as the phone rang once, twice, and then three times.

“Hello?”

“Hermione, it’s Tony,” Tony said awkwardly.

“What’s wrong?” Hermione asked, and he closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and pushed the words out of his mouth.

“Wizard cops invaded my mansion. They completely shut down all of my systems, and JARVIS was offline a concerning amount of time and—”

“Tony!”

“And they took Kendis,” Tony ended quietly. “She told me to tell you to owl someone named Draco Malfoy.”

“Buggering fuck!” Hermione swore and then went on to curse for a full minute.

Tony hadn’t known Hermione long. She was prim and practical to a fault, and it didn’t ease his panic to hear Hermione reduced to cursing out the MACUSA.

In the background, he could hear a man asking what was wrong and assumed that it was her husband Ron. Hermione ignored him as she continued to swear a blue streak so vicious sailors would be jealous, and then she abruptly stopped and asked, “Did they tell her what they were arresting her for?”

Tony frowned. “Resisting arrest and something about a statue of secrecy? That’s bad, right? It sounds bad.”

“It’s not good. Look, Tony, I’m going to owl a few people,” Hermione finally said after taking a deep breath. “Don’t do anything reckless.”

“Hey!” Tony protested. “I am not just going to wait here while Kendis is sitting in some jail cell.”

Hermione sighed. “Tony, this is a wixen issue, and I suspect you are the reason that they arrested her. Your presence right now might make it worse.”

Tony was torn. He wanted to be there for Kendis. He wanted to go in there guns blazing, and if Kendis had been arrested by the normal cops, he could have the might of his vicious legal team behind her and get her out.

But this whole situation stunk of politics. Tony didn’t think it was a coincidence that Kendis had been arrested after going back into the public eye. He knew that he didn’t have room for error there. One bad move and things could get incredibly worse for his spouse.

Tony felt his knees weaken as he thought about what Kendis had said about the Statute of Secrecy. There was a possibility that he would never see Kendis again. She could spend the rest of her life rotting in a jail cell just because she dared to tell him the truth.

They had only been married a little over two months, but Tony knew that he didn’t want to go back to the life he had been living before she entered it like a hurricane. Tony had been filling the void left by Rhodey and his parents’ absence by getting drunk and having sex with anyone who moved.

Kendis made the world bigger and brighter. In the short time they had been together, she had become home to him. And Tony would be damned if he would lose her just when he found her.

“Tony?” Hermione said softly. “We are going to get her back.”

Tony took a deep breath and grasped onto the hard determination in Hermione’s voice with both hands. Kendis didn’t give up on him even when she had the choice to leave him behind and reunite with her family in the otherworld.

And Tony would be damned if he repaid her faith in him by giving up on her. Tony would burn the world to the ground to get his spouse back, and he would cut down anyone who got in his way.