Shadow Hunter (Court of Life and Death Book 2)

by Melody Rose

  I spent the night avoiding conversation with strangers, silently deciding to only wear sweatpants when I went out with Lindsay from then on. Dressing up was fun, but I despised the attention it got me. I must have done a good job of giving off leave-me-the-fuck-alone vibes because almost no one tried to talk to me, but I could still feel their eyes. I’d tried to understand why Linds enjoyed this kind of attention, but it never seemed anything but intrusive to me. The first time a man came up to ask me what I was drinking, I told him I was the designated driver for the night, and that was enough of a cockblock to get him to leave me alone. The only other guy who bothered me parked himself at the next table over and just kept staring at me. I finally got him to lay off by digging into his head and planting thoughts about how badly he had to pee until he finally ran off in the direction of the bathroom.

  When I wasn’t busy trying to ward off guys, I analyzed what I knew about the situation at hand. What could I do? As a reaper, I helped souls pass from this world to the Bay of Souls, but the problem was amongst living people on Earth. If I had any sort of secret affinity for persuasion as my friends did, I didn’t know it. I couldn’t do half of what Syrion or Daath could do in terms of conjuring, and I’d only learned to world jump. Maybe they could teach me, but what would that do to help improve the state of things?

  Siena and Lindsay made sure to accost me every time they noticed my mind wandering, but it didn’t take long before Siena let us know she’d be going home with the guy she’d been getting free drinks from all night. Lindsay spent about half an hour all over some guy, but she’d promised me that she wouldn’t bring anyone back to the apartment tonight, since I wasn’t sure how long I’d be home. She was finally ready to go around 1:30 am.

  I pulled my blazer across my chest to keep warm as we waited on the sidewalk for a cab. There weren’t many people out at that hour, and the ones that were out were other club-goers. Eventually, a cab arrived, and I opened the door for Lindsay but stopped. Across the street, there was a young girl. She looked to be about fourteen, but she wasn’t like everyone else. It was obvious to me that she was a spirit. I hadn’t noticed her before because she wasn’t wandering around. She was sitting, holding her knees and leaning against a chain-link fence.

  “Myrcy? Come on,” Lindsay said absentmindedly, tugging on my sleeve. I nodded and got in the cab next to her, but the little girl hung in my mind. I was used to seeing these spirits. I’d seen them my whole life. It was easy enough to shake them off. But that little girl…

  “Myrcy?” Lindsay slurred her words slightly. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I-”

  “Have you figured out how to save the world?” she giggled.

  “No,” I chuckled, pulling her hair back from hanging in her face. “Not yet.”

  9

  Myrcedes

  I’d felt strange around Kalian ever since I went to the Floor of Dreams. Our interactions were already awkward - after all, he betrayed his Queen for my sake, nearly being sentenced to death until I came to save him at the eleventh hour. That created a strange dynamic between people. Yet despite all of that, the thing that haunted my mind the most was what the reflection on the Floor had told me would become of Kalian. The image of the guillotine had haunted my nightmares, the idea of Kalian being held beneath the blade, the knowledge that this could be his fate if I didn’t find a way to stop it… I was terrified for him. I didn’t know if this was a prophecy or a warning, or if it was for the next week or fifty years from now. Either way, I felt compelled to spend more time with him, learn about him, learn about his life, and figure out how to save him from what I’d seen.

  He sat in an armchair next to a window in an alcove on the third floor, looking out the window like he was in some kind of dramatic music video. I laughed a bit but kept myself quiet. He noticed me anyway and glanced in my direction, looking me up and down before turning back to the window. “Your hair…”

  “Hm? Oh,” I blinked. It had been a few days since I’d dyed it, but I had yet to see Kalian. I’d almost forgotten about it. It was surprising that he noticed. “Yes. Siena and Lindsay helped me dye it.”

  I almost expected a compliment or any generally positive sort of comment to follow, but I was clearly too optimistic.

  “What do you want?” he asked sharply.

  “I wanted to talk,” I shrugged. “Is that okay?”

  “I suppose,” he rolled his eyes. I frowned and leaned against the wall across from him.

  “What the hell did I do to you?”

  He glanced back at me, his hands clasped together loosely and resting against his chin, hiding half his face and making it even more difficult to read his stony expression. “You’ve done nothing but assist and save me, and I am grateful.”

  I frowned. It wouldn’t hurt him to act like it. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was having a hard time adjusting to so much sudden change. I’d bring it up later.

  “May I help you?” he raised an eyebrow.

  I sighed. “I just wanted to talk… I have some more questions for you if you’re up for it.” I waited for an answer, but he just gave me a slight nod that I took as a yes instead. “I was thinking about everything, the trial, the council… um, there was a man there. It looked like you knew him. He was the one that took the… the cuffs off when they said they’d let you go.”

  A look of understanding and some other emotion I couldn’t place spread across his face. I recognized the man from two places. He was the one from Kalian’s trial, but he was also the one who seemed to lead the executions in my vision on the Floor of Dreams. “Who was he?”

  “His name is Bahz,” Kalian sighed, leaning back in the chair and dropping his hands. “He’s - well, he was the Lieutenant. I suppose they’ve promoted him to General now that the position is open.”

  “Does that mean you two worked together?”

  He scoffed. “He was… for a long time. He was my closest friend, my right hand. He had an ambition that drove him to be the perfect soldier. He carried out orders to their fullest extent, exceeding expectations on a regular basis. He’s always been unflinchingly loyal to Minerva. I expect that’s no different now.”

  “Why couldn’t anyone else see how truly awful what Minerva did was?” I frowned. “Surely, you can’t have been the only person in the army with a conscience.”

  “I wasn’t.” He spoke sharply, and I flinched a bit, surprised to hear such a tone. “My men were good, strong, and intelligent. I trained many of them myself.”

  I felt myself get defensive as he grew heated. “I’m just saying if more of them knew right from wrong, wouldn’t they have defended you? Or stood against Minerva?”

  “That wasn’t their job! I was her General. I knew her plots and plans in ways they didn’t. No one knew her as I did, so no one knew how truly evil she’d become. Now that it’s over, they don’t want to believe it. I don’t blame them. If the denial of what had happened were an option, I might…” he trailed off. “No. I could never deny what had happened if I suspected it was the truth. But I envy those who can.”

  A softness crept into his expression and his voice. It wasn’t aimed at me, but it was an improvement to the hostility that he’d had a moment before. It was at times like this that reminded me that Seelie and Unseelie in the Queen’s army of the fae world couldn’t lie. He’d taken an oath when he joined to be truthful. This had been a little surprising to me - I’d seen enough people on Earth who found it far too easy to lie without it ever influencing their conscience - but Kalian embodied this in every way. He wasn’t always right, but he never told a falsehood if he knew any better. I admired that discipline. I admired a lot of things about him and his convictions. I just wished he wasn’t such an ass about it all.

  “Minerva was the only leader everyone in the fae realm has ever known. For many of them, she’s older than them, their parents, and even their grandparents. She’d existed since the beginning of time itself in their eyes.
Someone so eternal must be knowledgeable; someone knowledgeable must be good. It’s a fallacy I’m afraid many of my people fell for. Now, even for those who agree she went too far, it’s much easier to see someone like me punished as a scapegoat for the whole thing.”

  “That’s awful,” I said softly. “I can’t imagine being okay with that injustice.”

  He looked up, and his eyes met mine. “Truly? You can’t? It happens in your world all the time. Earth is full of selfish people who do things for selfish reasons.”

  I was taken aback by the accusation, but as much as I wanted to dispute it, I knew he wasn’t totally wrong. “Maybe so. But I’m going to do what I can to fix that.”

  Something shifted in his expression, but once again, it was some emotion I couldn’t decipher. He didn’t give much away. He wasn’t as guarded as Syrion. His emotions were spelled across his face. I just wasn’t able to read them yet.

  “Then perhaps Earth is lucky to have you as their Queen, whether they know it or not.”

  I smiled a bit. It was the first compliment he’d paid me since we met, certainly since he’d come to the Moonstone Castle.

  “What else can you tell me about Bahz?”

  He tilted his head a touch. “He’s certainly ruthless. I trained the man since he was a boy, and he was promoted just after I was. I’ve never had a closer friend… and yet he sentenced me to prison without asking my side of the story. He has a weakness for sex demons and a hatred for non-fae. Certainly not the qualities I would lead with to set him up with a matchmaker.”

  At that, I couldn’t help but laugh as I tried to imagine how something like a dating app would work amongst these non-human creatures.

  “Do you have any more questions to interrogate me with?” he raised an eyebrow. I sensed the slightest hint of teasing in his tone that made me feel at ease to continue.

  “How much do you know about Minerva’s interactions with the council?”

  As soon as my conversation with Kalian ended, I excused myself, and before I knew it, I was flying down the hall towards Daath’s room. I felt my heart race both from the exercise and from the adrenaline after learning what Kalian had to say.

  “Daath,” I said, bursting through his door. He looked up from some documents when I opened the door. His bedroom was actually quite bare. I suspected that it was because he didn’t spend much time hanging out there. He was usually with Syrion or me, or out of the castle entirely. There was a large, lavish bed, a desk covered in letters organized into neat piles, and an armchair. Aside from a pitch-black rug, that was the extent of decor.

  “What do you need, little owl?”

  “I was talking to Kalian about the fae council.” I sat across from him in the armchair. “I think some of them might know something.”

  He sighed softly and set his work down. He’d been trying to get me to ignore what I thought about the council, warning me about distractions, but I couldn’t. Even with other arguably more pressing concerns, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about this. The sight from the Floor of Dreams of the fae world in some sort of civil war wasn’t helping much either.

  “Please, share with me what he told you,” he uttered. I frowned a bit. I was trying to understand where Daath was coming from and that he had more experience than I did in matters like this, but it was hard when he was so hell-bent on not agreeing with me.

  “I know you want to dismiss this,” I said as I shook my head, “but just listen. Kalian said there had been rumors for centuries that Minerva repressed the memories of those around her in order to keep secrets. We know she can, because she did it to me, along with the wraith and the reaper that she sent after me. They’re only rumors, but he remembered a specific instant about eighteen years ago.” That caught his attention. Eighteen years ago was when Minerva destroyed my family.

  “Kalian said there was a period where the council members were all acting strange, that usually at least one or two of them were missing from meetings or just from the palace. Then, apparently, one of them got stuck on Earth and broke his leg. He was too weak to world jump on his own, so Minerva sent Kalian to go get him, someone named Oli.”

  “Oli?” Daath raised an eyebrow. “He was very close to her. But I can’t imagine a good reason he’d be on Earth.”

  I nodded. He was starting to see my point. “So when Kalian went to get him, Oli told him specifically how he got injured and said something about the Queen acting the same as she did last time, but when Kalian asked him about that further, he said he couldn’t quite remember. So he ran into him the next day and asked how his leg was doing, and Oli told him he couldn’t remember how he broke it.”

  A look of understanding spread across Daath’s face. “So, she really was controlling their memories?”

  “I think so,” I nodded. “So if that’s true, you could unlock them, right?”

  “That depends,” he said as he rested his hand against his chin, “on how long ago the events were and how strongly she locked the memories away. But it would be worth a try.”

  A wave of relief hit me. To finally have Daath back on my side and not thinking I was in the wrong was a weight I hadn’t even realized I’d been shouldering. “Great! So, where’s Syrion?”

  “Syrion is traveling. He’s trying to contact some other ancients and see if they know anything about that prophecy. It’s concerning that there was a prophecy regarding us that we managed to be unaware of, but it’s hard to believe that Minerva was the only creature in existence who knew about it, especially since it had nothing to do with her.”

  I bit my lip, disappointed. “So, we should wait for him to get back?”

  “Hm? Oh, no.” Daath shook his head. “He could return in either a week or a month, depending on what he’s able to find. If we act now, we have a flawless cover. We can visit members of the council in private under the guise of diplomacy.”

  I felt my pulse quicken as he spoke, both excited and nervous to find out something I’d been dying to know. “So when can we start?”

  A smirk fell across his face. “Tomorrow.”

  10

  Daath

  “Oli,” I bowed as we entered his home. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice.”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” the Unseelie’s voice shook as he spoke. I recognized him from the trial. He had been the first to address us, and he’d seemed just as nervous back then as he did now. “How could I say no to the King of the Underworld? Oh, a-and the Queen, as well, of course.”

  I’d had to have a serious conversation with Myrcedes about how vital it was that she not imply any suspicion until we were certain he was involved. Thankfully, she seemed to take that to heart because her demeanor was confident and positive. She nodded to Oli with a cool smile. “Still, we appreciate your hospitality.”

  “Please, sit,” he said as he himself took a seat in a rocking chair. His house wasn’t very large; most houses in the fae realm were small, aside from Minerva’s palace. Still, I expected such a high-ranking Unseelie to live with some luxury. Instead, he lived in a cabin. The living room had just enough room for the three of us amongst all of his trinkets and decorations. Typical. Fae made a habit of stealing or conning items from others, usually humans, and that was the only explanation for the strange amalgamation of objects on the walls and cabinets around us. My eyes were drawn to a small wooden horse with wheels on its legs. It was distinctly human, but it looked to be at least a few centuries old. It sat next to a very modern, rectangular metal tin. I recognized it as containing little chocolate pearls from some candy company.

  Myrcedes and I sat on a couch across from him.

  “What can I do for you?” Oli asked. “Oh! May I offer you tea? I have several herbal teas I got a while back I think you’ll enjoy.”

  I smiled to myself. My lovely companion wouldn’t realize this, but he had gone out of his way to insult us. High-ranking fae were known to offer something like tea immediately upon the entrance of a gue
st, and they had a hierarchy of what they thought was a worthy visitor. Herbal teas, and ones he’d made a point to say were older, were the lowest rung of that hierarchy.

  Myrcedes spoke first. “No, thank you, though. We wanted to ask how things amongst the council are going?”

  He sighed. “Well… not well. We can’t seem to agree on anything. Someone always insists on voicing a dissenting opinion; you know I’m sure some of them do it just for the sake of causing trouble? It’s sad.”

  “What exactly are you disagreeing on?” I knew the answer, but I had to be polite and ask, anyway.

  “Mostly what to do next… everyone wants to be in power. And I know what you’re thinking, but it’s different! They just want to be monarchs for the sake of control. I’m the only one who really wants to do what’s right for the fae.”

  “And what is that?” Myrcedes cocked her head. “What would you do to serve the people?”

  “I’m glad you asked,” he smiled. He seemed to relax a touch, but the Unseelie still seemed on edge. I got the feeling that was a permanent thing for him. “There have been so many taxes posed on the fae in the past few thousand years, that most of the realm lives in poverty. But if I were the King, the first thing I would do is open the coffers and provide every resident of the realm with an allowance to make up for the ages of unfair taxing. Darce actually suggested raising the tax! Can you believe that? And she wants to restrict travel to other realms. Unbelievable.”

  “Well, you sound like you have the best interest of your people at heart,” she nodded. I smiled, very impressed with her quick grasp of diplomacy. I didn’t think I’d ever stop being surprised by her.

  “But the rest of the council is so power-hungry. They couldn’t care less about someone good sitting on the throne. They all just want to take the place themselves. It’s sad to see so many people I trusted betray their world so selfishly.” Oli shook his head. “It’s almost a surprise that the people haven’t up and revolted. If we don’t come to an agreement soon, heads will be rolling.” His old and shaky voice was clearly attempting to exaggerate an unfunny joke, but I quickly noticed a shift it set off in Myrcedes. It was almost imperceptible, but I felt a change in the air around her. She seemed to grow anxious. I couldn’t fathom why.