Prince of Air and Darkness

by M. A. Grant

  I manage to sit across from Mother for another ten minutes, picking at my food while she eats the choicest morsels from her dinner. There’s no point in my eating anything else with this nausea churning inside me. There’s no point sitting here when I could be back on campus.

  My knife and fork chime as I set them on my plate. Mother raises a brow when I stand and place my napkin on the table. “I forgot I have a meeting about a project tomorrow morning. I’ll take my leave tonight.”

  I’m nearly to the door when she calls out, “Roark, send my regards to the human.”

  My skin pebbles with goose bumps. “Of course, Mother.”

  I don’t allow myself to shake until I’m safely hidden in my room, packing for my early return to Mathers. When the shudders do roll through me, I have to sit on the edge of my bed and wrap my arms around my ribs to keep myself from rattling apart.

  The Queen of Air and Darkness rules through subtlety and misdirection. I know the game she and I currently play. By threatening Smith, she thinks she’ll coax me into obedience. She thinks I would risk myself to protect him.

  I would. I just did.

  But I didn’t give in to her demands completely. I left myself a tiny space to parry her next move by refusing to move home. That condition is bound to come sooner rather than later. Mother measures her world by end results, not the means employed to reach them. The longer I refuse to take on the mantle before Samhain, the more she’ll casually threaten Smith. She’ll tease and poke and prod that open wound to motivate me, but she won’t act. She won’t risk losing me by harming him.

  But the moment she learns that he may feel something for me, that the spell might have a chance of breaking, she’ll focus her full energy on him. The chance to win a Knight of his power while keeping me as one of the heirs to the Court will be too much for her to resist. Smith won’t stand a chance. He’ll fall before he realizes he’s at war.

  The thin line on my palm mocks me when the firelight plays over it. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Hasn’t hurt for years. The protection spell cast all those years ago when I dragged Smith from the sídhe has settled into my skin and bones.

  He doesn’t remember my interference that night. He doesn’t remember my mother’s offer, the temptation she placed in front of him when he was mindless from pain: Knighthood for his family’s permanent security, for an end to his suffering, for near-immortality. He doesn’t know I ripped the words of binding from his memory. I didn’t want there to be a single chance that he would repeat them by accident, only to find himself chained by a fae promise, like so many other foolish humans had before him.

  Our laws are absolute. My mother offered it to him, told him how to claim the position, but could do no more than that. The Knight must choose to serve of his own will. She never dreamed I’d find a loophole in the process. She underestimated my desperation.

  I hid the litany from him, tied it back with ribbons of love and bitterness and ancient words as strong today as they were at the dawn of time. Like all fae spells, mine can be broken with the power of true love. Were he ever to acknowledge that impossible emotion for me, he’d remember everything. Remember the offer, remember the words. Could choose to say them.

  Until then, he’s safe from my mother. He can learn and develop his power since no one else knows that he’s the first choice for the Unseelie Knight. With that secret buried, there will be no serious assassination or kidnapping attempts on him. He’ll be viewed as an anomaly instead of a threat, humored instead of feared.

  He’ll leave Mathers after he graduates, forget about me, and have a chance for a normal life. As normal as his life could be.

  It’s the best I could do to make up for spying on him. For piquing my mother’s interest in the first place. A paltry offering, it seems.

  I force my fingers to curl and cover the line. I only have to outlast him for a few more weeks. In the alley, he made me forget everything. He made me want to ruin him utterly, damn the consequences.

  Years of planning nearly destroyed by a kiss.

  “Enough,” I whisper, praying to the Goddess that hearing the word echo through my chamber will make it true.

  * * *

  I try not to think about the way my entire body stills when I insert the key to the apartment in the lock. The insane rush of life in the sídhe vanishes, replaced with a quietude I didn’t know I missed until I return to it. It’s taken almost six years, but this shoebox has finally worked its magic.

  This is home. For a few weeks more, anyway.

  I don’t have time for the pang accompanying that thought. I bought some time, but it will be gone in a blink.

  It appears no one’s around. The kitchen’s empty and the satyr’s usual music isn’t blaring. I’m almost to my bedroom door when I hear the floor in Smith’s room creak.

  The door swings open and he emerges with an empty coffee cup. The moment he sees me, he stops and rubs a hand awkwardly over the back of his neck.

  The sight of him is a gut shot. His hair is still damp, drying into strange swoops and whorls. He’s wearing worn jeans and a hooded Mathers sweatshirt that clashes with his eyes and his feet are bare.

  I could still walk out of the apartment.

  “Hey,” I say instead, voice rougher than I’d like.

  He takes out his earbuds and stares at my chest. “Hi.”

  “The satyr’s not here?”

  I didn’t think it was possible for him to get any redder, but the flush has spread to the roots of his hair now. “Date with Sue.”

  I want to linger here, try to talk with him a little more, but my bag’s heavy. I hear him behind me on his way to the kitchen, probably to drop off the mug, as I enter my room and face my empty bed.

  Sleep hasn’t come easily in the sídhe. I’d fall asleep haunted by the way Smith had sighed when I teased my fingers through his hair. Waking up alone left me imagining what it would be like to see his face beside me instead. I long for intimacies I have no right to claim.

  There’s a soft noise near my doorway; I drop my bag on the bed and start to put my things away, pretending he’s not lurking behind me like a giant shadow. I pretend I don’t reach out with my glamour to rub against the energy of the ley line because it seems right to do that. I pretend not to hear his soft exhalation when our magicks mingle. Goddess, it was stupid of me to come back before absolutely necessary.

  “You’re home early,” he finally says.

  “Yes.”

  He takes an unsteady breath before rattling off, “I guess I thought it would take you longer to meet with your mother and figure out what the Unseelie are going to do next.”

  “Our meeting was precautionary—” I lie, but trail off at the sight of what’s sitting on my desk.

  It’s nothing fancy. A small wood-and-glass frame. The picture inside is a little out of focus, like the photographer couldn’t quite stand still long enough to snap the image with his cell phone. But it doesn’t matter. The golden fields offset the rich purples and pinks of the sunset. On a rolling hill in the distance, a small white farmhouse keeps watch over the land and another gentle hill swells behind it.

  Books and homework forgotten on the corner of my desk, I step closer so I can reach out and run a tentative finger over the corner of the picture frame.

  I recognize this place from the stories I hear through my door when Smith recounts his holiday adventures to Herman and Sue.

  He gave me a picture for my room.

  He gave me a fucking picture of his home.

  His mouth moves, but I don’t hear the words as I push past him. The walls close in. This is what it means to be buried alive.

  I stumble my way out of the building, in desperate need of air. Space. Anything but the joy and loss pulsing through me. It’s too much, too dangerous. Too easy to give in to temptation.

  “Lyne!”

  He followed me. He runs toward me, his bare feet almost silent on the grass. “Are you okay?”

  No. Not okay. N
ever will be okay again, knowing that all this—his thoughtfulness, his affection, his hard-won acceptance—will be stolen from me by magick in a matter of weeks. All I’ve ever wanted, sacrificed.

  If I weren’t so damn tired and drained I would let myself go. Let the wings and feathers and emptiness take me away so I can drift. But if I do that now, I may never come back.

  The Queen would come for Smith instead to coax my return.

  So I stay in this form and I walk.

  The campus is quiet; everyone’s off enjoying the long weekend before our next term of classes starts on Tuesday. I have no destination in mind, just a need to move and escape whatever it was that caught me by the throat in my room when I looked at that gift.

  It was a gift.

  “Hey, Lyne, slow down!”

  If my feet don’t start obeying my orders instead of his, I’m going to have to chop them off. We pass through the campus commons. The fountain burbles, cascading water illuminated by the enchanted ghostlights just under the surface of its pool. I’m nearly past it when Smith slips in front of me.

  He clasps my shoulders and I jerk to a stop. He doesn’t let go. He watches me, hair falling over his wrinkled forehead, worry twisting the curve of his lips.

  “Did I do something wrong?” he asks.

  Yes. “No.”

  He scowls. “Look, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep it. But I wanted to get you something because I know you’re tutoring me when you don’t actually have time for it and I...” His Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows and my glamour tingles when the ley line tenses. “I wanted to thank you for that.”

  For a moment, only the noise of the fountain trickling and quiet splash of something hitting the surface.

  His jaw works, muscles tightening. “Well, for more than that. I’ve been thinking a lot.” His fingers spasm on me like he can’t decide if he should let me go or not.

  I wait for that decision with bated breath.

  His grip tightens and I want to weep. “After what happened at the bar, I thought that maybe you were trying to protect me and then I started thinking about...well, shit, everything. And I talked to Sue and Sebastian because I wasn’t sure I was remembering things right. After talking with them, I kind of figured out that you probably didn’t know your mother had kidnapped me and maybe I’ve been overreacting by blaming you for what she did.”

  Dark blue eyes hold my gaze and I swear his pulse has sped up, or else mine has. I’m hopeless, because I’m going to kiss him again, maybe take it further this time, even though I can’t.

  Stop this. Stop him before he says something that can’t be undone.

  “Roark.” His hands drop and he takes a half step back. “Do you want—?”

  “I don’t want you.”

  Stabbing him would have been easier for both of us. The ley line screeches against my glamour, a flare sharp and painful enough I fear it left bloodied claw marks on my skin. His face crumples, but he doesn’t retreat from the savage lie I threw at him.

  “You kissed me in the garden at the ball,” he points out, his voice mostly steady.

  “A mistake brought on by adrenaline.”

  His chin rises and his eyes flash in a very un-Smith way that leaves my stomach dropping. “And in the alley?”

  How the fucking hell did the tables turn? It’s my job to throw Smith off guard, to taunt and smirk and tease and infuriate. He can’t do this to me. Not tonight. Any other night, I would be strong enough to handle it.

  I scramble for an excuse. The falsehood comes too easily to my lips, oily and toxic. “I was lonely and you were a willing distraction.”

  “You don’t mean that.” He crosses his arms, but doubt still unsettles him.

  “I do.” Those two words sound petulant, even to me.

  “That’s all it takes to get your attention, huh? Well, guess what? I’m still willing.”

  Touché. Air squeaks from my lungs and Smith’s smile glitters. He’s winning and he knows it.

  His voice dips, rough, smoldering. “I want you, Roark.”

  “I don’t want you,” I stubbornly repeat. It’s weaker this time, but it still does its job.

  Smith flings his arms down while the ley line cracks and sizzles like a whip in the space between us, reacting to his pain. Pain I caused. “Stop lying to me.”

  “I can’t!”

  The outburst surprises us both. My chest heaves and my body trembles as if the admission cost more than my voice.

  That furious heat of the ley line vanishes, leaving nothing but the autumnal breeze.

  At least Smith’s confidence is as shaken as mine. “What?”

  “Fuck off, Smith,” I snap, desperate to escape him and this conversation.

  “After that? Not a chance.” He closes the gap between us, all warm, willing flesh. The fear I tirelessly built between us isn’t there anymore. He’s sober, he’s eager, and all my paltry excuses have abandoned me.

  He halts when I squeeze his forearm, begging wordlessly for him to stop. Slowly, he turns his arm in my grip until his hand is palm-up, offered to me one last time. I swallow, drawing all my glamour together, building it into an impenetrable wall, and finally look up at him. A mistake.

  I’m tired of being all alone. I’m tired of being afraid all the time. I’m not like Finn, who faces death with unnerving grace.

  He is so alive, even knowing the cost he’ll eventually pay.

  And I am selfish and weak.

  I step in toward him, and nothing in the world matters except the hiss of breath leaving him when he tenses, gaze fixed on my mouth, and the need crackling between us.

  A shadow shifts in the light behind him. I swing him away and blast him with wind, sending him spilling back onto the lawn.

  Cool, hammered grip of my rapier. Familiar weight a natural extension of my arm.

  For the first time in my life, I welcome the arrival of a new enemy. At least this is a fight I can win.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Phineas

  One second, I’m standing by the fountain, breath squeezed from my lungs by the hungry look on Roark’s face as he steps toward me, his hand clenching around my arm. The next, I tumble ass over teakettle across the lawn when a charmed gust of wind blasts into me like a small pickup. I get grass stains everywhere and the bruises from last night’s game complain at the added injury.

  Clearly, I read that situation wrong.

  I skid to a stop about twenty feet away and lie on my back for a moment, wishing the pain would stop. With a groan, I clamber to my feet, prepared to yell profane things at my roommate. The sight before me shifts my priorities and makes me wonder what I’ve done to deserve this kind of suffering.

  Long tentacles, glistening shades of green and dark blue, rise from the fountain, growing like magickal bean stalks. Thick suckers the pale shade of fish bellies, inner circles ringed with a dark violet, squeeze and clench in the air. And it’s still coming, growing, exploding up out of the container that’s too small to hold it. In the center of its pulpy mass, a single orange eye blinks rapidly, as if it’s just as confused to be here as we are to see it.

  Roark stands in front of it, using his body as a barrier between me and the...whatever it is. A kraken, maybe? His rapier shimmers as it darts this way and that, searching for a hole in the creature’s defenses. It’s so out of place with his grunge flannel look that I would laugh if fear and worry hadn’t already overwhelmed me. I run back toward him.

  One of the tentacles falls toward Roark as it attempts to clamber out of the fountain. I pull on the ley line, but he’s already got it covered: A sharp archway of ice rears up over him. The tentacle connects, cracking the archway, but it bought Roark enough time to roll out of harm’s way. As the icicles pierce the monster’s thick, rubbery skin, it gargles and rears back.

  If it hadn’t noticed us before, it sure as hell has now.

  I swear it puffs up, gaining size, and whips its tentacles around in a frenzy.
>
  “Down,” Roark orders.

  I drop without a question. A breeze passes over my back and I push back up to my feet.

  Roark dances around another one of the tentacles with his sword drawn. The blade flicks out wounds so fast it looks like he’s surrounded by a cloud of silvery wasps.

  “Watch it!” I snap the ley line forward, ripping a chunk from the muscled mass that hurtled toward Roark’s unprotected back.

  I run to his side and press my shoulder against his. We’ve fought like this before over the years, but this is the first time I’ve ever enjoyed it. This time I notice every subtle shift of his muscles and all I want to do is keep him from getting hurt.

  He yells, “Now!”

  I sense his dodge and move with him. The ground shudders when the place we just stood is flattened by a bleeding tentacle. I slash my hand toward it and the ley line roars up to obey.

  The kraken emits a high-pitched scream when the golden energy slices through its flesh, leaving nothing behind but a smoking stump and twitching former tentacle.

  I try to whoop in victory, but the world slides sideways and little dots of black cloud my vision. Roark catches me mid-slump and helps me keep my feet. I shake my head, forcing the spinning away, and refocus on the murderous creature.

  “Making it mad seemed a good idea?” Roark complains, grabbing my hand and sprinting across the lawn.

  “Says the man stabbing it with a pin?” I snap back, confused why we’re retreating when we could just cut it up and leave its quivering corpse behind for people to discover tomorrow.

  If Roark thought our running away from the fountain would discourage the creature, he underestimated our ability to really piss off monsters of legend. The kraken rolls after us across the great lawn, a sucking, squelching ball of fury, its single eye fixed on us with predatory resolve.

  We’ve run away from the university buildings, which is probably good for insurance purposes, but really bad for our life expectancy. Nowhere to hide. It’s just us in a giant open space with a monster that’s about ten times our size bearing down on us.