The Shattered Dark sr-2

by Sandy Williams

  “If it comes down to that, yes,” I tell her.

  I feel Aren turn toward me—I’m sure he has a few things to say about a trade—but I don’t look away from Lena, not until her gaze focuses behind me. I glance over my shoulder and see Jacia, daughter of Srillan, limping our way. She’s a former Court fae, one of almost a hundred Kyol convinced to support Lena. She also happens to be the woman King Atroth wanted Kyol to form a life-bond with. That never happened because he was in love with me. I wonder if it’s a possibility now. She’s strong and beautiful, with long, black hair braided over one shoulder and the brightest silver eyes I’ve ever seen.

  “We need a healer,” she says in Fae. Her voice is monotone, but not tight, which is a surprise since she’s left a trail of blood behind her. The jaedric armor protecting her left thigh hangs on by just one lace.

  “There’s still fighting at the veligh?” Lena demands. She rises from her seat on the dais’s top step to glare at Kyol. “Why are you here?”

  “I needed to…” He stops, glances my way before clearing his throat. “I needed to know what was happening here.”

  Translation: he needed to know I was safe.

  Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “You sent your guards to the veligh. I’m here because you cannot be left unprotected.”

  “One thing we can agree on,” Aren mutters as he walks to Jacia and peers down at her injury. He pulls off the jaedric leg shield, then slips his hand through the rip in her blood-soaked pants so he can heal the gash in her leg.

  Only Aren, Lena, and a handful of other fae have the ability to heal. It’s one of the only endangered magics that I wish was more common. Some of the others, like the ability to read minds or to cast darkness, are less beneficial, more terrifying. The king and the majority of the Realm think humans and our culture and artifacts have been weakening the fae’s magic over the generations. They blame my people for making gate-building and a few other magics—magics that I’m not certain ever existed in the first place—extinct.

  Jacia’s gaze moves from Aren to me. I have no idea if she knows why Kyol rejected a life-bond with her. We tried to hide our feelings for each other, but I’m sure some people were suspicious. But then, maybe life-bonds are rejected often? Fae are able to sense each other through the magical bindings, and if it’s a good pairing, they’re able to use more magic without becoming exhausted. The biggest drawback is that life-bonds are permanent; even if the couple splits up, the magical bond remains. I’m pretty sure the only way to end one is for one of the fae involved to die. That would definitely discourage me from agreeing to one.

  “Jacia,” Lena says. “What’s happening at the veligh?”

  Jacia says the situation is under control, but if I’m translating her words correctly, the remnants were close to breaking through our defenses. A portion of the silver wall was damaged from flames thrown by a fae.

  That fae had to be powerful to be able to manipulate fire like that. Trev is a fire-wielder, one powerful enough to throw flames, and Lena can do something similar with air, but most fae who are able to manipulate the elements can only create small, temporary flames or a soft puff of wind. I hate knowing that the remnants have such powerful people supporting them.

  When Aren finishes healing Jacia, Lena questions her further. They’ll need to erect a scaffold to support the wall until a more permanent fix can be made. Aren and Lena discuss who will be in charge of that project, then they switch to another subject, then another. When they start talking about the books that contain a registry of fae names and magical abilities, I glance at Kyol, but he seems very determined not to look my direction.

  A resigned sigh escapes from me. It’s a familiar feeling, being pushed to the side like this.

  Without a word, I leave the king’s hall.

  FOUR

  FOR TEN YEARS, I kept my human life separate from my life as a shadow-reader. I let my parents believe I was crazy because it was forbidden to tell them about the fae, and I was on academic probation almost my entire time in college because I couldn’t keep my grades up. Except for Paige, I’ve been friendless this entire time. But I accepted all of that. I accepted everything because it was best that humans not know anything about the fae. It would endanger the Realm, and I didn’t want to drag anyone else into its wars.

  My precautions and sacrifices did a hell of a lot of good. They didn’t protect Paige.

  “McKenzie.”

  I’m surprised to hear Aren’s voice behind me, but I don’t slow down. I pull at the bindings of my cuirass as I stride through a corridor that follows the palace’s exterior wall.

  “Hey,” he says, forcing me to stop when he cuts off my path. “Hey. Lena will help you.”

  I sidestep around him, pulling at the bindings again. The damn knot tightens.

  “I’ll talk to her,” he says, falling into step beside me.

  “Don’t bother.”

  Aren grabs my arm, turns me toward him. “She’s exhausted. She misses Sethan, and the nobles aren’t cooperating with her on anything, but she will help, McKenzie. I’ll help.”

  “Lena won’t help because she shouldn’t.” I pull my arm free but don’t try to move past him again.

  Aren tilts his head to the side. “She shouldn’t?”

  “No.” The air whooshes out of my lungs. Sometimes, I really hate being reasonable. “She has to think about what’s best for the rebels—for the entire Realm, really. Paige is only one person, and she’s human. She’s not Lena’s responsibility. She’s mine.”

  “McKenzie.” Aren’s voice is laced with a warning.

  “What?”

  “Don’t try to get her back on your own,” he says. He reaches out to help me untie my cuirass’s bindings.

  “I wasn’t planning to.”

  His silver eyes meet mine. “I know that expression, nalkin-shom. You have a plan.”

  Nalkin-shom. Shadow-witch. The title should irritate me. Instead, it makes my stomach flip. The fae have called me nalkin-shom behind my back for years. I didn’t know that until Aren told me fae children have nightmares about me. Their parents tell them no one can escape the nalkin-shom, that if they misbehave, I’ll read their shadows, I’ll suck their magic dry. I still think he’s exaggerating. I might be the best at what I do—when I read a fae’s shadows, they almost never escape—but I’m not a monster.

  Aren’s not looking at me like I’m a monster. Somehow, he makes shadow-witch sound like a term of endearment.

  “I don’t have a plan,” I tell him. Not yet, at least.

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “I don’t,” I say, maybe a little defensively. Aren just shakes his head with that little half smirk I used to find infuriating. It’s not infuriating anymore. It’s alluring.

  The bindings of my armor finally loosen, and Aren helps me lift it over my head. My hair gets caught on something. Aren gently pulls it free before setting the cuirass aside, then he lets my loose ponytail slide from his hand. When he does, his fingertips graze my neck. It’s a brief, accidental contact, but my edarratae react instantly. By the way Aren’s gazing down at me, it’s obvious he felt the lightning’s heat, too.

  “Jorreb,” someone says, surprisingly close to us. Fae have better hearing than humans, but Aren stiffens just enough to indicate that the nearness of the fae startles him, too. He takes a step away from me as he turns toward Jacia.

  Her silver eyes move briefly to me before settling back on Aren. “Lena wishes for the shadow-reader to speak to Naito.”

  A muscle in Aren’s cheek twitches. “It’s only been two weeks.”

  Two weeks since Naito’s lover, Kelia, died. My throat tightens. Kelia was the rebel fae who taught me to speak their language. She was almost a friend, and I envied her relationship with Naito, a human shadow-reader. Despite some bumpy times, they were happy together—they were good together—but Naito’s father, a hateful man determined to eradicate the fae, killed Kelia the day we took the palace. Naito hasn�
��t been the same since.

  “Lena needs him in the watch rotation,” Jacia says. “And she needs him to read the shadows.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” I say, even though I agree it’s too soon. But I haven’t seen Naito in several days. I want to see how he’s doing.

  Aren looks at me. I think he wants to protest. Instead, he says, “I need to help secure the veligh. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”

  This is the problem with starting a relationship in the middle of a war. Including today, I’ve seen him only three times since I ended my relationship with Kyol. For us to work out, I need time to get to know him. The thing is, it’s very possible we won’t have that time. Despite the way Aren acts sometimes, he’s not invincible. I’m certainly not, either.

  My gaze goes to Jacia. I don’t know her at all. I don’t know her view on human and fae relationships or if she would rat us out to a high noble if I wrapped my arms around Aren. That’s what I want to do. I want to forget our responsibilities and run away to somewhere remote and quiet, someplace where we can be normal and sit and talk and…do other things.

  Aren must know the direction my thoughts are heading. The half smile he gives me is both an apology and a promise. “I’ll find you as soon as I can.”

  After he leaves with Jacia, I have to assure myself a dozen times that he’s going to be okay and that I will see him again. Then I start looking for Naito. Surprisingly, he’s difficult to find. A human with lightning-covered skin kind of sticks out in this world, but I check his room, do a quick walk-through of the sculpture garden, and search a few other locations where he’s likely to be, all without any success. I finally start asking the English-speaking fae—we decided it’s best that the high nobles don’t know I’ve learned their language—if they’ve seen him. After half a dozen negative responses, someone tells me Naito’s in the royal archives. I clarify that with the fae more than once, though, thinking he must have misunderstood me. Humans aren’t allowed in the archives. At least, they weren’t under Atroth’s reign. Eventually, though, I head in that direction because I don’t know where else to look.

  “McKenzie.” Kavok smiles when he opens the door. I can’t help but smile in return. I’ve always liked the archivist. He’s dedicated to his job. So dedicated he didn’t leave the palace when Lena gave the Court fae the opportunity, and when I worked for the king, he was one of the few fae who was always willing to talk to me. That’s mainly because he’s so curious about humans. Whenever he had the chance, he questioned me about my life and my world, and sometimes, he told me a few things about his.

  “Hi, Kavok,” I say, looking into archives behind him. Drawers line the walls of the large room. The symbols on them are illuminated by hanging orbs, which are lit with magic. The combination of blue and white lightning inside them creates a steady, slightly tinted glow that doesn’t damage documents like the sun or lights from my world would. But that’s not the only thing that preserves the records in here. Kavok can, to a certain extent, control the weather. It’s a useful magic, one that’s in high demand. Farmers employ fae who can tweak the weather if there’s a drought, and the former king used to use them to darken the sky when he thought it would give the Court fae the advantage during an attack. Kavok, though, uses his ability to regulate the temperature of the archives. He keeps humidity out, too, and from what I’ve heard, some documents in here look like they were created yesterday even though they’re centuries old.

  “It’s good to see you,” he says. Then, his face brightens even more. “I found an earlier reference.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about, but he turns to the desk that’s just to the left of the door. At least, I think there’s a desk under the mountains of papers, thick, leather-bound tomes, and haphazard stacks of anchor-stones. An entire alcove in here is set aside for storing the latter. Locations both here and on Earth are kept in drawers in case the king needed fae to fissure somewhere they’d never been before.

  After a minute of shuffling through the piles, Kavok looks up.

  “Come in,” he says.

  Carefully, I step over the threshold. I feel the atmosphere change when I do. It’s dryer and cooler than the corridor. “I thought humans weren’t allowed in here?”

  He shrugs. “New ruler, new rules. Ah, yes. Sixteen hundred ninety-one years ago—our years, not yours. That’s the earliest mention I’ve come across. It corresponds with…”

  He begins describing some kind of agricultural process, but I’m only half listening because I’m trying to figure out what reference he’s referring to. I haven’t spoken to him in months. He might have an impeccable memory, but I don’t. I can’t even remember the topic of our last conver—

  Oh.

  “You found a reference to a shadow-reader?” I ask.

  “Yes!” He looks up from the huge book in front of him and grins. “It’s 350 years earlier than Faem thought.”

  Faem, I think, was the previous archivist. The silver in Kavok’s eyes practically sparkles. His giddiness makes him seem even younger than he already looks. If he was human, I’d guess him to be in his midtwenties, so that means he’s probably pushing fifty, still a relatively young age for a fae. His hair is blond, just a few shades darker than Aren’s—most likely because he locks himself in here all day, every day—and it’s just long enough to be frazzled.

  In short, he’s the geekiest fae I know. I keep expecting him to push wire-framed glasses up on his nose.

  “What does it say about the shadow-reader?” I ask, interrupting his lecture on agricultural practices.

  “Oh, yes.” He clears his throat. “It doesn’t say this is the first shadow-reader, and I can’t validate the text’s authority, but it appears that there is little difference between his abilities and yours. The shadows only told him where a fae exited the In-Between, not where he entered it, and he, too, had to draw what he saw and name the nearest city or region out loud. But then, we come to a small discrepancy.”

  “Discrepancy?” I move closer to his desk, but he closes the text and rises.

  “Not with your abilities,” he says. “With ours. According to the author, only a few fae were able to fissure to the locations the shadow-reader mapped and named.”

  Now, that’s interesting.

  “Is it something fae learned to do over time?” I ask.

  “It’s implied that the fae who could follow the maps had more…er, more contact with humans.” Kavok doesn’t meet my eyes.

  “Sex?”

  He lifts a shoulder, says almost apologetically, “It’s implied.”

  Everyone who has the ability to fissure can make it to the locations I sketch, and since most of those fae would rather not touch a human at all, sex definitely doesn’t have anything to do with it.

  “That’s all I’ve discovered,” Kavok says. “I found the reference a few weeks ago, but you were…Well, you were…”

  “Things were different then,” I say, hiding a smile. It’s almost cute, how easily flustered he is. “I’m looking for Naito.”

  He seems grateful for the change of subject. “Of course. He’s there.”

  He points to an alcove that splits off from the main room.

  After he takes a seat at his desk, I walk toward the alcove he indicated, and there, sitting at a table heaped with papers, books, and a few boxes, sits Naito.

  He doesn’t notice me. He’s staring at whatever is in front of him. His left hand is clenched in his black hair, helping to hold his head up, and his forehead is creased. He’s wearing the same jeans and white T-shirt I saw him in a few days ago, and his shoulders are rounded and slumped. Oddly, though, he looks better than he did before. I can’t quite put my finger on why. Maybe it’s the lack of anger in his expression. Maybe it’s the amount of concentration, of focus, in the way his eyes move back and forth, reading, I presume. Or maybe it’s just the fact that he’s not demanding someone fissure him back to Earth so he can murder his father.

  “He
y,” I say when I reach his table.

  “Hey,” he responds without looking up. I wait a moment then, when he still doesn’t glance away from what he’s reading, I pull out the chair across from him and sit.

  My gaze sweeps across the table.

  “You can read this?” Everything is written in a jumble of symbols and marks. I can speak Fae fairly well now, but even if I had years to study, I don’t think I’d ever be able to make sense of their written language.

  “Kelia is teaching me,” Naito says.

  I bite my lower lip, unable to ignore the fact that he’s still talking about her in the present tense. “Naito—”

  “I understand enough to get by,” he says. His tone is firm, now, and his eyes have hardened.

  Everyone’s been tiptoeing around Naito these past two weeks. I don’t want to make him hurt any more than he already does, but I think it’s time someone convinces him that he’ll never see Kelia again. She’s well and truly gone.

  I ignore the way my throat burns when I swallow, then say, “Kelia would want—”

  “To be with me,” he interrupts again. There’s steel in his voice. It’s as if he’s daring me to claim otherwise. Before I can do just that, he turns the book in front of him around so that it’s right side up for me.

  “Banek’tan,” he says, pointing to a jumble of tiny lines.

  The word sounds familiar—I’m pretty sure it’s a type of magic—but I say, “I can’t read that.”

  He raises his eyes to meet mine. “It means ‘one who retrieves the departed.’ A banek’tan can bring Kelia back.”

  Really?

  I stare down at the book as an almost giddy feeling takes over me. A banek’tan could undo so much. With one’s help, Naito and Kelia can be together again. They can have their happy ending, and we could bring back the innocent fae who were caught up in this war: the merchants who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, the families who were burned inside their homes in Brykeld, the swordsmen on both sides of the war who were only following orders.