The Shattered Dark sr-2

by Sandy Williams

  I smile. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  Something inside me loosens. It’s nice to talk about something other than false-bloods and war, and that little part of me—the one that was so much bigger a month ago—that wants to retire resurfaces. I’m trying to get a job so I can support myself and have something that makes me feel human, but balancing two lives never worked in the past. I don’t know why I think it will work now. I could leave the Realm and the war behind. Lena would flip, but Aren would understand.

  We enter a residential wing of the palace. My room is here, though I still don’t use it very often. I prefer to stay in Vegas because I usually get more sleep there.

  I stop suddenly. I share my Vegas hotel room with Shane. How the hell could I have forgotten about him?

  “What?” Paige asks.

  I look over my shoulder at Trev, ignoring the sharp pain in my side when my torso just barely turns. “Did Shane make it out of the club?”

  A long pause, then, “Lena has someone looking for him.”

  They don’t know where he is. Damn it, I should have stuck around, looked for him before I left, but the club was crazy, and I’d caught a glimpse of Paige. Then the police officer was there…

  Shit. Shane was briefly in the building with the dead humans, too. His fingerprints might be there. He might be in a British jail.

  But that’s a better option than the alternatives. If he was trampled by the crowd or captured or killed by the remnants, I’ll feel at least partially responsible. He wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for me.

  “McKenzie?” Paige says.

  “It’s nothing. Here. This one’s empty.” I open a door that’s two rooms down from mine. It’s bigger than where I stay, more luxurious, too. A freestanding desk and sofa are arranged on the left side of the room. Two beds with silver, wrinkleless blankets are on the right. In between them is an open doorway to a bathroom. It’s dark in here, though. Only the light from the hallway allows me to make out the furniture.

  “Trev, could you…?”

  He mumbles as he enters the room. It doesn’t take more than five seconds for him to send his magic into the sconced orbs. They glow a soft blue, lighting up the room.

  “Thanks,” I tell him. “If you’ll do the same in Lee’s room.”

  “I’m staying here,” Lee says, walking inside.

  “The hell you are.” Paige crosses her arms. Trev mumbles something under his breath, then moves down the hall to the next room, leaving me to sort this out.

  “There are two beds,” Lee continues. “I think I can manage to not touch you.”

  “I don’t want to breathe the same air as you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Paige,” he says. “These fae aren’t your friends.”

  “You said the same thing about Tylan.”

  “And I was right about him,” he says, his voice rising. “He lied about McKenzie being a prisoner.”

  “Who’s Tylan?” I interject before they take each other’s heads off.

  “He’s the first fae I met,” she says. “After this asshole injected me with the serum, I went by your place just to make sure there wasn’t any truth to his crazy talk about faeries.”

  “Fae,” Lee corrects, taking off his cloak as if he actually thinks he’s going to stay here.

  Paige rolls her eyes, and continues, “I was going to file a police report, but when I was about to leave, Tylan fissured into your living room. He told me you needed help.”

  The way she says his name makes me think she likes him. Not in a romantic way but in the same way she likes all of her guy friends.

  “My living room?” I ask, thinking he could be the ward-maker who booby-trapped her purse. “So what happened at your apartment? It looked like there was a fight there.”

  She juts her chin out in Lee’s direction. “Him. He didn’t ask if I wanted to be injected. He just did it.”

  “I get it, Paige,” he says. “You hate me. You’ll never forgive me.”

  She turns on him. Paige angry is a scary sight. She’s a good foot shorter than Lee, but she gets right in his face and very loudly lists every reason he has no right to expect her to forgive him. I don’t blame her. If I knew nothing of the fae and someone injected me with something claiming it would let me see them, I’d be pissed off, too. But something makes me think there’s more to this. Sure, they appear to hate each other, but the way they’re staring each other down makes me think they’re seconds away from a kiss, not from clawing each other’s faces off. So, I focus on the ceiling, all but whistling, until I hear Paige say, “What are your daddy’s orders now? That’s who’s been texting you, right? He told you to murder your brother. What are you supposed to do afterward?”

  His dad has been texting him?

  “Shut up, Paige,” Lee says.

  Could he possibly still have his cell phone on him? We had to make a mad dash to the gate. After we fissured here, I so brilliantly ordered the fae not to touch him or Paige. Neither one of them have been searched.

  “Give it to me,” I order.

  Lee’s face hardens.

  Paige sits on the edge of one of the beds, wrinkling the cover. “He won’t let anyone touch it.”

  “Give it to me,” I say again.

  “I don’t have it,” he lies.

  I meet Paige’s gaze. I doubt I can get his cell away from him on my own, but with her help…

  She knows what I’m asking. “Go for it.”

  Now that I’m looking for the phone, I see the bulge in his left front pocket. My ribs aren’t going to love what I’m about to do, but I reach for it.

  As expected, he grabs my wrist. “I said I don’t have it.”

  I brace myself then ram my shoulder into him. It takes him by surprise. He staggers backward and loses his balance when he hits the bed.

  My ribs scream as I fall on top of him, but I get my hand in his pocket as he tries to fling me off. He’s too careful about it, though. He has the opportunity to hit me, and doesn’t take it. Kudos to him, having trouble hitting a woman, but I knee him in the side. He grunts, then grabs ahold of both my arms. That’s when Paige darts in and gets his phone.

  “Damn it, Paige.” He releases me to go for her, but she tosses the phone over his head.

  I catch it, then backpedal until I’m in the hallway.

  “What’s the problem?” Trev demands, drawn by the scuffling.

  “Keep him back,” I order. The phone is damp from Lee’s fall into the Thames. I’m afraid it might not work, but the screen turns on. Drawing in slow, shallow breaths, I bring up Lee’s text messages. I have to blink back tears to see the screen. My damn ribs hurt.

  Trev scowls at the phone, but keeps both humans from leaving the room. A quick glance tells me Lee’s given up the fight. Good. I can take my time reading.

  It pays off. We don’t need to send Naito back to Earth. His father—who does indeed want his brother to kill him—has a place in Boulder, Colorado. And I think I can make it easy for us to get it. I key in a text message. Lee doesn’t use any capitalization or punctuation when he types—it’s extremely annoying—but I force myself to leave out the commas and periods for authenticity’s sake. I just need one more thing, a picture to attach.

  “Where are you going?” Trev asks, as I walk away, holding my side.

  “I’m going to go get Naito to play dead.”

  NINETEEN

  I FIND NAITO in his room, flipping through a jaedric-bound sketchbook. He closes it when I enter. It looks nothing like the Earth-made sketchbook Lorn gave me in Nashville—the one filled with drawings of Kelia—but it reminds me of it just the same. I’m supposed to give it back to Naito. Problem is, it’s still tucked into the pocket of the cloak Aren made me take off in Rhigh. Aren fissured out with it when he told me to count to thirty. Presumably, that’s when he talked to Daron, the illusionist who created the fake lightning storm. Maybe it’s with him.

  I’m not about to mention the sketchbook
until I have it in my hand, so instead I ask what Naito’s reading when he closes the book. He says it’s a collection of notes he’s taken on the vigilantes, their names and where they’ve been seen before. I tell him about Lee and Nakano’s texts and about Boulder, and when I explain my plan, Naito agrees to it with only a grunt. I actually expected him to protest more, but I guess he doesn’t care because he’ll still be going back to Earth. He still thinks he’ll have a chance to kill his father. Of course, I don’t tell him what my prewritten text says. I wrote that the fae are burying Naito in Cleveland, Georgia. It’s kind of a random location, but that’s where the rebels had one of their safe houses. Nakano went all the way to Germany to kill fae before. I’m hoping he’ll want to do the same now and will leave his compound in Boulder.

  That’s what Naito calls it—a compound. He says it’s an abandoned ski resort, but it sounds like a military outpost. Nakano’s probably made it into one. He has the weapons, equipment, and camo to supply half an army. Add to that the fact that he and his people are extremely good at killing fae, and I’m a little worried about what we’ll find there.

  But we need to get to the serum and the research, so I slice open a roguia, a fruit with thick, bloodred juice, and squeeze it over Naito’s neck and chest. The picture I take with the phone comes out grainy and perfect—he really does look dead—and I just need to tell Lena and the others my plan, then have a fae fissure me to Earth so I can send the text and picture.

  I stop by my room first, though. I have to wash the human girl’s blood off my skin.

  I strip off my shoes, my clothes, the belt holding my dagger. The bath I take is cold—they always are unless I have a fae heat the water for me—but I don’t linger long, just long enough to scrub away the bloodstains. I can’t scrub away the guilt, though. The fae’s war has affected my world too much this last month. The girl in the club and the Sighted humans next door to it weren’t the first deaths. A little over two weeks ago, three humans died when King Atroth’s fae attacked a neighborhood near Vancouver. The neighborhood was home to a group of tor’um who sheltered the rebels. They were sane fae, born without the ability to use enough magic to fissure, but they were shunned by almost everyone else in the Realm. They moved to my world to start new lives in a place where they would be accepted. Only a Sighted human would know they were different. They weren’t harming anyone, but then Atroth attacked. He didn’t care who was caught in the cross fire. The war used to be almost completely limited to the Realm. It’s not that way anymore.

  I step out of the tub and dry off, taking care not to put any pressure on the side where my ribs are an angry purple. My favorite pair of jeans is still lying on top of my chest of drawers. I slip into them, nearly sigh at their perfect fit. The best option for a shirt is a long tunic. It’s white and dips low in the front, but with the jeans, it doesn’t look too foreign. Besides, I plan to only be in my world a few minutes, just long enough to text Naito’s father.

  I stick Lee’s cell phone into my pocket, then head to the throne room. Aren and Kyol are both there. So are Taber and a relatively large number of Kyol’s top swordsmen. I’m halfway to the dais at the other end of the room when I notice the latter are surrounding a fae.

  No, they’re surrounding a tor’um. The tor’um. The one who mistook me for Paige back in Spier. The one who almost became Atroth’s sword-master. She’s standing there with her wrists shackled in front of her, rocking back and forth, heel to toe, heel to toe. Her long hair is pulled back into a ponytail, then into a tight brown braid that drapes over her shoulder.

  As if sensing my presence, Aren turns toward me, and I swear his face pales. That’s when I notice he’s outside the group of fae. Like, way outside of it.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  Aren’s eyes close in a long blink. When he opens them, he looks at the tor’um, then back at me. “I’m sorry, McKenzie.”

  There’s so much regret in his voice that I would have to be an idiot not to put the pieces together. I freeze before I reach the group, and the stabbing pain in my side dulls to a distant ache when I realize that Aren did this. Aren turned this fae tor’um.

  When I first saw the woman back in Spier, Kyol told me she was made tor’um years ago. I assumed Aren had nothing to do with it because he wasn’t fighting King Atroth then. I didn’t know about his history with Thrain.

  It’s easier to ignore Aren’s past when I’m not directly confronted with it, but seeing what he’s done right in front of me and knowing that this woman isn’t the only person whose life he’s ruined makes me feel sick.

  “McKenzie,” Lena breaks into my thoughts. “I thought you’d be with your friend.”

  The tor’um turns to see who Lena is talking to, and when she spots me, her face lights up.

  “There you are!” she exclaims. She takes a step toward me, then stops. Her brow wrinkles in confusion and, in a completely different, almost disappointed tone, she says, “There you aren’t.”

  She’s looking for Paige, I realize, but the only thing I can think of to say is, “Why is she here?”

  “She was found skipping outside the wall,” Lena says. She turns back to the tor’um, her gaze taking the woman in head to toe. “Clearly, she wanted to be caught.”

  “Clearly!” the tor’um chimes in.

  “Why did you want to be caught, Brene?” Kyol asks in Fae. His voice is low, but gentle, and I get the impression that this Brene is someone he admired, someone he’s saddened to see in this state.

  She looks like a child concentrating when she frowns. She even has a slight pout to her lips. “I was looking for something.”

  “Were you looking for me?” I try, thinking maybe the remnants sent her to find Paige. Aren did this to her, not me, and I know this is unreasonable, but I feel like I owe the tor’um, like I’m obligated to help her because I’m involved with the fae who ruined her life.

  Brene squints at me, and I wonder if my pronunciation is off. Then, it’s like she’s looking through me. I glance over my shoulder, but no one is there. When I focus on her again, she shakes her head then tilts her head up to peer at the ceiling. Her demeanor feels off, more off than it was a second ago, at least. I think we might be losing her.

  “Brene?” I try using her name. Maybe it will help her refocus.

  Her coal gray eyes lock on me. “Un-Paige,” she says. “Tell them I dislike the bracelets.”

  “Bracelets?”

  She holds up her shackled wrists.

  “Can we—”

  “No,” Kyol, Lena, and Aren say in unison. Their responses are short and sharp, like taking off the shackles is the worst idea ever. Apparently, they all think Brene is dangerous, even in her semisane state.

  I’m not so sure they’re right, though. Without warning, she plops to the ground like a child and starts tracing the edge of the blue carpet runner. She’s babbling in Fae, something about lightning not being able to tell the difference between skin and sky, but she’s using such a singsong voice, I don’t know if I’m translating her correctly.

  Lena sits on the top step of her dais and watches Brene. Just for a moment, I think I glimpse pity in her eyes.

  “From what we’ve been able to learn from her,” she says, “the remnants don’t know about the serum. Naito will have time to track down his father.”

  The serum. Right. That’s the reason I’m here.

  “Are you planning to use it?” I ask.

  She draws in a slow breath, lets it out. “I would like to,” she says. “It will benefit us. It would benefit you, too, but if you are completely against it? Then, no. I won’t use it.”

  I don’t like that answer. I can’t be her moral compass. Kyol tried to be that for King Atroth, and he failed. He failed because the king had someone else whispering in his ear and because Atroth wanted to do what was expedient, not what was best for the fae. I need Lena to do what’s best for the fae and for my people.

  She must see my thoughts written on m
y face. “I know it’s wrong, McKenzie. I won’t involve your people unnecessarily. We still need to get the serum, though. The remnants might not feel the same way we do.”

  The knots in my stomach relax. “We’ll need to find and destroy the research, too, or someone might be able to reproduce it. But we don’t have to wait on Naito. I know where the serum is.”

  I show them the cell phone. No one gets close to it, of course, so I summarize the texts between Lee and his father. It’s better to think about this, about what we have to do, than to think about Aren and what he did.

  “All I need is for someone to take me to Earth, so I can send the text,” I finish. In my peripheral vision, I see Brene lie down flat on her back.

  “I’ll take you,” Aren says, stepping to my side.

  “No.” I don’t want to be near him right now. I need time to think, to process everything.

  “I’ll take you,” he says again, his voice harder this time. “It’ll be a quick trip. I think you can stand me for that long.”

  “Kyol can take me.”

  “He can’t heal you,” Aren counters. “Come on.”

  He places his hand on the small of my back before I protest again. The warmth of his palm is familiar. So is the firm, but gentle pressure he uses to urge me forward. He’s always touched me like this, even when I was doing everything in my power to get away from him, and I remind myself that he’s the same person he was five minutes ago. He’s the same person he was before I found out about his connection to Thrain. And, besides, I won’t fight with him here in front of Lena and Kyol.

  He trails slightly behind me as we leave the throne room and pass the palace’s administrative offices. I use the time and space to gather my thoughts. I need to figure out exactly what I’m doing with him. Just when I think I’m close to accepting his past, I learn something new. It’s a blow every time, and I don’t know how many more I can take.

  Outside, a bright sun warms what would otherwise be a chilly day. It feels good on my skin, and I soak it in, letting it ease some of the tension in my muscles. Aren moves closer to me now. Even though this is the most affluent area of the Inner City, it’s not 100 percent safe. Most of the high nobles have homes here. The eaves of the buildings are silver-trimmed even though we’re still inside Corrist’s silver walls. It’s purely something to show their status. They have money to throw away on things that aren’t necessities.