by D. N. Hoxa
“Thank you,” I said to Faceless.
She nodded, her focus still on the unconscious men on the floor. “It’s what I’m here for. Are they dead?”
I shook my head. “Only asleep.”
“Why? Can you not kill with your magic?” Her eye, black as the night outside, analyzed my face.
“I can, but killing isn’t necessary. They were just following orders. They’re with the Guild.”
“I see,” Faceless breathed and continued to look at the men, never letting go of her strange violin, as if she were expecting them to wake up any second. But if they did, I’d put them under again.
When we’d come back to Julie’s, she’d offered a room to Faceless, too. I don’t know how they’d heard the intruders, but I was glad she’d found them before they found me upstairs, asleep and vulnerable.
“They must have known you were here. How? Who else knows?” Julie said to herself, then looked at me. “Signora Vera.”
“I doubt she told the Guild about me. She wants the Eye too much.” At least that was what I wanted to believe.
“It is no longer safe here,” said Hiss. “You must relocate.”
“And go where?” I didn’t have a home here in the New Orleans Shade. I didn’t have a home anywhere anymore.
When the door opened outside in the hallway, my magic rushed out of me in search for hearts to stop before I could even panic. A second later, Mandar and Lola came through the door and froze in place when they saw Faceless. I couldn’t blame them. I’d done the same at the sight of her.
“Elo says they’re with the Guild,” Julie said, making her way toward Mandar, ignoring the shock on his and Lola’s face. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him deeper into the room.
Mandar didn’t look like he’d been sleeping, but his shirt was wrinkled and the bags under his eyes were more pronounced than I’d ever seen them before. He hadn’t slept for a while, it seemed.
“Hey, down here,” Julie said when Mandar refused to look away from Faceless. She leaned down and turned all three of the men over on their backs so we could see their faces.
“Who’s that?” Mandar asked instead, pointing his hand at Faceless.
“That is Faceless,” I said. “She’s a friend. I know this man, Mandar. He works for the Guild.” I pointed at the man with the familiar face. He looked so different asleep like that.
Finally, Mandar saw me and was actually surprised. Then he rubbed his face and dropped on one knee to look at the men.
While he did, Lola finally entered the room. Behind her, I could see a shadow of someone with curly hair in the hallway. Charlotte was up, too.
“Where did you get that mask?” she asked Faceless. “Where can I get one, too?”
Even though my heart still raced, I couldn’t help a smile. “I had it made especially for me. The man who made it is dead, I’m afraid.” Faceless didn’t sound like she was joking, but Lola didn’t mind.
“And what about that? What does that sound like?” She was looking at the strange violin in Faceless’s hand.
“Death,” Faceless said, her voice light as air.
“They’re with the Guild, all right,” Mandar said, standing up. “This is Pauls. He’s a detective with the Poison and Disease Unit, but the other two are not detectives. They’re hired help.” He kicked the first on the shoulder lightly. He was the biggest of the three, with blond hair and a chin wider than his temple. “I don’t know their names, but I’ve seen their pictures. They’re called agents, and the Guild only uses them for undercover missions.”
“Meaning?” Julie said impatiently.
“Missions they don’t want anybody to know about,” Mandar clarified. “And it usually involves doing illegal stuff. The Guild offers deals to criminals all the time for things like this.”
He didn’t need to say more. Hiss was right. We needed to leave right away.
“How did they find me? Have you spoken to anyone?” I asked Mandar.
“Of course not.” He looked offended at my question for only a second. Then, he must have remembered that he had already betrayed me once and lowered his head.
“We haven’t, Elo,” Lola said. “Nobody found out from us.”
“Well, somebody said something,” Julie said. “Now I have the fucking Guild in my house!”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said reluctantly. “They know—that’s what counts. Julie, thank you so much for letting me stay here, but Hiss is right. We have to leave.”
“Where are you going to go?” she cried, slamming her hands on her thighs. Only then did I realize that she was wearing black satin pajamas. I had no idea what time it even was, but it must have been the middle of the night.
“You can come over to our place.” Lola looked at Faceless. “You, too.”
“That’s the second place they’ll look.” If the Guild knew I was here, they also knew who I was. They knew that I’d stayed with Mandar, I was sure of it. I swallowed hard. “We need a new place. The Shade will help.” I had no idea if the Shade would help or not, but it was the only choice I had. “I’m really sorry, Faceless, but I can’t stay here.”
“Don’t worry about me.” With her violin and bow in hand, she walked out of the room without another look our way.
“What are we going to do about them?” Julie cried, pointing at the bodies of the men on the floor. Then: “To bed, Charlotte!” The sound of footsteps rushing toward the stairway sounded exactly like the beating of my heart.
“Leave it to me,” Mandar said. “I’ll take care of it.” He stepped closer to me, concern filling his whiskey brown eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to come over? It’s safe—I promise you.”
I shook my head. Even if I could trust him like that again, I wouldn’t put his daughter in danger a second time. “We’ll be fine. Just try to find out what the Guild knows. I’ll be in touch.”
I offered a smile to Lola and made my way upstairs to gather my things. It was time to leave yet another place behind, and the saddest thing was that I had already gotten used to it.
Chapter 17
Chapter
* * *
Ten minutes later, we walked out the back door of Julie’s house. She kept silent while she led us through her beautiful garden and to the fence door. I don’t know why I had the feeling that I would never see it again, but I tried not to think about it.
“If you need anything…” Julie said when we were outside on the street.
“I know,” I told her. “Thank you.”
It was difficult not to feel like a failure when I saw the hopelessness in her eyes. Even more so when I could feel the weight of Faceless’s eye on my face. The judgment in it. I’d dragged her from her home only to put her out on the street with no idea where to go next. She had her backpack and the black box of her violin with her, and I knew in my heart that she’d already regretted having come with me—and having agreed to help me.
Hiss was wrapped around my torso, but his warmth did nothing to calm me for once.
I had never felt more alone.
Lola’s eyes were filled with tears when she hugged me. “How will we keep in touch? You don’t have a phone.”
“I know where you live. I’ll find you when I need you,” I promised her because I couldn’t say that I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that the Guild had somehow found out where I was, and I needed to disappear.
We turned to leave, Faceless and I, the silence between us as thick as a concrete wall. Nobody else was around us. Dawn was minutes away.
But Faceless stopped walking. We hadn’t reached the end of the street yet when she did. I wanted to ask her if she was okay, but suddenly, she turned her head and looked back to where we had come from. I did, too.
Julie and Lola were still there by the fence, looking at us.
But behind them was someone else, and he was riding a horse made of white light.
Dropping the bag with my few clothes in it, I started to run before
the second was over.
“Run!” I shouted at Julie and Lola, who were still clueless about what was coming from the other side of the street. My magic shot out of me, searching for a heart to stop.
The last man I’d seen riding an animal made of light had been a sidhe. They commanded light the way the fae commanded the power of seasons, and the closer to them I got, the clearer I saw—all ten sidhe standing behind the horse of light and its master.
Julie and Lola had already disappeared inside the fence door, but they hadn’t closed it. The sidhe had seen me running to them, and now they’d stopped. The man sitting atop the light horse wasn’t one I’d seen before. I didn’t know whether to be glad that it wasn’t the leader from the battle a few nights ago or not. For all I knew, this man could be even more powerful.
I didn’t bother with my knives at all at that point. I just let my magic wrap tightly all around his heart, and I held it there, a part of me hoping that they’d turn around and leave. Why would they? That they were here was a clear indicator of what they wanted, but I still wanted to believe.
“Check if there are more,” I whispered to Hiss, and without a word, he immediately moved down to my legs and onto the ground.
“Our commander would like a word with you, elf,” said the sidhe atop the light horse. It looked so real, almost a copy of Mace’s horse. I’d only ever ridden it twice, and it had been dark, but I remembered. This one looked like the ghost version of it.
“So why isn’t he here himself?” I asked. My voice was strong. I was not afraid. So long as these were the only ones who’d come, I could take them. Only the more powerful were hard to kill. The rest of the sidhe were just as easily manipulated by my magic as everybody else.
“You will come with us now, with or without will,” said the sidhe, his voice strange, his accent thick. He never attempted to get off his horse, but the other ten behind him stepped forward.
“Leave now, while you can,” I said, even though I knew what the answer would be.
The sidhe were not going to leave. They were here for me. Minutes after the Guild officer and agents had found me in Julie’s house.
What were the odds?
The sound of the strange violin that took over the night made me shiver. The air was instantly colder as the music traveled past me and toward the sidhe. Faceless was only a few feet behind me, and Julie, Lola, Charlotte, and Mandar were there, too. They all had swords in their hands, except for Mandar. He was shirtless.
But he wouldn’t need to shift. Faceless was playing her music, and she could…
She could…
The sidhe kept on coming.
I risked a glance behind me to see Faceless playing her violin, her eye focused on the sidhe, her expression, what I could see of it, confused.
The sidhe ran.
Skin ripped. Charlotte was already running for the first one. I squeezed the heart of the sidhe on the light horse with all my strength. If he died, the soldiers would retreat. Without a guide, they would have no other choice.
Pulling out my knives from the back of my waistband, I shot forward, too, my eyes on Charlotte as she was about to make contact with the first sidhe, my magic still focused on the other.
The light horse blinked twice before it disappeared completely, and the sidhe hit the ground on his back.
Charlotte never got to fight the sidhe she was running to, now barely three feet away from her.
Whooshes in the air. A knife appeared in the sidhe’s forehead with so much precision, you’d think it was placed there by magic. The rest stopped running at the same time, and so did we.
While the knives came, seemingly out of everywhere at the same time, the other sidhe tried to look around, to find the source of the attack. I wanted to look, too, to defend myself, but the heart of the sidhe leader had almost stopped beating. I couldn’t let myself be distracted now.
Within five seconds, it was over. All sidhe, even the two who’d turned around to run away, ended up on the ground with knives buried in their foreheads.
The silence was deafening. We were all looking up, toward the roofs of the buildings around us, because those knives had come from somewhere above.
At first, I thought it would be the girl dressed in black, the Shadow sidhe who’d saved my life once. Maybe Hiss had found her again and she’d agreed to help?
But Hiss was on the ground, by my feet, just as confused as me.
And the man who slowly walked over to the edge of the roof of the two-story building to my right was most definitely not a Shadow sidhe.
He was fae.
Daredevil squatted and looked down on us, never saying a single word. We were all too stunned to say anything back, so all we did was stare for a little while. Was he the one who’d told the Guild about me? Was he the one who told the sidhe?
I doubted it; otherwise, all ten of them wouldn’t be on the ground with his knives buried in them. The eleventh, who’d been on the horse, was already dead. My magic had stopped his heart completely. And the rest…
“I’m going to cut off some heads now,” Lola said from my side, and holding both her swords over her shoulders, she made her way toward the sidhe decorating the ground.
“May I?” Charlotte asked Julie who couldn’t look away from the fae up on the rooftop. All she did was nod, and Charlotte happily followed after Lola with her Heivar sword in hand.
When I was able to catch my breath, I put my knives away and walked closer to the building he stood upon. Mandar and Julie were right behind me.
“Thank you,” I said to the fae. I couldn’t see his face—he was too far up and it was dark, but it was him. I knew the way he stood. He’d thrown those knives the same way at the Circus for his act.
When he stood up, I thought he was going to turn around and disappear, but instead, he jumped.
Two stories high was high enough to make anybody hesitate, even me, but not the fae. He jumped like he would from two stairs up instead, and he landed on one knee three feet away from me. When he came up and pulled the hood of his jacket off, I was relieved to see his face and his green hair.
“Who’s that?” Mandar and Julie asked at the same time.
“This is Daredevil,” I said and offered the fae my hand. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Again? What do you mean, again?” Julie asked.
“A word, if I may?” Daredevil said, nodding his head toward the street, where Charlotte and Lola were apparently done cutting off the heads of the sidhe. They’d even cut off the head of the one I’d killed. Lola was very bloodthirsty.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to the others and followed Daredevil with Hiss right behind me. “That was impressive. I could have sworn the knives were coming from the other side, too.” I doubted he could have jumped from one side of the street to the other. The street was at least thirty feet wide.
“A little bit of magic does the trick,” the fae said, and when he felt we were far enough from the others, he stopped. “You spoke the truth.”
I smiled. “I usually do.”
“They bleed purple,” he said matter-of-factly, waving another one of his small knives behind me, where the sidhe bodies were on the ground, but he never looked away from my face.
“They still bleed. And die.”
“So, you really are Elo Heivar, the Pain Seeker.”
I nodded. “And you really never miss a mark.”
He grinned and his face brightened up instantly. “If you are the heir to the Heivar throne, I have a proposition for you.”
Music to my ears. “I would love to hear it.”
Slowly, he raised his left hand and pulled at the leather tie around his neck. He grabbed the witch stone between his fingers and looked at me once more through the tiny hole. I’d drank the potion Julie had given me from Signora Vera before going to bed that night, and I had no doubt that it would hold. But I still felt naked to be looked at like that.
“You want your home back, and so do
I. I help you kill the purple-bloods, and you help me rebuild it.” He said it so fast, I was afraid I’d missed a word.
“Rebuild your home?”
“The Spring Court that you destroyed,” he said with a nod. “I will have all the manpower of House Heivar at my disposal to rebuild my castle from its ruins.”
Pain laced his every word. I felt it as if it were mine to feel, and my magic was hungry for it. It was complicated pain, mixed with regret, grief, and with a lot of guilt. And it made me see dark spots in front of my eyes for a second.
“You’re a Spring fae,” I whispered the obvious.
The Spring Court had been wiped out by the elves years ago. So many lives were taken that day, and my House’s army had been there, too. We’d lost a lot, but they’d lost everything. The entire land of the Spring Court had been burned to the ground, and every Spring fae who’d survived had fled.
I’d cried for days for Gaena. I felt it had lost a piece of itself because I believed that we all, fae and elf, were part of it. An entire Court gone, just like that.
And now I was looking this man in the face, and I felt so shameful.
“I’m sorry,” I choked, the words as bitter as the poison I was once fed.
“Don’t blush,” the fae said. “It’s already history. I don’t want to dwell on the past. I want to focus on the future.”
My cheeks were still burning. “Because of us, you don’t have one.”
“Because of you, we will again,” Daredevil said and stepped a bit closer to me.
“Are you of the Spring royals?”
“I am. My father was King. I shall take his place now that all of my family is dead,” he whispered.
“But why us? There are three other Courts, your own kind who can help you rebuild—”
He didn’t let me finish.
“And have them own us for the rest of time?” He flinched. “I don’t think so. To ask the other Kings for help is to admit that my Court belongs to them. To ask for the help of elves would be ridiculous but to ask it as payment for a service?” The look in his dark eyes was victorious. “I can’t build a kingdom myself, and you’re the ones who destroyed it. It’s only fair that you build it again.” He leaned even closer, and it was all I could do not to step away. “Do I need to remind you of all the lives lost?”