Thick smoke undulated around the two of us. Feathery threads wove between us, encircling us, binding us together. Senka watched all, her black eyes glittering.
The circle ceased all movement so abruptly, Senka gasped in surprise.
A hum arose, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere. My mother and the elders chorused into the sky. Blank eyes, white as clouds, looked into a world I had never understood.
I’d witnessed the sight and sound of the spirits more times than I could count. But the unnatural chill of touching the beyond never eased.
The hum turned to voices; voices that didn’t belong to my elders.
The spirits spoke.
“To find the answers you seek, you must travel beneath.”
23
To find the answers you seek, you must travel beneath.
The chant continued into my dreams that night, and remained with me as I awoke in the early dawn light, sandwiched on my tiny bed between Warren and Senka.
Sunlight cascaded over Senka’s smooth face. She’d begged to stay with me, and I had wanted Warren’s arms around me to banish the fear I felt over the spirits' insistent declaration. So I ended up between them. The arrangement had comforted me, and I slept through the night.
Senka had slept soundly for the first time since rising, and her body hadn’t lost its warmth. Maybe the real Senka—the girl she had been a hundred years ago, before she became a vessel for and against the darkness—was returning.
To find the answers you seek, you must travel beneath.
The answer rang loud and clear. To save the Hollow, I had to accompany Senka to the grave.
If I went with her into the tomb, would she go with me? Or the better question: Could I really sacrifice myself for the Hollow? For Senka?
I didn’t need a medicine man to tell me the answer was unequivocally yes. Senka had become more than just a concept or man-made deity. She was flesh and blood, so full of darkness but so innocent and sweet. I empathized with her lot, being forced into the ground by her mother to save her people from the greatest enemy we’d ever known. If my mother had her way, I’d be forced into the role of protector and problem solver for our tribe when she left this plane of existence.
I didn’t want to die anymore than I wanted to be chieftess. But at least if I died beside Senka, my death would mean something. I’d spent years chasing the shadow touched to protect the Hollow. Dying for it seemed the next logical step.
Warren’s arm tightened around my waist. His breath tickled my neck as he said softly, “I don’t like the look on your face.”
“What look?”
“Determination.”
“It’s my usual look. You should get used to it.”
His hand moved from my waist to my chin, and he gently turned my head until our eyes met. “You’ve made a decision I’m not going to like.”
My heart pounded beneath the intensity of his gaze. “I make a lot of decisions people don’t like. Always for a good reason.”
“You can’t.”
“I can. And I will. Senka can’t do it alone.”
“You have no obligation to this city,” Warren snapped.
I stared at him in surprise. Gone was his smirk and good-humor, replaced by fear and his own version of determination.
“I owe my life to this Hollow,” I told him. “I owe my life to Senka for getting us this far. We all do.”
Warren’s jaw tightened. “What about me?”
My heartbeat, already out of control, played a staccato that was almost painful. “What about you?”
He kissed me – desperate and thorough, and as PG as he could keep it, considering Senka slept behind me.
“What about us?” He whispered against my lips. His voice sounded as breathless as I felt: turned upside down and inside out.
I fought through emotions I couldn’t face. Not now, at the end when I’d chosen death. “I like you, Warren. If things…”
Gods, how cliché. If things were different. Why give him hope that things could be? Things couldn’t be different. It was too late for that. Senka was here. I was the one she chose.
For once in my life, I was destined for something I wanted to do.
“This was fun,” I finally said. I knew the moment the words passed by lips that they were so much the wrong ones.
Warren’s face hardened. His solid warmth disappeared, and he miraged out of existence, falling into his wormhole of time travel to escape me and my inability to be the woman he wanted.
On my other side, a soft, warm hand slipped into mine in solidarity.
After Mama fed us, Senka and I returned to Headquarters.
I tried not to think of driving the Charger into the city as driving a hearse to my own funeral. Senka seemed to understand the turmoil inside me, and she remained silent, giving me all the time in the world to convince myself I had chosen the right path.
I hadn’t told my mother. I thought maybe she understood when I kissed her goodbye – not something I usually did. The woman had just lost one child, and if I did this, she would lose another. Unfair, but necessary. If I died, Mai could live.
I parked at Headquarters and braced for the fight with Lila. She would rail and argue against us returning to the Hollow where Senka could hurt someone, and then she’d argue some more when I told her my plan. She could be hot-headed and egotistical, but she was also my friend.
We took the elevator. Senka didn’t bat an eye this time, and I didn’t give it a second thought. We were turning into pros.
Lila’s floor was silent and dim. Only a handful of office doors hung open, fluorescent lights illuminating hunched-back worker bees. Lila's tight-knit team generally raised a lot of noise and laughed like hyenas on workdays. It appeared half of them hadn't come to work, and the half that had were to shell-shocked to care.
The receptionist stood warily as we approached, and backed away, her gaze on Senka.
“She’s not here,” the girl told me, though her suspicious eyes remained glued to Senka.
“Where is she?” I asked. Lila wasn’t a morning person, so for her to sleep in or skip a few hours in the morning wasn’t out of the ordinary.
But the “state of emergency” should have been enough to get her lazy ass out of bed.
“You don’t know?” The receptionist finally tore her gaze from Senka and looked at me sympathetically. “She’s in the hospital.”
Dr. Webster met me at the door to Lila’s room as if the receptionist had alerted him to expect me. His brown face was haggard and pale, and his gray goatee sported a surrounding scruff of five o’clock shadow.
Of course Lila would have it in her contract for him to be her caretaker. She wouldn’t have trusted anyone other than the Coroner with her well-being.
“What happened?” I asked before he could speak.
He stepped back and widened the door, motioning us in. He nodded at Senka, apparently unconcerned by her presence.
Lila rested in a hospital bed, hooked to machines that beeped and whirred – proof she was still blessedly alive. Her vibrant, sun-kissed skin had gone colorless, though her fabulous golden hair spread in an arc over the pillow—the only spot of color in the room.
“She fell down the stairs,” Dr. Webster said quietly.
I crossed my arms. “Lila doesn’t take the stairs. Not even for me.”
Dr. Webster inclined his head but didn’t speak. His gaze flicked surreptitiously to the ceiling behind me.
I walked around the bed and took Lila’s cool hand. Keeping my face pointed to hers, I searched the ceiling in my periphery.
A camera. They’d installed a camera in Lila’s hospital room.
Why?
“She fell down the stairs.” I shook my head and forced a chuckle. “Silly girl. What are her injuries?”
Dr. Webster placed his body between the camera and Lila, facing me. “A broken clavicle, a broken femur, and a concussion.” His hand moved over her body, out of sight of the camera, t
o part her golden hair. He looked into my eyes. “The hit took place here. On a stair,” he added, then gave a slight head shake.
Not a stair. If not a stair... what hit Lila on the head?
Dr. Webster was a genius. He’d spent twenty years studying every death the Hollow had seen. If he said the fall hadn’t caused the concussion, and he was taking every step to tell me the truth without someone catching on...
Fuck. What was happening?
“Will she wake up?” I’d been too caught up in the subterfuge for the situation to sink in. Until I spoke those words. Sharp, hot anguish rose in my throat.
“Only time will tell.” He launched into an explanation of concussions, one I had heard a thousand times and could have recited in my sleep. He knew that. He wasn’t sharing it with me because he thought I would have forgotten.
He was sharing it to give him time to reach out and gently lift one delicate eyelid on Lila’s hauntingly beautiful face.
My breath caught in my throat.
Lila was shadow touched.
24
Dr. Webster’s cleverness always surprised me. But not as much as the rock-solid proof that the Reina of Senka Hollow had fallen to darkness.
Through simple questions that any loved one might ask, I learned that Dr. Webster hadn’t told anyone his theory on the concussion, nor had he mentioned her condition. No one knew she was shadow touched.
No one knew she’d probably been knocked out before being pushed down the stairs.
I needed to talk to Senka, and the only place I knew to be safe from prying eyes was Lila’s office.
The receptionist did the same awkward two-step away from Senka as we sailed through the lobby, but I ignored her. Senka gave the girl a wide grin, almost as if taunting her. I laughed. She was finding her sense of humor, buried beneath all that darkness.
I locked the door behind us, and motioned for Senka to take a seat in the chair I usually occupied. For the first time ever, I circled the desk and sat in Lila’s massive seat.
“Did you see that?”
Senka nodded.
“Do you understand what it means? To be shadow touched?”
The princess nodded again.
“Can you fix her?” My voice cracked.
Sadness graced her face. Senka opened her palms as if to say, I don’t know.
“If I thought I knew a way we could right things, would you come with me? Together. You and me.”
Senka put a hand on her heart and closed her eyes. “My destiny.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t want you to save the Hollow unless you believe it is worth saving. Right now, I’m not certain who’s an ally and who’s an enemy here. I have a feeling things are going to get worse.”
Senka’s eyes opened. “You are worth saving.”
“But I will be with you,” I reminded her.
“Your life... family...” Senka struggled with her words in her raspy, unused voice. “You believe Hollow worth save. I believe in you.”
“Why?”
“I see you... soul. It... pure.”
My skin raised in goosebumps. I reached across the desk and took Senka’s hand. “I see your soul, too. And it is pure. Even in the darkness, it is pure.”
In my early days as an agent, I’d attended a few council meetings for some of my more “high profile” apprehensions. Prominent members of the community were given a full council hearing before their sentence was declared and punishment decided. After the first two dozen times, listening to the canned declarations and watching every single person or fae be given the death sentence, I stopped going. My presence wasn’t needed, and I had enough death on my hands without being privy to the others.
I hadn’t given Warren another thought since he disappeared from my bed that morning. Not because he didn’t mean anything to me; he did. I liked him a lot. Maybe I cared about him and his stupid humor and that sexy grin. But even beyond my personal feelings for Warren, I’d begun to believe there was more to him than just what he believed. Senka’s darkness had no effect on him. He didn’t have walls like me or my mother. But he could touch her, even sleep in the same bed with her, and be completely unaffected by her presence.
What could that mean for our people? The darkness was out there—it would always be out there. Senka could only do so much to keep us safe, which meant people would continue to court danger and die.
But a niggling idea had blossomed: what if it were his special condition that allowed him to survive the darkness? He’d remained the same for years, not growing any darker like most. Could it be because of his parents? One normal, one shadow touched?
He watched me from the gathered crowd in the back of the room. I had no idea how he’d known we had requested a council meeting, though I assumed it had something to do with dabbling between minutes and seconds like an artist of time and space.
Everett called the meeting to order with a single ring of his bell. The council, seated on either side of him and uneven with Weston’s empty chair, hushed their conversations and faced us.
Senka held my hand, giving me the calming presence I needed to tell my government that I could fix things if they’d let me sacrifice myself.
Everett looked down his nose at me with his usual disdain. I thought of the times Lila had told me of their fights; the times she’d looked at me with bruises on her skin.
Dr. Webster, gently touching the knot on her head and telling me without words that someone had done it.
NO. Oh, gods. Oh, Senka.
Everett had tried to kill Lila. It only took one sneer from him for me to see it.
“Why are you here, Nez?” the Rein barked. “We’re in a state of crisis, and you bring that thing before us.”
My astonishment over the puzzle pieces clicking together dissipated. I straightened and crossed my arms, biting back my accusations. “I want permission to return to the tomb with Senka. If I go, she’ll go. And maybe we can fix things together.”
Everett laughed. “What makes you think you have anything it takes to hold back the dark?”
Senka squeezed my hand, stopping my retort. “I know it,” she rasped. “Sisters.”
The council collectively gasped.
I managed to hold mine in, but my surprise was no different. What was she saying? That I descended from Rasha?
I felt Warren’s gaze on my back.
“The tomb is in pieces,” Everett said, as if Senka hadn’t spoke. His council hadnt forgotten, though. They watched Senka in fascination. Seeing her for the first time as a living, breathing fae, maybe.
“Actually, it’s not,” Councilwoman Meade corrected. “The Reina ordered its reparation within hours of its destruction. Our maintenance team has already completed the job.”
“She did?” Everett’s knuckles whitened on his pen. “How forward-thinking she is.”
I didn’t deal with the Rein much, but I’d noticed a pattern with him: if Lila did something first, her actions pissed him off. I had a feeling he didn’t like how the people relied more heavily on Lila than they did on him.
“We will need some time to convene privately and discuss the matter,” Everett spoke again, smoothly covering his prior irritation.
Councilwoman Meade lifted a gray eyebrow. “What is there to discuss, Rein? Maurelle is offering us a solution to the problem. Senka herself endorses the solution.”
“Because we do not make decisions in this chamber without discussion!” Everett barked. His blond hair had come loose from its bun, and fell into his crystal eyes. His eyes had a taste of wildness to them, as if the councilwoman’s question had unhinged him.
As the crowd exited the council chamber, I searched faces for Warren, only to find he’d done another disappearing act. I tried not to care that he was mad at me. I failed.
Senka and I sat on a bench outside the chamber doors. She still held my hand, an anchor to here and now, but also to the past.
A tall, thin woman with frizzy yellow hair and a ha
ggard face approached us. She clutched her pocketbook to her navel, her red nails worrying at the aged leather. She met my gaze. “May I... may I speak to her?”
Taken aback, I nodded. “Be my guest. Just don’t touch her.”
The woman fell to her knees at our feet. “Princess. It is an honor. My mother met you when you came to us. She spoke of her encounter with you for the rest of her life. You told her to never give up, because she was destined to be a mother. She was 49 when she finally gave birth to me. I owe you my life.”
The woman ignored my instructions and reached out to touch Senka’s bare toes.
Before I could speak, Senka laid her hand on my bare arm and gave a minute shake of her head. “Walls,” she whispered over the woman’s tears. “Use your walls.”
I bricked up one-by-one, encompassing me and Senka. I’d never tried to protect another person before, much less created a wall to keep the darkness in rather than out.
But it worked.
Senka leaned forward and gently took the woman’s shaking hands from the floor. She helped her sit up and looked her in the eye. “You owe... me nothing.”
A crowd had gathered during the interaction. The woman thanked Senka and walked away, wiping tears from her smile, and a young man approached.
As the council deliberated behind closed doors, Senka spoke in her raspy, halting way to every person who came to kneel at her feet. I remained silent beside her, my hand on the bare skin of her back above the neckline of her dress so that I could hold our walls in place.
When the chamber door opened again, Senka was speaking in low tones to an older woman with long gray braids. Everett stepped into the hall.
“Nez. A word.” He nodded at Senka. “Privately.”
“I can’t leave her.”
The older woman kneeling at our feet patted my knee. “I’ll sit with her, love. It would be my honor.”
Relics and Runes Anthology Page 14