I touched Sirius’s pale cheek, poking it like the little girl had. “You’re here?”
He brushed my hand away. “Unfortunately, I am the only one here who can pull you from his thrall.”
He took my hand and pulled, breaking the illusion’s hold and pulling me into motion.
“Arran?”
“Already outside.”
We passed beneath crumbling glass walls. Shards cracked under my boots. Was that an illusion too, or was the glass palace really tumbling to the ground? From Sirius’s grim expression, I guessed it was real. Saru fled out of the gates, running alongside the fae. Even if Oberon survived this, his reign as king would not. Eledan was in control now.
“The saru…” I yanked out of Sirius’s grasp and turned back toward the palace. “Eledan and I had a deal…”
“If you go back in there, he’ll wrap you in illusions. I doubt he’d even see you before it was too late. You’ll be a creature bent to his whims.”
“But Sirius, all of this is for them.”
“And there will be time to save them.” He gripped my shoulders. “Understand this: Eledan was forgotten by Faerie for over a thousand years. He suffered great pain and anguish in that time. Everything he’s ever loved turned its back on him. He is not thinking clearly. If you go back inside the palace, I will be forced to follow, and I cannot stand against him. Do you wish to be his puppet? Because that is what he will make you, and likely me along with you.”
Something inside crashed, and a blood-chilling wail rose. I might have been able to temper Eledan but not with Sirius by my side, and I couldn’t shake his stubborn protection.
But he was right. This was not the time to confront him.
Sirius’s carriage waited, its flaming horses pawing the earth. I climbed inside, saw Arran unconscious in the corner, and fought the urge to go to him.
Sirius closed the door and rapped on the carriage walls, jolting us into motion.
The screams and howls faded behind the clatter of carriage wheels and the clop of hooves. My eye was drawn to the darkness outside the carriage windows. It seemed serene, as though Faerie Herself were shocked by Eledan’s awakening.
He would come for me. Our deal remained. But for now, as Oberon’s reign collapsed like the glass castle he’d ruled from, I settled back in Sirius’s carriage and let him take me away from the madness of the sidhe court.
I could have killed the king. I could have wrapped my whip around his neck and choked the life out of him, but Eledan had stopped me. Why?
Arran mumbled. His closed eyes twitched as he dreamed. Sirius had thrown his cloak over him sometime during the journey, but I’d been too lost in my thoughts to notice.
“The roses had their fill,” the guardian explained without my having to ask. “Give him time to recover.”
The roses had taken much from me too. I felt the absence of love keenly, and I knew I should hate Eledan for all the things he had done, but I felt nothing besides cool acceptance. “Does it wear off?”
“Yes.”
The Dreamweaver was free. Oberon had fallen, exactly as I’d wanted. So why had a sense of dread settled over me? Why did I feel as though Eledan had maneuvered me like a game piece to the exact position he needed me in? And I wasn’t the only one he’d used.
“Did I do the right thing, Sirius?” The moment the words were free I wished I hadn’t asked, but it was too late to take them back.
The guardian continued to stare out the carriage window. Seconds passed. His cheek twitched. “Only time will tell.” He sensed me watching and turned his head. Doubt haunted his eyes and fear too. “Rest,” he said. “This is far from over.”
Chapter 24
Marshal Kellee
* * *
Faerie’s colorful system swirled and rippled hypnotically outside Shinj’s observation window. Even inside the ship, I felt the magnetic pull on my vakaru senses, reminding me of how the vakaru were conceived by Oberon here. Humans, saru, namu… we could deny it all we liked, but we were all Faerie’s children.
“There are more horrors here than anywhere else in the four systems,” Talen said. He’d arrived by my side minutes ago and silently watched Faerie’s starscape fill the window.
I jerked an eyebrow at the statement. I’d seen horrors, most of them in war. Faerie would be hard-pressed to beat the tek-and-gore-strewn battlefields.
He folded his arms and tilted his head, his face a precisely guarded mask.
“How long has it been since you were last here?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed. “Long enough to fear my return.”
“You were the Nightshade when they drove you off?”
He nodded. “I was.”
With his power diminished and his motives changed, he wasn’t the Nightshade any longer. Perhaps returning to Faerie would change that or change him back? I hoped not, for all our sakes. I did not relish the thought of having Talen as an enemy.
Shinj had sailed us closer to the planet at Faerie’s heart. On its surface, rainbow colors swirled and mixed into storms of magic, beautiful but unpredictable and deadly.
“You feel it?” he asked. “Its pull?”
“Yeah.”
“Faerie gets under your skin and makes you fall in love with Her until you’ll do anything. It’s a madness all fae are infected with. I see that now. It is the planet’s survival mechanism. I would still be like them if Oberon hadn’t driven me out, and if you hadn’t kept me from going back.”
Did he know he was describing his own powers to infect human minds with thoughts and emotions? He looked over. We shared a silent glance, and he looked away again. Yeah, he knew what he was and what he could do, and he knew how dangerous coming back here was for all of us. It would be too easy for him to fall for Faerie all over again.
“Perspective is a wonderful thing.” I had loved the fae too. We all had, and most still did.
I could only hope Kesh had resisted.
Talen tilted his head again. “There’s a disturbance at the palace. Shinj is picking up substantial energy spikes from the surface.”
“Consistent with what?” What were we talking here? Weapons fire? Riots? I peered at the planet, but at our distance, it all looked normal.
“Magic use and a lot of it.”
“The polestar?”
“There have been small flares of polestar activity in the past few days, but the disturbance at the palace seems… different.”
Squinting at the swirling orb didn’t help determine what was going on down there. “The ship can tell all that from this distance?”
“All magic leaves a residue. Something as powerful as the polestar lingers, upsetting Faerie’s balance.”
I frowned at the pretty marble suspended in a glittering starscape, feeling grossly out of my depth. Claws and swords I could do. But magic? “We need to get down there and find out what’s going on before we rush in. Can this ship cloak itself from fae?”
Talen listened or asked or did whatever he did when he mentally spoke to the ship. “Yes.”
The tek leviathan in our wake could cloak itself for a few days, so long as Pierce cooperated. She didn’t have much choice if she wanted her crew to survive this. And there was always Talen’s touch to keep her in line.
“Bring Shinj in low over the disturbance, and let’s see what’s going on,” I said. “If you pick up any more polestar flares, let me know?”
He nodded.
Restless energy buzzed through my veins, threatening to spring my claws free. I needed to focus and war up if I was going to survive a planet full of fae without losing control. Here, on Faerie, I needed to be the warlord again, not the marshal. That lawman had no business among the fae. I headed for the door.
“Kellee?”
“Yeah…”
Talen stood at the window, backlit by all of Faerie’s colors. “On our return trip to Calicto, I dreamed of Kesh.”
Here it came, the moment he realized I’d invited Eledan int
o his head.
My stride slowed.
“She’s strong. She likely threw her whip around anything that stood in her way and brought it to its knees.”
I knew that—I did—but for one thing: the Dreamweaver and his deals, his strange confidence, and his prophetic words. His dreams haunted me, stalking my doubts and turning them over and over until I couldn’t shake the bastard’s mind games. Kesh could fight Faerie’s magic, but I remembered all too well what Eledan had done to her mind. She was tough, strong, brave, and brutal on the outside, but in her head, she had no defense against him. None of us did.
“When we get her back,” Talen continued, “and we will, you should tell her.”
I didn’t have to ask what. Apparently, my love for her was as obvious as the star on my chest. “I know.”
“We love her. She knows it. But you’re the one she needs to hear it from.”
“I know,” I grumbled again, bumping a fist against the doorframe and looking back at my friend. How was it that the most dangerous creature the unseelie had ever produced—besides me—was also one of the most astute and caring? He had changed. We’d all changed. “I will. Now, let’s go get our messenger.”
Chapter 25
Kesh
* * *
The carriage rocked to a halt, waking me from a light sleep. Strange images of darkness and reaching hands, of Eledan falling and Oberon rising, ghosted in front of my eyes until reality melted them away. Eledan was likely too busy screwing with his brother’s head to consider visiting my dreams.
Sirius climbed from the carriage, and Arran jolted awake beneath my touch and scrambled to dig himself deeper into the corner.
“It’s okay…”
The fear in his eyes passed in a blink. He looked around, took it all in, and slumped. “Where are we?”
I nodded out the door where Sirius walked along an amber-hued forest path toward a huge grassy knoll.
We climbed down from the carriage.
“What’s he doing?” Arran asked, jerking his chin toward Sirius.
Sirius had stopped at the knoll and was gesturing with his tek arm, too far away for me to hear his words. “He appears to be waving at a hill.”
“Huh.” Arran started forward.
I followed, keeping my hand locked at my side, resisting the urge to reach out and touch him. “You okay?”
“Sure.” His over the shoulder smile was too quick.
He clearly wasn’t okay. “You’re safe now.”
“I know…” He then stopped. “I just… Never mind.” A few more steps and he stopped again. “I don’t understand, Kesh… any of it.”
Critters snickered and chirped in the trees, retelling the tale of how the crystal palace had fallen. I waited for him to speak.
“I did everything right, and he was going to kill me for it.”
That was a saru’s life in a sentence. Arran’s wrought expression chipped some of the armor off my heart. Nothing I said would make it any easier to comprehend, and soon the impact from the roses would wear off and he’d feel all again. I wondered what was worse: to feel and hurt or not to feel at all.
I touched his shoulder and gave it a friendly squeeze. “We’ll figure it out.”
A rumbling dislodged a few leaves from the trees, and Sirius descended into a new hole in the hill that hadn’t been there moments before. “I guess we’re going underground.”
Arran and I followed Sirius down a steep flight of steps into a tunnel reminiscent of the one we’d uncovered on Hapters. It soon grew larger than the one on Hapters and took on a smoother, architecturally deliberate appearance. When we reached a wall of black stone with fae words scrawled across its surface, the similarities with the tunnel on Hapters became too many to shrug off as coincidence.
Sirius noticed my frown. “You didn’t ask my opinion on Hapters, so I didn’t tell you it was a Faerie knoll you’d found sealing off the dark fae.”
A Faerie knoll? “What is a knoll exactly?”
In answer, he touched the door, and I almost flinched, expecting dark fae to explode out like they had on Hapters. Instead, the seal cracked, and the heavy black stone groaned inward.
Faelights bloomed, illuminating a huge pillared hall. In the distance, arched doorways led to golden, twinkling rooms that seemed to stretch on and on.
Sirius’s mouth carried a tiny smile. “Welcome to an Autumnlands knoll.” He strode inside. “It will rearrange itself to our needs once we’ve been in residence for a few days. Until then, don’t wander too far. The knoll has been known to take visitors on a merry chase. Unfortunately, it forgets mortals need food and water to survive.”
Oh.
I looked for signs that he was joking but found only his typical stern expression. The tiny smile had vanished. The more we walked, the more I noticed doorways and windows in unexpected places. Rooms branched off here and there. Some doors were enormous, while others I couldn’t have squeezed through. The knoll was a maze of rooms and corridors and chambers… all underground.
Torches burst to life inside their brackets as Sirius passed beneath them.
“Is this place his?” Arran whispered, flame light dancing in his eyes.
“I think so.” Well, wasn’t my guardian full of surprises.
The huge receiving rooms beckoned to be filled with crowds of colorful fae. Its silence and emptiness felt wrong, as though the knoll were lonely. Did knolls have feelings? Having never left the palace grounds while on Faerie, I knew nothing about them.
Sirius directed us to ample-sized bedrooms. Mine was dressed in gossamer silks, with no personal touches to mark it as someone else’s. The huge bed beckoned me, and sleep tugged on my body and mind, but until I knew if Eledan could find me here, I couldn’t risk resting. The dream from the carriage still haunted me, rising to the surface of my thoughts. Dreams of reaching hands and Eledan falling into the dark…
He would come eventually, as surely as Night and Day fought over Faerie’s sky.
After showering and dressing in simple saru-like clothes, I tucked my whip into my belt and checked on Arran in the room next to mine. He was seated on the edge of his bed, staring at the wall. I should have gone to him, even comforted him, and perhaps someone better than me would have. I rubbed at my chest, feeling something sharp and bitter twist inside. Betrayal. So the roses hadn’t taken all my emotions. Or if they had, they were returning to me.
“Saying sorry doesn’t feel like enough,” he said, still staring at the wall.
“Because you don’t know why you’re sorry.” I leaned against the doorframe and held myself there. If I went into the room, I’d want to sit with him and tell him everything would be okay. But that wouldn’t help either of us, and it would be a lie. I remembered the time he had coaxed me into the pool with him and the time he had whispered of how he would take me away from everything. During those times, he’d been planning to bring me to Faerie. Every word, every promise, had been a lie, but he hadn’t known it. He had promised to keep me safe, sealing each lie with a kiss, and I’d believed him.
“I know why you did it,” I said. “I even understand it, but I can’t forgive you, Arran. I just can’t. Kellee and Talen could have died. I still don’t know what happened to them. They needed me, they needed us, and you abandoned them. Everything has a price. Whatever price they paid, that’s on you.”
He looked up, his eyes so damn sorry it hurt to see them. I loved him, I did. I’d always loved him. But it wasn’t enough.
“I killed you once for the same reason,” I said. He didn’t remember, but he should know. “So I do not blame you. And I know Aeon didn’t blame me. He loved me and the fae, the same as you do now. He had hoped to avoid all this by taking the starfruit. But…” What a mess we had made of everything. In another time, on another world, perhaps things would have been different, but here, now, there was no going back. “You and I, we are not to be. I loved you, and I know you think you love me, but you don’t know what love is.�
�
Talen had once accused me of the same. I wished he were here now. I wished they were all here. Sota too. I was losing myself to Faerie and losing them.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. A tear rolled down his cheek. He meant it, but our pasts couldn’t be undone.
“So am I.”
There was still a room between us, and neither of us was about to close that distance. We weren’t ready. Might never be ready. I had loved him as Aeon, but Kellee was right—like always. I had to let him go.
Spotting Sirius’s cloak on the end of the bed, I ventured inside and scooped it up, but I paused before I could make it out the door again. “Sirius wouldn’t have brought us here if it wasn’t safe. Get some rest while you can. Soon, all of Faerie will be searching for us.”
I didn’t look back as I left him alone with his thoughts. Kellee would have known how to help him. He knew how to manage people. I just knew how to break them. Perhaps that was the fate of the Messenger. How could I love them and be the savior they needed? I needed to make hard choices. Sacrifices, too. I had let my love blind me to Arran’s truth. The Messenger could not afford to make such mistakes.
I’d already made my choice. I’d made a deal with the Dreamweaver, a deal that left no room for love.
Walking the Autumnlands knoll, I turned my thoughts to its palatial layout, grander and more sprawling than the crystal palace but below ground. Why had it been abandoned? I roamed corridors and rooms, wondering if I’d wandered too far. If it was anything like Shinj, then the knoll was sentient and could change its pathways to have me running in circles for days.
I strode past a transparent drape and tripped as my thoughts snagged on the shadow inside. Backing up, I watched the outline of a figure move and pushed back the fabric. Sirius. Shirtless. The loose cotton trousers left little to the imagination. By cyn, Faerie knew how to craft her males, especially ones out of bounds.
“You may enter.”
Caught, I pushed the drape aside and studied the plush chamber furniture instead of him. “I have your cloak. I would have returned it sooner, but I couldn’t find you.”
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