“Trapped where?” I asked.
He tapped his head. “In here, in every reflection, in every window, in every smooth surface. I was cursed to forever see its madness looking back at me and to hear its howling in my thoughts, my dreams.” He lifted his bloody arm. “And here, behind these marks. With the polestar, I thought to destroy the nightmare eventually. But my mother did not see reason and fearing I’d been corrupted, she shattered the polestar, not I.” He spread his arms. “Which brings us to this moment. The polestar is still beyond my reach, my brother has torn my reign from me, and the Hunt…” Blood dripped from his fingers. “I am tired of hiding it, controlling it,” again he admired his bloody arms, “and so the Hunt will soon be free to consume once more.”
Oberon had controlled the Wild Hunt for millennia? But now, with the drip-drip of his blood on the library floor, he had stopped fighting it?
“I see you both understand. Unfortunately, it is too little, too late.” He nodded at Niamh, and she headed straight for me.
“I am sorry, Mylana. There is no more time. Your fate comes too soon. Perhaps your light can slow its progress…”
What? I backed up. “Wait… what are you doing?”
“I do not have the luxury of finding the last piece. Time has caught up with me. Eledan has stripped me of my power, and without my forces, I have no way of getting to Earth. Your piece is the only hope I have left.”
He wanted the piece of polestar… in me.
“It is a shame you will not live to see your true potential.”
Niamh raised her blade. Sirius lunged forward. I dropped, reached for my whip, and heard a metal-on-metal clash.
Fingers sank into my hair. Oberon hauled me backward, out from under the table. I thrust my elbow back, into his gut and flung my head back, into his nose. He grunted, and his grip loosened enough for me to twist and crack my whip handle across his jaw. Oberon’s growl chilled my blood. He grabbed at my whip and cried out when the tek blistered his skin. I pulled the whip back, but his fingers were already around my throat, digging in like cold iron. He lifted me and slammed me down onto the table. I bucked, kicked out, and writhed as purple lights burst in my vision. Too strong, too fast. Can’t fight him. Like this.
I needed to ignite this light inside me the way I had with the cu sith. If only I knew how.
“Hold still. I’ll make it painless.” The fingers of his free hand clawed into my chest, over my heart. “We have precious little time.”
No, no! It can’t end like this.
I tried to lift the whip and lash its tails at his face, but pinned, I couldn’t swing it, and the coils just twitched limply.
Something in my chest cracked inward.
Oberon pushed harder. The king was on me, over me, crushing me with a weight that was not physical. “Don’t fight your fate, Mylana.” His bared his teeth and pushed his power in. “This was always going to be your end.”
Sirius hit Oberon like a wrecking ball of fire, ramming the king into the bookcase. His tek fist slammed into Oberon’s cheek, breaking bone and teeth… and the rest I didn’t see as I rolled off the table, wheezing and stumbling, trying to breathe strength back into my body.
Niamh screamed. I saw her sword flash and saw it plunge. I cracked the whip. Tek-tails flew and snatched hold of her blade, halting her strike inches from Sirius’s back. The female guardian blinked in surprise and then turned her sights on me.
I tugged the whip. Its tails untangled, but the bitch caught it, and ignoring her simmering flesh, she yanked my whip out of my hand.
Oh, by cyn, I couldn’t defeat her unarmed.
Backing up, I reached for the light within me and tried to kick it awake. It flickered, or something did–something familiar—but so did the wound where Oberon’s fingers had dug in. Pain throbbed deep and hot, tearing away my strength. I stumbled and fell. “Oberon…” My heart… my heart was trying to break free. He had changed something in me. I clutched at my chest. My lungs felt crushed, and my chest caved inward. “Oberon!?”
Sirius started forward. “What’s happening to her?!”
“The polestar…” The king spat blood and placed himself between us. “It seeks freedom, just like she has her entire life.”
I caught Sirius’s eye—just long enough to convey a secret. He angled himself behind Niamh and Oberon, out of sight, in the shadows and forgotten. Beside his boot, the whip bucked and hissed.
I reached up for my once-beloved king, panting and heaving. “Oberon, please… I served you. I loved you.”
He crouched and took my hand in his. “I know.” His eyes seemed so genuine. “But this has been your purpose all along. You are a weapon, and weapons are designed to be used.”
A glance. Sirius kicked the whip. It skidded across the floor, between Niamh and Oberon, and into my free hand. I pulled, brought its length back in a high arc, and flicked it high enough so the tails scored across Oberon’s left eye, ripping it open. He screamed. So did Niamh. She raised her sword in a strike that would have beheaded me had Sirius not caught the blade in his tek hand and wrenched it from her grip.
Oberon fell back, dabbing at his bloody eye. “Oh, my sweet, lying Wraithmaker. How proud a father you make me!”
Father? Father! He was no more a father to me than Dagnu had been. I had been grown, not born, and harvested from saru stock. Those were my roots, and he could not take that from me.
Shrugging off the lies, I got to my feet. “I’m not some sick excuse for a daughter, and I’m not a weapon to be used and discarded.”
“Mine was the first face you saw.” The king threw back his head and laughed. “I watched you grow and fight—”
“That makes you nothing more than another fae who watches.”
“I protected you and marked you to keep your light safe—”
The whip’s tails lashed at my feet, hissing and spitting. “You tortured me. I loved you once, but it was a fake and twisted love. In the face of truth, that manufactured love died months ago.”
He turned on me with a snarl. “You think saying these things matters! It changes nothing. You have changed nothing. Your saru soul is mine.”
“Nothing of me is yours. I’ve watched your orders play out from a million light years away. I’ve seen the destruction you’ve wrought in Halow. I saw what you did to Valand. I will not be part of your madness.”
The king’s glare bored into mine. “You don’t have a choice. None of us have a choice. If you were truly this proud Messenger, you’d rip out your heart and give it to me.”
“You’re wrong. I have a choice. I choose to be the people’s Messenger my own way. I choose to speak for the billions who can’t. I will fight you at every step, and by Faerie, I will win. I killed a queen, and I made you king. You are nothing without me.” I circled the whip and cracked it viciously, sparking it in the air.
“Such fire in one so flawed.” He lifted his hand and squeezed his bloody fingers into a fist.
The pain was immediate. An all-over pressure, as though iron bars were squeezing around my arms, legs, and torso. Everywhere, the pain pulled in and in and in, squeezing tight. I knew every inch of their source, every twist and vise-like grip. He had hold of my marks. Those inky vines were tightening around me, trying to crush me into something so small only the polestar at my center would remain. But his pain did not touch my chest, where the marks had been blown away. I still breathed and lived because he’d broken those marks over my heart. I wasn’t all his.
“Stop! By Faerie, stop—!” Sirius’s protest was cut off by the sound of steel on steel. Niamh had struck him, I guessed.
I saw only Oberon’s face, only his vicious smile. I tried, Kellee. I denied him. I tried… just like you said. You would be proud of me. Even if I fail, and if the truth here is never told, I know you would be proud of me.
“I will not fail as my cu sith did!” Niamh yelled. “You die here, Guardian. And the shame you brought to our flight will die with you!”
The ache grew, the push and pull of forces inside me I didn’t understand and didn’t know how to control. Forces that weren’t part of me at all.
“Your mistake is believing you have any say in this.” Oberon was so close I could see how the dark bled into the edges of his one remaining blue eye and how his power rippled around him. “If you wish to be saru, then you will be treated as one. On your knees, slave.”
The binding marks pulled me down to my knees. My muscles strained and burned, but I could not escape these chains.
“It… isn’t just me.” I hissed through my teeth, forcing the words out even as they, too, hurt. Every word tightened my chest. “The saru… will fight you.” The room spun and blurred, and somewhere far, far away, I heard laughter. “Talen will fight you. Kellee… will… fight—”
“It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.” Oberon stood over me and looked down, as we always had. He swept cool tears from my face, leaving bloody smears behind. “The Dark is rising once more, and without the polestar, we are all lost. I will rip that piece from your body if I must. I will take an entire fleet of warcruisers and destroy Sol myself to win. The Dark must be stopped. The polestar is everything…” He clawed his hand over my heart, igniting a new fire, this one so bright and so powerful it tore my thoughts open and ripped through my mind. “It was hidden within, but it can easily be removed. What will you be then? A ghost, a memory, a nothing girl. The people’s Messenger dies with you, Mylana.”
“Get your hands off her.” The voice, the deep, drawling accent, the last of its kind from a dead world.
No, it wasn’t possible.
Oberon was suddenly behind me, his arm around my throat and his hand still craned over my heart, the organ thumping in pain. And there stood Kellee, like this was a dream. Was he a dream? He looked like he had on Valand, hair long and wild and riddled with beads and feathers. Red paint marked his face and neck, making him look like the savage creature many humans had feared. His star winked on his chest. He smiled, and his sharp teeth glistened.
“You cannot be here,” Oberon denied, “but you cannot be an illusion either. I left my brother on his knees!”
Kellee flicked out both hands, freeing his claws. “Think me a dream. It’ll only make your death that much sweeter.”
Kellee lunged. Niamh pivoted from her battle with Sirius and tossed her sword. Oberon caught the blade and shoved me down, and the blade sang as Kellee’s claws came down on Faerie’s king.
Chapter 26
Marshal Kellee
* * *
To see her again, the real her, after so long set my instincts spinning, but to see her in Oberon’s grip, his hand clutched over her heart, her face bloody and racked with agony... It took all my self-control not to tear into the room and gut the Faerie king where he stood. Rage tunneled my vision to points, pinning the king beneath my glare, but the fear that I might hurt Kesh had me locked in place. He would die here for the billions of lives he had slain, for Valand and its people. My people. Oberon was a tumor I would carve from the worlds.
I sprang. The king threw Kesh aside, caught the sword his guardian threw at me, and brought that blade down, crashing it against my claws. The impact sang through my bones, bringing the starved, maddened unseelie beast in me to life.
“Kellee!” Kesh. I ignored her and the second battle raging between the two guardians, and focused only on the king.
“Kellee, don’t!” Kesh’s words struck like a blade. Did she care for him? Or was she begging me to stop for another reason? I twisted the hurt into fuel and slashed. Oberon stumbled back and smiled his bastard smile, the same smile he’d worn as he’d snuffed out my people.
“Kill me and she’ll never forgive you for the repercussions,” Oberon said, his words lashing me.
The sword flashed, sinking beneath my lunge into my torso, and I jolted to a stop. Pain snaked up my side. I let it and grinned at the king. I wrapped my hands around the blade and eased it out, pushing against Oberon’s grip.
“I have nothing left to lose.”
Movement behind Oberon. Sirius broke the other guardian’s neck with a flick of his tek hand. He bolted toward Kesh—not to harm her but to lift her to her feet. Kesh fought him, fought to free herself to get to me. I couldn’t allow her to stop this. As the king’s Wraithmaker, she would try. I couldn’t fight her and win. This had to end now, and if she hated me, so be it.
Oberon landed a vicious backhanded blow, snapping my head back. The sword slid through my hands, cutting open my palms. I reached for it, already losing ground as the situation turned in the king’s favor. Oberon’s power bloomed, and the dark flooded his eyes as the sword plunged down.
White fire lit Kesh up like a spectral flare. She glowed from within, a ghost made of starlight. If she was the last thing I saw, I’d gladly take that vision of her with me into death.
“Noooo!” Oberon roared and turned on Kesh, exposing his back. “You cannot unleash the dark!” He raised his torn-up arm to shield himself against her light.
I thrust my claws forward, driving them deep into his lower back and severing his spine. It wasn’t enough. Grabbing his shoulder, I pulled him into my claws, into me, dragged my claws up his back, tearing through his insides, and plunged my teeth into the Faerie’s king’s neck. Hot fae blood splashed the roof of my mouth, bringing with it the tantalizing sweetness of magic and power. Someone screamed, and someone laughed, and that laughter swirled around and around. I didn’t care. I drank down this bastard king’s life until his heart stuttered beneath my tongue, until his magic snapped, until Faerie’s king died with my teeth in his throat and my claws through his heart.
For you, my vakaru.
Kesh
* * *
I’d seen Kellee fall, and in my mind, I saw the king bring the sword down and sever his head, and I could not let it happen. Not for anything, including to keep the dark controlled. Part of me knew Oberon wanted this. He had come here to die, but he would not be taking Kellee with him. Consequences be damned. I released all the light upon the king like I had with the cu sith, only bigger, brighter, and faster. My heart opened to it, and the polestar’s power lit me ablaze.
Oberon faced me, his creation, and saw his death in my eyes. The fear on his face made me want to bury him deeper in light until there was nothing left. Power—mine—struck him like lightning in the chest, and Kellee was on him.
“Kill me…” I heard Oberon’s words in my mind. “And you free the dark.”
“Time, our prison,” voices hissed.
“Dark, our sentence.” Not Oberon’s whispers.
“Light, our freedom.” Something else.
As Kellee’s claws tore the king open, blackness bled through the king’s eyes, swallowing them whole.
Fresh laughter fluttered around us like maddened wisps. I’d heard it before. It almost sounded like Eledan’s but… different. The king laughed too, but the sound was fractured. Kellee fed, and the king was dying, but something else was here with us… something unseen.
“A new pretender playing with light…” the new voice purred.“A new Nightshade with clipped wings.”
Oberon’s eyes spoke of secrets revealed and of regrets. The king almost seemed relieved as Kellee drank him dry.
Murderer, I thought. Monster. You deserve to die.
“Yes… yes, fleshling, Queenkiller, Kingkiller. Yes… kill him and free me. I… am… Light. My freedom…” the something whispered in my ear.
A hungry shadow—Oberon’s secret, which he had kept hidden inside the palace, inside himself—touched my skin. The Wild Hunt he had taken from Faerie, the Wild Hunt he had tricked, was a living thing. And I knew it, this thing. I had unleashed it. It was the dark to my light. The opposite of the polestar.
Oberon’s body collapsed. Kellee stood panting, his eyes flooded with blackness as Oberon’s had been. But it wasn’t over.
Darkness swelled above, pouring across the ceiling. A darkness so complete, I breathed i
t in and drank it down. The laughter wasn’t Eledan’s, but close. The sound made me want to crawl inside myself and hide around the light, because it was bigger than me, bigger than all of us. I was a candle flame, but it was a long and endless dark crushing me tight.
“Free… free at last.”
A swirl of oil poured into the space in front of me, forming into the shape of a fae. Its blackness lapped outward, sloshing across the floor like water. It was in the air and all around. I couldn’t breathe or see through it. It wasn’t a person. It was too big to be a single thing. It looked at me, and it felt as though a titan had woken and turned its gaze on me, like I was tiny and insignificant.
The Wild Hunt, Eledan’s nightmare. That was the weapon Oberon had contained and controlled. And it was here, alive and looking into my soul.
It pulled me into it. I felt myself falling in the face of such power.
“Run!” Sirius yanked me from the spell’s grip.
Kellee beckoned, already ahead and reaching out to me. The knoll grew huge around us and opened ahead, morphing its rooms into one long tunnel that funneled us toward the exit.
Run, run, run, my heart beat.
I glanced back and saw the petals of dark open as the Hunt poured itself over the walls and floors, the terrible and unending dark consuming everything in its path. How did you run from a nightmare?
A tentacle emerged from its center, as thick as Faerie’s mighty oak trunks and as lithe as a serpent. It lashed out, racing toward me. Too fast—too fast! It snagged my ankle and yanked me from Sirius’s grip, reeling me toward its churning center. And still it laughed its sickly, haunting laughter.
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