City of Shadows

by Pippa Dacosta

  Reign.

  Danny, where was Danny?

  “Alina.” Where Reign brushed my cheek, sharp, brittle sparks snapped between us.

  I gasped, breaking the surface of the madness. Andrews. “Where …” Danny lay faceup, sprawled across the floor, breathing, but out cold. “Reign, I didn’t—”

  “I know.” Reign pulled me forward and swore at the sight of the cuffs.

  “I just …” I wanted to explain, to say that it wasn’t my fault, that I’d come here for all the right reasons, but I couldn’t.

  Reign returned to Andrews and rummaged through his pockets for a key. “You have to leave. Quickly, now. I’ll deal with him.”

  I could see the rise and fall of Andrews’s chest. That was good, wasn’t it? “I couldn’t stop him.” Even as I said the words I knew they were lies.

  Reign tucked the key into the cuffs and released me.

  “It happened so fast.” Unease squirmed inside, and guilt, and something else too, like shame. Shame, that was the acid burn in the back of my throat. Saliva pooled in my mouth. What have I done?

  Reign’s steely fingers gripped my shoulders. He peered deep into my eyes and for a while I lost myself in their colors. “Focus,” he ordered. “I need to know if you’re all right?”

  I opened my mouth to say I was fine, but I wasn’t. “It was so fast. I couldn’t push him off. I couldn’t do anything. I’m supposed to be strong, and I couldn’t even stop him from …” My vision blurred, head throbbing.

  I could have broken the cuffs, I could have fought him, but I didn’t. I could have stopped him. The truth broke free of my denials and spilled from my lips. “Reign, I wanted it. I wanted this, I wanted to hurt him, and I—I—enjoyed it. I’m just like them. Like all of them. Like you.” No, no, not yet. I was still Alina, wasn’t I? Still the American Girl?

  “Look at me.”

  Tears blurred my vision. I clamped ahold of Reign’s arms, afraid to let go, afraid of the harrowing guilt gnawing at my thoughts. “What have I done to him?”

  Reign didn’t waste his breath with lies, the worry on his face told me all I needed to know. “I’ll help him.” He hovered a hand beside my face, his frown cutting harder as he struggled with wanting to touch me and knowing he shouldn’t. “It’ll be fine, remember? Go.”

  No, no, it wouldn’t be fine. I’d bespelled Andrews for good. I’d made him mine, and I’d wanted it. Danny Andrews wouldn’t know anything but the need. I’d destroyed him. Killing him would have been kinder.

  Cool tears slid down my cheeks. “He’s not going to be okay, is he?”

  Reign’s grave face was my answer. “I’ll do everything I can. But you have to leave. Can you do that? Are you going to be okay if I let you walk out of here?”

  “Yes.” He took my elbows and pulled me to my feet. “Yes, I …” My gaze drifted back to Andrews.

  “He’s not the same man you knew,” Reign said. “He’s too far gone to control himself.”

  I bit my lip and nodded, holding back the sobs that would come eventually, but not here, not in front of Reign, not when Andrews needed help. I pulled out of Reign’s grip, scooped up Becky’s journal and clutched it close to my chest.

  “It’s not your fault either, American Girl,” Reign called after me.

  He couldn’t see my tears, I wouldn’t let him, and by the time I’d reached the street, they were gone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hot water pummeled my skin, but as hard as I’d tried, I couldn’t wash away the shame. I had another patrol looming but didn’t feel like moving. I wasn’t ready to go back out there, wrapped in red and black, marching to the same tune as the rest of the fae. I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t.

  “You okay?”

  I’d heard Nyx enter my bathroom a few minutes earlier but kept my back to the shower door and my head bowed under the jets of water. “Yes. I’m okay.” Whatever tremors remained in my voice, the hiss of the shower hid any sign of weakness.

  “This isn’t about Sovereign, is it?” she asked after processing my stilted words.

  I lifted my face and let the pressured jets burn my skin. I could just make out her figure through the fogged shower door, leaning against the basin.

  “You went to see your policeman friend?”

  Samuel must have told her. It wasn’t a secret. Maybe it should have been? I was subject to fae law, and I’d taken his draíocht. Willing, unwilling, what did it matter? Reign was right; Andrews didn’t have a choice.

  “Something happened.” It was more of a statement than a question.

  I pressed a hand against the cool tiles and spread my fingers. “I can’t go on hating what I am but I don’t want to stop caring either.”

  “The touch?”

  “I could have fought him off.” It would have been easier to fight him, but I hadn’t. The ugly in me had won. “I wanted to hurt him. I wanted it to happen.” The words came out flat, like the chilling quiet in my head. “I want to cut out that part of me.”

  “You’re fae. You can’t cut that out.”

  “But I was made to be human. So what if I’m not real, if my body is fake, and my memories are fantasy? It doesn’t change the fact the queen made me to be Alina O’Connor. In my head, I’m the American girl, but my body was woven by the queen, and my spirit belongs to Arachne.”

  “When you put it like that it does sound pretty-damn screwed up. For what it’s worth, you shouldn’t even be alive, yet here you are, sticking it to the world.”

  “Fairy dust, glued together with lies.” There wasn’t anything good in me. A monster had made me, and after I’d killed that one, a new monster took its place. “I drank him down, Nyx. Danny was a good guy. He’s only ever tried to help me, and I fed on him. I liked it.” I stepped back, out of the jets and ran my hand roughly over my face.

  I did know I couldn’t hide in the shower forever. Turning off the water, I opened the door, took the towel Nyx offered me, and wrapped myself in it.

  She stepped back, giving me room to move. She’d dressed in tight jeans, equally tight knee-high boots, and a hooded top. Out of her FA uniform she looked smaller, but there was nothing vulnerable in her glare.

  “My sister, the warrior whose sketch Scaw showed you. Her name was Iris.” Nyx scooped up a top from the floor where I’d left my clothes in a pile and handed it over. “We’d just returned from the front, our blades bloodied. We’d usually take to the feasting halls, but not that night. I’d seen a change in her, and I thought it was just a phase. But that night, while the rest of us drank and made merry, she stayed home. I found her awake when I got back, sitting on her bed, clothes still bloodstained. She looked me in the eye and told me the fae would never be happy. She died in a battle soon after, believing we’re broken, all of us. In the end, she was so damn tired of fighting.” Nyx lifted her chin. Defiance burned in her bright eyes. “I’m not going to lie. Some of us are broken. But there are others, like me, like Scaw, who have hope. We make our own destiny, Alina. So do you. But you have the advantage. You’re a blank page. You can sketch your own fate. Dark or light. It’s up to you.”

  What if what I wanted was concealed in the dark? I turned my back on her, hiding the truth she might see in my eyes, and pulled my clothes on. “Did Samuel tell you how I almost summoned the hound near Leicester Square?”

  “No.”

  “I would have freed it on the street, right there in public. I wanted to. I could control it.”

  “You’re starting to figure out what the rest of us have known for some time. You’re dangerous, there’s little point hiding from that fact.”

  Turning, I caught my reflection in the misted mirror. A fae with the unreal heart of a human girl. A monster among my own kind, whatever kind that may be. It was time to stop pretending. “Where’s Kael?”

  “Kael?” She frowned at my sudden change of subject and then followed me out of the bathroom. “With Samuel, I think. Who sent me out looking for you when you didn’t sh
ow for your shift.”

  I stopped by the bed where I’d spread my FA leathers. They’d taken a few knocks and scrapes since I’d started wearing them, but Nyx had been right; these days, they fit well.

  Samuel. How was I going to look him in the eye knowing how Reign had watched us together? He should know, but I couldn’t tell him. I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near Reign. And what I’d done … bespelling an innocent man. I’d earned Samuel’s respect, but now all I deserved was a dagger in the back like all the other rogue fae. Was I even fit to wear the FA colors?

  “Alina?”

  “I’ll be down in a minute.” I didn’t turn, not until I heard the door click closed and only then to make sure I was alone.

  I couldn’t think about Reign. Or the things he’d said about Samuel. None of that mattered. I had to find Becky. I had to do this, even if I had to fight Kael for answers. There wasn’t any room for games. I was changed—altered in ways that I couldn’t make right again. I had to get Kael before it went too far, before I burned out or became something worse than I already was.

  I tugged on the leathers, then removed Becky’s journal from under the pillow where I’d stashed it earlier. The well-read notebook had clearly been loved. Its pages were shadowed by thumb marks, and the corners dog-eared. I flicked it open to a random page:

  He came again today.

  I know it’s wrong.

  I know I shouldn’t want him.

  I tell myself I won’t, but I never listen.

  He comes, and I’m his. I never want it to end. Inside I scream at him to stop.

  I beg him to stay, but inside I tell him to go. I don’t know who I am anymore.

  I’m empty.

  I closed the journal. Oh, Becky. Had Andrews been thinking the same things when he’d cupped my face in his hands? He’d been lost, too far gone to know what he was doing. I didn’t have that excuse. I’d asked Kael to teach me to be more like him. Was that what I was becoming?

  I tucked the journal inside the upper half of my leathers and zipped them closed.

  Samuel waylaid me in the entrance hall. He strode straight toward me, wrapped in leathers, daggered up and back in his warrior role. “I need you at Tottenham Court Road tube station.” He nodded toward the door.

  I glanced at Kael’s office. “I just need to see—”

  “Kael’s already on-site. The station’s closed. The most recent patrol discovered large concentrations of draíocht. We have to leave now.” He opened the main door and beckoned me forward.

  “Kael’s there?” I passed by Samuel and stepped outside into a cool drizzle.

  “He kept the call to himself,” Samuel added, following close behind me. “I only learned about it after speaking with dispatch. We need to hurry before he covers up whatever he’s doing down here. If we can catch him, Alina—if we can find the evidence we need—the FA will stand with us.”

  Kael had to be stopped. I would be the one to stop him. It was always meant to be that way. I wasn’t afraid, not when I knew I was doing this for the right reasons. I touched the journal pressed against my heart and knew it would end tonight—even if I burned out, whatever it took.

  Chapter Twenty

  Rain had settled over London and dragged with it a blanket of fog.

  “The Crossrail development runs right through Tottenham Court Road. The station’s been closed for months.” Samuel wove the car through slow-moving traffic. The windshield wipers beat back and forth, their jagged squeaks setting my teeth on edge. “Remember the plague pit at Leicester Square, close to where the lytch attacked us? That’s the Northern Line. The Central Line, where you first encountered the lytch, meets the Northern Line at TCR. All suspect lines lead back to Tottenham Court Road. It’s the source. It must be.” He muttered something distinctly guttural and fae. “I should have seen the connection sooner.”

  “There are hundreds of miles of tunnels under London, you couldn’t have known.” I cast him a smile, but it fell far short and his frown made it clear he’d noticed.

  “Is everything okay?” Nyx said.

  “Everything’s fine.” I unzipped the top half of my leathers and removed Becky’s journal. It felt warm in my hand and smelled faintly of perfume. A pang of remorse pulled my thoughts away from our destination and to the words hidden between the pages.

  “I didn’t think you were the sort to own a journ—”

  “Why, because I’ve not been around long enough to collect memories?” I regretted the words, but couldn’t take them back. “I’m sorry.” I forced a smile, which only made his frown heavier. “I’m just tired.” Tired of the lies, tired of running, tired of being afraid. And ready, I silently added—the presence inside stirred awake, shifting around my thoughts before settling once more—ready to stop Kael.

  I flicked to a page where the pencil marks scored deeply:

  Today I begged him to stop. I found the words. They’d been floating around my head, but I couldn’t reach them—until today. Today I told him to kill me.

  He laughed. His laugh—it’s poison. I hate it, and love it, and want more.

  It never ends. He laughed and told me there wasn’t an escape. Then he touched me all over, and I fell into the madness again. Wanting, not wanting, hating, loving. It’s killing me. He’s killing me. I love him. I know it’s not real. But I love him. I’d die for him. Inside I scream.

  “It’s not far. Be ready,” Samuel said.

  I turned a page.

  Sometimes, he’s gentle. I like those times. I like all the times, but I like it best when he sits with me. It makes it real. As though this isn’t a never-ending nightmare. As though this love could be real.

  He tells me it will be worth it. He tells me I’m special. That he needs me. There are others, he says. Like me. He says he’ll take me to them. It makes me angry. I don’t want to share him. He’s mine. My love. I shouted, raged at him, and he held me, filling me with the smell of him. He lay beside me, took me away, his touch on my skin, his fingers braiding my hair … He likes to weave his fingers through my hair. It feels like magic …

  Samuel was talking, but his voice, the rumble of the car’s engines, the swish of the wipers all faded behind Becky’s words. And something Nyx had said to me. She’d pinned my hair back, and teased that Samuel might braid it for me.

  Something fluttered tight and nervous in my chest. I flicked through more pages and scanned Becky’s broken thoughts.

  The car bumped onto a curb.

  He came here again. He picked someone else. The girl who cries.

  I hate him. Hate her.

  I wonder where Danny is …

  Another page.

  I cried today, and he licked my tears away and laughed. That laugh …

  Another.

  His eyes, they capture me, hold me still. They’re all I see. Beautiful. Shades of violet—amethyst eyes. He let me braid his hair today. I love him.

  Kael had silver and gray eyes.

  But Samuel…

  I lifted my head and peered through the windshield into the rain.

  “Alina, are you ready?”

  Samuel took Becky.

  I’d asked if he knew her and he denied it. He’d lied. Samuel had been the one who tormented her, twisted her mind, made her love him. How many lies had he spun?

  “Yes, I’m ready,” I said, voice distant.

  “We’re here …”

  I tucked the journal back inside my leathers and stepped out into the rain. A tiny voice in my head tried to convince me the words were wrong, Becky was wrong; it might not be him. There had to be other fae with the same colored eyes. And the braid. The one he’d cut off after we’d met. Another fae. Or had I been looking so hard for someone to care about, for someone to care for me, that I’d missed the signs?

  Construction panels encircled the station. Samuel pulled open a gate. I stepped inside, boots sinking in the mud. Floodlights chased away the dark. Stark white light illuminated the motionless heavy machinery
. My feet moved forward while my thoughts raced ahead of me. All this time … The smiles, the touches. Lies. Warning signs declared open pits. One such pit yawned beside the old station entrance. Easily the width of two cars, and as deep as the underground tunnels. I hung back, my boots slipping on the wet rubble.

  Samuel’s gaze crawled up my back.

  He’d lied about Becky. What else had he lied about? The note? Was it even real? Was Kael a part of this—had they worked together? I needed time to think, to clear the thoughts in my head, to see past the rage building within.

  A siren wailed outside the construction site. I lifted my head, caught movement in the corner of my vision, and skittered aside. The bar came down, slamming into my cheek and knocking me to my knees in the mud. Pain and noise filled my skull, blurring my vision, and blood burst across my tongue.

  “It’s hers, isn’t it?” Samuel snarled. He lifted the bar over his shoulder. “That journal.” When the bar cracked across the back of my head the world went black for a blink. Mud and grit scratched my lips and tongue. Something warm and wet spilled down my neck. The bar came down across my thigh and a scream tore free. There wasn’t time to organize my thoughts, to react, to fight back. I twisted onto my front and dug my nails into the earth.

  “All you had to do was distract Kael, but you couldn’t stop asking questions, could you?”

  I dragged myself forward. Blood blinded my eyes and pain yanked on my consciousness, threatening to tear it away. If I blacked out, it would be over, but I couldn’t see, couldn’t think through the agony. The world rippled and drifted.

  “What a shame to waste all of that potential in a construct.”

  The bar cracked across my back. “Sam—” I spluttered.

  He hooked his fingers around the collar of my leathers and yanked me up. Disgust twisted his face. His cruel eyes, amethyst eyes sparkled with malice. “Do you know what it’s like to lower myself to the level of a creature such as you? To pretend to be nice, to fuck you like it meant something? Do you know how sick it made me?”