“How?” He breathed the word, no more than a whisper.
His eyes glistened. Guilt dug in and twisted my insides into knots. “It wasn’t General Kael.” Nausea pooled saliva in my mouth. “There’s a fae strong enough to weave a path back to Faerie, and he was … he was collecting people, absorbing their draíocht. Kael said there were signs.” I remembered Reign’s file and Samuel’s past. Kael had covered it up, thinking he was protecting Samuel’s identity. Secrets always found a way to escape. “Becky probably saw Kael, or heard Samuel mention him … ” I stared at the black HQ doors—stared through them—but saw only the memory of Becky’s motionless body.
“Samuel?”
When I met Andrews’s glare the warmth had drained out of his face, leaving him cold and rigid.
“The fae Sovereign had me run an SO-Thirty-search on?” he asked. “Reign said Samuel was getting close to you for a reason. It was him, wasn’t it?” Andrews grabbed my arms and yanked me close. His fingers dug in, hurting, but I let it happen. I couldn’t fight him—fight what I’d done to him. “Tell me! You have to tell me who killed her.”
I closed my eyes. Reign’s file. Had I looked at it, maybe I’d have known earlier. Instead, I’d thrown it back at him out of pride.
So many mistakes. All of them mine.
“Alina … ” Andrews said, and sighed. His grip loosened but he didn’t let go. “What did you do?”
I opened my eyes and looked into his. I wanted to tell him everything; I always had. Like Becky, I trusted him. Now he’d hate me.
Perhaps that was for the best. It was better than loving me because he had no other choice. “It was Samuel,” I said. “He used me, and I—” Andrews lunged, or so I’d thought. I staggered under his weight, reflexively shoving back to keep from falling. But he didn’t grab for my face as I’d expected him to. His weight collapsed beneath him. He fell limp in my arms. His cheek brushed mine and the touch skittered between us, but the ghost of what it had been before. “Danny?”
Samuel emerged from the shadows deep inside the narrow garden. Head up, sharp fae eyes on me. A dagger glinted in one hand, but his other hand was free. I reached up Andrews’s back and found the blade embedded deep between his ribs—his heart.
Samuel’s lips ticked. He lifted the second dagger.
I hugged Andrews close and spun. The blade slammed into my back, washing a vicious heat across my skin that had me stumbling to a knee. But the physical pain meant nothing compared to the twisting, cutting grief that hit when I saw the faraway look in Andrews’s eyes.
“Danny?” I could make this better, make it right. I touched my hand to his face. “Take it. All of it. You saved me once, now take it back.” But nothing happened. The dancing sparks faded, until it was just my palm against his cheek and nothing else. “Danny … No, please.” A sob broke free. “Please.” I dropped my dagger and pressed both hands to his face. His head lolled, but I held him tightly in my hands.
He wasn’t breathing. His open eyes didn’t see me. “Take it!” I shouted. What good was I if all I could do was take life and not give it? I’d saved Reign on the platform the night I was born, why not Andrews now?
I tried to push life into him, but my attempts stuttered and failed. “Please … No, please …”
Samuel tugged the blade from my back, yanking me away from Andrews. I barely twisted around in time to block his strike. Blades clashed. His weight shoved me down, pinning me under his knee.
Blood-splatters dappled Samuel’s cheek. “Danny Andrews wasn’t fae,” he snarled. “You can burn yourself out flooding him with draíocht and it won’t work. He’s human. Humans die easily.” He smiled his flat, fake smile. “The problem with you isn’t that you’re made of dust or that your head is filled with thoughts which may or may not be yours. The problem with you, Alina O’Connor, is simple. You’ll never be more than you are right now, the girl who’s empty inside.”
He wrapped his free hand around my throat and slammed me back against the road.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ticktock. Ticktock. Thoughts adrift, I clung onto the ticking noise, letting it anchor me before I could drift away to nothing. And I was drifting … I could feel it; life seeped from my bones, my flesh. Unraveling. The clock ticked and more draíocht bled away.
I smelled fresh grass and apples. Home, my memory supplied. Samuel. When I dragged my eyes open he filled my vision. His jewel-like tricolored eyes sparkled so close that I could make out every deep facet. The beautiful killer. Tingles washed through my cheek where he drew my life out of my unreal body. I whipped my head back, but he sank his fingers into my hair and held me fast.
“There you are,” he said. His teeth flashed behind a sharp smile.
I bucked, or tried to, but found my wrists tied to a chair.
He straightened and let go, then stepped back to admire his handiwork. The dragging sensation vanished, leaving me gasping. Pins and needles attacked my body in alternating waves. While I gritted my teeth, Samuel watched me battle my pain with a content and lazy smile on his lips.
“I didn’t know what I was,” he said, turning away. “How could I? My family was slaughtered before I could be recognized as an elder. I suppose that should have been indication enough. But we’re forever killing one another. What’s another dead fae family?”
Slowly the world sharpened around me. I swung my gaze about Kael’s war room. The lights pierced my vision, but I saw Scaw similarly bound to a chair. Blood had dried in a smudge across his chin and cheek. He’d fought, for all the good it had done him. The Lorekeeper’s wide eyes were fixed on me. I tried to delve inside myself and seek out the threads of life I’d used to find the hound at Trafalgar, but my inward thoughts were met by chilling emptiness. What had Samuel done? I needed to think, to clear my thoughts. How long had it been?
“Elders are feared and revered for their ability to harvest draíocht and absorb more than they require, enabling them to weave pathways, among other things. Like Constructs. It wasn’t until I’d been exiled here, where draíocht is scarce, that I noticed I was different.”
Samuel rested his boot on a chair and draped his arm over his knee. He moved differently. Smoother, adding a lazy grace that hadn’t been there before. He’d given up his act, this was the real Samuel. An energy crackled around him. Draíocht. Mine. “In Faerie, Alina, what you can’t control, you kill. Which of the two do you think I’ve reserved for you?”
Teeth gritted behind my lips, I glared back at him, my mind furiously working to find a way out. I’d tried the ties around my wrists but they weren’t budging. My one remaining dagger lay on the table between me and the door, but to get to it, I had to get free.
“Let me be blunt. Hidden inside of your construction is a relic of Faerie. A spirit. One of the Three. Now, according to Scaw here, when you killed the queen, the spirit had no choice but to possess you. So, you, Alina, are carrying around in that poorly constructed head of yours, one of the three most powerful entities to ever have existed.” He paused with a sigh. “It’s not your fault you’re not worthy. I don’t blame you. You are what you are. You were never designed to last more than a week, and you certainly weren’t created to harbor One of the Three—”
“Wasn’t she?” Scaw said, his voice cutting in the quiet. Samuel turned his predatory gaze toward Scaw. The Lorekeeper stared right back. “You don’t know what the spirit planned. Perhaps the queen was too far lost to fae-fury to be of any use to Arachne. Perhaps the spirit guided the queen and had Alina created for this exact purpose.”
“Are you saying this … thing—” Samuel waved a hand in my general direction, “is not a mistake but is in fact a divine construction?” He laughed, and my insides squirmed. How had I ever found his laughter a turn-on?
Scaw’s gaze briefly skipped to me. He hadn’t told me he’d thought I might be a deliberate escape route for the spirit of Arachne, that the spirit had planned all of this. Maybe Scaw was bluffing, or maybe it was the truth?
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“I’m suggesting you might want to think twice before unraveling her.”
Unraveling. That was why I felt so empty and disconnected. He’d tried to do the same at Tottenham Court Road before dropping me into the pit. He was unraveling me, as only an elder could. Ticktock. Ticktock.
Samuel’s doubt didn’t last. The smile creeping across his face was a horrible thing and I wondered how I could have missed the wicked in him.
“Have you spent time with the construct, Scaw? Time to know her mind, her thoughts? To get close enough for her to tell you her dreams? I have. I had to. First to learn if she truly did harbor One of the Three, and then to learn how I might manage the spirit once I’d ripped her construct body apart. I know this construct like no one else in her short-lived life. She’s a weak creature, riddled with insecurities. Had One of the Three created her with the deliberate intention of possessing her, she would be more than this echo. She would be glorious. Instead, she is just this …” he paused, reaching for the right word, and then, with a snarl, said, “girl.”
Around the fog gathering inside—the absence of pieces of me—anger still lingered, like a lighthouse in the dark. “You’re a piece of work, Sam,” I drawled. The words came slowly. I had to drag them through the haze, but they slipped free easily enough. “But then I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, you’re just another fucked-up fae with an inflated sense of entitlement. You think you’re worthy of the spirit, is that it?”
“I know I am.” He kicked the chair away. “I will not be cast out again!” An animalistic growl rumbled from his throat. “I’m about to unravel you, and with the Lorekeeper as my witness, this moment will start a new history in that of the fae of Taerra, of London.” Conviction added a terrible, knowing weight to his words. He could—would—do this. “The elders know I’m here now. They know we’re all here. We survived, and the spirits still live in our blood. Arachne will possess me. I will rise up. An elder and a spirit as one. I will rule this world, as was my right in Faerie, and I will take back our home. With the hound under my control, I will take what was rightfully mine.” He strode forward, passion burning fierce in his gaze. “They cast me out, and when that didn’t work they sent the Hunt. Do you know why?” He didn’t wait for my reply. “Because they’re afraid of me. And they should be. I will not be denied!”
I wanted to shrug him off as mad. But an icy touch of knowing fear wouldn’t allow it. What he’d said, it could be done. He’d kill me, accept the spirit into him, and weave his path all over again, only he’d have complete control of the fae here, as well as of those who’d follow him. The harpy would come. The elders too. War. London wasn’t ready.
“That’s great,” I drawled, hiding the hitch in my voice while managing to sound nonchalant. “And what if the spirit in me wants nothing to do with your ego-trip?”
Scaw gave me a blatant look that said, “What the hell are you doing?” Samuel came at me, hands raised, ready to clamp on and prove his point to a world that didn’t want him. But while he’d been talking, I’d been thinking. What if Scaw was right? Arachne hadn’t tried to sabotage me or my thoughts, certainly nothing like the spider-queen had once done. And if she wanted me alive, then that meant I was meant to be here. That meant my construction wasn’t a fleeting, ghost of a thing, or a mistake. I had purpose. I was made to live, not fade away.
Samuel believed he could unravel me. But he’d failed to realize I could do the same to him. I’d already unraveled a lytch on the London Underground. I could take life; it was about the only thing I was good at. And I was about to take his.
“You’re empty, Alina. The spirit belongs in me,” he said, thrusting his hands against my face hard enough to snap my head back.
Empty, was I? He clearly didn’t know me at all. Ever since I’d been created, I’d been filled with too much of everything. Raw draíocht, an ancient fae spirit, and my own manufactured existence. Human and fae. Both and neither. And inside all of those fragments, all of those mismatched pieces, an ancient anger mingled with the sharp rage for those killed around me. An anger so raw, so consuming, that it numbed the grief, the heartache, the sorrow and regret, until inside I blazed, aflame with vengeance. And that vengeance was hungry.
As soon as his hands hit my face, I pulled. I reached down along his lifeline and yanked on that link with everything I had. Samuel’s mind and memories barreled into my own thoughts. Life. Bright, fresh—I drank it down, drank him down. Until he threw himself back with a cry. He stumbled into the table and clasped his hands on either side of his head. Words spilled from his lips. Old fae words. I recognized his chant as a prayer to the Three and smiled.
“Unravel that, asshole.”
I clenched my right fist and yanked hard on the restraints, snapping them free, then sunk my fingers into the remaining one and pulled. Samuel saw me break free. Rage contorted his face into a mask of ugliness. Ticktock. I spun, kicked the chair back and lunged for the fireplace poker. The chair clattered behind me. I clamped my fingers around the cool iron poker and swung it around with everything I had left. The tapered tip smacked across Samuel’s jaw, cracking his head to the side and tearing him out of his lunge. He sprawled into the fireplace, but he remained standing and rebounded with the kind of reflexes I’d never seen from him.
I slashed the poker through the air between us. He knocked it aside with his forearm but left himself wide open to a left-handed punch in the gut. I dropped a knee and planted my fist home, deep enough to knock the breath out of him and shove him into the table. He staggered, and I brought the poker down, plunging it deep into his thigh.
He let out a furious cry, hurled old words at me, and tried to pull the poker free with trembling hands. His skin fizzled where the iron touched him, but he clamped harder and pulled.
“Go, Alina!” Scaw jerked his head at the door. “Get out of here.”
Samuel yanked the bloody poker free. Run. I was faster than him. I snatched the dagger from the table and ran from the war room into the hallway.
Too many strange thoughts whirled in my head. Andrews’s “What did you do?” Becky’s lying among the dead. Samuel’s caring touch—his lies. You don’t need to be afraid. Not with me. Reign’s bloodied hands as he’d leaned over Shay’s broken body. I ran through it all, finding solace in the knowledge that I was meant to be. This was who I was meant to be. I had to live. Samuel wouldn’t be the death of me. I’d survive him and everything else. This life was mine and nobody was going to take it from me.
I navigated through the twisting corridors, sliding around corners and bouncing off walls. He’d be close. He was fast, but I was faster. I sprinted deep into the basement levels and burst through the doors into the pool room. The deep blue pool water lay silent and inviting. Layered shadows rippled over the walls, and an instinctive crackle of draíocht plucked at my panicked thoughts. My skin crawled with the sense of being watched, but before I could place the source, Samuel shoved through the doors. I whirled and backed up.
Wrath had screwed his face into something monstrous. I wouldn’t be like them, I vowed, flipping the dagger to catch its blade in my fingers. I was something new. I’m the best of both worlds.
“I will not be stopped by an insignificant nothing like you!”
He came at me, launching off his back foot and sprinting forward. I stood firm. Stood calm. Stared into the amethyst eyes of the only creature who’d taught me true hatred, and I launched my dagger with a cutting throw.
The blade struck at the center of his heart, knocking him off his stride. He staggered—almost fell. An animal growl bubbled up his throat, and briefly I wondered if a blade piercing his hollow heart might not be enough to stop him. But then he stumbled again and went down onto one knee. The ancient words were back, tumbling from his snarling lips.
I smiled and started forward. If he thought to threaten me with old words, he’d forgotten they couldn’t touch Arachne, and Alina O’Connor was too new for those curses to mean anything.
He spat at my feet. “You won’t kill me. You can’t. Your humanity, your fleeting construction, makes you weak.”
When I’d stalked Under, driven forward by the queen’s orders, I had no other choice. When I’d killed the fae guarding the queen, I’d had no other choice. I had no choice in my construction. No choice in my destiny. But standing over Samuel, I had a choice then, and it was all mine.
I yanked the blade out of his chest, splashing blood across the tiled floor. He gasped, but promptly resumed his chanting even as the light in his brilliant eyes dulled and his voice softened to whispers.
Slowly, I wiped the blade across my thigh. He didn’t think he’d die here. He truly believed I wouldn’t be the one to kill him. After all, he was an ancient fae elder, and I was nothing but the girl made of faerie dust.
His words faded when he saw my smile, and I think then he saw me for the first time; the real monster in me, as I saw the ugly in him.
Doubts shifted, became strengths, and slotted into place. Memories lined up, locking together to complete the picture of me. “I am fae,” I said. “Old and new. You aren’t the superior here. I am.”
One quick slash across his throat—that was all it took for him to understand. As his life bled away, I sank my hands into his hair, fisting my fingers around the knots, and forced him to see me and only me.
“Thank you,” I whispered, low and intimate. “For helping me find myself. You should know, I took your advice, but I don’t want to be accepted by fae like you.”
His eyes widened, and in those final moments, he truly did know me better than anyone who’d ever lived.
“Good-bye, Samuel,” I whispered against his lips as his last breath slipped past them.
The light had barely left his eyes when a surge of draíocht washed over me from behind. I staggered forward, dropping Samuel’s body, and spun to see the shadows converging. The liquid dark pooled into the corner, and with it the latent draíocht crackled, sparking a storm alive. The sweet, seductive smells of Faerie filled the air, and the Hunt came.
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