The guardian stared back at me. He had known or suspected Oberon’s plans for me for a long time. How could he not? He had witnessed the king train me and subject me to Faerie’s poisons in another of his experiments. Sirius and I had always had an understanding. I was Oberon’s secret obsession, and he observed without comment.
“Wherever Eledan’s body is contained, it may not be enough. His mind is free.” I swallowed around the knot in my throat, hearing that distinct laughter all over again. “He wants revenge on Oberon.”
“You know this for certain?”
“Eledan is within his rights to kill Oberon for what the king has done, and much of Faerie will stand with Eledan. Sjora thought him a hero, and I doubt she’s alone in that admiration. I also know Eledan was searching for an ancient Faerie weapon, its pieces cast throughout the stars, and he found some pieces. If he has them all, we need to know where he took them and maybe we can… destroy it.” Use it. I could use it against Faerie. Use it to stop the war, to stop the fae, to free the saru, the namu, and the humans—when the time came, which it would. “I am trying to save Oberon by tracking down all the pieces. He’ll need the polestar.” Lies. All of it. If Oberon had hidden something of the polestar inside me, that had been his mistake. I wouldn’t give it up. Now more than ever, I had a chance to make things right.
“You’re searching for the polestar for the king?”
“Yes.” I held his gaze like the professional liar I was.
He regarded me as though the harder he stared, the more he could unravel my lies, but few could see past them. Frowning, he leaned back and glanced around us. His flight and Hapters’s people were watching us, the king’s guardian and the Wraithmaker having a little heart to heart alone.
I was surprised Sota wasn’t here recording the entire conversation to share with Arran.
“You are his guardian not because you follow orders,” I added. “He has a thousand fae who answer to his every word. You’re Oberon’s guardian because you love the king. When we return, and we will, you’ll have the knowledge of how to stop Faerie’s decline and I’ll have the polestar. With those two things, nothing will be able to stop Oberon, not even his brother. That is how we must return to Oberon. Triumphant.”
How easy the fae were to seduce with their own karushit.
Sirius nodded. “I will not wait forever, Wraithmaker.”
I placed my hand over Sirius’s metal hand. “We will return to him with gifts he cannot refuse.” And Sirius knew, without something to smooth his path, Oberon would frown upon the guardian’s new arm. Many would see it as a failure, a defect, and it could ruin his standing among the court. Sirius needed all the help he could get.
“After we return to Hapters, we must depart for Faerie, willingly or not. Refuse and our deal is void, including our agreement to keep your companions safe. Nothing will stop me from fulfilling Oberon’s decree.” He stood and was about to leave when a stray thought stalled him. “The guardians were not always Oberon’s. We are Faerie’s protectors first. You would do well to remember that, calla.”
He left, and the room released a collective sigh. Sirius had enough fae on the ship to overpower Hapters’s refugees. He couldn’t overpower Talen, but they already had an agreement in place. The guardian would soon stop playing nice. I didn’t have much time.
The chatter lifted again, and I lost my thoughts beneath the murmuring.
After everything that had happened on Valand, I had to face Talen, preferably before we arrived on Hapters.
I tapped my palm. “Sota?”
“Yes, Kesh?”
“Where’s Kellee?”
“Third level, aft chambers, with Arran.”
“And Talen?”
“In his chamber, where he’s been since returning to the ship.”
I thanked my drone, acknowledged Hulia and her observing presence behind the grown bar, and headed deeper into the ship.
I watched Kellee and Arran spar for strictly professional reasons. Kellee was fast and brutal, whereas Arran had a grace that came from honing his skills for entertainment. I’d fought Kellee and knew he preferred his opponent to see the threat coming. Arran used all the tricks to distract and disarm.
It was over too soon, both breathing hard. I made a concerted effort to keep my eyes from roaming the exquisite display of bare chests. Neither were fae, so I could admire as much as my sexually repressed saru mind could handle. And that was a great deal.
“Kesh!” Arran beamed, spotting me.
Kellee made a sound, like a grunt of acknowledgment, before scooping up his shirt and heading for the opposite exit.
“Kellee?”
He stopped. His grip on his shirt tightened.
“We’re good, right?” I asked. It seemed too small a thing to say after everything I’d seen on Valand, but Kellee wasn’t the sort to talk. His actions did the talking for him.
He smiled over his shoulder. “We’re good.”
“Have you spoken with Talen yet?” Arran asked after Kellee had left, eyes turning serious.
“No, not yet. I…” I’m terrified. “Can we go somewhere?”
Arran’s grin faded. “It’s not me you need to be with.” He ducked his head and passed by, leaving through the doorway behind me. Of course, he was right. I knew exactly where Talen was. These days, I always did. And I should have been with him. He was too important to let slip through my fingers, but how could I speak with him after everything I’d seen?
The walk to Talen’s chamber had never felt so long, and with every step, the echo of our bond beat inside my chest. None of what I had seen was okay. Nothing about any of this was fine, and it wouldn’t go away unless I faced him. Doubts tried to undermine my every step. He controlled the ship, controlled the unseelie, and by-cyn, he even controlled Kellee. What if he was like all the others on Faerie, and this was just the real him shining through?
He was powerful. Too powerful. We had the bond, but he didn’t control me like he could control Faerie’s monsters. I was the only one who could face him.
I had to do this.
The door to his chamber opened, and there he sat on the end of the bed, his back straight, and his expression indifferent as he settled his gaze on me. And it was all I could do not to turn around and run. But I’d run from him on Valand, and I couldn’t afford to give in to those instincts. I wore my coat, my whip was secure at my hip, and Sota was just a mental summons away. I could face the Nightshade as the Messenger. For the sake of Halow, I had no other choice. Kellee would be proud.
“You ran.” He said it as though he had only now just realized. His perfect brow crinkled, and those fiercely intense eyes softened.
I took a single step inside, and the door whispered closed behind me, shutting me in with a creature of unseelie legend.
“You ran from me, Kesh.” He lifted his chin.
“Talen—”
“You asked to see the truth of me. I showed you.” His gaze flicked away. “And you fled.”
Another step closer. He could lunge from that bed, turn into something dark, something unreal, and swallow me down in seconds, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. Throughout all this, he had always been fae, and I was saru. I was changing, yes. I could heal quicker, but I could still die like any other mortal saru.
The bond was the only thing keeping me in the room, because it meant he couldn’t—wouldn’t hurt me.
He stood, and I jolted back, losing the ground I had gained. The downward tilt of his lips sliced straight to my heart.
Why did it have to be like this? Why couldn’t he just be Talen again, the quiet, reserved fae who liked to cook and read, the fae who had run with me through our prison? But there had always been more to him. I’d only seen what I’d wanted to see.
Lies, just like the lies I’d once been made of.
“I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “I can’t tell anyone. The words… After I was expelled from Faerie, it was made so I couldn’t speak t
hem. It is dangerous to speak them. They have a power of their own and Faerie hears all.” Even that admission pained him. He stepped closer again, and this time I fought off all my instincts to back down, to run, to kneel, though my saru heart beat against its bars.
He took another step, bringing him within arm’s reach. He looked like Talen—poised and restrained and proud. But that was his armor. The thing I had seen on Valand was powerful and deadly and made of all the worst bits of Faerie.
“I will never hurt you.” He couldn’t lie, but someone like him talked so easily around the truth that every breath could be a lie and I wouldn’t know it.
He slowly reached out, wary, as though any sudden motion might startle me. His fingertips brushed my face so lightly I wondered if I was imagining the touch. Part of me—the saru part—wanted to brush against his hand, to lean into him, to let him embrace me, because it would be so much easier that way.
“Are you the Nightshade?” I asked. I’d asked before, and I knew the answer, but it was the wrong answer.
“No.” He closed that last step between us. His hair, unbraided and free, fell forward, framing his face.
“Are you unseelie?” I asked, words tripping as fear ate away at my barriers.
“Yes.” He brushed the backs of his fingers against my cheek, the touch more insistent. “And seelie.”
“Both?”
His fingers threaded into my hair, drawing it back from my face, and pleasurable tremors spilled through me.
“How is that possible?”
“All things are possible on Faerie. Time stands still, dreams are breathed to life, stars can be plucked from Night’s embrace and given a heart to beat.” He pressed his hand over my heart and our bond flared, washing wave after wave of warmth across my skin.
I had heard those words before. Kellee had spoken them… Plucked from Faerie’s sky… He had been talking about the polestar. Oberon had broken the polestar apart and scattered the pieces to prevent anyone from using the polestar to bring the unseelie back. But the king had kept a piece for himself, and here I was, facing the unseelie’s mythical leader. It seemed so… fantastical, like a myth a saru would concoct to whittle away the long hours behind bars.
Thoughts tumbled. It can’t be destroyed, but it can be broken up or altered to resemble other items.
Talen had known all along. He had asked me to help him, to free him, to share this bond with him. He had steered and guided my path with his small touches and subtle hints. He was not of Winterlands, or Summerlands, not of the ruling courts, but of something else entirely. He was the wildness of Faerie, the parts the courtly lords never could control. He was part of the dark, part of the night, part of the monsters, the wild and hungry, part of chaotic Faerie. All the parts Oberon had sought to destroy.
I looked into Talen’s eyes and saw the truth of him looking back at me.
I had been asking the wrong question all along. I am not who I once was. The real answer was right in front of me, peering back at me, caged and hidden for so long.
“Were you the Nightshade?” I asked.
“Yes,” he whispered.
I was expecting to feel more fear, to have to fight to stand so close to him, to have him touch me, but the great weight of fear lifted, and all I felt was relief.
There was the truth. He wasn’t the Nightshade, but he had been and could be again. That was why Sjora had used her last breath to say she knew him, why he had dared not speak the name, why he had stayed away from Faerie. As Talen, he was not the unseelie’s chosen ruler. He was hiding in plain sight.
“You see now why I cannot speak the words?” he whispered. “Why I could not tell you my name.”
Stardust and shadow.
“Talen…” I touched his cheek and danced my fingertips down the side of his face and along his jaw. So perfect. So measured and controlled. All of it camouflage. He hid inside the light.
“Did you free the dark fae on Hapters?” I asked.
He was so close I saw every flinch, every tiny line gather around his lips, every miniscule narrowing of his eyes. And now that I knew what he was, I saw the poetry in it all.
“They had been locked away for a long time. The magic used to hold them there had faded. They were already breaking free. My presence spurred them on. I didn’t realize how fragile their cage was until it was too late.”
“And the vakaru? The truth, Talen. I need to believe you, otherwise it’s over. The Messenger, the myth, the good we can do—if I can’t trust you, it’s all over.”
He cupped my face and my heart beat furiously. He could crush me in his hands, turn my feelings inside out, but through all this, he had never once hurt me. Right from the moment we’d met and he had dropped to a knee, he had helped me. When Kellee had first freed him, Talen had asked after me. Time and time again he’d tried to keep me safe. Only because he knew what you are.
“The vakaru were lost long ago,” he said. “Oberon trapped them in time and shadow, forever reliving their demise. I freed them and bought the Messenger an army.”
“Or yourself an army?” I pressed my hands over his and lowered them.
“I am not who I was once.” He sounded like Sota, hung up on old code, and I wondered if every time he said those words, he believed them a little more. “Oberon painted me as a monster.” He took my hands, still on his, and folded both over his heart. “You know I’m not. You feel the truth in me as I do in you. I know you, as you know me. It was the only way. The bond means we cannot lie to each other. I know you’re afraid, and you sense the same in me. And more…”
Oberon had killed the vakaru, I’d seen the past and knew how the king worked. He would not stop until he wiped out everything he despised. The Nightshade, weakened and separated from the unseelie, had done the only thing he could do and withdrawn. The victors had spun tales of unseelie monsters. What was the Nightshade, really? A monster to some, but a hero to others.
I felt the thud of his heart beneath my hand, saw the truth in his wide eyes, and felt the broil of emotions that weren’t mine. Strong, mixed feelings of anger and fear, but more too, of anticipation and hope. I did not have it in me to understand something like him, but I knew he was good and perhaps that was enough.
I knew too much.
“Kesh…”
I stepped back, out of his hands. If I went back to Faerie, how could I keep all this from Oberon? The polestar, the Nightshade. Oberon would know the moment he saw me. He always knew my secrets, as small as they had been all those years ago. But now my secrets were big.
“Kesh, please…” He stepped forward, reaching. “I couldn’t tell you. I wanted to. For so long, I wanted to.”
We had the fate of Faerie tied between us and I was the weak link.
“Mylana…” The plea in my name broke me open.
“I… We need to go back to Hapters,” I said and backed away toward the door, “to control the unseelie there and give the people their homes back… Then we should separate. We can’t… we can’t be together. We can’t do this.” The Messenger and her crusade ended with us. I had to let them go. Talen. Kellee. Arran. It was too dangerous to keep us all together. Eledan knew what I was, and he’d been searching for the other pieces. To what end, I wasn’t sure, but it couldn’t be good. He would come for me. If Oberon didn’t use me first, Eledan would. But if I found the pieces, I could control the polestar, couldn’t I?
“You can’t do this alone,” Talen said, guessing my thoughts.
I needing space to think. I needed to speak with Kellee and Sota and Arran. This involved all of us. “If what you said about me is true, if I am—”
“A star made flesh.”
I smiled at the pretty words. The Wraithmaker was not a creature of light, neither was the Messenger, but she could be a harbinger of change. “I am vulnerable to Eledan and to Oberon…” And to you. “I must master all these elements conspiring against me. I can, I’ve done it before. I’ve always survived, thrived, and I will do
the same, but… not with you.”
“We are stronger together. Not just you and me, but Kellee and Arran, Sota too. It will take more than the fragment of a star to stop Oberon.”
“Is that what you want? To stop Oberon? Or is there more?” Of course there was more. Had he just been Talen, I could have believed stopping Oberon was his only concern, but as the Nightshade, he had his own motives.
“I…” He turned his face away. “When Oberon drove the Dark Legion out of Faerie, he did not understand the consequences. Faerie is hurting. She needs to be made whole.”
He had no intention of stopping Faerie at all. He wanted to heal Her.
Left alone with the guardian, Talen had conspired behind my back. His intentions were good, if you were fae. But what would become of saru, namu, and humans?
“Kesh?”
I lifted my hand. I could not play these games with him, with them. I didn’t have it in me to outthink the fae. I never had. “You told me once I did not know real love.”
He didn’t reply, but his hands clenched at his sides.
“Maybe I still don’t, but I think love is accepting and understanding someone so completely they can tell you they’re a monster and the feeling doesn’t go away. If anything, it gets stronger. I am afraid of you, the real you, but I understand, Talen. I understand what you must do for your people.” He listened in that silent way of his. “And you understand that I cannot stand with you.”
“I had hoped we might stand together.”
I was beginning to see why Kellee had knelt to him. It was a shame we would likely one day be enemies. But that day was not today. Today, all I saw was Talen, the hopeful, honorable silver fae whose streak of dark humor often had me secretly smiling.
He offered me his hand. “Run with me.” The door opened by his silent command.
The Nightshade's Touch: A Paranormal Space Fantasy (Messenger Chronicles Book 3) Page 24