The Nightshade's Touch: A Paranormal Space Fantasy (Messenger Chronicles Book 3)

by Pippa Dacosta

We would finish this, and when we did, we would clash in all the right ways. But there was more behind the lust, all the parts he kept hidden, the parts too hurt and scarred by his past. The real Marshal Kellee was proud and wounded, fierce and complicated, and I loved all of him. Always had.

  “C’mon, Messenger, let’s go make history.”

  Hapters’s air smelled like rotten fruit, and its sky broiled, punctured here and there by crackling storm eyes and Shinj’s atmospheric fireworks. Screeches and caws called out, some distant, some so close they tingled my spine. In the time it had taken us to travel to Valand and back, and with no resistance, the unseelie had claimed this planet.

  Arran had brought the shuttle down on the landing strip we had departed from a few days ago. On the descent, we had left Talen in the center of the open prairie, exposed and alone with just the brooch as a weapon. But he had assured me and the others the unseelie would not harm him. As we had pulled away, the downdraft from the shuttle had whipped his long cloak and single braid around him, and he had stood like a rock, immovable and immune to everything. I knew otherwise and keenly remembered the unhurried grace of his touch, our fevered motions, and his sly, satisfied purr.

  Pushing thoughts of Talen aside, Kellee, Sota and I circled around the prairie in one direction while Arran and Sirius veered off in the other, so we would create a closing pincer on Talen’s location. The ship from low atmosphere would corral the unseelie toward us. We were the back flank, keeping them penned in, and Talen was the center of everything—the eye of the storm.

  If we pulled this off, the Messenger would be worth her myth. Word would spread. The people would believe, and we all might have a chance at pushing back Faerie. As for the larger picture, saving the saru, stopping Faerie altogether, those thoughts had to wait.

  “Sota, ready?” I primed the drone, hovering within sight but still some distance from me. The drone’s sights turned tactical, sharpening my vision via our ocular link. In the distance, the drone scanned an incoming wave of dust and the pinpricks of heat signatures inside. The unseelie were coming.

  “Ready,” he responded.

  All we had to do was hold them in place long enough for Talen to control them. The wild vakaru wraiths had bowed to him. Kellee had bowed. The unseelie here would bow too. Talen believed it, then so did I.

  To my left, Kellee lurked in the long grass, claws out, eyes ablaze. Once he felled a few, the others would recognize him as a threat and fall in line, or so he had told me. As for me, I had my whip alive and lashing at my side, and the ever-present glowing warmth humming its own power. My coat shimmered, charged and ready. I might have looked like something Faerie had crafted, but my heat was saru, and that’s where my strength came from.

  This would be a victory. Losing Hapters was not an option.

  The clouds boiled away, and the warcruiser’s bulk loomed like the cleaving head of a scythe. It spat out powerful beams that crept ever closer, herding the unseelie right toward us.

  The wind whisked, hot and abrasive. And my heart hammered like the hooves of the Wild Hunt coming for its prize. I lifted my chin. Lightning split the sky.

  I was not afraid. We were together and nothing could stop us.

  They came as one. A galloping wave of darkness, an ocean of claws and teeth and wings and fangs. I felt the moment they hit Talen, felt the flare of power strike my soul and burst into flame. Light shot outward, slamming into the unseelie’s ranks, knocking them back. The bond tugged, sharp and painful, until I let it go as I had once before, let it flow instead of fighting to hold on to it.

  Power crackled down my whip and along my coat’s silver lining, lighting it and me up. It didn’t hurt, because it wasn’t wrong. Saru could not steal magic, but it could be gifted, and Oberon had given me something powerful, believing it would stay hidden. That had been his mistake.

  The eye of light flickered, its edges fading, and at its center, a dark heart unfurled. Talen’s wings. Enormous and hungry, they pulled the light into them, and pulled the unseelie too.

  A few had broken free of Talen’s thrall and scattered. One beast bounded toward Kellee. The marshal’s claws flashed, the beast roared, and then I had my own fanged and winged thing screeching at me through the sky, talons thrust forward and open, ready to crush and kill.

  The whip whirled and cracked, slicing through leathery skin and splashing blood onto Hapters’s parched earth. The winged unseelie smacked into the ground, tumbled and thrashed, trying to lift itself into the air. Its movements were jagged, and its keen, wide eyes darted until it saw me. “Nightshade…” it hissed.

  “Not me.” I lifted the whip, circled it above me, and sent its tails in, coiling it around the beast’s neck. “I’m just saru.” The whip snagged tight, locked, and with one swift jerk, the unseelie’s fragile neck snapped.

  More broke free of Talen’s hypnotic summons, but Kellee was there, wreaking havoc on the edge of my sightline, and I dealt with mine just as efficiently.

  As more and more unseelie flowed in, more of Talen’s hypnotic mix of dark and light flowed outward. I didn’t need to be close to him to know he was a thing of dangerous awe and beauty. The bond shared it all, our combined strength and the sense that this was the right thing. Should we ever come to blows, sparks would fly, but that was not happening today.

  Wraithmaker, no more.

  Nightshade, no more.

  Droch-fhoula, no more.

  We were each something else, something changed and renewed, and we were winning. I’d only felt elation like it after the arenas, when the fae had cheered my name and the death I had wrought for them. A deep thrill surged through my veins, driving me on and lighting me up so the unseelie cowered back, trapped between Talen’s consuming dark and my raw glow. They fell back from Kellee too, and Sota drove them closer toward Talen, his lens firing, blazing, washing Hapters in pulses of red light.

  A crack sounded, and in the melee, I almost missed it. A heartbeat later, the bond stuttered, Talen’s magic faltering. Talen’s power, at the eye of all this, shrank in on itself, and the reaching dark edges of his wings curled inward, closing.

  Something was wrong.

  The unseelie moved as one, their mass breathing outward.

  “Kellee!”

  Kellee was looking up.

  A mass of claws sprang from my right. I whirled and cut it down. More were coming from everywhere. No, Talen’s hold on them was slipping. But why?

  Another crack like thunder.

  I looked up toward the sounds of cracking and saw the enormous warcruiser buckle at its center. It happened slowly, or perhaps it just appeared that way as cold, hard dread settled over me. There were hundreds of people on that ship, fae and human alike. Hulia too.

  The crack sounded again, and a silver tek-leviathan speared through the clouds above the warcruiser. Bigger and bigger, the enormous metal ship swooped in, wings spread like a falcon’s. It bristled with cannons, each one aglow with harsh red light as they charged for their next volley.

  Earthens from Sol.

  An icy dart hit my chest. Fear. Talen’s.

  “No. No!” I screamed uselessly at the intruders. We had this. We had it under control. We were subduing the unseelie. We were winning. And now the unseelie had scattered, masses of dark wings and rampaging hordes running chaotically.

  I was running too, toward Talen.

  The unseelie were on him.

  I am not who I once was. He couldn’t contain them, not torn between the ship and here. They would tear him to pieces.

  Kellee was a blur, fast outpacing me, heading straight for Talen.

  Another crack sounded, and I knew without looking up that the Earthen weapons had broken Shinj’s back. Sorrow slammed into me, tripping my stride. The ship, our ship, was dying. And Talen felt it. I felt it. He wanted to help her, but the pain, the unseelie, they were everywhere, and he wasn’t yet strong enough.

  No. Damn them, no! Shinj had done nothing wrong.

  “
Sota, send a communication. Do it now! Tell them to stop firing!”

  “They are not responding.” My drone flew over my head and shot toward the heaving mass of unseelie blocking my way to Talen.

  “We’re not their enemy!”

  Kellee plowed into the mob, Sota too. They fought and fired, claws and lasers tearing into flesh to get to Talen. I swung my whip, lifting it high, and was about to bring it down on the nearest heaving mass of unseelie, when a heavy, numbing weight captured my arm and lowered it softly to my side. Wait... why couldn’t I raise my whip?

  “Kesh?!”

  Arran.

  “Kesh…”

  I turned, hands at my side, and walked toward the sound of my name on Arran’s lips. I shouldn’t have been able to hear him, but I did. I should have been heading the other way, fighting to free Talen, but I wasn’t. What was wrong with me?

  “Kesh…” Arran’s hand settled on my arm. Yes, Arran was here and that was good. “Kesh, come with me.” He pulled me forward, and that seemed like the best thing to do. I should go with Arran. He had kind hopeful eyes and they beckoned now, pleaded...

  The light was all wrong. Bodies lay scattered around me. Unseelie bodies. None moved. We had killed some and we walked by them now as though they were nothing.

  “Where…” I reached for my head, trying to brush the fogginess away, sure I must have gotten wounded to be thinking so slowly. I was in a fight, wasn’t I? I was… doing something… important. Something I’d forgotten. It was right there, the thing I must do. Right there.

  Arran pulled me on until we stumbled and staggered in a trot. Our shuttle gleamed ahead.

  “Where’s Kellee?” I asked. Kellee would know what I’d forgotten.

  “Inside,” Arran assured.

  Inside? “But—”

  I tried to see behind me, to understand what had happened, but a flicker of light and dark scorched my vision. If Kellee was inside the shuttle, then he was okay. That was good. That was important too.

  “Talen?” I asked.

  “Close.”

  “So much light and yet so little hope.” The Dreamweaver’s syrupy tones poured into my ear. I flinched and almost stumbled. Arran’s arm tightened around my waist, and he urged me on, but didn’t he know there was a ghost whispering in my ear?

  “Arran, something is wrong with me. I shouldn’t be here. There’s something I need to do.”

  “Look around you, nothing girl. There is more happening here than your weak saru mind can comprehend.”

  I stumbled up the ramp into the shuttle and reached for the wall to stop the world from tilting beneath my feet. Blood was cooling on my neck, the wounds throbbing hot. Skin feverish. Wrong. I shouldn’t have been hearing the Dreamweaver, not anymore. I’d beaten him back. Something terrible had happened, but I couldn’t think around the fog to find its source. Why couldn’t I think?

  “Kellee…?” I called. He was here. Arran had said so.

  He would know what to do. He always knew what to do.

  The shuttle door slammed closed with a final thwunk, and everything rumbled as engines fired to life. But that couldn’t be right. Where was Talen? Where was Kellee? And Sota… Sota had been fighting them with Kellee.

  I turned too quickly.

  “Queen of the hearts she steals…”

  I squeezed my head in my hands. No, no, no, get out of my head. You can’t be here. YOU CAN’T.

  “Is she all right?” Sirius asked. Sirius was here too? A cold, hard tek-hand took mine. Wait. I looked at that hand in mine, the gleam of silver metal on my dark saru skin. Sirius was here. Arran was here. But not the others...

  “It will wear off,” Arran said with a harsh cold finality that didn’t sound like my Arran.

  What would wear off?

  None of this was making any sense. My vision blurred around Sirius’s autumnal reds. “Where’s Kellee…?”

  The floor moved, and I would have fallen had Sirius’s metal arm not swooped around me.

  Sirius.

  Harsh and unyielding. Oberon’s guardian.

  Arran. Arran who had forgotten but remembered how to love.

  Wait…

  “Now she sees… but it’s too late to save those she loves.”

  I shoved Sirius aside and stumbled against the copilot’s chair. Arran was maneuvering the shuttle away. Outside, turning the entire plain into a play of light and dark, a battle still raged. Sota’s red beams flashed. Kellee was a dark storm of his own, cutting a path through the horde. And there, at the eye, stood Talen, desperately holding the unseelie back even as they slashed and bit.

  They were still fighting.

  They didn’t know I was in the shuttle.

  Arran and Sirius were taking me away.

  “No…” I lunged for the controls. Strong arms locked around my waist and hauled me back. “They’re still there!” I whirled and swung for the guardian, but his tek-fingers caught my punch and squeezed, threatening to break my arm. I cried out, curling under the pain, and buckled to my knees.

  The guardian’s cool green eyes revealed nothing but harsh reality, like they always had.

  “Don’t hurt her!” Arran barked.

  “Arran!” I shoved at Sirius with my free hand, but he held firm. “Don’t do this! We have to help them. The unseelie will swamp them. And there’s a ship, an Earthen ship from Sol! It attacked Shinj—”

  A warning growl rumbled through Sirius. “They won’t let you go. This is the only way.”

  Fury raced through my veins. I bared my teeth at the guardian.

  “In thousands of years,” he sneered back, “I have never failed Oberon. I will return you to him at any cost. Their lives will pay for our quick exit before the Earthens overpower us.”

  My thoughts swam, sickness rising. “What did you do…? You drugged me…” But when? How? I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything from Arran or Sirius. Argh, my damn mind wouldn’t clear. “How did you do this?”

  “Benrin’s Spite.” Arran glanced back. “When you had me guard Sirius’s ship, I retrieved the syrup from the town, and earlier, when you were with Talen, I coated your whip handle with it. Just enough to make you susceptible to suggestion. You never would have left them otherwise.” He said all this matter-of-factly. He wasn’t sorry. Sirius and Arran believed this was right. Arran—my honest, carefree, trustworthy Arran—had drugged me.

  Shock and disbelief left me grasping for the right words to stop this. I had to make him turn around. I had to make him go back.

  Kellee would think I’d left him. He knew I’d struck a deal with Sirius. He would think I’d lied. After everything we had tried to accomplish, after everything he had shown me on Valand. It would all be for nothing. He didn’t trust me enough. He would think I’d betrayed him. The realization hit me like a blow to the gut, and a pained whine peeled from my lips. And Talen…. I’d run from him once. Would he think I was running again?

  “Take me back.” My voice was cold.

  “No.”

  “Please, Arran. Please… We had something. We were something. All of us. We were together. Don’t do this. Please.”

  The shuttle rumbled harder as the vessel passed through Hapters’s atmosphere. He wasn’t turning around.

  “You told me I was saru,” he said, his voice as cold as mine. “That must mean I owe my life to Faerie and her king. I might not remember who I am, but I know what I feel. I love them. Love cannot be wrong.”

  I heard myself laugh a sad, twisted chuckle. “Oh, Arran…” Kellee had been right. He had wanted me to stop Aeon from taking the starfruit. He had said we were our memories. Love meant nothing without the memories to go with it. Arran’s love was a lie, the same as the love of every single saru ever grown and harvested for Faerie. All of them were so in love with the fae, in love with a lie.

  “Arran, you were my hero.” I shoved against Sirius when he tried to pull me back again, and this time, he eased off. I gripped Arran’s arm, turning toward me. There, in
his eyes, something sparked, something I could hold on to. “You were brave and strong and proud. You were saru, and yes, you loved the fae. You loved them like all saru. But you knew that love was a lie. You tried to show me. You tried to tell me. I couldn’t see, not like you. It took me years outside of Faerie to see it. Please, Arran, you might not remember, but I do. And inside, you must feel that too? Please. Aeon would never do this. Please, for the time we spent together. This is not who you are.”

  “It is now.” He pulled his arm from my grip and returned to the controls. “Aeon is not me.”

  “No!” I reached for him again, but Sirius’s hand came down between us. “Don’t make a liar out of me! Please, Arran. I can’t leave them like this.” The ship, the people, my friends. This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. I should be there. I’d earned the right to be there. They needed me. I needed them. “Don’t take them from me!”

  Sirius’s metal hand jerked me away from Arran. “Perhaps leaving them like this is for the best,” he remarked.

  I lunged at him with no real thought behind it and knocked the fae guardian off his feet. I tore myself free and dashed to the seat beside Arran’s in time to see Hapters’s storm clouds dissipate and a million stars blink in welcome. The shuttle lurched toward them, and around my heart, the bright, tight bond between Talen and me stuttered. I touched a hand to my chest, sinking my fingers in as if I could hang on to that thread. He would know I was leaving him. It hurt. The distance was hollowing me out, emptying me of Talen’s connection. It hurt like grief.

  Weaker and weaker, stretched too thin, it was breaking. And I couldn’t stop it.

  Arran hit a button, and the stars turned into long needles of light.

  The bond snapped, taking my breath and the last of my strength with it.

  “Why, Arran?” My body blazed, radiating heat and sickness. I clutched at the copilot’s seat, feeling my heart hollow out with every labored beat.

  Arran turned to me and dared to touch my arm. “Because I love you.”

  I jerked back, his words a slap in the face, and stumbled to my knees. The darkness was coming, and I wasn’t sure if it was the same nothingness that always stalked me or if it was alive and hungry and watching, if the Dreamweaver had come to hide me in his arms and carry me away to the nowhere places where nothing hurt anymore.