The Nightshade's Touch: A Paranormal Space Fantasy (Messenger Chronicles Book 3)
Page 30
I pinned the star to my coat and leaned forward on the bench. “The law is gone. We live by morals now.”
“Do Earthens have morals?”
Earthens were Oberon’s original experiment, the origin of humans. Their kind had spread beyond Earth and Sol, prompting the first war with Faerie. After Mab’s peace treaty, they settled Halow, grew, and developed, birthing tek cities like Calicto and Point Juno, cities in the stars. Humans of Halow were subtly different from the humans of Sol—the original Earthen families. I’d only met a few Originals in all my years, and all of them were better-than-you assholes.
I rubbed my hands together, pushing out the itch to free my claws. “They struck while we were already engaged in a fight. What do you think?”
Talen’s eyes narrowed. “I could free us with a touch. I need only get close to one of them to incite their rage and have them—”
“No.” He could do a whole lot more than that, but the last thing we needed was more enemies. I still hoped Hapters had been a misunderstanding. “Don’t.” Not yet. I would speak with their general and try to come to some agreement. They were keeping us alive for a reason. That meant there would be an opportunity to talk. Once I was out of the cell, I’d get a better idea of where we were and what our options might be. Find a ship, get back to Hapters, assess the damage…
“Is the ship alive?” The last I’d seen of the warcruiser, it had been bent and broken, lying limp in the sky over Halow.
Talen’s fingers gripped his knees. “Yes, but she’s in considerable pain.”
I would never have believed the day would come when I’d pity one of the fae’s world-eating ships. But ours—Shinj—had done nothing wrong. We had done nothing wrong. The Earthens had attacked from behind like cowards. All this time, all of Halow’s people dead, and worlds destroyed, and they had been absent.
My fingers itched again. I got to my feet, needing to move, to think, to clear my thoughts of the increasing restlessness. The cell wasn’t much larger than a few meters squared but pacing helped settle my thoughts, until they landed on Kesh.
I’d seen her run into the fray.
Watched her slow.
Turn back…
“And Kesh? Do you feel her?” I asked, careful to keep my voice level.
Talen bowed his head. “I don’t know.” He touched his chest and then dropped his hand. “The distance between us is too great.”
She’d hurt him. By-cyn, she’d hurt all of us. But Talen hadn’t seen the fierceness of her charge. He hadn’t seen her rush into a wall of monsters to save him. I’d seen it. All of it. She would have toppled a dark army singled-handedly to save him.
“Do you think she left us?” the fae asked. He lifted his head, and that same indifference sat easily on his face, but his eyes held the truth. Always had. He loved her—the fool. She had made fools of us all, but damn her, I loved her for it too. Hated her most of the time as well, but we’d been working on that before she was taken.
“No.” I gripped the bars and clenched my hands so hard the muscles ached. The way she had slowed, her shoulders dropping, her pace slowing. I’d seen that blank look on the faces of Hapters’s folks when Sirius had drugged them. But Sirius hadn’t drugged Kesh. The guardian, for all his many, many faults, had more integrity than that. I’d fought Arran. The gladiator liked to deflect, distract, and then make his move. “The kid took her.”
“Arran? I don’t see how. Arran is a skilled fighter, but Kesh is… ruthless. Had she not wanted to go, she would not have gone.”
I smiled at all the times Kesh had gotten me on my back, at the precision with which she’d strike, at the raw, unyielding way she fought. She thought herself cumbersome and slow, but I’d stopped holding back in our sparring long ago. And every time I’d seen her in that Faerie coat, her whip at her side, her drone a constant death sentence in her wake—fuck, she took my heart and ripped it from my chest. Every damn time.
“There was a time, once, when she would have left.” I’d had to lock her up, something I wasn’t proud of, but it had been necessary. I’d known, given enough time, she’d come around if I showed her another way outside of Faerie. We all needed perspective before we could change. And she had. She’d more than come around. She’d taken up the challenge of becoming the Messenger and embraced it. To come back from the puppet she’d been and remake herself anew? That took strength and courage. “She chose to fight alongside us.” She made the right choice.
“So he’s taking her back to Oberon, back to Faerie.”
I turned my back to the bars, leaned against them, and flexed my fingers. “By my count, she’s already there.” For all her crimes against Faerie, the king would kill her. But he’d make it slow, draw it out, let all of Faerie watch her demise. Everything was a pantomime with the fae. And I couldn’t get to her. She was a million light years away, facing execution, and I was stuck in this cell.
Talen watched my hands move, knowing me well enough to understand why I had started rattling around this damn cage. I couldn’t afford to free my claws here. I looked human. The Earthens would talk to me, trust me, but if they discovered who I was, they’d kill us both. Earthens had written legends in my name. They had turned me into a monster that rampaged through their ranks, drinking their blood, slaughtering thousands, driving spikes through their severed heads, and I couldn’t blame them. They were right. I had been that monster.
I winced and pressed my teeth together, forcing back their ache.
Talen’s gaze darkened with knowing. “They shouldn’t have caged us together.”
“They don’t know—” What we are.
It would be fine. Someone would come soon. The restlessness would pass. Unleashing the beast in me wasn’t an idea I relished, and not with Talen trapped here too. He might not be the Nightshade anymore, but he was nightmare enough for the Earthen to lose their collective shit if we showed them our true selves.
Maybe it would come to that. If it did, this cell wouldn’t hold us. We’d have to fight our way out of this mess, Nightshade and Droch-fhoula together. That was Plan B, and I hoped I didn’t have to put it into action, even if a deep-seated raw part of me wanted it all to go sideways just so I could tear through them again. It had been a long, long time since I’d been Droch-fhoula, but the hunger never left.
Talen picked a speck of dust or fluff off his leathers. “Attack me and I’ll put you down. Again.”
I grinned. For a fae, his right hook was lethal, and he was fast too. When I’d lost control with Kesh, I hadn’t known he’d moved until I’d hit the floor. “Try it, fae.”
“And have you lose another bet with Sota?” The corner of his mouth twitched. “I’ll let you keep your pride, Marshal.”
I huffed a laugh and the tension in my muscles eased.
The distant clanging of doors sounded and human voices traveled through the walls. I straightened and faced the bars, putting myself between the closed entrance and Talen. The fae could look after himself, but Kesh would kill me if anything happened to him.
“How do you want to do this?” he asked.
“With diplomacy.” I looked behind me at the silver-haired fae sitting upright and proper on the floor. He looked harmless, unless you knew the fae, then you’d know he was as lethal as any predator. If I were Earthen and on the other side of the bars, I’d kill him. We just had to hope that whoever was about to greet us had better morals then me. “If talks fail, we’ll try Plan B.”
“Plan B?”
“Stardust and shadow.”
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Get your free e-copy of ‘Wings Of Hope’ by signing up to Pippa’s mailing list, here.
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More fae?
Read The London Fae series
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