He begins describing some kind of agricultural process, but I’m only half listening because I’m trying to figure out what reference he’s referring to. I haven’t spoken to him in months. He might have an impeccable memory, but I don’t. I can’t even remember the topic of our last conver—
Oh.
“You found a reference to a shadow-reader?” I ask.
“Yes!” He looks up from the huge book in front of him and grins. “It’s 350 years earlier than Faem thought.”
Faem, I think, was the previous archivist. The silver in Kavok’s eyes practically sparkles. His giddiness makes him seem even younger than he already looks. If he was human, I’d guess him to be in his midtwenties, so that means he’s probably pushing fifty, still a relatively young age for a fae. His hair is blond, just a few shades darker than Aren’s—most likely because he locks himself in here all day, every day—and it’s just long enough to be frazzled.
In short, he’s the geekiest fae I know. I keep expecting him to push wire-framed glasses up on his nose.
“What does it say about the shadow-reader?” I ask, interrupting his lecture on agricultural practices.
“Oh, yes.” He clears his throat. “It doesn’t say this is the first shadow-reader, and I can’t validate the text’s authority, but it appears that there is little difference between his abilities and yours. The shadows only told him where a fae exited the In-Between, not where he entered it, and he, too, had to draw what he saw and name the nearest city or region out loud. But then, we come to a small discrepancy.”
“Discrepancy?” I move closer to his desk, but he closes the text and rises.
“Not with your abilities,” he says. “With ours. According to the author, only a few fae were able to fissure to the locations the shadow-reader mapped and named.”
Now, that’s interesting.
“Is it something fae learned to do over time?” I ask.
“It’s implied that the fae who could follow the maps had more…er, more contact with humans.” Kavok doesn’t meet my eyes.
“Sex?”
He lifts a shoulder, says almost apologetically, “It’s implied.”
Everyone who has the ability to fissure can make it to the locations I sketch, and since most of those fae would rather not touch a human at all, sex definitely doesn’t have anything to do with it.
“That’s all I’ve discovered,” Kavok says. “I found the reference a few weeks ago, but you were…Well, you were…”
“Things were different then,” I say, hiding a smile. It’s almost cute, how easily flustered he is. “I’m looking for Naito.”
He seems grateful for the change of subject. “Of course. He’s there.”
He points to an alcove that splits off from the main room.
After he takes a seat at his desk, I walk toward the alcove he indicated, and there, sitting at a table heaped with papers, books, and a few boxes, sits Naito.
He doesn’t notice me. He’s staring at whatever is in front of him. His left hand is clenched in his black hair, helping to hold his head up, and his forehead is creased. He’s wearing the same jeans and white T-shirt I saw him in a few days ago, and his shoulders are rounded and slumped. Oddly, though, he looks better than he did before. I can’t quite put my finger on why. Maybe it’s the lack of anger in his expression. Maybe it’s the amount of concentration, of focus, in the way his eyes move back and forth, reading, I presume. Or maybe it’s just the fact that he’s not demanding someone fissure him back to Earth so he can murder his father.
“Hey,” I say when I reach his table.
“Hey,” he responds without looking up. I wait a moment then, when he still doesn’t glance away from what he’s reading, I pull out the chair across from him and sit.
My gaze sweeps across the table.
“You can read this?” Everything is written in a jumble of symbols and marks. I can speak Fae fairly well now, but even if I had years to study, I don’t think I’d ever be able to make sense of their written language.
“Kelia is teaching me,” Naito says.
I bite my lower lip, unable to ignore the fact that he’s still talking about her in the present tense. “Naito—”
“I understand enough to get by,” he says. His tone is firm, now, and his eyes have hardened.
Everyone’s been tiptoeing around Naito these past two weeks. I don’t want to make him hurt any more than he already does, but I think it’s time someone convinces him that he’ll never see Kelia again. She’s well and truly gone.
I ignore the way my throat burns when I swallow, then say, “Kelia would want—”
“To be with me,” he interrupts again. There’s steel in his voice. It’s as if he’s daring me to claim otherwise. Before I can do just that, he turns the book in front of him around so that it’s right side up for me.
“Banek’tan,” he says, pointing to a jumble of tiny lines.
The word sounds familiar—I’m pretty sure it’s a type of magic—but I say, “I can’t read that.”
He raises his eyes to meet mine. “It means ‘one who retrieves the departed.’ A banek’tan can bring Kelia back.”
Really?
I stare down at the book as an almost giddy feeling takes over me. A banek’tan could undo so much. With one’s help, Naito and Kelia can be together again. They can have their happy ending, and we could bring back the innocent fae who were caught up in this war: the merchants who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, the families who were burned inside their homes in Brykeld, the swordsmen on both sides of the war who were only following orders.
We could bring back the fae I inadvertently killed in Belecha.
We could resurrect Sethan.
But just as quickly as those hopes appear, they vanish. What the hell am I thinking? If that magic existed, Lena would have already tried to bring her brother back from the ether. And someone would have tried to bring back the king.
I close my eyes as a rush of pity flows through me. It’s tinged with pain, and it takes everything in me to keep it locked down tight. I swallow, trying to loosen a tight and raw throat, then, carefully, I ask, “Is that an extinct magic?”
Naito’s gaze doesn’t waver. It’s almost as if he’s waiting for the pity or skepticism to reach my face, but after a handful of heartbeats, some of the tension leaves his shoulders. “These documents are filled with references to banek’tan. And some of them are recent. This one”—he grabs a loose parchment from one of his stacks—“is only twenty years old. A false-blood’s bond-mate was killed. She came back.”
I bite the inside of my cheek and watch as he picks up another paper.
“Same thing with this one,” he says. “It’s a little older, but there were dozens of witnesses. A fae died in the silver mines of Adaris. His bond-mate was able to bring him back. I’ve found twelve stories like these from the past century. Twelve. There has to be some truth to them.”
There’s so much hope in his voice, I almost want to let him believe this. Would it be so wrong to? This is the best he’s looked in weeks. He has a reason to live, but these…these stories are just that. Stories. They’re rumors. Dreams. I want to believe them, too, but I’ve learned the hard way that life isn’t a fairy tale. People don’t come back from the dead.
No. I was wrong before when I thought it was too soon for him to go back to work. He needs the distraction. He doesn’t need to sit around researching dreams that can’t come true. It isn’t healthy.
“What happened to them?” I ask.
His brows lower. “What do you mean?”
“These fae who came back from the ether. Where are they now?”
He blinks, then stares down at the pages in front of him. “I’m not sure.”
I wait a moment, letting him think things through. “Naito, the banek’tan don’t exist.”
He looks up again, his expression hardening. “Neither did the ther’othi.”
And one point goes to Naito. Fae aren’t
supposed to be able to walk the In-Between, but Micid could. He was a cruel, sick fae who worked for the previous king and his lord general, Radath. Instead of going through the In-Between, the freezing space fae pass through when they fissure, he waded in, taking me with him into a dimension within a world. We were invisible to everyone, but could still move and interact with the world. I suppose I can see why Naito is clinging to this hope, but it’s so, so thin. If a fae was ever brought back from the ether, there would be more evidence than what’s hinted at in these documents.
I draw in a breath, let it out slowly, then go for a not-so-subtle subject change. “Lena’s having a hard time keeping the palace secure.”
“Hmm,” Naito murmurs, leaning back in his chair and pulling a book closer. “She needs more fae to guard the Sidhe Tol.”
“The Sidhe Tol aren’t the problem,” I say. They’re not entirely the problem. A Sidhe Tol is a very rare and very special type of gate that allows a fae to fissure into an area protected by silver. We know the locations of three of them, but rumor has it there are more. No one’s been able to find them, and until two weeks ago, no one but the king and a few trusted advisors knew where they were. I wasn’t supposed to know where they were, but Kyol fissured me through one once. I gave the rebels its location, and then, they learned where the other two were as well. They used the Sidhe Tol to take the palace. Now, we have to guard them to make sure the former Court fae don’t do the same thing to us.
“The remnants are launching organized attacks from within the silver walls,” I tell Naito. “They have illusionists and all of the humans who used to work for the Court. Lena needs—”
“Not all of them,” Naito interrupts. “They don’t have you. I hear they don’t have that Shane guy, either.”
So he is aware of some of the things that are going on around the palace. That’s good. It means he isn’t completely lost in his research here. “Lena needs your help.”
“I’m busy.”
“Naito.”
“I said I’m busy.” His glare comes off as a warning not to press the issue further.
Too bad. I have to.
“And how much time do you think you’ll have for your research if we lose the palace?” I demand. “Do you think the remnants will just let you hang out here?”
His bottom lip twitches.
“You need to join the rotation,” I say. “With you and Shane, there are six of us working for Lena. We can keep all the entrances watched.”
Naito’s gaze grows distant, focusing somewhere behind me. “It won’t make a difference. We can’t keep watch indefinitely. Lena needs to take out the remnants’ leader. She needs to go on the offensive.”
It’s hard to argue with that because it’s true. The rebels’ other Sighted humans and I are almost burned-out already. We need a break, and while Naito and Shane will help lighten our workload, it’s only a temporary solution.
Naito is still staring behind me. I look over my shoulder just as Kyol reaches our table.
“I need a shadow-reader,” he says. “Quickly.”
I rise automatically, not noticing until I’m already standing that Kyol isn’t focused on me. He’s focused on Naito. Naito meets his gaze but doesn’t say a word for a good six seconds.
“I’m busy.” He returns to reading the documents in front of him.
I don’t know if it’s obvious what Naito is researching—I feel like it should be—but Kyol’s face remains expressionless, even when he eventually looks at me. “Will you come?”
It’s a question I was rarely asked when King Atroth was alive. The fae always assumed I would drop everything and help them, and most of the time, I did. My own fault. I should have stood my ground more often, made more time for myself.
“Yeah, I’ll go,” I tell him. Jenkins doesn’t need my driver’s license and Social Security card until 5 P.M. on Friday, two days from now. I have more than enough time to help Kyol and get back to Vegas, and I want to help him.
I turn to Naito. “You’ll have to cover my watch.”
He doesn’t glance up.
“Naito,” I say again, sharper this time. I see his jaw clench once, twice. Then, when I think he’s going to ignore me indefinitely, he finally says, “Fine.”
I’ll have to trust he’ll follow through on that because Kyol’s already heading for the door. I was avoiding Kyol these past two weeks only because I didn’t want to hurt him, but it doesn’t look like being near me fazes him at all. Maybe I’m a fool to think he still wants me. Maybe he’s completely over me.
I follow him out the door, breaking into a jog when my legs can’t keep up at a walk. Usually, Kyol would slow down for me, but when we exit the archives, he increases his pace.
“We might lose him if we don’t move quickly.”
The urgency makes my stomach tighten. The last time I shadow-read with him was two weeks ago in Montana. It didn’t go well. A lot of fae died securing the Sidhe Tol and fissuring into the Silver Palace. They’ve been dying ever since, and while I want to believe we’ve made it through the bloodiest days of this war, my gut tells me we haven’t. More lives will be lost before the high nobles accept Lena as queen.
FIVE
KYOL ISN’T THE fae who fissures me out of Corrist. He hands me a cloak, a sketchbook, and an imprinted anchor-stone, then lets Taber, his second-in-command, take me through the slash of white light. As soon as the gated-fissure fades away, I release Taber’s arm, trying to ignore the heat swirling in my palm. He doesn’t look bothered by our contact. I’m sure he is, though. The majority of the Realm’s citizens believe humans and human tech damage their magic. Chances are none of the three fae with me now want to get too close to me; they’re just too professional to show it.
They’re all former Court fae who served under Kyol. I’ve worked with Taber before, but not the other two, though I have met Brayan, the tall but stout fae standing to my left, once. He was one of the men guarding the storage room where Kyol was holding Naito and Evan, another shadow-reader, during the war. I haven’t seen him since then, but being with the three former Court fae makes this assignment seem so familiar, I almost feel like nothing has changed these past few weeks. Nothing, that is, except our target. We’re not hunting Aren anymore.
“We’re hunting Dyler, son of Jielan,” Kyol says when he joins us. The shadows from his extinguished fissure twist in the air behind him. Fae can’t see them. They don’t feel the itch to sketch out their peaks and valleys. They don’t need to know if the tiny swirl in the middle of the black haze puts us on the east or west side of the river that cuts through the city. I do, though, and my fingers tighten on the sketchbook in my hand. I wish I had the strapped sketchbook I packed in my suitcase, but this one will work, and it will take only a few seconds to slip the pencil from the spiral and draw what looks to be a marketplace just north of the swirl. If I—
“McKenzie.”
I blink. Kyol’s voice is firm, like he’s called my name more than once.
I give my head a little shake so I can focus on him and not the shadows dancing over his shoulder. In the last ten years, I’ve only tranced out a dozen times looking at them. Two of those times have been in the last week. I think sleep deprivation and constantly being on edge is finally getting to me.
“Are you sure you can do this?” His silver eyes don’t soften like they usually would with that question.
“I’m sure,” I say, keeping my voice neutral as well. We both know I’m the best person for this job. “You said we’re looking for…?”
“Jielan,” Kyol says.
I recognize the name. I read the shadows for him just a few months ago. We were looking for Aren in Jythkrila, but the rebels set a trap for us. For me, really. They’d killed and replaced the inspectors at the city’s gate. The inspectors’ job was to make sure the fae who used the gate paid taxes on the goods they took through it. They’d never approached me before, but one did that time. He feigned interest in the sketchbook I carr
ied. By the time I realized something wasn’t right, he locked his hand around my wrist.
Jielan saved me from the rebels. They were my enemy then, so I was grateful. I thanked him. Now, I’m here to help Kyol capture or kill him.
“Up here,” Kyol says, motioning me toward a ladder. It’s only then that I really take in my surroundings. My impressions from the shadows were wrong. We’re nowhere near a marketplace. The ladder climbs up the side of a gray-and-black brick wall. The building is big, stretching more than fifty feet to either side of me. It’s plain, though, with a flat façade and what looks like a flat roof. My guess is it’s a bregorm, a stack house, which is basically the Realm’s equivalent of a UPS. Jaedric, wood, textiles, and other bulk items don’t just appear in merchants’ stores. They have to be brought there, and the fae who harvest or create them don’t have the time to fissure what they’re selling in small armloads to every merchant who might want them. So they bring them here, stacking them in their local bregorm, where other fae agree to the tedious job of hauling them to the nearest gate.
The stack house is the only building I can see. I don’t know what’s on its other side, but there’s nothing but an open field at our backs. It was near midnight in Corrist, but here, it’s maybe late afternoon, which means we’re a good ways to the east of the Silver Palace.
I grab the first rung of the ladder and start up, thinking maybe I’ll recognize the city when I have a better view. It’s close to a three-story climb, but I make it to the top quickly. As I pull myself onto the roof, I notice the thick band of silver edging the building. The metal prevents fae from fissuring up here or inside, but that’s not the only reason we emerged from the In-Between at the base of the ladder. One of Kyol’s swordsmen lies flat on his stomach on the far edge of the roof. His head is pointed away from us and tilted at an angle that presumably gives him a decent view of the door to the building that’s across the street. From where I’m crouched by the ladder, I can only see a roof and the top edge of a window. No one inside should be able to see me, but if we’d fissured directly up here, there’s a chance they might have seen the flash of light.
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