His smile wasn’t comforting. The bastard was working his own game, and he saw all the cards.
“Why did you help me escape the human facility? You told Pierce about me in her dreams. Without your interference, I could have been there for weeks.”
He bowed his head coyly. “A thank you would be nice.”
“Fuck you.”
He frowned. “Perhaps I freed you because I wanted to?”
“The fact you’ve phrased that as a question means it’s virtually a lie.”
“What does it matter why I helped? You’re free. You’re on your way back to Kesh. Bravo. Oh, you should probably know there’s about to be an execution…”
“Whose?”
“A gladiator. One of Faerie’s finest.”
Not Kesh. It couldn’t be… could it? Unless Oberon had seen through her lies and had no choice but to execute her. But he needed her to retrieve the acorn.
“How much time?” I asked.
“Time is fickle on Faerie, but you can stop Oberon,” Eledan insisted, “if you hurry.”
“Me stop Oberon?”
“He’ll be leaving the palace walls, but he won’t go far. Still, it could be enough… Others will be there. Thousands are arriving to see the spectacle of the execution. Not everyone is coming to see the saru lose their head. Others have ideas… ideas I may have planted in their dreams and let grow.”
“If you have that set up, what do you need me for?”
“I don’t, but after he murdered your entire people, I assumed you’d appreciate taking a little revenge.”
It wasn’t as simple as that. He wanted me there because he wanted the acorn. By now he’d probably plucked the fact I had it from Pierce’s dreams. Nothing was simple with Eledan. He could seed a dream here, an idea there, and have anyone dancing to his tune.
He already knew too much. I couldn’t think around him, not in his dream world, but I needed him. “Will you help me contain the Nightshade?”
“Are you sure he wants me in his head?”
Was this the right thing to do? “He doesn’t need to know…”
“Oh, Marshal Kellee.” He clicked his tongue. “I thought lies were Kesh’s weapons, not yours.”
“Just let him dream of her. That’s all I’m asking.”
Eledan chuckled. “You wear your weakness on your sleeve, Marshal. One day soon, it will cost you dearly. All right. But you’ll owe me a boon.”
I opened my mouth to deny we were making a deal.
“Just a little thing. I ask only that when the time comes, you’ll let her sleep.”
I hated how he had me pinned. “What does that mean?”
“Just as it sounds. Shall I go ahead and soothe the silver fae to keep him from terrorizing those fragile humans or worse? Tick-tock, Marshal. Time is not on your side.”
When the time comes, you’ll let her sleep. I needed this to work. I needed Pierce on my side so we could get back to Calicto and save lives. His words were traps, but my choices were limited. “Agreed.”
Chapter 20
We made it to Calicto while Talen slept, only waking on entry into the planet’s atmosphere.
After handing me the acorn, he stalked into the depths of Arcon, keeping to the light so our reluctant human companions didn’t see the worst of him in the shadows. Whatever dreams Eledan had given him, they had worked. If he knew what I’d done, he didn’t mention it. But he was calm again. We had a human alliance and we were heading to get Kesh. It had to be worth it.
Hulia stuck close to me as we observed Pierce’s crew scout through Calicto’s Faerie-touched remains, recording and observing how Faerie had changed the planet. I wondered if Earth might one day soon be similarly twisted beneath Faerie’s magic.
Shinj hovered high in the sky over Arcon where we’d left her. Lights beat along her hull in a rhythm I knew matched her two powerful hearts. Soon, we’d be aboard and making our way back to Kesh.
“Before we leave, I want to do something for Sota,” Hulia said.
I hadn’t forgotten about the drone, but with everything I’d been managing, his well-being had slipped down the list of priorities. It came back now with a heavy dose of guilt too. “Arcon had a warehouse full of drones. I could maybe salvage something from the remains…”
She pulled a tek-board and what looked like wiry scraps from her back pocket. “I was thinking more of an upgrade.”
“An upgrade?”
“We can’t leave him in pieces, Kellee.”
I looked at Sota’s remains cradled in her hands. Fragments of gleaming tek. “He’s just a drone…” But even as I said the words, I knew they were false. Hulia’s scathing glare pulled me up on it. “Okay, all right. Go fix him, but be quick.”
She headed toward Arcon’s shadow.
“Hulia?” I wanted to thank her. She had stuck with us, helped us and Kesh, and not once had she asked for anything in return.
She grinned and waved me back. “Stop with the brooding face already.”
“Whatever you do, don’t make him more irritating than before,” I called.
“You’re not fooling anyone, Marshal. You lurve Sota.”
“Don’t tell him that.”
A few hours later, Shinj welcomed me home by flooding warm light through her corridors. Her subsonic hum pleasantly tickled my senses.
“All better, huh?” I headed for the observation chamber and ran my hand along the smooth corridor walls. The humming note lowered, and maybe some of Faerie had gotten beneath my skin, because I sensed her polite queries without hearing any words. “We ran into some issues on Earth, but we’ll go get Kesh as soon as Talen is healed and thinking clearly, and once Hulia has fixed Sota.”
Outside the observation window, Calicto shimmered below, looking a lot like Earth. To our right, off the starboard side, the curve of gleaming tek hung suspended in Calicto’s upper atmosphere. “Yeah, I hear that…” I told Shinj. She didn’t like Excalibur being there, and I couldn’t disagree. “Keep an eye on their weapons’ ports. Any change, any hint that they’re about to stab us in the back, fill its hull full of holes.”
Shinj thrummed her acknowledgment. They wouldn’t have the element of surprise a second time.
Rolling my shoulders, I sighed out all the stresses and strains. No tek. Shinj’s quiet was a luxury compared to Excalibur’s hissing tek. All I needed now was to know Kesh was safe and for us to be on our way to Faerie. Finally, I’d see her again, and I was bringing her a gift.
I plucked the acorn from my pocket. The nut buzzed against my palm, more alive now that it was closer to Faerie. “One-quarter of all our troubles.”
Something cold and hard nudged against the back of my neck. I’d had enough electro-pistols pulled on me to recognize the pressure of a gun. I froze, and to my right, the air rippled over an exosuit, peeling it apart the same way fae glamour sloughed off its owner. And there stood Pierce, leaner and harder outside of her Sol Alliance uniform, her face full of righteous determination. I hadn’t sensed her approach, hadn’t smelled the tek or felt its itch. Humans were getting more fae-like by the day.
“I can’t let you go to Faerie with that acorn.”
“You have two choices,” I told her, sounding a lot like a human emissary from a long, long time ago. “We work together, we survive, or you—”
A pistol shot rang out.
I expected pain and not much else. Maybe I’d heal the blast to the back of my neck. Maybe I wouldn’t and fate had a twisted sense of humor. I’d killed the human emissary and now one had killed me? But the pain didn’t come, and it wasn’t me who fell.
Pierce crumpled to her knees, clutching at my leg on her way down. Deep red blood bloomed across her chest, seeping through the exosuit mesh. She tried to swing her pistol around at the shooter filling the doorway behind us. I kicked it from her grip, and the captain fell forward onto her hands.
I looked up at the figure in the doorway, a man but not a man. He smelled of warm wires and
ozone, like an electrical charge in the air after a storm. The picture of him didn’t fit, as if he wasn’t here at all, but my senses didn’t lie.
He settled his steely gaze on me. One tek-eye blazed red, and the other crackled an electric blue. Not a man, my senses warned again.
His lips turned upward in a bright, cocky smile. “I couldn’t find a damsel, so you’ll have to do.”
The voice… I recognized it, but it was different, smoother, deeper, and formed over lips instead of through electronic filters.
“Sota?”
The gun twitched in his hand and vanished. No, it didn’t vanish. Metallic pockets opened in his forearm and retracted the gun inside, sealing it off beneath synthetic skin.
Hulia stumbled into the room, saw Pierce bleeding out at my feet, and gaped at Sota. “Holy karuballs, Sota. When I said go surprise Kellee, I didn’t mean shoot Pierce!”
Sota shrugged the way I’d imagined him doing a thousand times in my mind. “She was about to kill Kellee. Kesh wouldn’t have liked that.”
Pierce spluttered, still very much alive, but not for long.
I blinked at Sota, made sure all his guns were stowed away, shoved the questions aside, and grabbed Pierce by the neck, hauling her onto her feet. “I’d love to say I’m surprised, but I’m not.”
Her watery eyes found the acorn in my left hand. She grasped for it, perhaps thinking its magic could save her.
“We had a good thing going here, and you had to be predictably human by stabbing me in the back.”
“Butcher.” Blood bubbled over her lips.
“Shall I shoot her again?” Sota asked, lifting his arm.
The offer was tempting. “No, because I’m not who I once was.”
Huh, look at me, sounding like Talen. The fae had a point, one lost on this human.
“I’ll ask the ship you’re currently inside if she might be kind enough to fix you up, but seeing as you almost killed her not so long ago, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
Shinj strummed agreeably. More compassionate than I was, she’d fix Pierce up.
“I think I should shoot her again,” Sota said, “just to be sure.”
I scooped Pierce against my side and hobbled toward Sota and the door.
“Just her knees,” Sota continued. “She doesn’t need those.”
I caught Hulia’s wide-eyed gaze and smiled reassuringly. “I thought we agreed not to make him more annoying.”
She shrugged. “He’s the same he’s always been, just with legs.”
“And arms,” Sota added. “And fingers. Can I cut off her fingers?” The way he asked made it sound perfectly reasonable.
“She needs her fingers,” I told the drone, “and her other parts.”
He lifted his hands. “She only needs three on each hand. The rest are superfluous.”
Oh, by cyn, what the fuck would I tell Kesh? “Help me out here.”
Sota collected Pierce’s limp arm, propping her up between us, and together, we carried her limp body deeper into the ship toward where twin hearts thudded loud and strong. We set her down near one of the life-streams and left her there. Shinj would seal her inside and deal with her.
Sota fell into step beside me. His clothes were mine, I realized, which was why they hung off his shoulders and dragged along the floor at his heels. Hulia must have dug them out for him.
“Hey.” I stopped and looked him over. He leaned to one side, looking perfectly natural. Dark hair curled against his cheeks and hid much of his red eye. He looked human and would have passed for one if not for the gaze from that penetrating eye. I hadn’t known they made mandroid bodies this accurate. Of course, Arcon would be the place to find one.
“Marshal, if you keep looking at me like that, I might have to do something about it.” He suggestively tongued the corner of his mouth.
“Oh-kay.” I walked on, chuckling. “Yah know, it’s good to have you back, and thank you for what you did back there.”
“It’s good to be back, and you mean the part where I saved your ass? Me? I saved you from dying. She had you. You’d be a dead marshal if not for me. So we’re clear, that part?”
“Yeah, that part.”
“You’re grateful to the drone for saving your life. Say it again. One more time.”
Hulia had made him more annoying. “I am eternally grateful.”
“Also, I have fingers now.”
The rapid change of subject almost tripped me up.
“They’re amazing,” he went on. “Ten of them. Can you believe that?”
“Actually, yes.”
He waggled his fingers in front of his face. “They fit into all sorts of interesting places.”
“Yes.” What had Hulia been thinking? “They do.”
“I have an extra one. It’s enormous. Between my—”
“Okay, all right, you know what, let’s finish this conversation later…” Much later. Preferably never.
I caught his sly sideways smile. He was messing with me, wasn’t he?
“I’m messing with you.”
I laughed. I’d be having a chat with Hulia about whether Sota had any protocols or filters. “One thing. Now that you’re… bipedal, do you still have an off button?”
“Honey, if you can find it, you can flick it.”
Talen appeared in the corridor ahead, his timing exquisite, and the shock on his face at seeing Sota was priceless.
“Talen, meet Sota 2.0. I’m sure you’ll get along just fine.” I clapped Sota on the back and veered off, leaving the fae and the mandroid to size each other up.
“Shinj, we’re all aboard. Get ready to depart for Faerie. We’re taking Pierce with us as leverage.” The humans could have her back once they’d saved Halow lives. Until then, the captain was mine.
Hang in there, Kesh. We’re coming for you.
Chapter 21
Kesh
From the king’s window, I watched pixies cut through the air above the gathered fae in the courtyard below, their claws and wings sharp. Their collective song tried to lull my human mind into believing this was all a wonderful parade, but I’d changed too much to be suckered in. Thousands of fae filled the space, and more crowded the balconies and open walkways. Everywhere I looked, a sea of sidhe colors rippled, representing their houses in reds, blues, silvers, greens. Each one appeared perfect in their glittering sidhe glory. Each one my enemy.
“Come, we must not keep Faerie waiting.” Oberon collected his crown from the throne and ran his fingers over it before lifting his gaze to me. “You will walk behind me.”
Every living thing down in that courtyard wanted me dead, and Oberon wanted me to parade behind him? It was asking for trouble, and I wondered if the king wanted his fae to slip up so he could reinforce his rule. Part of me wanted to see their surprise that I hadn’t died from a nail to the chest. But I needed to slip away and steal Eledan’s heart, and that would be difficult in a crowd of watchful fae.
“My lord, I do not think it would be wise for me to be seen alongside you.”
He stopped, almost at the doors, and said without turning, “Why?”
“If they see me with you, I’m afraid some might… lose control.”
The king’s back straightened. “You fear I do not have control over my own people?”
I’d already had three cu sith try to assassinate me. Twice. The second I stepped out of the palace into that courtyard, a thousand fae would have me in their crosshairs. I’d only survived the Game of Lies because of my small army of attack drones. Polestar or not, a lucky arrow between the eyes would finish me off.
“Come, Wraithmaker,” he said. “There is nothing in that courtyard that can hurt you.”
The large throne room door opened, and Niamh bowed to the king. Beside her, two other guardians stood stoic and aloof, infamous blades sheathed at their hips. Sirius wasn’t among them. I followed in Oberon’s shadow, keeping my eyes ahead even as the attending saru tried to catc
h my gaze. With every step, my chances of getting away in time to free Eledan and save Arran dwindled. My heart galloped as the guardians closed ranks behind me.
The pixies’ songs upped a note, and ahead, as we emerged into the courtyard, the crowd parted. Fae respectfully bowed their heads to Oberon. Me, they ignored. The guardians stayed close behind me as my shadows. I remembered Sirius’s scolding words of disrespect, of how a saru wearing the warfae markings was an insult to all the proud soldiers who had lived and died for Faerie. A saru walked behind their king now. Worse, a fae killer. A queen killer. A mass murderer. And he’d rewarded me in so many ways.
I swallowed to moisten and clear my throat.
My presence tainted Oberon, but the king only saw the light he’d hidden inside me. Like so many fae, he was blinded by it.
A few sharp glares and countless scornful glances scored into me. Lips were raised in silent sneers. We were almost at a platform, grown from glittering black rock, when someone called out, “Kill the Wraithmaker!”
Silence followed.
Oberon climbed the hewn rock steps, ignoring the declaration. He stood atop the rock dais and regarded his people with a friendly half smile. Either he was oblivious to the tension strumming the crowd, or he was choosing to smile in the face of it. “Night has graced us with her presence, and so the gladiator who slaughtered thousands of our number on New Calicto shall pay for his heinous crimes.”
Panic thumped me in the chest over and over. I couldn’t call for my stardust and shadow, for my Nightshade. He was worlds away. And Kellee… he would be furious if I got myself and Arran killed by doing something rash. He’d say he told me so, that I’d died for a dream. As I looked into the shallow gazes of thousands of fae who despised me, I ached to have the Messenger’s strength—Kellee, Talen and Sota—here with me. But I stood alone among an entire race who hungered for my death.
Saru… there were saru among the crowd, unseen and ignored. But each one of them saw me, and I saw them in return. Arran was one of theirs. I’d confronted the king and saved the saru family. Surely I could do the same again? Wasn’t that what I’d started? Wasn’t that my whole purpose?
Prince of Dreams (Messenger Chronicles Book 4) Page 25