I dashed in, but Kellee grabbed me from behind and lifted me off my feet.
“Don’t!” he barked and tore me away from the sight.
“Kellee, let me go!” I kicked and struggled against his hold.
“You can’t save him.”
I writhed in Kellee’s arms as the Hunt crushed Arran inch by inch. Pain contorted his face. Physical and mental pain. By Faerie, no. I had to reach him. I had to save him. It didn’t matter what he’d done or what we’d said. We would always save each other.
Bones cracked.
Kellee pulled me close. “Don’t look. Don’t, Kesh. We can’t fight it. We have to run…”
Arran screamed and then abruptly fell silent.
Oh gods, no. No… The power within me stuttered, trying to blaze once more, but it was too late.
Kellee pulled me into a run, and I stumbled on.
But it was coming. There was no escaping the Hunt, not on Faerie and maybe not anywhere. It would never stop. And now, without Oberon, it was free to consume worlds.
We climbed the steps and emerged into a storm. The forest hissed and groaned. Leaves and twigs lashed at my face. And there, ahead, stood Talen, aglow in all his Nightshade glory, wings spread and silver hair flowing.
“Talen!” The bond struck and strummed. Relief, and fear, and joy hit like shots to my veins.
Kellee shoved me toward him as the ground heaved beneath our feet. Earth lurched, tripping me. I reached, stumbled, and clambered, falling and climbing on the edge of a chasm that was growing larger and larger. I dared not look behind me. The earth groaned, and the wind howled. Something inside the storm screamed, maybe Faerie Herself.
And then Talen was there, his wings spreading around us and tucking us in tight. I looked up at Shinj’s colorful hull. Her beam of light descended over his, bathing us in her transportation halo. Seconds now. Seconds to survive.
“All the worlds are mine!” the nightmare-made-real bellowed so loudly it cracked the earth and sky.
I glimpsed the madness before Talen’s feathers sealed shut. The Wild Hunt was a giant monster, a force too large to fight. It clawed its way out of the ground, growing larger, seemingly fed by the storm. His eyes glowed like two moons, and its glare landed on me, marking my soul as its next target.
Chapter 27
Kesh
Talen’s wings dissolved inside Shinj’s brightly lit belly of a cargo hold. He was already telling the ship to pull away from Faerie. Sirius was here, his pain evident on his face. And Kellee… Kellee was looking at me and breathing hard, bloody and wild. His eyes were back to their normal gleaming greens.
I had my whip in my hand and carefully tucked it through my belt, needing that small, familiar motion to anchor myself in the moment.
We were safe.
We were on Shinj.
All of us—no, not all…
“Kesh?” Talen came forward.
They were here, both of them, after everything I’d been through, after Oberon and Eledan, after the heart, the execution, the cu sith, the saru, the crucifixions. They were here. Now. But Arran wasn’t. I’d promised to keep him safe, and I’d failed. I couldn’t process it or think past the monster we’d unleashed on Faerie. I’d freed that nightmare to save Kellee. Or had I killed Oberon because I’d wanted to, even knowing what would happen?
“I can’t…” Their eyes were full of questions. And Kellee… why was Kellee looking at me like I’d disappointed him—again? “I can’t do this right now.”
“Kesh! Wait,” Kellee said.
I whirled on him. “You let him die!”
Kellee’s frown twitched, but he said nothing.
“He’s dead, Kellee. He tried to save me again—” My voice cracked. “I could have saved him, and you stopped me. What’s wrong with you? He was one of us!”
I hadn’t meant to raise my voice, hadn’t meant to lose control, and even the words didn’t sound like mine, but everything was falling apart, and I couldn’t even begin to search for the pieces to make things right again.
“Are you done?” Kellee asked.
Blood stained his chin and neck, and it had soaked into his shirt. I hadn’t noticed it until now. He had killed Oberon. We had both killed Oberon.
“I would do anything—anything—to save any one of you,” I told him. “I’d die for every single one of you. Do you even understand that?”
Kellee stood in front of Sirius and Talen as though he were their shield, protecting them… from me.
“Aeon’s dead and that’s on you.” The words were fast and vicious, just like the flick of my whip.
“Damn you, Kesh!” Kellee grabbed for me, and I stepped back, leaving the marshal grasping at nothing. “He wanted to die, and you kept standing in his way. Can’t you see that? You were supposed to kill him in the arena on Calicto, but you refused to let him go. He told you to leave and not look back. He died to save you. The least you can do is honor his last wish and let him go!”
My friend was dead. My first friend, the boy who had held my hand when I’d been alone and afraid and who had taught me how to hope for better things. Without him, I wouldn’t have known there was anything else outside my cage. He had made me laugh, made me cry, made me human. He had deserved more from me, from all of us. And now it was too late.
Kellee reached for me. I batted his hand away and warned him off with a look. “Don’t.”
He reached again, this time moving in.
“Kellee, don’t.” I stood motionless as his warm, strong arms closed around me, and he pulled me close.
“Don’t push me away now that I’ve found you again,” he whispered.
I caught his ruined shirt in my hands and squeezed the fabric into my fists. I wanted to push him away, to push them all away. I didn’t deserve them. This was on me. I’d made the deal with Eledan, I’d freed the Dreamweaver, and he’d unseated the king, sending him into a downward spiral he’d been fighting to survive for millennia. Eledan had known this would happen from the moment he’d figured out what I hid inside. His nightmare was free, and so was he. He had called himself a god, and with the Hunt free, maybe he was right.
I looked up into Kellee’s eyes and saw too much raw emotion there. Whatever he had been through to get to Faerie, it hadn’t been easy. But he had come, and if he’d waited a second longer, maybe that nightmare would have consumed me and Sirius too.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” I admitted quietly, loosening my grip. “I killed him, Kellee.” I killed one of us.
He brushed my hair back and planted a chaste kiss on my forehead.
Silent tears rolled down my cheeks.
Talen and Sirius looked on, one open and honest, the other shutting down behind his guardian armor. The three of them completed me. Three pieces of my fragile heart. I loved them too much. Losing Arran hurt so much, and thinking on his final moments almost brought me to my knees. I couldn’t lose any more of the Messenger’s men. That nightmare, and Eledan, they would try to take them from me.
“I wanted to make the worlds better, but I fear everything is about to get much worse.” I stepped out of Kellee’s arms, even though there was nowhere else I would rather be.
Eledan could control it. He was the only one who could.
Together, the Dreamweaver and I made up half the polestar.
We had a deal.
Kellee’s soft smile hurt even more because I knew what I had to do. I had my marshal back, my silver fae, and my guardian. But I’d lost one. I couldn’t lose another. “Thank you. All of you.”
Talen bowed his head enough to acknowledge the thanks, and Sirius glowered harder, if such a thing were possible. Kellee, though, looked at me with suspicion in his eyes. He couldn’t just accept the thanks or accept that I was fine. He was too damn sharp for that.
He’d figure it out first.
I had a little time. Precious time.
“Let’s get cleaned up and regroup.” I sniffed and cleared my throat. “Where’s
Sota?”
“He’s shy,” Talen replied. His glance snagged Kellee’s. The pair of them shared some secret knowledge in that look.
“Shy?” That didn’t sound like Sota. I frowned at Kellee. The marshal scratched his cheek. “What happened? Is he all right?”
“He’s fine,” Kellee grumbled. “Don’t give me that look, fae,” he said, sensing Talen’s heavy stare. “You need to see him,” he told me. “I’d tell you, but it wouldn’t be half as much fun as seeing your face.”
“Kellee…” I warned.
“While we’re sharing, you should also know we have an Earthen hostage aboard.”
“You went to Earth?” Does he have the polestar fragment?
Kellee’s smile grew. “It’s a long story.”
“Don’t they hate you on Earth?” I asked, allowing a smile to slip through.
“Yes, yes they do. They hate me even more now, but we’ll get to that.” He threw an arm around my shoulders. “First, while Shinj takes us well away from Faerie, you need to catch up with an old friend.”
Talen guided Shinj out of Faerie’s immediate atmosphere and far enough away to not leave us dangling as bait for the Hunt. With the chaos of the collapse of Oberon’s reign and Eledan’s awakening, one returning warcruiser wouldn’t raise any flags. Kellee also explained we had a Sol Alliance vessel cloaked behind a Faerie moon, but he waved off any further questions.
“I think you should sit down.” He grinned, enjoying this far too much. It was making me nervous.
“If you tell me to sit down one more time, I’ll throw a chair at you.”
We’d cleaned up. Talen had offered to give Sirius a tour of Shinj. To my surprise, Hulia was here, but she took one look at me, asked if I’d seen Sota, and made her excuses to leave, which left me and Kellee, who was doing his damnedest to distract me from the imminent apocalypse.
Wearing my more familiar leathers, although unlaced and loose, I leaned against the table in the meeting room, eyeing the door for Sota. Any more secrecy and I’d tie my whip around Kellee’s neck and demand he cough up whatever big secret he was enjoying keeping to himself.
“There wasn’t much else we could do,” he explained from his spot beside me. “Sota got fried in an Earthen museum—”
“What were you doing in a museum?”
His smirk hadn’t left him in the time I’d taken to clean up. He’d changed into a black sweater, washed off the blood and war paint, and tied back his hair, feathers and all. He looked good with that little touch of wildness.
“Hulia salvaged all his vital parts.” He dug into his pocket and opened his hand.
I knew what it was the second I laid eyes on the seed. Superficially, it looked like an acorn, but the halo of light throbbing around it gave its true form away. A piece of the polestar.
“Oh.”
The same urge to pick it up and destroy it almost overcame me. I now knew where all the pieces were. And if Talen had Sjora’s thimble, they were all close by.
“That’s what we were doing in the museum. The humans weren’t too keen on letting it go. We had something of a disagreement, but—”
A man cleared his throat. I shot my head up and reached for my whip at the sight of the stranger filling the doorway.
“Whoa!” Kellee caught my hand. “Don’t. I should have realized you’d be twitchy… It’s safe. Look again.”
The stranger appeared to be in his mid-twenties, although the mischievous gleam in his eyes hinted at older secrets, making me doubt my age assessment. Dark bangs partially hid his tek-red eye. I sensed more tek in him too, hidden beneath his clothes. He buzzed with it, almost glowed like the acorn, but his magic was human made.
He was tek. I laughed softly. Of course, he was Sota. I’d have recognized him anywhere as anyone. They could have put him in a tin can and I’d have known him, but this… this was what he’d wanted ever since I’d put him together and fired him up.
A knotted ball of emotion robbed me of my voice, but I kept it hidden. He watched me approach, blinked, and tried to smile but didn’t quite manage it. Color touched his cheeks. Inside, my battered heart melted a little.
“Hey, Kesh.”
His voice was the same but smoother and somewhat deeper.
I took him by the shoulders, watched his expression betray every thought and doubt inside those marvelous tek-processors, and pulled him into a hug. He tensed up, then puffed out a breath and relaxed, throwing his arms around me, crushing me close.
“You like?” he asked, the words tingling my ear.
“I love!” My heart cracked. I’d needed this, needed a win. Needed him.
He squeezed me tighter, almost popping a rib.
“Okay, easy there, you’ve got a whole lot of strength.” To Kellee, I asked, “You did this?”
The marshal grinned. “Not me, it was all Hulia.”
Sota’s partner in crime. Sota high-fived me, then raked his fingers through his hair, revealing the tek-eye in all its precision glory. It was a beautiful piece of work, one I wasn’t sure I could have created. It was perfect.
“Souvenir,” he said. “Hulia said it made me look bad-ass.”
“You’re bad-ass, all right, Sparky.” Kellee chuckled before leaving Sota and I alone together. We talked about his time on Earth and about him storming the Earthen ship with Kellee and Talen. He told me what it had felt like to die and then be reborn with arms and legs and fingers. He seemed to like his fingers.
He had always liked to talk and now was no different. Talen found us hours later and invited us to dinner. We each took up a spot at the table, and for a while, I forgot about the thing feasting on Faerie far below us and enjoyed Kellee and Talen’s telling of their adventure on Earth. Hulia and Sota had us laughing, and even Sirius allowed himself a miraculous chuckle. They talked about the polestar and where to find the missing pieces. I listened, smiling in the right places and agreeing where I could, but I knew this moment—this wonderful, precious moment—would soon end. I knew where all the pieces were, and I would be the one to stop the terrible thing we’d unleashed, not them. They spoke of the Messenger myth and how it had grown throughout Halow. Communications chatter made her out to be a goddess of vengeance that could wipe the fae from all the worlds. The comparison was too close to Eledan’s words that the weight of it chilled me, turning the food stale and the drink sour.
“Kesh.” Talen had moved to sit beside me. I hadn’t seen him leave his seat, hadn’t seen the others move either. Hulia was spinning them a tale about her time in The Boot, holding the others under her spell.
“I cannot imagine what you endured at Oberon’s hand,” Talen said.
No, only the guardian knew that, and he was quietly watching me from the other end of the table, pretending to be immersed in Hulia’s story.
“But you must know we did everything we could to return to you as soon as possible.”
“I know you did.” I smiled at my silver fae, my Nightshade, and touched his face, needing to feel that bond strengthen between us. Warmth calmed my racing heart. I wanted to go with him, to lose myself in him, to hide in him. “I do not deserve you, Talen.”
He caught my hand and lowered it between us. “I dreamed of you. Vivid dreams. Some were…” He swallowed and glanced behind him at the guardian glowering at us. “Some were unexpected.” He lowered his gaze. Delicate lashes fluttered. “Others were terrible visions of things to come.” Looking up, his eyes shone with open fear. “Tell me you won’t leave us. I can’t be apart from you again.”
I couldn’t meet his gaze, not when it so easily tore through my defenses.
His grip tightened on my hand. “Kesh, don’t make me beg you.”
I’d told enough lies. I wanted nothing but truth between us now. “There’s something I have to do.”
“You swore on your name we would get through this together.”
I had, and damn him for twisting the knife in the wound. “I told you I’d protect you all. I failed
, and Aeon died. I can’t have that happen again.”
“You don’t need to protect anyone but yourself.”
“I do, Talen. You can’t understand what it was to be the Wraithmaker and then have this…” I glanced at them, all laughing and joking, oblivious to my conversation with Talen. “I can save you, and the saru, and everyone left in Halow. I can. But not with you at my side.” I lowered my head and watched a tear splash on my thigh. “Not with Kellee or even… Sirius. I love you all too much. Eledan will… He will twist it all.”
He touched my chin, turned my face toward him, then smiled a secret smile and wiped my tears away. “We’ve been through this. We’re stronger together. You cannot live in fear of something that may never happen.”
I merely smiled back. “It already has.”
Talen closed his eyes. Regret thrummed through our bond. Aeon had died and there was nothing he or I could do to change that. I cupped his cheek and bumped my forehead against his so that when he opened his violet eyes, those shimmering irises were all I could see.
“You’re not really here, are you?” he asked.
I blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
He took my hand and gently lowered it to my lap. “This meal, with us, you’re not here. Your mind is elsewhere, thinking about other things you won’t tell us because you know we’ll try to stop you. Secrets. Deals made? I dreamed it… Eledan took great pleasure in scattering his secrets among my thoughts.”
“He was in your dreams too?”
Talen nodded. “He was in a great many dreams, steering us all toward a moment in time, toward Faerie. I know where this is going. I understand.” When I didn’t reply, he stood, and leading me onto my feet, he escorted me out of the room. I drifted mutely alongside him. “You don’t owe me or them anything,” he went on. “We owe you. What we have together, all of us, it would not be possible without you.”
I let him guide me back to my chamber, but instead of taking me inside, he kissed the back of my hand in a sweet, chaste manner, and backed up. Confused, I lingered, wondering why I was here if we he wasn’t staying with me.
Prince of Dreams (Messenger Chronicles Book 4) Page 31