Marshal Kellee
The old arena Eledan had chosen to hand over Kesh hadn’t seen any gladiator battles in a long time. Terraces that once seated thousands of fae had crumbled, and above us, vines dangled through the broken crystal dome roof. Faerie’s thick, tangling flora could consume a structure like this overnight, should they wish to, but there was an age to this place that set my teeth on edge. Everything on this wretched planet was alive. Glowing wisps bobbed in the air like sentient pollen. Pixies chittered and snickered, rustling nearby bushes and irritating my sensitive vakaru hearing with their incessant songs. The huge flowerheads—their black centers like enormous single eyes—tracked us.
I cradled Kesh in my arms, her head resting against my shoulder as she slept. She seemed smaller tucked in close. It always amazed me how someone so small could survive and master everything she had.
Talen walked to my right, Sota to my left. Sirius hung back. Sota had instructions from me to keep an eye on the guardian. I hadn’t trusted Sirius before and wouldn’t anytime soon, despite Hulia’s namu instincts telling her he only had Kesh’s wellbeing in mind. My vakaru senses told me to separate his head from his neck at the first opportunity.
Hulia had remained on board Shinj. Our ship hummed above the glass dome like an enormous sea creature. Her lights flowed from stern to bow in colorful ripples. Should the Hunt appear, Shinj would transport us off the planet. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that. Eledan was more than enough to handle. The Hunt—the creature that had killed Aeon—was off-the-scale dangerous and not something I was ready to encounter. That problem was for another day.
We emerged from the undergrowth to find the Mad Prince sprawled on a lower seated terrace, his head propped on his hand as though he’d been waiting for some time. A crown of bleached twigs sat stark white against his black hair. No royal robes, not for this brat, just simple hunting leathers laced with silver thread. He smirked as we crossed the arena floor. I grinned back, revealing sharp fangs. Such a shame he’d missed his brother’s death-by-vakaru. I welcomed the chance to demonstrate his brother’s final moments on him.
“The Messenger gang’s all here.” He jumped to his feet and eyed us in turn, reading our mismatched clothes and lack of visible weapons. Only when his gaze settled on Sota did one fine dark eyebrow arch in surprise. “A fitting upgrade for a unique drone,” he said, words bloated with flattery. Sota shifted from one foot to the other. “Your code was a work of genius. I’ve long admired Kesh’s work, and to see you upright and fully functioning…” He touched his fingers to his chest, over where his tek-heart thumped, and beamed like a proud father. “How does it feel to be one of Kesh’s males?”
“Fuck you,” Sota replied, beating me to it.
Eledan masterfully ignored the insult, unconcerned that Sota could fill him full of holes without warning. Unfortunately, attacking Eledan wouldn’t wake Kesh. “The things I could do with your internal processes.” The prince’s eyes flashed. “Kesh’s tek-construction was riddled with flaws. If you like this upgrade”—he flicked his hand at Sota’s new body—“what I could do with you would blow your tek-mind. I conceived that body you’re wearing. I know every inch of you, Sota. I created Arcon. I created the drone you were originally, and I created your current suit. I created you. So fitting. I am protofae, after all. From the fae, all life does spring.” He winked. “You need only ask for my touch. I’d be more than happy to oblige.”
Sota licked his lips and tilted his head toward me in question. “Let me kill him?”
If only Eledan were that easy to destroy. “No.”
He held his forefinger and thumb an inch apart. “Just a little bit?”
Eledan spread his arms. “You think you could shoot me and make it stick? On Faerie? Go ahead…”
Sota looked to Talen for a second opinion, but Talen had zeroed in on Eledan as though the rest of us had vanished. They hadn’t met before, as far as I knew.
Eledan gave up taunting Sota and methodically appraised our line—skimming over Kesh in my arms. He lifted his chin under Talen’s cool glare. “The Nightshade…” the prince purred and something nearby scurried off into the undergrowth. “I witnessed you in battle once. So long ago, you likely don’t recall, you commanded Night like the unseelie were your pets. I wasn’t sure it was you the Nothing Girl had found until she dreamed you up. The Nightshade, not so dead, as we were led to believe… We have that in common, you and I. We’ve both survived Oberon. Without my assistance, Kesh would never have known you—the real you.” He let that gem sink its barb in. “Here, now, you seem… diminished.”
Talen glared back, unfazed and immovable, and when Eledan didn’t get a rise from the former-Nightshade, he turned his attention to Sirius, now moving into line beside Sota. The guardian’s stern face spoke of a history between them. A history Eledan laughed off. “A tek-arm to my tek-heart. Does that make us brothers, Lord of Fire?”
“You are as tiresome now as you’ve always been. Such a terrible disappointment to your mother.”
Eledan instantly lost his smile. “Careful, guardian. How difficult it must have been to live with your unrequited love for so long. To watch my brother torture Kesh day after day and stand by, so helpless and confused by your sordid feelings for a weak saru.”
“She was never weak,” Sirius replied.
Sirius had loved Kesh… for a long time? I hadn’t expected to hear that information, and I had no idea what to do with it, besides burying it deep to examine later. The prince played his games, dropping hints of information to infuriate and undermine. I snagged Talen’s knowing gaze. He’d heard it too.
“Eledan, your reign is a farce,” Sirius said, raising his voice in true sidhe fashion. “Give up what you do not want. The Wild Ones will protect you from the nightmare of your own making until this is resolved.”
Indignation darkened Eledan’s face. “I did not give up when my own brother turned against me. I did not give up when Queen Mab neglected me. I did not give up when Faerie forgot me. I shall not give up now.” He turned to me. “You have the polestar fragments?”
I considered not answering and telling Sota to fire, Sirius to unleash his flame, and Talen to release his darkness but it would be for nothing. Eledan would still have Kesh in his dream world.
“We hand over the pieces and you wake her?” I asked.
He held out his hand. “Agreed.”
“She’ll return with us?”
“That’s up to Kesh, not you or I.” He flicked his fingers toward his palm. “Hand over the pieces, lawman.” Sharp intelligence sparkled in his blue eyes, and not for the first time, I wondered who was more dangerous: Oberon or Eledan. Events in the knoll hinted that another force had driven Oberon’s actions, but Eledan… his cunning madness was all him.
“Come now, vakaru,” he urged. “Kesh’s lifetime isn’t getting any longer.”
“I killed your brother, fae. Don’t think I won’t kill you too.”
Eledan rolled his eyes. “There’s so much ignorance in that threat that I’d be wasting my breath in my attempt to enlighten you.”
My gums tingled at the memory of tasting Oberon’s blood.
“My brother wanted to die,” Eledan snapped, enlightening me anyway because his ego demanded it. “He was weak. You were just the brute standing in front of him with the claws.” He likely regretted missing his brother’s death. I’d stolen his chance at vengeance. I had that victory over him, at least.
This posturing had already gone on too long. Crouching, I laid Kesh gently on the dirt. Would she hate us for handing Eledan one of Faerie’s greatest weapons in exchange for her or agree with our decision? She was still one-quarter of the polestar. Eledan didn’t have every piece yet. There was everything to play for.
I removed the throbbing acorn from my coat pocket and dropped it into the Mad Prince’s palm, then nodded at Talen. Eledan’s smile grew as Talen withdrew a glass thimble from his coat. Talen handed it over, and Eledan admired the tw
o trinkets nestled in his palm. So much trouble in such small things.
Eledan poked the thimble. “Now this piece has eluded me for a long time. It was stolen when my brother had his flights attempt to kill me during the first war. It’s right that it has returned to me now.”
“You stole it from Valand,” I said.
He looked up, his blue eyes as cutting and multifaceted as crystal. “You’re so quick to hate, Marshal Kellee, but you and I? We’re on the same side.”
“We are not on the same side, prince.”
Both pieces went into his pocket. “No? You don’t recall the dreams? Our deal?” He laughed it out, knowing how his games infuriated. “Never mind, it will come back to you as time dictates.” He stepped back, brought his hands together, closed his eyes, and bowed his head. His smile however, inched into a grin.
What dream? What deal? “You’re lying. I made no deal with you.”
“Lying?” He chuckled, eyes still closed. “Today is a dangerous day to lie on Faerie. The time for lies is long over.”
Kesh gasped awake.
The ground shuddered. Thunder rolled, but not from above. From below. Rock cracked apart, sounding like pistol shots. From my left, a chasm opened like a hungry mouth yawning in the earth. Its edges rushed toward Kesh.
Chapter 3
Kesh
I was falling, my body weightless.
Weren’t you supposed to wake after falling in a dream?
A jolt snapped up my back, yanking me to a stop and dousing me in reality.
“Kesh!”
The world spun. Rocks and earth rained from above. I tasted dirt on my lips, grit on my tongue. My coat’s seams cut under my arms, holding me over the darkness below. No, don’t look down… Too late. A void yawned beneath me, like the yawning darkness that had killed Aeon and was now hunting me. But this was a dead darkness, an emptiness, a hole with no bottom.
“Kesh, reach up!” The words flew at me like bullets.
Sota. Lifting my head, I blinked into dust and dirt.
I was still dreaming, wasn’t I? Nothing made any sense.
“Kesh, take my hand!” Sirius was here too. If only the dust would stop falling on me, I’d be able to see them both.
And Talen. His power, a flow of life and energy, beat inside my chest, warm and comforting, his entire being feeding through our bond.
They were real. They were here.
A tek-hand glinted among the trembling earth, and behind that hand, Sirius’s green eyes glowed through the clouds of dust. I should reach for his hand. He had saved me before, but something seemed wrong, like a thin film of a lie coating reality.
“Kesh!” Sota was so close, but I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see much of anything. Just Sirius. It didn’t matter. They were all here, together. I trusted them.
I reached for Sirius’s metal hand, closed my fingers around his cool grip, and held tight. He smiled, but the smile didn’t belong to Sirius. The touch turned warm. Inky black hair consumed Sirius’s red locks. Green eyes turned icy blue. Eledan. He laughed that wretched laughter. He let go.
I was falling again, falling far from those who loved me, into whatever trap Eledan had sprung below.
Chapter 4
Kellee
Sota grabbed for her, calling her name, and then they were gone, swallowed by a bank of rolling gray clouds. The crack in the earth was gone too.
Illusions. That piece of royal fae karushit!
And then Talen and Sirius had vanished inside the churning gray smoke. Only Eledan’s sickening laughter haunted the fog.
“You’re out of your depth on Faerie, vakaru,” the prince crooned from nowhere and everywhere.
Claws out, I spun, raking at the fog, and narrowly missed disemboweling Sirius at the last second. The guardian threw me a look that told me he knew I had wanted to follow through and plunge my claws into him. He read the thought on my face, and in response, liquid fire burst from his outline, setting him ablaze like a beacon in the night. The beast in me read it as a threat. Instincts urged me to kill him before he could kill me, but as the fog burned away and Sirius backed up, reason reined in the madness, clearing my head.
There the pair of fae stood, one made of fire and the other of silver and darkness, his unseelie wings spread wide. More dark than light. More monster than lordly sidhe. Talen, as the Nightshade, made me look tame. This was Faerie, ripe with magic and monsters. I was in their backyard now, and I’d never felt our differences more keenly than when both powerful fae looked at me as though I should be kneeling.
I shook my head to dislodge the crackling insanity. Sirius was a dick, but apparently, he loved Kesh, and I knew Talen better than my senses tried to tell me.
The fog rolled away, revealing the arena floor. No cracks, and no Kesh or Sota either. Turning on the spot revealed no sight of them and no indication as to where they could have gone.
“You son of a sluagh, Eledan!” My shout sailed far into Faerie, carried by unnatural winds. “The Hunt will not be enough to stop me from killing you!”
Behind me, Sirius’s fire cooled and Talen’s suffocating magic withdrew. “We must leave,” Talen said. “Shinj warns that the Hunt is drawing close.”
I’d leave, but I wasn’t going far. I turned to face the two fae. “Where would he take her?”
“He’s building a seat of power,” Sirius replied, hanging back, out of my reach. “Hiding is not the sidhe way. Find the gathering fae and we’ll find the prince.”
I didn’t look at him. Couldn’t look. The wildest part of me wanted him dead for all of Faerie’s wrongs, for who and what he was, for loving Kesh and letting her go. The protofae had taken my people from me, and now their royal brat had stolen Kesh and Sota. I was so out of my depth I was damn well drowning. Fuck Eledan for being right.
Thunder rumbled. Our enormous ship hovered in low, smothering the sky and broken dome. I needed an army, needed to fight. I needed my damn people back and Kesh by my side.
“We’ll find them,” Talen said. “For now, Kellee… we must leave.”
“Did he get the polestar?” I sighed, shuddering out the killing desire. The wildness was too close and had been since I’d killed Oberon. I needed to be better than this, to think more clearly.
Talen held out a glass thimble, pinched between his finger and thumb, and smiled. “Only one piece.”
We’d switched the thimble polestar fragment for a dummy, gambling on the fact Eledan wouldn’t notice how his cheap trinket didn’t throb with power while beside the acorn. It had worked. “Good.”
Shinj’s bright, hypnotic light flowed over us, bathing the area in a cool blue. Kesh was awake, and we still had a piece of the polestar. All we had to do was trust Kesh to make the right choice. “Let’s go find our messenger.”
Chapter 5
Kesh
I woke with a head full of dream-like images of Faerie swallowing me down, of Sirius’s gleaming arm, and of Eledan’s urbane laughter. I might have leaped to my feet had the pair of strong arms clamped around me not tightened into a vise-like grip.
A quick visual check for any immediate threats revealed a high-ceilinged bedchamber with gold and silver flourishes, minimal furniture, including the bed I lay on, and no windows. There was nothing like this room on Shinj, and the shape lacked the human-made feel. This had to be Faerie.
“You can let go now, Sota.”
“Must I?” Sota asked in my ear. It felt like before, when he’d been a ball of killing tek and used to sit low on my shoulder. “You’re so warm. This body molds perfectly to your back. I’m experiencing some interesting sensations. I don’t think I ever want to let you go.”
Only Sota had the power to summon a smile in the direst of circumstances. I twisted in his arms and looked him in the eyes. A small smile pulled at his soft lips and brightened his honest mock-human eye. The red tek-eye wasn’t as cold up close. I flicked a lock of his hair away to admire its sleek, accurate detail. He really was a work o
f art.
I touched Sota’s cheek, finding it warm. Nothing hinted at its synthetic construction. I’d seen mandroids before, although they were more popular in Sol than Halow, but never this close. Less than a day had passed since I’d learned he was my Sota, and it didn’t feel real. Maybe it never would.
He smiled, appearing disarmingly real and very male, now that we were eye to eye. When he touched my face in the same manner in which I’d touched his, my heart did a little anxious flutter.
“This feels kinda weird,” he said. “Doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.” It did feel strange, but I couldn’t place the sensation. I looked at him as though he were something precious, something to be loved and admired, but not in the way I looked at Kellee or Talen. Sota was family. My family. I’d created him.
He withdrew his hand, his smile gentle and honest.
“How long was I out?” I asked.
“Fifteen hours, four minutes, and three seconds.” His voice, so smooth now that it was synthesized through more sophisticated filters, held a delightfully humorous purr that perfectly matched his personality.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Sirius is permanently angry. Talen shouted. Kellee is a twitch away from turning feral.”
“Oh.” I rolled onto my back and blinked at the ceiling. “They tried to negotiate with Eledan, didn’t they?” Of course they had. Clearly, negotiations hadn’t gone well.
“Yes and no…” He narrowed his eyes and whispered, “The walls are listening.”
Then we weren’t free to speak. I sat up and waited for my head to stop spinning before rising off the bed. Dressed in my typical leathers and coat, I dropped my hand and found the whip still clipped to my side. I had no memory of anything after I’d fallen asleep in Kellee’s arms, but I did recall being naked then, which meant someone had dressed me and left the whip with me.
Her Dark Legion Page 2