It seemed Eledan wasn’t home, but then the breeze found me, carrying his silken voice with it.
“… it is being done, witch. A few more days will not kill you.”
I inched toward the drapes, hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever he spoke with.
“Faerie is not how I remember,” Eledan said, louder for my benefit. Words too similar to those I’d spoken many times in my head for them to be meant for anyone else.
Peeling back the drapes, I emerged onto a balcony similar to the one that overlooked the grand hall, but instead of looking over a sea of people, this one provided a panoramic view of Faerie’s landscape. Blushed by a wash of red light from the nearest binary stars, hills dipped and climbed, sweeping from an emerald ocean to vast, winterlands-tipped mountains. In front of it all, with his back to me, hands grasping the balustrade, stood Eledan. Alone. From behind, he looked so much like Oberon that I deliberately blinked, wiping the comparison clear. The same warrior shoulders and dark hair, only Eledan’s tumbled loose down his back. Old instincts tried to drop me to my knees. I snarled them back. The day I voluntarily knelt to Eledan would be the day I died. Kneeling to save Talen didn’t count. I hadn’t had a choice, but soon, armed with all the facts, I would.
Slowly, precisely, I coiled my whip and clipped it to my belt.
“It seems so… hollow,” Eledan said.
“Maybe it’s you who is hollow?” If my words had any impact, he didn’t reveal it.
“There’s a wasp. They call her shee het. She lays her eggs inside Faerie’s mighty acorns. The larvae grow, cocooned within a protective shell, and slowly devour the seed until there’s nothing left.”
His words wove around me, trying to sink in and devour me from the inside, just like his wasp, but they would not find purchase. Hate sizzled beneath my skin, rebuilding unseen armor against all things Eledan. I knew him too well to fall for his spells.
When I didn’t reply, he regarded me over his shoulder. His face wore no expression, but it could easily switch to vicious, or kind, or compassionate in a blink. It was impossible to know what was real with him and what was the lie. Right now, he looked through me, like he wasn’t sure if I were real or an illusion of his making. He’d spent so long alone, weaving his dreams, that this solid reality must have seemed strange.
“You were no less hollow, Wraithmaker, than my brother’s insect, burrowing through human tek to do his bidding.”
I let a smile lift my lips. “The Wraithmaker is long dead. Bringing her back here makes you appear weak. Grasping at the past, my liege?”
His smile mirrored mine. Bastard. “So proud, you are,” he said, facing the vista once more. Leaning forward, he folded up his shirt cuffs and rested his warfae-marked forearms on the balcony rail. Those sweeping marks stood out against his golden skin. “So full of passion and hate.” A finger of breeze teased a few errant locks of dark hair against his cheek. “A symptom of mortality. So very saru. I always admired that about your kind.”
Maybe I could shove him off the balcony.
“I didn’t come to talk wasps—”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Your silver fae will be fine. If anything, by removing his power, I lifted a thousand-year burden off his back. He doesn’t want to be the Nightshade and hasn’t done for a long time. He should thank me.”
Even if he was right, he could have gone about it a different way instead of turning the whole thing into a painful spectacle. “And my saru?”
“What of them?”
“Are they truly free?”
His lips quirked. “How do you free a creature from its nature?”
He believed he’d tricked me, but I already knew the saru could not be so easily freed. Sirius had told me as much when I’d learned he had been trying to free them properly for centuries.
Moving to lean casually against the balustrade, I took a few fleeting moments to admire how the pinkish light stroked his dark hair and lightened his blue eyes. As the human Istvan Larsen, he’d been handsome but unremarkable. All an act he’d played for centuries. Now he looked every part the wicked fae prince. As lean and cruel as a blade, everything about him was cutting, from his smile to his glances. I’d tasted every inch of him in my dreams, and he’d mouthed the most intimate parts of me. I’d once hated him for making me feel those things. Now, I just wanted him, and all the fae like him, dealt with. “What you did to Talen was barbaric.”
He snorted. “Says the woman who slaughtered hundreds of her own kind to be noticed by Oberon.”
I flexed my right hand. “Did it really take Faerie a few thousand years to make you this much of an asshole?”
“Oh no, that’s all me.” He chuckled. “Faerie has done nothing for me, my queen.”
Every word out of his mouth grated on my patience, and he knew it. “Still hung up on mommy dearest abandoning you?”
His quick glance revealed a sliver of his dark soul, and for a breathless moment, his eyes narrowed, his lips thinned, and the weight of his rage poured in. I could not forget how powerful he was, and here on Faerie, he was at the height of his power. “I once thought she’d sent you to me as a gift. You were my messenger… I wasn’t wrong, but the message was.”
Ignoring the flutter of fear tightening my chest, I casually folded my arms. “Why are we here, you and I? What do you want from me?”
“You already know.” His smile was back, masking that sudden viciousness. He shifted a step, bringing himself close. His warmth tried to wrap around me like his voice had. He brushed his knuckles down my cheek, easing his thigh against mine. Hard against hard. I didn’t stop him, and he came closer, pressing in, filling my head with all things Eledan. His touch trailed lower, running the length of my jaw, sprinkling delicate shivers down my back. Fingers on my chin, he tilted my head up and fell into my eyes. From my dreams, I remembered all too easily how his body had felt undulating beneath my hands. Remembered the powerful contours of a physique, an impossible combination of hard and soft, that belonged to one of Faerie’s most deadly predators.
His fingertips brushed my lips, gently parting them, and then he was so close his presence clouded my thoughts. I tasted him on my tongue as he pinned me back against the balustrade with a few hundred feet of nothing below.
His mouth brushed mine, so lightly, but I didn’t seal the kiss. He teased, urging me to surrender. I brought my hand up between us and splayed my fingers against his chest, soaking in his warmth until I felt the cool, measured beat of his tek-heart beneath his shirt. His breath stuttered. I sucked that falter in and curled my fingers around his scar. Faerie’s new king tensed. He’d been away for so long he no longer recognized his home or his place in it. Which one of us had caught the other? Did he believe I was still the nothing girl he’d held in his thrall for nine long months?
The same ancient power that raced through my veins beat inside the tek-cage inside Eledan’s chest. I felt it, that urge to rip his heart free and crush it, but also the beat of two lost pieces brought together for the first time in millennia. Half of me wanted him dead, but the other half, the Faerie part of me, wanted to bury itself inside his veins and wrap around what felt like home. It wasn’t me, that need and want, and now that I knew these feelings were alien, I could use them. If I was feeling like I’d ruin worlds to possess Eledan, he surely felt the same toward me.
I danced the fingers of my free hand over his collarbone and around to the nape of his neck, spreading them there to capture him close. “I need answers,” I whispered.
His thumb gently stroked below my chin. “You’ll have them,” he replied, gaze on my lips.
“About the polestar… about us.”
He turned his face away. His lashes came down, shuttering his blue eyes. When he opened them again, he lifted a glass thimble between his finger and thumb. Light danced in its construction. I’d seen it before. It had belonged to Sjora. More importantly, I’d learned that trinket was a piece of the polestar. Talen must have given it to Eledan whil
e I was unconscious during the trade that went wrong.
Eledan’s fingers spread around my neck. The lust in his eyes hardened.
I still had a hold of his neck too. If he tried anything, I’d fight, and then maybe one of us would discover that drop below.
He smiled, sensing my thoughts, and gently set the thimble on the balustrade rail.
His smile twisted, and with one powerful thump, he shattered the thimble beneath his fist, scattering glass shards.
“Wh—”
His grip locked on my neck, steely fingers clamping shut.
I closed my hand, pulling him close and sinking my fingers in.
“Your messenger men thought to trick me.”
They had?
My lungs burned, chest heaving. He pressed in, locking me down. “Do not play me, Messenger. You may not cherish your own life, but they certainly do. They’ll do anything and everything to keep you safe, including giving up their lives. You are their weakness, and they are yours. Now they’re in my court, trading in lies… Have they forgotten how the Hunt consumed one of their own? Did you forget how my creation swallowed your dear friend, Messenger? The Hunt is mine.” Tightened. “Faerie is mine.” Choked. “You are mine.”
Tears leaked from my eyes.
“Get your harem in line, or I will.” He released me and pushed away, sweeping back through the drapes.
My vision sharpened, and strength flooded back in. I had my whip out in a step and lifted it up in another. The tails sparked, coming to life as I lassoed them over my head and struck, viper-fast. Eledan knew my mind as though it were his own, and as the whip cut through the drapes, he turned, brought a forearm up, and caught the whip’s tails. They snarled around his wrist instead of his neck.
He yanked, tugging me closer, and met my gaze.
The warfae marks on his forearm seemed darker than I remembered, and as I watched, they shied away from my whip’s spitting tek.
With a flick, I recalled the whip, freeing his arm. As he lowered his hand to his side, the marks spilled back into place. I hadn’t imagined it. They had moved.
“I’ll never be yours, Eledan. All the stars could fall from Faerie’s sky and I’d never be yours. You stole nine months of my mortal lifetime. You mind-fucked me at your whim. You let the fae back into Halow, killing billions.” I would never forget the sight of their frozen bodies glistening among the stars. I took a step closer. He lifted his chin, expression locked. “You were just your mother’s afterthought when she believed Oberon’s mind was too far gone to save. Your tek-heart is the most honest thing about you. Without it, you’re just a failed son. Faerie accepts me more than she accepts you. You are nothing to me.”
He brought his hand up to strike. I caught his wrist before the blow could land.
“Your only legacy is a nightmare as black and hollow as your soul.”
His eyes widened. He tore free from my grip and stalked away. His chamber door slammed closed, rattling the walls.
I stared at the empty room, chest heaving, and then back out at Faerie. I hadn’t meant to lose control, to tell him the truth. He was more easily manipulated if he believed he was winning, and now I’d lost any goodwill between us. Huffing, I looked up at Faerie’s stars. “So much for getting answers.”
Chapter 9
“How’d it go with Eledan?” Sota asked, breezing up to me as I approached the chamber.
“It… didn’t. Any answers he gave me would have been poison anyway. Where are the others?” I assumed they’d already moved from the room in preparation to leave the knoll.
“Outside. Shinj transported Sirius onto a beach below the knoll. Kellee sent me back up here to find you before he came himself and”—he put on his Marshal Kellee voice—“tears the place apart looking for you. Also, Sirius reported that the Excalibur crew is getting restless.”
I absorbed Sota’s words as he led me through the corridors. I should send Talen back. We’d hijacked Sol Alliance’s Excalibur and brought it, cloaked, to Faerie-space after its captain had tried to steal a piece of the polestar from Kellee. Talen’s unique ability to control human emotions meant he could keep the human crew subdued, but the thought of being apart from him, from any of them, tightened my chest. We were stronger together. Every time we separated, bad shit happened.
Sota and I left the knoll via one of many steep, spiraling staircases and emerged halfway up a cliff face where paths snaked down to a silvery dusk-lit beach. I could just make out the figures of Sirius, Kellee, and Talen on the sands below. Talen leaned heavily against the marshal. His silver-white hair reflected the half-light, while beside him, the marshal’s dark hair absorbed it. Sirius, standing apart from them, looked like a flame in fae form.
Gripping a rail, I welcomed the warm breeze trailing across my face. Faerie’s green ocean was calm. Night still lingered and would probably stay for weeks, its dark blanket covering Faerie in these troubling times.
“I don’t want to see them hurt,” I whispered.
Sota joined me at the rail. “They’re with you because they choose to be.”
His words hit like a punch to the chest. How could I love them all so equally? Was it truly me they loved in return? Not the polestar, not the messenger myth, just the real me beneath all those names? Sirius had somehow admired me from afar for years, and Talen… Talen wanted so badly to be good. And Kellee had made me his messenger long before I agreed to it, but he would never use me, never lie to me. They were all better than me.
Sota’s hand settled on my shoulder—the shoulder he’d always preferred to hover over. “They believe in you.”
I closed my eyes.
“I believe in you.”
I could do this.
I would do this.
We would stop Faerie. I’d return the polestar to where it belonged, and this nightmare would end. Forever.
“C’mon.” I eased out from Sota’s touch and started down the cliff path. “We should get moving before Eledan realizes we’re gone.”
Sota followed. “Can you stop him and his nightmare? Can you stop the war?”
“Yes.” Not a lie, I hoped. First, I needed those answers from someone who knew Eledan better than anyone else alive.
Talen appeared to be regaining his strength. Some color had returned to his cheeks, and his eyes were no longer hooded or sleepy.
“Are you fit to travel?” I asked, arriving at their side on the beach.
He dipped his chin. “Fit enough.”
The wind lashed his long, untethered hair around his shoulders.
All right, so we could make some progress. Kellee nodded, signaling he was ready for anything. His edgy rawness lingered in the way he tapped his fingers against his thigh and in his quick, alert glances.
Sirius stood apart, proud and aloof. The expanse of green ocean offered a startling backdrop to his red coloring. I had to remind myself he wasn’t Oberon’s tool and likely never had been. He served Faerie, and, apparently, he also served me. That was a revelation we hadn’t had time to explore. I’d sparked a wildfire in him with a kiss, but there was no sign of that wildfire now. He looked back at me as restrained and stoic as a soldier awaiting orders.
“Let’s get one thing clear so there are no more misunderstandings.” All eyes blinked to me. “No more plotting or scheming without consulting one another. We do things together from here on out.”
Sota stood at my side, my protector, my friend. Always. “Does that include you, Kesh?” he asked and recoiled under my glare.
“It’s a fair question,” Kellee added. “You’ve been known to scheme, on occasion.”
Talen huffed a gentle laugh.
“Yes,” I conceded, “that includes me.”
“Well, all right, then,” Kellee drawled.
“With that in mind, are there any more secrets you’d like to tell me or each other?”
Talen flicked his eyes skyward, trying to appear innocent. Kellee immediately noticed his body language, and his humor s
oured. So something had happened between them while I’d been unconscious.
“What is it?” I asked.
“We have the Valand piece of the polestar,” Talen said. “We… I’ve had it since killing Sjora.”
“The thimble?” I asked. Kellee’s eyes widened. I’d known. How could I not? I’d wanted to crush that thing or throw it away every time I’d laid eyes on it. I hadn’t known what I was looking at, and because I hadn’t been seeking it, the polestar had stayed hidden in plain sight. “Eledan crushed your fake. Where’s the real one?”
“On Shinj,” Talen replied.
“What about the acorn?”
“Eledan has it,” Kellee said. “We had to give him something to free you.”
Then we were even, Eledan and I. He had two pieces and so did I. Good. But he’d come looking for the thimble as soon as he realized we’d abandoned him.
“Any other revelations?” I asked Talen.
His old-soul eyes said yes. “A millennia’s worth, but nothing relevant.”
Kellee shook his head. He’d always been honest. And then there was Sirius. The guardian’s jaw fluttered under our scrutiny. “I do not believe so, but an immortal’s memory is an infinite place where pertinent information can easily be lost,” came his typical fae response. It was the best I would get from him.
“As we’re sharing,” Sota spoke up. “Eledan programmed a failsafe into me. It seems, when he disabled me in Arcon, he added some upgrades. He can render me unconscious with a gesture. There may be more he can do.”
Kellee swore. Talen’s brow knitted together, and Sirius continued to glare.
“We should leave the drone here,” the guardian declared. It was a wise suggestion, and it wasn’t ever happening.
“Sota comes with us.” I wasn’t letting any of them out of my sight, especially Sota.
Sota bowed his head. “He’s right. I’m a liability—”
“No.” My tone alone shut down any further protests. “We are together, and we will stay together. If any of you have a problem with that, you can walk away.”
Her Dark Legion Page 5