Neither was it mine. I stopped and held his gaze, searching for the karushit behind his words. “Then give up the crown.”
His right eyebrow lifted. “To whom? You?” A short laugh. “Faerie must have a ruler, and as you saw fit to kill my brother—”
“You wanted vengeance. You wouldn’t have let him live.”
“I would have. I told you not to kill him at the crystal palace. You did it anyway.”
“Oh, stop trying to paint yourself as the understanding brother. You stopped me because you knew the Hunt was inside him. Had you told me that fact, we might not be in this situation—”
“And when was I supposed to tell you? The moment I awoke, surrounded by my brother’s guards, or after my return, when you fled the sight of me?”
I’d only fled because he was bringing the castle down around him and would have brought me down too. “Do you hear yourself? You’ve had me in your dreams for hours. You could have told me the details of Oberon’s curse at any time. Oberon harbors the Hunt.” I clicked my fingers inches from his face. “Just like that.”
His lips twisted. “You took my heart for him. How could I know you would not do the same again if you learned of his power?”
“What power? He was trapped in that palace. He had no power. You drove him so far he had no choice but to leave the safety of its walls, and by then, he was done with hiding and done with keeping your secret.” I poked him hard in the chest.
“I have my regrets. Many, in fact. You are one—”
“Oh, please.” Throwing up my hands, I marched on. “I’m not falling for your sob story, Eledan. When you wake up, you’ll go back to twisting the fae and making them dream so they rally by your side, and you’ll take what’s left of Oberon’s rule, including his pointless war, because you think you have a thousand years of neglect to make up for.” I whirled on him. “You don’t have to be this person, you know. You can be whoever you want to be. You can choose to be good. Nobody controls you. You’re truly free.”
A coldness held him still. “Cast aside, I lived in pain for centuries. Faerie forgot me—”
“Get. Over. It.” Rage sharpened his glare. “I would have given anything to have the freedom you enjoyed, and all you did with it was fling it away. Now that you have it back, what do you do? You bitch and moan and throw a fit. Why don’t you try doing some good with your immortal life instead of wallowing in self-pity?”
The dream ended as abruptly as it had come. I gazed up at the carriage ceiling. The sudden change stunned my senses into numbness while my words to Eledan rang in my ears.
“She’s awake,” Sota announced. His face appeared over me. “Kesh?”
My gut flipped and head spun, and I almost reached for the dream. At least there I didn’t feel as though I’d been trampled under the carriage, the floor of which I currently lay on. Why did I feel like a ton of rocks had been dumped over me while I’d slept?
We’d stopped moving. Or maybe we had yet to begin?
Sota helped me sit up. Kellee wasn’t here, but the carriage door hung open, and his voice drifted in from outside, telling Sirius I was awake.
Talen was looking at me like I might shatter if he touched me. I tried to smile and winced at my throbbing skull. “It’s all right. I’m fine.”
“Only you could so blatantly lie on Faerie and get away with it.” His tone was cold, but his smile was soft.
“Where are we?” Pressing a cool hand to my temple helped.
“The Autumnlands knoll.” Outside the carriage’s open door, Faerie’s twilight licked at the grassheads, making them glisten so the whole field shimmered like a lake. Where Sirius’s knoll had been, and where the Hunt had risen, the earth had been scalped, exposing a huge patch of barren soil. Ailish had said the knoll was sleeping, but from my position, it looked dead.
“I’ve summoned Shinj,” Talen said, following my gaze, “but she’s reluctant to approach until we need her. She senses the Hunt nearby.”
“I’m all right.” I gently peeled Sota’s grip off my arm. “Let’s do this.”
“Perhaps we should go into the knoll without you.” Talen saw my expression and quickly added, “I’m concerned for your wellbeing.”
“When has splitting up ever been a good idea?” Sota asked him.
“You’d be with her.”
I got to my feet while they bickered and climbed down from the carriage. “I’m just tired… that’s all.”
Kellee and Sirius abruptly ended their furtive discussion. I lifted a finger as Kellee opened his mouth to either ask if I was all right or tell me to stay topside. “Don’t say anything. I’m fine. Let’s get the book.”
Nobody dared to mention the blood on my clothes. Much of it had been wiped off my face and neck while I was out, but some still itched around my collar. I’d passed out, that was all. It happened to humans all the time. It wasn’t common in saru, but it did occur.
Kellee worked his jaw, like he did when he was pissed, and planted a hand on his hip. “Did you see Eledan while you were out?” Beside him, Sirius gazed toward the scarred patch of earth above the knoll. At the mention of Eledan, the weight of his attention returned to me.
“Yes.”
“And?” Kellee pushed.
“Nothing.” Mentioning the mirrors and what I’d seen in them wouldn’t help anyone, and the argument with Eledan had been one of many.
“Nothing?” Kellee’s eyebrow arched.
Always with the questions… “He doesn’t know where we are. He mentioned the sidhe being pissed and tried to get me to feel sorry for him. The usual Eledan nonsense.” I waved a hand, dismissively. “I think he’s floundering as much as we are, which is good. It will keep him distracted.”
“He only shows you as much as he wants you to see,” Sirius said.
I sighed. “Yes. Thank you. I’m becoming quite adept at deciphering Eledan. So, shall we get into this knoll, get the book, and get out of here before the Hunt notices we’re back?”
Kellee poked his tongue into the corner of his mouth and found a nearby shrub fascinating, determined not to look at me.
“What?”
Sirius cleared his throat, green eyes darting. “Talen and I are going inside.”
“We are?” Talen asked, climbing from the carriage.
“The rest of you will stay outside,” Sirius continued, “and watch for any sign of the Hunt. Sota, stay close to Kesh. Your tek presence will shield her from the Hunt.”
“We’re splitting up?” Sota asked and rolled his eyes to me. “Splitting up never ends well.”
“In this instance, it’s better we divide our resources and potential targets.” Sirius stood his ground, expecting an argument. I’d seen that look on him a hundred times. We didn’t have the time to talk him around. The longer we stayed out in the open, the more at risk we were. Splitting up made sense, even if the idea ramped up my anxiety.
“You know the book you’re looking for?” I asked.
Sirius nodded. “Oberon left it on the table in the library. The knoll, if I can wake it, will help me find it again.”
Kellee wasn’t arguing with Sirius, likely because he wanted to keep me out of the hole in the ground where Oberon had almost ripped the polestar out of me.
Talen’s lips lifted at one corner. Eledan taking his wings had shocked him, but all things considered, he’d never looked better. Like Sirius, Talen had gained a vitality he had been missing before. The glitter in his eyes spoke of his returning strength. He might even be stronger now than at any other time since I’d known him. He was more than capable of retrieving the book with Sirius.
“All right. Kellee, Sota, and I will stand watch.”
Sirius nodded, and Talen fell into step beside him. Together, they trekked through the grass toward the patch of scarred land.
Kellee tracked them with his keen vakaru senses until the grassheads obscured them. He jumped when I touched his shoulder and quickly went back to observing Talen and Sirius.
I slid my hand down his arm. His muscles were bunched so tightly his arm felt like stone. “Talen will be all right.”
“It’s not him I’m concerned about.”
Ah, Sirius. I could explain to Kellee how Sirius had been my silent guardian for years, how he’d been forced to endure my torture alongside me, how Oberon had nailed him to a cross for daring to protect me, but words wouldn’t be enough to convince Kellee that any fae was worthy. Only actions would do that, and I knew from experience that Kellee was difficult to impress.
I eased my fingers into his.
“Do you trust him?” he asked without looking away from the distant pair of fae.
“With my life.”
The ground rumbled just enough to shiver the nearby grass, and in front of Talen, the dirt rose until it was twice his height. Once it had stopped climbing, a hollow opened in its facing edge.
Talen and Sirius disappeared inside the Autumnlands knoll.
“I really don’t like splitting up,” Sota said, moving to my side.
Neither did I.
The fire-horses tethered to the carriage behind us snickered. A swift, cool breeze lifted dust off the grass and swirled it in the air. Kellee frowned at the darkening sky. “I’ll go find a vantage point to better see over this grass. Stay here.”
I let his hand slip free and watched him melt into the grass until even glimpses of his dark hair vanished. The wind whipped a chill around me that tried to work its way down to the bone. I folded my arms and hugged myself tight.
Sota’s hidden forearm gun ports opened with a soft whirr. He shrugged. “Maybe we won’t need them.”
I smiled back, neglecting to mention how, on Faerie, hope was an invisible shield that rarely worked against real monsters.
Chapter 16
Talen
The knoll rearranged itself around us, reopening collapsed tunnels and breathing out, blasting us with cinnamon- and sandalwood-scented air. Sirius’s outpouring of Autumnlands magic tickled my senses, wanting to take my hand and run with me, while also brushing up against my skin as though it wanted to climb inside it.
“Did it look like this before?” I asked, shrugging off his magic’s invasiveness. It had been so long since I’d walked on Faerie and without my wings; it was taking me time to reacclimate to the magic’s peculiar touches and whispering wants.
“No.”
My own restrained magic flexed and stretched, trying to slip its leash. That, too, was new to me.
“It’s showing us enough to get us to the library. It still suffers from… what was done here. Reopening the entire knoll is impossible.” He avoided mention of the Hunt, not wanting to prick its ears.
He strode ahead, ringed in warm reds, his spicy, earthy magic tingling on my tongue. As a Wild One, Sirius was rooted to the earth, to Faerie. His magic was Hers, and she permitted him to use it. It must have been quite the revelation for him to learn of how Faerie approved of Kesh. It would have taken a great deal of personal adjustment for a fae as old as him. Although I sensed that initial adjustment had happened long ago. He appeared resigned now. Perhaps, when this was over, he would tell me how his love had come to be, if the pair of us survived.
The library came into sight, the walls aglow enough to light the way. Books lay strewn about the floor among jagged splinters of a table. Sirius crouched and picked up fallen books. After checking their spines, he arranged them in towers beside him.
The Origin of the Wild Hunt. I searched through the titles at my feet for the prince’s work. “Is it true he created the original nightmare?”
“The Wild Ones persuaded him, but yes, his mind created what we call the Hunt,” he said, whispering its name.
The fae could be highly persuasive to anyone open and accepting. The Wild Ones had probably used Eledan’s fear of being forgotten to promise him power.
“And we’re taking this book back to the Wild Ones?” If they had caused this, returning the book to them seemed like a mistake.
“After I’ve read it and gotten what we need from it, yes.”
Sirius was a Wild One and Faerie’s guardian long before he became Mab’s guardian, and Oberon’s thereafter. Older than me. Older than the courts. Older than order itself. Kesh trusted him. Kellee did not. As familiar as I found him, I wasn’t yet convinced by his motives.
He rocked back on his heels, his long dark coat bunching on the floor. “Kesh is dying.”
My hand froze over a book, a tome with an archaic title that sounded as dull as dirt. I forgot the title, and the book I was meant to be looking for, and looked over at the guardian.
Sirius didn’t turn, but he’d stopped organizing the books. “She’s mortal. The fragment of polestar hidden in the saru bloodline found its way to her because the time was right for it to resurface, as all of Faerie’s hidden things resurface, but it was never meant to be contained inside a mortal body for long.” He dropped his head and looked over his shoulder, meeting my gaze. The guardian’s green eyes glistened. “She has suffered more than anyone I’ve known. Every breath, she has fought for. She does not yet know freedom. It is not right for her story to end this way.”
“It won’t.” The words beat like drums in my head. “I won’t let it end that way.”
The brightness of his eyes dulled. “I am Autumnlands. I know and understand death as though she were a friend, one who visits immortals from time to time but never stays for long. Autumn embraces Kesh… Her time approaches.”
“I understand.” I dropped the book and stood. “But do you know what I also understand? I spent three centuries buried in tek, fighting death. It wins when you let it win. Kesh will not let it win.”
“She knows.”
He was right. Kesh knew she was dying. She’d known since she’d learned she had part of Faerie’s night sky inside her, made worse by her attempt to protect me, taking too much of the Nightshade into herself.
“She knows, Talen, and she’s accepted it.” He straightened with a book in his hand. “I… we should respect that.”
The book was Eledan’s, and now he’d found it, he looked at me with all the sorrow of the worlds on his face. It took me a moment to realize the significance of his words and why he was telling me this now.
He might not have read the book, but he knew what was inside its pages.
And so did I.
The polestar pieces had to be reunited and returned to Faerie’s sky. The light would balance the dark. The dark fae would return. The Hunt would once again be Faerie’s justice. Faerie would be at peace, and the war would end. All it would cost was the death of an immortal prince and the life of the mortal woman I loved.
“When we were bonded, our shared link healed her—”
“And made her vulnerable to your considerable power as the Nightshade.”
That had been a mistake. I had never wanted to hurt her, just keep her safe. That was all I’d tried to do. Her life was so fleeting. I’d been afraid the worlds would take her from me. I should have realized not even I could change Kesh’s fate.
“She’s strong,” I added. I knew the Nightshade’s powers. The wings wouldn’t have chosen her if she could not bear their weight.
He smiled, as though my words barely covered how strong we knew her to be. “I know she is.”
“Together, we’ll find a way.”
The polestar, the Hunt, the dark fae needing her as their new guiding light. Surviving just one of those things would be difficult for a fae. For a mortal? If it were anyone else but Kesh, they wouldn’t have a chance.
A smile lifted my lips. “Have a little faith in our Messenger. She might surprise you.”
He took those words on board, tucked the book under his arm, and nodded. “Let’s return to the surface.”
A ground-shuddering rumble trembled through the knoll’s walls. I turned as the tunnel collapsed, cutting off our only way out of the library. Dust settled, revealing a wall of rock where the door had been moments before.
“Sirius?”
He tilted his head, listening to something I couldn’t hear. “The knoll is… afraid.”
The Hunt.
“Get us out of here. Now.”
He closed his eyes. His throat bobbed, and a small knot of concentration appeared on his brow. When his eyes fluttered open, his cheek twitched. “It’s not answering. We’re not going anywhere until the Hunt has moved on.”
“Kesh is out there.”
“I know that…”
I checked the buried doorway and ran my hands over the tightly compacted stone.
“It won’t let us go until it’s safe,” Sirius added.
Bookshelves lined the walls. There were no other doors or windows. We were buried inside a sentient hole in the ground. “There must be another way out.”
“There is nothing else we can do.”
There was. “Command your knoll to open a doorway, or I’ll summon Shinj here and blast a hole in your precious home.”
Fire licked at the green in his eyes. His hair turned a shade darker, to the color of blood. “That would be… unwise.”
“Then you’d better start talking to your hole in the ground, Wild One.” He looked as though he might unleash his considerable power. “Do you love her or not? If you do, as Eledan revealed, nothing would stop you from getting back up there.”
The fire in his eyes stayed, the threat delivered and understood. I might not be the Nightshade, but I was still both seelie and unseelie fae.
He turned his back to me and pressed a hand to the wall. “Be ready. The knoll doesn’t react well to commands.”
I mentally tugged Shinj. I’d be ready and have Shinj overhead. I hoped it would be enough.
Chapter 17
Kesh
The breeze lashed Kellee’s loose, dark hair against his face. He sniffed the air. “Death,” he growled, fangs lengthening.
The Hunt was coming.
The ground shook beneath my boots, and where the knoll had reopened, the earth collapsed, sending up a blast of dust. Talen and Sirius were still inside.
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