Her Dark Legion

by Pippa Dacosta

  Talen cried out and dropped. His hands shot to his head, clasping over his ears as though he were fighting to keep out something we couldn’t hear. Someone growled, likely Kellee, and Hulia snapped an insult at Eledan.

  “Quiet! All of you!” I ordered, dropping in front of Talen and touching his knee. He’d squeezed his eyes closed and hissed through gritted teeth, caught in an agony. With the loss of our bond, I couldn’t help him.

  His hissing breaths slowed. “It’s… all right.”

  Kellee loomed behind him, his face mirroring my thoughts: this is not all right.

  From behind me, Eledan said, “It’s the leviathan ship.”

  I glanced behind me. Eledan had a hand against Arcon’s wall, his head lifted.

  “It’s alive,” Talen breathed. He opened his violet eyes and lifted his head. “Calicto is defending itself with the Excalibur by birthing new life inside the tek-ship.” He settled his hand on mine. “It’s calling for a pilot.”

  Panic fluttered in my heart—the first time I’d felt it since waking. I gripped Talen’s arm and helped him to his feet. “Talen, I don’t understand.”

  “This sentient planet is bracing itself for war against Earthens and grasping at anything in its arsenal–including the ship and me.”

  “We have to stop it.”

  “Then you’d better stop the Sol Alliance from firing,” Eledan’s sardonic drawl answered, humor glinting in his eyes. He was loving every second of this.

  “Take us to the seat of power here,” I barked at him. “Somewhere we can regroup and assess what’s happening.”

  We followed Eledan through the snaking tunnel. Talen winced and missed his steps, Excalibur still calling out to him. I couldn’t lose him to a ship. I’d seen pilots. I’d killed one when it had begged me to free it. I could not let that happen to Talen, but I had a hundred other things to stop first. Namely, stopping the humans from firing on this planet and getting us all killed.

  The tunnel mouth widened, and a waterfall of ivy parted, depositing us in a grand, root-infested chamber. My soul knew this room, even if my eyes didn’t immediately recognize it. One wall was solid glass. Outside, Calicto throbbed like living neon lights. The sky dripped with Sol Alliance ships.

  “Oh, by Faerie…” I drifted toward the glass, drawn by the magnificent sight.

  “I know this room,” Kellee growled.

  “So do I,” Sota agreed flatly.

  I caught sight of the broken oak table Eledan had once punched me through, and where he’d made Hulia dance and scream. She seethed near the tunnel mouth, her hands locked into fists. I’d rebuilt Sota here, with phantom-Eledan’s help. I’d once jumped from these very windows rather than fight a fae unprepared. I touched the glass and watched metallic veins pulse against the outline of my hand.

  The history in this room was a living thing inside all our minds.

  While we absorbed the room’s new Faerie-infested look in stunned silence, Eledan had predictably taken up residence on the oak throne. In his human clothing, he looked like a cross between Larsen and the Mad Prince, which seemed eerily appropriate, considering how magic was merging with tek here.

  Eledan rested his hands on the throne’s wide arms and spread his fingers. He looked down, his expression locked in concentration.

  “Now then…” He sighed. “Time to birth a new reign.”

  His body jerked, back arching. He threw his head back, or whatever was happening to him wrenched his head back, exposing his neck and the squirming tattoos coming to life beneath his collar.

  “Stop him!” Kellee growled.

  I thrust out an arm and jolted Kellee back. “No, wait. We don’t know what he’s doing.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s bad.”

  Maybe. “Just wait…”

  Roots sprang from the throne, knotted, and lashed in the air, then they wound around Eledan’s trapped form, tying him tight to the throne. He stared at the ceiling, lashes fluttering, but whatever he saw wasn’t in this room. Roots crept up his chest, peeling apart the shirt to reveal the throbbing scar tissue and tek-veins of the heart keeping him alive, then those roots traveled on, lacing through his hair.

  Talen twitched beside me. He again clutched at his head and swore. “He’s readying the Excalibur to fire.”

  “Can you stop it?” I asked carefully.

  “Not from here. I’d need to be… on the ship.”

  The way he’d added that last sentence, I assumed he meant being on that ship wouldn’t be enough. He needed to fuse with it, and that wasn’t happening. I shook my head, but he flinched away again, teeth gritted. He was a pilot. More than that, he’d been exposed to tek for hundreds of years. Fate had made him for something like the Excalibur. No other fae could pilot a tek-and-magic made ship. I didn’t care. I would never let him suffer like the other pilots had.

  I squeezed his hand. Destiny couldn’t have him. He was mine.

  “Kesh, what are we waiting for?” Sota asked. “Whatever he’s doing, it’s gotta be bad.”

  I scanned the worried faces surrounding me. Kellee, Hulia, Sota and Talen. They didn’t know Eledan had led them by the hand to this very moment. We were each here for a reason. The dark fae were close. Calicto was alive, and together, with each of them, I was the Nightshade. The Earthens were about to pick a fight with the strongest weapons outside the Hunt: us.

  Slipping my hand from Talen’s, I approached Eledan and focused on that wretched pumping organ exposed in his chest.

  He and I were two parts of the polestar, and together, we had summoned Faerie’s dark legion. But not all weapons had to be used. Sometimes, it was enough for them to exist.

  His heart beat like a drum, louder in my ears than in anyone else’s. I stopped in front of him and hovered my fingers over the tek-heart trapped in its cage. All he had ever wanted was to be noticed, to be loved, to be remembered. He had created the Hunt because the Wild Ones had promised him power, but the Hunt was too wild, even for him. He’d fought for Oberon, and his brother had betrayed him, having him slain in battle. But Eledan hadn’t died as his kind had assumed. He’d survived, like I’d survived. He’d fought and lived and made mistakes. We all had. And now he was fighting again, but it did not have to be this way. The polestar was a weapon of light, a signal of hope taken from Faerie’s sky, and it was by no mistake that it rested in us. He had tried to tell me, and I hadn’t listened. He had tried to reach out to me as only a fae knew how, and I’d shut the door on him at every turn.

  It was time to try another way.

  I spread my hand on his chest, over his heart, and absorbed the strange, pulsating warmth, sliding my touch against scar tissue and tek. The rhythm stuttered, his fear spiking, but before he could pull away, I closed my eyes and reached inside myself, to where that new source of power beat like a second heart. Instead of turning it against him, instead of fighting him like my instincts demanded, I surrendered my power to him, like I’d done many times with Talen. I gave him a true and honest gift, one unencumbered, and whispered, “I see you.”

  Eledan opened his eyes.

  Chapter 32

  “The Excalibur’s standing down,” Talen said.

  I stared into Eledan’s crystal blue eyes, seeing the damaged soul inside. His heart beat against my palm, so vulnerable, even as he commanded a newly sentient planet. Weren’t we all Faerie’s children? Good and bad, light and dark, unseelie and seelie, wild and sidhe. I had to embrace the dark and the light to prevail.

  “Don’t fight the humans,” I told Eledan. “Don’t start the cycle again.”

  His throat moved as he swallowed. His chest rose and fell. His heart thudded its racing beat.

  “You are not your brother. That’s a good thing.”

  His brow pinched into deep-set lines, and then his hand broke away from the oak roots, and clamped on mine over his heart, perhaps to pull me off him or to hold me closer, his face too muddled with emotion to know.

  “They’ll kill us all,
” he whispered.

  “No. You were right. We are so alike, and I refused to see it. We will end this war. Together. But not like this.” It was the only way. I had to stop fighting my past and stop fighting him.

  His hand squeezed mine, and slowly, the roots binding him to the throne unraveled. After they’d withdrawn, he stayed seated, his gaze roaming my face, looking for the lies that didn’t exist. The time for lies was over.

  I lifted my hand from his chest, but he snatched my wrist and held firm, his gaze spearing into mine. Whatever he wanted to say, he didn’t voice it.

  I didn’t need the words. I knew. He had only ever wanted to be seen and heard, and have something real in his life instead of living from one illusion to the next. Everyone in this room, we saw him. Some might not look on him with kindness, but they saw him all the same, and that was all he’d ever wanted.

  I pulled my arm free and backed away. “The dark fae are here,” I announced feeling the weight of a thousand minds filling Arcon below our feet.

  Turning, with Eledan at my back, I admired my friends, each one worth more than life to me.

  Marshal Kellee—his marshal’s star glinting—looked at me with a strange sense of awe on his face. With his claws exposed and eyes aglow, he was more vakaru than man, and that was how I needed him, because Hapters’ dark fae weren’t the only souls who had arrived among Arcon’s foundation. The minds of countless long-dead vakaru skirted the fringes of my thoughts.

  “The legion is here.” The words carried deep into Arcon, down into the shadows. “We are the Messenger and our time has come.”

  I loved these people. I’d do anything for them. “Together, we are light and dark, just as it was always meant to be. There is only one battle left to fight, and it is not with the humans of Sol. We must stop the Hunt and return the polestar to Faerie. That is the only way to end this.”

  The grief on Kellee’s face betrayed him. We all knew how this ended. We’d known all along, but it was right. That star on his chest stood for everything right. He would not stop me from doing the right thing.

  Talen stood tall, proud, my untouchable silver fae, but I didn’t need a bond to know how his mask hid the pain inside. I would die to save them, and they wouldn’t stop me.

  “We will return to Faerie with the Dark Legion. That is where this ends.”

  Magic tingled and stroked around my legs and up my back. Not the blinding, overwhelming blast of the polestar, but its smoother, gentler touch, as though I was now ready to control it. The tek-whip, hooked at my belt, hissed and fizzled to life. Nightshade wings blurred into existence. Like smoke and glitter, they billowed over my shoulders and drifted toward the ceiling. I barely felt their weight, their burden light. I’d come a long way from the saru who’d fought her way out of the delivery crate and into a world that would sooner see her dead than breathing. I was so many things to so many people, and this war needed me to be those things to end it. You must survive yourself to unlock your truth.

  I was ready.

  Talen knelt and bowed his head. Kellee followed. Sota and Hulia did the same, and then, from behind me, I heard a rustle of movement and turned to see Eledan on a single knee, his right hand fisted over his crackling heart and his head bowed.

  We were all ready.

  “That was the most badass thing I have ever seen,” Sota beamed, striding along the Excalibur’s new corridors beside me. The ship had taken on a green aura, and just like Calicto, its tek was changing before our eyes—or his tek, as Talen had confirmed the Excalibur was male. My wings and aura had vanished. My reflection in the Excalibur’s glass told the world I looked the same as I always had. Unassuming clothes, and whip mostly-concealed at my hip, beneath my coat. On the outside, I was Kesh Lasota, illegal Calicto messenger, but on the inside, I was something else entirely, but still Kesh. Still me. I’d never give that truth up.

  Sota’s enthusiasm had shored up my own since we’d returned to the Excalibur, shortly after I’d stopped Eledan from killing thousands of people. Eledan had retreated somewhere inside the living ship, while Kellee and the others descended on the command deck, familiarizing themselves with the newborn spacefaring vessel under Talen’s guidance.

  “What did you do to Eledan?” he asked.

  We approached the obs room. “I stopped fighting him.”

  Sota mulled that over. As a wardrone, the idea of not fighting was alien to him, but he also had personal AI protocols, which meant he was more than capable of thinking instead of shooting.

  “Isn’t that dangerous?” he finally asked.

  The obs room door opened ahead.

  “Yes, but I got nowhere as his enemy.” I let Sota enter the room first. “Doesn’t mean I trust him, though.”

  Sirius observed Sol’s fleet drifting in Calicto’s airspace on the screens, his hands clasped behind his back. The smallest smile touched his lips as he saw me and turned away from the screens. Eledan’s book lay innocuously on the table, seemingly nothing more than an old tome.

  Pierce sat across the table, looking grim and wrung out. Earthens didn’t cope well under Faerie’s influence for long. After the Excalibur’s transformation, she likely wondered if she was losing her mind. She watched me pick up the book and tuck it neatly under my arm.

  “We don’t want this war,” I told her. “The least you can do is speak with your people and ask them to back off. We haven’t fired on them and we won’t, as long as they keep their fingers off the triggers too. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. “Now that I’ve lost my ship, can my crew return to the Sol fleet?”

  “After you’ve hailed your counterpart in that fleet and told them how we mean them no harm.”

  “They won’t believe me.”

  “Then it’s your job to convince them.”

  She sighed. “My crew and I have been off-grid for weeks. They won’t accept a message from me, from this ship, when it’s clearly infected with Faerie. I’ll need to speak with them in person.”

  “We can change that.”

  “You’ll need to be with me.”

  Sirius stiffened. He and the others would not react well to my visiting the human fleet.

  “Look…” Pierce rubbed her temple. “If I tell them the Messenger is real, if I tell them any of this, they’ll think my mind has been compromised and they’ll attack. If you come with me and speak with them, we could come to an amicable working solution. Despite our captivity and your fae’s… invasive touch, you have not hurt us, and I appreciate that. The Sol Alliance does not want war either. We saw what Faerie did to Halow, but we will fight if we must. You can bridge our differences, Kesh, and stop this from getting worse.”

  They knew my myth. I had to go. “All right.”

  “Kesh…?” Sota queried.

  “You’ll both be by my side.”

  Sirius nodded, happier guarding me than leaving me to walk among Earthens without him. Kellee would hate it, but knowing his and Talen’s past, I couldn’t take either of them to an Earthen ship without risking the humans capturing them.

  All I had to do was convince the Sol fleet that a sentient planet and ship and a legion of fae monsters didn’t intend to hurt them. It wouldn’t be easy, and I wasn’t entirely sure it was true, but if I succeeded, we’d be one step closer to peace.

  I nodded. “I’ll have Hulia help your crew get ready to depart. Sirius, hail the fleet and tell them I will personally escort the Excalibur crew back to them. Let’s make this happen as peacefully as possible. Nobody has to die today.”

  Leaving Sota and Sirius with Pierce, I headed straight for the command deck to debrief Kellee and Talen, Eledan’s book still tucked under my arm. The route had changed, corridors twisting and branching off where they hadn’t before, but on arriving, I found them standing at the great curved window, ignoring all the bleeping tek flashing warnings and watching the Earthen fleet shimmer in Calicto’s low atmosphere.

  Before I left, I had to tell Kellee I’d sensed
the vakaru and ask Talen not to bond with the ship. Two conversations I dreaded. My next words could cost me them. So, instead of speaking, I climbed the steps onto the deck and planted myself between Kellee’s simmering presence and Talen’s icy stillness. We watched the fleet and the stars behind, and I wished I had more time with them, just to stand and watch and be in the moment.

  “Do you believe in destiny?” I asked, echoing the same question I’d asked Sirius.

  Kellee shifted and cocked his head toward me, keeping his gaze on the fleet. “Before I met you, I didn’t.”

  Talen lifted a single shoulder, agreeing with Kellee. Having them so close reminded me of all the things I’d done, and some things I shouldn’t have, and how they’d been beside me through it all. It had been worth it. I wouldn’t change a damn thing.

  “Kellee…”

  Hearing the tension in my tone, he turned to me, his mouth set in a firm line. “If this is about Eledan, I don’t care how you did it, just that you could control him—”

  “The vakaru wraiths are here.”

  He flinched and took a moment to digest those words. “What?”

  “They’re all there. I don’t know how… I think Eledan had a hand in it. His heart is Valand’s piece of the polestar. It’s likely the wraiths recognized it.”

  Kellee’s lips tightened, a snarl threatening to bubble through. “Then it’s a trick,” he dismissed, unfolding his arms to make way for sprouting claws.

  Selfishly, I wished it were a trick. “Not this time. They’re here and…” I swallowed, because the next words might lose me my vakaru, but the words meant he’d have a future after me. “It’s possible the lifewell below Arcon can bring them back.”

  His face crumpled. He blinked too quickly, and a color I’d never seen before bloomed in his eyes, a blue so pale it was almost white. “Don’t say these things unless they are true.”

  “I wouldn’t lie about this, and I don’t lie to you, not anymore.”