Her Dark Legion

by Pippa Dacosta

  Chapter 35

  Kellee

  The bowels of Arcon groaned louder the deeper we descended. Wisps tossed their light around, casting crawling shadows along the walls. My vakaru senses itched. Those shadows could be alive. Just because I had unseelie in me didn’t mean I was immune to them. Hapters had proven that. Now, all those Hapters monsters were here. I’d have preferred Talen next to me than Eledan.

  The king walked ahead, dark hair swishing without a care in the world, and here I was, following him into the darkness. This was not how I’d imagined events would go.

  The deeper we went, the cooler the air became. It licked at my face and neck, and had my skin bristling. Even the air was alive down here, and I had no choice but to breathe its poison in. Fucking Faerie.

  Winged dark fae clung to the ceiling and watched us pass beneath them. They looked like hairless bats, if bats were man-sized. I’d seen the monsters of Hapters. What we found down here wouldn’t get any prettier.

  “Nightshade…” Hissing voices echoed at our passing. Not for me, but for Kesh. They sensed we were all connected, which was why none had decided to impale itself on my claws. Yet.

  The green orb chamber had the same throbbing energy as Shinj’s two hearts. Life magic leaked outward, washing over my face, sticking to everything, and trying to smother me in Faerie. I wrinkled my nose, fighting off a sneeze. Shadow after shadow writhed over the dome walls. I’d seen them on Valand, when Talen had tried to subdue them. Those wraiths were my vakaru or their essence. The injustice had my teeth aching.

  “Control yourself, Kellee.” Eledan smirked.

  “I am,” I growled back, “or you’d have more holes in you.”

  “Are you sure you can wrangle a vakaru army? It would be a terrible mistake to bring them back only to make the situation worse.”

  The bastard’s smile was hanging out on his lips again. I knew how to wipe that smile off his face. “What’s with you and this key you told me about in a dream?”

  Sure enough, he straightened and the smile vanished. Turning his back on me, he approached the huge green orb. Light flowed over and around him, not consuming him, just lapping at his edges.

  “To do this,” he began, raising his voice against the skitter and scurry of claws marking the walls, “there will be a sacrifice.”

  I wasn’t getting my answer about the key, then. “What kind of sacrifice?” I inched closer, absorbing the beat of magic.

  “A death for a life.” He stared into the green.

  “What?”

  “Did you think their resurrection would be free?” He slid his attention to me, looking every part the bewitching fae well versed in luring innocents to their deaths. “The lifewell can rejuvenate, but to bring the dead back to life, new life must come from somewhere.”

  “That’s not how it worked when you healed me here before.”

  “You weren’t dead when I brought you here, just close to it.”

  A death for a life? I couldn’t tell if he was full of karushit. He knew I wanted this and would do anything for it. “What life do you suggest?” The thought alone knotted my insides.

  Eledan considered the question before looking back the way we’d come. “There are hundreds of dark fae here and more arriving. They seem like a reasonable trade to have your battle-hardened vakaru back, don’t you think?”

  Kill the dark fae to bring the vakaru back?

  I couldn’t do it.

  I could not take a life in exchange for the lives of others. That was not my way.

  “Hmm…” he mused. “So close to having your world back, yet so far.”

  “You’re a real piece of work, Eledan. There’s no mystery why Mab didn’t care for you like she did Ober—”

  I had the wall at my back and Eledan’s cool fingers around my throat before I could finish speaking his brother’s name. Unfortunately for him, I also had my claws lodged beneath his ribs, ready to thrust in and zip open his insides. His fingers squeezed, and the Mad Prince snarled in my face, his true fae colors showing.

  “Go on.” I bared my teeth. “Push me. I’d like nothing more than to gut you right here.”

  The words wormed their way through his rage. He blinked, caught himself, and withdrew, looking down at the tears in his shirt where my claws had dug in. I hadn’t cut him, but we both knew I could have.

  “If you aren’t willing to make the sacrifice”—he tugged his shirt straight—“I will.”

  “No, you won’t. If you want to redeem your brother’s fuckups, you won’t touch the dark fae. Leave them be. They’ve been through enough.”

  “The vakaru are better fighters. We will need them against the Hunt and against those on Faerie who do not want to end this war.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I backed away. This was over. “I’m not condemning the dark fae just because they’re convenient for you.”

  “Don’t your vakaru deserve the same?” Green light poured over his face, hollowing his cheeks.

  “My vakaru are gone.” I had the wraiths, and with the dark fae, it would have to be enough. “If you make a move to sacrifice the dark fae, I’ll do everything in my power to stop you, key or not.”

  He glimpsed my claws. “Then you had better hope Kesh can control the dark fae where Talen could not, because we will not get a second chance to stop the Hunt.”

  “She will, and if you knew her like you think you do, you’d know it too.”

  He took one long look at the lifewell. “I suppose I do.”

  Kesh arrived at the command deck with Sirius and Sota in tow. She saw me at the window and tripped over her feet and her words. Whatever she’d been saying to Sota, it was forgotten as she came across the room in a flurry of her dark coat and hair. The slightest flicker of vulnerability about her had me wanting to meet her halfway. I stood firm, watched her climb the steps, and braced for whatever words she flung my way. Instead of attacking, she threw herself in my arms, the press of her soft and warm and achingly familiar. I breathed in her leather and metal smell, wishing we were alone.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “There were complications. As with all things Eledan, the cost was too high.”

  She lifted her head, and the fear in her eyes caught my breath.

  She’d thought she’d lose me. I’d been so consumed by the thought of resurrecting the vakaru that I hadn’t seen her concern.

  She fumbled with the star, trying to unclip it.

  “Keep it.” She looked up with those fine, emotive eyes, equal parts fierce and vulnerable, and I couldn’t stand to see her pain a second longer. I crushed her close, folding her into my arms, not caring about our audience. “You’re never getting rid of me.”

  Never is a lie.

  Not for mortals.

  By cyn, I wanted to take her away from here and run so far time couldn’t catch us, but she wouldn’t come.

  “The wraiths are here,” I added, pushing aside selfish thoughts, “as are the dark fae. Eledan believes the last lifewell is on Faerie. He said the dark fae will travel there next.”

  “When?” She pulled out of my arms, her barriers slamming down.

  “When you say so.”

  She nodded and absently looked toward Sirius and Sota. “We had some success. The Earthens won’t fire on us, as long as we don’t do anything to alarm them.”

  I snorted. My being alive routinely alarmed them. “I never doubted you.”

  “Then we should ready the ship to return to Faerie,” she said, firm in her conviction. “I need to see Eledan…”

  Just like that, she was back in motion, her focus on the task ahead. I rarely felt the passage of time so keenly as when I was with her. Everything in me ached to pull her back, to capture her light and savor it before she burned out.

  “Find Talen,” she said, already halfway to the door. “Ask him if the Excalibur will help us without him having to bond with the ship.” The next words she muttered almost too softly to hear. “I can’t
lose him as well.”

  After she’d left, Sirius and Sota lingered with me in the quiet, their thoughts likely along the same lines as mine. There wasn’t enough time left to love her how we wanted.

  Chapter 36

  Kesh

  “We’re returning to Faerie,” I said, entering the long, narrow hall that had once been a cafeteria but was now more of an atrium filled with sprouting leaves and tangled roots. Had I not been accustomed to Shinj’s strange organic living, I would have struggled to adjust to this.

  Eledan sat at a table, his book spread before him, fingers flicking over the empty pages.

  I pulled out a chair, detaching it from its nest of metal roots, and sat across from him. “It’s time you told me about this book.”

  He continued to tickle the pages, running his fingers over them as though he could see something on its plain age-mottled pages.

  “How do you live knowing you die a little more every day?” he asked in that mad, poetic way of his.

  I slammed my hand down on the open book. His head snapped up, a snarl bubbling on his lips. He could growl all he liked. I was done with his karushit. “What is wrong with you? We are going back to stop the Hunt and correct your monumental fuckup. Get your head out of your dreams and in the game.”

  Dark lashes shuttered over too-blue eyes, my words chipping off some of his attitude.

  “Why does Ailish want this book? Why was it in Sirius’s knoll, and why is it empty? What’s so special about these blank pages?”

  He tugged the book out from under my hand, glowered hard, and slammed it closed to spite me. Glittery dust wafted into the air.

  “Eledan, there isn’t time for your drama—”

  He tapped the spine and drawled, “The Origin of the Wild Hunt.”

  “I know what it’s called.”

  After working his jaw, he tried again. “Titles are never just words. Messenger, Wraithmaker, do you think those titles are just words?”

  “No.”

  “No?” He laughed.

  My palm itched to slap him. I needed the sane Eledan, not the tek-exposed insane version, although at least the insane version was honest. “So tell me what I’m missing.” Folding my arms to keep the urge to lash out under control, I leaned back. “Tell me what my saru mind can’t comprehend of your fabulous masterpiece full of blank pages.”

  He rolled his eyes and sighed. “This book is the origin of the Wild Hunt.”

  “Were you this annoying before getting stuck on Halow?”

  Muttering something fae and foul, he flipped open the hardcover, lunged across the table, grabbed my hand, and shoved my palm against the page. Nothing happened. The pages were still blank.

  “I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

  “Don’t look. Feel.”

  He pushed my hand harder into the paper, and just as I was about to yank free, a cool, slippery void opened beneath my touch. I couldn’t see the hole—the page was just a page—but I could feel it. It felt like the nowhere hole Oberon had kept Eledan in. Like it went on forever with no end and no beginning. Like it might swallow me and keep me in its pages forever.

  I yanked my hand out from under his and cradled it to my chest, rubbing off the oily feel. “What is that?”

  “That is an empty book. That is the origin, where it all began, where the Hunt was first conceived. The Wild Ones wanted a horror story, so I gave them one. Those pages are the prison we must return the Hunt to.”

  The title wasn’t just a title; it was a description. The book was the origin of the Wild Hunt. That monstrous thing had come from its pages, and it had to go back in there.

  “Now she understands.” He fell back into his chair with a huff. “So clever and so stupid all at once. I suppose that explains your infatuation with the vakaru…” He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “How by Faerie do we get the Hunt back into a book?” The Hunt was enormous, and the more it consumed, the bigger it got. I couldn’t even wrap my head around wrangling the thing into a book.

  “With the light of the polestar,” Eledan replied flatly.

  I shoved the book away, not wanting its cold, hungry hollowness to leak out. The thing felt like death, like the Hunt itself, and that was why it had been in Sirius’s library, I realized. Autumn was death.

  Light attracted dark. The polestar and the Hunt. Then Eledan and I, as the last two pieces, were bait.

  “Do you have a plan?” I asked.

  His eyebrows lifted. “One we both survive?”

  I took that to mean no. “Okay, so… we need to get the Hunt near the book, right?” He gave me a droll look. He’d been thinking on this for a long time, maybe centuries, and here I was trying to bring something new to the table. “Let’s work with that. We lure it in and corral it like Talen did with the dark fae on Hapters?”

  “The polestar must be complete for its light to sufficiently tempt the Hunt anywhere near this book.”

  A complete polestar meant Eledan and I wouldn’t be around to see it. “Must it be the polestar’s light? Can’t it be some other bright light? Can’t we… I don’t know… ask Faerie for another star?” He gave me that look again, that one that told me I’d been born yesterday and couldn’t comprehend how superior he was. “You’ve had hundreds of years to think up a solution… At least I’m trying.” The anger in my voice disguised the tremor of fear. “You’re just going to sit there and sulk?”

  “Well, yes, I think I might. I have that right.”

  “Where is the general who commanded Oberon’s armies? Where is the prince who fought the dark legions long before they were cast out of Faerie? You weren’t always a useless waste of space.”

  “That prince died a long time ago.”

  “Why? Because you got trapped with humans? You’re capable of more than this. I know you are. You built Arcon. You practically made New Calicto what it is, and you brought us all back here for a reason. So… get off your ass and help.”

  His expression ticked, something unlocking and turning over. The change was subtle, and instead of mulling over what he couldn’t do, an intense new spark brightened his eyes. “Arcon…?” he mumbled, gazing off into the jungle-like room. “Hmm… you’re right. There may be another way.” When he returned his attention to me, his smile had returned. “How far is Kesh Lasota willing to go?”

  “To stop the war and save the people I love? To the end and beyond.”

  “Good.” He stood and scooped up his wretched book. “Then we had best get to work.”

  Eledan’s version of “we” apparently meant just him. Moments after I’d rallied him into action, he slipped off my radar and disappeared somewhere inside the Excalibur’s evolving corridors. Getting rid of him was never easy, so the fact he’d vanished likely meant he was scheming. As long as he was scheming a way to get the Hunt back in his book, I’d take the fallout when it happened.

  I found Talen by asking Sota to scan the ship and went to him inside a strange dome-shaped chamber. Silver veins throbbed up the walls. Glittering dust hung in the air, each speck glowing in time with the silvery throb. I’d seen a similar room on Shinj. Navigation. But this chamber was still growing into its purpose.

  Talen stood at its center with his head tilted back and eyes closed. He looked every piece the surreal vision of untouchable fae. His long white hair hung unbound down his back. In the strange pulsating light, each strand gleamed like silver. He’d never looked so alien or so beautiful.

  This was where he was supposed to be.

  Did the Excalibur call to him now?

  I considered turning away, but his head lowered and a smile tugged at his mouth. “Stay.”

  He knew me so well.

  “Eledan’s book is how we stop the Hunt,” I said. “He’s gone off somewhere to make that happen, but I don’t trust him not to sacrifice us to get what he wants.”

  He watched me approach, and when I was close enough, he pulled me close, tucking me under his arm so he could plant a
soft kiss on my forehead. By cyn, how could he be so gentle in one breath and so devastating in another? I melted against him and sighed, letting the wiry tension fade.

  “Eledan manipulated us here…” I whispered, wanting the secret out before it festered. I couldn’t keep anything from him, from any of them, anymore. “He played us like we’re his toys.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “It’s his nature. He cannot change who he is. Dreams are his life. Asking him to stop would be like asking him to die.”

  I’d never thought of it like that. The Dreamweaver was who he was, just like we all were who we were. “The Hunt escaped his book,” I muttered, looping an arm round Talen’s waist and molding myself to his side. “He says only the polestar can lure it back inside.”

  “Hmm… light attracts dark. It has always been this way.”

  His rumbling voice traveled through me, sinking into my bones. I used to wake tucked into his side like this, feeling as though there were no safer place than in his arms. I wanted more of those times. “Do you think Kellee knows Eledan manipulated him?”

  Talen smiled. “Kellee knows there’s an art to dealing with the fae.”

  I rested my head against his chest and listened to his heart. He had talked of dreams being Eledan’s nature, but what of Talen’s nature? He was a pilot without a ship.

  “What does the ship say to you?”

  “He is young and afraid.”

  I looked up to see Talen’s distant gaze, his thoughts turning inward.

  “The human fleet frightens him,” he continued, smile falling away. “Calicto frightens him. We frighten him… I’m attempting to soothe him, but doing so while not connected is not easy.”

  “Is the Excalibur stable enough to take us back to Faerie?”

  He paused and listened to something I had no hope of hearing. “Possibly, given enough time to acclimate.”

  “How much time?”

  “A few weeks.”