“Eledan, please…” When I touched his shoulder, his whole body trembled.
“It is… the worst of me.” He spat the words, eyes still closed and head locked in his hands. “I did not… mean for this… to happen.”
“I know…” I dug my fingers into his shoulder, holding him firm so he knew he wasn’t alone. “I know you didn’t want this.”
“I just… I wanted Faerie… to see… me.”
“She does.”
His mouth twisted. “Not… like this.” He opened his eyes, and they shone with unshed tears. “Not like this, Kesh. I am truly sorry, for everything.”
“Eledan, please. We must move.”
He shook his head. “I was so very wrong. I believed revenge was all I wanted… To make them see me, as you wanted them to see you. But my true desires are much simpler. I didn’t want their love, in the end. I just wanted… yours.”
The plea in his eyes almost broke me open, but now was not the time for this. “Eledan, I…” I can’t love you. But I could lie? The words almost came, but something stopped me. No more lies, not even to appease his madness.
“I know.” He looked down. “I can… make it right.” He tore his hand from his chest and nestled there, locked in his fingers, lay his caged tek-heart. The pain on his face faded. He looked at his heart like he didn’t recognize it as his. Then his fingers parted, and the metal cage fell to the platform with a tinny rattle. The heart inside beat in a stuttered, irregular rhythm, each thud potentially its last. But he was immortal… wasn’t he? Removing his heart hadn’t killed him before.
“I made it right…” he whispered. “A death for a life.” Color bleached from his lips. His eyes dulled from blue to gray. He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw him as he had been before: a fae desperate to be seen, to be loved; a fae so alone in the world that he’d created monsters to force Faerie to see him.
Eledan was dying.
I pulled him into my arms, pulled him so close there was nothing between us but his tremors and mine. He melted against me. His soft, shallow breaths fluttered against my cheek.
“You can make worlds…” he whispered, “and break worlds. Kesh, live and make the worlds better than I ever could.” The words left his lips, and when I expected to feel his breath on my cheek again, it didn’t come. His tremors faded. His weight lessened, and the solid crush of his body against mine dissolved into lifting, shifting clouds of glittering dust. The dust fell through my fingers and wisped away like smoke… like a dream I couldn’t hold on to and would never get back.
Live.
I wanted to tell him more and make him feel that whatever he’d done, it was all right, that together we’d make it right. But the cold, dead heart trapped in its metal tek-cage told me he was not coming back. Not this time.
I clutched it in my grip and squeezed—crushed it so hard that the tek split open, and inside, the hardened dead thing that had once been Eledan’s heart shattered into a thousand pieces. Jagged pieces of tek stuck in my palm. Blood welled, but among the broken bits hid a small, glowing stone no bigger than its acorn cousin: one-quarter of the polestar. I stared at the fragment and watched, numb, as the cuts on my hand sealed and the bleeding stopped.
I’d healed.
Live.
I remembered. Below Arcon, when I’d felt more alive than ever, when he’d brought me back… I’d felt different. I still felt different.
How do you live knowing you die a little more every day?
His melancholy.
The real reason for our return to Arcon.
All life required a cost.
Eledan had traded his for mine.
I closed a fist around the piece of polestar and stood. Above, the sky was a swirl of dark fae and tangible, lashing darkness. The Hunt hadn’t won. Eledan had removed himself from its grasp. The dark fae were home. Faerie was once again complete. I had the book and the polestar.
It was time to end this.
Wispy, watery tendrils appeared a few feet ahead. They grew and knotted together, forming a translucent body. I realized too late what I was seeing.
Ailish rushed in. The iron collar clicked into place around my neck.
Chapter 38
Kellee
No, no, no! Not again.
The wraiths withdrew, and where Kesh had kneeled, the platform was empty. Both her and Eledan had vanished.
“No!” Sota breathed, staggering forward. He paused, getting that long look in his eyes that said he was figuring something out. “She’s not here. SHE’S NOT HERE, Kellee!” He whirled. “I can’t sense her anywhere nearby. She’s… gone. She’s gone!”
That fucking fae bastard. I’d known he’d pull a stunt like this.
The Hunt loomed above, cushioned behind an enormous bank of dark fae. But those dark fae weren’t enough to stop it. Only the book under my arm could do that, and now Kesh was gone…
“Get back to the ship.”
“We have to find her.”
“Sota. Fall back now!”
Sirius met us at the ramp, his face like thunder when he realized neither Kesh nor Eledan followed our retreat. “Where are they?”
“Close the doors.”
The doors rumbled closed, and the ship’s lights flickered from green to red, signaling the ride was about to get rough.
“Where are they, Marshal?” Sirius demanded, stalking close behind me.
The ship lurched, throwing us against the walls. “As best I can tell, Eledan took her.”
“Then he took her to the Wild Ones…” the guardian snarled.
As the ship leveled, I strode onward through the corridor, with Sota armed at my side. “Will they be in Safira?”
“It’s likely,” Sirius confirmed, following behind.
“Then that’s where we’re going.”
“We don’t have the numbers to fight them,” he warned.
I’d seen the dark fae flood the air. I’d felt the wraiths pour in. “Once we didn’t. Now I’m bringing my army to their damn doors, and nothing will stand in my way.”
“And how do you intend to get there?”
The Excalibur’s corridors throbbed around us: tek and magic woven together in harmony, creating the deadliest warcruiser in all four systems. We had the weapons we needed to go to war right at our fingertips.
My gaze fell to the guardian.
“No human vessel can travel to Safira,” he said. “Safira has never granted Oberon’s warcruisers access.”
Never was a lie. This ship could do it because it had the best fucking pilot Faerie had ever produced. “Buckle up, Buttercup. This ride’s about to get rough.”
Talen entered the command deck and slowed at the sight of all the living, breathing organic constructs, complete with silvery tek-veins and magic that had made my senses itch while I’d been waiting for him.
“Where is she?” His cold, rigid look spoke of centuries spent among the fae courts. He and Kesh had argued, that much was clear, but he’d do everything in his power to save her.
“Safira.”
He stopped near the foot of the steps leading to the raised deck and braced a hand against the rail. “You want me to order this ship into Safira,” he guessed. “The Excalibur isn’t ready for a journey like that. His navigation is limited. The chances are slim he’d even arrive in the correct location. One wrong calculation and he could deliver us into the heart of Faerie or worse. It’s too dangerous.”
“Don’t tell me that.” I descended the steps and looked my friend in the eye. “There’s a way. There’s always a way. This is Kesh. Eledan has her. We brought her back once, against all the odds. We can do it again.”
“Without mature navigation, Kellee, it’s almost impossible. As immortal as we are, we would not survive an impact such as you’re suggesting. We’ll be no good to Kesh then.”
“Almost impossible?”
He breathed in and held that breath, fearing the words he spoke next. “No starship can travel bli
nd unless it has a pilot who already knows the final destination.”
To get us inside Safira with enough firepower to frighten the Wild Ones into submission, he’d need to bond with the ship. Shit. A newborn ship that had never had a pilot and was half tek—it could kill him.
Since Kesh broke their bond, he was free to pilot, but bonding with a ship was a permanent arrangement. There was no knowing what this tek-and-magic hybrid would do to Talen. Kesh would not want this.
“Not that way.” I sighed. At every turn, there was an obstacle in our way. “Dammit, Talen. We need a break. We have the weapons we need right in front of us and we’re still losing.”
He nodded, understanding, and looked around him as though seeking the answers among the knots and tangles of tek and vegetation. “We could go in alone with Sirius’s help… as we did before.”
“They’ll be expecting us,” Sirius said. He and Sota entered, with Hulia close behind.
“We’re getting my girl back, right?” Hulia asked, her gaze falling expectantly to me for answers I didn’t have.
Sirius crossed the floor and eyed up Talen. “We need to end the battle before it begins. This ship can do that.”
Talen winced. “The ship also needs a guiding pilot. Without one, he’s volatile and dangerous. I tried to tell Kesh, but she has strong feelings on this.”
I could imagine how that conversation had gone. Kesh already felt as though she’d lost him once. She couldn’t lose him again. It would cut her too deep. “We can find another way…”
He lowered his gaze and ground his jaw. “I’m resistant to tek. I’m the only fae pilot who can bond with this ship. Once I have him under control, we will gain a formidable weapon in this war that could help subdue the Hunt.” The more he talked, the more determined he sounded, and the more the words made perfect sense. “At the least, any warcruisers the sidhe lords employ against us will fail. With this ship at our control, we’ll command the sky.”
Not all weapons must be used… but it sure made fighting a war much easier if you had a weapon the other side feared.
But Talen would lose his freedom, which he’d only recently discovered. Since he’d spent much of his life behind bars as my prisoner, I wasn’t the best person to argue with him on this.
Talen waited for one of us to argue, and when we didn’t, he added, “What is the use of having the best pilot on the Messenger crew if I cannot fulfill that destiny?”
Sota stepped forward. He struggled with his words, doubting himself. “Is there no other way?”
“None that feel as right as this.” By cyn, Talen was going to do this.
“You don’t know how this ship will react to you,” Sota said.
He smiled at our tek-friend. “That is the way of all pilots.” Shrugging off his coat and under-jacket, he revealed the play of concentric circle marks etched into his arms. I’d seen him strung up as part of a ship before, when Sjora had tried to force him to pilot for her. Everything about that had felt wrong, but this was different; he’d chosen this.
Sota took Talen’s coat and jacket, his gaze lingering so long on Talen’s face that Talen said, “This is not an end.”
“If Kesh were here, she’d stop this.”
“I know… but what we want and what we must do are sometimes two different things.”
Sota sighed out hard. “She’ll kick our asses when she learns what happened.”
He chuckled. “She’ll understand—eventually.” As he headed to the center of the deck, I stepped in and caught his arm, drawing him back around. His gaze met mine, acceptance nestled and resignation there, the same look he’d given me all those years we’d had bars between us. This was happening. Nothing I could say would change his mind.
“Pilots are meant to fly, Marshal,” he said.
I released my grip and nodded, finding anything else I could say had lodged in my throat.
Talen found the original captain’s chair beneath all the overgrown vines, tore them off, and lowered himself comfortably into its embrace. The silvery veins that had been working their way through the ship snaked up his legs. He wet his lips, placed both hands on the chair arms and leaned back. The thin silver veins thickened, turning into long, needle-sharp probes. When those needles pierced his skin and slithered inside, I winced. He didn’t. The veins thickened into arteries, rooting to the chair in the same way Eledan had been rooted to Arcon. Nothing about this seemed natural, but then, nothing about Faerie felt natural to me either. I almost couldn’t watch, but if he could sacrifice his freedom for us, then I was damn well watching the ship adopt my friend until it was done.
Silver fingers filtered through his hair and plunged into his neck, above the rise of his collarbone. His lashes fluttered. Silver flooded his eyes, blinding him like I’d seen happen a hundred times, but this time, it would be permanent.
Sota’s fingers found mine, seeking comfort.
The ship jolted, as though shoved in mid-air. The lights blinked out.
“What—” Sota began.
The lights flicked back on, blazing a brilliant silver. The entire deck shone. Even the glass was streaked with veins of shimmering silver, like dragonfly wings. Power nipped at my senses. The ship’s power and Talen’s, combined as one.
“Ready?” Talen asked, his voice a strange echo of its former self. His fingers flexed on the chair arms, and light rippled through the silvery veins across the floor, strumming through the ship, making it hum a pleasant note.
I took a seat, careful to flick the vines away and watch for their creeping touches. Sota, Sirius, and Hulia took up their own seats and strapped in.
“As ready as we’ll ever be.”
Sota grinned back.
“Let’s go get our girl.” Hulia thumped her seat.
Talen smiled, and the ship’s humming grew, its engines powering up.
Safira was in for one hell of a surprise.
Chapter 39
Kesh
Cold iron had never felt heavier.
When the rush of water settled, I blinked into Safira’s obscenely bright colors and a hundred different but horribly beautiful sidhe faces, none I recognized. It was only a matter of time before the courts acted on what they’d see as a saru stealing power over them. I’d been expecting it, but with a crisis around every corner, I hadn’t seen the sidhe lords’ revenge coming.
Something dull and hard struck my lower back, driving me to my knees. I grabbed my whip and set the tails loose, but while I lashed out at one or two onlookers, others plunged in and tore the whip from my grip.
Smooth but hard fae hands grabbed my arms and yanked them behind my back, bringing my wrists together. Barbed vines sank into my skin and tightened. All this happened while the collar clamped off my burgeoning power. Ever since Eledan had woken me inside Arcon, that power had been growing, but now it was gone. The collar had choked it off, like a tourniquet. I had no magic to reach for.
Hands bound and whip gone, I snapped my teeth at the fae, like the wild thing they thought me to be. I wanted to crawl into a ball and hide. Everything I’d earned, everything I’d fought for, felt too big to carry or dream of. On my knees and powerless, subjected to the fae, I was a nothing girl again. Damn them all.
“The mortal saru who wanted to be queen.” A sidhe lord laughed. His tinkling laughter tickled the air, joined by a dozen others. Say what you would about unseelie, but at least they wore their ugly on the outside.
A nameless fae guard hauled me to my feet and shoved me through the jeering crowd. The pretty sidhe weren’t the only ones here. Wild Ones were peppered throughout the crowd, eager to see the Nightshade, or whatever I was to them, brought to her knees. After my run-in with Dagnu, I’d left them as their equal, but the sidhe had torn me down.
The crowd parted, creating a clearing in the center of their village. There stood a huge vertical oak column. The guard shoved me against it. More sidhe swept in, tying my wrists behind the column so tightly the wood grated my spine.
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The small, winding streets brimmed with hundreds of fae. Some leaned from overhanging balconies to get a better view. Agitated wisps buzzed overhead, making colors dance. So many fae, so many colors, and the sickening taste of their magic rammed its way down my throat. Had Eledan died so I could be humiliated in front of a crowd while the Hunt grew ever stronger?
Ailish came through her people like a watery phantom. “One last show from the Wraithmaker,” she announced to the crowd’s glee.
There had to be a way out of this. I tried to swallow around the tightness of the collar.
I hadn’t come this far to die at the hands of a mob and a mad Water Witch. Eledan hadn’t died and given up his immortal life so she could use me. Kellee, Talen, Sota, and Sirius—they hadn’t joined this fight to see it end uselessly here.
“What do you want?” I asked, holding a snarl.
Her hand burned cold against my chin. Her fingernails dug in. “Now that the Mad Prince is dead, your soul—the polestar—belongs to the Wild Ones.”
I still had Eledan’s polestar piece safely in my pocket, but the iron collar prevented me from accessing the power running through my veins. “Not true.” I tore my head free from her grip. “His deal died with him. You don’t own me.”
She laughed. “You are saru. Of course you’re owned.”
“Why are you doing this? You told me we were all Faerie’s children. You said I would save Faerie.”
“You are, just not in the way you expected. I told you what you needed to hear.”
“We need to stop the Hunt.”
“The Hunt is chaos. Faerie began in chaos. She will be returned to chaos.”
“And Sol? Halow? What of them?”
“Ours to reclaim.”
Her sidhe crowed and her Wild Ones alike jeered and voiced their agreement.
Was there any good on Faerie? Talen believed there was. Sirius did too. I trusted them. And hadn’t Faerie chosen me, a mortal saru, to harbor the polestar? Surely Faerie knew how this should go, and it wasn’t so we could war with Sol all over again.
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