Despite the dire circumstances, a smile found its way to my lips. “You won’t win this.”
“How do you figure that?”
With hundreds of pairs of eyes on me, I raised my voice so they all heard, and so Faerie’s breeze could carry the words far. “I have the Dark Legion. I have the last vakaru war chief. I have a guardian and a wardrone with a grudge. I have the saru, and I have a lord who became the first Nightshade. The Dreamweaver, a fae you all fear, sacrificed his life so I may live.” My voice cracked at the reminder of Eledan’s sacrifice. He’d given me more than his life; he’d given me his immortality, something none here knew. “So ask yourselves, how long will it be before this parade of fools brings the weight of the dark legion down upon you?”
Her grin reminded me of a curved, serrated blade. “With that collar around your neck, you have nothing.”
She must still fear me, or I’d be dead already. “What do you have but some angry sidhe lords who are annoyed because their saru have left them?”
“I have Faerie, and that is all a fae needs.”
I laughed and enjoyed the freeing sensation. “No, you don’t. You told me Faerie loves all Her children, and that includes the saru and the humans of Sol and Halow. Billions of lives gone. Faerie’s children murdered. That was not Her wish. Sirius, one of the oldest fae, turned to me, and Faerie approves. Talen, from a time when unseelie and seelie were one stands beside me, and Faerie approves. The last vakaru, left alive by Oberon, commands the wraiths of his murdered kin, and Faerie approves!”
Murmurs rippled through the crowd, turning over their uncertainty. Ailish’s grip on the sidhe lords was tenuous, like her grip on the truth.
“I have the polestar in my soul, put there by Faerie to end this turmoil.” The wisps bobbing above the crowd glowed brighter. Strings of pulsing faerie-lights shone in every color. There were no stars in Safira, because all the light was down with us, and that light knew me; it knew my words, and it approved. The Wild Ones stirred, no longer sure of Ailish and her ways. Maybe I wasn’t queen just because Eledan had made it happen, they wondered. Maybe it was always meant to be this way.
I tugged on the wrist bindings. If Faerie truly were on my side, now would be the time for Her to help.
I know you and I haven’t seen eye to eye, but I need you now, I silently told Her.
Ailish saw her crowd falling apart, but the sidhe lords would not be deterred. One nodded her on. I didn’t know him, but it didn’t matter. They all believed I was owned and unworthy.
I pulled against the vines. C’mon, Faerie, cut me some slack here. You made me the polestar, now help me end this for you.
Ailish produced a bone-handled iron dagger from the folds of her silk dress. “It is a shame Eledan will not be here to see you fall.” She drifted closer. Colored light licked off the blade. “He was a talented creature we misguided.”
For all his mistakes, he’d died so that I got to live, and I wasn’t about to let his sacrifice end here.
You neglected your prince, your child. Do not neglect his final act. Help me, Faerie. Help your children do the right thing.
“Where is your precious Dark Legion now?” Ailish’s cool, hard fingers dug into my cheeks again. Her face pushed close, revealing both sides to her, the side I’d believed and the burnt ugliness that had festered in Faerie for millennia.
“At least Oberon believed what he was doing was right. You’re just a mad witch clawing at power she can never own—”
The blade punched into my chest, stealing my breath and spreading its ice-like cold through my veins. This couldn’t be right. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
I’d been so sure I’d get free or Talen and Kellee would come… It didn’t seem possible that the dagger’s plunge was real. I had known I’d die—I had known I’d leave Talen, Kellee, Sirius, and Sota behind—but not before it was over. It wasn’t right. This wasn’t right. I hadn’t come this far for it to end now.
I clutched Eledan’s piece of polestar, willing it to do something, but the fragment that had fueled his heart for so long hummed uselessly in my fist. I searched the crowd for a face I knew, for anyone who might help me, but the sidhe had crowded in, creating a wall of sinister glares.
How could it all be for nothing? Whatever I’d become, the truth of me, Kesh Lasota didn’t fucking die here.
“When you die, as you will in these next, precious moments, you’ll turn to dust, and among your ashes, dear child”—her fingers sank into my hair and clutched the back of my head—“I’ll find the polestar. When your legion come for you, so distraught they will be to learn of your demise that I’ll take the remaining polestar fragments from them. Its power will finally be mine, and the Wild Ones will reign, lawless and chaotic, once more.”
Invisible ice had a hold of my legs and waist. Higher, it coiled, so cold I couldn’t breathe through it. I’d fought my entire life. There had to be a way to fight this too.
“Give in, child. Embrace death.”
“You’re… wrong.”
She stroked my face and smiled like I imagined a mother might.
By Faerie, this is not how it ends!
More ice needled across my skin, plucking and pinching over my chest, where my heart stuttered its final beats. The sound of pixies chirping faded. The whole world fell quiet, and then the light faded as each wisp blinked out, one after another. Ailish’s face fogged and blurred until there was nothing but darkness and the quiet of two beating hearts: mine, and the warm, pulsating beat of Eledan’s fragment locked in my fist. It wasn’t fading. I looked down. The fragment glowed through my fingers, the only bright thing I could see. Safira had gone. The fae had all gone. There was nothing but the quiet and that fragment feeding warmth up my arm. A dream… or something more?
A soft breeze touched my neck, no heavier than a wisp’s wings.
“A death for a life,” Eledan whispered, but I could not see him or anything beyond the glowing fragment locked in my hand. “A heart for a heart. A death for a life. What cannot be taken must be freely given.” He paused, and his sigh warmed my cold skin. “Perhaps a forgotten prince may be forgiven.”
Light.
Everywhere.
It burned through skin and bone, and scorched my soul. I screamed, but my voice was too small to hear inside the blazing brightness.
I fell into the light, and I remembered Eledan once telling me, “A monster among your kind, and a monster among ours. It must be a lonely life, Wraithmaker.”
Not lonely, just without a place. Until now.
Chapter 40
Kellee
The ship jerked out of motion, and the vines, which had tangled across my chest during travel, almost severed me in half from the force of the sudden deceleration. I clung to consciousness enough to know the wash of bright light pouring in through the ship’s windows was not normal. Where it touched the floor, small curls of smoke drifted into the air.
Talen, fully latched into the ship’s systems by hundreds of silvery veins, jerked in the chair and threw his head back, agony tearing through him.
I freed a handful of claws, cut my restraints, and lunged for him. I hadn’t guarded him for hundreds of years for him to die now, bound to the chair by tek-and-organic veins, his eyes wide, silver, and unseeing, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to fix whatever was wrong with him.
“What’s happening?” Sota was out of his chair and heading toward the light-flooded windows, but the moment he touched its glow, he stopped. The light, where it touched his boot and leg, began to melt both.
“Get out of the light, you idiot!”
“But it doesn’t hurt,” he remarked.
Sirius hissed something alien and fae. “This is Safira…” He approached the light, his aura pumped up on Faerie’s magic, setting him ablaze. “But something is very wrong.”
Something was wrong, all right. Talen hissed every breath through his teeth. I reached out to touch his hand, clamped on the flig
htchair’s arm, but the tek tying him down writhed and sank deeper into his veins, forcing me back.
“This was a fucking terrible idea, Talen! If you die, you fae son of a bitch, I don’t care where your wretched soul goes, I’m coming after you so you can explain what happened to Kesh. Do you hear me?”
His chest heaved.
I considered cutting him free, but crudely severing a ship’s bond with its pilot would kill them both.
“Pole… star.” He pushed the word out.
“Is that what that light is?” Hulia asked. “It’s stunning.”
One problem at a time. “Dammit, Sirius, can you help him?”
The guardian tore himself away from observing the light. “Light from the polestar is flooding the ship’s external sensors. Talen is just experiencing too much stimuli. He’ll recover.”
My heart plummeted through my gut. “If that’s the polestar out there, then where’s Kesh?”
“It’s not the entire polestar.” Sirius dug the acorn and the thimble out of his pocket, both glowing in his palm. “Not yet—”
“Take the pieces to her!” Talen struggled to speak, and just as Sirius looked down at the pieces in his hands, a blast of light stole the guardian’s fire-laden presence away, transporting him right off the ship.
“You finally got rid of him, right?” I asked Talen.
A hint of a smile lifted his lips.
“Kesh is alive?” I asked.
His lashes fluttered but didn’t fully blink over his silver eyes. “Yes.” I could only imagine the mindfuck he was dealing with, but at least he was coherent. “Then take us down there, Talen.”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Dark fae… coming. Hunt… coming. Need control and power above Safira.” His speech came easier now, and although his eyes stayed silver, he blinked over their sheen. “We opened the door…” he said. “Now there’s nowhere left for anyone to hide.”
Chapter 41
Kesh
The collar clattered to the ground, half melted and warped. I looked at that twisted piece of metal and then at the dagger handle sticking out of my chest. I plucked the dagger free and looked at the blade. Its crude iron was a simple design that could no longer hurt me. Nothing here could hurt me. Not anymore.
Combined with Eledan’s piece, I was half the polestar, and the other half was close.
Ailish’s face dropped. She backed away, drifting off the ground in her eerie ghost-like way. She hadn’t expected a useless nothing mortal girl to rise from the ashes as the polestar. Without Eledan’s gift of immortality, maybe I wouldn’t have, but I was damn well here and alive, and I had a debt of vengeance to collect.
With a flick of intent, I was beside her, having moved meters without taking a step. The wings were back, though I barely felt them. Their starry reflection shimmered in Ailish’s one good eye.
“Faerie sends her regards, bitch.” I slashed the blade wide, moving too quickly for her to counter. Intent became action, with nothing in between. I wanted her throat cut. The polestar in me made it happen. The iron stunned her more than damaged her. It would take more than one little dagger to kill or capture her.
A good thing, then, that a beacon of flame was making his way toward me. Sirius had the rest of the polestar on him.
“Fire Lord?” Ailish humbled herself before him. Whether she didn’t know how to fight him, didn’t want to, or the iron had weakened her, he flung his liquid flame at her, more powerful now than I’d ever seen from him. She screamed and kept on screaming as the blue-and-orange fire devoured her.
I didn’t have it in me to care about her death.
Sirius was in front of me, presenting me with both pieces of the polestar. I knew what I looked like to him and everyone else. The sidhe lords, unable to look away, saw me as a monster, and maybe they were right. The Wild Ones saw me as an unknown touched by Faerie, and that was enough for them.
“You are… undying?” he asked, deep worry lines etched into his usually stoic face.
I nodded, still coming around to the idea. “Eledan gave me a gift.”
He frowned, either struggling with the idea of my immortality or Eledan doing something good. There would be questions later, if we survived what came next.
“The Dark Legion and the Hunt are coming,” he said. Kneeling, he offered up the last pieces of the polestar. “Mylana… Kesh, this will not be easy. As powerful as you have become, the polestar is not easily contained.”
Nothing on Faerie was easy. “I know, but I have Faerie on my side.”
“She spoke with you?” He didn’t bother to hide the note of awe.
“In a way.” I picked up the acorn, so tiny a thing to have caused so much trouble, and its counterpart, the thimble. Four pieces scattered among the stars and lost for thousands of years, and here they were, found again and in my hands. The power would be astounding. I’d be godlike.
“Kesh?”
“Hmm.” The glass thimble twinkled.
“Do not let the dark or the light seduce you,” he said.
I heard the words, but here was a moment, in all this madness, that demanded I take the power and make worlds and break worlds, just like Eledan had, but for real, not just in dreams. He’d said I was better. He’d told me I could make better worlds, and that was what I planned to do. I’d made mistakes. I’d taken lives. I hadn’t always been good, and I hadn’t always done the right thing, but I was good now. Dark and light, unseelie and seelie, were balanced in me. There would never be a better time to save the worlds.
I took the polestar pieces in my free hand. “I’ve got this.”
Rolling, monotonous thunder sounded from above, and there, in the sky, hung the enormous hull of the Excalibur. His belly rippled with iridescent colors, like I’d seen on Shinj a thousand times. How was the ship here without a pilot?
Before I could ask, the thunder grew louder. The ship wasn’t the source of the noise. Behind the Excalibur, a jagged tear opened the sky, peeling it apart, and from inside, the lashing, oily tendrils of the Hunt appeared, bigger than ever. The thing made of nightmares yanked itself through the tear and spilled its wretched form across the sky. The Excalibur’s silvery hull shone against its blackness.
“Who is on that ship?”
Sirius whispered, “Everyone.”
The Hunt wrapped an enormous, swooping appendage around the Excalibur’s hull.
The wild fae erupted into screams and fled the pathways, leaving the sidhe lords caught between me and their fairytale nightmare.
The Hunt would surely crush the Excalibur, though his tek-bones might give him an advantage. “If Talen were to bond with the ship, they’d have a chance—”
Sirius’s frown and his silence said enough. My wrecked heart sank. Talen had already bonded with the ship. That was how they were here. I’d lost him, and the last time we’d been together, we’d argued. The beautiful part-tek creature in the sky was Talen, and the Hunt had him in its grasp.
That changed things. Talen was a weapon, and a damn good one. All eyes turned skyward as the Excalibur glowed a bright, angry red. The ship’s smooth hull rippled and shifted, like Sota’s casing used to do before delivering a ton of “smack-down” defense. Sure enough, guns prickled his outer skin and blasted off an electric blue light. With a sky-shattering roar, the Hunt recoiled.
My insides flip-flopped.
Tek hurt the Hunt.
We had a chance!
I picked up my whip, dropped by the guards in their rush to flee, and relished the painful zing of tek and magic arching through my palm and up my arm. Like Talen, I’d been made with a foot in both worlds. The world of human-engineered technology and metals, which I’d navigated and used to my advantage, and the world of Faerie, which I’d been born into but had never been familiar with, until now.
Talen, as the Excalibur, let off another volley of sharp electric light, and the Hunt’s pulsating mass shrank around its core, curling inward to pr
otect itself. If we weakened it enough, it would have nowhere left to hide. Nowhere… but its home.
“Where’s the book?” I asked Sirius.
“On the ship.”
Of course it was.
“Can’t one thing go right?” I clutched the throbbing, heated polestar pieces and backed up. “I’ll draw it away from the ship. You get the book down here.”
“Calla…” He hesitated, torn between following me and following my command. “You cannot stand alone against the Hunt. Are you ready?”
“I’ve never been ready for anything Faerie’s thrown at me, but I’ll survive. I always do.” A different shifting darkness flooded into the sky, funneling around the Hunt. “And I’m not alone…”
Thousands of winged dark fae swarmed the ship and the Hunt. Each one was as much a part of me and Faerie as the stars were. With my whip crackling in my hand and my Nightshade wings spread, I focused my thoughts on them and commanded, “Protect the ship. He’s on our side. Distract the Hunt.”
The winged creatures pulled away from the Excalibur, flocking in great undulating clouds, like I’d seen Sol birds do on virtuavision. The dark fae were beautiful, and now they were home, where they belonged.
“Go,” I told Sirius. “Bring the book to me at Talen’s home. That’s where this ends.”
He tipped his head skyward, and in a blink, he vanished, snatched by the Excalibur’s transport, leaving behind a dusting of embers.
Now I was alone among a panicked crowd. Living Faerie throbbed beneath my boots, Her presence like a comforting hand on my shoulder.
I had the polestar pieces in my grasp. I had the power of Faerie’s ultimate weapon at my fingertips and an army behind me. I was the Messenger to all, not just those on Faerie, or the saru, but to Sol and Halow, and I would not—could not fail.
Chapter 42
Talen
“It’s withdrawing.” Kellee announced what I already knew. The Excalibur’s high-energy tek-weapons dealt the Hunt considerable damage, enough for the ship to jerk at his reins and try to launch everything he had at the center of the churning nightmare. My grip on the young vessel held, but I’d been right. The Excalibur was like no fae or human vessel before it. As a combination of both, he had gained the firepower from the best of both races and evolved in ways I could barely understand, the same way Calicto had evolved. He was the future, tek and magic in harmony, but only if we survived.
Her Dark Legion Page 24