She huffs out a breath. “I have instructions to place you in Lena’s care if you’re uncooperative.”
Well, there’s nothing like a threat to get you going in the morning. I sit up . . . and barely manage to suppress a groan. Despite not sleeping well, I didn’t toss and turn much, and damn, my body’s stiff. I guess jumping fences and dangling off the sides of buildings will do that to you. I rub my neck, trying to massage out some of the pain.
“Aren said you might be sore.” The fae holds out her hand and uncurls her fingers to reveal two little white pills.
“What’s that?”
“Ibuprofen.”
My eyes narrow. “Fae don’t take human medications.”
“They’re not for me.”
Fae anatomies aren’t all that different from humans’, but they’re not supposed to have anything to do with our food or culture. Not that the medicine is directly hurting her. If it was, lightning would be circling the pills in her palm like writhing blue snakes, but nontech items from my world are gradually weakening the Realm’s magic. Of course, we’re not in the Realm right now so the only one hurting here is me.
After reminding myself that poisoning me doesn’t make sense, I pluck the two tablets from her hand. It takes a moment to work enough moisture into my mouth to swallow them. Unfortunately, it’ll take another twenty minutes or so before they kick in.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“I’m . . . Kelia.”
Interesting hesitation there. I’ve never met a fae who, on their first introduction, doesn’t tell me who they’re a son or daughter of. Are we hiding our ancestry, perhaps?
“Is that premthyste in your hair?” I’m sure I recognize the stone now. Only a few prominent bloodlines wear name-cords these days. She has to be a daughter of Cyneayen. If I remember Lord Raen, elder of Cyneayen, correctly, he’s notoriously antihuman. He doesn’t speak a word of English and every time I’ve run into him he’s scowled as if I’ve put a bad taste in his mouth. This girl—Kelia—has impeccable English. She’s perfected an American accent and could blend in with a crowd of humans so long as no one around her has the ability to see edarratae.
Her lips narrow into a thin line. “Aren wants me to teach you our language.”
I might have called her out for avoiding my question if her statement didn’t give me pause. Teach me to speak Fae? Why the hell would Aren want that? He speaks English. So do Sethan and Lena and anyone else who might need to work with humans. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the rebellion has mastered my language. Plus, won’t I be more of a liability if I can eavesdrop on their conversations? As it is now, they could detail their entire war strategy and I wouldn’t have a clue what they were saying.
“The king’s forbidden that.” It’s not that I don’t want to learn to speak Fae—I’d love to—but I’m used to not knowing it. I’m used to keeping our cultures as separate as possible.
“He’s also forbidden us from learning the languages of your world,” Kelia says without missing a beat. “That hasn’t stopped us. It shouldn’t stop you, not unless you’re afraid of the Court.”
Afraid of the . . . Oh, I see his angle now. “Aren starts big, doesn’t he?”
Kelia’s eyebrows rise. “What?”
“Never mind.” This is a devilishly clever move on his part. He’s making a statement with this offer: the Court might not trust me enough to learn their language, but he does, or so he wants me to believe. Nice try, but I’m not stupid. The only way I might—might—have believed his intentions were pure is if I learned their language, then he let me go. Unfortunately for him, he and Sethan both made it clear that’s not an option, not until this war’s over. I won’t fall for Aren’s manipulations.
But I will take advantage of them.
“Okay. I’m game,” I say, standing too quickly. My muscles protest the movement and my vision blackens around the edges.
She stares a moment. “After breakfast.” She starts to turn, then suddenly she grabs my hand.
I ball my other hand into a fist, ready to defend myself.
“Is that a watch?” she asks.
I hesitate. “Um, yeah.” It’s a cheap digital watch, $14.99 at Wal-Mart.
Kelia’s silver eyes widen. “Can I wear it?”
I pull my hand free from hers, rubbing it against my jeans to chase out the tingle of her edarratae. “It’s tech.”
“Small tech,” she says dismissively. “Please? I’ll give it back.”
What the hell is wrong with her? Kyol hates it when I wear my watch, and I’m honestly surprised Aren didn’t demand I take it off so he could send it to whatever tech graveyard my cell phone ended up in.
“Please?” she says again.
Well, it’s her magic. I unstrap the watch and hold it out. Chaos lusters spring up her arm when she takes it. Not bothered by their increased activity, she tries to fasten the band around her wrist. It’s obvious she’s never done this before—why would she have?—so I help her insert the metal hook into a hole in the rubber. Beneath the strap, her skin glows a faint blue.
She rotates her wrist, staring mesmerized at the digital face. The light coming in through the door wasn’t quite enough for me to make out the time, but she’s fae. She can probably see the numbers.
“Thank you,” she says without looking at me.
“There’s a . . . You see that little button on the right? If you press it, the face will light up.”
“Really?” She presses it and a trio of needle-thin edarratae rush up her finger and spread over the back of her hand like tiny blue spider veins. They disappear when she releases the button and then reappear when she presses it again. After lighting up the watch a dozen times, she finally drops her hands to her sides. The intrigue leaves her face when she realizes I’ve been studying her.
She clears her throat. “It’s time for breakfast.”
I close my eyes and press my palms into my temples. After three solid days of nothing but repeating everything Kelia says and naming everything she points to, I’ve reached my breaking point.
“Enough!” I yell.
“Na raumel e’Sidhe,” she responds calmly. In the language of the Fae.
“No. No more. I need a break.” Plus, I can’t remember the Fae word for “enough,” and I’m exhausted. The only times I’ve been left alone since Aren brought me here are when the rebels lock me inside my cell.
Okay. Room. And the rebels haven’t exactly been awful to me. They’ve made sure I have plenty to eat and drink, and no one’s outright threatened me since that first day, but they’re always around. They’re always watching, scowling, judging. They might as well have me shackled because I haven’t had a single chance to escape.
Kelia folds her arms and cocks her hip, waiting, but if she thinks she’s even half as stubborn as I am, she’s wrong. I’ve been the perfect student since we began these lessons. I’ve never in my life crammed so much information into my head in so short a period of time, not even the evening I returned from shadow-reading in the Realm and was forced to pull an all-nighter for an exam I should have spent days studying for.
Kelia lectures me in Fae. I don’t have to understand what she’s saying—her tone makes her meaning clear—but at this point, I don’t care if she turns over my supervision to the daughter of Zarrak. I can’t learn one more new word. I won’t.
Kelia finally realizes her words are hitting a wall—a very tired, grumpy, unmovable wall. Her shoulders slump as the fight whooshes out of her.
“Fine,” she says, a petulant purse to her lips. “You hungry?”
“No.” We ate lunch no more than half an hour ago and had a snack a little before that. Besides, I suspect this might be a scheme to get me to start naming foods and cutlery, and I’m serious about not learning another word of Fae today.
I walk to the picnic table and stare at my rock-carved map. My shadow-readings always look like they’re drawn by a schizophrenic. This one is worse than my others, bigger
and messier with a series of lines that cut off abruptly only to begin again a few inches to the right when my mental map scale zooms. To a normal human, the final sketch probably looks like a kindergartner’s drawing, but to a fae who hears me name a city or a region, it’s as good as having an imprinted anchor-stone. Without an anchor-stone or a shadow-reader naming the location on his or her map, fae can only fissure to places they’ve memorized. It’s sort of like humans and phone numbers: they can remember dozens upon dozens of locations, but if they don’t think about them often or dial in on occasion, they tend to forget them completely.
I plop down on top of my map’s orchard, rest my elbows on my knees, and stare down at my boots. While I ate breakfast my first morning here, Kelia fissured out. Twenty minutes later, she returned with an armload of clothing. Most of it was for her, but she gave me two pairs of jeans, three new tops, and a pair of black leather boots—high-heeled, of course, because comfortable flats would make running away far too tempting. The jeans are just a smidgen too tight. Kelia’s assured me they look fine—not that I asked or cared—and that the neckline of my azure blouse isn’t too low, but this is definitely not my normal attire. I shop sale racks and wear T-shirts. This look is way too trendy for me. But not too trendy for Kelia.
She sits beside me on the tabletop, fingers the drawstring pouch tied to her belt, and gazes at the overgrown trailhead cutting through the dense tree line. She’s been doing that for three days now, gazing at the trail. At first, I thought she was waiting for Aren to return. I haven’t seen him since he deposited me in my room and, despite burning curiosity, I haven’t asked where he is. Now I’m not so sure he’s the reason for Kelia’s constant head-turning, not unless she has a crush on him. I’m pretty sure Lena’s in love with the guy—I suspect there are very few fae who wouldn’t want to jump into bed with him—but Kelia never sounds love-struck when she mentions Aren’s name. Maybe she’s worried about the Court finding this place? I can only hope.
As I pick at a thick splinter on the edge of the table, my mood plummets. This is one of the reasons I’ve managed to endure three full days of language cramming. If I let my mind go idle, inevitably I get depressed. It’s been four days now and I’m certain no one misses me back home, not even Paige, who is used to my long, sporadic absences. Those absences are the reason why I live alone in an apartment a couple miles from campus. I tried the dorm thing back when I was a freshman, but after being caught one too many times talking to myself—fae almost always choose to remain invisible to normal humans—my roommate requested to be transferred.
I flick the splinter I tore from the table away and search for a distraction. Anything to take my mind off my life.
“Aren,” I say, grabbing hold of the first image that pops into my head. “Will he come back?”
Kelia snorts. “Probably.”
“Where did he go?”
“The Realm.” Her response is short, like she’s closing the door to future questions about the false-blood. Or rather, the false-blood’s decoy, if I’m to believe Sethan.
“How long have you known him?” I ask.
She stops fiddling with the pouch on her belt and eyes me. “You haven’t mentioned his name in three days. Why the sudden interest?”
I shrug.
“Do you miss him?”
This time, it’s my turn to frown. “Of course not.”
“Most women fawn over him,” she says.
Is she actually suggesting I like his company? “He kidnapped me.”
She tilts her head to the side. “You don’t think he’s attractive?”
“He’s fae.” The words tumble out. Not agreement or denial, but they’re as heavy as a lie on my tongue.
Kelia’s face darkens. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We don’t belong in each other’s worlds, let alone each other’s beds,” I recite, my voice sounding as desolate as Kyol’s the day he made the same statement to me.
“You believe that?” she asks.
I force out an empty, “Yes.”
Kelia’s tone turns acidic. “You’re just like the others.” She rises off the picnic table. “If you need a break, you can take it in your room.”
She starts to walk toward the inn, but stops midstride and pales. I follow her gaze to the trailhead.
A bruised and bloodied Trev limps into the clearing. Edarratae flash beneath a thick layer of dirt to disappear under a ripped and blood-soaked tunic. I haven’t seen Trev since the night I read his shadows. Including Kelia and Lena, only five fae remained at the inn. They’ve been watching me like hawks from the front porch all afternoon, but now they abandon their posts and sprint to the wounded rebel.
Kelia reaches him an instant before the others. Her words are panicked. Trev shakes his head, his expression grim. I understand a few words . . . Court . . . heal . . . gate, but then they’re all talking at once and too quickly for me to decipher. It doesn’t matter, though. The important thing is they’re 100 percent engaged in their discussion. No one’s so much as thrown a glance in my direction, and the eastern edge of the clearing is no more than ten little-itty-bitty feet away from me.
I don’t think. I run. Three long strides and I’m engulfed by the forest.
Adrenaline kicks in as I leap over a rotting tree trunk. I know the fae will have wards surrounding the camp, but I’m a human who has the Sight. I won’t exactly see the magical trip wires, but I’ll feel them, so I let my skin listen for a hum in the air. When a slight vibration runs across my left arm, I follow my instincts and veer right. The ward won’t stop me, but if I run through it, the fae will know exactly where I am. I ignore the branches whipping at my face and arms and push on, faster and faster.
The forest floor plunges beneath my feet. I shuffle-slide down the steep incline in a waterfall of dead leaves, and just manage to regain my balance when the land levels out. I have no idea where I’m going—everywhere looks the same—but I don’t slow down. I can’t. I’ve got to get away, to put as much distance as possible between the rebels and me, and find some way to contact Paige.
I run full-steam for two to three minutes before my skin tingles a warning. I skid to a stop, staring into the forest. It’s not a ward I’m sensing now. It’s them.
The thick canopy blocks out most of the sun’s light, and when the wind moves the treetops, shadows dance on the forest’s floor. I can’t see the fae, but I’m certain they can see me.
Shit. What am I supposed to do now? Run? Fight? Beg for mercy? None of those options appeals to me.
I turn in a circle. My boot heels sink into the damp ground as I glance from one thicket of trees to another, trying to predict the direction of their attack. A movement catches my attention. Lena. She steps toward me, sword drawn. Not good. It doesn’t matter that she’s a woman. All the fae know how to fight. She could kick my ass even if I were the one holding the weapon.
Okay, then. This narrows my options down to one—run—because I won’t beg.
I turn and flee. Branches whip my face and snag my clothes. I raise my arms to block the forest’s attack. Ahead, the ground dips sharply again. Despite burning lungs and a stitch in my side, I push on.
The underbrush rustles behind me, to my left, and to my right, and just before I reach the hillside, I trip on the wind.
There’s no other way to describe it. One second my legs are swinging out in front of me; the next my shins slam into air as solid as steel. I’m able to keep my balance long enough to grasp that Lena’s an air-weaver—an incredibly strong air-weaver—then another burst of impermeable wind slams into my shoulder. I pivot from the blow, my ankle catches in a thicket of thorned weeds, and I land hard on my butt. I might have slid to a stop then, but a third shot of wind hits my chest, throwing me backward with enough force to carry my feet over my head, again and again until I’m gaining momentum, not losing it.
The forest slashes at my skin and flips through my vision. Suddenly, there’s a tree directly in my path.
I stretch out my arms to ward it off. A mistake. My right arm absorbs the full force of my weight. I hear a crack, feel a sharp explosion in my forearm, then I’m lying facedown in the dirt.
As the world grows fuzzy around me, I roll to my left side. My right arm flops as if I’ve grown an extra joint between my wrist and elbow. I try to ignore the white bone stabbing up through my flesh. I try to rise to my knees, but I’m nauseated. Dizzy. My vision blurs. Then, as Lena steps to my side, everything goes black.
SIX
“THERE’S A NEW false-blood.”
I tear my gaze away from Kyol’s shadow-trail. It’s been months since we’ve seen each other, but time hasn’t dulled my reaction to him. My stomach does a little flip. He looks the same as he did the last time we were together, the same as he did when we agreed things would be easier if we stayed in our own worlds. We were right. The way he keeps his expression carefully neutral makes my chest ache.
I sink down on the couch. My parents are out. This is the first time they’ve left me home alone since I went missing for three days straight. I wouldn’t tell them where I was—really, what would the truth accomplish?—and they only ungrounded me a couple of weeks ago, after I got my grades up.
“ A new false-blood?” I echo. The first one nearly killed me, but the fear I should be feeling is buried under a more potent emotion.
“You’re safe,” Kyol assures me, sitting on the couch as well. Even though there’s a good foot between us, the air warms with his body heat.
“Then why are you here?” I ask.
His gaze slides to meet mine. He doesn’t have to say a word. He’s not here for the reason I want him to be. Nothing has changed. The king hasn’t revoked the laws keeping us apart and Kyol has no intention to break his oath.
“I asked Atroth to send somebody else,” he says.
“Because you didn’t want to see me.”
“No.” His jaw clenches, then his gaze drops to the floor. “Because I wanted to see you.”
I hate the way his admission flows out on a wave of guilt. I hate the way I want to comfort him, to tell him it’s okay—that I’m okay—and I understand. I don’t want to understand, but he’s the king’s sword-master. He swore to protect the Descendants of the Tar Sidhe with his life, and even if being around me and my world’s technology didn’t damage his magic, he’s a man who doesn’t break his promises.
The Shadow Reader Page 6
