“Do you feel the life flowing through it, Mylana?”
All I felt was the desire to snatch it from his hand and hurl it against the wall. But I needed that heart to wake and free Eledan, and I needed it now. My whip was just behind me. I could grab it and use it against Oberon in a blur, but the risk was too great. Get it wrong and Oberon would know I was no longer his faithful servant. I wasn’t as fast as he was. The second I moved, he’d know my intentions. It would be wiser to return to this chamber alone and then reveal its location to the Wild Ones and Sirius, if I could find him. But that would take time, and time was not on my side.
Thwump-thwump, thwump-thwump.
Or I could take that wretched thing, crush it like I ached to, and stand beside Oberon as his Wraithmaker. It would be so much easier that way.
“Four pieces,” Oberon continued. “One remains.”
“Only one?” He knew where the three other pieces were?
“And I crafted you to find it.”
The way he admired the heart, an organ wrapped in tek that burned the hand it rested on, wasn’t with brotherly love in his eyes, but with power-hungry admiration.
A tek heart. An impossible combination. Eledan had survived a dozen lifetimes in Halow, surrounded by tek. He had survived away from Faerie. I’d seen him spin illusions and bend Arcon to his whims. He could have manipulated all of Calicto had he wanted. But despite his distance from Faerie, he hadn’t been weak. Eledan was the strongest fae I’d ever known.
The admiration in the king’s eyes as he looked down at his brother’s monstrosity of a heart… it could mean only one thing.
Eledan’s heart was a piece of the polestar. Valand’s piece or Halow’s?
Instinctively, my hand went over my heart, where Oberon had driven an iron nail home. I was a piece too. My thoughts whirled, and inside my head, I heard Eledan’s luscious laughter. He’d known. All this time, Eledan had known we shared the polestar together. That son of a sluagh. I’d give him his heart back just so I could rip it out a second time!
“General Sjora had the third piece in her possession,” Oberon said, his voice sounding distant behind the pounding in my head. “Valand’s piece. She took it from Eledan a thousand years ago when I had his flights kill him but following her recent demise, its whereabouts are unknown. I have scouts searching for it. Do you know where it might be?”
Sjora, who Talen had torn in two, had carried Valand’s piece of the polestar. The piece we had tried to find in Valand’s pyramid?
Had Talen known? Did he have Valand’s polestar? No, he would have told me. “I don’t know where it is…” My voice sounded distant too as all the pieces rearranged themselves inside my head and slotted into place.
Sjora had kept one thing close. A little thing. A throwaway thing. Something easily overlooked. She had kept it on her always. Her glass thimble. And Talen did have it. I’d seen him admiring it and felt the same strange urge to destroy it as I did now with Eledan’s heart. Talen couldn’t know what it was, or he would have told me, wouldn’t he? But he definitely had it.
A glass thimble.
Eledan’s tek heart.
And the piece in me.
Three pieces.
One left.
Four systems, four dots on a Faerie map, four pieces to make the polestar whole again. I looked up at the king. He knew where the final piece was.
“Earth,” I said. “The final piece is on Earth.”
“And you were made to walk among their tek cities, unseen by their countless eyes. Their world is built on tek. You are a ghost in their human machines. You will find that final piece just as I designed you to.”
All the years he had studied human tek, and all the poisons he had poured under my skin, had been to make me his tek-whisperer. My life on Calicto, slipping unseen through a tek-monitored world, had been the first step. He had always intended to send me to Earth to find the final piece of the polestar.
My life’s purpose, all spread before me.
“You see why I cannot lose you. You are everything, Mylana. Without you, there is no polestar. The gladiator’s death will soothe my people, and once the unrest has passed, you will go to Sol, to Earth, into the heart of human cities. With the polestar made whole, we will keep the dark at bay, all the dark, and Faerie will finally be free.”
My thoughts reeled under the weight of it all. The king was waiting for my response, but I could only think of how the dark deserved to come home, where it belonged. Of how a piece of Faerie beat through my veins like the tek-wrapped heart in Oberon’s hand, and of how Talen had a piece. I knew where the pieces were. I knew how to get them all. I was the centerpiece around which they all revolved. The polestar could be mine.
I bowed my head. “Yes, my king.”
Oberon placed the tek heart back among the roses. The thorns and vines writhed and knotted closed around it, sealing the precious artifact tight inside.
Oberon stepped closer, and without his cloak and crown, he might almost be just a prince again, a prince full of dreams of ruling Faerie and full of nightmares of the thing that kept him imprisoned. He reigned over a prison cell. “I need you more now than ever before. I need to know you are mine and that you are ready to serve me. I have no choice but to trust you. All of Faerie depends on you, Mylana. I depend on you. I know this has been difficult. Saru are not meant to have so much power, but you are different. Can I trust you?”
“Yes,” I whispered the lie, feeling its barbs on my tongue. “I won’t fail you, my king.”
“Come, then.” He offered his hand. “Night is here and my fae await us.”
I hesitated, my eyes on the whip and mass of roses. Taking his hand, I let Oberon lead us back through the tunnel and toward the sounds of Faerie’s citizens and the sense that time was slipping through my fingers.
I would steal a moment to slip away. I’d take Eledan’s heart and find Sirius, and the Wild Ones would come in time to make the Dreamweaver whole and stop this madness before it was too late.
Chapter 14
Marshal Kellee
* * *
A namu, a drone, and a vakaru walked into an Earthen bar… only it was no joke and the grand Earthen museum was no bar. I couldn’t think of anywhere in the four systems where a group like ours would be less welcome, yet here we were.
Hulia had her arm looped through mine, and Sota drifted behind us, looking as out of place as I felt. Hulia was the only one whose smile seemed genuine.
“Act like you belong,” she whispered.
I’d been doing that for centuries, but squeezed into this building and surrounded by warm-blooded humans had the starved vakaru in me clamoring for blood and violence. Maybe I could pick off a weak one outside the herd…
“Marshal?” Hulia elbowed me in the ribs.
“I heard yah.”
With Talen’s help bespelling a few guards, we’d manipulated our way into a celebration housed in a palatial structure widely heralded as the centerpiece of Earth’s museum network. The story of the Earthens’ rise and fall played out across painted walls. Some of the history I knew from various stories I’d heard throughout the years while either battling humans or living in secret among them. Humans milled around in their thousands, filling the museum hall with their glittering tek-enhanced bodies, penetrating gazes, and unnervingly fake smiles.
“Your heart rate is elevated, Marshal,” Sota reported, flying in low to sit behind my right shoulder.
“It does that when I’m hungry.”
“Do we need to be concerned?”
“Not yet.”
Sota wasn’t the only personal drone here. Many bobbed and hovered in the air above or behind their owners. Most of them resembled the sleek-bodied machines the captain of Excalibur owned. Sota looked like something we’d glued together with spit and scrap parts. The uniforms Hulia and I had stolen from the Sol Alliance also meant we didn’t blend in as well as we’d hoped.
“When was the last time you gave
in to your desires?” Hulia inquired, maneuvering us between islands of chatty people. She smiled politely, keeping up the appearance that we were just another Earthen couple enjoying the festivities.
Did she mean the desire to kill—which was ever present—the desire for blood—not so constant but it tended to creep up on me like it had with Kesh—or the desire to fight, which steadily built over time until I could no longer deny it?
“Kesh mentioned differences between humans and the vakaru,” she added. “Some I knew already.”
“There are more differences than there are similarities,” I replied carefully. Accidentally catching a woman’s gaze, I smiled my marshal’s grin. Her cheeks warmed and her pupils widened in open invitation. Still got it.
“Oh, I know.” Hulia tugged me back into line beside her. “Take all the raw human instincts and give them teeth and you’ve got the vakaru. I’m the same, darling. But where you would give your right lung to fight, I’d give the same to fuck.”
Namu were famous for their pleasurable talents, but also for their singing voices and hypnotic dances. I had no doubt Hulia could turn those talents into weapons. She had acted as the madam of The Boot and had often found herself on the wrong side of Calicto law by smiling nicely at punters.
“I’m fine for now,” I told her, plucking two wine glasses from a passing serving-bot.
“I could sate some of those rising urges.” Her highly suggestive gaze roamed over me.
I handed her the glass. “As tempting as you are, dear Hulia, you wouldn’t survive the encounter.”
Hulia’s smile only grew. “Telling me I can’t have you makes me want you more.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you can seduce your way through the Excalibur crew. This vakaru is taken.”
“It doesn’t bother you that you’re not the only one for Kesh?”
I smiled into my drink. “It’s her choice. If she wants Talen and Arran as well as me, I can’t, and won’t, stop her.”
“Huh… I would have assumed vakaru were possessive.”
“We are—were. We mate for life, and seeing as we live for a very long time, we don’t fuck around. It’s a fiercely loyal companionship. We don’t share.”
Hulia’s smile said she had a whole lot more to ask but would save it for later. “Then it must hurt to see her with Talen.”
I studied a wall painting that depicted a battle among the stars and didn’t answer. That was answer enough.
“My mother once told me sharing love is not losing love. Love is infinite.” Hulia’s arm tightened around mine. “She had fifteen husbands.”
I chuckled. “She had a lot of love to go around, huh? Sharing with one fae is enough for me.”
“What if you had to share with another? Say… a certain guardian?”
“A guardian? You mean Sirius?”
A group muscled on by us, their high-brow laughs rattling my teeth. Hulia drew the collective gazes of the males like a magnet drew metal. With her mahogany skin and bright eyes, she painted an exotic picture to admire.
“I first thought there might be something between them,” I said, watching Hulia flutter her lashes and soak up the attention, “but I saw the hatred in his eyes. He would have killed her if his vow to Oberon allowed it.”
The male stumbled into one another, and Hulia pulled her gaze back to me. “You might be surprised.” She trailed a finger down my sleeve, playing the part.
“Surprised how?”
“Oh, when it comes to emotions.” She shrugged and tapped her nose. “Namu know everything.”
“Are you suggesting he has other feelings for her?”
“I’m suggesting that all that hate is irrational for a highly rational fae, don’t you think? He doesn’t hate her because of who she is or what she represents. The hate is too raw for that, and I have my theories…”
“I’m guessing you’re about to share them.”
“He doesn’t hate her at all.”
“She caused him to lose his sword arm, then spliced abhorrent tek to the raw wound. He hates her.”
“Well then, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”
Sirius in the Messenger team? The thought had my teeth and knuckles aching. Talen cared for Kesh and she cared for him. One fae was enough. But Sirius…? I’d asked Kesh about him, asked whether there was anything between them. She hadn’t answered because she loved to rub salt in my wounds. But now I wondered if she’d had another reason to refuse. One fae, Talen, I could live with. But a Royal Guardian one step removed from Oberon?
I threw my wine glass back and downed the Earthen concoction in one. No, it would never happen. Hulia was wrong.
Hulia leaned in. “She loves you.”
“She does, huh?” I dumped the glass on a sideboard. “And you know that for certain?”
We drifted on, mingling and building a picture of the layout with Sota scanning for any threats.
“You and Talen both. It’s a new love. Bright and energetic. The love she has for Arran is different. It’s an older, softer love. Not as fiery but just as powerful.”
We stopped below another scene, one I’d seen in grand Calicto dwellings over the years. The scene portrayed Mab, the Faerie queen with her crown of thorns, on her knees in front of Earthens’ precious central star. I was certain that wasn’t how the First War had ended, but history was written by the victors. Behind the queen, hideous beasts with claws for hands lurked in the shadows.
“You see all that in Kesh?” I asked.
“And more, but it’s not my place to say.”
Now she was playing coy? My laugh surprised us both and drew more attention our way. “I think we passed your place way back when you started talking about love.”
“You’re attracting too much attention,” Sota warned.
“Why? We’re the same as everyone else here.”
“You’re both attractive individuals without tek among an enhanced crowd. That’s unusual,” Sota said.
Hulia flicked her dreadlocks over her shoulder and patted me on the arm. “We’re having a grand time. Aren’t we, Marshal? I’ve wanted you on my arm for a long time. Do you remember that time on Calicto when you tried to talk your way into the Boot’s back room?”
I did. She had been dealing cyn out the back door, but I couldn’t get anyone to talk. So, I’d planned to buy some.
Sly charm sparkled in her eyes. “You look the part, all rough and ready, but I saw your heart even then. You’re a good man, Kellee.”
“If Kesh were here,” Sota said, “she would tell you to dial down the pretty.”
“Darlings,” Hulia drawled, raising her voice like she’d been made to. “You can’t dial down perfection.”
“He’s right.” We’d garnered more than a few wayward glances. Half the room was either openly staring or surreptitiously observing. “We need to find a way into the museum and get away from this crowd before we both get propositioned.”
“I am more than happy to be propositioned. These humans look as though they could do with some natural loving.”
I hurried her toward a nearby doorway. “No part of this mission includes Hulia getting laid, just so we’re clear. We get the acorn and we get out, ideally without anyone knowing we were here.”
Her double eyelids flitted. “Marshal, you are no fun.”
“You can’t go back there.” The museum guard’s optics scanned us. He ignored the drone.
“It’s my friend here.” I nudged Hulia. “She’s not feeling well. Is there a restroom?”
“I’m not well? No, I’m not.” Hulia swooned, too dramatically, and fanned her face. “Cyn-sticks, it’s so hot. Is it hot? I know I’m hot. Are you hot in that sparkly guard uniform? You look exceedingly hot. When do you get off? Maybe you and I could find a quiet corner…”
The guard rolled his eyes. As most folks here had gotten free and easy with the ample wine, he knew he’d see a lot more swooning rich folks before the night was through.
He pointe
d farther down the hallway. “Down there, third door on your right.”
Hulia acted the part of a stumbling, inebriated partygoer until we made it through the door and into an inner hallway.
“Sota? Any idea where the seed bank is?”
“Given the layout so far, and overlaying that with the public records, take a right here, then ride the elevator down a level and take a left. Access will be difficult.”
We hurried on, passing beneath lights as they flicked on ahead of us and flicked off again behind. We hadn’t yet passed anyone, but we would eventually. Nothing was this easy.
Riding the elevator down brought us back to ground level, where the corridors curved around a central arboretum. At its center, an enormous tree stretched beyond the narrow view the windows allowed. Its old nest of roots resembled enormous knotted snakes. On Faerie, they would have moved. But here, on Earth, tucked away inside its museum park, the ancient tree was as still as a monument.
“Marshal,” Talen said, his voice buzzing through the comms behind my ear.
“Yeah?”
“You’re looking in the wrong place.”
I stopped, causing Sota and Hulia to pull up too. “We’re almost at the seed bank.”
“It’s not there.”
“Talen, you said—”
“I know what I said. I wasn’t sure. Now I am. I know it’s not there because I’m looking at it.”
That was good news, wasn’t it? “Grab it and let’s go.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Where are you?”
“West exhibit hall.”
I turned on my heel, waved to Hulia, and started back the way we’d come. “I thought we agreed you’d stay out of sight.”
“The exhibit hall is in the west wing,” Sota announced. “We can reach it if we continue along this corridor and take the next flight of stairs.”
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