City of Shadows

by Pippa Dacosta

  “I’m not trying to prove anything.” Except maybe Kael’s guilt, I thought.

  I tracked Reign as he turned and paced back along the edge. He wouldn’t fall; the fae thought in three dimensions. The buildings, the rooftops, they were just another thoroughfare to get to where they wanted to go. Ironic, considering I was scared of heights. “What difference does it make? I need to do something.” I sighed. “Do anything. You don’t understand. Nobody does. You’ll probably live another hundred years. I might not have a hundred hours.”

  He stopped to my left. The sun bathed us both in bright morning light. The touch of it played in his dark hair and across the proud lines of his face, warming his pale skin. When did he get so pale?

  “You’d rather burn out than fade away, is that it?” he asked. “Go out in a blaze of glory?”

  Two hundred years old. How could he know what it was like to feel time slipping through your fingers? “Yeah, actually. What’s so wrong with that?”

  “What’s wrong with it, is that I can help you learn how to feed, to control it. Give you more time.” He could, but what would it buy me? Another few days? Weeks? I wasn’t designed to live a long life. And besides, he’d have to teach me to take “life” from a human being, and the thought of spending any time with him after what I’d seen; why torture myself with something I couldn’t have? Whatever way you slice it, it felt wrong.

  “You should go,” I sighed, “before Kael finds you.”

  “I understand you’re afraid.”

  He did. I knew that. His hound and my … whatever I was inside. We were linked, and he knew well what that felt like. We were both monsters. Which was why it was better if I stayed away from him.

  “You understand what you want to and nothing else.” I pushed to my feet, brushed my sweats down, and turned toward the fire exit door. “Just go. You shouldn’t have come here.”

  “Alina, you’re not like them.” His voice carried across the rooftop before the sounds of London swallowed it up.

  “You’re worse.” I winced at the memory.

  “Don’t trust them,” Reign said.

  I glanced over my shoulder into the sun, but he’d gone. An empty ache bloomed through my chest.

  I couldn’t let Reign distract me. If I was going to get close to the general to find Becky, I had to prove I had what he wanted.

  All I had to do was remember … her. The spider-queen. The monster. My mother. Me.

  Chapter Seven

  After much of the day exploring the FA’s glorious period house, trying to sneak into nooks and through locked doors without much success, I’d yet to find evidence that the fae were anything other than what they appeared to be—a well-oiled machine charged with keeping the peace between human and fae. But what about the general? I’d tried striking up conversations with the warriors, eager to learn more about Kael, but they’d quickly made their excuses or avoided me altogether.

  I paused outside what I’d decided to call the general’s war room, about to knock, when I heard snippets of conversation from behind the door. The general was saying something about trust—not trusting anyone else, and how important this could be, not just for him, but for all the fae.

  Samuel muttered something low enough that the door muffled the words. Whatever it had been, Kael wasn’t pleased. He growled a string of words that sounded both menacing and melodic and definitely weren’t English.

  Minutes ticked over at an excruciatingly slow rate. I had an aversion to waiting. Time was my enemy. I didn’t want to be waiting on Kael’s whim, but I did need to get inside that room so I could look for any clues as to Becky’s whereabouts.

  The door opened. I stepped back, tucked my hands behind my back, and smiled sweetly at Samuel. His eyes narrowed to angry slits. He seemed to hesitate, as though expecting me to say something or perhaps he wanted to speak with me, but he eventually chose silence and stepped aside, gesturing for me to enter.

  “Thank you,” I added with extreme politeness.

  He closed the door behind me without a word.

  “Construct,” Kael said. I gritted my teeth and pinned a wooden smile to my lips. “Sit,” he said, pointing at the huge meeting table.

  My gaze slid about the room, over rolls of maps strewn about the table, and came to rest on a pair of crossed daggers on his desk. “No, thank you.” They were his daggers, I realized, noticing his empty thigh sheaths.

  Fae weaponry had an exotic flare you’d expect to see in ceremonial swords, but their blades weren’t designed for aesthetics alone. The edges would be razor sharp. A good fae blade represented its owner. Gorgeous to look at, deadly to touch. Kael’s daggers were probably as old as the general himself.

  He saw me eyeing his blades and straightened. “I’ll return your daggers when I’m satisfied you’re not a threat.”

  That would be never.

  I wandered the room, trailing my fingers across the books; old leather-bound books, embossed with intricate fae designs, fully aware of Kael’s eyes on my every touch. I’d tried to decipher the fae language using books left in Under, but I’d failed. Their swirling letters were more art than words. The books, the maps, the daggers. Kael wasn’t a blunt instrument; his troops, and the fae as a people, revered him for a reason. I’d do well to take in everything I could from this meeting and file it away to consider later.

  While I wandered, Kael waited, his face expressionless, but for the smallest narrowing of his eyes. His silvery hair had grown out a little since I’d first laid eyes on him, when he’d attacked Reign on the Underground. It wasn’t yet long enough to grab in a fight; perhaps he was trying to appear less threatening? A smile twitched on my lips. General Kael was never going to win personality of the year, but he did have an infallible presence about him, one that earned him the respect of the London public. The FA, under his command, had kept London safe; until the queen broke free.

  I’d roamed the room, finding nothing obviously connected to Andrews’s sister, and stopped in front of the general’s desk. Could I snatch his daggers and run him through before he retaliated? My palms itched, seeking the blades. I lifted my head. Kael leaned an arm over the back of his chair. His reach was about the same as mine. Was this a test? He didn’t look defensive, but Kael could flick to killer just as quickly as I could.

  “Three days,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “After you attacked, it took three days for me to recover.”

  Was I meant to be impressed? “The queen patched me up in hours.”

  “Do you remember how?” His eyes had widened slightly at mention of the queen.

  I bowed my head and reached out a hand toward the daggers. Kael didn’t move to stop me, so I trailed my fingers along the cool flank of the nearest one and remembered everything the queen had done to me, every moment of when she’d plucked me apart and remade me all over again. I remembered it like a vivid dream; I was there, but not there. I couldn’t explain it to Kael, not without him thinking I was more unhinged than he already did.

  “Is it difficult? Remembering?” he asked.

  I frowned and pulled my hand back from the dagger. “Why? Because I don’t have a mind of my own?”

  He studied me with a slight scowl on his sharp features. “I’m merely trying to understand your construction.”

  “We understood each other perfectly when I stabbed you and you gutted me.”

  His thin lips twitched. “You’ve asked me to train you. You said you want to be like me, my warriors. To what end?”

  To buy time while I find Becky—and end you—before my time runs out. I cleared my throat, and with it the vengeful thoughts. “So I can control these dreams, memories, this thing in me.” The words had come in one long rush.

  I bit my lip and turned away, if only to hide whatever he’d see on my face. Fear, probably. I couldn’t let him see me afraid. He had to believe in me, or else he’d never let me close enough to discover what had happened to Becky.

  “I�
�m not convinced I can train you. A construct does what it’s been designed to do. No more, no less. But, I’ve been monitoring your activities, keeping an eye on your existence. As a construct you should have unraveled long ago, and yet here you are, standing in my office, telling me you have dreams.” He paused, perhaps considering his next words, but that silvery glimmer of reverence was back in his eyes.

  “You’ve been monitoring me?”

  “The Authority, and my purpose as its leader, revolves around protecting the interracial balance between the London people and the fae. You are something of an anomaly and, from my experience to date, a potential risk to that balance. I originally planned to contain you in Under’s catacombs, but in light of our fortuitous meeting and after what you’ve told me, I’m interested in what you believe you know of the queen and how much—if any—of the queen or her spirit still exists in you.”

  “Her spirit?” I wasn’t sure if I was more alarmed by the fact he’d been watching me, thinking about locking me up alongside Faerie’s monsters, or that he believed something of the spirit could have survived in me.

  He bowed his head and appeared to admire the daggers, but his gaze went farther, passing through the blades, seeing into his past perhaps. “The spirit Arachne possessed the queen. Arachne is One of the Three.” Arachne, Cu Sith, and the other I knew only as the harpy. The Three. The fae liked things in threes. Always threes. “But you must know this?” Kael asked.

  I did. Reign had told me the spirit Arachne sought out the queen for her talent for weaving, that over time the spirit drove the queen insane—fae fury, he’d called it. In my dreams, I saw only broken images that together created a cascade of emotions. The images faded on waking, but the feelings lingered. Fear, elation, anger. I could believe in the queen’s madness. I’d seen it, felt it, and lived it. But the spirit?

  “If what remains of her truly resides in you,” he said, looking up from the daggers to fix his sharp eyes on me. “It could be significant.”

  Like he’d said, constructs did what they were designed to do, and they didn’t think outside the box. But I’d never been in the box to begin with. I was unique, perhaps even more so than I’d feared. “Is that possible? Could the original spirit somehow exist in me?”

  “It’s highly unlikely,” he said, dismissing the notion with a hand-flick, and after a few moments’ thought added, “I doubt a construct could contain One of the Three spirits. You would have burned out within moments had that been the case.” He let those words settle in the quiet. “Still, it’s worth considering. The spirit, if harnessed, could help us protect the balance between human and fae relations.”

  Well, that was comforting. Not. I turned my back on Kael and headed toward the bay window, thoughts whirring. The spirit? I’d assumed the dark inside of me was the remnant of the insane queen, but what if I was wrong? I couldn’t think about that; not yet. I had enough doubts racing through my head without adding immortal-spirit possession to the list, but if the general wanted to know, I’d play along for Becky’s sake. “To really remember.” Sunlight filtered through the drapes. I stopped inside the shafts of light and soaked up the warmth. “I need to be the thing the queen created me to be.”

  “You need to let go of your control?”

  “Be the killer.”

  I need to let go of everything, I thought. Everything I’ve made my own. Every new part of me. I had to forget it all and let the memories, the dreams, wash it all away. That’s what I was afraid of, and the reason why I hadn’t let loose on the general in the club. Why I hadn’t fought Samuel like I had the queen at the Dome. I could. I had it in me, and more. So much more. Too much?

  His daggers chimed as he scooped them off the table. “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  He headed for the door, leaving me to catch up with him. “To test this theory.”

  Chapter Eight

  The evening was warm, which made traveling in the Range Rover with Samuel, Nyx, and Scaw all the more uncomfortable. The general rode in the car ahead. I’d almost have liked to swap my seat buddies for the general; at least I could have used the opportunity to question him.

  Nyx chewed gum and tapped out a beat on her thigh to a tune only she could hear. Occasionally she’d slide her gaze to me and then skip it to Samuel sitting in the seat in front of me. Scaw drove. And nobody said a single word. Tension filled the air, much of it coming from Samuel’s dead-still posture.

  I keenly felt the press of the knives hidden in my boots. The general hadn’t told me where we were headed tonight, but each of his warriors were well armed.

  We hit the Mall, and passed through St. James’s Park heading toward Trafalgar Square. Samuel twisted in his seat to address Nyx. “On arrival, break off in pairs. Nyx, you’ll be giving Alina the tour.”

  Nyx’s grin was pure mischief. “Wouldn’t you rather hold her hand, Samuel?”

  He let her comment slide right off his professional demeanor and told Scaw to pair up with him. Scaw nodded, his attention focused on the Range Rover ahead as we passed through Admiralty Arch and pulled to a stop alongside Trafalgar. The FA drew a few sideways glances from the late evening tourists as they climbed from their cars. They made quite the sight in their red and black uniforms, weapons tucked in easy-to-reach places. I’d at least been given a jacket, but otherwise still wore sweats.

  Some of the tourists turned from the Trafalgar fountains to take pictures of the fae’s elite forces. I pulled my collar up and hid my face. Interest in the events at the Millennium Dome and my association with rock star Reign had died down, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be spotted. Unlike the rest of the fae, I didn’t relish the attention.

  The general peeled off with his group of two FA warriors toward Charing Cross station. Samuel and Scaw veered left, toward Leicester Square Garden, while Nyx and I strode up the hill, beside the National Gallery, toward St. Martin’s Lane and its theaters. We passed a pair of police officers weighed down with stab vests, batons, and radios. They each eyed Nyx beside me with a respectful nod. She inclined her head in return.

  My thoughts wandered to Andrews and guilt twisted inside. I could do this. Get close to the FA and their ranks, close to the general, and find Becky. Part fae, part something else, I was probably the only person who could. Andrews deserved to know where his sister was.

  Much of Covent Garden’s nightlife had spilled out onto the streets, bringing them alive with chatter and the thump of music pouring from the pubs we passed.

  Nyx sent a sly smile toward a group of young men crowding outside a pub. Their eyes widened at the sight of her. One chanced his luck, “Oi, fairy. Wanna touch me?”

  “Sorry sweetheart, wrong tackle.” She winked.

  “I could change your mind,” the charmer hollered.

  Nyx strode on, weaving through the crowds. “They think they could handle us,” she said, glancing over her shoulder as I followed close behind. “They can’t. They’re like children playing with fireworks.”

  “Is that what we’re doing out here, teaching people a lesson?”

  She swerved right and nodded at a doorman guarding a restaurant entrance. He unclipped the rope and let us through ahead of the long waiting line.

  “We’re here to police our own, not the people foolish enough to dabble with bespellment.” She saw my frown. “We can’t stop Londoners from wanting it, but we can stop our own kind from giving it.”

  She pulled me into a corner, out of the main throb of customers crowding the bar, and then stood close enough so she didn’t have to shout to be heard over the music. “There shouldn’t be any fae here. They’re all subject to the curfew. But you can feel them?”

  The fleeting tickle at the back of my thoughts. I nodded. “But they have to feed.” I scanned the crowd and tried to pick out any pointed ears, but under the slippery lights and moving bodies I couldn’t see any.

  “That’s what the clinics are for.”

  The draíocht clinics were a new
initiative, sanctioned by the government to keep the peace. People dropped by, were compensated with cash, and told to sit while the fae absorbed their draíocht under controlled conditions. Reign had once growled something derogatory in fae-speak when I’d asked him if he’d visited one.

  “We’ve all got rules we’re obliged to follow.” Nyx’s wandering tone pulled my attention back to her. Multicolored light sparkled in her tricolored eyes. She glared hard across the bar, her lips slightly parted, with something like desire on her face. I followed her gaze and found the fae she was focused on. She was beautiful, of course. And had attracted quite the crowd of admirers. She rested a hand on her victim’s, likely drawing draíocht from him with every second.

  “She’s breaking the law.” Nyx slid one of her daggers free but she paused, her sharp gaze snagging on me. “You’re not ready.”

  I’d seen that look. In the mirror. “Nyx, wait. You don’t need to—”

  “By the order of the Fae Authority—”

  The fae predictably bolted, but she didn’t get far. Nyx’s dagger somehow found a straight line through the crowd and punched the fae high up in the back. She let out a yelp and groped behind her, but she didn’t stop. Nyx burst forward. The crowd recoiled. A few screams peppered the music. And the chase was on. I followed as best as I could, but Nyx and the fae soon became a blur in the crowd, and once outside, I quickly lost them on the busy sidewalk.

  I sighed through my nose, ignoring the few who glanced my way—probably wondering why a human girl was wearing an FA uniform jacket—and headed down the street, keeping my gaze high, scanning for fae.

  After thirty minutes of wandering Covent Garden I’d lost my FA escort, and I had no idea when or where I was meant to regroup. I considered catching the subway back to FAHQ when I felt a familiar pull toward a basement club. I’d have known the voice from outside on the street, had I not been so preoccupied with finding Nyx. Inside, I couldn’t mistake him for anyone else but Reign. He’d captured the crowd—packed wall-to-wall—in awe. The band behind gave it their all while Reign commanded the small stage as if he was playing to Wembley Stadium. His hair was a mess, his white shirt was barely buttoned so that it flared in dramatic fashion when he strode back and forth, his jeans sat low on his hips, and he didn’t give a damn. In fact, the crowd lapped it up, hanging on his every word, screaming at his every glance. His voice rolled and teased. He had the kind of singing voice that seduced. Combined with the way he moved, his body a weapon in his arsenal, designed to seduce, he simply hypnotized, even to my immune eyes. Every word, every step, every glance; I am powerful, it said, and he was. Powerful enough to own this crowd of several hundred. Powerful enough to command a crowd of tens of thousands. This little club didn’t know what hit it. The patrons screamed, waved their arms in the air, utterly lost in Reign’s thrall. As I studied those nearest to me, saw how their eyes drank Reign in, I wondered if he could bespell with music. It wouldn’t have surprised me; I already knew he could do things other fae couldn’t—impossible things, no doubt made possible by the spirit of Cu Sith curled around his soul.