Queene of Light

by Jennifer Armintrout

  He moved her to straddle his lap, parted her thighs with his hands. The male part of him jabbed clumsily between her legs, and she panicked. “Please, wait a moment…”

  How could she tell him that it was too fast, too frightening suddenly? How could she tell him that the edges of her vision were beginning to curl and blacken like burning paper? She opened her mouth to ask for just a minute to catch her breath, a moment to get her bearings, but the tip of him found entrance and before she could take her next breath he gripped her hips and pulled her down, splitting her open just as everything turned red around her.

  The water arcing over their heads turned to blood, the black sides of her mind closed in around and behind it, bending it until it was her hair, floating in the dark void that surrounded her as it had beneath the water of the pool. Below her, instead of endless black, a sea of bloodred feathers stretched as far as she could see, and she plummeted toward them, crashing through the surface without touching a single one. The feathers turned black—where had she seen black feathers?—and rained over her as she knelt above Garret in the pool. The searing heat where their bodies joined flared, burning up the tree of her life force inside of her, and when she raised her head, sobbing, from his shoulder, it was not Garret she clung to.

  It was the Darkling.

  In a flash, he was gone, replaced by Garret, who shuddered and groaned inside of her. Gone, too, was the burning in her soul. With the vision gone, all that remained was the stinging pain in her abused flesh where Garret slipped from her body. The ebony feathers that had covered the ground like black snow had been nothing but a dream, as well. She shook her head and pressed her fists to her eyes, willing her mind to balance.

  “Ayla, are you all right?” Garret pressed his palms to her temples. She felt his energy trying to force its way into her, to heal her, but it was spiked and cold and blue, and she did not want any part of it.

  “I am fine. I am…overwhelmed.”

  This pleased him. He laughed a little when he said, “It is understandable, with such a new experience.”

  She heard little else of what he said as he pulled her from the pool and gently helped her dress.

  What had the vision meant? Surely not that she wished to mate with the Darkling! The creature was physically disgusting, and his very nature was contrary to the principles of the Lightworld. One God? A wish to return the Earth to the Humans? No, she could never bring herself to even imagine such a desire.

  The man with wings. The old woman’s words echoed in her mind. Surely, then, this was a warning. This Darkling would destroy her, and the happiness she would surely have with Garret. But how? Would Garret learn what had taken place in the Darkworld and reject her? No, he did care for her, and he would not wish to lose something he cared about. Would the Darkling kill her? It seemed less likely after what had taken place. But the old woman had known, and she had possessed a powerful magic. This Darkling would destroy her, and her vision was no coincidence.

  Garret dressed quickly and returned to her side, his antennae twitching in concern. “You look so serious, Ayla. Perhaps more is bothering you than you care to tell me?”

  “No,” she began, shaking her head, “I am only—”

  She was not able to finish. Garret lifted his hand to her hair, lips compressed as though trying to stifle laughter. “How did you manage to get this tangled in your hair?”

  When he pulled his hand back, he held a night-black feather.

  Thirteen

  H uman rituals of hygiene were nothing short of torture. Keller guided Malachi from one insane and uncomfortable task to another. Washing with a rag and a basin of water, so that his skin prickled from the cold. Raking a comb through his matted hair until he was sure the skin would come away from his skull. Dressing in new clothes Keller grudgingly gave over.

  “It is too tight,” Malachi grumbled as Keller pulled the shirt over his head. He sounded like an unhappy child. He did not wish to bother with all of these inane vanities. The longer he waited, the farther she would go, disappearing into her strange world forever.

  “No, no.” Keller fussed with the fabric, pulling it down. “Maybe. But look, you’re not trying to win a beauty pageant here. You just want to be clothed.”

  Malachi picked at the sleeve of the garment. It was a shirt like Keller’s, with no buttons on the front, so it had to be dragged over the head, a disconcerting process that made Malachi feel as though he’d ducked his head under water for a moment. The back bunched around his shoulder blades, where his wings attached, but Keller made two quick cuts and pulled it down. The fabric hung as a flap between his wings, but at least it was not tight anymore.

  “I have these,” Keller announced, producing a pair of pants that appeared to be missing half their length, “or these.”

  Malachi chose the second option. They were far too large, but better than too short and ragged at the ends. He put them on, and Keller produced a length of frayed cord to thread through the loops at the top to prevent them from slipping down. Malachi pushed his hands through his hair, and Keller swatted them away. “We just got that untangled. Hang on.” He pulled a thin, stretchy band from the handle of a tool lying on the workbench and used it to gather Malachi’s hair into a single tail at the back of his neck. “You look good, Mac.”

  Vanity! Another new experience. He allowed himself to smile at the compliment. “Thank you. Now, you will take me to the Faery.”

  “No, we’re not done yet.” Keller went to a cabinet and rifled through it, cursing. When he emerged, he held a long length of burgundy cloth in his hands. Unrolled, it proved to be a cape with a hood and a faded gold emblem of a star painted on the back. “From the Dragon Court. Their Human messengers wear them. Nobody’s going to bother you with one of these on.”

  Malachi took it from him and swung it over his shoulders, flattening his wings.

  “No, don’t put it on now!” Keller snatched it and rolled it into a hasty bundle, looking around as if some invisible person might have caught them. “If you’re seen with this on in the Darkworld, you’ll get killed. Put it under your shirt and keep it there until you reach the Strip. Oh, and don’t let any real messengers see you with it on, either. Their employers don’t like people messing with their stuff.”

  “Then how did you get this?” Malachi took the folded cloak and tucked it under his shirt.

  “I won it off a messenger in a card game.” A moment later, guilty and angry, Keller snapped, “I stole it off him, after he passed out.”

  “Brave of you.” Malachi headed toward the door. “Now, you will take me to her.”

  “Now, just wait a minute.” Keller had not moved, stubborn Human. “I’m not going with you. I can tell you where she is, but there’s no way that I’m going to be able to sneak in. It’s going to look suspicious already, you looking as Human as you do, and I’d rather both of us remain in one piece. I can’t tell you exactly where to find her, but I can tell you enough that you’ll be able to find her on your own.”

  “On my own?” The idea held some excitement. If he went by himself, he could act as he pleased, with no bossy Human to impose restrictions on his behavior. He could find the Faery and steal her, and, as nothing would matter once that had been achieved, he could do what was necessary and efficient to make his way back with her.

  “You can’t kill anyone,” Keller said gravely, and Malachi cursed the Human’s ability to look into his thoughts.

  “Tell me what I need so that I can find her.” Malachi’s hands clenched to fists at his sides. The waiting was interminable. He needed her. The feeling of her hands on him, the way she had felt against him as he’d pushed her against the workbench…those moments tumbled over and over in his mind, driving him mad. He needed her.

  Keller canted his head to the side, more thoughtful than he’d appeared a moment before. “You love her.”

  “Love?” A small laugh escaped with the word, a huff of denial he had not meant to express. “I do not know a
bout mortal love. I need her. And you must tell me where to find her.”

  With a loud sigh, Keller relented. “I see a door, up high, no stairs. There are four doors where she’s at, but this one is up high. There’s a pipe leaking water, and it’s in an area where a lot of Faeries live.”

  Something plummeted in Malachi. “Is that all?”

  Keller nodded, spreading his hands helplessly. “All I can give you. I saw trees a little while ago, but it couldn’t have been real, because she was—” He broke off suddenly. “Better be going now, if you want to get into the Lightworld tonight.”

  He wanted to ask Keller what he’d been about to say. If she were hurt or needed help, he would want to know. But the prospect of the journey was too enticing as he slipped out the door.

  “Dragons speak Latin. I assume you know it?” Keller called after him.

  Though his gift of language had fled, Malachi still remembered that tongue, preferred of the Human church on Earth a century ago. “Yes.”

  “Use that when you enter the Lightworld. The guards won’t question you. And take the entrance to the Faery Quarter, that’s your best shot. Ask someone on the Strip, they’ll tell you the way.”

  Malachi nodded once and turned, slogging through the deep water.

  “Hey, Mac!” Keller yelled, and Malachi turned back. The Human smiled. “Good luck.”

  Malachi took the sentiment to heart as he made his way toward the Strip. On his first journey to the Strip, he’d been desolate and bewildered. He had not cared that something might spring from the shadows to devour him. After seeing the Faery, touching her, his heart beat with new desire to live, to be with her again. Was that the “love” he’d seen Humans display for each other while he’d done his duties for God?

  Perhaps, but perhaps not. So much of the love he’d seen examples of seemed destructive. Women lying dead at their own hands, in despair over love. Men killing their wives, their children, driven mad by the ending of a relationship. That was not love.

  What he felt for this Faery was just as consuming and terrifying, though. Did that constitute love, or mere infatuation? Love seemed the sort of concept that would need time and nourishment to grow. He could not love her.

  Lost in his thoughts and plans for how he would find her once more, he did not realize how close he’d come to the Strip. The easiest part of his journey was over, he realized with some dread. He slipped into the stream of people and pulled the cloak from his shirt, but he did not put it on, not yet. First, he had to find the passage into her land, and it seemed unlikely that the messenger of a Dragon, a denizen of the Lightworld, would not know how to find their own home.

  A young, female Human with shining golden hair stood beside a stall containing ribbons and jewels, all the many material goods that female creatures enjoyed possessing in order to appear more attractive or wealthy than others. This girl would not question him, too intent on selling her wares.

  “Excuse me.” He smiled at her. Smiles seemed to get Humans further with each other.

  The girl’s face brightened, and for a moment something about her seemed so familiar that prickles rose on the back of his neck. In the next second he felt nothing. She was merely a girl, dazzled by the sight of someone who looked good, if Keller could be believed in such matters.

  “Yes, sir. What can I show you today?” Something about her words implied more than polite helpfulness.

  If she was interested in him on a base, mortal level, she might be more inclined to speak to him honestly. He leaned forward, pretending to be interested in something on the cart. “I fear I have lost my way. Might you be able to show me into the Lightworld?”

  Her eyes glittered. “What do you need in the Lightworld that you cannot find here?”

  “True love.” He thought it ridiculous as he said it, but her face shone with true emotion.

  She reached one work-roughened hand into the stall and pulled out a metal pendant on a ribbon. “Any alley off the south side of the Strip will lead you to the boundaries of the Lightworld. And take this.”

  Her quick movement toward him surprised him, but he bent down so she could slip the ribbon over his head. “This will help you find your true love,” she whispered close to his ear. When she stepped back, she looked into his eyes as if trying to convey some deeper meaning to him, but a moment later she turned and darted around the other side of the stall. He started after her, but the pull to the Lightworld was too strong, now that he knew how to get there.

  He unrolled his borrowed cloak and fastened the ties around his neck, glancing for a moment at the pendant the girl had given him. A curled vine, covered in thorns. If it were a sign, it was a disappointing one.

  He pushed across the traffic of creatures in the main thoroughfare of the Strip until he reached the wide alleys that would lead him into the Lightworld. Posted at the mouths of these paths were signs in many languages. He found one he recognized and read:

  Behold the proclamation of Queene Mabb: No enemy of the Lightworld shall pass these gates. No creature born of Dark shall be suffered within these walls. Heed these words or perish.

  It might have served a frightening warning to some, but mere words would not stop Malachi in his pursuit. He pulled the hood of his cloak lower, flattened his wings around his shoulders, grateful that the cape brushed the ground and concealed their tips.

  Despite its name, the Lightworld was as dim as the Darkworld. Cleaner, though, and drier. And though Malachi had never seen sentries or any sign of an organized militia in the Darkworld, within five hundred feet of the mouth of the tunnel, two soldiers awaited him.

  He began to practice his words in his mind, what he would say. Would they ask him his name? What Dragon he worked for? For the first time, real doubt crept into his mind. But the sentries eyed his cloak and stood down without comment, even looking a bit afraid of him as he passed. It might have been his size—the sentries were slender as children, even with the added bulk of their armor—or that he worked for so fearsome a creature as a Dragon.

  He knew of Dragons and knew they were not to be angered.

  His first task managed, he set to the next. Where, in the whole of this Lightworld, would he find his Faery? At the juncture of two tunnels, four directions to choose, he stood paralyzed. It would be easy to become lost here, and dangerous, as well. He looked about the tunnel, hoping for some identifying sign, wishing he had brought something to mark his path.

  Unbelievably the sign was there, as it was around his neck, as well. Painted arrows and corresponding symbols—a rose here, going farther south; a tree, pointing east; a large red X toward the Strip—decorated the concrete at the tops of the tunnels. And there, pointing him west, a curled, thorny vine, identical to the pendant the girl had given him.

  Gripping the pendant in his fist, he started down the tunnel.

  All Ayla wished to do once they arrived back at Garret’s apartment—no, her apartment, their apartment—was to crawl into bed and sleep for a day. The experience at Sanctuary had sapped her of her energy, but Garret wished at once to present her to Mabb.

  “Come, please. She will be so happy to embrace you as her sister.” Though he said it with as much sincerity as he could muster, Ayla knew it was not the truth.

  But she wished to please Garret, so she combed her hair and left it loose, as the ladies at Court did, and put on a fine silver necklace that Garret presented for her. Forcing her weary, swollen feet into the silk slippers he offered, she wondered if it would always be this way: presents for obedience, swallowing her discomfort to please him.

  “While we are there I can report to the Guild Master,” she mused aloud as they flew down from the door.

  Garret sniffed. “I wouldn’t think it necessary. You outrank him now.”

  “Yes, but I have completed an assignment.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “My final assignment. It is my duty to report.”

  “My sister—”

  “And I would not wish anyone to spea
k ill of you as a mentor.” Striking at his vanity was a low tactic, but he had always taught her that there was no shame in doing something she knew would work.

  He smiled. “Ayla, you know where my weakness lies. For my pride’s sake, you will go and see Cedric.”

  At the Palace, the stares of the Court members were open and disbelieving as Ayla walked the halls beside Garret. The whispered gossip was not so much whispered as hissed so it could be heard as they walked past:

  “I never thought Mabb would allow it!”

  “To think, he could have had anyone, and he picked that.”

  “Half-Human? What a tragedy.”

  She kept her head high. In the past few hours she had let her guard down some, and now the barbs wounded her far more than they would have on an ordinary day. She blamed her fatigue for the tears that collected in her eyes and stiffened her spine.

  “You are beautiful,” Garret murmured close to her ear as they slowed before the doors to the Assassins’ Hall. He pulled her close and pressed his lips to a tear that slipped down her cheek. “You are my beautiful Ayla, and I would have you no other way.”

  It was a lie, but it helped her gain her composure as they entered the Hall.

  The reporting for the day had already begun, and the Hall was crowded with interested courtiers and Assassins ending assignments or awaiting new ones. Ayla moved through the crowd to sit and wait on a bench in the queue, but Garret pulled her forward, marching her down the aisle in the center of the room, toward the table where the Guild Master was seated.

  Cedric was a Faery so old that it was said he’d been on the shore the day Amergin won Ireland with his feats of Human wizardry. He’d walked with Lugh and had once been a lover of Bronwyn, Goddess of the Northern Sea. He kept his position at Court to be near Mabb, his true love, or so it was said. Ayla supposed that now she might know the truth behind those rumors, if she found the courage to question Garret on them.