Shoot the Messenger

by Pippa Dacosta

  My gut heaved, throwing up nothing, but it woke me from the nightmare. My arm stung. I reached for the pain, noticing the black tattoos, and found Marshal Kellee kneeling on the bed, looking at me with hopeful eyes, an empty syringe in his hand.

  “Kellee?” I croaked.

  “Kesh…?” His eyes frantically searched mine. His lips parted. “Do you…?”

  Wait, wait… This was a lie. I shot from the bed, but my legs turned to jelly beneath me, and I collapsed, dropping to my knees. He was coming—it was coming. The truth was barreling forward, about to roll right over me. I clutched my hands to my head to squeeze out the horror of knowing. “Oh Kellee…”

  His arms came around me, pulling me against his chest. I locked my fists into his shirt and twisted my grip, tearing the fabric. His strength and warmth were too much, too real. “Please, make it stop…”

  His chin brushed the top of my head. “It’s all right. We have you.”

  He smelled masculine, like soap and something woody that made me think of earth and the outdoors on a world far away. He smelled real. But if I opened my eyes, I’d be clutching the Dreamweaver.

  I couldn’t stand this.

  I pushed him away, my eyes squeezed closed. “No, no… don’t.”

  “Kesh, please. It’s me.”

  “NO, NO, IT’S NOT!”

  An arm hooked around my neck and yanked me up and off Kellee. Another arm hooked around my waist, pulling me back against a lean, hard body. I writhed and kicked and bucked, but every twist tightened the hold.

  “Open your eyes,” Violet-eyes said. Talen. It had always been Talen beside Kellee. The fae and the marshal. The pair. But Talen being free didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense anymore. I was surrounded by lies. I was the biggest lie of all.

  I sobbed and sucked in the air the useless noise had cost me. I would open my eyes. I would be in the Dreamweaver’s arms. But it was okay. I knew that now. I fluttered my eyes open and blinked at Kellee.

  He rubbed his jaw where my heel had caught him. “Hey.”

  I blinked, breathing hard through my nose. Another blink. Still Kellee. “Hey.”

  He lifted the syringe. “It looks as though this helped,” he said to Talen.

  Talen, who had me trapped in his arms. Talen, who was too much like Eledan. Saliva pooled in my mouth. “Put. Me. Down.”

  “Your muscles suffered a great deal of atrophy—”

  “Put her down, Talen,” Kellee ordered.

  The fae let me go. I hobbled away from them and fell against the wall. The wall was good. The wall was real. Okay, they were still here. Kellee had given me a drug to ground me. I was here. This was the now. But for how long…?

  I swallowed, still feeling sick, but I was upright and thinking. I looked down at myself, at the oversized white shirt someone had dressed me in. One of theirs, probably. My legs poked out, knees and ankles jutting. The fae marks were so dark against my skin that they appeared to glow.

  “How long?” I rasped.

  Talen glanced at Kellee. A sure sign the answer would hurt.

  “How long?” I asked again.

  “Nine months,” Kellee replied.

  Laughter threatened, tugging at my mouth. Nine months of dreaming. Nine months of being his to toy with as he pleased. The drug they had given me could only last so long. Every time I closed my eyes, he would be there. Every time I lay down to sleep, he would be waiting.

  I looked at them. Kellee’s concern was easier to read, but worry also pinched Talen’s brow. They had brought me back. Why? Dozens of questions surfaced, but I didn’t ask them. Not yet.

  “I just… Can I have some time alone?”

  Talen tensed. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

  “I don’t care what you think, fae,” I snarled.

  He flinched, and I might have regretted the words if I’d had the energy. I owed him and Kellee a debt, but the chittering insanity in my head wouldn’t shut up.

  “Go,” Kellee ordered.

  Talen’s mouth set into a line. “If her awareness slips—”

  “Get out!” I screamed.

  He left, long hair swishing like a tail.

  “I didn’t mean…” I reached out a hand, and Kellee took it, leading me back to the bed. “I’m sorry. It’s just… He’s…”

  “He understands.”

  I didn’t think he did, but I didn’t have room in my head to feel sorry for him. I sat on the edge of the bed, cupped my hands on my thighs and sighed. “I have a million questions, but I’m not sure I can handle the answers right now.”

  “There’s only one thing you need to know. You are safe here.”

  He was wrong, but I smiled anyway. “The last time I saw you…” I winced, trying to find the real memory. My mind was a soup of dreams. “I think… he cut you?”

  “He would have killed me. You saved me. Do you remember?”

  I did and nodded. I also remembered stabbing him over and over while the Dreamweaver laughed. I swallowed the acid in my throat and looked away. The memories were slippery and difficult to hold on to. But the dreams, the dreams were so real. So real I could reach out and take one.

  “It will take time,” Kellee was saying.

  The bed moved as he stood. I didn’t want to look up. It would be easier if I didn’t care about anything here. Easier for when he came and took it all away.

  “Kellee?”

  I didn’t know if Kellee looked. I wasn’t even sure if he was still in the room.

  “Thank you.”

  The door clicked closed, sealing me alone with the madness clawing at the insides of my skull.

  Blood welled in my hands. I plucked my nails free of my palms. That pain was real. And this room was real, and Kellee was real, and I was real. Reality hurt.

  They were keeping me in chambers carved into rock. Occasionally, I’d hear something clunk somewhere far off, like a heavy door closing, but there were no other voices, besides the ones in my head. I dry-showered alone, watching my thin arms tremble and the black marks sink deeper into my skin—skin that hung off my bones, distorting the once beautiful swirls.

  I had been so proud of those marks. Now I wanted to sink my nails under my skin and peel them off. Sinking my long nails into my palms instead alleviated those urges.

  As I exited the shower room, I discovered that one of the males had left some clothes folded at the end of the bed. Simple gray jogging pants and a black long-sleeved top. I returned to the bathroom and looked in the mirror for the first time.

  I was skin and bone and nothing else. I poked at my face, below my right eye. The skin barely sprang back. I hadn’t been this emaciated since I’d been punished for fiercely defying an order as a child. I’d learned how to behave after that. How to please my fae masters.

  My eyes were sunken, my cheeks too. I was all edges and angles, and not in the striking fae way.

  “Shit,” I hissed. It sounded good. Felt good too, forming the word around my tongue and pushing it against the top of my mouth. “Shit, shit, shit.” Then my head spun, and I had to grip the rail to keep from falling over.

  I probably should have lain back down, but I couldn’t. I had lain and wasted away for nine months, lost to the dreams. I would have died like that if it hadn’t been for Kellee and Talen.

  I scratched my arms, leaving red marks behind. Pain. It was real—or as real as I could tell.

  I left the room and drifted wraith-like down a cold corridor. Lights buzzed above, flicking on as I passed under them and blinking off again behind me. Emerging around a bend, a cavern opened ahead. Normal household things were huddled around the edges. A chiller, chairs, couch, a few tables, two cots. A glass cage sat dead center in the middle of the cavern. Its door hung open, chained in place so it couldn’t fall closed.

  Talen sat on the edge of a bed on the opposite side of the room. He looked up through the cage’s transparent panes.

  Kellee wasn’t here. My empty saru heart fluttered like that sill
y bird trapped in its cage.

  Talen seemed to sense my apprehension. He looked down at the book in his hand. “Kellee will be back soon.”

  Why wasn’t he in the cage? Why wasn’t he locked up like he should have been?

  His violet eyes flicked up. “I won’t hurt you.”

  I swallowed, knowing he heard the click in my throat. I needed a weapon. My hand dropped to my hip, but my whip was long gone. Wouldn’t matter anyway. Without my magic, it was just a metal whip. My fingers brushed the grazes on my neck. I heard—recalled the clatter of the collar hitting the ground. Recalled his hand pushed against my chest. Recalled the life leaving me.

  My breath caught, throat closing.

  “Are you hungry?” Talen asked.

  I blinked. The memory shattered.

  He had moved to where the couches formed a circle. Behind them a line of cupboards had been pushed together, forming a kitchen area. I bumped against the wall, unaware I’d been backing up. And now I had nowhere to go, but Talen wasn’t looking. He took a bowl from inside a cupboard, poured something into it and set it on an old heating hob.

  “Why…?” I croaked out.

  “Why am I not in the cage?” He leaned back against a cupboard and folded his arms. “You will have to ask Kellee that.”

  Vague fae karushit. They were all the same. I breathed in through my nose and lifted my head. I was in no condition to fight back. He could snap me like a twig. But I would at least keep my head up and pretend I had strength enough to fight him.

  “This is your prison,” I said, stating the obvious.

  “Was.”

  “Freedom must be nice for you.” I started forward, one foot in front of the other. Not backing down. One foot, then the other. Nothing bad happened. Again. One foot, then the other, then the first again.

  “Perhaps it would be, under better circumstances.”

  “What do you mean?” I reached for the nearest couch. So close.

  He looked down but didn’t hide the full range of emotion on his face. Pain. Shame. Fear.

  What in all Halow had happened while I was gone? I opened my mouth to ask and all the expressions on his face fled. He knew what I was going to ask and was already shaking his head. “Wait for Kellee… Right.”

  I had only made it as far as the first couch. I wasn’t sure my legs would carry me much farther.

  Talen scooped up the bowl and set it down on the table at the center of all the couches. Without saying a word, he returned to his cot and picked up his book.

  It was a trick.

  He would often do this to me.

  Offer kindness and then rip it away.

  But the soup smelled good, and I was so hungry my stomach might eat itself at any moment. I pawed my way around the couch and lowered myself into their mismatched cushions. Keeping one eye on the fae, I picked up the bowl and ate, unable to contain the groan when the soup touched my tongue.

  Talen’s little smile didn’t go unnoticed.

  While eating, I studied my surroundings. The pair had been here a while. But why? If Talen was free to leave, why hadn’t he? And why would Kellee hang out here when he had that glorious apartment all to himself? What was keeping the sworn enemies together?

  I scraped the dregs from the bottom of the bowl and fell back into the couch cushions, feeling more normal for the first time since I’d come back around to myself.

  The quiet was thick but not uncomfortable. Occasionally, Talen would turn the book’s pages, and curiously, I found that papery scrape comforting. Only a fae would read old physical books.

  “You said some things while I was… not all here.”

  He looked up.

  “You said, ‘He always breaks them.’”

  “Yes.” Talen nodded.

  “You know him?”

  He hesitated, sensing he was on dangerous ground. “I know of Eledan. Kellee refused to believe me when I told him the prince wasn’t dead.”

  “Wait.” I shook my head. “That’s not what happened. I told Kellee, and he came to you with questions.”

  Talen blinked. “You remember incorrectly.”

  “No, I remember perfectly. I saw the extent of Eledan’s warfae markings first and warned Kellee about him. I thought Kellee might decide not to visit if I told him. The fool came anyway and then… Well, I guess you know what happened next.”

  He rolled his lips together, carefully placed a bookmark between the pages of his book and set it down beside his bed, next to a neat stack of paperbacks. The movements were slow, deliberate, buying him time to think.

  “Talen’s right.” Kellee emerged from another doorway, carrying a bag of what I assumed were supplies. “He told me who the fae was right after we found you and got you away from Arcon. You and I didn’t speak, Kesh, not until that meeting.”

  I laughed because how could he have forgotten our many conversations over the comms? Had they meant so little to him? His voice had been my lifeline then and during… the dreams. Always his voice. “The comms.”

  The marshal emptied out his bag, avoiding my glare.

  “Remember, we talked over the comms I made at your apartment. You told me about your job, told me a lot of things, and I…” I stopped and snapped my mouth shut. They were both looking at me, gazes filled with pity. “Don’t…” I heaved my withered body to standing. “I don’t… I can’t hear this. I don’t want to hear it…”

  “The comms didn’t work, Kesh. The last time I spoke to you on the comms was when you went through Arcon’s scanners without me. I lost the signal right after. I didn’t see or hear from you again until the meeting with Larsen.”

  “But we…”

  The nights I’d fallen asleep listening to his voice, needing to hear him, to know I wasn’t alone.

  I had been alone all along.

  It had been an illusion.

  Something inside me broke open, and a long, drawn-out wail left my lips. I crumpled to my knees and no longer cared about anything. Kellee had been my lifeline during those days and nights, my one hope, and it had all been a lie.

  A hand touched my back. I shook it off. “DON’T TOUCH ME. DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME.” I scrambled to my feet. The two men watched me warily. Kellee was closest, but Talen stood behind him, ready, waiting—waiting for me to snap. “Don’t. Please don’t.” I blinked at Kellee. I didn’t even know him, did I? “We talked. For hours, we talked.”

  He swallowed. “It didn’t happen.”

  “You said—you said you needed to know I was real. That’s why you came to the meeting. I told you not to come and you came anyway.”

  “I came because of an assault report—”

  “You were never at the party, were you?” I already knew the answer.

  He looked alarmed and then just sad. “I don’t know about any party.”

  Then, the last time we had really spoken, he had learned I was the Wraithmaker. The entertainer gladiator. The fae’s pet killer. And to someone like Kellee, I was abhorrent. “You left me with him because I’m the Wraithmaker, didn’t you?”

  He shifted back a step and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  “Then why come at all?” I asked. “Why come to the meeting?”

  “Because I suspected he was fae and I knew, if he saw me, saw that I’m vakaru, he would reveal himself. I didn’t expect him to be so… powerful.”

  I twitched, words breaking on my tongue. How could I know for sure what was real? “I think I want to go home now.” My container was a mess, but I could go to The Boot. I’d have a drink and see Hulia. It was something, anything. I wanted to go back to that life, not this one I now found myself in.

  Talen turned away and stalked back to his book.

  Kellee watched him go, a muscle twitching in his cheek. When he next met my gaze, he sighed. “You can’t. I had hoped to tell you when you’d had time to adjust…”

  “Tell me what?” A thudding started in my head, burying Kellee’s voice.

 
“The fae came.” His voice cracked. “There’s nothing left.” He tried to say more, but words failed him. Turning back to his bag, he continued emptying it out. “We don’t have homes to go to.”

  Eledan had opened the door. He had let his kind in.

  “The people?” I whispered, thinking about The Boot, and Hulia, and the sinks. And all those people on Calicto. So many lives.

  Kellee shook his head.

  The darkness rushed in, and I heard the Dreamweaver’s intoxicating laugh. This time, I laughed with him.

  Chapter 21

  A sting dragged my consciousness back from oblivion. For a long time, I didn’t move from the couch the males had lowered me into and stared at the empty glass cage in the middle of the cavern.

  Hours or days may have passed in silence, when I finally said, “Show me.”

  Kellee wordlessly escorted me toward the prison’s dock. We passed through empty chambers, past abandoned guard posts and static scanners. When we boarded his little stolen shuttle and backed away from the prison, I watched through the screen as the dock grew smaller and disappeared into the cliff-like rock face.

  “Anything larger than a four-seater and the fae ships will notice,” I heard Kellee say. He may have said more, but my thoughts had gotten lost in the stretch of black before us.

  “Their tactics have changed since my people fought them,” he added.

  I half listened and let the pleasant drone of his voice smooth my frayed nerves.

  “I guess you already know their ships are organic?” he asked but clearly didn’t expect an answer as he continued. “They’ve evolved.”

  I nodded. It was hardly surprising. If they could grow it, the fae could manipulate it. Kellee and I were both products of the fae’s genetic engineering, and Faerie was full of weird and wonderful creations—all built to serve the fae.

  He talked more about how the ships had avoided Halow’s deep-space early warning systems. How much of it was Arcon’s doing, nobody outside the fae knew for sure, but when the fae came, the people in Halow had been defenseless.

  Kellee slowed the small vessel as we approached an area of sparkling debris. When he pulled the shuttle to a stop, I checked the location screens, but something didn’t add up. Where was Juno? Flotsam drifted, glinting against the endless black of space. I pushed to my feet and leaned closer. What was I seeing? And then, the vast mass of the wreckage caught the light from a distant star. The devastation glowed, light flaring off countless shiny surfaces. Juno was gone. Nothing larger than our shuttle remained. The wreckage of the once beautiful station spun and turned, twisted and broken. Steel clawed at the dark. Glass shone like a dusting of stars.