Shoot the Messenger

by Pippa Dacosta

His knee came down, pinning my wrist and whip to the floor.

  “Good,” he admitted. Blood welled from the cut marking his cheek.

  I arched an eyebrow. Did he think the Wraithmaker would give up so easily? Sinking my hand into the pocket of my jogging pants, I pulled out three tiny silver balls and tossed them into the air. I’d used similar tricks in the arena, horrifying my fae audience by bringing forbidden tek into the game.

  He frowned and watched the balls hang suspended a few inches from his face. When he looked down questioningly, I winked and turned my face away. The balls exploded, filling the chamber with brilliant light. Kellee recoiled, spluttering a curse. I rolled away, hopped upright, leisurely wrapped my whip around his neck, and gently tightened it so there was no misunderstanding about who was in charge.

  He blinked rapidly, shook his head and grumbled, “This had better not be permanent.”

  I crouched and watched him blink me into focus. This close, the all-green in his eyes wasn’t green at all. The outer edge of his irises was blue, fading to green and then to the black of his pinprick pupils. “Submit.”

  He chuckled. “Not happening.”

  I hadn’t beaten him. I’d barely ruffled his feathers. His teeth weren’t out, neither were his claws. If he brought all his weapons, he could cut the whip with one swipe. This scuffle that had left me breathless was little more than a fun tumble for him. What would it truly be like to face the real Marshal Kellee? I barely knew what he was capable of, but I knew enough to guess how his people must have been a magnificent force in battle.

  I thumbed the blood from his cheek. He froze. His eyes still weren’t fully focused, but he saw enough to catch my hand, preventing me from licking my thumb clean.

  “Don’t.”

  I stalled.

  His pupils widened, focusing, drinking me in, and then he closed his hand around mine and brought my thumb to his mouth. He wasn’t about to—

  His tongue swept up the side of my thumb.

  I watched, entranced by the strangeness of having a man’s tongue lick across my skin. He moved my thumb closer and closed his lips around it, gently sucking it clean. He probably heard my heart and definitely heard my rapid breathing. But he couldn’t know how his intimate touch sent need fluttering inside me. The moment narrowed to just him and me kneeling on the mats, my thumb in his mouth and where we might go from here.

  Kellee eased my thumb free, grazing it across the edge of a sharp canine-tooth, and turned my hand palm up. His hazel-flecked green eyes flicked up, checking for permission, and then he brought my middle finger to his lips and rested the most delicate kiss on the tip. I hadn’t known he could do delicate until that moment. He tipped my hand down, settling a snowflake kiss on my palm, and then brought my arm up a little and hesitated, his mouth hot where it hovered over the thin skin of my wrist.

  His own breathing came short and fast. Each flutter against my arm summoned telltale goosebumps. He slowly, gently rested a single kiss atop the beating vein and sighed as though that one small kiss had cost him too much.

  He lifted his head, and his eyes appeared to shine with longing, his smile tantalizing. Oh, he knew exactly what he was doing to me.

  I wanted to curl my hand around his neck and draw him to me to taste that teasing, smart mouth of his. From the heated look in his eyes, he wanted me to. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would sink my hands into his hair and pull him close like I had in my dreams before the Dreamweaver stole him from me. Every. Time. But this would be real. He was on his knees, and in this one moment, he was mine. Maybe this was a dream? It felt like a dream, like we were the only two people left in all the worlds.

  I ran my fingertips across his bottom lip, marveling at the maddening softness. He breathed too hard, moments away from taking what he wanted. Our tussle hadn’t taxed him, but holding himself back did. He liked it though, liked that this anticipation hurt, liked that I had control.

  Kellee was gentle now, but his barely restrained tension told me he wouldn’t be once I gave him permission. This promise of more stretched thin, almost to the breaking point. And I would gladly take him, take all of him. But a wrongness chimed inside my mind and the ache of loss grew in the place of desire. I couldn’t do this.

  I lowered my hand and turned my face away. I cared too much to hurt him.

  Kellee pulled away and climbed to his feet. “The fae took the essence of cadaloup leaves and inserted its strands into our DNA.” His voice sounded colder and clipped. “Making vakaru blood poisonous. A drop can paralyze. Any more ravages the nervous systems, killing in three minutes.”

  The moment we had shared slipped away like a dream on waking. “Does it work on the fae?”

  “It disorientates them.”

  I got to my feet and straightened my clothes, focusing on those simple movements instead of watching Kellee shut down behind facts and warfare.

  “A messenger is here,” Talen said.

  I reached for my whip and whirled. Talen stood a few steps inside the room, his violet eyes flicking to the whip, reading the warning. He could have been here the entire time and I hadn’t heard a thing. My pulse raced. Stealth and stamina. I couldn’t afford to forget what he was.

  “From?” Kellee asked, ignoring me as he passed by and headed toward the exit beside Talen.

  I followed, whip in hand.

  “Calicto.” Talen eyed me as I passed him, his expression unreadable. Had he seen the moment with Kellee? If he had, did he care? I didn’t understand this fae, or why he was still here, and I certainly didn’t trust him.

  “There are people left on Calicto?” I asked Kellee.

  “A few,” the marshal replied, striding ahead.

  A new shuttle had docked next to Kellee’s rover, this one just as small, but it looked as though it had been strung together with little more than glue and tape. A young woman waited inside the airlock. A shock of red hair cut shorter at one side framed a pale, round face dashed with freckles. She spotted the three of us through the airlock window, her gaze lingering on Kellee.

  “It’s Natalie. Let her in,” Kellee said.

  Talen obliged, opening the airlock.

  Air hissed as the door retracted, and out stepped Natalie. “Marshal,” she acknowledged.

  “Natalie.” He held out his hand.

  Natalie’s blue eyes read me and Talen in an instant. Whatever she thought of us, she kept it all hidden behind an icy stoic mask. She shook Kellee’s hand, adding a familiar squeeze before letting go. “Is there somewhere we can go and speak in private?”

  Kellee nodded. “Sure.” To Talen and me, he said, “I’ll meet you by the cage.”

  Talen struggled to repress his snarl at the marshal’s dismissal. He wasn’t the only one. I watched Kellee escort Natalie along the dock and into the prison. Before disappearing inside, he touched her shoulder and leaned in, speaking too quietly for me to hear.

  “What did he say?” I asked Talen once the door had closed behind the pair.

  “That he has missed her.”

  A stab of jealousy struck low, but I quickly dismissed it. He wasn’t alone. And that was good. He would need a friend for what was to come.

  I left Talen behind and changed out of my sweats and into clean pants and a turtleneck top, making sure to cover all incriminating fae marks. Just because Kellee knew her, it didn’t mean she wouldn’t lose her mind over seeing warfae marks on a stranger.

  Leaving the chamber, I considered how this prison had been my sanctuary. As cold and hard a place as it was, I had come to consider it safe. It was Kellee’s and Talen’s refuge and mine. I’d gotten used to it being me, the marshal and the fae. Natalie’s presence jeopardized that. She brought reality in from the outside worlds, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready.

  Talen was already in the kitchen area, cooking. He liked to dabble in the kitchen and had cooked up some excellent feasts with the dull prison supplies available. He had changed out of his instantly recognizable fae leathers and in
to more human dark trousers and a dark purple dress shirt. He made no attempt to hide the pointed tips of his ears and had braided some of his silvery hair at both sides, deliberately displaying his faeness. The rest of his hair fell loose down his back, all the way to his ass. A toned ass that the black pants neatly shaped. I caught my gaze lingering and veered away, wandering the chamber instead. Kellee’s intimate kisses had fired up my blood, reminding me what it felt like to be touched by a male. To be longed for. But all those needs and wants were tangled up with Eledan’s mindfuck and my own human weaknesses.

  I came to Talen’s cot and stopped at his stack of books.

  “You may take a look if you wish.”

  He didn’t look up from his sizzling pans, but his fae senses knew exactly where I stood in the room.

  Up close, I could see the books were all old human titles. I had assumed he was reading fae books.

  “How did you get these?” I picked up the book he had been favoring lately and opened it where he had left his bookmark.

  “Kellee brought them.”

  Kellee had brought him books in prison? My first impulse was to ask why, but I managed to keep the question to myself. Kellee had likely pitied the fae. I already knew the marshal had visited Talen often. Gifts just showed that Kellee had a heart, even when it came to his enemy.

  I flipped the book over. The cover was dark and faded, but I could make out the title. I wasn’t familiar with the language, but I took a guess at sounding it out. “Drak-uule?”

  “Kellee thought it… amusing.”

  “Why?” There it was. I couldn’t help it. Kellee and Talen’s relationship didn’t fit with what I knew about them. They should be at each other’s throats, not living together in relative harmony.

  “You’ll have to ask Kellee.”

  “Ask Kellee, right.” He always deferred to the marshal. I set the book back down and scanned the spines. I had never read a physical book before.

  “Would you like to read one?”

  I glanced across the room, expecting him to be watching, but he concentrated on cooking and retrieved some plates from a cupboard. Talen wasn’t like any fae I had met before. The families had slaves—saru—to run their houses. How did he know how to cook? He could fight, I’d seen evidence of that when he had defended himself, but he preferred to run and read and watch.

  “They’re written in an archaic language,” he said. “I can teach you to read it if you like.”

  I picked up a small paperback, its cover torn and text faded. The picture on the front depicted an Earthen bird with black wings. Carrying it to Talen, I showed him the title. He nodded. “I think you’ll enjoy that one.” And went back to his bubbling sauces.

  “Thank you.” And I meant it. The old relics were precious, yet he trusted me with one. I was curious enough to spend time with the fae to decipher the words.

  “Let’s eat,” Kellee said as he and Natalie entered. “We don’t have water, but we have a concoction of syrup and barley Talen mixed together from the stores.” Kellee brought with him his smiles and jovial persona.

  “This is some place you have here,” Natalie remarked, her gaze falling to the massive glass cage. “Shit, all this prison for one prisoner? Who did they keep in there?”

  Talen set her plate down in front of her, rattling it against the tabletop. He caught my eye, and we shared a moment. I wasn’t sure what kind of moment, but a mutual something. Distrust, maybe. He didn’t like her. I had to agree.

  “This isn’t poisoned, is it, fae?” she asked, making it sound lighthearted, but there was a sharpened jab in there too.

  Talen wasn’t laughing. “If I wanted to kill you, human, I wouldn’t waste good poison when I could merely break your neck”—he flicked his fingers—“like that.”

  Natalie paled.

  “Talen,” Kellee growled.

  Inappropriate laughter almost burst free. I cleared my throat and caught Talen’s eye. The fae’s mouth ticked up at one corner, only known to me.

  “Ignore him,” Kellee suggested. “He doesn’t get out much.”

  “Uh-huh.” Natalie tasted her meal, side-eyeing Talen. “Damn, fae, this is good food. We don’t have much in the mines, and what we do have tastes like salt. Everything tastes like salt down in the shafts. Even the air.”

  “How long can you hold out?” Kellee asked. He sat close beside her and tucked into his dish.

  Talen and I chose to stand at the counter and eat. I had one eye on our guest and one on Talen, who trusted her about as much as I did.

  “A few months with our existing supplies. Scavenging has gotten harder now that we’ve exhausted the first dome. But it could be worse, right? At least the fae haven’t noticed us.”

  “And your air?” Kellee asked.

  “The mines were always closed-circuits. The filters will work as long as the geothermal pumps are running.” She fell silent while eating, and then added, eyes brightening, “There’s one thing we have that’ll make you jealous.”

  “Go on.” Kellee smiled and it reached his eyes. He knew this woman well. There were none of the guarded sideways glances he gave me.

  “We have so much water we have to drain it out of the shafts or drown in it.” She laughed. “The fucking irony, right? We’re millionaires and now nobody gives a shit because there’s nobody left to care.” Her laughter twisted into a harder, bitter sound and slowly died. Echoes of it around the chamber soon followed.

  I poked at my food with my fork, no longer hungry.

  The silence grew, each of them lost in their own thoughts. I hadn’t been there when it happened, when the fae came. I hadn’t seen the first wave or heard the screams or fled for my life. I had been dreaming the whole time, trapped in another world entirely.

  Talen had set his plate down, virtually untouched. He was watching me, I realized. As Kellee and Natalie chatted, I tried on a small smile to reassure the fae I wasn’t about to let the dreams pull me under. But nothing about any of this was reassuring. He studied my face while his expression revealed all the sadness I’d seen in him when he had begged me to free him. He had known about the Dreamweaver, known how badly Eledan ravaged his victims. And in his keen eyes and the press of his lips, he understood it all.

  “What was your message?” I asked Natalie, deliberately breaking away from Talen’s gaze.

  She slowly finished her mouthful and glanced at Kellee, I assumed for permission to tell me. But he was finishing his food and didn’t see. Instead of answering, she pushed the last bites of food around her plate. “You seem familiar, but I can’t place from where, and Kellee here… Well, he says you’re just a survivor like the rest of us, but…” Breathing in, she pushed her plate away and brushed her hands together, wiping them clean. “Your pet fae is a quiet one.”

  Talen could look after himself, but that didn’t stop the shards of my heart from twisting at the sound of her derisive tone.

  “Natalie—”

  “No,” she cut Kellee off, fury shortening her words. “Our world is slowly dying and you’re here, what? Playing house?”

  “You know I’ve been trying to rally the cells.” Kellee pushed his plate away. “Communication isn’t easy—”

  “It’s not fucking good enough, Marshal. I had to come out here myself to see what you’re doing. Turns out, fuck all. You said you were working on something. So, where is it? Huh?” Her accusations bounced around the chamber.

  Kellee’s gaze caught mine and nerves rattled through me. Wait. I remembered him asking me to help, telling me to think on it. Was I his something?

  Natalie stood and moved to the outside of the cage. “And the worst of it is, I have to go back and tell them you don’t have anything. That their marshal—the man they’ve pinned their hopes on—lied.”

  “I didn’t lie.” He spoke too softly, his tone already defeated. “It’s not ready.”

  “There are kids in the mines. Kids whose parents acted fast enough and knew the mines were the only pla
ce that could survive a fae warship assault. When the domes shattered, we heard it. All of Calicto trembled like the whole planet was breaking apart, and the glass screamed.” She pressed her hand to the glass cage and added softly, “Or the people did.”

  Did Kellee have a plan? Surely, the woman couldn’t be pinning her hopes and the hopes of her people on me?

  “When we found the well, I thought…” Her hand closed into a fist. “You said it would change everything.”

  What well? I tried to catch Kellee’s eye, but he had bowed his head. Why hadn’t he told me any of this?

  “We’re all going to die down there,” Natalie whispered.

  “You won’t.” The words were mine. Alarmingly. But they felt right, as though I really could do something to back them up.

  “Right.” She laughed and turned. “You and your pet fae will do what exactly? We can’t get anything larger than a shuttle off Calicto without the fae noticing, and even that’s a risk. There are almost a thousand people hiding in the mines. Are you going to save them?”

  “Yes.”

  “With what? Your whip?” She flicked a hand at the whip coiled at my hip and then pulled her hand back. Confusion clouded her face. “Wait… I know you.” Her eyes widened. “You killed him!”

  Killed who? “You’re going to have to narrow it down.”

  That was the wrong thing to say. Natalie lunged at me. Kellee shouted a warning to her or me, I wasn’t sure which. A silvery blur of hair appeared between the girl and me, and everything stopped. Talen had gently rested his hand on her face, as though the pair might be about to kiss. But Natalie stood limp and dazed, pupils so large her eyes looked black.

  “Talen!” Kellee thundered in. “Let her go.”

  Talen didn’t move. I stepped out, moving around so I could see his face. His eyes, like Natalie’s, were filled with blackness. The soft, careful, wary Talen who had lent me a book to read was long gone. In his place stood the killer species I knew so well. There was the fae who would have the three systems bow down to him and his kind. There was the fae who would make humans dance for him until they died on their feet. I had known he was in there somewhere, but seeing the truth filled my broken heart with fear.