Shoot the Messenger

by Pippa Dacosta

  Natalie flew through uninhabited valleys and across the shattered skyline. There were no signs of life.

  The mines sprawled several miles from the domes. Self-contained with their workings all underground, the small, single-story patchwork of buildings could easily be missed from orbit, and fae scanners may not be able to penetrate the substrate to scan deeper for life signs. Or they simply didn’t care about the few remaining survivors.

  As we circled in, it was clear something had taken a chunk out of the miners’ complex, opening some of the tunnels and shafts to Calicto’s atmosphere.

  Natalie docked the shuttle and opened the shuttle doors.

  “I’ll be back soon,” I told Talen. We had agreed he wasn’t to leave the shuttle. His reception among the remaining human population wouldn’t likely be a good one.

  He flicked his hood up, hiding his distinctive ears and hair, and nodded grimly. “Three hours.” His tone made it clear this wasn’t negotiable.

  “They’re in the Nymn sector,” Natalie said, opening the second airlock and stepping inside.

  She hadn’t said much on the trip back to Calicto—clearly uncomfortable around Talen—but she had explained that a section of the mines had imploded. Pressurized fail-safes had locked down, sealing anyone alive on the other side. Kellee had last been seen in Nymn.

  What she believed I could do, I wasn’t sure, but I hadn’t thought much beyond getting here and rescuing Kellee. I still had the comms, and I pressed the small circular unit into place behind my ear.

  We passed down narrow mine shafts, boots splashing in puddles, and through chambers like the ones in the prison, only much smaller. A few people passed us, some wearing masks, others coated in dust.

  “You’re the messenger, right?” Natalie asked.

  “I was one,” I replied.

  “No, the messenger. The one who that fae nut sack framed for Crater’s murder?”

  Kellee must have told her the truth. What else had he told her? How I’d been out of my mind and lost to the dreams while her people fought for survival? “I was her.”

  She screwed up her nose. “Was it you or not? Because he said you’re something special and we need special right now.”

  “It was me—it is me,” I corrected. “I’ll do what I can.” Special? Dammit, Kellee. He should never have built me up. What in the fresh Faerie hells had he been thinking?

  “Guess the bounty means shit now, huh?” Natalie mused, gripping a guardrail and splashing ahead.

  I’d forgotten about the fortune on my head. “Well, since the fae nut sack was the one paying the bounty, the only reward would probably have been a quick trip to a hole in the ground.” If lucky.

  We marched on, weaving between rubble and around cracks in the floor.

  “You know why he had Crater killed, right?” Natalie asked, tossing the question over her shoulder.

  “No idea.” Eledan had never told me.

  “Crater and his team were drilling into uncharted ground—because they’re idiots and never knew when to keep their heads down and do as they’re told.” Her voice echoed ahead, joining the mumbling of other voices. “He had some grand idea to lead a rebellion. They were looking for water to fund his crusade.”

  “What did they find?”

  “The well.” Natalie’s eyes crinkled above her mask. “The mother lode of magic—off the fucking charts—with Arcon’s foundations drilled right into it. Crater reported it. Next day, him, his drilling team, and the marshal he reported to were dead.”

  A reservoir of magic below Arcon? The magic Eledan had been harvesting? The magic he had used to heal Kellee? This was significant. Eledan wouldn’t abandon a find like that. Was that why the warcruiser was sitting in orbit? “Is it still there, untapped?”

  She snorted. “You don’t think Arcon surviving in the middle of all this devastation was luck, do you? The Arcon buildings are all intact—no people, we checked. I guess the magic it’s sitting on is too.”

  A source of natural fae magic outside of Faerie? I eyed the jagged cracks in the tunnel walls with concern. The magic was nearby, and the fae lingered in orbit… This didn’t feel right. “Who else knows about this?”

  “Only a few of us. But Kellee said you would want to know.”

  “He was right.”

  A line of men and women cleared debris from the tunnel ahead. Their murmurs grew louder as we drew nearer.

  I couldn’t shake the image of the hulking warcruiser sitting in orbit. Waiting. For what? “Natalie, are you sure this was an accident?”

  “Well, there ain’t no fae down here, and we’ve got early warning systems in place. No landing craft or missiles came from the cruiser if that’s what you’re getting at. Maybe it was an accident, maybe not, but right now we’re more concerned with getting people out. Here.” We stopped where a central junction stretched in five directions. Two of the tunnels were blocked. “This is as far as we can get. Kellee said you were good with tek.” She waved at a blocked tunnel. “So… do your thing.”

  People stopped digging. Grim, dust-coated faces watched me. Some looked hopeful, others barely looked as though they were mentally in the same place as the rest of us.

  I tapped the comms to activate it. “Kellee?” The signal hissed in my ear. “Kellee, can you hear me?” Nothing. I shook my head. “I need to get closer to the section behind the rubble. Is there another chamber nearby? It doesn’t have to be connected.”

  “The rec room,” a young woman said, maybe half my age. “When it’s quiet, you can hear the drilling through the walls.”

  Natalie led me along more tortuous tunnels, passing more pale faces and blank stares. These people… they couldn’t survive long down here. Their quiet desperation worked niggling concerns into the back of my thoughts. But with the cruiser in orbit, they had no means of escape. They were trapped. And their withered expressions said they knew they were just waiting out the days until the fae came or their filters gave up.

  My comms crackled, and a voice tripped into my ear. Just fragments of words. But I knew it. I stopped outside the rec room. “Kellee?”

  “Kesh…”

  Natalie whirled. “You hear him?”

  I waved her question away and closed my eyes, listening hard. “Kellee, move around. I need you to find a better spot. I almost have you.”

  “Are you sure it’s him you hear, little saru?”

  I snapped my eyes open at the sound of Eledan’s smooth, silky question and spun, looking for the Dreamweaver. He wasn’t here. Of course he wasn’t here. He couldn’t be here.

  “What?” Natalie asked, eyes widening as she caught my panicked expression.

  “I…” Just Natalie and I stood in the corridor. Eledan was a hundred thousand miles away on a warcruiser. He wasn’t here, playing games in an abandoned mine.

  “Did you hear him or not?” Natalie huffed.

  “Shh!” I snapped. “Just… just be quiet. Let me listen.”

  “I’m not so far away that I can’t hear your heart fluttering, little bird.”

  No. This was not the time to fall into madness. He wasn’t here, even if the touch of his words teased through my hair behind my ear. It wasn’t real.

  “Kellee? Please…” It had been lies before—the nights and nights we had talked—but I needed him to hear me now. I needed this to be real, not just for me, but for the hopeless people here.

  “Kesh!” Kellee’s voice boomed.

  “Yes! I hear you. I hear you—”

  “Get off Calicto!”

  My eyes snapped open.

  Eledan wrapped his arm around Natalie’s neck. His long black hair swept forward, over his shoulder and her. He whispered sweet words into her ear, words that held her still and emptied out her mind. Her eyes lost focus. A lurid smile alighted on her lips. Eledan smothered her face with his other hand and yanked.

  I heard the sickening crack and watched her collapse.

  Not real, not real, not real.

&nb
sp; Eledan stepped over her crumpled body.

  No, there were hundreds of people here. He couldn’t be real. They would have seen him.

  “Hello, Wraithmaker.” He lifted his gaze, looking through delicate eyelashes. “I neglected to thank you for the message you brought me.” Liquescent green power rippled around his fingers. The power of illusion.

  A shout sounded behind me, tugging on my awareness and bringing me back from the dream. The teenager who had helped earlier fell to her knees beside Natalie’s body. “What happened?” Her fingers went to her neck, though it was clear from the unnatural angle of the body that Natalie was dead. “You…” She looked up. “Did you do this?” Her hand flew to her mouth.

  She thought I’d killed Natalie? “No, no, I…” She couldn’t see the prince because he was in my head.

  Eledan arched an eyebrow and came closer. “Killing is all you’re good for.” I watched his lips form the words, lips that were quick to snarl, quick to whisper promises. “And you never did like that one. She was a touch too close to your marshal for your liking.”

  No, it was a lie.

  Eledan’s lips mimicked a sad frown. “Oh, I can almost hear those thoughts in your pretty head desperately trying to rationalize what you’ve done.”

  The woman was screaming. Others would come. If this wasn’t real, then had I killed Natalie? I had killed Kellee’s friend.

  Eledan approached, so clearly fae, wrapped in fitted leathers. Leathers painted with his kill marks. The same marks tainted his skin. He was right there, just a few strides from me. So real. So close that the people should see him.

  “You can’t see him?” I asked, but my voice was too soft and the screams too loud.

  Eledan circled around me. The air tightened with the scent of citrus. He threaded his fingers through my hair, brushing it back from my face. “When did you last inject yourself with the vakaru’s clever nectus oil? It has been too long, no?”

  I blinked up at Eledan. He couldn’t know about that, unless none of this was real. And so, if none of this was real, it didn’t matter what I did or said, or what happened next, because I was asleep somewhere, lost to the madness. Please, let me be sleeping.

  Eledan’s deft fingers plucked the comms from behind my ear. He studied the small device. “All those nights you spoke with me, revealing your weaknesses, your secrets. You begged him to stay with you, to keep you real. And all the while you were begging me. I know all your little secrets, Messenger.” He leaned in, his gaze filling mine, pulling me down. “I know your desires. A little saru who only really wants to be loved. You poor creature. My kind can never love something like you, and you kill your own kind, so…” He dropped the comms and brushed his fingers across my mouth. “I knew if I created a disaster, plucked on the strings of human compassion, your marshal would bring you back to Calicto.”

  The rock fall had been his doing? So, this was real. All of this was real. And he was wrapped in illusion. “What do you want, Dreamweaver?”

  He took my hand in his—the touch so gentle I could pretend it meant something—and pressed it to his chest. “Mother’s gift was not enough.”

  His heartbeat drummed against my palm, and inside, tek ticked. Mab’s magic hadn’t cured him. He still had his human-made metal heart.

  Shouts erupted around me, but all I could see was his terrible beauty, his piercing eyes, his razor-sharp smile. I saw it all, and I saw the truth behind it. The fae weren’t beautiful. They were monsters. They might have raised me and I might have spent my entire life begging them to let me love them, but that life was over. That nothing girl was gone.

  I stretched onto my tiptoes and brushed my lips against his. “I’ll remove your heart, Prince.”

  With his hand on mine, our wrists pressed together, I felt the shape of the dagger hidden inside his bracer. His mouth brushed against mine, his breath cool on my tongue. I remembered his taste, his poison.

  With my left hand, I snatched the blade free—the same dagger he had slashed across Kellee’s neck—and thrust it forward. The blade punched into his chest. Magic burst, and his illusion collapsed. He roared and tore away, stumbling over Natalie’s body and into the crowd of stunned onlookers.

  “They see you now,” I whispered.

  Blood dribbled down his chest and dripped around him. I had missed his heart, but that didn’t matter. I had never seen anything so satisfying. I wanted more.

  Eledan’s face twisted into a snarl. He snagged the gazes of the two people nearest him and barked, “You. Humans. Stop her. Don’t kill her.” He swayed and looked down, noticing the blood coating his hands.

  The two onlookers—drenched in his magic—charged. I spun away from the first, sinking an elbow into his neck to drop him, and kicked the legs out from under the second.

  “I see you now,” I called to him. “I see you, and I will ruin you like I promised I would.”

  Shouts rolled in from behind me. More people were coming.

  “Stay back!” I barked, hoping they listened. He would kill them.

  Eledan straightened and pulled his top lip back in a snarl. “You’re nothing, Messenger.”

  I eyed his chest and twisted the dagger in the air. Blood coated my hand and ran down my arm. “Come close and I will carve out your heart for you. Isn’t that what you want?”

  His gaze skipped behind me, and whatever he saw gave him pause. He didn’t want me dead, and the situation was rapidly spiraling out of his control. This wasn’t the place for us to dance. We both knew it.

  He turned and ran.

  “Don’t,” I warned those who started after him. They saw the blood on the dagger, saw the raw intensity on my face, and hung back. “You won’t catch him.” But I would.

  Their faces turned to me. Anger and fear blazed in the eyes of the young and old. They weren’t soldiers. Eledan would toss them aside the way his kind did with saru. But I wasn’t just saru. I wasn’t just a messenger. I had one more trick up my sleeve.

  I breathed in, denying the itch of insanity its hold, and addressed them all. “There’s a fae among you. The Dreamweaver.” Gasps broke the quiet. “Stay together. If anyone starts acting out of character, restrain them. Nobody goes anywhere alone.”

  Fearful shouts rose up. “We have to run.” “Can’t fight him.” “He’ll kill us!”

  He might. “No!” I barked. “Stay calm. Stay close. I will stop him.” His blood, stark against the steel of the stolen dagger, sold my argument for me. I lifted it, let them get a good look at the dagger, at me. It was real, so damn real. And there would be more fae blood spilled. A river of it. “I’m your messenger, and I promise I will end all of this.”

  The crowd huddled closer, Natalie’s body between them and me. Beside her lay the discarded comms unit. I picked it up, ignoring the wary but hopeful glances flicking over me.

  “Kesh, he’s here!” Kellee said. “You need to get off Calicto—”

  “No. I need to kill a prince, and you, Marshal, are going to help me.”

  Chapter 26

  That fae prick is somewhere in the mines. He won’t stray far from the unmapped section where the well is.” The marshal—bloody and racked with too many emotions for me to decipher—paced back and forth in a room that had once been a monitoring station. Some of the cameras still worked, relaying live images from the inhabited sections of the mine. Talen monitored the screens, his hood up to conceal his faeness, while Kellee seethed behind him.

  It took a day to dig out Kellee and the rest of the survivors, during which time I walked all the tunnels and shafts, leaving no corner unexplored. I had found no traces of Eledan.

  “I knew…” Kellee muttered. “I knew something was wrong. That section of mine should never have collapsed.”

  “It’s done.” I watched the screens, searching for anything suspicious among the displaced miners while keeping Kellee in the corner of my eye. “He wants me, and to get to me he’ll use anything he thinks I care about.” I didn’t look up, b
ut I sensed Kellee abruptly stop pacing.

  “So, whatever you care about, we use it as bait,” Kellee suggested, apparently volunteering. He just didn’t know it.

  Eledan had ensured, during the long nights of loneliness when he had pretended to soothe me to sleep, that I cared for the marshal. I despised how easily he had suckered me. The thought alone twisted my insides. But that didn’t change the fact I did care for Kellee, even though I hardly knew him.

  Talen looked my way, reading my expression without me having to say the words.

  Kellee noticed our shared glances. “What is it?”

  “Marshal Kellee.” Talen turned the chair to face Kellee. “You are her weakness. He uses you against her. Why do you think it was your name she called out while we worked to bring her back from the madness?”

  “I…” the marshal stammered. He looked at me, and then quickly darted his gaze away.

  I leaned back against the monitoring consoles and folded my arms. “He went to a lot of effort to use you, or my knowledge of you, against me.”

  Kellee laughed, actually laughed. It was so unexpected I couldn’t hide my surprise. “You know that wasn’t real,” Kellee scoffed.

  My feelings were a joke now? “It was to me.”

  “Whatever it was or wasn’t,” Talen interrupted, “he will use you or Kesh’s awareness of you to pull her back in. We need to set up the trap on our terms.”

  Kellee dropped into a chair and hunched forward, sinking his fingers into his hair. He stayed that way—shoulders locked—long enough for me to worry. His friend had died, and he hadn’t once mentioned her. I’d seen him angry, seen him barely restrained, but this was different. He was hurting, and I couldn’t help him. It was made worse by the fact I had watched Eledan kill Natalie and hadn’t lifted a finger to stop him.

  “He needs the tek removed.” I sighed and rubbed at the ache building at my temples. “The fae won’t accept him if they know he has human tek around his heart. That’s why he’s here and why he’s desperate. He’s the returning prince. He’s supposed to be their hero. As Mab’s son, he’s in line for the crown, but the tek taints all that. He’ll do anything to have me remove it. I’ve already shown him that I’m willing to kill myself to protect you… He will use you, Kellee.”