Radiant Shadows tf-4

by Melissa Marr

  “When?”

  “In my dream.” He stared at her. “Before our dreams…”

  “That was real? What we… you and me… and…” She leaned closer until she was once more braced over him, and placed a hand on either shoulder.

  “I told you it was real.” He reached up and threaded his fingers through her hair. “Do you regret it?” He let none of his emotions leak through, but she didn’t need to taste his emotions to know he was afraid of her answer.

  “Awake or asleep, I want you,” she assured. “The only reason I’d say no in the waking world is because I like you, but if it’s safe there—and it is, right?”

  “Yes. It’s safe there.” He smiled, but there was also tension in his expression.

  “How? How did we do that? Share a dream, I mean.”

  “There are those who can walk in dreams,” he murmured.

  “And we did? You knew, and we—” She broke off and kissed him until she was breathless. “Are you tired enough to sleep more?”

  “I would rather stay here with you, fall asleep or stay awake, just be with you, but I need to go.” He paused, frowned, and then said, “Faerie is coming unmade. I need to retrieve Seth and deliver him to Sorcha.”

  “Say that again.” She stared at him, trying to process the enormity of what he’d announced so casually. The revelation about what they’d done—and that it was real!—shook her world, but the second announcement wasn’t the good kind. “What you just said. Repeat it.”

  Devlin propped himself up on his elbows. “I need to collect Seth before we can resume… anything.”

  Ani realized that she was watching him like she was transfixed. “Give me a sec here, Dev.” She slid farther back from him and tried to focus. “Faerie is coming apart… what does that even mean?”

  “Within Faerie, reality is a reflection of the queen’s will. Once there were two courts there, and the world was the combined visions of the two monarchs. With the Dark Court gone from Faerie, there is only Sorcha, and she appears to be ill from mourning her s—Seth’s absence. If Faerie vanishes, we all die with it.” Devlin sat up and wrapped a black leather tie around the hair he’d gathered at the nape of his neck. His movements were unhurried; his tone was calm.

  And the world is ending.

  It wasn’t like Ani thought often about Faerie, but it was their homeland. In some primal part of herself, of every faery, there was a chord that was struck at the thought of Faerie. For her, Faerie was forbidden, but somewhere inside she’d still known that it was there.

  “I will take him to her and return quickly.” Devlin stood and retrieved his shirt. As he spoke, he put on his shirt and shoes. “I’m certain we will resolve it. I’m not sure the seasonal courts need to be made aware, but the Dark Kings need to be informed. Perhaps if I cannot wake her, they can… come home.”

  “What do you need me to do?” she asked.

  “Tell your steed that invisibility and optimum speed are required. Blending in with the mortals aids us in hiding you, but I fear that the time to retrieve Seth for the High Queen is limited.” Devlin’s words and manner were becoming increasingly aloof.

  “Devlin?” Ani put a hand on his arm.

  He paused.

  “Is she going to be okay? Your sister?” Regardless of what Ani thought of the High Queen, Sorcha was Devlin’s sister. If Tish were sick, Ani would be lost.

  “The High Queen has never been ill,” he said. “I will do what must be done, but I cannot say that I am without worry… or frustration. Her behavior is—” He stopped himself. “The High Queen should not mourn. She should not grow ill over emotion. Something else has happened, but Rae didn’t tell—”

  “Rae?”

  “She delivered the message from Faerie.”

  “You know Rae,” Ani said slowly. “Rae from the dreams?”

  “Yes.” Devlin gave her an unreadable look. His emotions were so tamped down that she had no idea what he felt.

  She didn’t know what to say.

  And when she didn’t respond, he asked, “What do you need to do before we depart?”

  “Give me fifteen minutes.” She walked past him to the bathroom.

  Rae is real. Ani had just learned that her dream with Devlin was real, but hearing Devlin mention Rae so casually startled her. Who is she to him? What is she?

  Ani absently went through the motions of washing up and brushing her teeth as she replayed every detail she knew about Rae. There were more questions than Ani could fully process, but in light of what Devlin had told her, asking about Rae seemed unnecessarily selfish.

  Chapter 26

  Devlin held Ani’s discarded shirt in his hands. He’d kissed Ani, shared a dream with her, and for a few brief moments, his life had been his own. After an eternity of existing as an object in an endless conflict between his sisters, the possibility of living on his own terms was intoxicating—and interrupted already.

  Sorcha’s maudlin emotion over Seth was forcing Devlin to choose between staying at Ani’s side to keep her safe from his mad sister or abandoning her because of the solipsism of his other sister. Being near Ani had made him realize he wanted a life that he knew he couldn’t have as the High Queen’s Bloodied Hands. He was made to exist as the fulcrum between Order and Discord; he only had value because he served the will of the Unchanging Queen and reminded War not to kill them all by killing Order.

  I want to determine my own path.

  Ani returned to the main room. “I have questions. You’re keeping things from me, but they’ll wait. I’ll wait.”

  “You’ll wait for what?”

  “Answers. You. Time. Whatever this is”—she came over and took his hands—“it’s not going to go away. I don’t really buy the whole fate thing. I know the Eolas claim to know the future, and so do… your sisters, but it’s not always as set as all that. Some things, though, feel like they’re right. You and me? It’s one of those things. I don’t know what they see or why things are such a mess, but in the middle of it all, I do know that being around you is really the best thing that’s happened to me in, well, ever.”

  Her words only made him surer that he needed to keep her safe.

  “My sisters cannot see your threads.” He looked down at their hands and then back at her as he added, “They cannot see those whose threads are tangled into their own futures… or, they say, into mine.”

  She held tight to him and asked, “So I’m in their future or yours? Can you see future threads?”

  “I can.” He pulled his hands free and paced to the window of the tiny room. This wasn’t a topic he enjoyed discussing.

  “Can you see mine?”

  “I tried, but… no.” He didn’t look at her or speak of the fact that this meant that their lives were entangled as far as her future stretched. “The only way for them to see you is through ordinary channels—a faery who carries word to them, or your presence where they can see you.”

  “You can’t see my future at all,” she prompted.

  He wasn’t hiding his emotions away, not now. Instead, he let Ani feel his worry and his hopes. “I haven’t been able to see your future since you were not-killed… since I didn’t… It’s not that you’ve lacked an existence but because you… we…”

  “Because your life and mine are entangled,” she finished.

  “In some way.” He looked out at the parking lot. “Maybe you should stay here in the room, maybe—”

  “No.” She was right behind him when she said it.

  He looked over his shoulder at her. “Either of my sisters would kill you without compunction. I can’t lose you.”

  “I know.” She put a hand on his arm and tugged so he was facing her. “You aren’t using any sort of logic, Devlin. Hounds can’t stay trapped, and even if I could, wouldn’t it at least be safer to have someone with me?”

  He growled, a sound that was very not–High Court, but nothing inside of him felt High Court anymore. “I don’t know whether you’re safer i
n the mortal world or in Faerie. Perhaps stay here, and Irial—”

  Ani reached up and pulled him down for a kiss. “No.”

  “Call Irial. See if he’d come here.” Devlin hated the idea of Ani trapped in a room with the embodiment of temptation, but he hated the idea of Ani being killed even more.

  All of these emotions are… too much.

  She felt them all, knew every emotion he was trying to make sense of, allowed him to express them even if his centuries of hiding them kept them from being visible.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “You with me and safe.” He knew it wasn’t logical, but he didn’t want to be apart from Ani.

  “One problem solved then.” She picked up the shirt he’d been holding earlier. After she shoved it and the rest of her belongings into the bag, she zipped it. “That’s what I want too. I’m going with you at least as far as Huntsdale. We’ll figure out the rest after we talk to Iri.”

  “And Niall. We will consult the Dark King,” he said.

  She lifted her bag. “And Gabriel. He’s likely to be difficult. There’s this whole no-dating-the-Gabriel’s-daughter thing….”

  Devlin shrugged, but he let her feel the excitement that filled him. “We are, though.”

  “We are,” Ani repeated in a soft voice. She stared up at him. “I would fight him for you… well, if he would fight me, but he’s afraid I’m going to get broken.”

  For a moment, Devlin stared at her, not wanting to tell her that she was far more likely to break others than to be broken. He was willing to sacrifice everything he’d ever been for her. He brushed his lips over hers. “Gabriel is a fool. You are not invincible, Ani, but you are not mortal-weak. You are a worthy fighting partner.” Devlin reached through a false pocket on the side of his trousers and slid a knife from a thigh sheath. He held it out. “Here. I know you have yours, but… I would give you… if you…”

  She took it. “A girl can never have too many weapons.”

  He lifted her bag from her shoulder. “You need to wake the steed.”

  “Dev?” She gave him a very serious look and put her hand on his chest. “I’ll do my best to be careful with everything you are giving me.”

  He didn’t have the words to answer that, so he merely nodded.

  She reached out to turn the doorknob, but before she opened it, he put a hand on hers: there were faeries who wanted her dead.

  “May I go first?” he asked.

  “Today, but not always.” She smiled at him. “You know that if there’s any chance to fight, I won’t sit on the sidelines like some silly High Court faery.”

  “You’re the daughter of Gabriel. I wouldn’t expect anything less.” Devlin repressed the surge of happiness he felt at having someone want to fight alongside him.

  The Queen’s Assassin was to be alone. He lived and fought alone. Sorcha had always made that detail explicitly clear. She’d given him soldiers and guards to train; she’d allowed him almost complete power in such matters. There were only two rules: unlike in the other courts, no High Court soldiers were to be female, and his own prowess was to be held as an example. His ability to kill efficiently was proof of his other sister’s parentage. The bloodthirstiness Sorcha abhorred in Bananach, she exploited in Devlin.

  Ani, without meaning to, challenged every limitation he’d lived by for eternity. He hadn’t truly known what he lacked until Ani’s vibrancy had illuminated the emptiness in his life. He had a fleeting image of training Ani. If they were able to leave Sorcha and live as solitaries, they’d need to be stronger than any other faery they met. Her heritage certainly predisposed her to be so: Gabriel had been the left hand of the Dark Court, the dispenser of Irial’s punishments, for centuries. Other Gabriels had preceded him, and Ani was very much like them. Devlin suspected that expectations of mortality were all that had kept Gabriel from training her to lead her own pack. Devlin knew better: when the last of her mortal blood was consumed by her faery blood, she would be able to stand against most any faery.

  He thought of the wolves that attended Ani in her dreams. They were harbingers of the Hunt, but they weren’t feral things pacing near her. They looked to her for guidance.

  Was that what you saw, Sorcha? That she would be strong? Or was it merely that she would be mine?

  Once the High Queen was retrieved from her dream, Devlin had questions he wanted answered before he left her side.

  Chapter 27

  Rae returned to the room where Sorcha slept. Outside the window, the sky appeared to have dimmed, not into darkness but into a chalky palate as if the color was being leeched away. Neither day nor night existed, only perpetual dusk. It meant Rae was free to roam, but that freedom was of little consolation when the world was vanishing.

  “Could you go to the other world?” Rae asked the queen’s attendants. “The mortal world—”

  “No.” One of veiled mortals turned to face Rae. “We stay with our queen. If she dies, we die.”

  “Why?” Rae stared at them.

  “There is nothing for us there. Our queen brought us here, and here is where we stay.” The mortal paused, and longing crept into her voice as she added, “The lives we had there are gone; the people we knew are dead; the rules… it’s not our world now, not with the way time passes.”

  The muted light that fell through the window threw gray shadows over the glass-encased bed. The bed had shrunk and now had a more funereal shape. Rae wasn’t sure if the casketlike appearance was a reflection of the shrinking of the queen’s world or something more; regardless of the reason, it was unnerving.

  With nothing else to do but await dissolution of the world, Rae entered the queen’s dreams once again.

  The leonine guards hissed at her.

  “I don’t want to see you,” Sorcha said. Her gaze did not leave the mirror.

  “Devlin is bringing Seth to you, but he says that Faerie must be as it should be so Seth can reach you.”

  Sorcha gestured at the image in the mirror: Seth was walking down a street. “I can see him. He is not in Faerie.”

  “He will be,” Rae insisted. “Maybe you should wake to ready yourself.”

  At that, Sorcha did pull her gaze from the mirror. The look she gave Rae was withering. “I need a heartbeat to ready myself, child. I am the High Queen, not some mortal who must work at attempting to achieve perfection. When he comes, I’ll wake, but not before. Go and do not disturb me until he is here.”

  There were no more words. One of the winged creatures licked its maw and gave Rae an approximation of a smile. The High Queen’s dreaming guards were extensions of her will, and her will was that she not be disturbed.

  Rae shuddered and stepped back into the darkened room in Faerie.

  Hours later, the stillness was broken by a scream—and another, and then several more. Through a tall glass window on the far side of the cavernous room, Rae could see an unfamiliar faery striding down the street. As she walked, she slashed out with a battle-ax and flung knives at fleeing faeries. All the while she smiled.

  I know you. Rae wasn’t sure how, but the new faery felt familiar. The faery had thick feathered wings, dark tresses that were a combination of hair and feathers, and patterns drawn on her face. Her gaze was darting around assessingly.

  She paused across the street and looked at Rae. The smile she gave Rae was familiar, an unpleasant match to Devlin’s. Devlin’s other sister. Bananach.

  “There you are, girl.”

  Rae heard the words; through wall and glass they flew as if they were physical things sent crashing toward her. She stepped backward, putting herself between Sorcha and the faery who must be Bananach, the High Queen’s mad twin. It wasn’t that Rae could stop Bananach: the insubstantial couldn’t impede the physical. It wasn’t even that she cared to protect Sorcha: the High Queen had done nothing to earn Rae’s loyalty. Rae’s action was the instinctual movement to keep safe the entity that created the world around them. Sorcha created; Bananach destroye
d. That simple fact was enough to align Rae’s loyalty for the moment.

  Bananach grabbed a sleeping faery and tossed him through the window. Shards of glass crashed on the stone floor in a dangerous shower. The faery she’d thrown lay unaware and bleeding. The queen’s two mortals didn’t react at all. They stayed beside their queen’s casket.

  “Run. Now,” Rae said to them. She didn’t turn to see if they obeyed.

  The destructive faery looked to her left and right, reached down and uprooted a small sapling, and used it to knock out the remaining glass in the window frame. Shards hit the stone floor like a glittering rain shower.

  Rae didn’t move, couldn’t move, as Bananach stared at her.

  Bits of glass crunched under Bananach’s boots as she stepped through the window frame into the room.

  “You belong to my brother,” Bananach said by way of greeting.

  The raven-faery leaned close enough to Rae that for a breath it felt like she was going to walk into Rae. Rae moved to the side.

  Bananach sniffed, circling Rae as she did so, and then paused. She tilted her head so close to her own shoulder that it looked as if her neck muscles had been severed. “You smell like him. He’s not here.”

  “He’s not,” Rae agreed.

  Beyond Bananach, Rae could see a few still-awake faeries who stood in the street. They watched the raven-faery as she stalked and circled Rae. They didn’t move, not to help or to flee. They stared with very un–High Court looks of horror on their faces.

  “You have worn his skin”—Bananach sniffed again— “more than a few times. He let you inside of his body.”

  “Devlin is my friend,” Rae said.

  Bananach cackled. “He has no friends. He wasn’t made for such things.”

  Rae straightened her shoulders and stared at the faery. “I am whatever he wants me to be.”

  The faery stared at Rae as if she could see things, and Rae suspected she was seeing things, looking at the threads of Rae’s future. The sensation of being studied thusly was disquieting. Bananach was weighing and measuring her, and if the results weren’t to her liking, there was no reason to believe she’d ignore Rae.