by D. D. Miers
What kind of humans let themselves be so enamored with the Fae they’d be willing to hurt their own people? The shitty kind, that was who.
Ronen spread a thin layer of the noxious liquid beneath my nose.
I hadn’t expected that, so I didn’t have time to stop him. It was pungent in all the wrong ways; it stung my eyes and left my throat constricting in unbidden retches.
Through my inward agony, I heard Aedan’s continued protests. “Ronen, we aren’t trying to hurt her.” He stood up, the sight of him off-kilter in my wavering vision as he grasped the chair I sat in and pulled me off the wall.
“It’s an interrogation, Aedan, not a get-together.”
“I would much prefer the latter.” I moaned as my spinning vision settled, leaving me in a constant state of nausea. The stench never faded, leaving me wishing I could escape its grasp, but hard as I tried, there was no wiping it free without the use of my arms.
“Now, we wait.” Ronen sat beside Aedan, his arms pulled up over his head in smug satisfaction. I wanted to punch his lights out and force the foul extracts down his throat, so it would cling to his tongue and linger for days.
Unable to control myself, I began to mumble, the incoherent strings foreign to my ears. It was as though I were possessed, and the being within rambled in a language no one in the room understood. Terrified, I drifted in and out of consciousness several times over. My head hung forward, the full weight of it pulling upon my neck as I gave up entirely under what felt like the weight of twenty sleepless nights.
Their voices came in slowly, and I was able to make sense again of their words.
“What do you think it means?” Aedan asked.
Ronen cleared his throat. “I’m not certain, but it can’t be a coincidence.”
“I don’t think so either.” Aedan paused. “But could the shadows—”
I wanted to hear more, but I couldn’t stop the moan from slipping from my lips, reminding them of my presence.
“So…” I heard Ronen’s hands clap on the opposite side of the room. “Are we ready to try again?”
My mouth parted to curse, but it came out only half coherent.
Ronen seemed to derive enjoyment from my agony as he laughed. “Almost there.”
In slow order, my ramblings formed full-fledged syllables, until my head lifted in a flurry of curses swung straight at Ronen.
He rose, a smile plastered on his face. “Your name,” he demanded again.
“Sloane…” My name dragged out on my tongue as I fought an insistent urge to continue with the full length of my name. Somehow, I resisted.
My response only made the man’s lips quirk. “And where did you come from?”
“The…Outlands,” I began, unable to hold back the torrent of need that forced me to speak from within. Whatever he’d given me, whatever he’d done, had loosened my lips beyond my willpower. Yet, I was going to fight fire with fire if it killed me. “Falseon Lake,” I got out with a spat of breath. It was true, in a sense.
“And why are you here?”
“I don’t even want to be in your stupid city.” Something within me seemed to crack as I fought to yank free of my bonds.
“Then, why did you come?” he asked through narrowed eyes.
I feared giving the name of another, of anyone they might harm because of me. “To find my brother. That’s it.” I let out a lengthy groan of upset; at them and myself for having the search for my brother halted. “As soon as I find him, we’ll leave. We won’t come back.”
“Why would your brother be here?”
“Because he traded goods every few months. Otherwise, we had nothing to do with you. We stayed in the Outlands, minding our own business.”
Ronen and Aedan exchanged a look.
“Who is your brother?”
My teeth ground so tightly I feared one would crack. Still, it was enough as his name came out incomprehensible. Whatever he’d forced upon me disallowed me from halting the truth, but it couldn’t force me to make it audible. Why did it matter who my brother was?
“He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
Ronen grasped the chair’s back, anger flooding through his tone as he shook me until my bones hurt. “Who is your brother?”
“Killion!” I screamed, both in answer and in a desperate plea for him to swing through the door and save me.
I hadn’t even noticed when Aedan pulled Ronen’s hands from the chair and pushed him aside. “Sloane,” he asked, far more calmly as I looked up to his vibrant eyes that glowed amber like a sunset. “What is your brother’s last name?”
Serum or not, I held back my breath and answered, seeing no other way out of this. “Hunter.”
He recoiled, as if I’d slapped him across the face, and my anger swiftly returned. “What? What have you bastards done to him?”
I hated them, all of them, and hoped they would—
“We haven’t done anything,” Ronen grumbled angrily as he strode toward the door. He ran a hand through his hair as he and Aedan exchanged a long look. “But…”
“But what?” I demanded.
He grabbed the handle and yanked it open, casting a last glance at me. His eyes focused intently on mine, and he spoke four words that would forever change my world.
“Your brother is gone.”
“What do you mean by gone?”
“He’s dead, Sloane.”
5
“I don’t believe you.”
Even with my hands still tied behind my back, I remained defiant. In my mind, there was some feeling people were supposed to have, deep down in their guts, that told them if someone close to them had died. I hadn’t felt it, and so I refused to believe his words.
Without warning, Aedan slipped behind me and made quick work of freeing my bonds. I grasped at my wrists, rubbing at the flesh that stung, not from how tightly they’d been bound, but how hard I’d pulled.
The door lay open at Ronen’s hand, piquing my curiosity as he and Aedan stared at me, waiting. The latter’s head nodded down the corridor. “Follow us.”
“No.” I saw no reason to trust a word they’d said, and though I had no escape from this room, it didn’t mean I had to play along. Instinctively, my hand reached for the leather holster that wrapped around my chest, only for my fingers to find it devoid of my weapons.
Ronen’s head shook. “Do you really think we left your blades on you when you tried to kill Darius?”
“Give me my weapons back.”
“Look, you have two choices.” Ronen raised a set of fingers into the air, counting as he spoke. “One, you can leave out that door right there,” his finger jutted just up the hall, “and take your chances scouring the city for a brother who is no longer alive. Or you can follow me and learn what Killion was doing for us, what truly happened to him—and why.”
I cautiously rose to my feet, ready to throw fists if I had to. I expected to find they were entirely wrong, that somehow there was another Killion, and it wasn’t my brother who was dead. That was the true reason I followed. Not to be proven wrong, but to reassure myself I was right.
Killion Hunter, my brother, was missing—not dead—and there was no way he’d ever have anything to do for or with these people.
Nondescript walls of ivory stone lay bare as I followed Ronen and Aedan down the winding halls. Most doors stood shut, sealing me out from seeing anything, but the ones that were open looked like nothing more than offices. Fae and their humans chatted away around stacks of books. It was a far cry from the prison cell and torture chambers I’d half expected. Yet, not one wore the traditional Sonola Fae armor.
“We’ll start with this, first.” It was Aedan’s voice that swept me into a large room behind them. The long space was stacked with shelves, floor to ceiling with assorted items from weapons to baskets, to old headphones that had cracked with age.
“And what am I supposed to learn from this place?”
Aedan moved toward a small square des
k in the corner and grabbed something from a leather case. He returned and stood in front of me. There he held a few leaves of paper out at arm’s reach. “Take a look.”
My eyes narrowed sharply as I snatched them away. He’d been the nice one out of the two captors, yet somehow, I hated him just as much, if not more. At least Ronen showed his true nature. Aedan was the worst kind of villain. The kind who pretended to offer kindness, to care, in order to get what they wanted.
I glanced down and opened the folded paper until its contents were revealed. All my thoughts washed away as I looked at what was unmistakably my brother’s work.
Graphite and charcoal splashed across the pages in a dance of patterns only Killion could have made. I’d seen his drawings before, so many times. In fact, I could usually find his artwork folded in my pocket at any moment. He was an artist of sight, and while these were pieces I’d never seen before, I knew without a doubt they were his. No one captured the spirit of the forest quite like that, and there, within the puffs of the clouds, lay his hidden signature: a gently curving ‘K’ that anyone else would miss.
“Where the hell did you get these? What did you do to him?” Tears burned at my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.
Aedan said, “I know you are angry—confused—but we didn’t harm Killion. We wouldn’t have.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“I don’t think you are.”
I swallowed down a sob that wanted to escape. “Why would I believe you?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“Says the people who beat me up, drugged me, and held me captive.”
I didn’t offer to return the drawings as I held them close to my chest. Instead, I stuffed them into the slip of my pocket. He was my brother, and none of these men, whoever they were, deserved any of them.
“This means nothing,” I snapped as my fear and worry bubbled to the surface.
Ronen grumbled something inaudible as he swept back out the door.
I looked angrily to Aedan, the mere bystander who’d yet to walk out. “You could have killed him and taken these, or maybe he dropped them, or they could have been stolen from him…anything. I have no reason to trust either of you.”
Killion wouldn’t have been here. He wouldn’t have made friends with these people. They must have had something to do with whatever had befallen him and were now trying to convince me otherwise, but why? Why go through the effort—unless they needed something from me—or meant to torment me cruelly before ending me.
Aedan didn’t look entirely suspect with his scarred leather pants and loose linen shirt that somehow managed to magnify his powerful physique. I couldn’t see a single weapon on him, but I knew better than to think that negated the threat he exuded. Though he wasn’t a Fae, he still held the same air of confidence and strength that was inbred into all of them. Yet, there was something about him, something that made me detest the way he looked at me, even if it was without judgment.
“Follow me,” he said.
He gave me nothing else to go on, leaving me clenching the pages in my pocket as I followed behind. Even on his back, it appeared he held no weapons. Ronen was a different story; his loose wool pants held at least one visible knife at the waistband. I was certain several more were hidden out of sight. I’d need to remember that, in case they changed their minds about letting me leave.
I stepped over the threshold of a room that swept a chill straight through to my bones. There was no explanation, especially not as my skin remained warm to the touch.
The ceiling curved upward, looking as if it were hewn from a cave itself with roughened edges and uneven walls that took no sharp corners. It was entirely different from the almost-sterile hall we’d come from, and everything within lay covered in haphazardly stitched strips of cloth.
The dirt floor crunched beneath my boots with each step I took behind Ronen and Aedan.
“What is this place?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Ronen said as he came to a stop before a particularly cramped row of whatever the draped cloths were hiding. My breath seized the moment he pulled back the corner.
“Killion.”
I dropped to my knees, the pain minor in comparison to the choking cry that tore at my lungs. “Killion, oh God. Why?” My fingers curled into his shirt, the one he’d left camp in. It had always been his favorite, and now it would be his last as it hung from his lifeless form.
His eyes were closed, and his lips lay flat, save for the faintest of curls upon one side. Even in death, he looked amused, a fact which pushed tears even harder down my cheeks.
“You weren’t supposed to leave me.” I brushed back his thick raven locks. “You’re all I had left.”
I half expected to hear his smart voice telling me I was being ridiculous, or to feel the nudge of his hand playfully knocking me away.
Neither came.
For a long while I laid there with my head against his chest, wholly aware of the silence within. Never again would his heart beat, nor would I ever hear his laughter or charm.
It was difficult to say how long I clung to my brother with the hope that magic could somehow turn back time. It was a childish dream, but it was one I held on to as my tears dried and my breath evened.
Slowly, I pulled at the cloth and tucked it under his chin, as if he were merely sleeping.
“What did you do to him? Why is he here?” I took a shaky breath. “I don’t understand any of this. Killion wouldn’t have chosen to be here. He hated the Fa—” I stopped, but not fast enough.
“Your brother…” Ronen emphasized the word, perhaps to ensure I listened to his next statement. “He chose to be here. Whatever secrets he kept from you doesn’t diminish that truth.”
I wanted to fight, to argue and scream that it was nothing but lies, but I couldn’t. My heart ached with anger and regret. I wanted to know what happened to the last of my flesh and blood.
“Who did this?”
“We aren’t certain,” Ronen answered. “He was found far from here, near Nuxvar Pass.”
“Nuxvar?” My surprise was not well hidden. The pass was one I’d heard about, dangerous and filled with rockslides and attacks that happened almost daily. Killion had always told me to stay as far away from it as possible, and I was one to oblige given it was beyond the Fae border. “Killion would never go there.”
“Well, he did, and that’s where we found him.” Ronen, it seemed, was lacking in human compassion. “He was brought back here so he wouldn’t succumb to it.”
“Succumb to what?”
“The darkness. The shadows. We don’t really know what to call it.”
“How often have you wandered the forests at night?” Aedan asked, making me suddenly aware of his proximity as I jumped to my feet and backed away.
“Not often, but I traveled through it last night.”
“And did it not seem odd to you? Darker somehow?”
My lips pursed. Had it seemed different somehow? “It did seem different, yes…”
Aedan’s muscular arms slipped across his chest. “How about creatures or beasts that seemed a twisted version of something you know?”
My attention snapped toward him so quickly there was no denying my answer. “I killed one last night. It was like a bear but far worse.”
“This darkness, this sickness, it plagues the land. Were we to leave your brother out there, he would have twisted into a creature of death.”
I wanted to disbelieve him, to throw back his own ridiculous words into his face. Yet, how could I after what I’d seen? I hadn’t let myself think too much on the massive beast that had swiped at me with twisted claws and lanky arms that weren’t like any bear I’d ever seen. I’d been too busy merely surviving to allow myself as much, and now there was no turning back.
Looking about the room, it dawned on me with a sudden twist of my gut that it was filled with bodies, hundreds—if not more—tucked away to avoid the same grim fate. Death was bad
enough; I didn’t want to worry I’d keep on going as some sadistic twisted monster afterward. More surprising, though, was the complete lack of smell. There was no hint of putrid flesh or rotting corpses where I was certain there should have been.
“I need to go.” I had to get back to the encampment, to warn the others and tell Leander his hunting partner would never return. Just maybe, he’d give me more of an idea about why Killion had been in the pass at all.
“I’ll be back for my brother’s body.”
Turning toward the door, I was halted by Aedan’s broad chest that stood firmly in my way. He was all kinds of infuriating, so stoic with his perfectly swept brown locks falling halfway down his cheek.
“Killion can’t leave this place, Sloane. Not if you want to save his soul.”
I clenched my fists far too tight, my nails digging into my palms. “Move.”
“I can’t let you go either, Sloane. Not yet.”
I hated how familiar my name sounded on his tongue, as if he’d said it a thousand times before. “What, so I’m your damn prisoner now?”
“No.” He glanced to Ronen and back to me. “I need you to listen.”
I stood as defiantly as I could while staring him down, or up, given he stood a head taller. “Out with it.”
“We need your help.”
“You need my help?” He had to be joking—or mocking me. Human or not, Aedan worked for the Fae. I didn’t trust him. “The Fae, as everyone knows, do not ask for help from anyone.”
“You’re the only one who can do this.”
Melodramatic. I exhaled, emotionally exhausted and ready for this entire conversation to be over with. I wanted to leave. To go home and mourn my brother, but Aedan still didn’t move.
“Do what?” I finally asked.
“Take your brother’s place.”
6
“Take his place, how?”
Aeden rubbed at the back of his neck, the conversation clearly making him uncomfortable. “To work with his Fae familiar and stop this darkness from rising.”
“You actually think I would help you people?” Laughter bubbled up my throat even though I failed to see humor in any of it. “You can’t be serious. I don’t even know if any of this is true. For all I know, you killed Killion.”
