It’s easier to ignore Aren’s past when I’m not directly confronted with it, but seeing what he’s done right in front of me and knowing that this woman isn’t the only person whose life he’s ruined makes me feel sick.
“McKenzie,” Lena breaks into my thoughts. “I thought you’d be with your friend.”
The tor’um turns to see who Lena is talking to, and when she spots me, her face lights up.
“There you are!” she exclaims. She takes a step toward me, then stops. Her brow wrinkles in confusion and, in a completely different, almost disappointed tone, she says, “There you aren’t.”
She’s looking for Paige, I realize, but the only thing I can think of to say is, “Why is she here?”
“She was found skipping outside the wall,” Lena says. She turns back to the tor’um, her gaze taking the woman in head to toe. “Clearly, she wanted to be caught.”
“Clearly!” the tor’um chimes in.
“Why did you want to be caught, Brene?” Kyol asks in Fae. His voice is low, but gentle, and I get the impression that this Brene is someone he admired, someone he’s saddened to see in this state.
She looks like a child concentrating when she frowns. She even has a slight pout to her lips. “I was looking for something.”
“Were you looking for me?” I try, thinking maybe the remnants sent her to find Paige. Aren did this to her, not me, and I know this is unreasonable, but I feel like I owe the tor’um, like I’m obligated to help her because I’m involved with the fae who ruined her life.
Brene squints at me, and I wonder if my pronunciation is off. Then, it’s like she’s looking through me. I glance over my shoulder, but no one is there. When I focus on her again, she shakes her head then tilts her head up to peer at the ceiling. Her demeanor feels off, more off than it was a second ago, at least. I think we might be losing her.
“Brene?” I try using her name. Maybe it will help her refocus.
Her coal gray eyes lock on me. “Un-Paige,” she says. “Tell them I dislike the bracelets.”
“Bracelets?”
She holds up her shackled wrists.
“Can we—”
“No,” Kyol, Lena, and Aren say in unison. Their responses are short and sharp, like taking off the shackles is the worst idea ever. Apparently, they all think Brene is dangerous, even in her semisane state.
I’m not so sure they’re right, though. Without warning, she plops to the ground like a child and starts tracing the edge of the blue carpet runner. She’s babbling in Fae, something about lightning not being able to tell the difference between skin and sky, but she’s using such a singsong voice, I don’t know if I’m translating her correctly.
Lena sits on the top step of her dais and watches Brene. Just for a moment, I think I glimpse pity in her eyes.
“From what we’ve been able to learn from her,” she says, “the remnants don’t know about the serum. Naito will have time to track down his father.”
The serum. Right. That’s the reason I’m here.
“Are you planning to use it?” I ask.
She draws in a slow breath, lets it out. “I would like to,” she says. “It will benefit us. It would benefit you, too, but if you are completely against it? Then, no. I won’t use it.”
I don’t like that answer. I can’t be her moral compass. Kyol tried to be that for King Atroth, and he failed. He failed because the king had someone else whispering in his ear and because Atroth wanted to do what was expedient, not what was best for the fae. I need Lena to do what’s best for the fae and for my people.
She must see my thoughts written on my face. “I know it’s wrong, McKenzie. I won’t involve your people unnecessarily. We still need to get the serum, though. The remnants might not feel the same way we do.”
The knots in my stomach relax. “We’ll need to find and destroy the research, too, or someone might be able to reproduce it. But we don’t have to wait on Naito. I know where the serum is.”
I show them the cell phone. No one gets close to it, of course, so I summarize the texts between Lee and his father. It’s better to think about this, about what we have to do, than to think about Aren and what he did.
“All I need is for someone to take me to Earth, so I can send the text,” I finish. In my peripheral vision, I see Brene lie down flat on her back.
“I’ll take you,” Aren says, stepping to my side.
“No.” I don’t want to be near him right now. I need time to think, to process everything.
“I’ll take you,” he says again, his voice harder this time. “It’ll be a quick trip. I think you can stand me for that long.”
“Kyol can take me.”
“He can’t heal you,” Aren counters. “Come on.”
He places his hand on the small of my back before I protest again. The warmth of his palm is familiar. So is the firm, but gentle pressure he uses to urge me forward. He’s always touched me like this, even when I was doing everything in my power to get away from him, and I remind myself that he’s the same person he was five minutes ago. He’s the same person he was before I found out about his connection to Thrain. And, besides, I won’t fight with him here in front of Lena and Kyol.
He trails slightly behind me as we leave the throne room and pass the palace’s administrative offices. I use the time and space to gather my thoughts. I need to figure out exactly what I’m doing with him. Just when I think I’m close to accepting his past, I learn something new. It’s a blow every time, and I don’t know how many more I can take.
Outside, a bright sun warms what would otherwise be a chilly day. It feels good on my skin, and I soak it in, letting it ease some of the tension in my muscles. Aren moves closer to me now. Even though this is the most affluent area of the Inner City, it’s not 100 percent safe. Most of the high nobles have homes here. The eaves of the buildings are silver-trimmed even though we’re still inside Corrist’s silver walls. It’s purely something to show their status. They have money to throw away on things that aren’t necessities.
We reach the silver wall without incident, then cross the terrace to the river. That’s when Aren takes my hand, pressing an imprinted anchor-stone into my palm.
“If I could undo my past for you, McKenzie, I would. But I don’t have that power. No fae does.”
I watch my chaos lusters dart across the back of the hand he still holds. His touch is hot, tantalizing. I still crave it. “Why do I have to find out about your past like this? When you don’t warn me, it’s like you’re trying to keep things from me.”
“Do I need to name every fae I’ve made tor’um?” he asks quietly.
I meet his eyes, a little startled. “How many are there?”
“I do remember them. Every one,” he says. Then, as if he’s just hearing my question, he adds, “There were five. All but Brene were when I was under Thrain’s tutelage.”
Five. After seeing Brene, it sounds like so many.
Aren bends down to the river to cup water in his hand. He raises his palm to the sky, then the air rumbles as a fissure splits through the atmosphere. I feel like it’s splitting through me.
“Ready?” he asks.
I nod, then let him pull me into the light.
The icy bite of the In-Between makes my muscles tense, and that sends a sharp lance of pain through my side. I hiss out a breath, or try to, but the In-Between has stolen the air from my lungs. When we emerge on the other side, I’m coughing, which makes my ribs feel oh so much better.
I double over, holding my side.
“McKenzie.” Worry fills Aren’s voice. He puts his arm around my waist to support me, and that only makes it worse. My knees hit grass.
“McKenzie,” he says again, more anxious this time.
“Ribs,” I manage to get out. I concentrate on drawing in a slow, careful breath as he slides my shirt up.
“Sidhe.” He crouches beside me. “I know you don’t want me to touch you, but you should have said something. I didn’t
know you were hurt this badly.”
He places his hand over my bruised side. Heat sinks into me as he flares his magic, using it to heal my ribs. They must be cracked or broken because it hurts. It hurts almost as much as it did when he healed the arm Lena broke after I tried to escape the rebels in Germany. My hand clenches on Aren’s forearm. I squeeze my eyes shut against the pain, but it only lasts a few seconds. Then, the edarratae take over, and the only thing I feel is a hot, delicious tingling.
Aren’s hand is still on my side. His touch was clinical at first. It’s not clinical anymore. The lightning affects him just as much as it does me, and I know he feels it gathering. What he said was wrong. I do want him to touch me. I want it so much, I can barely think.
“Aren,” I whisper. His body gives a little shudder, and I half hope he doesn’t regain control. He’s always done this to me, made me want him when I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t right now. There’s too much between us, too much that we need to talk about.
We move away from each other at the same time. I see him swallow, and his eyes have a wild edge to them. There’s a glimmer of something else there, as well, though. Something that I’ve rarely seen from him. Fear. He’s afraid of losing me.
I’m afraid of losing him, too. I almost feel that, if I take the time to sort through my thoughts, if I create a list of reasons to stay with him and reasons to go, the reasonable thing would be to go. We were enemies. He threatened my life more than once and killed fae who were just trying to protect me. The thing is, I don’t want to walk away. No matter how illogical it might be, I want to be with him.
“You have a call to make,” he says quietly. He runs a hand through his already disheveled hair as he straightens.
A text to send, but I don’t correct him. I stand as well, shutting down my feelings for now as I slip Lee’s cell phone out of my pocket. Then, for the first time, I take in my surroundings. It’s dark, and there’s nothing but a starlit river beside us. The shadows from our fissure have already disappeared, so I have no clue where we are. We’re practically on top of a gate though, which is good. We can be back in the Realm as soon as I contact Nakano.
Aren watches as I send the text and slide the cell back into my pocket. That’s all I need to do here—he knows that—but neither of us moves when I’m finished. We’re both waiting for the other to say something.
Okay. I just acknowledged that we need to talk. Now is as good a time as any.
“What did you do for Thrain?” I ask.
“Is that where we’re going to start?” His gaze locks on the river, though I don’t really think he sees it. My stomach churns, waiting for him to answer.
“I did whatever Thrain asked,” he says. His voice, which is usually lighthearted and full of mirth, is so monotone, it could be mistaken for Kyol’s. It doesn’t fit him.
“If he wanted someone killed,” he continues, “I killed them. If he wanted someone captured and hurt, I did that as well. Then I healed them and hurt them again. I stole from fae. I burned down their homes. I exposed them to tech.” He draws in a breath. “I delivered humans to him, humans that I later learned he sold to tjandel.”
My heart turns cold at the mention of the tjandel. Atroth’s lord general, Radath, threatened to send me to one of those. It’s a brothel that houses humans. I’ve never seen one—they were illegal even under Atroth’s reign—but Radath made it clear most of the women didn’t have the Sight, and that the fae who visit them get off on their screams. Knowing that they exist sickens me. Knowing that Aren helped make them exist…
A lump forms in my throat. My chest feels hollow.
“I’m not proud of what I did, McKenzie,” Aren says. He’s still staring at the river, and the starlight reflecting off its surface is mirrored in his eyes.
“What made you leave?” Now it’s my voice that’s gone flat.
“Lena’s and Sethan’s father.” He turns away from the river to look at me. “I was an imithi before I met Thrain. The exact translation would be orphaned wanderer, but it’s…It’s more than that. It’s a subgroup of fae, usually children, who have no family, no roots. It’s not a healthy way to grow up. Fae can fissure from place to place easily, but not having somewhere to call home changes us. We don’t follow the rules and customs of a region. We don’t care if we anger or offend people—we can just fissure to another city. We break laws and cause trouble, and there are almost never any consequences.”
A part of me—the weak, sensitive part—wants to reach out to him, but I force myself to keep my hands at my sides, and say, “That doesn’t excuse what you’ve done.”
I see him swallow again, and this time, it’s not because he’s struggling to control himself.
“I know,” he says, and my chest aches, hearing the pain in his voice. “I’m telling you this because I want you to understand why I followed Thrain. We—me and the other imithi—all pretended to accept our situations, but in truth, we wanted roots. Thrain took advantage of that. Healing is a rare magic, so I was useful to him, and I wanted a mentor. It didn’t matter who it was. Not until I tried to steal silver from the mines in Adaris.”
Adaris. That’s one of the provinces Atroth dissolved, the one where Lena is from.
“You stole silver?”
“I tried to steal it,” he says. Then he gives a short laugh. He doesn’t smile, though, and there’s no light in his eyes. “It’s not the smartest thing to do, and I didn’t plan it. Briant, the elder of Zarrak, showed up. He lived there, so he had experience fighting with deposits of silver around him. I didn’t. He slipped through my defenses and gave me a wound that would have sent me to the ether if he hadn’t ordered Lena to heal me.”
“I’m sure she loved that,” I mutter, imagining her having to heal someone who had just tried to kill a member of her family.
“There was an argument,” he says. This time, when he chuckles, he does smile. “Anyway, the Zarraks were already making plans to oppose Atroth. They gave me a cause to fight for—a good cause—and they gave me a home.”
He takes an anchor-stone out of his pocket. “I’ve spent every day since I ended my association with Thrain attempting to make up for it. Briant was a good man. I wanted to deserve the home he gave me.” He runs his thumb over the surface of the stone. “I want to deserve you.”
Those words make my heart thud against my chest, erasing the numb, hollow feeling that was there.
“Aren—”
“You need to know something else,” he says, stepping forward and pressing the anchor-stone into my hand. “I regret what I did to Brene, but I would do it again. Radath had Briant. Brene knew where they were. She wouldn’t tell us. We had so little time and…” He draws in a breath. “By the time I made her tell us, she was broken, and he was already dead.” His gaze grows distant as he relives the moment. “Almost dead. Radath tortured him. He’d lost so much blood and…If I’d acted sooner, I could have healed him.”
I bite the inside of my cheek until it hurts. Falling in love with someone shouldn’t be this difficult. It should be something you easily slip into, like a bed with silk sheets, but I can’t continue questioning why I’m with Aren. I need to decide if I’m going to follow my heart or if I’m going to follow my head. I followed my heart with Kyol for ten years. It was the wrong decision.
The phone in my pocket vibrates, startling me. I wasn’t expecting a response to my text, especially not one so quickly, but I take the cell out and read Nakano’s message.
“He took the bait,” I tell Aren. “He and his team will fly out tonight.”
“That’s good,” he says quietly. Then he turns back to the river and dips his hand into its rippling surface. I watch as he lifts his palm to the stars, letting the water fall between his fingers. A rumble vibrates through the air as the rain turns into light, a fissure safe for me to step into as long as I have a fae escort.
Aren turns back to me, holds out his hand. His chaos lusters leap to my skin when I take it. It’s as if the
y know I’m struggling with a decision, and they’re going to make it as difficult as possible for me to be clearheaded about it.
Aren pulls me gently toward him. “You told me you wanted time. I’ve given it to you, and I’ll give you as long as you need, McKenzie. I love you.” He tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear. “You’re worth waiting a decade for.”
He places the softest of kisses on my lips, then takes me into the In-Between.
TWENTY
WHEN WE STEP into Corrist, Aren changes. He’s back to his usual, lackadaisical self. It’s like our conversation never happened. His movements are relaxed, languid even, and, as we pass through the silver wall, he teases me about my tendency to get hurt—which I promptly point out is so not my fault. Fae keep trying to kill me, and I wasn’t born with a sword in my hand like he and everyone else in the Realm practically were.
His voice is still light when we step out of an alley and the Silver Palace comes into view.
“You’ve been to the Sidhe Cabred,” he says.
“Yeah,” I answer, even though he wasn’t asking a question. When we were back in Germany, he found the anchor-stone that proved I’d been fissured to the Ancestors’ Garden via a Sidhe Tol. “It was three years ago.”
“Lena’s thinking about allowing anyone to enter it,” he says. “The high nobles are against the idea.”
Of course they are.
“They love their privileges,” I say.
Aren nods. “It’s beautiful?”
I shift my focus from the palace’s silver-rimmed turrets to him. “You haven’t seen it yet?”
“I’ve been busy.”
True. That’s why we’ve only seen each other a handful of times since Atroth died.
“It’s beautiful,” I tell him, remembering the vibrant green leaves edged in pinks and purples. “Even at night, the flowers are brighter and more alive than any I’ve seen in my world, and they’re lit with magic. Their petals are soft. Their scent lingers on your skin and…”
I stop. The only reason I know that last part is because Kyol laid me down on a bed of laubrin at the foot of the Sidhe Cabred’s waterfall. I thought the flowers would be prickly and uncomfortable; they weren’t. They were sleek and silky, and Aren doesn’t need to know what Kyol and I almost did on top of them.
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