Iron Kin: A Novel of the Half-Light City

by M. J. Scott

  Pandemonium erupted.

  I was the first to reach the queen, managing a solid punch to Ignatius’ face as I passed him. Luckily for me, he couldn’t retaliate as a tide of Templars and enraged Fae quickly encircled me.

  I pressed my fingers against the queen’s wrist, hoping desperately to find a pulse. Somebody put their hands on my shoulders, yanking me backward. I snarled a protest, then subsided as I saw Guy. One of the Fae healers bent to the queen, put her hand on her chest, face intent. I felt a surge of power.

  Lady, please. Gods. Anyone.

  The healer’s face twisted with sudden grief. She shook her head and straightened. “There is nothing I can do. We will take her back to Summerdale.”

  I swallowed against the nausea rising. This was my fault. I hadn’t seen this future. I should have saved her. We needed her.

  I rose as one of the queen’s guard lifted her, readying myself to follow them back to Summerdale, but somebody stepped into my path. I recognized Lord sa’Eleniel.

  “Where do you think you are going, hai’salai?” he said coldly.

  “The queen . . . I swore to serve her.”

  “The queen has no more need of service,” he said. “If you wish to live, I suggest you remain here amongst your own kind.”

  His cane hit the earth with a thump and he turned and followed those carrying the queen.

  I watched him, my mouth open, not entirely believing him. The queen . . . how could she be dead? It was only a bullet. Surely the Fae could heal such a wound.

  I turned and stumbled away, leaning over the nearest vacant seat to retch onto the grass.

  The queen was dead.

  Lady help us all.

  * * *

  For the second time, the delegates streamed away from the negotiations as fast as possible. I caught a fleeting glimpse of Simon hurrying Saskia toward a carriage, but I didn’t go after them. Instead I followed Brother Anthony and found myself in a wagon with six armed Templar knights. They were too busy watching the night around us, weapons at the ready, to bother about me and I didn’t press the issue.

  I locked my powers down tightly. I didn’t dare look. Not yet. I didn’t want to see that I had ruined everything.

  I just wanted to go home.

  Not that I had a home to go to.

  When the wagon passed through the gates of the Brother House, my first thought was to find Holly. She, at least, might still speak to me.

  I nearly bumped into Liam as I walked into the Brother House.

  “Fen.” He frowned. “What are you doing here?” His tone was distinctly unwelcoming.

  “I wanted to see Holly and Reggie,” I said. “Then I’ll go.”

  His expression turned odd. “I see. You should come with me.”

  I didn’t like the sudden studied neutrality of his voice. But I wasn’t going to ask questions. I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answers. Liam hurried me through the hallways to one of the guest chambers. He knocked once, then opened the door, gesturing me through.

  Holly was lying on the bed propped up on pillows. She wore loose trousers and a looser shirt, her hair roughly piled up on her head. She looked too pale and too thin.

  Her eyes lit at the sight of me and I had to take a deep breath.

  “Fen!”

  I crossed the room without thinking, dropping to my knees and hugging her. She made a soft noise of protest and I let her go. “Gods. Are you hurt? Holly? What’s wrong?”

  I searched her face and was horrified to see her look of pleasure had turned to sadness, tears welling in her eyes. “I’m fine,” she gulped. “I was hurt but I’ll be all right. But, Fen . . .”

  She didn’t need to tell me. I saw it suddenly, clear as day. Saw Reggie with no light in those pretty blue eyes. Saw Holly screaming as she defended her.

  I swallowed hard. Reggie. My little sister. Gone. I didn’t know what to say, so I just hugged Holly to me again and let her cry.

  SASKIA

  * * *

  It was Liam who told me where to find Fen. In the craziness at the negotiations I had lost sight of him as Simon dragged me away and shoved me into a carriage headed for the Brother House.

  I’d seen him spring to his feet just before the queen had been shot, had seen his desperate sprint across the field, but then he’d vanished behind a wall of Fae and Templars and I didn’t know whether he was hurt or even still alive.

  But I knew I wanted to find out.

  Stupid stupid stupid.

  Was there anything stupider than love?

  I’d half expected to hear that he had returned to Summerdale, following his precious queen, but then Liam had passed me in the corridor and, with a grimace that expressed clearly how unhappy he was with the situation, stopped to tell me that Fen was with Holly.

  I’d almost kissed him. Sweet, serious Liam. Who’d been very quiet since Reggie had died. Quiet and deeply angry.

  Those who choose to be Templars don’t contemplate failure. Nor do they accept it easily. I knew that well enough from my brother.

  And I understood that particular sentiment. I didn’t like failure either and carried my own burden of guilt and grief that we’d arrived too late to save Reggie. And now, tonight, I hadn’t felt the weapon that had killed the queen. None of the mages had. Not soon enough anyway.

  The field had been awash with magic and the earthsong was so much stronger away from the City that it had been hard to feel anything at all. I had felt a strange surge of power before the shot, had screamed Fen’s name as though that might help but I hadn’t stopped anything. Once again, too late. Yet here I was, unable to stop myself from walking toward my biggest failure of all.

  The door to the room where Holly was recuperating from her wound was half ajar and I heard the sound of her crying before I reached it.

  She had been nearly inconsolable since Reggie had died. Simon had been worried that between Fen’s defection and Reggie’s loss, she wouldn’t want to recover from her wounds, but she had pulled through. Now she just had to deal with the grief.

  I hoped I could help her with that, as she had comforted me after Fen had left.

  I pushed the door open quietly and saw Fen sitting on the bed, his arms around Holly.

  He looked so lost my heart cracked all over again.

  Stupid stupid stupid.

  “Fen.” His name left my tongue on a breath before I could stop myself.

  Green, green eyes met mine. He smiled sadly. “Hello, Saskia.”

  Holly lifted her head from his shoulder, made a gulping effort to stop her tears. I pulled a handkerchief from my sleeve and passed it to her. She blew her nose noisily, then blinked up at me. “Thanks,” she said. It was a familiar exchange. I’d spent too many hours with Holly as she’d cried these last few days. And shedding tears of my own. Though those weren’t all for Reggie.

  “You told him about Reggie, then?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

  Holly nodded, gulped again.

  I made myself look at Fen. “I’m sorry for your loss.” That was the truth, at least. No matter what pain lay between us, the loss of a loved one was something nobody deserved.

  “Thank you,” he said, equally formal.

  “Are you—”

  “Are you—”

  We both started, stopped, fell back into awkward silence. Beside Fen, Holly snorted, the glimmer of a smile on her face.

  “You two need to talk,” she said. “Go on. I have to take another dose of Bryony’s disgusting tonic now and it makes me fall asleep.”

  “Are you sure?” I said. “I don’t like leaving you alone.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You sound like Guy. Go on. Come back in an hour or two.” She gave Fen’s arm a little shove. “Don’t even think about arguing with me.”

  He kissed her cheek quickly and I tamped down the flare of envy that sparked in my chest. “I won’t be far.”

  * * *

  Outside in the corridor, we looked at each other in anot
her awkward silence. Part of me wanted to stay with him, part of me wanted to flee before he could hurt me all over again.

  I pointed down the hall. “There are a few empty chambers that way.”

  He nodded and we walked. I could feel the gap between our bodies like a wall of ice. But I didn’t move closer. I wasn’t quite that foolish.

  Another silence descended as we entered the room. It held a bed and a table and chair, as did most of the guest chambers. There was no way I was going to sit on the bed, so I crossed the room and perched myself on the table, hands gripping its edges.

  “Are you staying long?” I asked in a rush before he could say something.

  He nodded. “The queen is dead.”

  I sucked in a breath. “Dead? But she—”

  His mouth thinned. “Dead.”

  My mind went blank for a moment, then a thousand questions sprang to mind. I started with the most obvious. “What does that mean?”

  Fen shrugged. “For the negotiations? I don’t know. But it does mean that I’m not going back to Summerdale. I didn’t exactly endear myself to the court while I was there.”

  “Really? You annoying people? Who would have thought it?” I said, unable to stop myself.

  His mouth quirked and I hated the fact that my heart warmed a little when it did.

  “The Fae are immune to my charms, it seems.”

  “Lucky them,” I muttered. Then I squared my shoulders. “So are you leaving the City? Going somewhere safe?” The last word cracked more sharply than I intended and he winced.

  “Ah,” he said. “I guess I deserved that.”

  All at once all the hurt and anger boiled over me. “You have the fact that I don’t want to inflict any further hurt on Holly to thank for me not showing you exactly what you deserve,” I snarled, hands biting harder into the wood.

  “Am I allowed to defend myself?”

  “Can you?”

  “I don’t expect you to believe me, but I did it to protect you.”

  That was the last thing I had expected him to say. “What?”

  “I had a vision, back in Summerdale, when she asked me to stay. The queen was going to kill you if I didn’t agree.”

  “What? Are you insane? Why in earth’s name would she do that?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged, the gesture studiously casual, but his eyes were very intent on my face. “Maybe it wasn’t a true vision. But I couldn’t take the risk.”

  “But that’s crazy.”

  “No. But I’m not entirely sure she wasn’t. The last few days have been . . . odd, to say the least. I think she loved the Speaker and I think she was very tired of ruling the court alone.”

  “But she was the Veiled Queen. All that power . . .” I faded off. Power, I knew, was little consolation for grief.

  “Power doesn’t mean that much, in the end. Not if you’re alone.” He looked away for a moment. “She seemed very lonely to me.”

  “I didn’t get that impression.”

  “Maybe it was a case of like recognizing like.” He stopped, rubbed at his eyes for a moment. “She helped me, after all. And look how I repaid her.”

  Now I was honestly confused. “I don’t understand.”

  He held out his right arm, pushed his sleeve back. No chain. No bruising on his wrist. No raw red skin.

  “She cured you?”

  “She did something. Fixed whatever it was in me that fought the power. My visions are under my control now. Much good that it did her.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He looked away again. His shoulders were tense, stretching the black velvet of his elaborate coat. I got the feeling he was trying not to break down.

  “Fen?” I slid down from the table, moved closer to him. “What’s wrong?”

  “I saw what was going to happen.” He lifted his head, green eyes bleak. “Just before. I saw it, Saskia. Saw someone shooting the queen.”

  “And you tried to stop it.”

  He shook his head. “But I failed. I didn’t see the second man—whoever it was who fired the shot—in my vision. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough. Because I saw what came after if I did save her. There wasn’t going to be a peace, not if the queen lived. The City was going to fall.”

  “But—”

  “You don’t have to believe me. I wouldn’t, if I were you.” Despair cracked his voice and I somehow knew that I did believe him. Knew that the man before me was true, as clearly as I knew the lines of metal threading the earth beneath me. Knew what he’d done and what it had cost him.

  And I knew that I loved him for it. He’d risked everything he’d had. Given up those he’d loved to save us. Stood alone to face what might come.

  Brave. Braver than me with my family always standing at my back. He’d been willing to give up his entire life for the City. To save all of us.

  “I do believe you,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re you,” I said and I reached up to kiss him and show him he wasn’t alone any longer.

  Epilogue

  FEN

  The night of the first curfew, we gathered on the roof of the Brother House to watch the sun set. All six of us, standing silent watch as the sky darkened.

  Below us, we saw the line of sentry lamps wink into life along the edges of the human boroughs. Ignatius had declared the peace broken, and though he hadn’t yet made any moves other than stating that the Night World boroughs were subject to Night World law and no others, no one believed he would be content with that for long.

  The human council had declared a curfew. No one other than Templars would be allowed to cross from the human boroughs into the border boroughs—those that hadn’t petitioned to belong to the humans and thereby declared themselves truly no-man’s-land—after sunset.

  Tonight that decree would be put to the test. Beside me, Guy stared down at the line of lights. He would be patrolling later and I imagined that had something to do with the whiteness of Holly’s knuckles as she held his hand.

  I tightened my arm around Saskia. I didn’t know exactly what she—and Holly perhaps—had said to her brothers, but they hadn’t tried to beat me up yet and they were talking to me, so whatever it was had worked.

  Which brought us to where we now stood. Six of us, united against a common enemy. There had been no word from Summerdale about the state of the Court. Bryony refused to talk about it or go home, and the rest of the Fae in the City—the few who remained—were equally tight-lipped.

  “What now?” Lily asked, breaking the silence.

  “We have the day,” Guy said, his free hand flexing, the cross tattooed there rippling like blood. “We’ll hold the night.”

  I felt a shiver run through Saskia and pulled her closer. She smiled up at me.

  “What do you see?” she said softly.

  I shook my head. “I—” But then I stopped, flames springing up around me and spreading out across the City. And through them, an army came riding to meet the Blood. I blinked and the vision disappeared as quickly as it had come. “I think we’re going to need some help,” I said.

  Guy grunted. “Already working on it. Might take a while.”

  Simon shifted, and a ball of light sprang to life in his hand. I felt the warmth of it, warm as Saskia’s body against mine. Sunlight. Hope.

  “All right,” Simon said. “We hold.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  M. J. Scott is an unrepentant bookworm. Luckily she grew up in a family that fed her a properly varied diet of books and these days is surrounded by people who are understanding of her story addiction. When not wrestling one of her own stories to the ground, she can generally be found reading someone else’s. Her other distractions include yarn, cat butlering, dark chocolate, and fabric. She lives in Melbourne, Australia.

  CONNECT ONLINE

  www.mjscott.net

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  Also by M. J. Sc
ott

  Shadow Kin

  Blood Kin