“Kellee wants me here?” I asked, turning to find Sota on the bed, eyes dancing over me.
“There weren’t many options.” He swung his legs off the bed, stood, and stretched his arms over his head, his shirt lifting to reveal his lower waist and hips, his pants slung low. Arcon sure knew how to make their mandroids. “Kellee figured you’d be happier armed when you woke.” Had Hulia picked out that body or had he chosen it? It was a fine example of a mid-twenties human male. Sota had picked it, for sure.
He placed a hand on his hip and gestured wildly with the other. “What kind of monster puts a bed in the middle of a room? Even I know that’s not where beds go. And this decoration is shockingly ostentatious. Is all of Faerie this ridiculous?”
There was no use fighting my smile. “Do you know where we are?”
“No, but there’s no tek. I’m blind here.” He ran his fingers through his hair in a very normal gesture. “I can only see what is in front of me and only hear what is immediately around me. Is this how you live, stuck in a sensory bubble?”
“Yeah, mostly.” I touched my chest and felt the warm beat of Talen’s bond inside. I’d gone so long without Talen that I’d forgotten what it felt like to have that connection strumming between us. It felt good, felt right, like I wasn’t alone. And I wasn’t. Not anymore. Sota was here. Kellee would be nearby too.
“I do have fingers to make up for it, though.” Sota lifted his hands, wiggled his fingers, and grinned.
The mention of fingers reminded me of how Sirius’s metal hand had reached for me. Clearly, it hadn’t been Sirius. “Was any of it real? Falling? Sirius…?”
“No.” Sota’s smile vanished. “Eledan hit everyone with an illusion to make you see things.” He shrugged. “Didn’t work on me.”
“Then how did he catch you?”
He swallowed and looked away. A touch of heat warmed his cheeks. “I don’t want to say…”
Sota was embarrassed? Surely not. “Well, now I have to know.” I roamed the room and rummaged through a dresser, its drawers empty. Was this place an underground knoll? It did have that same cavernous feel as Sirius’s knoll. I touched a wall, and its organic warmth throbbed against my palm. Definitely alive. Eledan’s knoll, then, if he had one? I knew so little about him from before his time in Halow, but there was one vital piece of information Oberon had made clear. Eledan had created the Hunt—a nightmare that was free again, and hungry. The Hunt had killed Aeon and would kill us all eventually.
“Kesh?”
“I was remembering Aeon…” Sota’s eyes softened with concern. Kellee had said Aeon had wanted to die, but that didn’t make enduring the loss any easier. For all his mistakes, he was still my first friend. I should have done more. We all should have done more.
I headed to the door and tested the handle. Locked.
“You can tell me anything, you know,” I told Sota, eager to steer my thoughts away from the past. “Like it used to be during all those nights on Calicto. I’d tell you a fairytale, and we’d watch those silly shows on virtuavision.” Those mundane memories seemed like someone else’s, but they were mine, and I’d cling to them forever if I could. Memories of the Calicto messenger and her AI drone when things were simple. Even Sota had changed beyond recognition.
“I have an off switch,” he blurted. “Not an actual switch. Eledan clicked his fingers, and then I was here, rebooting beside you.”
Sota had a failsafe. It wasn’t surprising. Eledan had probably implemented it when he’d had Sota in his lab at Arcon, future-proofing him. What else had he programmed into Sota? “He’s worked with tek longer than I’ve been alive. I can try to disable it, with the right equipment…” On Faerie, finding tek-equipment was nearly impossible, and Eledan would have crafted his failsafe with a skill I could only dream of. It would not be easy to unpick his work.
Sota wrapped his arms around himself, biceps tensing. “I don’t like the way he looks at me. He wants to cut me open and study my insides.”
I offered what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “He looks at everyone like that.”
“Not you, Kesh.” He shook his head. “We’re dust to him, but he admires you.”
“It’s not admiration. It’s lust, but not in the way you’re thinking.” I tugged at the door again, but it didn’t budge. “He wants the polestar fragment inside me. It calls to him.”
“It’s more than that.”
Sota, more than any of the others, could read people from the inside out. He knew Eledan’s infatuation with me ran deeper than desire. I turned back to face him. “He has a quarter of the polestar in him too.”
“His tek-heart?” he correctly guessed.
I nodded.
Loosening his folded arms, Sota came forward. “I knew there was more than madness wrong with him.”
“We simultaneously repel and attract each other. Before, I thought… I thought I was so messed up that I was genuinely attracted to him, even after everything he’d done to me. I didn’t know all the facts. Now I do.”
“How did he get a piece of the polestar to combine with tek to make his heart?”
“His life magic, the same magic as his mother’s, the same magic I had for a few years. I used it to make my whip semi-sentient and… to make you.”
Sota drew up next to me and settled his hand on my shoulder. “I haven’t thanked you for that.”
“Yeah, you have.” I squeezed his hand. “Every day, not with words.”
Sota looked at my hand over his without blinking, perhaps enjoying the sensation of skin on skin. I had no idea how much he could physically feel or how he processed that information.
He beamed and dropped his hand from my shoulder. “Step back. I’ve got this.” The skin on his forearm unzipped and from inside, a compact pistol dropped out on a cantilevered tek. He aimed at the door handle and a single blast crippled the lock and handle. The gun stowed away again, just as cleanly, and the synthetic skin zipped up without a seam.
I offered my fist, and he bumped it. “You are badass, Sota.”
“So are you, Kesh.”
“Now let’s get out of this prison before Eledan shows up.” I tugged the broken door open.
Eledan stood in a hallway, his expression tilted toward boredom. He wore a deep purple doublet and matching pants, laced with pure white thread. The same white thread was braided through his black hair. In his arms, he cradled a bundle of similar clothing, made of the same fabric.
Sota’s gun port dropped open again with a metallic whir.
“Save it, drone.” Eledan clicked his fingers, and Sota collapsed. His head hit the floor with a sickening thunk.
“Sota?” I rushed to his side and cradled his head in my hands. He didn’t move, didn’t breathe. His open eyes stared at nothing. He looked… dead.
I squared up to the prince, nose to nose, and reached for my whip. “Bring him back!”
He gave a disgusted grunt. “Oh, please, Kesh. He’ll be fine. Put this on.” He shoved the bundle of clothes at my chest.
I shoved it back hard enough to rock him on his feet. “You put it on.”
“You will wear this.” This time, he shoved hard enough to drive me back against the wall and trap my whip hand beneath the clothes. His eyes narrowed to dark slits, like twin obsidian blades. “Or Sota will spend the next few decades right where he is. I know you don’t want that for him. Stop being stubborn and do as I command.” He eased back. “After all, you agreed to this, remember?”
I had. His dominion over me in exchange for freeing my people. “I don’t have to do anything for you. You haven’t freed the saru yet.” I snatched the clothes off him anyway, to get him out of my space, and tucked the bundle under one arm.
“That’s what we’re doing.”
We were? I shoved at his chest, forcing him backward, and tugged my coat straight. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”
Humor crept into his expression, in the twitch of his wicked mouth and shine of his dark eyes.
“When, pray tell, should I have told you? Before or after the drone shot me in the chest?”
I hated him more when his arguments were reasonable. “I wear this and you’ll wake Sota up?”
His shoulder lifted. “Fine. Yes. Must everything be a bargain with you?”
It wasn’t worth fighting him over something so small as clothing. Ignoring his questions, I flicked the clothes out. Trousers and a fitted blouse adorned with delicate lace filigree. At least it wasn’t a dress.
I arched an eyebrow. “His and hers matching outfits?”
He smiled. “It seemed appropriate, as you’re about to address your saru.”
“What?”
A hand gesture was all he deigned to give me before sauntering down the corridor. “You are their queen, are you not, Mylana?”
“But… the Hunt is looking for me—and you. If we’re seen in public, won’t it come?”
“I’ll handle the Hunt. It’s important we appear united in these terrible times.” He spoke those last words like they were a joke. Was everything a game to him? “Oh, and bring the mandroid.” A click of his fingers and Sota stirred to life at my feet. “Keep him close, Kesh. Faerie is not kind to tek.”
Chapter 6
Sota had stayed quiet since the incident in the hallway. I’d tried to tell him I’d keep him safe, but we both knew Eledan had rooted inside an integral part of his mental processes and would be lodged there until we figured out how to remove him. I knew exactly how it felt to have Eledan’s hooks inside your mind.
“We’ll fix this…” I whispered.
Sota nodded but didn’t reply.
Dressed in my new outfit, I threw my familiar coat over the fancy clothes, clipped my whip to my hip, and followed the contingent of fae guards through what had to be a knoll, considering its confusing layout meant to thwart any attempt to escape. It reminded me of the Arcon basement, just more organic and less shiny. That place, although made of metal, glass, and tek, had the same strange feel as this one, like the walls were alive and watching. Maybe Arcon had been a tek-knoll on a tek planet. If any fae could manipulate tek like magic, it was Eledan. He wasn’t like other fae. He’d spent too long on Halow. Some of that humanity had rubbed off on him, and not in a good way. What would the fae think of their prince returning with a tek-heart, especially after he’d used his illusions to scare the magic out of them at the crystal palace? Whatever they thought, they had no choice but to follow him, their new king. There were no other fae of royal blood left. If Eledan kept his word and freed the saru, would the sidhe rise against him? Would the guardians? Would Faerie protect him or fight him?
So many questions, so many unknowns, and I was walking right into each one.
Eledan waited in front of a huge arched door ahead. He’d complemented his purple attire with a black cloak inlaid with silver and a bleached ash-wood crown that looked like bone.
He acknowledged me with a curt nod and closed his hand on the door handle. “Wait here, drone.”
Sota glared, his red eye thinning to a laser point.
“Are you ready?” Eledan asked me.
“Ready for what, exactly?”
He swung the door open, captured my hand, and pulled me into a blinding glare. After a few blinks, my eyes adjusted to the sight of a sea of people inside a vast underground pillared hall that stretched to infinity. Hundreds and hundreds of faces, sidhe and saru alike, peered up. So many people, they didn’t look real. A cheer thundered through their number and crested to a deafening level. Overwhelmed, I clutched Eledan’s hand tighter. His fingers squeezed.
We stepped up to the balustrade, and Eledan raised my arm. If the cheer had been loud before, it shattered through me now, rattling my bones, my soul… Saru… so many of them. Their smiling faces and drab clothing outnumbered the glittering, stoic fae eight to one. And they were cheering for… the Messenger. Not Mylana, not Kesh, but the Messenger, just as Eledan had seeded in their heads since my return to Faerie, maybe before then. He must have planned this long ago, but why? What did he get from their freedom and my myth?
Peering out over the thousands of faces, I realized it had nothing to do with me. I’d made a deal: free the saru in exchange for me—one life for countless saru. But the saru still wouldn’t be free; they’d follow the Messenger, a myth Eledan would control thanks to my deal.
I’d be his puppet queen. I’d handed him a saru army.
I plucked my hand from his and gripped the rail. A Faerie breeze whispered across my face, sweeping my hair back and bringing with it the sickly scents of magic and power, of all things Faerie. Wisps gathered above the sea of people, suspended between us like a thousand stars. The saru lifted their hands.
“Our Messenger! Our Messenger!”
These were my people. The fae had grown us to serve them in every way. They’d shaped and honed us to do their bidding, and we were already in love with our masters when they harvested us.
I’d see them truly free if it was the last thing I did. Eledan would not have them. I could not have them. One day, they’d be their own people.
“You feel it, Messenger?” The prince smirked beside me. “The power your presence inspires? You are Faerie’s queen now. Together, nothing can stop us.”
The sidhe lords didn’t think so. They stood still and mute among the saru, each one simmering in their own brands of magic. They looked like orchids in a field of plain daisies, and although the saru vastly outnumbered them, they still believed they had power.
“Sire, your guests have arrived,” a male guard said behind me, speaking to Eledan.
“Bring them out.”
I half turned as a hush descended over the people, curious as to what game Eledan was playing now.
Guards brought Kellee out, his long, wild hair braided with beads and feathers and his face painted with a green handprint in the ancient style of the vakaru. It took a moment for my thoughts to catch up. What was this?
Not daring to look at Eledan, I fixed Kellee under my glare. He came forward, his eyes intense and expression determined, and when he was close enough for me to touch, he dropped to one knee. “As the last vakaru, I pledge myself and all that I am to the Messenger, for now, and forever.”
Why was he doing this? It didn’t feel right. An illusion? How could I know for certain?
“Where’s Sota?” I asked Eledan. Sota could see through Eledan’s tricks. I needed him beside me.
“Do you doubt me, my queen?” His glittering eyes confirmed he knew my fear. He crooked a finger at the door. Sota prowled in, seething from his tek-soul, but when I queried this with a glance—Illusion?—he gave his head a small shake. It was real. Kellee really was here, on his knee.
“Do you accept my allegiance?” Kellee lifted his head.
What was I supposed to say? What trap was this? Thousands of people watched on, and the new king stood beside me, waiting.
“If you’re messing with me, Eledan—”
He laughed his rich, deep laughter. “If you weren’t so full of lies, it would be easier to see the truth when it kneels before you.”
“Kellee?”
He blinked green eyes. No lies. “I’m with you. Always.”
“You don’t have to do this.” I didn’t want him to do this. I had never asked or needed him to kneel before me.
His cheek fluttered. “Do you accept all that I am to serve under you?”
“Yes, of course I—”
Eledan clapped his hands and barked a gleeful laugh. “Bring out the Nightshade.”
Talen!
Kellee rose to his feet.
“What is this?” I whispered to Kellee while Eledan’s back was turned. “What’s going on?”
“Go with it,” he muttered and fell into line beside Sota.
Talen walked, unguarded, through the arched doorway, joining us on the balcony. He wore his regal clothing, the silver and gray from his time at court, as though he were a winter storm frozen in fae form, but his eyes were violet
and true. He outshone Eledan and regarded the prince with icy disdain. The entire crowd fell silent at the return of the Nightshade. All of Faerie held its breath until Talen lifted his chin and appraised those gathered here. Then he fell to one knee before me, just as Kellee had done.
He had done this before, months ago, and practically begged me to free him from a prison I didn’t yet understand. “I will be yours,” he had told me.
“The Nightshade pledges all that he is to you, for now and forever,” Talen said, his words soft and precise but no less heavy for their gentleness. “Do you accept?”
A murmuring sailed through the thousands present. The saru likely didn’t understand or know who the Nightshade was—the fae had kept the truth from them—but the sidhe’s wide-eyed stillness confirmed they knew. Not only was the Nightshade back, he was kneeling to… a saru? They would be incensed. Did Eledan want them to fight him?
This was change, just as Eledan had said. My people saw pillars of Faerie kneel to me, one of their own. They saw change happening right before their eyes. Their Messenger had the fae at her feet. I could never have dreamed this up.
I wanted to settle my hand on Talen’s silvery hair. It had always been that way between us—a touch here, a brush there, a stolen kiss that melted my heart—but this moment? Words had power on Faerie. Talen and I were already bonded. This spectacle felt too convenient. I didn’t understand any of this. How could I agree when I didn’t know what I was agreeing to? It was a trap.
“Kesh?” Talen looked up.
This wasn’t fair.
“I can’t.” He was too important. I needed to understand before I spoke the words.
“Kesh?” Talen’s face crumpled.
I whirled on Eledan. “I’m not saying another word until I know what this farce is. You don’t control me yet—or them. Why are you making them do this?”
Eledan’s lips crawled into a sharp grin. “I knew you’d make this difficult.” He nodded at the guards flanking us and ordered, “Hold the Nightshade down.”
They rushed Talen before he could rise, and then Eledan was moving, his hand outstretched and the same liquid glow emanating from his fingers as the one he’d used to lock me in a coma for six months. He reached for Talen.
Her Dark Legion Page 3
