Kellee
Sota grabbed for her, calling her name, and then they were gone, swallowed by a bank of rolling gray clouds. The crack in the earth was gone too.
Illusions. That piece of royal fae karushit!
And then Talen and Sirius had vanished inside the churning gray smoke. Only Eledan’s sickening laughter haunted the fog.
“You’re out of your depth on Faerie, vakaru,” the prince crooned from nowhere and everywhere.
Claws out, I spun, raking at the fog, and narrowly missed disemboweling Sirius at the last second. The guardian threw me a look that told me he knew I had wanted to follow through and plunge my claws into him. He read the thought on my face, and in response, liquid fire burst from his outline, setting him ablaze like a beacon in the night. The beast in me read it as a threat. Instincts urged me to kill him before he could kill me, but as the fog burned away and Sirius backed up, reason reined in the madness, clearing my head.
There the pair of fae stood, one made of fire and the other of silver and darkness, his unseelie wings spread wide. More dark than light. More monster than lordly sidhe. Talen, as the Nightshade, made me look tame. This was Faerie, ripe with magic and monsters. I was in their backyard now, and I’d never felt our differences more keenly than when both powerful fae looked at me as though I should be kneeling.
I shook my head to dislodge the crackling insanity. Sirius was a dick, but apparently, he loved Kesh, and I knew Talen better than my senses tried to tell me.
The fog rolled away, revealing the arena floor. No cracks, and no Kesh or Sota either. Turning on the spot revealed no sight of them and no indication as to where they could have gone.
“You son of a sluagh, Eledan!” My shout sailed far into Faerie, carried by unnatural winds. “The Hunt will not be enough to stop me from killing you!”
Behind me, Sirius’s fire cooled and Talen’s suffocating magic withdrew. “We must leave,” Talen said. “Shinj warns that the Hunt is drawing close.”
I’d leave, but I wasn’t going far. I turned to face the two fae. “Where would he take her?”
“He’s building a seat of power,” Sirius replied, hanging back, out of my reach. “Hiding is not the sidhe way. Find the gathering fae and we’ll find the prince.”
I didn’t look at him. Couldn’t look. The wildest part of me wanted him dead for all of Faerie’s wrongs, for who and what he was, for loving Kesh and letting her go. The protofae had taken my people from me, and now their royal brat had stolen Kesh and Sota. I was so out of my depth I was damn well drowning. Fuck Eledan for being right.
Thunder rumbled. Our enormous ship hovered in low, smothering the sky and broken dome. I needed an army, needed to fight. I needed my damn people back and Kesh by my side.
“We’ll find them,” Talen said. “For now, Kellee… we must leave.”
“Did he get the polestar?” I sighed, shuddering out the killing desire. The wildness was too close and had been since I’d killed Oberon. I needed to be better than this, to think more clearly.
Talen held out a glass thimble, pinched between his finger and thumb, and smiled. “Only one piece.”
We’d switched the thimble polestar fragment for a dummy, gambling on the fact Eledan wouldn’t notice how his cheap trinket didn’t throb with power while beside the acorn. It had worked. “Good.”
Shinj’s bright, hypnotic light flowed over us, bathing the area in a cool blue. Kesh was awake, and we still had a piece of the polestar. All we had to do was trust Kesh to make the right choice. “Let’s go find our messenger.”