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.
There was no way that bastard was getting his hands on my fae.
I blocked him, hand dropping to my whip, but instead of lunging for Talen, Eledan slammed his hands into my chest, and for a single breathless moment, it felt as though he held my heart in his fist. Everything vanished, the people, my friends. Everything but him.
“You’re just a single piece of the polestar, Messenger,” he sneered.
I didn’t understand, but the meaning of his words cracked through me. Light spilled outward over his hand. My light. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t take the polestar out of me right here, could he?
The moment stuttered back into motion. Eledan threw me backward. My lower back hit the rail. I tried to rebound, but after one step, the impact of what he’d done ripped the strength from me. I stumbled, and Sota rushed in to hold me up. Kellee was moving for me too, his instinct urging him to protect me, but they should have been watching Eledan, not me. He turned his glowing hand toward Talen.
“Don’t touch him!”
He took a sword from one of the guards. A plain weapon, but the moment his hand touched it, light blazed down its length.
Talen struggled against the guards holding him on his knees. His power built, pulling on the shadows and wrapping them around him.
The sword glowed through his dark. It would cut right through it. Eledan wielded more than my polestar essence. He knew how to access his power and mine.
Eledan lifted the white-flaming sword.
“Talen!”
No, by Faerie, no! Eledan would kill him.
Talen pulled his fists into his chest, yanking the guards off balance. His eyes turned silver, and with a roar, the Nightshade’s wings burst from his back, unfurling until their velvety star-touched darkness spilled over the balcony. Night blanketed us all. Talen’s eyes shone silver in the dark. That same silver blazed through his clothes and his body, lighting him up, framing the dark creature he was at his core. So beautiful, so terrible, and out of my physical reach.
The bond between us strummed hot and alive.
Eledan’s blade came down.
I saw it all in precise detail. Saw the razor-sharp edge sever the Nightshade’s left wing and the white fire scorch down Talen’s dark outline. The wing burst into a cloud of static silver and ash, blasting us in sparks. Pain was a screeching, clawing thing tearing me apart inside, but it wasn’t my pain. Screams I had no control over tore from me. Power snapped through my bones, riding my body too hard.
I flung out a hand to direct this furious, chaotic light inside, using the bond to funnel everything into Talen and save him from the terrible agony. I was on my feet, but not for long. My vessel wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t strong enough. It hurt like I was bathed in fire. It hurt in a way I’d never known.
Eledan swung the blade over his head and hacked off the Nightshade’s last wing in one smooth slice.
Talen screamed, and an ancient part of me that had nothing to do with being saru, or Mylana, or anyone else awoke. The polestar. Now it was my turn to blaze. Power burst from my skin in a tangle of dark and light, and inside it, I was the heated, beating heart of vengeance. A reservoir of power swelled at my call, and I welcomed it.
Light licked down my back and lifted me off my feet, driving my mortal body toward Eledan.
Eledan pressed the sword to the back of Talen’s neck and regarded me as though I were a child. “Kneel, my queen.”
“I’m not kneeling to you.” My voice held an echo, like it was mine but not mine. An echo like that from the Hunt. It resonated beyond more than just sound, and I knew those words had sailed much farther than this knoll. Faerie had taken them. She’d heard. Everyone had heard me.
“Kneel like we agreed, Mylana, or your silver fae dies and the Hunt will take every one of your saru like it took your doomed gladiator friend. You agreed to this. Now kneel to me and show all of Faerie who their king is.”
I looked past Kellee’s wide, fearful eyes, ignoring my horror reflected in them, and found the saru looking on, whimpering and fearful alongside the fae.
The bond stuttered, and Talen’s head lolled forward, his eyes fluttering closed. The guards held him up. His lips moved, but the words were inside my mind. “Do. Not. Kneel, Mylana. Do not give… him…” His voice faded as he lost consciousness.
Eledan had created the Hunt. It was his nightmare. If he wanted it to, the Hunt would take every single saru here and strip them of their souls.
I had freed them and condemned them.
I’d agreed to this.
“I will find a way to kill you,” I told Faerie’s king. My light faded. I dropped to my knees. “And that monster your putrid mind birthed.” The power singing through my veins spluttered and died, leaving my body wretched, panting, and weak.
Eledan tossed the sword to the floor, where it clattered and lost its light. He whirled, raising his arms. “The Nightshade submits. The vakaru submits. And as promised, because I am a fae of my word, saru, you are henceforth free! A new reign on Faerie begins today, one that will spread to all four corners of Faerie’s worlds.”
Slowly, a cheer rose up out of the heavy quiet, but it was a cheer born of fear and suspicion. As well it should be, because as he turned, Eledan caught my gaze and murmured, “Welcome to a new Faerie, my queen.”