Alone, as a messenger on Calicto, I’d built a personal safety drone by repurposing an Arcon wardrone and mixing it with borrowed fae magic. I had many reasons for making Sota, but none had been to make a friend. I hadn’t known I needed one, until he was there, by my side, filling the silences and chasing away bad memories. Night after night, after I’d finished delivering my messages for the day and earned my fresh water or food rations, I’d tell Sota tales of the fae. Stories like the bucca, for whom human fishermen always left a fish from their catch on the shore. Or how the bucca was used as a threat to quiet noisy children. The changelings that the fae left in place of stolen babies—who the fae took to check up on their human experiment—could be found out by mixing a brew of crushed eggshells. The tatter-foal could take the shape of any creature, not just wolves, like the Cu Sith. On and on I told Sota those human folktales, marveling at many myself. The truth of the fae was kept from saru as it was from humans, but humanity had woven their existence into their myths. I’d often wondered how many of these myths were true. The Faerie I’d been raised in was poised and sedate compared to the colorful Faerie from those tales.
Humans had been right.
When Talen led me from the carriage and the bright light lessened, I found my mind reaching for those fairytales to make sense of the sight. Little people, no taller than my knee, sat in the branches of gnarled trees. Enormous foxgloves, twice as tall as me, swayed in a nonexistent breeze, colored bright red and soft cream. Sidhe fae, like Sirius and Talen, milled about, but some had tails, or cloven hooves where their feet should be, or horns, or hair like manes, or no hair at all, their skin shimmering like fish scales.
“They’re real…” Sota whispered. “They were always real.”
When Talen finally spoke, his voice was full of awe but undermined by a touch of regret. “Before Oberon’s cleansing, before the courts of unseelie and seelie formed, the Wild Ones populated Faerie.”
A virtually naked female with tawny, velvety skin sauntered by, singing to herself or the glittering pixies nesting in her dreadlocked hair. Her tail swished around her ankles, and her eyes were like Hulia’s, with double eyelids. She was namu, or part namu, perhaps the origin of Oberon’s namu creations. There was no mistaking the power of her voice as it urged me to follow her in dance.
Oberon would have hated this riot of beasts and color and the chaos of their construction. To me, they were beautiful, each and every one of them. These were Sirius and Talen’s people. They were chaos and mayhem and noise and dance.
“Be careful, calla,” Sirius murmured behind my left shoulder. “Remember the docks.”
Ah, yes, the docks, when one of these people had tried to lure me away from Sirius. The tales of the messing with humans had been true too. I was close enough to human and susceptible here.
“Ailish will be here,” Sirius said. “Do not dally or the earth will root your feet and keep you forever.”
Sota huffed a laugh, then lost his smile when he looked down to see how a string of vines had tangled around his boots. He plucked himself free and shuddered. “That’s just rude.”
Meandering paths crisscrossed the mossy earth and around different-sized earthy mounds propped up by little doors. Homes, I assumed. Some were stores displaying their wares of clothes and fabrics. Above, wisps clung to strings of ivy like the lights slung across the sinks back home on Old Calicto, only here the lights were alive.
I didn’t see a sky, just layers of dark on dark with no stars. We were underground, then? A knoll, but much, much bigger, like a small underground town. I moved after the others, trying and failing not to stare. C’mon, Kesh, nothing down here should be surprising. Where did I think Oberon had gotten the DNA for all his experiments?
We came to a junction of paths.
“Find Ailish,” Talen told Sirius. “I’ll take them home.”
Sirius veered off one way, toward where the domes grew larger and more closely packed together. Talen nodded at us to follow a less worn path that snaked away from the “town” center toward a copse that looked a lot like Kellee’s blood-hungry vakaru trees. I checked Kellee. He nodded. They were those trees. Best not bleed on them.
“Did you know this place was real?” Sota asked, dropping back from Talen.
“No, I had no idea. I thought it was all silly human stories. I knew some of these people lived in the wilds, but not like this, in these numbers.”
“Did you see the man-horse?”
“A púca?” I’d missed that.
His gaze had already wandered. “It must be very impractical to have a horse’s ass.”
“Don’t let the pretty fool you,” Kellee said. He had stayed close behind, scanning our surroundings for threats. “Anything here will kill you as readily as any sidhe.” His claws were out. Here, those claws were normal. He even looked like he belonged, with his wild hair and multicolored eyes. Oberon’s idea for the vakaru had come from here too.
I wasn’t sure where I’d expected Talen to live. In a palace, like Oberon, maybe? He’d been the Nightshade, so surely that required a fortress? I’d been wrong. We entered the gardens first, and I knew it had to be his from the enormous sprawling patches of lilies and flowering jasmine tumbling over terraces that led up to a single-story cave-house, the type carved from rock, but this was Faerie, so his house had grown this way, spreading outward through the rockface, peppered with doors and windows. Veins of silver flowed through the gray stone. Now that I’d seen his home, I couldn’t imagine him living anywhere else.
Roots snapped from the ground ahead of him and scurried out of the way. Trees leaned their branches out of his path. Plants peeled back to expose the polished stone beneath, and ahead, the honeysuckle lifted from the dwelling, like a curtain revealing its showpiece. Talen strode on as if this were all perfectly normal.
We’d reached the front deck when a cloud of enormous moths burst from a few windows, dusting us all with glitter.
Sota sneezed. Kellee pulled his hand across his mouth and sighed, already tired of the drama. He caught me looking at him and narrowed his eyes. Only, how could he appear threatening with glitter in his hair? My lips twitched. I swallowed the laugh.
He lifted a finger, and I rolled my lips together, locking the laughter away, but he saw it in my eyes and smiled coyly.
Talen’s home had been empty for a long time, and little bugaboo creatures had made it their home. Talen let the furry things, no larger than lizards, scurry out. Some little people—brownies, I figured—bumbled from room to room. I watched them work and listened to their humming. They reminded me of children, until they spoke, their mouths full of shark-like teeth.
I wandered the house. Every room had windows, which wasn’t possible, considering the home was built into a hillside, but everything here wasn’t possible, so what were a few windows in a cave-house?
I found what had clearly been Talen’s favorite room. From the wide window, the view of Safira stretched far over hills and into valleys. Warm, scented air breezed in. I touched the wall beside the window, and magic spritzed across my fingers. The walls lit up with familiar silvery circles and faded again in moments.
“My home welcomes you,” Talen said. His coat was gone and his waistcoat hung unlaced. Leaves were still snagged in his long hair, and an odd new-to-Talen smirk rested on his lips.
“Your home is perfect.”
“It was full of life for a long time…”
Until Oberon had changed the course of Talen’s life forever.
“I’m sorry…” A silly thing to say, but I was struggling to find any words that did this place justice.
“It was a long time ago.” He breathed in and stopped at the window to admire Safira, as he gathered his thoughts. “This location is easily defensible. We’ll see any force long before they arrive.”
Always so practical. “I was thinking more along the lines of how beautiful Safira is.”
“It wasn’t always like this. Before… before it was full of dark and light fae. It was… different. Oberon tried to destroy it. We battled here, so close to Faerie’s heart I was sure we would win, but Oberon already had the polestar. We could not survive its light, and so the dark ones fled…”
“Are there any dark fae left here?”
He fell quiet, studying me. “You sense them.” Not a question.
“I feel like what I see isn’t everything. Like there’s something I’m missing, but it’s right in front of me.”
It seemed to be the right answer, because he laughed and leaned against the wall. “You are more fae than you realize.”
“I’m saru.”
“Saru are fae. We are all degrees of fae. Vakaru are fae, and so are humans.” He saw my face fall. “That doesn’t make you any less saru. Just that… Faerie welcomes you here the same as She welcomes me. It was Oberon who changed our fates, not Faerie.”
Faerie loves all Her children.
The Nightshade returns. Now is the time for all Faerie’s children to return.
“Ailish knew we’d come here.” I needed to speak with the water witch before Eledan could stop me. “Do you think she knows we’re here?”
He smiled like I was a child for asking. “Every creature on Faerie knows we’re here.”
“Even the Hunt?” I whispered.
He bowed his head. “It is possible. Secrets are difficult to keep here.”
I gripped the windowsill and gazed over the valley, down into Safira. I’d been raised on Faerie but knew so little about it. “You say I am part of Faerie. Ailish said the same, but I’ve never felt like I belong.”
“Because you are incomplete.”
He said it like it was simple. Maybe it was and I just hadn’t been ready to hear it before. While the polestar was in pieces, I would never belong. Emotion knotted my throat. “Talen…” I gripped the sill tighter. “I won’t survive the polestar, will I?”
“I do not know.” He hadn’t moved from his spot against the wall, and I didn’t want him to. If he came close and swept me into his arms, I’d use him to forget and pretend we’d survive this, and I couldn’t afford to. Not anymore.
“If I die, Eledan dies, right?” My voice wobbled.
“That seems likely, given how the polestar is as much a part of him as it is you.”
I bit the inside of my cheek and tasted coppery blood. “Good.”
I couldn’t look at him. Even without the bond, I knew he was hurting. He’d loved and lost before. “My people will be safe, Faerie will stay here and not war with others, and the humans will take Halow back. It will be as it was for a thousand years. There will be peace.” I could make that happen. All I had to do was restore the polestar and stop the Hunt, balancing the light and the dark weapons once more. Oberon was gone. Eledan would be gone. Faerie would be settled. The killing would stop. It only required the lives of one saru girl and Faerie’s forgotten prince. So small a price for universal peace.
Talen’s arms were around me. He scooped me up, turned my back to the window, and propped me on the sill. His hands were on my face, holding me still. I had no choice but to see the bright tears in his eyes. “I cannot watch you do this. I can’t lose you. You’re the only part of me that feels, Kesh. Without you, I do not know who or what I am. Without you, there is no meaning. I would die in your place if you’d allow it. I have never known a soul as bright as yours. I cannot see it burn out. I won’t. There must be another way.” His voice caught, and those diamond tears fell, taking pieces of my heart with them. Did this always happen when immortals loved mortals? It seemed so wrong, so unfair. I would do anything to save him, to save them all.
I kissed him and tasted salty tears on his lips. His tears or mine, I wasn’t sure and it didn’t matter. Outside, rain pattered on leaves, stirring up the garden’s sweet scent and Talen’s magic. He crushed me close and kissed me like he could save me. If love could save lives, ours would. Just not my life.
“Come out, Wraithmaker… I have a surprise for you.”
I blinked, stirring in Talen’s arms. We lay tangled on his bed. His earlier kisses still tingled my skin, warming me through. “You let me sleep?” Surely I’d been dreaming and the voice had woken me. A voice I knew well but hadn’t heard in years. The memory of it faded into the past where it belonged.
“No, I allowed you to drift for a while. You didn’t sleep.” His strong arm looped around my waist. He reeled me in, against his naked chest. I breathed him in, wishing I could stay in his arms all day, but Sirius was out there looking for Ailish, the Hunt was loose, and Eledan had an entire world at his fingertips. I could not afford to rest.
“I thought I heard… a voice.”
“Someone is outside. I planned to ignore them until they went away.”
But the voice… I pressed the heel of my hand to my head. I knew who that voice belonged to, and he couldn’t be here.
“You’re cold?” Talen brushed a hand down my arm, over the goosebumps.
“No—”
“Wraithmaker?” the voice crooned. Male. Rough. “Come entertain us, Wraithmaker.”
Talen’s eyes narrowed.
The sound of a whip cracking shot through me. I tore from Talen’s arms, snatched on my pants and undervest, and grabbed my tek-whip. I headed for the door before Talen could stop me.
“Kesh, wait…”
Kellee approached from one of the side corridors. “Who is this asshole?”
I veered right, keeping Kellee behind me. “I’ll deal with it.”
Another whip crack jolted through me. Not a metallic sound, like mine. This was the unmistakable snatch of leather tails.
Sota was already outside, where he’d likely been standing sentry all along. His guns were open and on display, and there, a few steps down the terrace, stood a fae I’d hoped never to see again. Long salt-and-pepper hair had been pulled back from a severe, narrow face and bound so tightly that it gleamed against his skull. He hadn’t aged a day since he’d first sneered through cell bars at me and the other saru children who had survived the harvesting.
“There she is…” His right cheek pulled upward, lifting the corner of his mouth. “You haven’t changed, Wraithmaker.”
I should speak, but all the words had jammed in my throat. The last time I’d seen him, he’d whipped me to within an inch of my life. Only by Oberon’s grace had I survived.
“Dagnu.” His name on my lips tasted foul. Dagnu. Bad blood. My jailor. The fae who had thrown me into the arenas as a child so I’d have to fight to survive time and time again.
He laughed and looped the thin whip around his hand and elbow. “My saru gladiator is all grown.” It was the same whip he’d always used. I’d know its tails anywhere. He would oil it before visiting the cells every day. I smelled that same sweet oil on him now.
“Leave,” Talen hissed, appearing at my right side.
Dagnu sneered at him. “You have no authority here—”
“You know who I am. Leave or suff—”
“The king took your wings, Nightshade. I know who you are—a useless ornament dangling from the Wraithmaker’s fingers. You and that filthy vakaru and this”—he threw a hand at Sota—“monstrosity of human-made tek, you are all her ornaments. Isn’t that right, Wraithmaker?”
Kellee’s growl bubbled to my left.
“What do you want?” It was my voice but without the internal screaming trying to drown out my thoughts. I’d known he was alive—Aeon had made it clear that Dagnu had remained in his life—but to see him again after so long reminded me of who I had once been.
“Are you here to entertain us?” he asked, ignoring my question. He spread his arms, and for the first time, I saw the flank of fae behind him. Some sidhe with darkness in their eyes, like the fae at the docks, while others appeared more outwardly vicious, made of claws and teeth. They hooted and snickered, whispering, “Wraithmaker, Wraithmaker.” Their combined voices started to eat into my skull and burrow deep.
“The Wraithmaker is dead,” I said, making sure they all heard.
Dagnu mock-lunged at me. I recoiled like I had in the past, and even though it didn’t happen, I saw the whip come down, saw his leering smile and rough hands.
He chuckled darkly. “Not yet she’s not.”
“Kesh,” Sota said. “Say the word and he’s dead.”
Dagnu’s mouth jerked around a grin. He pointed at me. “Oberon stole you from me. You know how this ends. You’ve always known. Come crawling back to me when you’re ready, saru.” Chuckling, he turned and strode down the steps, away from the terrace. His train of sidhe followed, their gazes hungry for murder.
He was long gone and the pixies had returned to squabble in the bushes, but I still hadn’t moved. “Kesh…” Sota dared to approach first. “What did he mean?”
You know how this ends.
“Talen.” I looked over him, through him. I saw the whip come down and felt it bite into my back, my arms. I heard my whimpers with each lash. “We don’t have time for this. Find out where Sirius has gotten to.”
He nodded and started down the steps.
“Don’t touch… Dagnu,” I called, stumbling over the name. I wiped my mouth, swallowing excess saliva.
Kellee watched me, keeping his expression lawman neutral, though he likely knew my seeing Dagnu had undermined everything I’d worked to forget.
“No more secrets,” Kellee said. “Remember? We’re together in everything.”
I closed my eyes and squeezed the whip, still coiled, unused, in my hand. “He’s nothing. Forget it.”
How could I tell him everything Dagnu had done? The beatings and relentless healings so I could fight again. Making the Wraithmaker dance at the crack of his whip. Dagnu and the arenas had taught me how to fight, and he’d taught me to despise the fae for the monsters they were.
I swallowed. Kellee wouldn’t forget, and he wouldn’t stop asking his questions.
“He’s nobody, Kellee. Don’t ask me again.”
“Kesh—”
“Kellee, please, let it go.” I retreated inside the house, his gaze on my back. I knew he cared, but he’d also go after Dagnu if he learned even a fraction of what that fae had done to me. Dagnu’s life was not Kellee’s to take. It was mine.