Kellee
The blood of Faerie’s dead king sang in my veins, setting ablaze my thirst for battle. Sickle-shaped claws stretched, desperate for purchase. Raw, unseelie strength poured through muscle and bone. The restlessness I’d been feeling since drinking Oberon dry coalesced into power, and as I stared down a nightmare the size of a mountain, I smiled.
Inside the storm—jabbed by lightning—a man-shaped figure reared up, but it was no more man than the sky was. It studied me, its attention everywhere, on my skin and sliding under it, seeking the heart.
My horse stamped and screamed, shaking its head, but the horse was a wild, proud thing too, like me. The beast was mine to control, like the long-dead beasts of Valand. It would not flee.
“The last vakaru…” The voice seemed so loud it might shatter my skull, but the words weren’t spoken. They sounded in my head, insubstantial like dreams. “One of the brothers created you, the one whose blood you stole. Did his death taste sweet, vakaru? Did it taste like vengeance for the millions of vakaru lives he took? Did it taste like justice?”
Justice. I knew it well.
The storm rolled closer, pouring across the forest like smoke. It gathered in the meadow and turned the grassland to a lake of darkness. It could reach out and crush me like it had crushed Aeon. But while it was focused on me, Kesh was escaping.
The blackness swirled around, making my horse snort and paw at the earth. Its flaming mane blazed brighter, seeing off the dark as we danced around, following the dark’s leading edge.
“Is that what you are? Justice?” I called.
The darkness became a figure again, but only as tall as my horse. It had no features, just an outline of someone vaguely male, and the eyes… if I looked too long in those eyes, I’d hear the screams of all the immortal souls it had taken. Forever trapped, forever punished. That fate could be mine.
“Justice? Yes. You have the taint of a thousand souls on you, lawman. Have you not killed as many as the prince who created you?”
I had, but not by choice. “Do you blame the slave for the actions of its master?”
The Hunt hissed its displeasure, startling my horse. My words had struck close to something it felt. Did it count itself a slave or a master?
“Oberon created the vakaru to kill, and when we fought his design, he killed them all.”
“All but one…” The voice poured into my thoughts, coating them in oil, but I was already unseelie and part of Faerie’s dark, where this thing had been birthed.
“What do you want from us?”
“Freedom.”
“You already have it.”
“No. It began with the death of a king, but it has not ended. There is one left who must die for me to be free.”
“Eledan?”
“The Wild Prince. He has the key…”
Key…
A memory bounced back. Eledan, his forearms raised and brought together. The warfae marks shifting, realigning, becoming one—becoming the key to stopping the Hunt. He had shown me the truth, and now the Hunt was inside my head, diving into the memory, trying to rip it free. The dark blinded and the howling storm deafened, until all I knew was that memory, turned over and over: Eledan revealing the key etched into his skin. I couldn’t hide it. The Hunt flowed, filling me up. The horse screamed, but I no longer felt the beast beneath me. Just the dark.
Was this death?
No, not for me.
I’d fought this long, come this far, I was not giving in now. Doubling down, I pulled on the parts that didn’t know how to surrender. Poison for blood, rage and thirst for the kill. Ageless. Ancient. I would not allow the memory of my vakaru to die with me here.
Clutching my head, I pulled on my faith for honor, for justice, for all the things I stood for and had done for centuries. The Hunt withdrew a beat. I remembered the lives I’d saved, the good from my recent past, all the wrongs I’d tried to right. I fought for the good and always had. The Hunt pulled back. It twitched and snarled, lashing out. “I did not come here to be mind-fucked by Faerie’s mistakes!”
The dark twitched. The Hunt had faltered.
Power burned me up, power and light, and Faerie… I felt Her then, the weight of the world, listening, watching, guiding. I’d felt it before, on another world in another time when I’d reigned over a people, but I’d known and loved Her then as Valand. Valand had been Faerie. I was part of Faerie too. This world was as much a part of me as my home had been. Her warmth flowed in, and instead of fighting it, I allowed Her to breathe into me. And Kesh, I felt her presence too, so warm, so light. Talen’s silvery touch wrapped closer, lending a sharp edge to the light burning through my veins. Sirius’s heat flared, and the horse reared, kicking at the dark. Sota’s metallic tek sizzled and itched, driving back the darkness.
The Hunt folded in on itself, shrinking around its throbbing, warped center.
It wasn’t enough.
Despite the power connecting us, we weren’t ready.
A roar cut through the air, coming in low overhead. I ducked in time to see the multicolored undercarriage of a vast warcruiser plunge downward.
The Hunt pulsed and pulled back, retreating in on itself. Fleeing.
Fire, born out of the heat of reentry, licked at the ship’s enormous bow, setting the sky ablaze. Her heat boiled away the Hunt’s darkness.
Shinj would not be pulling up from the dive.
Her bow hit the boiling darkness, and for a few breathless blinding moments, there was nothing, just light and silence. Then the shock wave hit.