Talen
Calicto looked nothing like the tek-riddled planet Kellee and I had rescued Kesh from over a Sol year ago. From orbit, its surface churned green and blue like Faerie’s. As Pierce maneuvered the Excalibur over Arcon, some fifty miles below us, Faerie’s touch became apparent. Calicto hadn’t started out alive like Faerie, but it was now.
Hulia set the shuttle down in the open plain in front of Arcon’s pyramid-shaped building and lowered the ramp. Pollen and magic puffed into the small cabin on the exchange of air. Kellee sneezed and swore, then helped maneuver Kesh’s hovering stretcher down the ramp behind me. Kesh remained unconscious.
As soon as my boots settled into the mossy ground, a new, invisible touch wound around my legs, exploring, tasting. New Calicto was an extension of Faerie now, and as alive and aware as we were.
“Holy shitballs.” Sota scanned our surroundings, made up of strange, little trees with weeping branches and sparkling brooks burbling across what had once been an all-tek plaza. Arcon loomed like a mountain of greenery.
“Life signs are too abundant to track,” Sota announced. “I don’t recognize any of the species here.”
To prove his point, a six-legged critter scurried out of the bushes and scuttled to the nearest pool. Tek tickled my senses, and as I watched the creature lower its antennae-bristling head to drink, the tek-scales along its back flared to absorb the heat.
The creature was tek and magic. I scanned the nearby bushes, listening for pixie chirps, and found them among the branches. Their little bodies were the same as any pixie on Faerie, but these had an extra set of wings made from metal and mesh.
Tek fused with magic, just like the trinkets on Hapters.
Just like Kesh had made Sota.
And just like the heart that kept Eledan alive.
It shouldn’t have been possible.
“I thought magic hated tek?” Sota asked, echoing my thoughts.
Eledan descended the ramp. “It’s evolved,” he said, like the answer was obvious. He stopped at the edge of a stream and lifted his head, admiring Arcon towering out of the undergrowth. His Arcon. His teasing smile suggested he’d known this would happen. “Faerie always finds a way.”
He touched Kesh’s med-stretcher and had it drift behind him.
Kellee started after him. I blocked him and Sota, earning frowns from both. “You need to stay here.”
Gold rimmed Kellee’s dark pupils. “To hell with that. I’m not letting him take Kesh in there to do whatever the cyn he wants with her like last time—”
“I’m going,” I interrupted.
Sota had fallen into the stillness that happened whenever he forgot about pretending to be human. His instincts demanded he protect Kesh, but whatever Eledan was about to do would trigger those instincts.
“Kellee, you know you’re not in the best frame of mind, and Sota, what happens in there may trigger your protocols to protect. Kesh needs you both out here, waiting for her when she wakes.”
“You promise he won’t hurt her?” Sota asked.
I couldn’t answer that, as well he knew. “I will do everything in my power to keep her safe.”
“If anything happens to her…” Kellee trailed off, his eye color bleeding red.
He knew me well enough to know I’d never put Kesh’s life at risk, but my controlling his emotions to prevent him from killing Eledan had driven a wedge between us, which might never be dislodged. I’d known the risk then as I knew them now. This had to be done.
“Guard the shuttle. There’s no knowing what monsters Faerie has created here.”
Sota backed off, his eyes cast downward, but Kellee’s stayed the entire way across the plain. Eledan had stopped at the foot of Arcon’s vine-blanketed steps. He rested a boot on the bottom step and looked up at his old home. Glittering motes drifted in the air, catching Calicto’s light, filtered through its new atmosphere. Faerie had always terraformed worlds, but I’d never seen the process firsthand before. New Calicto was beautiful, even with its hybrid tek-and-magic base.
Eledan arched an eyebrow and raised his gaze to me. “Afraid the vakaru might lose control?”
“Yes.”
He chuckled. “He’s tried to kill me several times, and here I am.”
“Because he wasn’t really trying.”
His smile died. “This is as far as the stretcher will go. We’ll have to carry Kesh deeper into Arcon.”
There was no we. Easing my hands under Kesh’s light body, I cradled her in my arms and climbed the steps. Vines and fauna slithered out of the way, revealing a dark cavernous mouth. It took a great deal to unnerve me, but passing into Arcon and feeling a thousand eyes observing me from behind hidden walls sent a shiver down my spine. I’d stepped into the mouth of something alive, and I wasn’t sure what that meant.
Walls moved, and the floor opened, leading us spiraling downward. Dallying wisps lit the way. The well had turned Arcon into a knoll, but this knoll was like none on Faerie. Creatures made of tek parts scuttled around my boots and up walls.
“Is this your doing?” I asked Eledan, who strolled ahead. I expected my words to echo, but the trailing greenery devoured the sound, adding to the claustrophobia. One wrong step and the knoll could seal us inside. Knolls were well-known for their temperamental nature. Was this knoll friend or foe?
“It’s merely what happens when a well is left to claim a world without intervention.”
“But tek and magic fused together?”
“My brother feared such a union. He considered it blasphemy.”
“Do you consider this blasphemy?”
“I would have, before Faerie neglected me. Now, having lived among humans, I consider this inevitable. I assume you’ve seen my heart, and you’ve certainly seen what Kesh did with Mab’s gift in Sota. This is, after all, Queen Mab’s life magic at work.”
“Your magic.”
He dipped his head in acknowledgment.
The same magic that had run through Shinj, and Oberon’s warcruisers, could create life from nothing, and here it was, as Calicto’s beating heart. It felt significant. “Where are we taking Kesh?”
“She’s dying. I intend to change that.”
“Why help her? Isn’t it the polestar you want?”
He walked on. The air cooled, and tek-wisps settled on roots poking out from the tunnel walls.
“You are as old as I am, perhaps older. You once fought a war, and like the vakaru, you lost. The years go on, and nothing changes. The same cycles begin again and again. As fae, we are not immune to these traps, but I saw another side. I stood outside Faerie and looked in. You know what that view looks like.”
I did. I knew the loneliness, the isolation, the confinement behind a glass prison, both real and imagined. The chill tried to gnaw through my skin. I pulled Kesh closer, keeping her close and warm as much for her as for me.
“Faerie is shortsighted,” he added. “Calicto is the future.”
Then he wanted Faerie to spread far and wide, to Sol and farther. And he’d be its ruler. Everyone would finally notice the ignored prince.
“What does any of that have to do with Kesh?” I asked again, and all I received in answer was a cutting glance in warning. Did he even know the answer?
The deeper we traveled, the more magic hung in the air, its silken trails tasting like spun sugar. Deeper still we walked, into the old mining tunnels a mineworker had used to stumble across an ancient Faerie well. A discovery that had gotten the worker killed and Kesh framed for murder. The presence of burgeoning magic pushed in from all sides, like water pressure. It searched for a weakness or sought to drown me in magic. My defenses flared, my unseelie side stirring awake and pushing back. Kesh’s breathing became labored, her mortality fighting against Faerie’s touch.
“How much farther?” I’d barely finished asking before the tunnel opened into an enormous chamber, with a large, glowing green bubble at its center. The bubble pulsed and rippled, magic churning, throwing off enough light to stretch long, dancing shadows behind us.
Eledan approached the well, his aura taking on a similar green glow. The well was three times as high as he was tall, and it beat with magic, the same as Shinj’s twin hearts had once thudded life through the ship—only this heart fed an entire planet.
Eledan gestured for me to hand over Kesh.
“What will this do to her?” Life magic rarely killed, but it wasn’t meant for mortals either. This much of it… it could kill, the same as my bond with Kesh could have killed her in the past.
He offered his hand. “This is not your magic. It’s mine. Hand her over or she’ll die in your arms. Is that what you want?”
“Why are you helping her? At least tell me that.”
He let his smile go, and a fresh honesty shone through all the layers of madness and neglect shimmering behind his eyes. “There is no time for explanations.”
Moving closer, I felt more magic throb over me. Kesh trembled, her breaths racing with her heart. She felt small and fragile, like something so close to breaking. I wanted to turn back and leave this place, leave them and take her with me, but she’d never forgive me if I stole her life and her choices from her.
“Why, Eledan?”
Green light pulsed over him and through him. Beneath his shirt, his tek-heart glowed with the same intense light as in his eyes. His guarded expression broke open, becoming raw and desperate.
“Because I’ve lived a thousand years as a ghost, and she finally saw me. I will not allow her to die.”
I searched his face for the trick, for the crack in his words that would reveal the deception, but I found only pain and confusion. He meant every word. Eledan took her from my arms, and in the next step, the green well of energy swallowed them both.