Her Dark Legion Read online

  ‘HER DARK LEGION’

  #5 Messenger Chronicles

  Pippa DaCosta

  Urban Fantasy & Science Fiction Author

  Subscribe to Pippa’s mailing list at pippadacosta.com & get free ebooks.

  Copyright © 2019 Pippa DaCosta.

  May 2019. US Edition. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictions, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Edited in US English.

  Version 1.

  www.pippadacosta.com

  Please note: Crazy Ace Publishing monitors popular international pirate sites for infringing material. If infringement is found (illegal downloading or uploading of works) legal action will be taken.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

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  Chapter 1

  “He that made this knows all the cost,

  For he gave all his heart and lost.”

  ~ W.B. Yeats, Old Earthen.

  Talen

  Shinj’s constant presence hummed at the back of my thoughts, beating in time with her two massive hearts. As those I loved fell apart around me, I wondered what it would have been like to fall into her embrace and bond as her pilot. Eternal life would be so much simpler.

  The part of me designed to join with Faerie’s enormous warcruisers still yearned for that connection, and always would. Shinj pushed against my mind. She also yearned to keep me and everyone here, in the observation room, safe. She considered us her family—Kellee, Sota, and perhaps even Sirius, although Shinj remained unconvinced by the guardian. But one of us—our heart—was missing.

  “How could you allow him to take Mylana?” Sirius accused Kellee, using Kesh’s original name to remind us how the guardian had known her longer than any of us. He leaned over the table, propping himself up on his fists to loom over Kellee, seated opposite. Had there not been a table between them, I might have been forced to intervene.

  Kellee stared back, as silent now as he had been since his arrival. He’d sprawled his predatory grace into a chair, and there he remained, face unreadable but for the occasional twitch in his cheek whenever Sirius commented on our failures. A quiet vakaru was a creature best left alone. The guardian was walking a thin line.

  “I had her in my care for days, protected against all of Faerie,” Sirius continued, straightening to his full fae height. “Cu Sith assassins, vicious Wild Ones, and even King Oberon himself. And you lost her within a few hours? You failed her.” The guardian flung his tek-hand at Kellee in dismissal, but he wasn’t done. The smell of wood smoke and warming spices permeated the air. Sirius was losing control of his magic. In Faerie, Royal Guardians—the oldest and most powerful of Faerie’s creations—were known and respected for their composure. Sirius was losing his, but blind rage wasn’t pushing him toward lashing out. He cared for Kesh, more than Kellee could fathom.

  “You are a disgrace to the vakaru creed,” he said, landing his final blow.

  Anger lit up my veins, quick as lightning. “That’s enough!” Accusations were one thing, but I would not have Kellee’s honor called into question, not even by a guardian older than me.

  Sirius whirled away in a fan of red hair and russet-colored frock coat, diverting his rage through the obs-window at Faerie’s colorful planetary arc, some three hundred miles below our orbit.

  Kellee’s glare tracked the guardian and then rebounded to me as I approached the table. His eyes, usually green, burned with flecks of red. It wasn’t like him to sit in silence. He likely believed Sirius’s words to be true. When it came to Kesh, the marshal I’d known for over three centuries made mistakes, but he hadn’t let Kesh go, as Sirius had accused. Eledan had taken her in her dreams. No one here could have stopped him. My talents were chaotic and did not extend to illusion. The Dreamweaver could not be beaten in his own realm.

  Kellee dropped his gaze to the table and ground his teeth, his cheek fluttering.

  We’d get her back. Eledan was just one fae. Granted, he was particularly good at dancing around us, but together, we, a guardian, a vakaru, and a drone-turned-man, would get her back. Eledan had left us his terms: give him the polestar pieces and he’d let Kesh choose which side she was on in this war. It seemed noble enough, but Kesh had a habit of sacrificing herself for others. Her choice would not be simple.

  “He could not take her without her consent,” Sota said. His presence, like the ship’s, constantly pressed against my senses. Where the ship’s touch soothed, however, Sota’s created a static tingling. He looked human, but he was further from it than anyone here. Dark hair fell in a messy mop, long enough to obscure his tek-eye—the only outward sign he wasn’t what he appeared to be. He looked no older than Kesh, perhaps in his mid-twenties in human years, but inside, his age was indeterminable. Constructed by Kesh’s hands and brought to life by a magic she no longer had, Sota had been made to protect her, but in the last cycles, he’d become more than tek-equipment to us.

  “He has taken her before.” I glanced at Sota and Kellee, two of my most trusted friends and advisors. Kesh loved them. The bond she and I shared broadcasted it every time she favored either with one of her small, rare smiles. “Kellee and I spent months bringing her back from Eledan, and even then, his hold on her remained for months afterward.”

  “She was weaker then.” Sota lifted his head. “Guardian, you spent the most time with her on Faerie. What was her mind like before Eledan took her?”

  Sirius didn’t turn and remained quiet, likely thinking back on his days with Kesh. Something had happened between them on Faerie. It had shattered the guardian’s stoicism and warmed him to Kesh in ways I had thought impossible. “She was focused,” he finally said, turning his head. His auburn lashes fluttered, his gaze falling. “Driven. Determined.” He turned to address us. “There is something you should all know. The Mad Prince offered her the one thing she could not refuse. She bargained herself into Eledan’s ownership for saru freedom.”

  The truth of his words rocked me on my feet. Shinj’s touch reached out to soothe me, and the surrounding lights throbbed a deeper red in response to my distress. I barred the shock from my fa
ce and swallowed a sharp knot in my throat.

  She had given herself to Eledan for her saru.

  A foolish solution, but also a brave one. She believed she had no self-worth—a belief she’d spent her entire life striving to prove wrong—but she always fell into the same trap, and Eledan knew it—knew her. Her people and the past she clung to, believing it shaped her, had always been her weakness.

  Sirius mentioned the trade for the polestar, but it took so long for me to regain my runaway thoughts that I missed his words. Bargains on Faerie were binding. Kesh had always escaped before, as a saru so far from home, but Faerie was not so forgiving of oathbreakers, especially now that the Hunt was free. Oathbreakers and those who flouted justice were the Hunt’s preferred sustenance.

  “Kellee,” Sota said, his tone softening. “What do we do?”

  Kellee was lost inside his own thoughts. Like this, he was of no use to Kesh. My earlier anger reignited, and this close to Faerie, my restrained and depleted magic crackled awake. This was not the time for Kellee to lose faith in himself or us. None of us had that luxury. Kesh needed us.

  If he wouldn’t provide any answers, then I would. “We give Eledan the pieces.” I said, drawing the weight of everyone’s attention. “Once we have Kesh back, we’ll have enough power to deal with Eledan.”

  “That’s assuming she chooses to come back,” Kellee countered.

  “Do you know where the polestar pieces are?” Sirius asked.

  “We have—”

  “Three pieces,” Kellee interrupted. He looked at me, his eyes needle sharp. “Eledan has the last piece. We have three: Kesh is a piece, the acorn, and there’s another. Isn’t there, Talen?”

  Then he knew I’d kept the discovery of Sjora’s thimble from him. I hadn’t deceived him deliberately, more so out of caution. Kellee’s natural desire to be the righteous crusader had convinced me to keep the last piece of the polestar to myself, until I could be sure Kellee wouldn’t toss it out an airlock. But seeing how my betrayal cut deep lines into his face, I regretted the decision. Kellee had never trusted easily, and regarding the fae, he didn’t trust at all. By concealing Sjora’s thimble, I’d proved the marshal’s centuries’ old assumptions right.

  “I have the thimble,” I admitted.

  “Were you ever going to tell me?” The scorn in those words cut at a different kind of bond, one of a friendship that had lasted mortal lifetimes.

  “Until recently, I was not sure the thimble was a piece.”

  “Karushit.” His sneer revealed the tips of his lengthening fangs.

  Sota looked similarly disappointed, while Sirius was as unreadable as all fae who had long ago mastered the art of hiding their emotions.

  “For Sjora to have the thimble seemed too convenient,” I explained. “I wanted to make sure it was a fragment, but when the events on Hapters revealed my true name and…” Hapters had revealed the monster I’d once been—a powerful killer and everything Kellee despised about the fae. “I feared you would assume I’d kept the thimble for malevolent reasons.” Because, as the Nightshade—the unseelie’s chosen ruler—I would have kept a piece of Faerie’s most dangerous weapon. No matter how many times I said the words—I am not who I once was—only Kesh truly believed me. Oberon had wiped out Kellee’s people, and he saw that potential in all fae, including me.

  Kellee sprang from the chair and marched toward the door. “Take Shinj down to Faerie,” he said, coldly. “We don’t have a choice. We give Eledan exactly what he wants, or he’ll make her sleep forever. I’m not prepared to risk Kesh’s mortal lifetime.”

  He was out of the chamber and gone. If I didn’t set this right, he’d assume the worst when we needed to be united.

  Sota’s soft eyes urged me to go after him. The drone had always known how to fix things between us.

  I nodded and followed Kellee, catching sight of him ahead in the corridor. “Wait, Kellee…”

  Kellee turned from a solid mass of male into a blur too fast for me to track. His hand locked around my throat, hard fingers squeezing. My back cracked against Shinj’s wall. The ship’s alarm rang through my thoughts. Kellee’s grip tightened. He leaned in, pinning me firmly. Red blazed in his eyes. His fangs extended, and he worked his jaw to accommodate those king-killing weapons. He’d torn out countless throats, and I had no doubt he’d do the same to mine if he believed I’d betrayed him.

  “I’ve warned you repeatedly not to fuck with me, fae.” His eyes drilled into mine. “And you kept something as important as that thimble a secret. Why?”

  “Because of this…” I croaked. His fingers eased, allowing me to breathe. “Because you still see me as your enemy.”

  He leaned closer, the threat a living, breathing fire behind his glare. “Then stop making it easy for me.”

  Now that we were closer to Faerie than I’d been in countless centuries, I had access to power that would make short work of the last vakaru. I could have thrown him off, could easily have fought him, but our clashing wouldn’t help either of us. Kesh needed us to work together, not fall apart.

  His grip released, and as he backed up a step, I rubbed the ache from my neck.

  “The fate of Faerie relies on reuniting those pieces,” I wheezed. “I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t take the thimble and hide it far from us. Tell me you haven’t considered it? Tell me you haven’t thought of scattering the pieces again for the greater good?”

  Kellee dragged his hand across his chin. “I owe Faerie nothing. Scattering the pieces would stop anyone from getting their hands on a powerful weapon.”

  He had considered it. I knew him too well, and that’s why I’d kept Sjora’s piece from him. As dangerous as the polestar was, we needed it. Faerie needed it. The war wouldn’t end without restoring the balance it provided. “You’ll do what’s right… you always have. I know that, and I don’t blame you. Someone needs to stand for good, but it’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  “Not me, not this time.” His claws retracted. “I’m getting Kesh back at any cost.” He ran a hand over his hair and tightened the band holding his hair back. That tightness translated to the rest of him too. Less than a day had passed since he’d killed Oberon. I’d seen him furious, seen him high on victory and low in defeat. In the years he’d acted as my jailor, I’d come to know Marshal Kellee as well as I knew myself, and it wasn’t only my keeping secrets tearing him up. He was afraid, just like I was.

  “Kellee…” His love was a fierce, wild thing, and one day, it would be ripped from him, as it would be from me. Such was the way of mortals. So brightly they shone, until they extinguished in a blink. “She is the polestar,” I murmured, creeping the meaning around his anger. “We can’t ignore that. Have you thought about what will happen… later?”

  He winced and cut me a scorching look to back off. “If she’s reunited with all pieces,” he said, “they’ll cease to exist in their current form.” He delivered the fact with all the distance of a lawman doing his work, detaching himself from its reality.

  “Not if—when.”

  Kesh would die. He needed to hear it, to understand it. More was at stake than Kesh’s life. In many ways, she had been right to bargain for her people; she knew, in the land of immortals, Faerie would resist change for millennia. Kesh was playing the long game. But Kellee… he’d played that game long enough. He’d lost much to it. We both had.

  It hurt to hear. By Faerie, I knew it hurt. I was bonded with Kesh. Her death would likely mean my own, but I’d die a thousand times over to save her. “I wanted you to take the pieces and hide them away,” I said. “If I gave you that thimble and you threw it away, Kesh would live. I wanted it. I considered having Shinj eject it into space. But what would become of the dark then? It has to end. Kesh knows she can end it. We must reunite the polestar with its fragments. Order must be returned to the light and dark fae. It’s inevitable. The longer it goes on, the more lives will be lost—saru, namu, human, and fae alike. Kesh knows even the brightest star
must die.”

  “How can you give up on her, Talen?” His voice cracked, and all the fierce, violent vakaru fell away.

  Regret twisted sharply in my chest. “No. No, I haven’t… and I never will. We will get her back, and we’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe, but she will fight us. She’ll try to give up everything because she believes it’s the only way. We have to make her see otherwise. I’m prepared to stand beside you, beside Kesh, no matter the cost, even if it goes against her wishes. I once fought for Faerie, for all the dark fae, but I’m no longer the Nightshade. Faerie doesn’t matter to me the way it once did. The polestar, light and dark—those things don’t matter to me. They should, and it terrifies me that I’m turning my back on who I was, on who I’m supposed to be, all for a mortal.” He looked up, my words finally getting through that vakaru stubbornness. “I’m not your enemy, Kellee. I never was.”

  Over the years, I’d wondered if he’d suspected how easily I could have escaped him. As I stood with him now, the truth was all over his face. He had known, but as two immortals in a mortal world, where else could either of us have gone?

  He extended his hand. “You’re with me?”

  “I always have been.” I gripped his forearm and shook. Together, we were ready to fight for Kesh.

  Chapter 2