Prince of Dreams Read online

  “Kill the Wraithmaker—Kill the Wraithmaker!” The air trembled.

  They had once chanted for me to kill for them. I smiled at the irony. Oberon’s fingers tightened around my neck.

  The king looked at the remaining oak cross. He knew I would heal. He knew this was all entertainment, just like the arenas were. I was the Wraithmaker. I’d been made to entertain. It cost him nothing to see me fixed to the cross, and it would buy him the crowd’s adoration. But he could not kill me here. That he would never allow. But his crowd wanted it, and anything less would make him appear weak.

  His cheek twitched.

  I’d made the choice for him.

  In one swift movement, Oberon slammed me into the vertical oak beam. Pain lashed up my spine. Teeth gritted, I blocked it out, blocked out all feeling, and buried my thoughts far away in the place I hid when he poured poison under my skin.

  This won’t kill me… He can’t kill me. He needs me. Pain. It will only be pain.

  He wedged his forearm under my chin, forcing my head back and trapping me against the cross, and lifted my right arm. Even though I knew what he was about to do, when his warm gloved fingers touched my wrist, my skin tingled in treacherous delight.

  “You leave me no choice,” he hissed.

  He can’t kill me. He won’t.

  Don’t be a martyr, Kesh. I could see Kellee’s enraged face in my mind, feel the bite of his words, see the righteous twinkle of his marshal’s star. He would have hated this.

  But I wanted it. It needed to happen.

  Oberon had no hammer and didn’t need one. He stabbed the nail in, punching it through my palm. Pain that didn’t feel like pain burst up my arm and struck at my chest, sharp and intangible. When he took my left arm and punched the nail in, a pitiful cry broke free, and the crowd cheered their bloodlust.

  I won’t die here… I can’t die here… It’s just pain. Pain always ends.

  The roaring fae sounded like breakers crashing against rocks, or Calicto’s whooshing air ducts. I thought of Calicto, of the simpler life of a simple messenger. Of Eledan ripping it all away, turning my happiness into a nightmare. I thought of Kellee showing me the glittering remains of thousands upon thousands of bodies scattered among the stars. Of Halow’s lost generations. Of all the saru I’d killed to be seen by those I’d thought I loved. Faerie and her worlds were broken. And the fae had broken it all. But I would end it.

  Oberon clicked his fingers. A saru freed the man nailed to a cross, as the king and I had agreed. My sacrifice for their lives.

  Cool tears streamed down my cheeks. I let the fae see them. Let them roar their justice until I turned deaf to it. They had roared like that when I’d killed for them. That was before I killed their beloved queen. Now they just roared for the Wraithmaker’s death. They’d built me up, and now they wanted to tear me down, just like Eledan had said. They didn’t love me. Never would. Never could. And I no longer loved them. I’d been blind my entire life, but now I saw everything in stark clarity.

  Oberon watched his fae boil into a frenzy, his blue eyes hard and glacial.

  “Kill the Wraithmaker—Kill her! Kill-her-kill-her-kill-her!”

  If Oberon didn’t kill me, they would.

  Heat throbbed up my arms in time with my heartbeat. Acid burned my throat. I could not withstand this agony much longer. Polestar, messenger, whatever I was, I was mortal. I could die here.

  Oh, Kellee… I’m sorry you think I left you. And Talen… my Talen, I promised I would always be with you, but I left you alone. It wasn’t my choice. Arran… made it so I had no choice.

  “This did not need to be…” Oberon filled my vision, or was it Eledan? Tears blurred the brothers into one.

  His fingers tore open my waistcoat, exposing my chest. The breast wrap went next. Cool air touched my skin. The roars increased, thudding against my head, and the king’s blue eyes cut through me. Was he laughing, or was that Eledan? No, Oberon wasn’t laughing. His lips drew back in a snarl. He raised an iron nail in his fist. The metal gleamed.

  I peered over the heads of the fae and saw the faces in the shadows. The saru watched, not turning away. They saw me clearly.

  I’d die for them and be reborn. And they would witness it all. Change. It was here. I was their Messenger, and this was how my myth truly began.

  The king raised the iron nail, and his eyes flashed. My heart stuttered. He brought the nail down, slamming it between my ribs and into my chest.

  I came around slowly from a dreamless sleep to find a familiar saru peeling bandages off my hands. Sonia. She must have been recaptured in Halow and brought home. Comfortably numb, I watched her examine my unscarred palms. Her round, unassuming face glowed with warmth and kindness. After everything she’d been through, raised as saru and losing her tongue to keep my secrets, she still smiled. I admired her for that, for many things.

  She turned my hands one way, then the other, searching for wounds. There were none. I’d healed. I was still alive. A miracle the saru had needed to see to believe.

  “Healed,” Sonia signed against my palm, her smile full of brightness and hope. “How?”

  She should have been free. I’d tried to free her in Halow. But in the end, we all found our way back to Faerie.

  I pulled my hand back and shook my head. They had already taken her tongue because of my secrets. I would not see her further hurt because of my actions.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. Sorry for all of it.

  “Don’t be.” She stood, signed, “Rest,” and left.

  The low-ceilinged room was small but functional enough. Oberon must have ordered that I be taken care of out of sight. I had no memory of them removing me from the cross or bringing me to this dwelling. Even the pain was a vanishing dream.

  Sitting up, I pressed a hand to my chest where Oberon had driven the nail in. The skin was healed and smooth, but something felt fragile inside. Not a physical hurt, but a heart hurt, as Sota had once told me. I missed him more than was healthy for someone to miss a machine. I missed his inappropriate comments and his unwavering devotion. I had made him, but he had always kept me safe in more ways than I’d programmed him to.

  I missed them all.

  Kill her…

  Their vicious taunts crowded the room with me. Saru only wanted to be loved. I couldn’t deny how their hatred hurt the old me, but it wasn’t all of me. I no longer needed the fae to love me.

  Kellee had told me that until I’d stood in front of Oberon and denied him, I would always belong to the king. I had denied him and more. I’d died on that cross—or near enough to it to satisfy the crowd. The Wraithmaker was dead. But the Messenger was very much alive. And I had vengeance on my mind.

  I climbed out of bed and dressed in the simple saru clothes Sonia had left out for me. The pale thin cotton barely hid my dark warfae marks, but unless someone looked closely, I’d pass as a nothing saru.

  Sonia returned, and pressing a finger to her lips, she beckoned me to follow. The saru dwelling was bigger than I’d first thought and decorated with enough faelights to make the place feel bright and warm.

  There were other saru here. Palace servers, I assumed from the delicate threads of gold running through their clothing. They looked up as I passed, eyes widening, but none fled like they had in the palace kitchen. Their gazes stayed glued to my back until I’d passed out of sight.

  Sonia led me into another wing of bedrooms. She stopped at an open bedroom door and gestured for me to look inside.

  Sirius lay unconscious on a saru bed, boots hanging off the edge, tek arm slung out at the side and red hair fanned across the pillow. Shirtless, he looked like a forbidden fruit humans would stumble across in ancient tales. The kind that ached to be awoken with a kiss. But the moment the unsuspecting human’s lips touched the fae’s, he would wake, devour the human, and wear their skin for the rest of a mortal life. I shuddered at the sight, prompting a frown from Sonia.

  “Why afraid?” she signed.
<
br />   “I’m not afraid,” I whispered and then corrected the lie. “Fear keeps us alive.”

  “Not fear him.” She smiled.

  “Yes him. Sirius is the worst of them.” I kept my voice low, not wanting to wake him.

  She shook her head and made a sound like a laugh, but it was muffled by her missing tongue. “Different.”

  I leaned against the doorframe and crossed my arms. She wouldn’t have been smiling at him had she seen him lurking in the shadows during my years of torture, or seen him sneer at me from behind Oberon, or watched him hold me back as I’d begged him and Arran to take me back…

  His metal arm, tossed carelessly half off the bed, glinted. A mangled mess of a palm remained where Oberon had driven the nail through. That would be almost impossible to fix on Faerie. He truly was crippled, and all thanks to his king.

  Sirius wasn’t different. He was a guardian. That made him a hundred times more dangerous than a normal fae. And he was a stubborn “all must obey me” sluagh-bait.

  A little saru girl squeezed between Sonia and me and bounded into the room without fear. She plonked down on the chair beside the bed and beamed at the lordly fae spread before her. He could wake and crush her skull in the time it took me to click my fingers. Where was her mother?

  Sonia was smiling again.

  “Girl? Come away…” I had started forward when Sonia reached out and held me back.

  “Harmless.”

  Had she lost her mind? Sirius was many things, but harmless wasn’t one of them.

  “If you knew the things he’s done—”

  The little girl poked Sirius’s cheek.

  Sweet cyn!

  I could make it to the bedside in seconds and tear her away from him, or I could stand by and watch the storm that was about to be unleashed. I could imagine it now: How dare a saru infant touch his mightiness!

  Sirius’s eyes snapped open.

  My heart leaped into my throat.

  The girl poked him some more.

  I wasn’t ignoring this foolishness any longer. I hadn’t just had myself fixed to a cross so this girl could get herself killed for poking a guardian. I’d had enough death for one day. I started forward. “Girl…”

  Poke.

  “Girl, leave him be.”

  Poke.

  Sirius blinked. He turned his head toward her, smiled a soft and impossibly playful smile, and pretended to nip at the girl’s tiny fingers. She squealed in delight.

  “Enough!” I grabbed her and shoved her behind me. “Get out of here before he bites your fingers off for real.”

  Sirius sat up and regarded me with an eerily Talen-like raised eyebrow. I heard the saru retreat but didn’t take my eyes off the fae should he decide to go after her and deliver his guardian justice.

  “You survived…” his deep voice rumbled. “How frustrating.”

  He stood, bringing him too close, but I wasn’t backing down. He peered down his nose at me the way he had countless times before. All that raggedy red hair stuck out at odd angles, framing a stoic, neutral face made of harsh lines. This close, I noticed how a sprinkling of barely-there freckles dusted his nose, and with that sight came a barrage of dream memories that scorched my mind. His mouth on mine. My hand tightening around his cock.

  By cyn!

  I wasn’t moving. Even as my face heated, I was not backing down. He would think the flush was from anger.

  Eventually realizing I wouldn’t move, he sidestepped around me and proceeded to an open window. I watched from the corner of my eye, feigning disinterest. The lean musculature of his back flexed as he brought his arms up and rolled his shoulders. He winced, stiff. He was in pain but wouldn’t admit it. Not all of it was visible pain, either. His beloved king had nailed him to a cross. That had to hurt in more ways than were obvious.

  The guardian braced an arm against the wall and peered through the little window. “Twilight.” A spark snapped across his tek hand, making it twitch uncontrollably beside him. He hissed, saw me watching, and lifted the offending appendage. “Nothing on Faerie can fix this.”

  “I can. Maybe…” I knew where there might be some tek hoarded away.

  “Of course you can.” Chuckling darkly, he returned to the bed and snatched up a folded shirt, using his good left hand. “And I suppose you want to make a deal for it? Do not waste your breath. I’ll not bargain with you.”

  Which would make finding the prince’s heart a thousand times more difficult. I closed the door, hoping the thin oak panels were thick enough to stop the saru from listening in.

  He had shrugged his shirt over his shoulders and was now struggling with the hook and eye fastenings. His tek hand glitched every other second, making the tiny cotton lops almost impossible targets. Metal fingers I knew to be precise and smooth jerked. He tried again to pinch the hook section between his finger and thumb, but the tek jolted, freeing the hook. His growl was one of pure frustration. A Royal Guardian, a warrior protector for thousands upon thousands of years, needed help to get dressed.

  He saw me approach and backed up as though I had a weapon and was bearing down for an attack. For such a revered guardian, he feared the smallest things. The little things. “Allow me to help you?”

  “I do not need your help.” He was on the move again, crossing the room, putting as much distance between us as possible. His hands went to his raggedy hair. Another visible sign of how I’d mutilated him. Considering everything that had happened during the past few weeks, it was a miracle he was functioning at all.

  “There’s nothing wrong with accepting help,” I told him.

  “There is…” he laughed dryly, “… when it’s yours.”

  “Saru help you every day.”

  “They do not. My household is—” He stopped himself and dropped his hands, defeated. “Very well. You may attend me, saru.” He almost spat the word and turned to me, presenting me with the gaping shirt and a stubborn, sullen face.

  This time, when I approached, he stood still and glared over my head. I could have argued that I wasn’t his saru, and therefore I wasn’t attending him, I was helping him, but that would have gotten us nowhere. I could put aside my pride, even if he couldn’t.

  Careful to keep my fingers away from his skin despite the strong urge to touch, I fastened the shirt like a good little saru and stepped back. There. He even permitted himself the tiniest of smiles before twitching it into a half snarl.

  “Faerie is dying,” I said. He narrowed his eyes and stayed silent, letting me continue. “You want to fix Faerie. Talen told you how we could do it. But I know how you and I can do it too.” And Eledan, but we’d get to that once he’d come around to my thinking.

  “What trickery are you conjuring? Your intentions are clear, and they have nothing to do with healing Faerie. You’re a curse upon me and this world. After what transpired at the Seat, your only possible motive is to get revenge and destroy.”

  You just want them on their knees… Eledan laughed inside my mind. I pinched the bridge of my nose, seeing off his phantom. “Would it cost you too much to listen to me instead of arguing?”

  “The queen listened to you. She is dead.”

  He had a point, but that was before. “Oberon made me his assassin. I killed the queen for him.”

  He looked away, the truth painful even though he must have known it all this time.

  “You know I would have done anything for the king. But the years I spent away from him changed me, and then, when I found Kellee and Talen, they helped me realize Oberon is not Faerie’s king.”

  His lashes fluttered, and he replied softly, “This is the same treasonous thinking that had me nailed to a cross.”

  “It doesn’t mean it’s wrong, just that he has the power. But I can change that.”

  “How, calla?” he whispered, afraid the words would sail away and find Oberon. Calla, his pet name for me. It meant lesser, smaller thing. I’d always assumed it was an insult, but the way he spoke it now almost im
plied a reverence. Likely because he feared his words would find their way back to Oberon.

  “I can fix Faerie, and I’ll tell you how, but first… I need your help.”

  “You expect me to help you on your word?” He laughed and turned away.

  I caught his tek arm. The touch jerked him to a stop. “The polestar,” I said, hand still on his glitching arm. “Do you remember, on the warcruiser, I was going to come back to Faerie with you to look for the polestar? We were going to find it and bring it to the king to make him strong again.”

  He pulled his arm free and frowned, a long way from trusting me.

  “We can use it for good, maybe even harness it to stop Faerie’s decay. And I know where it is.”

  “The polestar was lost to the stars long ago. How could the Wraithmaker know where it is and not Oberon?”

  “I had help.”

  Sirius had spent weeks with my so-called help, Talen and Kellee. He knew what we were capable of together. “Mab shattered it. It was never to be reconstructed,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “A saru, not even one as…” he struggled to find the correct word, “… impossible as you could know where to find all the pieces. A vakaru, albeit the last, could not know. And the pilot… he is… he is something powerful… He knew more.”

  “That is all true. But there’s also a fae who knows exactly where the pieces are, and he’s agreed to show us.”

  Sirius’s eyes darkened as he put all the events of the past few days together. “You speak of the Dreamweaver. And I suppose he wants you to free him from Oberon’s prison in exchange for this knowledge?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Can it be the Wraithmaker is so gullible as to fall for his promises?” Sirius rubbed his face and cast his gaze toward the ceiling, seeing beyond it into Faerie’s twilight sky. “Let us assume, for a moment, that he intends to give you this information. The Mad Prince’s subsequent actions, should he reconstruct the pieces of the polestar, would destabilize Faerie. He will seek out his brother, the current king, and kill him—all within Faerie law, considering Oberon’s crimes—creating a power vacuum and throwing Faerie into disarray.”