The Nightshade's Touch: A Paranormal Space Fantasy (Messenger Chronicles Book 3) Read online

  “Times are changing.” Sirius got to his feet, doing so slowly when he saw me tense. “As much as I disagreed with your tutorage, I rarely saw Oberon happier than when he was with you.”

  I glanced at the door. If Kellee so much as heard a single word of that…

  “With you, he did not have the weight of the court on him. With you, he was different.”

  No, no, no, sweet lies. They meant nothing. “He just trained me to fight, Sirius. You know this. I’m one in a long line of pet saru. Something for him to occupy his days with. A distraction, at best.”

  “No,” the guardian whispered. “I wish it were so, but Oberon… He has an unseemly fascination with you. I have tried to explain it, to understand it, and failed. You have somehow beguiled him and now you must return. The king has never had more enemies and fewer resources. He never leaves the palace. Every day his light darkens further. I would see him returned to his former glory for the sake of the court, for the sake of Faerie, and if you can assist with that, I will not stop until you are returned to his side. The king needs his Wraithmaker.”

  I swallowed and hoped Kellee wasn’t listening, because what I said next would destroy everything I had built between us. But it had to happen. For Halow. For the namu and saru. For all the lives holding out hope that somebody would save them. I had never wanted to be the Wraithmaker, and I hadn’t asked to be the Messenger. But nobody else would be.

  “I will go back with you to Faerie, and I will go willingly, but first, I need your help. Yours and your flight’s.”

  “With what exactly?”

  “An unseelie problem.”

  “We’re working with the guardian?” Kellee rolled his eyes and slumped in his seat at the meeting table. He pinched the bridge of his nose as though this meeting were too painful. I’d sent Sirius from the room and called everyone in to discuss how to proceed from here.

  “The guardian is working with us,” I corrected. “Big difference.”

  “How, in cyn, did you get him to agree to that? Wait. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. It’s taking all the control I have not to walk right out of here. Maybe I can find an abandoned farm somewhere and grow barley for the rest of my long and hopefully uneventful days. There’s no way you, Kesh, can fuck barley up.” The marshal huffed and added, “You do realize venturing into unmapped tunnels with a royal guardian by our side is the definition of stupid?”

  As reactions went, Kellee’s could have been worse. Usually, his brutal honesty was refreshing, but not now. I needed him with me on this. I was trying to do right and move forward. I needed his support, not his side-eyed scowl.

  I flicked my gaze to Talen. The fae stood at the back of the meeting room, leaning against the wall like a lethal statue. He appeared to be engaged and acknowledged my glance with a lift of an eyebrow, but the fact he had isolated himself spoke volumes. That and the distant focus, like he was only going through the motions.

  Arran’s fingers tapped lightly on the tabletop. He saw me looking his way and smiled reassuringly. At least I could count on him to stand beside me.

  “I suggest we vote,” Sota said. The drone hovered in the air between Arran and Kellee. He had been mostly quiet since the incident with the anonymous pilot, which meant he had a lot to say. Time for our usual debriefs wasn’t on our side.

  “That’s actually a good idea,” Kellee agreed. He lifted a hand. “I vote ‘fuck no’ to having a sidhe guardian tagging along while we hunt deadly unseelie monsters. The only one he wants alive is Kesh, and the rest of us he’ll accidentally kill because Oberon ordered it to happen. He’ll wriggle around his word. They always do.”

  “I vote yes,” Arran said.

  Kellee groaned, nipping the sound off when it turned into a growl. “Of course you’d agree with Kesh.”

  Arran bristled. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you’d fling yourself over the edge of a cliff if she told you to.”

  Arran folded his arms and glared back at the marshal. “I trust Kesh.”

  Kellee chuckled. “And that right there is your problem.”

  I was ready to snap at them, when Sota added, “I vote no.”

  Why had I programmed my drone to have an opinion on everything? I couldn’t even rely on him to back me up. What was I doing here? I needed them with me, not divided. I needed everything they could be if we were to make a difference where it counted, and I couldn’t even organize them enough to go rooting around tunnels on a faraway planet. But they could be united. All of them had one thing in common: their dislike of the fae. All but one.

  All eyes turned to Talen, aware his was the deciding vote. His brow knotted, messing up his perfect lines and hardening his expression. I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed with them, with this entire situation, or just frustrated at being here when he had already admitted he’d prefer to take me away from all this.

  The silver fae blinked emotionless eyes back at us. “Having the guardian’s flight search Hapters for signs of unseelie habitation is a far better use of resources. Hapters’s people are at risk. If there are more rogue unseelie here, they will kill again. We need to deal with this threat and move on.”

  “And that’s a yes.” Kellee was on his feet and heading for the door before the last word had left Talen’s lips. “When you’re all dead, be sure to remember this conversation and which one of us is always right.”

  “We leave in fifteen minutes,” I told the others and jogged to catch up with the marshal. He would have vanished the second he’d left the room if he hadn’t wanted me following, but instead, he strode down the winding corridors, the soft lighting warming his gray and black leathers.

  “Hey.” He ignored me. Stubborn, arrogant son-of-a-sluagh. “Hey!” I caught his arm and tugged him around. A warning flared in his eyes. “You and I need to talk about a lot of things—”

  “Now is not the time.” He started to turn away.

  “No, it’s not, so shut up and listen.” I waited for him to keep on walking. He thought about it but must have decided I wasn’t a complete loss. When he faced me, a muscle twitched in his cheek. “We rarely see eye to eye, but I respect you, Marshal Kellee.” More than he could imagine. “I’m just asking you to respect me in return.”

  “I will.” He nodded. “When you’ve earned it.”

  I blinked, his words striking so deep, so fast, they cut off any reply. Hadn’t I done enough? The arena, saving the colonies alongside him, freeing Hapters’s people. I looked into his dark eyes and only saw disappointment, like he already knew how this would play out and I’d fail him. Again. When would it be enough? When would he forgive me? I then remembered that my heart believed I knew Marshal Kellee, but I never had, not really. Eledan had seeded an idea of the marshal in my head when he’d had me running circles in the illusory prison. The marshal I’d spoken to during those long nights of loneliness wasn’t real. The one in front of me was. Despite everything, we were strangers. And my heart ached to think we might always be.

  “Kellee.” I swallowed, refusing to wilt under his glare. “You must believe I can make a difference, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  He looked away, and the muscle in his cheek fluttered again as he bit down on whatever he wanted to say in reply.

  “You promised you would help me be the Messenger. I need your help now.”

  “You aren’t the Messenger.” His top lip twitched. He flicked a hand back down the corridor. “We are. Talen, Me, Sota, even Arran, and you. We’re the Messenger. I’m here for that. We can make a difference, all of us, so long as you don’t tear us apart, Kesh.”

  For once, we agreed. I wasn’t the people’s hero. We all knew it. I was just the face of the myth: the coat, the whip, the saru slave risen out of the dirt. It was a great tale. But Arran, Talen, Sota, and Kellee—they were the Messenger. They could be the people’s hero. They were more than I could ever be. They gave hope to a star system barely clinging to life. And that was precious. I understood now
. When Kellee looked at me, he saw a threat to that hope, because I’d betrayed him once, and in his mind, I could betray him again. He trusted Talen—his enemy—more than me. He trusted Arran and Sota more than me. And now I’d brought Sirius into our midst. Oberon’s guardian. My king’s most trusted advisor. A king who had made Kellee watch as he slaughtered the vakaru.

  “I was wrong,” I admitted. “But I didn’t understand how wrong I was until now. I was the Wraithmaker. It was all I ever knew. I lived to serve my king. Nobody and nothing else mattered to me.”

  The quiet pain showed in his eyes. A trust betrayed. He had seen me at my worst. He had helped pull me back from the nowhere place the Dreamweaver had trapped me in. He had pinned his hopes on me. This proud man who had lived a hundred lives alone, this last vakaru.

  I pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the soft, warm leathers beneath my palm. If he pulled away, we might never know each other, but he didn’t. He looked down, his expression raw and open, his heart strong where it beat beneath my hand. “We were both wrong.”

  He pressed a hand over mine and closed his fingers. His hands weren’t the soft, smooth hands of courtly fae. His were the hands of a male who had worked the fields and gripped weapons, who had fought for more lives than I could know. Inside, I ached to know the real Kellee.

  “I’ve been someone’s slave my entire life. Now that I’m free, because of you, I’m still trying to understand who I really am, but I know one thing. I won’t ever let you down, Marshal Kellee.”

  He lifted my hand from his chest and brought it to his lips. His lips brushed the back of my fingers while his eyes never left mine. The touch of his lips in a kiss so light it was barely there at all was so unlike Kellee that all I could do was watch and feel as that small brush of a touch held me utterly bespelled.

  He lowered my hand and released it. “I have never known anyone like you, Kesh Lasota. I want to believe you, to believe in you. But you are Oberon’s, and for all your pretty words and promises, you will always be Oberon’s.”

  My heart stuttered, because he was wrong, so very wrong. If he would just give me a chance to prove it.

  “Do not deny it.” He backed off. “It would be a lie, to both of us.”

  I watched him turn and walk away, wanting so badly to call out, to deny it, but I feared beneath all the need and want between us that Marshal Kellee was right.

  Chapter 14

  Hapters’s night was warm and velvety, reminding me of Faerie’s long, sultry hours, clad in wisp-punctured darkness. Day and night weren’t linear on Faerie. Night came only when many desired it and was banished again when Faerie’s people sought the light of day. The wax and wane of desire and indifference made Faerie and its people unpredictable, but it also made no two days the same.

  Was Hapters more than it appeared too?

  Kellee strolled far ahead, his outline little more than a flickering candle inside the moonlit heat haze. Sota and Arran were closer, Arran tossing his daggers in the air while Sota dipped and bobbed behind him. Next came the guardian, his every step delivered with purpose. His dark, earth-colored leathers and cloak almost had him blending in with Hapters’s fields. If he wanted, he could slip away, but the guardian was used to people seeing him and obeying him. He was not subtle.

  Behind me, Talen slipped through the night, Hapters’s twin moons painting his silvery hair a milky white. In my silence, I was struck by how impossible we all were.

  Don’t tear us apart, Kesh.

  Kellee’s words haunted me like the Dreamweaver’s. I wouldn’t tear us apart. I had every intention of making the Messenger a legend worthy of Faerie, but keeping everyone together and on the right track wouldn’t be easy, especially when I thought of the things we must do.

  “The stars are beautiful here.” Talen had drawn up beside me and fallen into my pace. He lifted his face, lips quirking gently at their corners.

  I followed his gaze, through the pale greens of Hapters’s high atmosphere, and spotted a few stars desperately competing with the moonlight. The stars were unfamiliar here. They had been unfamiliar on Calicto too, on the rare occasion they were visible through Calicto’s domes. The nightscape on Faerie looked as though someone had spilled a line of glitter across the sky. I’d often watched their path through the bars of the window in my cell (when permitted), and later from the tower Oberon had kept me in. Hapters’s stars were lifeless and dull in comparison, and yet Talen looked at them as though they were brighter than anything else in the sky. What did he see that I didn’t?

  My gaze fell from the sky to the fae admiring them. He was like those stars, I realized. Not Faerie’s brilliant fireworks, but something distant, something so far away that if I blinked, it might vanish. I had bound him to me, captured him, to control him, but it seemed he had captured me. I couldn’t hope to hold something like him for long.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, checking the others ahead to make sure we were heading in the right direction. Sota said something that Arran laughed at.

  “Why am I here on this mission, on this planet, with you?” Talen asked. He turned his head, resting the weight of his precision gaze on me. A flicker of humor softened it. Softened him. Outside, wrapped in Hapters’s warm night, he seemed happier and lighter.

  “With me.” I likely wouldn’t get an answer, but it wouldn’t stop me from chipping away at his barriers. “You called me a thief when we first met.”

  “I saw too much in the young saru standing outside my glass cage. I didn’t understand how you were there, how you had a queen’s magic wrapped around you and living tek attached to your hip.” He flicked a glance to where my whip sat now, peeking out from beneath my coat.

  “A human can’t steal magic. It must be gifted,” I reminded him. Then I recalled the wound in my thigh and how it had miraculously healed in hours. I remembered other things too, such as how I had recovered from the Dreamweaver’s affections with Talen and Kellee’s help. I hadn’t been bonded to Talen then. Perhaps Eledan hadn’t taken all his mother’s magic like he’d thought.

  “And yet you are the only human I’ve ever known who has wielded fae magic without it ravaging their mind.”

  I let his words sink in, let all their hidden secrets and things he didn’t say permeate the air and my thoughts.

  Nothing girl.

  No, she is everything.

  I would be a fool to ignore how there was more happening here, more I didn’t understand, but Talen did. The fae with all the secrets. “You knelt to me.” It had been the first time I’d seen a fae shed tears. “Why?”

  “I begged you to free me.” His smile grew. “Perhaps I wasn’t speaking of Kellee’s cage.”

  “You weren’t?”

  “Free me from this prison. Do this one thing and I will be yours,” he repeated wistfully. The memory of those words was so vivid that I saw him on his knees again, his hand pressed to the glass. And just like back then, my saru heart fluttered, an eager, fragile thing.

  “Sure sounds like you meant the glass cage.” I kept my tone light in the hope he would keep talking and not shut me out like all the other times I’d tried to get answers out of him.

  His smile stayed. “There are many prisons, Kesh. Some are visible, and some are not as obvious.”

  “In that case, which prison was I freeing you from, if not Kellee’s glass one?”

  He looked over, met my inquiring gaze, and his smile faded. “The same one you are trapped in.”

  I opened my mouth to deny I was inside any kind of prison, but Kellee’s sharp whistle shattered the moment.

  We had reached the hole into the tunnels. It had widened since we’d left it, turning into a crater, with multiple tunnel mouths branching off to cyn-knew-where.

  “Sota, can you do an infrared sweep and see how many tunnels there are and where they lead to?”

  Sota buzzed upward. The rest of us lingered near the edge of the sinkhole, equal parts intrigued and wary. Even Sirius eyed the hole in the
ground with trepidation. But it was Kellee’s reaction I sought, and by the hard stare he sent my way, he knew the evidence was grim.

  “There are, within range, fifteen tunnels,” Sota reported. “Half intersect at various locations beyond this plain. One appears to head toward the settlements. One terminates precisely four hundred meters from here.”

  “Where that tunnel terminates, is there anything beyond it?” I asked, thinking of the foreign stone Arran and I had discovered.

  “There is a substantially cooler pocket nearby.”

  “Cooler by how much?” Kellee asked.

  “Hapters surface temperature is on average twenty-five degrees. The pocket is approximately twelve degrees.”

  It could be a cavern or water. In fact, water could have formed the entire tunnel network. “Irrigation?” I asked the others.

  “Perhaps,” Kellee replied, not convinced.

  I caught Arran’s gaze, his eyes glittering with anticipation. In the arenas, we had always stuck together, and when we weren’t together, we’d always had a plan. The others looked to me for answers. All but Sirius. The guardian peered into the hole in the ground, his ruthless mind turning over clues and possibilities. All of this, every second, every word, he would report to Oberon.

  “Sirius, stay topside,” I said.

  He grunted and jerked his chin at Arran. “Have the saru guard the hole.”

  I freed my whip and arched an eyebrow at the guardian. “The saru isn’t likely to sabotage this mission. You, however, are less of a threat up here than you are down there.”

  “I am the king’s guardian. I follow my king’s command. Not yours, Wraithmaker.”

  I held the guardian’s stony glare, silently reminding him of our deal. He helps me, I help him. “Are we having a problem?”

  He lifted his chin enough to declare his defiance, and then stepped back from the edge. “I’ve decided I will stand watch.”