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

  Sota hovered off his shelf and drifted across the room to where I stared at the coat.

  “I want to ask you a question,” the drone said.

  I looked up. He wasn’t usually careful with his words. Perhaps Talen was rubbing off on him. “Then ask it, Sota.” I smiled reassuringly.

  “The others haven’t noticed, but they don’t see you like I do.”

  He didn’t need to say any more, because he was Sota and he saw all the things the rest of us missed.

  “I noticed immediately after you rebooted me on Arcon. You exhibited fae characteristics then. They’ve been increasing, changing you. I’ve heard the others speak of a bond. Are you bonded with Talen?” Was there a hint of sadness in his voice?

  “Yes.”

  “It’s changing you.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Did you know it would?”

  I looked my friend in his single lens. “No. It’s… I don’t think he meant for it to get this far. The initial bond wasn’t as strong as it is now. But after I helped him break free of this ship, the connection between us widened. Something changed. I don’t know how to explain it. It feels more solid. And it’s changing me.”

  “He knew it would.” Sota’s lens didn’t waver. He had an unnerving ability to stare through people, like he was doing with me now. He knew when my heart rate increased and when my temperature fluctuated. He knew every nuance of my face, every flicker, every twitch. Sota was a walking lie detector. Perhaps that was why I had never lied to him. Never needed to.

  “What makes you say that?”

  Sota’s lens narrowed. “He wants something from you.”

  “What do you think he wants?”

  “I don’t know, but I think it will hurt you.”

  “Talen won’t hurt me. He can’t. The bond ties us together. If he hurts me, he’ll hurt himself.”

  “Not hurt like that, Kesh. A different hurt. A heart hurt.”

  I blinked at my drone, at the artificial components glued together by plant extracts, tek tiles, and Faerie magic. He still wore his battle scars from the time Kellee had torn him open. A few dents here and there, imperfections that made him perfect. What could he know of heart pain? Of the sting of rejection or the ache of losing someone you loved? I hadn’t made him to feel.

  “Do you know what that feels like?” I asked him quietly.

  “Like an error inside I can’t correct. Like when I hard-reboot and feel myself falling, even though my sensors indicate I’m not moving. Like an answer that should be simple but eludes me.”

  Holy cyn, the things he was describing sounded exactly like grief, perhaps even human despair, but where had it come from? I hadn’t programmed anything like that into his system. Eledan had reprogrammed him, but the mad prince wouldn’t bother adding emotional feedback when all he’d wanted from Sota was a means to control me.

  “If he hurts you, I will hurt him,” Sota said clearly, precisely.

  I should have told him it wouldn’t be necessary, should have ordered him not to hurt my friends like I had ordered Sirius. But somewhere inside, I had always believed Talen would hurt me too. It was why I’d asked him to seal the bond. Because he was fae, and they did not know any other way.

  “C’mon,” I told the drone as I headed for the door, leaving my self-healing coat on the bed. “Let’s get some answers.”

  I had asked the ship to remodel the pilot’s chamber, not knowing Shinj could hear or understand me, or if she would even listen. Much to my surprise, she had. Talen seemed surprised too as he drifted between the clearly defined seating areas, all grown from the walls and floor. Kellee eyed it all like it might swallow him if he sat down.

  “I like it,” I said as I entered the room, alerting them to my presence. “Sit. We have a lot to talk about.”

  Neither of them obeyed.

  Kellee had ditched the fae leathers in favor of his well-worn duster. He had showered the dust and blood off and bore a striking resemblance to the cocky lawman I’d first met in the sinks. Even his smile played on his lips. All he was missing was his star. Getting off Hapters agreed with him.

  Talen also looked more like his usual self, carved from unyielding rock, smoothed off, and polished to the height of fae elegance. Not a strand of hair was out of place. He sent long looks my way beneath long lashes. My saru heart did its usual flicker at the sight of him. He felt it, and the corner of his mouth ticked.

  They were both in for a rude awakening.

  “Close the doors.”

  Talen tilted his head. A knot gathered between his sweeping eyebrows. Even now he didn’t trust me. But eventually, the doors whispered closed, sealing me, the two males, and Sota inside the pilot’s chamber. Arran was with Sirius. He knew what was about to happen and had told me he was happy to sit this one out.

  I eyed each male in turn. They waited. Kellee sat and kicked his boots up on the low table, crossing his legs at the ankle, pretending to be completely at ease with the growing tension.

  “We can’t do this if we’re all lying to each other,” I began.

  Kellee snorted.

  Talen blinked innocently, as sweet and harmless as candy.

  “The two of you have known each other a lot longer than you’ve known me. You’re both old in ways I can’t begin to imagine. You’ve both seen and done things, been part of things, I’ll never fully understand. But I’d like to. I want to know you, and I want to understand you—not like you understand each other, I know I’ll never share that connection, but enough to know who I am dealing with. Because right now, we’re strangers, and with each day that passes, I know you less and less.”

  Talen looked at me as though he was afraid to look away, and Kellee looked everywhere but at me. They were so very different but equally stubborn in their stoic silences.

  All I heard was Sota’s gentle humming behind my shoulder. I sighed and approached the bench opposite the table from Kellee. I sat, gave them a few more moments of silence, ready to be filled, and said, “I’ll tell you a secret. Then you tell me a secret. A trade of secrets, if you will. Can we do that?”

  Kellee arched a dark eyebrow. “That’s a dangerous game.”

  “It would be worthless if it wasn’t.”

  He flicked his eyes to Talen, saw the fae fold his arms, still unblinking, and nodded. “All right, let’s do this. It’s been coming for a long time.”

  “I’ll tell you one of my fears. I have many, but this one… it’s been on my mind a lot.”

  Talen finally moved. He shook his head, his braids rippling. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I want to.”

  “No, this is not the way it should be.” He started for the door.

  Kellee’s gaze dropped from the fae to me. I held the marshal’s oddly challenging glare, a flutter of excitement stirring way down low as his gaze dared me to say something, do something, to stop Talen.

  “Sota.”

  The drone buzzed to the door. I didn’t look, knowing the drone now blocked Talen’s path.

  “We can play this game the easy way or the hard way,” I said.

  “You would use your drone against me?” Talen inquired, a dangerous note in his voice.

  I turned in my seat and saw Talen cast his narrowed gaze over his shoulder. We were just getting to the truth, but he felt it enough to know this was a dangerous game indeed.

  “You destroyed that map in an instant. If we are to continue this charade that the Messenger means something, then you’ll sit with me, Talen, and you’ll help me understand who you really are and what you want.”

  He lifted his chin. “There are myths far darker than the Messenger out there. It is those we should be addressing.”

  “Why did you destroy the map?”

  “You know why.”

  “No, I don’t. It showed the sites of the unseelie. So? It had been there for a thousand years and you put your hand on it and turned it to molten rock in seconds. What was really on that map?”r />
  My stubborn, cold, distant fae looked through me. Hair of silver and eyes like Faerie’s sunfalls, his touch rooted around my heart, a stranger. But he didn’t have to be.

  “Tell her,” Kellee grumbled, indicating he knew something, probably most things.

  Talen sent his gaze across the room, far from me, from us. “I cannot,” he whispered.

  “You can’t or you won’t?” Kellee asked.

  I fought the urge to look at the marshal. It almost sounded as though he was on my side.

  “Can’t.”

  I heard Kellee move, sensed he had leaned forward. “But there’s nothing to stop me from telling her?”

  Talen’s expression ticked. “Are you so sure you know?”

  The marshal glared right back. “I’m not just a pretty face.” His smooth words were barbed.

  Stardust and shadow.

  He has another name, one he guards as closely as I guarded my heart.

  An affinity with Faerie’s creatures.

  Eledan had been on Hapters a long time ago, and there the people had fixed him, made him a tek-heart, made him their messiah. That map had been there just as long. The unseelie too. Talen feared Eledan’s knowledge of the map and the whereabouts of the unseelie. He feared it so much that he’d destroyed the map before anyone could fully understand what it showed.

  Talen, who I had seen walk among the fae and have them hanging on his every word. Talen, who could control a warcruiser by asking nicely.

  I looked up at the silver veins marking the pilot’s chamber ceiling and remembered how he had torn himself from the ship—right here. I remembered how I had seen something of him take the light and twist it. And I remembered falling through the Dreamweaver’s darkness to find my silver fae. Only, what if it hadn’t been the Dreamweaver’s darkness at all?

  “You’re the Nightshade.” It felt right. Every time the beasts had attacked me and spoken that name, I’d been aglow with Talen’s magic. He was so different from anything I’d seen or heard of on Faerie. But he was light and the Nightshade was dark. Wasn’t it?

  I looked up. “You are, aren’t you?”

  His lips twitched as though he might smile at my foolishness. “No.”

  “Then what?!” I snapped.

  “I’m stardust—”

  “Sweet cyn, fuckin’ fairies and their drama,” Kellee growled.

  “Oberon—” Talen began.

  “Doesn’t need to know, right Kesh?” Marshal Kellee held my gaze. “Because if there was ever a secret you needed to keep from the king, it’s this one. You told Talen your saru name—no, he didn’t tell me it, because he has integrity. I figured it out because I can’t miss the way he looks at you. Do you have integrity, Kesh? He’s about to put his life and the lives of billions of people in the hands of an infamous liar and killer. Because he trusts you. Because he knows you.” Kellee tapped his fingers to his chest. “He knows you inside. I think he’s a fool, but what do I know? I’m just the last vakaru. So, Kesh, can Talen trust you?”

  A knot twisted in my throat, so I almost choked on the word. “No.”

  Kellee blinked. “What?”

  “Don’t tell me.” Panic contracted my heart in my chest. “You can’t trust me.”

  “Kesh?” Kellee growled the warning inside my name.

  “Because you were right. As much as I want to believe I’m my own person, I can’t be sure. Talen is obviously important. I thought I needed to know who he was, but…” I thought of Sirius and my agreement to return to Faerie with him, to return to Oberon and somehow end this war from the inside. I had killed a queen I loved. I could do the same again. I had that power. Nobody else did. I couldn’t give that up. But going back made me vulnerable. And the Dreamweaver… Without a collar, he could get inside my head. He had at Arcon. The illusion of him had plucked secrets right out of my thoughts. I couldn’t know the truth of Talen and go back to Faerie with that knowledge. I didn’t trust myself enough.

  “Don’t,” I said again. “I’m sorry… I want to be your hero, but I can’t.”

  “Kesh?” Kellee pleaded.

  “Open the doors.” I got to my feet. So much for getting answers. All I’d done was expose myself as the fraud they had always believed me to be.

  The doors stayed closed, and Talen looked at me with apologetic eyes, breaking bits off my heart. Kellee’s gaze was worse, as though he understood. I can’t be the person you want me to be.

  “This won’t work.” I divided my attention between them. Kellee’s dismayed face and Talen’s regret. I wanted so badly to be like them, to be the hero Aeon had ached to have come and save them all. But I wasn’t there yet, and no matter how I tried, I might never be. “Do you want to know my secret?”

  “Kesh—” Talen stepped forward, reaching as though he could stop me.

  I lifted a hand, holding him back. They needed to hear this. “Eledan… He got to me. He got to me in a way I can’t brush off or pretend didn’t happen. He pulled out my fears and made them real. He… he has a name for me. He’s not gone. He’s still up here”—I pointed at my head—“in a way I think might be real.” I paused, waiting for their argument, waiting for them to stop me, and I saw the same two hopeful faces who had brought me back from the Dreamweaver’s grasp all those months ago. But while I’d physically recovered, mentally, I was a mess and was only now realizing how much I still had to heal.

  “He calls me the nothing girl. Because he knows, underneath all this pretend Messenger costume, I’m just another saru. He knows the truth. You are right not to trust me. What I want doesn’t matter; it’s what I do that matters, and I am Oberon’s. I always was, from the moment I slit Aeon’s throat. I can’t stop being his by saying the words. It’ll take more and I’m not ready. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to the both of you. I never meant for it to go this far. The Messenger is just a dream, just like the life you’d have with me.”

  I turned my back on them and strode to the farthest door. “Open it, please.” I couldn’t hide the depth of my pain from Talen, but at least he knew my words were true.

  The door opened, and it was all I could do not to run.

  Chapter 16

  Asleep, Sirius looked like a chiseled god from Talen’s Old Earthen history books. The tipped ears gave his fae genetics away; those and the ruby shades of red in his hacked-up hair meant he couldn’t possibly be human. Of the four royal guardians, he was the one who had both fascinated and frightened me when Oberon had first taken me aside.

  I’d willingly fallen into admiring him as I’d sat beside his bed, waiting for him to wake. It was difficult not to look and easier to dream than to live the life rapidly unraveling around me. I’d rarely gotten so close to the guardian. He had made sure to always keep his distance.

  The guardian’s golden lashes fluttered, but he stayed asleep, his chest rising and falling steadily.

  He was my key to returning to Faerie without being shot through the heart on arrival. Your king needs you. Oberon was Sirius’s weakness—and one I would gleefully exploit.

  His eyes snapped open. Green blazed and then locked on me. He gasped and jolted upright.

  “Easy there.” Arran swooped in, but Sirius wasn’t looking at him or me.

  He lifted his right arm. Four tek-fingers and a tek-thumb curled inward.

  “It was the best we could—” I started.

  Sirius lunged for the nearest figure—Arran—snatching with his intact left hand. The grab was sloppy, giving me time to fling myself between them. Sirius grappled pathetically with me, his tek-hand and wrist limp at his side. We tussled, and the sheets slipped and tangled between us. A frenzied wildness had fallen over him.

  “Easy!” I tried pinning him down, only for him to buck me off, and then with a jarring thwump, the guardian and I fell in a heap on the floor. I had him pinned, one leg straddling both of his, while I had his good hand wedged against the bed, bringing me so close to him I felt his trembling as though it were my own. He blinked, unsu
re where he was. Recognition softened his glare, and I became aware that I was propped on the guardian’s lap. Then he lifted his tek-hand. Light slid across the bare metal fingers. Shock widened his eyes. Fear too. He shook his head and scrambled backward, shoving me off him.

  “It’s okay…” I hadn’t expected this, though perhaps I should have.

  “No, no, no….” he murmured over and over and over, holding his arm out as far as possible.

  I glanced behind me at Arran.

  “I could put him out again?” he suggested.

  I shook my head. “He just needs time… to adjust.”

  “Get it off,” the guardian growled, more animal than fae. He yanked on the metal limb.

  “It’s fused.” He’d need to hack at his flesh with his sword to get it off.

  He pulled again, baring his teeth and putting considerable strength into it. His abs quivered and glistened with perspiration.

  Arran and I had built the arm and borrowed the ship’s abundant life magic to bind the tek to the sidhe lord. Now, I wondered if that had been the wrong thing to do. But a guardian with a missing arm was no guardian at all.

  “My sword. Saru!” he barked at Arran. “Get me my sword.”

  “It’s gone,” Arran replied flatly.

  Sirius swung his glare on me. “You did this.”

  “I… we fixed it.”

  “You did all of this!” He sprang.

  I swung an open-handed slap he could have avoided had he been thinking clearly. My palm struck the side of his face, sending a fiery bloom up my arm and shocking him to a halt. “Your arm is gone. You can’t grow limbs back. If you ever want to wield a sword for the king again, you’ll need this tek. Without it, you’re useless to Oberon.”

  His fury was so thick I could taste it, but after a few nostril-flaring moments, he retreated against the bed. “This cannot be. Don’t you see? I cannot go back to him like this, calla.” He lifted the arm and gawked at it like it was a hideous disfigurement. I found its sleek metal beautiful, but I understood why Sirius might not.

  “He will shun me,” Sirius whispered. “Or worse.” A shudder ran through him. “I have failed him.” He sagged and stared at the arm, now resting on the sheet covering his lap.