Prince of Dreams Read online

  I pulled my hand back from the crack in the desk, hearing my earlier words of war and sacrifice in my head. There were things that must be done, even if we didn’t want to do them.

  But if I lost Kesh, there would be nothing left for me. Nothing at all. I’d lived so long without hope that I’d forgotten what it felt like to have hope breathe new fire into my life. She had given me that.

  “You need to go back to Faerie, to Kesh…” I told him. “She’ll try to save everyone on her own and do something foolish. She thinks she has everything to prove.”

  “And you?” he asked.

  I managed a wry smile. “I’ve always wanted to see Earth. How hard can it be to find a magical acorn in a never-ending forest?”

  Talen didn’t return my smile. “I can bespell the Excalibur crew to take you there, but their docility will wear off within days. You may not escape again.”

  “I’ll find a way.” I didn’t want to do this. I wanted to go to Faerie, to Kesh, and help her, protect her, be her last vakaru, and tear the whole glass palace down around Oberon. Instead, I was sending the not-Nightshade back to her. A fae I only marginally trusted. A fae she loved. A fae I couldn’t compete with. Together, they could save worlds or end them.

  I wanted it to be me.

  I rubbed my forehead and sighed out my regret. She’d never know how much I admired her, how much I wanted to save her and for her to save me. When would my sacrifices end? For once, just once, I wanted something for me.

  “As much as I’d love nothing more than to abandon you to your fate, Marshal,” Talen sighed, “Kesh is where she needs to be, and my presence on Faerie would only complicate matters. But I can help you walk among the Earthens undetected and get us both out again. With my talents and yours, we can secure Sol’s polestar before it’s lost forever.”

  He was right, we stood a better chance together, but he was giving up a chance to return to Faerie—his home—to help stop the war. The Nightshade wouldn’t have.

  “I’m not your enemy.” His lips hinted at a soft smile. “If I were, I’d have done more than knock you on your ass that day.”

  I snorted a laugh. “You’ll never let that go, huh?”

  “Not until the next time.”

  “Next time?”

  He shrugged. “Besides, if I returned to Kesh without her vakaru, she’d never forgive me.”

  We sailed into Sol space as though we had every right to filter through the bristling tek buoys. Talen’s mental grip on the crew held firm, and the crew followed his orders to the letter. While he was around, the humans acted like eager puppies. Even Pierce, the iron captain, went out of her way to make sure her esteemed guest was comfortable while fluttering her lashes and making it clear he could have her any way he wanted. Multiple times.

  Captain Pierce wrapped up her report of the uneventful journey to Sol and left the observation room with a fae-struck dreamy smile on her face.

  Chuckling, I scanned the many, many screens flickering and dancing like holograms along the wall. “At least I don’t have to infect minds with suggestions. I was born attractive.”

  Slumped at the table, Talen managed a muffled grunt as he massaged his temples. Whether from the strain of keeping the entire crew bespelled or the tek, he was suffering and it would get worse.

  “The vakaru mothers all fell over themselves in shock when you were born, Marshal, with a star pinned to your infant chest?” he snarked back. He still had some humor left in him, but the deeper into Sol we ventured, the more the tek would eat away at his mind. We couldn’t stay long for fear the Nightshade might lose his shit, and after Valand, that was not something I relished being around to witness.

  “Something like that.”

  Keeping the fae in my peripheral vision, I continued to scan the ship’s livescreens. One screen had caught my eye. On our approach, the view had resembled an oval spider’s web, but now, with the ship among its design, it was clearly an expanse of never-ending tek scaffolding—a net still under construction, but humans didn’t wait once they got it in their heads to build. Not only were they capable of shutting the door on the rest of the systems, they were virtually ready.

  Talen approached and admired the screens depicting the various levels of the ship, the crew, weaponry, communications, and more I’d yet to figure out.

  “You were right,” he said. “This ship is a valuable weapon. But I don’t know how long I can function on it.”

  “You spent three hundred years surrounded by tek. You can do this.”

  His cheek twitched as he ground his teeth. “I can barely hear my own thoughts inside the tek interference.”

  I had an idea of what he meant. The tek burned my senses too, irritating me like an itch I couldn’t scratch. I could live with it, but he might not. We had to get in and out quickly.

  “I doubt we can take Excalibur close to Earth without attracting too much attention. We’ll take a shuttle in… just a stroll in the park.” A few million acres of parkland.

  I tapped at the screens and brought up the blue and green image of Earth. Once the cradle of humanity, so they believed, and now a museum and temple to all things human. Their pearl of a world.

  “There hasn’t been a fae on Earth for a thousand Sol years,” Talen remarked. “Some would venture this far from Faerie to see the young world, so much like Faerie but populated by humans. Humans who would later create their own magic: Tek.”

  And it was everywhere. Tek stations lazily orbited Sol’s planets and smaller shuttles buzzed between them. The system crawled with life and tek that worked seamlessly together. I had to give it to humans, they knew their tek.

  The image of Earth rotated in front of us, half of it cast in darkness. “Where’s the acorn?”

  Talen’s brow scrunched, his face thinning. “Earth’s cities rose and fell, but relics from its early days still remain. There.” He pointed at a continent that stretched almost from pole to pole in all shades of green.

  “You’ll have to narrow it down.”

  “It will be protected. I…” The frown deepened. “I just need time to think.” He rubbed at his chest and winced. “This would be easier with Kesh here.”

  “Many things would be easier with Kesh here.” The bond likely pained him too. No matter the distance, they were connected, two lives entwined. Talen had power, and together, the pair had seemed virtually unstoppable, but with countless light years between them, they were vulnerable. Did she feel his absence like he did?

  I felt the hollowness. It wasn’t like the feelings Talen and Kesh shared. What I felt for Kesh was simpler. I wanted her here, testing me. I wanted her challenges and battles. She made me feel again, made me rage, made me laugh. And it had been a very, very long time since I’d felt much of anything.

  The door opened. Sota shot in, fast and low. He jolted to a halt in mid-air in front of the screens. “I’ve died and gone to drone heaven.” His lens widened, absorbing the sight of all the tek.

  “Sota, no detours,” I told him. “In and out. We don’t have time for sightseeing.”

  “Sol is where all tek came into being,” he said, voice full of drone-awe. “The upgrades I could get.” He shivered, or vibrated, maybe both. It was difficult to tell. “I could get a body.”

  “A what?” Talen asked, eyebrow suitably raised.

  “I could be upgraded,” Sota whispered dramatically.

  “You mean as a mandroid?” I laughed. “There’s no way we’ve got time to find you a disused tek suit to strut around in. You’re more useful as a killing machine than as Kesh’s man-toy.”

  His lens drilled toward the screens. The worst part was that I knew how much that ball of tek wanted a body. Months ago, he’d bet me I wouldn’t win a brawl with Talen and if I lost the bet, I’d owe him a way to get his AI consciousness into a manufactured body. I’d agreed because there was no way Talen could floor me. As it so happened, he had knocked me out, and pretty damn swiftly too. I’d lost that damn bet.

&
nbsp; “You’re her man-toy, Marshal. Talen is her man-toy. Even Arran was. I want to be her man-toy too.”

  Talen coughed into his hand and wandered away, shoulders jerking from barely contained laughter.

  “Okay, firstly, we are not man-toys, and even if they are, I’m not one. Talen, maybe. Arran, definitely. I’m a vakaru, and vakaru are not man-toys. Dammit, Sota, you make it sound like we’re Kesh’s playthings.”

  Sota swiveled his single lens on me. “Aren’t you?”

  I held his single-eyed glare. “Talk to Talen. He knows all about being a man-toy.”

  “Do I?” the fae inquired in that flickering tone of his that sounded like laughter, though he wasn’t, yet, laughing. “Your jealousy is showing.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Why would I be jealous of someone who kept pushing her away? At least I knew a good thing when I had it.”

  Talen leaned against the captain’s table. “And tried to bite it, if I recall correctly.”

  “The only reason you recall correctly is because you were getting your rocks off on her pleasure through your bond. A pleasure I roused in her.”

  He shrugged, unconcerned. “I have no problem with that. Where I come from, sharing is normal.”

  “I’m aware of where you come from, fae.”

  “I should point out…” Sota butted in. “I’m recording this to show Kesh how you squabbled over her the way man-toys would. If you were man-toys, but clearly, you’re not, so you’re just two grown men arguing over who pleasured who first.”

  I clamped my mouth shut, and Talen did the same. We both had our pride—or most of it.

  “I could not show her this footage…” Sota’s tone lifted questioningly. “If you help me find a tek-body, I might delete the footage of you two bickering altogether.” He bobbed toward the door, happy with himself. “Think on it, man-toys.”

  “That drone is not to be underestimated,” Talen said once Sota was gone.

  I grunted in agreement. “And about as obedient as Kesh.”

  Out of all of us, Sota had been beside Kesh through the worst times and always came through. He deserved to have his wish realized, but this mission would be difficult enough without hunting down a tek suit for a drone that was far more useful as a hovering murder-ball.

  Talen folded his arms and closed his eyes. “He knew exactly what he was doing by coming here and stirring us up.”

  “Oh yeah, he did.” I faced the screens again. “He learned from the best.” We were a few hours from Earth and would need to find a station to dock at soon. Then the games would begin. “You ready for this?”

  Talen breathed out and opened his eyes. Their violet sparkle had darkened. He might not be the Nightshade, but what we were about to do would require some grade-A fae manipulation in a world full of tek, far away from Faerie. Nothing about the next few hours would be easy. And if the Earthens caught us, Talen would not survive. There was a high chance that neither would I.

  “I am ready.”

  “Let’s go say hello to some Earthens.”

  Chapter 12

  Kesh

  * * *

  The cavern glowed its eerie blue light, and strings of water droplets sparkled like Talen’s stars had in the warcruiser navigation room. The air was wet and tasted sweet, every breath laced with Faerie’s magical perfume. For all I knew, I could have been breathing in poisonous spores. That might account for why I was following a water sidhe deep into the cavern.

  On and on she led me, deeper and deeper, where rocks gleamed, buried gems winked, and my breath misted in the chilling air. Creatures scurried in corners. Occasionally, something gave a startled chirp and dashed off before I could catch a glimpse of it.

  The tunnel opened, and rock walls shone from within. I reached out a hand to steady myself against the wall. The thrum of magic beat against my palm like a thudding heart. Almost stumbling, I made it inside the cavern and froze. In the center, on a slab of glittering black rock, lay a sleeping prince.

  Thoughts, emotions, doubts—they all stopped.

  They’d positioned Eledan on his back, arms crossed over his chest to hide the hole where his heart should have been. Beads of water glistened like diamonds on his dark eyelashes. He wore the same raggedy clothes and was missing his boots, just as he’d appeared to me in the dreams. But here, his smile was gone, and his haunting laughter was silent among the drip-drip of water.

  “The wild prince slumbers and will do so for eternity if not saved.”

  I forced my body into motion, cracking an instinctual need to freeze, and approached the side of the dais. Wet threads hung all around, their pale blue glow making Eledan appear glass-like. Fragile. Like one wrong touch, one loud word, might shatter him.

  He looked… not harmless, but vulnerable. His serene expression made him look younger than I remembered from our time in Arcon. The snarls, sharp smiles, and sharper glances were a distant memory. This prince was a terrible and stunning sight to behold.

  I despised him for what he had done to me. For so long, I had wanted him dead and wished I’d crushed his heart when I’d had the chance. But this was worse than death for him. Oberon had discarded his brother and locked him away in loneliness.

  I had feared Eledan for the longest time, but now, looking down at his sleeping form, I only felt pity.

  “Young Prince Eledan would come to these caverns,” the water lady said, “and tell tales of how he had battled the Dark Legion for the Light. He was a foolish prince, with a heart full of pride and a head full of dreams. I told him his crusade against the Dark was dangerous, but he would not listen. We are all Faerie’s children, even the dark ones. It broke Her heart when half her children were driven away, but in Eledan, it broke more…”

  The lady spoke her musical words, and I watched Eledan’s chest rise and fall. I didn’t recognize the prince she spoke of and wondered how long ago this had been. Time away from Faerie had twisted the Eledan I knew and made him into a nightmarish version of himself.

  “They did not listen, the princely brothers. One fought for pride while the other fought for the blinding Light until the dark fae fought back, rallied by their courtly Nightshade. They clashed, Dark and Light. Immortal fae fell, and Faerie wept for her fallen children. The wild lands fractured, the seas withdrew, and Faerie began to decay. She could not intervene, no mother can take sides, and so the battle raged for centuries until the sidhe became few and the fae grew desperate. Mab reached for the polestar, a weapon of Light, with promises to end the war Faerie allowed it, but only because Prince Oberon had already reached for another weapon, one of darkness, one he and his brother were all too familiar with.”

  The water lady paused and approached Eledan. Her hair, beaded with water like the tendrils dangling around us, covered half her face, but the other half was visible. I saw a fine, curved mouth; white, powdery skin with a glittery sheen; and a dark, all-black eye beneath snow-white lashes.

  “The two opposing forces would have clashed and brought about a balance, a unity, and an obscure peace would have returned to Faerie. But it did not happen as Faerie had foreseen. The princeling, Oberon, made a terrible mistake. He realized Faerie’s intentions in giving his mother the polestar, and so he tricked the dark-forged weapon into silence, sealing it away. Oberon, alongside Mab, used only the polestar, and without its opposing force, the dark fae were overpowered and driven into the stars, sundering Faerie with grief.”

  In trying to cleanse Faerie, Oberon had condemned Her to death. Talen knew the truth. He had told Sirius, which was why the guardian had kept so many secrets from the king on our return to Faerie. How many others knew? Eledan? Most certainly.

  “Why did the Hunt not come for Oberon?” I asked. “The Hunt is Faerie’s will. It has no king or queen to rule over it.”

  The water lady lifted her head. Her waterfall of hair shifted, falling back to reveal the horror of her “other” face. Where skin should have been, her flesh had rotted away and shrunken around stark-white bo
ne. Her jaw and teeth shone white, and her empty eye socket was a black hollow. “Only Oberon possesses that answer.”

  Who was this fae? Why was she telling me any of this? “You do not tell me these things freely. What do you want from me?”

  “Justice.” The bone of her jaw worked as she spoke.

  “For whom?”

  “For the Dark.”

  And she wanted me to… what? Champion the Dark? How was that even possible? I could barely protect myself from the cu sith, let alone half of Faerie’s squabbling children. This fae, this… creature was something Dark and unseelie and likely full of tricks. For all I knew, this was an illusion.

  “The Nightshade returns. We feel it. Oberon’s grip on the dark weapon is weak. Now is the time for all Faerie’s children to return.”

  I only wanted to free the saru, save Halow, and stop the fae from killing innocent people. I didn’t owe Faerie anything. This war had raged for millennia, and the death of Faerie was theirs to fix. I was saru, and the saru had served their sentence. They owed Faerie no alliances.

  “Sometimes the Light can be found in the most unlikely of places,” she said, “and in the most unlikely of people.”

  “I cannot stop your war.”

  She looked down at the slumbering prince. “There are others close to your heart, Faerie’s forgotten children. Together, you all will save Faerie.”

  She spoke of Talen and Kellee. My Talen and Kellee. Faerie had cast both aside. We are all Faerie’s children. I wouldn’t ask them to fight for Her now.

  It wasn’t fair. I’d spent my entire life in love with Faerie and Her creatures, and I’d learned it was all lies. Now this wild fae was asking me to be their champion? What right did she have to ask this of me?

  “Why should I?” My question echoed around us. “Faerie has done nothing for me or the saru. We barely even understand the world we live in because the fae have kept it from us. We are murdered and used, manipulated and driven insane by the fae, yet we’re forced to love them. How can you ask this of me, of them?”