The Nightshade's Touch: A Paranormal Space Fantasy (Messenger Chronicles Book 3) Page 21

  “Noted.”

  We walked together, following Talen’s slash of silver ahead, until the motionless, sentinel trees ended at a step pyramid as high as Arcon’s back on Calicto.

  “It can’t be in there,” Kellee said, resting a boot on the first step. “We built these pyramids. If there was anything of Faerie here, we would have noticed.”

  Talen gave him a look that said he really wouldn’t have. “Some things cannot be found without intention.”

  Meaning the polestar needed to be deliberately sought out. We headed inside.

  The pyramid was hollow, its insides cavernous. Shafts of light streamed in through holes punched far above.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “A temple.” Kellee watched Talen drift up the straight path, heading for the raised platform at its center. “To our gods, the sidhe.” His sharp teeth flashed.

  Light shivered down Talen’s back, and when he dropped his hood, it sparked in his hair as though to emphasize how easily the fae could make themselves appear divine. Talen wasn’t even trying—the plain cloak, the simple leathers—yet he looked magical. It was easy to understand how ancient races had worshipped them.

  Talen stepped up onto the platform and knelt at its center with his head bowed.

  I waited, expecting something to happen. The silence stretched on. “What’s he doing?” I whispered.

  Kellee snorted. “Who knows.” He circled the platform, dropping down a step into a lowered area. “I’d have sensed Faerie’s touch long ago if it were hiding here. I know every inch of this temple and the others. There’s no mystical weapon on Valand.”

  A flicker of power sparked inside my chest. It wasn’t mine. But when Talen didn’t react, I ignored it and followed Kellee’s trail around the outside. “You didn’t know there was magic on Hapters.”

  “I did, but I was using it to farm and I had no intention of digging up the past so it could screw me over again.”

  “Are your hungry trees not Faerie touched?”

  He threw me a half smile. “You’re full of questions, huh?”

  “That’s what happens when you start answering them. Why did you start answering?”

  Kellee ascended a few steps onto a raised pathway. I joined him, putting us both in front of Talen, who still knelt on the platform. The only entrance or exit was behind the fae. “Because you walked away from answers before, on the ship, when Talen offered you the truth,” Kellee replied. “If you were still under Oberon’s thrall, you would have gotten your answers, no matter the cost. That honesty… that’s the first real thing I’ve seen of you since you revealed exactly who you are. Be honest with me, Kesh, and we’ll get along just fine.”

  He smiled in that crooked way of his, inviting me to challenge his words. He didn’t know how I planned to go back to Faerie. I could tell him, but he would try to stop me. He might even succeed, and I couldn’t allow that. I had to go back, for him, for Talen, for Hulia, for the people everywhere still running from Faerie.

  Kellee lifted his head and frowned at the crux of the pyramid, where the four sides combined to the inverted point high above us. “The trees are unseelie,” he explained, answering my earlier question.

  “Unseelie is Faerie too.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “There was something here,” Talen said. “But it was taken.”

  Darkness pooled at the point above the platform—above Talen. I hadn’t noticed it before because it seemed as though it should be the darkest section of the pyramid, but now the darkness was… growing. I watched, fascinated as the dark’s edges dripped down the undersides of the pyramid’s sloped ceilings liked spilled ink.

  “Talen,” Kellee growled. “We’ve got company.”

  Talen snapped his head up at the same time as a stone slab slammed down over the exit, sealing us inside.

  The shadowy droplets coalesced, forming humanoid shapes. Sluagh—restless souls discarded by the Hunt—but then I saw the claws flicker from reaching shadowy hands. Not sluagh… similar, but something else. I unclipped my whip and let its tails fall free.

  One or two we could handle, but the dark was growing, flooding the ceiling, dribbling the things in a steady stream across the floor. And then I heard the laughter. Laughter like I’d heard for months while trapped in dreams, laughter that licked over my skin, strumming my flesh to life with hate and lust and all the feelings the Mad Prince summoned.

  “No...” I gasped.

  The Dreamweaver was here.

  Chapter 20

  It was impossible. The Dreamweaver couldn’t be here. If he had been real in Arcon, it was because he’d had enough life magic there to open a doorway to step through. There was no life magic here.

  “You are too late,” Eledan’s liquid voice purred as the blackness stalked down the walls.

  Not possible. Not real.

  I clamped my hands over my ears but still heard his words rolling over and over. Too late, too late, too late. Turning, seeking the shadows, I was sure I’d see him there, his blue eyes arresting.

  “I hear him too, Kesh.” Kellee’s claws sprang out, glinting with the last of the light. “Stay with us!”

  All around, the temple’s light was being snuffed out, shaft by shaft, going dark. Soon, there would be only darkness, and he would be inside it. He always came in the darkness. He was the darkness. The sweet darkness my dreams were wrapped in.

  I’m not his. I’m not.

  I lashed the whip’s tails in the air. It cracked viciously. The liquid-like creatures covering the walls flinched away, and my thoughts cleared, but then Eledan’s laughter whirled like a storm inside the pyramid, filling up the space as real and thick as the silence before it.

  He’s not here.

  “Wraithmaker…” he whispered, in my head or aloud, I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell what was real and what was illusion. And the worst of it was, a small part of me wanted this, wanted him to be here.

  “Kesh!”

  Not Kesh.

  Wraithmaker.

  The Faerie King’s hired killer.

  Liar, loser, nothing girl.

  “It’s an illusion! Fight it!”

  Kellee. His voice found me among the chaos like it always had. Illusion. Just illusion. I raised the whip, whirled it above my head so it hissed like a living thing and struck at the creature slithering closer. Its outline glitched, there and gone again, jolting through time. Both here and nowhere.

  Not sluagh, but something else… Something stronger. Something rooted in this world. They were… people. Once.

  “Kellee!”

  He wasn’t moving. The flickering sluagh-like creatures rushed him in a wave as one.

  Kellee lowered his claws. His shoulders dropped, and he stood defeated, his face lifted to the cresting wave as it slammed over him, devouring him in its broiling dark. When the dark parted, lapping at the jade floor, Kellee was gone.

  “No!”

  I ran to where he had been standing and scooped my hands through the dissipating blackness. He had to be here. They couldn’t just take him away. He had been right here. There was no way out. He had to still be here.

  The black crawled back up the walls, limbs and claws just broken pieces inside the hungry darkness, taking Kellee somewhere inside it.

  He’d given up.

  He hadn’t fought them at all.

  The darkness above swirled at the pyramid’s inverted tip, like water down a drain, and then it was gone. Light spilled into the temple, flooding every corner, every platform, and bathed Talen where he stood. Where he had stood the entire time, doing nothing.

  “Where is he?” I demanded.

  He didn’t move, didn’t reply, didn’t blink.

  Kellee was gone, and Talen had done nothing. Just watched. Like always.

  I ran onto the platform and glared up at the perfect, expressionless fae. “Where is he?” Anger throbbed inside, aching to break free. I knew my hands shook, knew I breathed too fas
t. “Damn you, answer me!”

  “They took him.”

  “Who took him? Took him where?”

  Talen lifted his gaze over my head as though I wasn’t even there. His gaze darted, thoughts far away. But it wasn’t good enough. He wasn’t good enough. He could have done something. Anything. They had taken Kellee!

  I slammed my hands against his stone-like chest, shoving him back a single step, and glared up as he peered down. “Where is he, Talen?”

  “I was right… I always saw the light. I knew… But Eledan was here. He could have more pieces. He saw the map. He knows—” He cut off his mutterings, believing he’d said too much despite none of it making any sense. His gaze wandered again, and he turned away.

  No, he doesn’t get to walk away from me, not anymore.

  I grabbed his wrist and pulled. Power crackled up my arm, darting straight to my heart where it burned. When his gaze swung back around, his violet eyes flared with indignation. I’d seen that look a thousand times before, but never on him. How dare a saru touch a fae.

  Instincts demanded I let go, but I clamped his arm harder. “If this bond means something to you—if I mean something to you—then answer me. Where is Kellee?!”

  He looked at me, his lips a thin line, his eyes cold. Did I even know him at all?

  When he tried to walk away the second time, I let his wrist slip from my grip and threatened, “If you walk away from me now, it’s over. I’ll find a way to carve out this bond the same way I carved out Eledan’s heart. Don’t think I won’t do it. I may not have earned the right to ask you your name, but I’ve earned the right to understand what’s happening here. You owe me, Talen. And you owe Kellee.”

  With his back to me, I saw his shoulders stiffen. “The vakaru took him home.”

  Those things were vakaru? “But they’re all dead.”

  “Yes.”

  I circled around to stand in front of my fae, blocking his route to the exit. “Can we get him back?”

  “Yes.”

  Listen to what he’s not saying. His frozen gaze, his shuttered face. He didn’t want me to know what was going on here. We could get Kellee back, but it would cost us. Cost him. Would Talen save a marshal who had kept him prisoner for over three centuries?

  Talen bowed his head and stepped around me, giving me time to reach for him. I didn’t. Instead, I watched him walk to the stone slab covering the door and turn it to dust beneath his hand.

  “Why didn’t you stop them?” I asked.

  He waited for me to catch up, and when I did, I realized the sadness tugging at the corners of his mouth was real. “Kellee was right. The fragment of polestar isn’t here. The Dreamweaver stole it long ago and left the illusion behind as a warning to any who followed.”

  The fact Eledan had part of an ancient Faerie weapon was something I filed away for later. “Why didn’t you stop them, Talen?” He could have. He was light. I’d seen it in the tunnels, seen him wield it when breaking free of Sjora’s hold.

  “Because,” he sighed, “I am not who I once was.”

  He had told me that before, in moments when he wanted me to understand something I hadn’t yet grasped. Something he couldn’t speak. My name is stardust and shadow, and it cannot be spoken aloud.

  “Do not ask again, Kesh. It is my fault you already stray too close to the truth. The secrets I harbor are my burden. To speak them would…” He trailed off.

  “What happens if you speak your secrets?”

  His focus softened. “In the past, people died. People I cared for.”

  “Could Kellee die like them?” This was not over. “Talen?” He didn’t answer. I had a marshal to save, and damn his vagueness, I was getting him back no matter what. “How do we get him back? At least tell me that.”

  Talen walked out into Valand’s green light. “With blood.”

  I braced an arm against the shuttle’s door rams and squinted at Valand’s pyramids. Nothing had changed, but in my mind, the sharp edges and glittering greens now had cutting edges.

  Blood would bring Kellee back.

  Great.

  “This entire system is made of violence,” Sirius said. He appeared beside me. The last I’d seen of him, he had been checking the perimeter walls around the plaza for anything unusual. “Valand is a culmination of violence and warfare,” he continued. “Can’t you hear it?”

  I couldn’t hear a damn thing besides the rapid thumping of my heart.

  Talen approached from Kellee’s pyramid, his silvery outline shimmering like a mirage. With blood. I was to bleed on the plinth inside the pyramid at the right time, or so I’d finally managed to wring out of him as we’d returned from the hungry forest.

  Sirius’s gaze followed mine. “You were right. Oberon should meet him.”

  “Oberon can’t have him.” The words were out before I realized I was supposed to be Oberon’s faithful servant. Sirius’s gaze settled on me. I guarded the panic from my face. If I didn’t highlight my mistake, then it wasn’t a mistake at all. Sirius had heard it. Not a word was uttered on Faerie without it having weight and meaning. And my words had a whole lot of both tethered to them.

  “You are a puzzle inside a puzzle, calla,” he admitted.

  “It’ll be dark soon.” The warcruiser was moving in, guided by Talen, to cast her shadow across the city and herald a forced night. We needed the shadows to smooth the way, or so Talen had said.

  We had failed to find anything related to the polestar, and we’d lost Kellee. And Talen, like always, was right in the middle of it all. I wasn’t sure I could take much more of his cryptic answers and layers of secrets. I’d pushed him away, despite aching to have him close, but it only made me want him more, and with every non-answer, every stubborn silence, every cold shoulder, I was reminded of how he and I were worlds apart.

  “How is your arm?” I asked the guardian.

  Sirius tensed. “Functional.”

  As answers went, that was probably the best one I would get. “Show me.” I faced the tall wall of reds that made up Oberon’s guardian and held out my hand.

  “I’d rather not.” A muscle in his square jaw twitched, and he glared at the approaching Talen.

  “Would you have preferred not to have an arm?” I asked coldly.

  “Yes.”

  Well, that was ridiculous. “I thought—”

  “You mutilated me.”

  “No,” I said carefully. “I gave you your sword arm back.”

  I heard metal slink across metal from beneath his coat and wondered if he’d clenched his tek-fingers into a fist.

  He continued to glare across the plaza. “I wouldn’t have been wounded if not for you.”

  “You might have saved my life back on Hapters, and I am grateful for that, but you didn’t do it because you chose to. You were following Oberon’s orders. This isn’t my fault.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “What do you want from me? I’m not apologizing for fixing you.”

  “I want us to leave. Now.” Finally, he looked down at me. “We go back to the warcruiser and return to Faerie where you will take up your place as Oberon’s shadow. All of this”—he gestured with his left hand at the silent city—“whatever is going on here, is irrelevant. Only Faerie matters. Only Oberon matters.”

  “No.” I watched Talen’s silvery outline take shape. “I think it’s entirely relevant.”

  “Your vakaru was an animal. Leave him.”

  Sirius didn’t see my smile. I liked my animal. “And Talen?”

  He considered the question. “He would make a valuable ally.”

  “What did he say to you, Sirius? Why do you no longer want him dead? What did you and Talen agree on?”

  “In exchange for my word that I would not harm you or the people on Hapters, he told me something the king needs to know.”

  And what could Talen possibly know that was worth all that? “What did he tell you?”

  Sirius’s eyes glittered with knowledge and
relief. “He told me how Faerie will be saved.”

  “Talen told you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Talen told you how to save Faerie from withering away?” Talen, who was supposed to be on our side, supposed to be part of the Messenger myth, had told the king’s guardian knowledge so valuable that many would kill for it and many had died for it. We were meant to be saving the systems from Faerie, not making the fae stronger. “You believe him?” I asked, sealing my shock deep down where Sirius couldn’t see it.

  “He cannot lie.”

  That was right. He couldn’t. Just whose side was Talen on?

  “How can Faerie be saved, Sirius?” I asked.

  “That is knowledge Oberon will hear from my lips and not yours.”

  Powerful knowledge indeed. “I’ll remove that tek-arm if you tell me.”

  He scowled, shattering all those handsome male angles, making him seem cutting and hard. “Not even the promise of being made whole again and being rid of this tek could make me reveal this knowledge and certainly not to you, someone known to betray those closest to her.”

  I glared back at him. “I haven’t betrayed Oberon. I’ve done everything he’s asked of me.”

  “And yet the Dreamweaver still lives.”

  My mouth twitched. “I’ll rectify that the next time I see him.”

  He smirked in a way that had me wanting to free my whip and square up to him. “Your weak saru mind cannot withstand the Dreamweaver.”

  Ugh. Fae. “Maybe your new arm will whittle down some of that fae ego you lord over every other race.”

  “We are protofae. Everything you see, hear, touch, taste, and breathe belongs to us.”

  I shook my head and descended the ramp. How different my view of Faerie and its children was now. At one time, I would have agreed with him. A fae like Sirius could never see the truth outside of Faerie. He was blind to it, just like I had been. “You.” I pointed a finger at Talen. “With me.”

  He watched me stride past him, heading back the way he had come and then looked up at the approaching warcrsuier and her shadow. “It is not dark yet.”