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

  And he did? I smiled along with him, my mood lifting. “Not even the Dreamweaver could break me. Although, he tried…” Eledan’s laughter tickled my thoughts, but I let it slip away, still smiling when my thoughts were my own again.

  “You’re amazing, Kesh Lasota.” He blinked innocent eyes at me—eyes that held too much understanding. The woman in front of him had killed an arena full of fae and apparently had the confidence of two of Faerie’s immortal creatures, and she rode a fae warcruiser through Halow and freed innocent civilians: the Messenger myth—the good to the Wraithmaker’s bad—but just like the Wraithmaker, she wasn’t real. He didn’t know all the lies she’d been built on. He looked at me like Sjora had looked while talking of Eledan, the mad prince, and his sacrifices. Like I was that hero.

  I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t sure I could. Not yet.

  “You really think Talen’s afraid to break me?”

  “I know he is. When you broke him free of his bond with the ship, you almost died. Kellee told me he stole you away afterward and how he nearly lost his shit searching the ship for you, then Talen reappeared with you in his arms, sleeping like a babe. If you believe they don’t care for you, you’re mistaken.”

  “You’ve been watching us closely.”

  He shrugged. “What else can I do from the outside?”

  Those words held a longing that hurt to hear. “You’re not on the outside, Arran,” I offered carefully.

  “I am.” He looked down into the pool. “You all know me, but I don’t know you. I might have fit before I lost my memories, but I don’t anymore.”

  “There wasn’t any time before. Kellee and Talen have spent more time with you as Arran than…” I almost said Aeon. Almost. “…who you were before.”

  “Kellee doesn’t like me and Talen… I can’t even begin to guess at what he’s thinking.”

  He had it all wrong. “Kellee likes you. If he didn’t, you’d be dead, and Talen…” I didn’t even know where to start with Talen. “They can be… intense.”

  He snorted. “That’s one word. But not you.”

  “Not me what?”

  “You’re not intense. You’re just you.”

  I was pretty simple once you peeled off all the layers of lies. “I’m saru.” I smiled. I pulled my gaze from the pool and found my friend looking back at me, his eyes honest and true, his smile loose and playful. Arran had a simple, saru-like honesty in every word, every gesture. On Faerie, everything was out to seduce and manipulate, with layers upon layers of deception, but saru weren’t like that. The fae saw it as a weakness, but it was our strength.

  Arran looked at me and he wasn’t hiding secrets. He didn’t have any to hide. He was just Arran, just a guy who liked to play with tek and dance with strangers. Just a guy sitting with me beside a pool. Someone who listened without a price.

  “How do I save Hulia and the others?”

  He drew in a deep breath and looked out over the pool. “Misdirection.”

  “Like… a distraction?”

  “Lure Sirius out. Keep him occupied. Strike from behind when his attention is elsewhere.”

  Spoken like the gladiator saru I knew. “He’ll expect a trap.”

  He shrugged. “So give him one. And then add another.”

  I turned Arran’s words over in my mind—an idea forming. “And the unseelie creature?”

  Arran clicked his tongue. “Talen’s eyes lit up when you mentioned it. He knows what it is. Let him deal with it.”

  I had stared into the creature’s eyes and seen only darkness looking back, a darkness so thick I wasn’t sure Talen’s brightness could overcome it. But he had an affinity for Faerie’s creatures, and the unseelie were still part of Faerie. I needed time to think on Arran’s advice—advice freely given with no ulterior motive. I was more grateful than he could ever know.

  “Thank you,” I told him.

  His smile turned crooked. He looked down, almost shyly. “Any time.” His gaze skipped to the pool. “How deep do you think it goes?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  He got to his feet, and in one swift motion, he pulled his shirt over his head. “There’s one way to find out.”

  I caught a tantalizing glimpse of his gladiator physique before he dove into the water.

  “Aeon!” I yelled, jumping to my feet. I’d used his real name and didn’t care. Idiot! He had no idea what was in there. What if it was a drainage system that this ship periodically purged?

  The surface ripples faded.

  The blackness settled. Seconds passed too slowly. He wasn’t surfacing. My heart thumped in my throat, in my head. I started tugging off my coat and stepped to the edge. I couldn’t swim. Nobody had ever taught me. What if he didn’t come up? I had to go in there. I clenched my hands into fists. “Aeon?”

  He broke the surface with a gasp and grinned. “The look on your face…” When he dragged a hand through his wet hair, sweeping it back, delight flashed in his eyes. With his hair back, his dark skin and darker features took on a rugged masculinity I’d forgotten he had—or hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. He wasn’t Aeon the boy anymore, that much was obvious.

  I glowered. “I hope ship parasites eat you.”

  He laughed and kicked onto his back, splashing me. “Water’s warm, Kesh.” His smile beckoned. Water lapped at his chest and tugged at his dark pants. He looked right at home swimming in an alien pool.

  My glower sharpened. Where had he learned to swim? Like me, Aeon hadn’t known how to swim. There wasn’t much call for it in the arenas and Dagnu didn’t waste time teaching saru what they didn’t need to know.

  I folded my arms. “I can’t swim.”

  “You can’t?” He bobbed upright and swam forward to clutch the pool’s edge near my boots. “Huh… I found one of the Wraithmaker’s weaknesses? Are there more?” he asked, intrigued.

  “No.” Hundreds. He was one.

  I started for the door before he got any ideas about climbing out and presenting me with an image of Arran I could do without. “While you’re splashing about, the grownups have a mission to plan.”

  “I could teach you…”

  Swimming was a useful skill to have, but the time spent next to him—not touching—would be torture. “Thanks, but I like to keep my feet on dry land.”

  “You’re missing out.”

  I looked over my shoulder. He still clung to the side. Water streamed down his face, beading and licking down his jaw and neck, right where I’d like to run my tongue and mouth and maybe nip at those golden shoulders the water lapped at. Hope widened his eyes. He made no attempt to hide his feelings—it was all there on his face, wide-eyed hope and the spark of playful desire. He wanted me in there with him, and cyn help me, I wanted it too.

  I laughed and left the room, somehow keeping my feet moving away from the delectable sight of a friend who was all grown up and alluring in all the right ways. “Faerie help me survive these males.”

  Chapter 7

  “You did what?”

  Kellee ignored my question and tossed a compact personal interface onto the meeting table. He had finally reappeared after Sota had found him back at the salvage yard.

  “Can you make it work?” he asked.

  I glared at him. He’d gone back down on Hapters’s surface without telling anyone, doing whatever the cyn he pleased, like always. What if the unseelie creature had picked him off? Nobody would have known. What if he was down there doing other unseelie things?

  I shoved that last thought aside.

  “Next time you get ideas about going off on your own, will you at least let me know first?” I asked, testing out diplomacy instead of clashing.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Why?” I echoed. Because we’re a team, Kellee. Because I care about you. Because you’re all I’ve got and I don’t think I can do this without you. “Just let me know, okay? It’s hard enough to keep track of everyone on the ship without you disappearing whenever you please
.” Because I need you.

  He made a disgruntled, dismissive sound. “I thought I didn’t need your permission. I’ll be sure to run every decision by you in the future.” The dangerous gleam was back in his eyes. He dropped into the chair to my left, leaned back, and kicked his boots onto the table, appearing at ease.

  I snatched the device he’d brought back and turned it over in my hand. A personal data bank. Most of the working personnel on Hapters probably had one to track their working hours, documents, taxes. Sota could easily crack it open and spill its secrets. “Are you looking for something specific?”

  “Any mention of strange events or the tunnels.”

  “I thought there were no tunnels on Hapters, Marshal?” I smiled, finally getting that dig in low and sharp.

  He wasn’t amused. “There didn’t use to be.”

  “When you were here before. When was that, a few hundred years ago?”

  “Give or take a few centuries.” He knew exactly how long it had been. He didn’t become a marshal by giving vague answers. Once again, he was shutting me out.

  “I think you and Talen know exactly why there are tunnels down there and what the fae writing is for. But you won’t tell me, probably because you think I’ll run right back to Oberon and tell my beloved king all your dark, dirty secrets.”

  “Pretty much exactly that, yeah.”

  The data bank groaned in my tightening grip. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

  “Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

  I worked my jaw around what would have been a dry laugh. “Oh, okay, we’re doing this now, huh?”

  “I’m not doing anything. I brought you that. A thank you would have been nice, but instead you demand I have to tell you every fucking thing I’m doing because you’re the Messenger and I’m just the vakaru, here to follow your orders like a good pet soldier.”

  Was that what he thought? “That’s not—”

  “I don’t wanna hear it, Kesh.” He dropped his head back and ran a hand down his face. “I just… Let’s get this ship spacebound, scare the glitter out of Sirius, and save some people. Can we do that?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do. Had you been at my meeting—”

  “Oh, the meeting, right. The one where Talen artfully avoided your questions and Arran spent the whole time making eyes at you.”

  He had asked Sota about the meeting. That was the only way he could know. I slammed the databank down and shoved it across the table at him. He caught it before it could fall off the edge.

  “Crack it open yourself. Ask Sota, seeing as you’re both getting along so well.”

  His glare intensified and a touch of gold rimmed his eyes. Gold was the first stage, black the next, and red when it was too late to turn back.

  “Back off from the kid,” he warned.

  Now I wished I hadn’t given him back the databank so I could throw it at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Aeon. Leave him alone. Let him have a life, a good one, without you in it.”

  If I hadn’t already been angry, his words might have hurt more, but a dart of pain still hit home—and there it burned. “You, Marshal Kellee, need to stop talking.”

  “No, you need to hear a few painful truths.”

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into you.”

  “You don’t?” He stamped around the table, putting himself inside my personal space. If he thought he could muscle me down, he was mistaken.

  “People are dying on Hapters,” he said, “and all over Halow, but they have hope, because they’ve made up this fantasy hero who’ll save them all, only I know their hero, and she’s more likely to turn on them than save them. She might even hand them over to Oberon for a new matching set of fancy warfae marks—” I lifted my hand to slap him. He caught my wrist an inch from his face, his eyes ablaze and his teeth sharp behind his snarl. “Don’t like the truth?”

  Damn him! I grabbed him by the collar and shoved him back, so close I felt his trembling rage that matched my own. “You don’t even know what the truth is. You’re so caught up in the horrors of my past you can’t see what we could do together, what we could be together. You, me, and Talen. And Arran too. We have something special. I get why you’re angry, I understand you’re afraid—”

  “I’m not afraid.” He looked down at his fingers gripped around my wrist. It was the first lie he had ever told me.

  “We’re all afraid, Kellee.”

  I thought he might break. The wildness in his eyes burned hotter, golden edges sizzling. I knew what was coming. He would tell me I was a paper lynchpin holding up the hopes of millions and how he would expose me for the nothing girl I truly was, but instead of speaking, his mouth crashed into mine, and before it occurred to me to fight him off, I was kissing him back—with my tongue, my lips, with my entire body. Lust stoked my anger, because damn him, he wasn’t winning this. His kiss bruised my mouth, his teeth scraped my lip, close to cutting. I nipped back, pinching the corner of his mouth between my teeth. His sharp intake of breath was all the cue I needed. I broke the kiss and clutched his jaw in my free hand, holding him still while I pinned him under my stare. His grip on my wrist tightened, teetering on the edge of pain, and the fire in his eyes burned hotter still. We had each other captured, controlled. I wanted to hurt him, knowing he could take it, and likely wanted it too. All the times we had fought in the arenas, those games had been foreplay. He would not win this one.

  I pushed him back against the table’s edge, feeling him tense and resist, but he let it happen, let me pull him down to my level so I could lift my face and taste him again, this time slowly. I tasted his lips first. Ironically soft, considering how sharp his words could be. He opened a little, letting me take more, and I relaxed my grip on his jaw. His responding kiss was a careful question, more of a teasing ask than the earlier demand. This gentleness wouldn’t last. Tension quivered through him. He held himself in check, like a nocked arrow on its string. I spread my hand on his chest, felt his heart thud, his raw power reined in. The darkness in him paced its cage. Part of me wanted to set it free, knowing it would be reckless and wanting it even more. I’d wanted the marshal since I’d first laid eyes on him, but back then, I’d been a different person. Now, I didn’t have to pretend. His kiss wandered from my mouth, skimming my chin. As his hand found the back of my neck, claiming me, his other freed my wrist and cupped my ass. Sinking his fingers in, he pulled me tight against him. What would it feel like to be this close to him with nothing between us? Hot skin on skin, his body beneath me as I rocked… I wanted him that close. Wanted it so badly I was forgetting my anger.

  I turned my head away and let Kellee’s warm, fluttering breaths land on the curve of my neck.

  Talen stood in the doorway. Watching. His bright fae eyes dared me to call him out.

  “He still there?” Kellee whispered, vakaru senses always alert.

  Without answering, I ran the tip of my tongue up Kellee’s neck to the back of his jaw. Talen watched. I didn’t need to see him to know. Our bond was alight, sharing my lust and his. The fae shared most things, including lovemaking. The thought of Talen joining us freed a rush of pleasurable shivers. I lowered my hand and rubbed my touch up Kellee’s inner thigh, seeking proof of how much he wanted this. And oh, how he did. Skimming my palm up the hardness straining against his pants summoned a twitch and growl from the marshal. Need pulsed hot between my legs, aching to be filled.

  Kellee breathed, his voice wrecked. “Do you care he’s watching?”

  His rough whiskers grazed my cheek. In answer, I kissed his mouth, thrusting my tongue in. He growled again, low and deadly. The threat heightened my senses so that his touch strummed a part of me I never knew existed. He cupped the back of my head and crushed me with a kiss so rough, so demanding, that his teeth cut. I tasted coppery blood and groaned into the feverish attack.

  Blood.

  A shudder racked Kellee, and he whined pitifully, the sound new from him. He yanked m
y head to the side, exposing my neck, and bared his fangs. Their curved, pearly smoothness looked almost beautiful with the red madness of his eyes.

  A blur of silver shot between us.

  Talen tore Kellee from my arms and slammed him into the wall so hard it was a miracle he didn’t drive him right through it. Talen’s right hook landed next and drove the marshal to the floor, where he swam close to unconsciousness.

  I felt a whole lot of things. Some of them mine, some of them not. Lust, disappointment, anger, and… fear. None of those emotions belonged to me.

  It happened so fast, and was so unexpected, I had to recall the string of moments and piece them together. The madness had started with blood.

  I dabbed at a thin, precise cut on my lip. My fingers came away glistening red.

  Kellee had been about to sink his teeth into my neck, maybe tear my throat out.

  Talen, convinced Kellee wouldn’t fight back, turned. He didn’t need to say a word and neither did I. He had saved Kellee from making a terrible mistake, and perhaps even saved my life.

  And there we stood. Kellee swimming close to unconsciousness, Talen a granite block between us, and me, out of my mind with lust and anger.

  “Well, karushit,” Sota drawled, swooping into the room. His single lens, trained on the semiconscious Kellee, swiveled up to Talen. “That answers who’d win in a brawl and I just won a bet.”

  “I want you two to trade me for the people,” I said and was met with less than impressed expressions from my team—if team was the right word for them.

  We had gathered in the pilot’s chamber, where traditionally a pilot was fused with the ship. Silver veins scarred the ceiling, like lightning frozen in time, where Talen had torn himself from the ship’s grasp.

  Despite the memories here, the walls thrummed with a warm, comforting glow. There was no table, no furniture, just a raised area where Talen’s bond had almost torn me apart. That was where we sat now in a messy circle. Sota silently hovered behind me. Kellee lay casually on his side, head propped on a hand. He seemed… normal, considering what had happened between us only a few hours before. Talen sat beside him, one long leg crooked, the other stretched out so his leather boot almost brushed my knee. Side by side, their differences were stark in contrast: dark and light.