The Shattered Dark (7 page)

I can’t accept Aren doing that or anything like it ever again. It’s one of the many
reasons I’m trying to take things slowly with him. We still have things we need to
talk about.

“Perhaps we’re dealing with a false-blood,” Lena says into the silence, a silence
that grows heavier as we consider the possibility. That’s something we don’t need
to deal with right now. I’ve hunted many false-bloods in the last decade, all in an
effort to prevent them from gaining enough support to overthrow the king. Most of
them were easy to capture.
Most couldn’t prove they were Descendants of the
Tar Sidhe
, so they never had a big, loyal following. But for some false-bloods, that lack of
proof didn’t matter. They gained enough support, with either cunning or brute force,
to be dangerous. Thrain, the fae who found me ten years ago, used plenty of both.

Kyol shakes his head. “The remnants wouldn’t follow a false-blood so easily. We’re
dealing with a fae who is charismatic and smart. I think it’s likely he was one of
Atroth’s officers or he was rising in the ranks quickly. He’s looking for a Descendant
who can rival your bloodline, but he hasn’t yet found one who’s willing to take the
throne.”

No one here misses hearing the “yet.” We’re on borrowed time. I don’t know how Lena’s
going to make the high nobles confirm her as queen, but she needs to come up with
something soon. I wish I had a suggestion, but fae politics are beyond me. Plus, I
have another problem to add to our list.

“There’s something else we need to talk about,” I say. “The remnants abducted Paige.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kyol stiffen. He looks at me, but I keep my gaze
focused on Lena, and say, “They put a ward on her purse and left it at my apartment
for me to find. That’s why they showed up when I was there.”

“And Paige is…” Lena asks.

“My friend. We went to her sister’s wedding.” “Went to” is stretching it. We were
there for, like, five minutes because Aren wanted a public place—one filled with humans—to
exchange me for Lena after the Court captured her. “I need your help finding her.”

She stares at me for a good five seconds before she turns and sits on the top step
of the dais. If she didn’t look so weary, I’d be annoyed by her lack of reaction.
Still, I have to get Paige back.

“What do you want me to do?” she asks. “Assign a hundred fae to search the entire
Realm for a single human? Shall I assign a hundred more to search Earth?”

“Lena,” Aren interjects, stepping to my side.

“What?” she snaps. “The remnants attacked the palace because they knew I’d divert
resources to save her.”

I manage to draw in a slow breath and count to three before responding, but only because
I know she’s stressed and hasn’t been getting much sleep.

“You could offer a trade,” I say. “They took her for a reason. You could at least
attempt to—”

“And who should I trade?” she demands. “You?”

Lena and I have never been friends. We probably never will be, and our tolerance for
each other has its ups and downs. If she didn’t need my shadow-reading talent and
I didn’t need her to bring some kind of stability to the Realm, we would have nothing
to do with each other. But the fact is, she does need me, and I need her. I need her
to end this war so that I can have some hope of living a seminormal human life.

“If it comes down to that, yes,” I tell her.

I feel Aren turn toward me—I’m sure he has a few things to say about a trade—but I
don’t look away from Lena, not until her gaze focuses behind me. I glance over my
shoulder and see Jacia, daughter of Srillan, limping our way. She’s a former Court
fae, one of almost a hundred Kyol convinced to support Lena. She also happens to be
the woman King Atroth wanted Kyol to form a life-bond with. That never happened because
he was in love with me. I wonder if it’s a possibility now. She’s strong and beautiful,
with long, black hair braided over one shoulder and the brightest silver eyes I’ve
ever seen.

“We need a healer,”
she says in Fae. Her voice is monotone, but not tight, which is a surprise since
she’s left a trail of blood behind her. The
jaedric
armor protecting her left thigh hangs on by just one lace.

“There’s still fighting at the
veligh?” Lena demands. She rises from her seat on the dais’s top step to glare at
Kyol.
“Why are you here?”

“I needed to…”
He stops, glances my way before clearing his throat.
“I needed to know what was happening here.
”

Translation: he needed to know I was safe.

Almost as an afterthought, he adds,
“You sent your guards to the
veligh.
I’m here because you cannot be left unprotected.”

“One thing we can agree on,” Aren mutters as he walks
to Jacia and peers down at her injury. He pulls off the
jaedric
leg shield, then slips his hand through the rip in her blood-soaked pants so he can
heal the gash in her leg.

Only Aren, Lena, and a handful of other fae have the ability to heal. It’s one of
the only endangered magics that I wish was more common. Some of the others, like the
ability to read minds or to cast darkness, are less beneficial, more terrifying. The
king and the majority of the Realm think humans and our culture and artifacts have
been weakening the fae’s magic over the generations. They blame my people for making
gate-building and a few other magics—magics that I’m not certain ever existed in the
first place—extinct.

Jacia’s gaze moves from Aren to me. I have no idea if she knows why Kyol rejected
a life-bond with her. We tried to hide our feelings for each other, but I’m sure some
people were suspicious. But then, maybe life-bonds are rejected often? Fae are able
to sense each other through the magical bindings, and if it’s a good pairing, they’re
able to use more magic without becoming exhausted. The biggest drawback is that life-bonds
are permanent; even if the couple splits up, the magical bond remains. I’m pretty
sure the only way to end one is for one of the fae involved to die. That would definitely
discourage me from agreeing to one.

“Jacia,” Lena says.
“What’s happening at the
veligh?”

Jacia says the situation is under control, but if I’m translating her words correctly,
the remnants were close to breaking through our defenses. A portion of the silver
wall was damaged from flames thrown by a fae.

That fae had to be powerful to be able to manipulate fire like that. Trev is a fire-wielder,
one powerful enough to throw flames, and Lena can do something similar with air, but
most fae who are able to manipulate the elements can only create small, temporary
flames or a soft puff of wind. I hate knowing that the remnants have such powerful
people supporting them.

When Aren finishes healing Jacia, Lena questions her further. They’ll need to erect
a scaffold to support the wall until a more permanent fix can be made. Aren and Lena
discuss who will be in charge of that project, then they switch
to another subject, then another. When they start talking about the books that contain
a registry of fae names and magical abilities, I glance at Kyol, but he seems very
determined
not
to look my direction.

A resigned sigh escapes from me. It’s a familiar feeling, being pushed to the side
like this.

Without a word, I leave the king’s hall.

F
OR TEN YEARS
, I kept my human life separate from my life as a shadow-reader. I let my parents
believe I was crazy because it was forbidden to tell them about the fae, and I was
on academic probation almost my entire time in college because I couldn’t keep my
grades up. Except for Paige, I’ve been friendless this entire time. But I accepted
all of that. I accepted everything because it was best that humans not know anything
about the fae. It would endanger the Realm, and I didn’t want to drag anyone else
into its wars.

My precautions and sacrifices did a hell of a lot of good. They didn’t protect Paige.

“McKenzie.”

I’m surprised to hear Aren’s voice behind me, but I don’t slow down. I pull at the
bindings of my cuirass as I stride through a corridor that follows the palace’s exterior
wall.

“Hey,” he says, forcing me to stop when he cuts off my path. “Hey. Lena will help
you.”

I sidestep around him, pulling at the bindings again. The damn knot tightens.

“I’ll talk to her,” he says, falling into step beside me.

“Don’t bother.”

Aren grabs my arm, turns me toward him. “She’s exhausted.
She misses Sethan, and the nobles aren’t cooperating with her on anything, but she
will help, McKenzie.
I’ll
help.”

“Lena won’t help because she shouldn’t.” I pull my arm free but don’t try to move
past him again.

Aren tilts his head to the side. “She shouldn’t?”

“No.” The air whooshes out of my lungs. Sometimes, I really hate being reasonable.
“She has to think about what’s best for the rebels—for the entire Realm, really. Paige
is only one person, and she’s human. She’s not Lena’s responsibility. She’s mine.”

“McKenzie.” Aren’s voice is laced with a warning.

“What?”

“Don’t try to get her back on your own,” he says. He reaches out to help me untie
my cuirass’s bindings.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

His silver eyes meet mine. “I know that expression,
nalkin-shom
. You have a plan.”

Nalkin-shom.
Shadow-witch. The title should irritate me. Instead, it makes my stomach flip. The
fae have called me
nalkin-shom
behind my back for years. I didn’t know that until Aren told me fae children have
nightmares about me. Their parents tell them no one can escape the
nalkin-shom
, that if they misbehave, I’ll read their shadows, I’ll suck their magic dry. I still
think he’s exaggerating. I might be the best at what I do—when I read a fae’s shadows,
they almost never escape—but I’m not a monster.

Aren’s not looking at me like I’m a monster. Somehow, he makes
shadow-witch
sound like a term of endearment.

“I don’t have a plan,” I tell him. Not yet, at least.

He raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t,” I say, maybe a little defensively. Aren just shakes his head with that
little half smirk I used to find infuriating. It’s not infuriating anymore. It’s alluring.

The bindings of my armor finally loosen, and Aren helps me lift it over my head. My
hair gets caught on something. Aren gently pulls it free before setting the cuirass
aside, then he lets my loose ponytail slide from his hand. When he does, his fingertips
graze my neck. It’s a brief, accidental contact,
but my
edarratae
react instantly. By the way Aren’s gazing down at me, it’s obvious he felt the lightning’s
heat, too.

“Jorreb,”
someone says, surprisingly close to us. Fae have better hearing than humans, but
Aren stiffens just enough to indicate that the nearness of the fae startles him, too.
He takes a step away from me as he turns toward Jacia.

Her silver eyes move briefly to me before settling back on Aren.
“Lena wishes for the shadow-reader to speak to Naito.
”

A muscle in Aren’s cheek twitches.
“It’s only been two weeks.
”

Two weeks since Naito’s lover, Kelia, died. My throat tightens. Kelia was the rebel
fae who taught me to speak their language. She was almost a friend, and I envied her
relationship with Naito, a human shadow-reader. Despite some bumpy times, they were
happy together—they were
good
together—but Naito’s father, a hateful man determined to eradicate the fae, killed
Kelia the day we took the palace. Naito hasn’t been the same since.

“Lena needs him in the watch rotation,”
Jacia says.
“And she needs him to read the shadows.”

“I’ll talk to him,” I say, even though I agree it’s too soon. But I haven’t seen Naito
in several days. I want to see how he’s doing.

Aren looks at me. I think he wants to protest. Instead, he says, “I need to help secure
the
veligh
. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”

This
is the problem with starting a relationship in the middle of a war. Including today,
I’ve seen him only three times since I ended my relationship with Kyol. For us to
work out, I need time to get to know him. The thing is, it’s very possible we won’t
have that time. Despite the way Aren acts sometimes, he’s not invincible. I’m certainly
not, either.

My gaze goes to Jacia. I don’t know her at all. I don’t know her view on human and
fae relationships or if she would rat us out to a high noble if I wrapped my arms
around Aren. That’s what I want to do. I want to forget our responsibilities and run
away to somewhere remote and quiet, someplace where we can be normal and sit and talk
and…do other things.

Aren must know the direction my thoughts are heading. The half smile he gives me is
both an apology and a promise. “I’ll find you as soon as I can.”