After Larsen brought me fresh clothes and my coat, he left to continue his charade as human. I contacted Kellee using the comms and told the marshal about the scar, the heart, the markings, Larsen’s threat. I told him everything except for Larsen’s offer to remove my crime of murdering a queen.
Kellee left me alone with my thoughts while he contacted Talen. I dressed, threw on my coat and wandered Larsen’s private quarters. His books drew my eye. I plucked a large tome from the shelf and set it down on the desk with a heavy thwump. Gold leaf embossed beautifully intricate writing. But the content of the text wasn’t pretty. The history of human evolution. The original humans were seeded on Earth and grown to serve the fae. But the fae underestimated their experiment and the time the new civilization would need to evolve. With their short life spans, humans rushed to evolve and learn and create all on their own. In the absence of magic, humans created tek—huge interconnected metal machines with brains.
By the time the fae returned to check on their experiment, late in the twenty-first century, humans had surrounded themselves with technological advancements that repelled the fae.
I flicked the pages and ran my fingers over the sweeping words.
The fae didn’t take kindly to their pets creating what they saw as weapons and attempted to wipe humans from the Earthen system. That was when the fae learned their experiment had evolved beyond the whims of their creators. The resulting war lasted a thousand years. Billions died. Fae and human. Tek evolved and got smarter, launching humans to the stars and beyond to the neighboring Halow system.
The book described human advancement as a fae-engineered virus that stubbornly resisted the fae’s best efforts to destroy it.
The final battle saw enormous human-built space-faring battlecruisers encroach on Faerie. The full force of the Fae Courts fought back. The summoning blasted human forces out of Faerie, creating an area of dead space littered with wrecked ships and ravaged worlds on both sides. Queen Mab, leader of the Fae, penned a truce, and a defensive net was strung across Halow and Fae borders, sealing one from the other indefinitely.
Over the years, the defense net thickened, backed up by human tek. Tek Arcon now maintained.
No human had seen a fae for at least a thousand years since the war. For all but the few at the highest echelons of government, they had slipped into the realm of myth and legend.
But one had survived in Halow. The fae with the metal heart.
When Kellee’s voice came back through the comms, the news was worse than I’d imagined.
“His name is Eledan,” Kellee said.
My heart sank. The world grew smaller and colder, the truth contracting around me. Now I knew why he appeared to be so powerful. “He’s Mab’s son.”
“Supposedly killed in the war, before even my time.” The marshal sighed. “Eledan has been missing and presumed dead for over a thousand years.”
“Not dead.” I swallowed. “Just hiding among humans, building Arcon and buying time. If he returned to Faerie with a tek heart, they would kill him. Royal or not.” He just wants to go home.
No, don’t fall for it.
It didn’t matter why. He was insane, driven mad by tek exposure, and he was dangerous because of it. Whatever he might have been a thousand years ago—Mab’s son, prince of the Fae Courts—he wasn’t that now.
“Talen is suspicious,” Kellee said, softer now, his words whispering through the comms and into my ear.
“Is he secure?” The last thing we needed was another dangerous fae on the loose.
“Yes.” He didn’t sound sure. “He had questions about you.”
“None of that matters,” I mumbled, thoughts churning.
A fae prince could disable the defense net and open the door to Faerie. Humans had forgotten what it meant to war with the fae. The fae had not. They thrived on the hunt. Lived by it. Even sought it out. And Mab—the only one who’d had the presence of mind to arrange a truce—was gone. Her son, Eledan’s brother, Oberon, ruled in Faerie now—the same king who reared saru to hunt and kill and entertain their fae overlords. Oberon loved nothing more than bloodshed. Nothing crafted a king and his reign quite like war.
Billions of human lives hinged on my ability to fix Eledan’s heart. And if I did, would he keep his word?
“Kesh?”
“Yes, I’m still here…” I closed the book.
“Can you fix him?” Kellee asked.
I lowered myself into Eledan’s chair, listening to the old wood creak. “I don’t know. The tek is there for a reason, either to keep him alive or to kill him slowly, and he’s been resisting it all this time. I doubt it will be a simple case of just removing it or he would have done it himself.” My magic would secure his life during such a tricky operation. “Did Talen say anything about the heart?”
“No, but I recall a legend, of sorts, from the warfiles during my training. The missing prince led a charge against a line of tactical drones. His unit broke through, suffering massive losses, but he went on to kill hundreds of soldiers before a colossus machine took him down. The colossus tore his heart out. They paraded his body through Aluna’s streets. The city and much of the planet is gone now. Mab’s retaliation was swift.” Kellee’s odd, slightly detached tone had me wondering if the marshal had been there despite him saying it was before his time. “It seems like Eledan survived the impossible.”
“He’s a powerful illusionary. It’s nothing for him to fool a mob.” Eledan could probably also live without his heart, for a while, but someone must have helped him or condemned him by replacing his fae heart with tek. An unsuspecting human who was likely killed once the job was done.
For me to operate on his heart, he would need to trust me. We weren’t there yet, but now I knew who he was and exactly what he wanted. The power was in my hands. Once he trusted me, I’d open him up, cut out his heart and kill him.
“Kellee, don’t come here tomorrow.”
“Kesh—”
“Please. I… I’m afraid he’ll hurt you. If he suspects we know each other—”
“He won’t suspect a thing. Trust me.”
“Why risk it? You can’t do anything. Putting yourself at risk like this is foolish—”
“I have to come.”
“No, you don’t.” His silence grated on me. “Why?”
“I want to see you.”
I closed my eyes, ignoring the flutter of silly human hope his words stirred inside. “Kellee, pl—”
“No. I need to know you’re all right. When I saw the collar he put on you…” An exasperated sigh interrupted. “Look, it’s… I have to do this. His kind killed everyone I knew. They took away my home, my family. They stole everything from me. I won’t let him take you. I know what he is. I need to know you’re… you’re alive, that you’re real. That it’s really Kesh I’m talking with. Do you understand?”
“I am real. I’m not some trick. He’s not screwing with you. Right now, he doesn’t even know you exist. Stay away and stay secret. I can’t protect you if you come here, Kellee, and I need you on the outside.”
“You don’t need to protect me. You’re more at risk than I am. You killed his mother. I have to come. I’m not discussing it.”
I shook my head, wishing the fool didn’t make me smile. “Are all your people this stubborn?”
“They were.” I heard the smirk and then the comms cut off.
“Be careful,” I whispered into the silence.
Larsen—Eledan arrived early the next morning, demanding I follow him. He spun his Larsen disguise between one step and the next as we left his apartment. Down through Arcon we walked, taking elevators and escalators. These excursions of his were deliberate. He needed to be seen to reinforce his act.