Dammit Kellee, just let it go already.
Eledan straightened and stepped toward Kellee, putting himself slightly in front of me. I gave Kellee a quick shake of my head. The marshal’s determined glare narrowed. The fool wouldn’t back down. Did he want Eledan to attack? If he kept pushing, the fae surely would.
I stood and reached for Eledan’s arm. The undercurrent of illusionary magic prickled my fingers. “Istvan, it’s all right.”
But Eledan ignored me. He folded his arms and tilted his head, blatantly scrutinizing the marshal. Kellee peered up at the young CEO.
A citrusy bite tingled on my tongue.
“Vakaru.” The word dripped from Eledan’s lips like a curse or a threat. I had never heard it before, but Kellee had.
The marshal’s upper lip pulled back, revealing lengthening canine teeth in a smile crafted of pure malice.
Fae magic flared, and Eledan lunged. Kellee—a blur—kicked off the floor, knocking his chair backward with inhuman speed. Eledan’s hand clawed at the air where Kellee had been sitting, and the marshal landed a punch to Eledan’s cheek, nearly dropping the fae to the floor.
I stepped in. “Kellee!”
But he flung out a hand—“Stay back, Messenger!”—and sunk his hand into Eledan’s hair, twisting him off the floor. The fae’s illusion collapsed, revealing the warfae in all his black-haired, leather-wrapped alien glory. A growl bubbled up from Eledan as he turned his head to fix the full weight of his glare on the marshal. His eyes burned, crackling with the full force of his magic. Kellee wasn’t leaving this room alive.
“Vakaru el nislet,” Eledan growled.
“Fuck you, fae.” Kellee locked his hand around the warfae’s throat and drove him backward, slamming Eledan into the desk.
Eledan wasn’t fighting. Why wasn’t he fighting? He smiled at the marshal, and that smile was a terrible portent. He was toying with Kellee.
I had to do something. But with no weapon and my magic contained, the pair of them grossly outmatched me.
Five black knives appeared in Kellee’s hand and punched into Eledan’s chin. The fae jerked his head back, yanking free.
Not knives. Claws.
Citrus spritzed the air, so pungent it burned the back of my throat, and Kellee launched away from Eledan, coat whirling. Air shimmered, Eledan’s illusions coming to life and surrounding Kellee. The lawman roared and turned away, shoulders heaving.
Shudders racked him.
Eledan straightened. He brushed a hand down his jacket, straightening it, and wiped his chin, smearing blood across his cheek.
“Interesting,” he said, eyeing his spilled blood and then the shivering marshal. “Do you know what he is?” Eledan asked, addressing me.
A fucking idiot. “No.”
“No, you shouldn’t. We wiped his kind out long before the saru were conceived.”
I wet my lips and swallowed, finding my throat dry. Kellee stood rigid, his back to me, his long coat rippling, amplifying his trembling. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Besides the obvious, I showed him something from his past. Something he didn’t want to see,” Eledan said, blasé. He retrieved a towel from inside his desk drawer and wiped the blood from his chin and neck. Not a mark remained. “I believed they were all dead.”
“We are,” Kellee said, grinding the words out from between his teeth.
Eledan rolled his eyes in a very human expression of dismissal. “The Vakaru were bred as soldiers and designed to feed off violence, making them crave the kill. They were Oberon’s pet project, and they served us well, until one of their kind started harboring rebellious ideas. They have a pack mentality. Once one turns, they all turn. It sealed their fate.”
After wiping his hand clean and dumping the bloody towel on the desktop, Eledan crossed the room to stand dangerously close in front of Kellee. But the marshal didn’t lash out. He lifted his head, I assumed to look into Eledan’s eyes, though I couldn’t see Kellee’s face.
Standing so close, it was clear which of them was designed for combat. Kellee’s presence was broader, even draped in his marshal’s coat. Eledan’s taller, slimmer frame was meant for stamina, for weeks spent on the hunt, for illusion and trickery. Kellee was designed to deliver a punch to the face, which he had done spectacularly to Eledan, for all the good it had done him.
The fae rubbed his jaw. “What shall I do with him?”
He was asking me? Let him go! I approached, giving them both wide berth, and stopped in front of Kellee. With his lips parted, Kellee’s sharp teeth were obvious and lethal—but his slack expression revealed Eledan’s hold on his mind. The fae was likely surrounding Kellee with illusions. Painful ones, from the haunted look crossing the marshal’s face.
I sighed. If only the fool had listened to me and stayed away. “Let him go.”
Eledan laughed. “I thought you might say that.”
A blade dropped from Eledan’s right bracer into his hand. I caught the shimmer of metal too late to stop him from slashing open Kellee’s neck.
“No!”
The marshal staggered, reflexes holding him up. His hand went to his throat, fingers sinking into the gush of blood. Blood soaked his shirt and poured down the front of his coat, obscuring his marshal’s badge. Panic stuttered my thoughts. I grabbed Kellee’s arm. He caught the back of the chair, but his grip slipped and his knees buckled. We dropped together.
“Oh, Kellee, no…” I knelt beside him, reaching for the gaping wound pumping out too much blood. His eyes rolled back. I was losing him.
His wet fingers touched my face. “Messenger,” he mouthed, his voice drowning in blood.
No! He was the last of his kind. A good man. He had saved me from Eledan’s assassins. He was only trying to do the right thing. He didn’t deserve to die this way.
I shot to my feet and slammed my palms into Eledan’s chest, splattering blood across his fine leathers and shoving the fae backward. “Remove this collar. NOW!”
“So you can use Mab’s magic to heal a vakaru?” Eledan scoffed. “No. I’m putting him out of his misery. Life as a vakaru, alone and hungry, is no life at all.”
“That’s not your choice to make!”
“Yes, it is. His life belongs to the fae.”
Rage and fear overrode all reason. I snatched Eledan’s blade from his hand and pressed it to my neck, feeling the sting of the blade cut. “Heal him or lose your only chance at being fixed.”
Eledan reached for the blade. I jerked back, nicking my skin. “If he dies, I will never help you. Do you understand? You’ll have that metal heart in your chest forever.”
Eledan snarled at the pale, listless marshal. “You would put the entire system—several billion lives—at risk, for one worthless vakaru?”
I poured all my indignation at being enslaved, all my resolve, all my rage and frustration into my glare and dragged the blade across my skin, opening it up. Fiery pain fizzled. Blood dribbled over the iron collar. Kellee wasn’t worthless to me, but Eledan was right: I wouldn’t go through with this. I lied and cut myself because it was the only weapon I had left. Believe it, you fae fuck. “Heal him!”
Eledan’s amusement turned dry. Reluctance making his movements too damn slow, he knelt beside Kellee, pushed his hand into the blood soaking the marshal’s neck and looked the marshal in the eye.
My heart thumped too loudly. I blinked the blur of fury in my vision away.
Eledan sighed. “It will take more than I can give.”
No, those were not the words I wanted to hear. “Heal him, you have more fae magic here. Use it.”
Eledan frowned over his shoulder. “The additional magic is not for a vakaru—”
“Do it!”