“No? I’ve heard the stories of you mercilessly slaughtering your kin. Where was your humanity then, Wraithmaker?”
I clenched my jaw until my teeth ached.
“I thought so,” he replied, smug as always. “You like the pretty idea of being human, but you are no more human than I am. You are saru. It must have been easy to forget that while playing at being a messenger for… what was it? Five years. A blink in a fae lifetime, and you believe you understand me? You actually believe I feel something for humans?”
Clearly not, but at least I had my answer. His motives were purely selfish. “So why the delay?”
He shrugged. “It isn’t the right time.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“You.”
Icy dread clamped around my heart. Me? But he couldn’t have known I’d come to Calicto. He couldn’t have planned for that. He had been in Halow a thousand years. I was only twenty-six. It wasn’t possible. Unless…
I reached for a nearby chair as the world necessary tipped, taking my memories of the queen’s murder with it. “You knew I was going to kill Mab…”
“You don’t think she plucked you out of the arena to actually serve by her side?”
I had. I had strived to be the best. I had longed for them to notice me. And they had.
“She had warriors, a thousand years old, trained in the art of battle. A saru is nothing compared to them.”
“I don’t—”
“Why would the Queen of Faerie pick a saru as her personal guard? You’re not stupid, Kesh. But you are blinded by your love for her and for Faerie.”
No, she had picked me because… because I was the best. I had killed all the others to prove I was like them. She had picked me to reward my devotion and the blood I’d spilled. She had loved me as I loved her. She had respected my advice, and she had confided in me. She was mine and I was hers. I was hers. I would always be hers… She had told me so.
I flinched, the memories turning jagged and sharp.
I was hers.
I would always be hers.
I had made sure of that.
“You’re lying.” The words were weak, clutching at hope.
He dipped his chin and peered through his lashes. “You know I can’t.”
“But she gave me her magic. She said it was a gift.”
“It was. For me.”
I gripped the back of the chair, all my strength draining away. “But I’m the Wraithmaker,” I whispered. I had earned my name. Earned her respect.
He touched my shoulder, suddenly beside me. I hadn’t seen him move, and now he was so close, filling my view of everything. “We gave you that name. We built you up. We made you what you are. From the moment the saru breeding bitch squeezed you out, bawling into this world, you belonged to Faerie. Everything you know, everything you are, we gave to you. My mother, the Queen of Faerie, put you in her bed and gave you the blade to kill her.”
“Why?” I whispered, ignoring the cold tears that fell.
“How is it possible you came to be here, in this room with me, without all of Faerie knowing I still lived? It had to be you—someone who wouldn’t be noticed, a tek-whisperer, a ghost, a nobody girl with a queen’s magic tied around her heart.” He pressed his hand to my chest and pulled. All at once, an integral part of me arched toward him. Power—mine—surged from my heart and poured outward into his hand. His lips parted, eyes widening. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Screams shattered my mind but never left my lips. Prince Eledan leaned close. His mouth brushed mine, and his gaze burned. “Your life was never about you. You are just the messenger, and you are here for me.”
More and more he pulled, draining the touch of the divine out of my veins. The queen’s love had filled me, made me into something, and now he was taking it all away, emptying me out and leaving me hollow. And I couldn’t stop him.
It was a lie.
All of it.
My entire life.
I had always known. But it had been easier to dream of more. To make it mean something. Anything.
His fingers brushed the collar. It clicked, fell open and clattered to the floor somewhere far away. “I’ve waited a long time for this,” he whispered.
My eyelids fluttered down as the last strings of Mab’s gift left me. Her magic had been all that held me up. I collapsed into Eledan’s arms. He stole permission and licked his tongue over the corner of my mouth. “They call me the Dreamweaver, little saru. I will show you why.”
No, no, no, no… My vision fluttered, the edges of my world tearing apart. My heart stuttered, his hand still pressed close, still taking, still pulling more than just magic.
He lightly brushed his fingertips down my face, closing my eyes. “Sleep. Dream. When you wake, the worlds will be better for having the fae in them.”
He hadn’t needed me—Kesh Lasota—at all. All he had wanted was my magic, his mother’s magic. It would make him whole again, make him the prince she had lost so long ago. She had died to give me the gift that would bring him back to Faerie. He would be the prince who would herald in a new age by poisoning Halow from the inside out, starting with Arcon at the system’s heart.
As I fell into nothing and nowhere, I wondered if anything I had lived had been real.
If I was just the messenger and I had served my purpose, what was left of me now?
Part II
“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you
can understand.”
W.B. Yeats ~ Old Earthen, 1892
Chapter 20
When dreams were layered one on top of another on top of another, reality became the nightmare. I lived a thousand lives, loved a hundred souls and lost them all. With every day that passed, the dreams buried me deeper. I dreamed of carving out Eledan’s heart. I dreamed of thrusting a sword through Mab’s chest. I dreamed of a prince seated on a throne of bones. I dreamed of wishes and nightmares and all the things that mattered, until they didn’t. I dreamed until there was nothing left to dream, until the fantasies had emptied out my mind, leaving it barren and ravaged.
“Reach out to her. She’s calling your name.”
“I can’t.”
I knew those voices, but from where, I couldn’t recall.
All around there was darkness, and I heard him laugh. The sound of his laughter stirred me to life, and the dreams began again. Over and over and over, they turned me inside out and upside down.
I heard myself weeping like the saru who had begged me for their lives moments before I’d cut their throats. I’d killed them for praise, and their blood on my hands was worthless.
Dreams became nightmares that tore me apart. The ghosts I’d made came back to haunt me. I was the worst ghost of all. Kesh Lasota didn’t exist. I didn’t know who I was.
A hand waved in front of my face.
A man blinked at me. His eyes were green. Pretty.
“I don’t think she sees us,” he said.
He wasn’t real, so I didn’t answer.
He straightened and propped his hands on his hips. He seemed frustrated, but I couldn’t imagine why. Then he gestured at someone standing to the side, almost swallowed inside the darkness threatening to wash over me again. “You try.”
A second male came forward. Although his stride was casual, he moved like a killer. Each step was a statement, each footfall placed to pivot and launch if he needed to. He wore their leather clothes, adorned with too many ties and straps. Silvery hair veiled half his face.
Fae.
My teeth chattered together, adrenaline racing through my veins.
He stopped, his violet eyes darting over me.
He wasn’t him, the one who had made me dream. The Dreamweaver. But he was one of them. My top lip twitched.
I heard laughter. It sounded terrible, like nails on glass.
The first man turned and shot me a concerned glance.
The laughter had come from me.
“What did you do?” the man asked.
“Nothing.” The fae backed away, sinking into the shadows. He lurked there, waiting. I kept my eye on that one.