“You know I’ve been trying to rally the cells.” Kellee pushed his plate away. “Communication isn’t easy—”
“It’s not fucking good enough, Marshal. I had to come out here myself to see what you’re doing. Turns out, fuck all. You said you were working on something. So, where is it? Huh?” Her accusations bounced around the chamber.
Kellee’s gaze caught mine and nerves rattled through me. Wait. I remembered him asking me to help, telling me to think on it. Was I his something?
Natalie stood and moved to the outside of the cage. “And the worst of it is, I have to go back and tell them you don’t have anything. That their marshal—the man they’ve pinned their hopes on—lied.”
“I didn’t lie.” He spoke too softly, his tone already defeated. “It’s not ready.”
“There are kids in the mines. Kids whose parents acted fast enough and knew the mines were the only place that could survive a fae warship assault. When the domes shattered, we heard it. All of Calicto trembled like the whole planet was breaking apart, and the glass screamed.” She pressed her hand to the glass cage and added softly, “Or the people did.”
Did Kellee have a plan? Surely, the woman couldn’t be pinning her hopes and the hopes of her people on me?
“When we found the well, I thought…” Her hand closed into a fist. “You said it would change everything.”
What well? I tried to catch Kellee’s eye, but he had bowed his head. Why hadn’t he told me any of this?
“We’re all going to die down there,” Natalie whispered.
“You won’t.” The words were mine. Alarmingly. But they felt right, as though I really could do something to back them up.
“Right.” She laughed and turned. “You and your pet fae will do what exactly? We can’t get anything larger than a shuttle off Calicto without the fae noticing, and even that’s a risk. There are almost a thousand people hiding in the mines. Are you going to save them?”
“Yes.”
“With what? Your whip?” She flicked a hand at the whip coiled at my hip and then pulled her hand back. Confusion clouded her face. “Wait… I know you.” Her eyes widened. “You killed him!”
Killed who? “You’re going to have to narrow it down.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Natalie lunged at me. Kellee shouted a warning to her or me, I wasn’t sure which. A silvery blur of hair appeared between the girl and me, and everything stopped. Talen had gently rested his hand on her face, as though the pair might be about to kiss. But Natalie stood limp and dazed, pupils so large her eyes looked black.
“Talen!” Kellee thundered in. “Let her go.”
Talen didn’t move. I stepped out, moving around so I could see his face. His eyes, like Natalie’s, were filled with blackness. The soft, careful, wary Talen who had lent me a book to read was long gone. In his place stood the killer species I knew so well. There was the fae who would have the three systems bow down to him and his kind. There was the fae who would make humans dance for him until they died on their feet. I had known he was in there somewhere, but seeing the truth filled my broken heart with fear.
“Talen…” He looked at me, through me, just like they all did—as though I were nothing, just dirt to be scraped off his boot.
“Talen,” the marshal warned. “TAKE YOUR HAND OFF HER.”
Talen’s transformation had me gripped, but I suspected Kellee’s claws and teeth were out and ready. I reached out slowly, carefully, but didn’t touch Talen. Whatever he was doing to Natalie, he would likely do to me too. “Talen, tell me about your favorite book?”
He blinked, and the blackness subsided. Violet blazed through. He looked at Natalie swaying on her feet and plucked his hand free. The messenger gasped and stumbled back into Kellee’s arms. She looked around her, panicked, until she set her eyes on Kellee. “What the…?”
Talen turned away, barely registering that anything out of the ordinary had happened. What had happened?
Kellee wrapped his arms around the trembling, dazed Natalie and took her out of the chamber, leaving me alone with Talen. Fluttering fear tried to pull me away. I knew he was dangerous. They were all dangerous. But somewhere in all the times we had jogged the prison circuit together, in the moments I’d caught him watching me and when I’d watched him, I’d allowed myself to believe he was different.
Talen came back with a book in his hand. He held it out. “This is my favorite,” he said, oblivious to the pain he had caused Natalie.
I looked down, forgetting for a moment what I’d asked him. Right. His favorite book. It had worked, bringing him out of his trance, but now that I had seen something of the monster inside, I wasn’t sure I could ever look at him again without seeing fae.
“She had been about to attack you,” he explained.
I swallowed and looked up into his normal eyes and saw something like hope in them.
I took a step away and the hope faded.
He was fae, and this prison was his for a reason. “What did you do to her?”
“She intended to hurt you.”
“What did you do, Talen?”
He clutched the book against his chest and locked his sights on my scowl. “I was protecting you.”
I backed up another step, and he noticed but didn’t move. I could never trust him or believe his words. Kellee had once told me that words were all the weapons Talen had left. That was before the marshal had freed him. Now he had plenty of weapons at his disposal.
“What did you do?” I asked again.
“I tempered her emotions.”
He had made her feel something else. Dread undermined everything I had built up. Right now, he could be manipulating me. I was human, saru, and he could twist me around his little finger without me knowing.
“When we first met, here… in this room.” My voice trembled. I swallowed and hoped when I next spoke, I sounded stronger, because what I was about to do would have consequences for us both. “You said if I let you out, you would serve me. Do this one thing and I will be yours.”
“Those words are mine. Yes.” A muscle in his jaw ticked.
“Talen, I can’t ever trust you. Do you understand?” He stared back, immovable, emotionless. “What you did to that woman, I’m guessing you’ve hurt people like her many times… You’re fae. It’s in your nature to twist lesser beings to your whims.” Of course he had. He was hundreds of years old. The Talen standing in front of me was a product of Faerie, and in Faerie, everything was seductive and beautiful so that you bled your life away while begging for more.
“Yes,” he hissed. “It is my nature, and I have hurt many.” He narrowed his eyes and looked at me side-on. There was the threat again. It had always been there, buried under his quiet pauses and watchful glances. Talen was more dangerous than Kellee. He was the snake in the grass, the killer you never saw coming.
“You can’t help what you are.” I steeled myself for what was to come. “But I can help you. Do you know what I’m asking?”
He nodded once and dropped to one knee. He didn’t have to do this. I wasn’t forcing him. He could leave, take one of the shuttles and go. He was a creature made to manipulate, made to rule all other species, but now he offered himself to me. He wanted this because he knew there was no other way forward for us.
He closed his right hand into a fist and pressed it over his heart, just as I had done with Eledan. The saru had been ruled by the fae for thousands of years, but now a fae kneeled to a saru. It shouldn’t happen, not in this multiverse, but it was happening.
“Do you submit?” I asked.
“I do.” He bowed his head. “I am yours. I will always be yours.”