“No idea.” Eledan had never told me.
“Crater and his team were drilling into uncharted ground—because they’re idiots and never knew when to keep their heads down and do as they’re told.” Her voice echoed ahead, joining the mumbling of other voices. “He had some grand idea to lead a rebellion. They were looking for water to fund his crusade.”
“What did they find?”
“The well.” Natalie’s eyes crinkled above her mask. “The mother lode of magic—off the fucking charts—with Arcon’s foundations drilled right into it. Crater reported it. Next day, him, his drilling team, and the marshal he reported to were dead.”
A reservoir of magic below Arcon? The magic Eledan had been harvesting? The magic he had used to heal Kellee? This was significant. Eledan wouldn’t abandon a find like that. Was that why the warcruiser was sitting in orbit? “Is it still there, untapped?”
She snorted. “You don’t think Arcon surviving in the middle of all this devastation was luck, do you? The Arcon buildings are all intact—no people, we checked. I guess the magic it’s sitting on is too.”
A source of natural fae magic outside of Faerie? I eyed the jagged cracks in the tunnel walls with concern. The magic was nearby, and the fae lingered in orbit… This didn’t feel right. “Who else knows about this?”
“Only a few of us. But Kellee said you would want to know.”
“He was right.”
A line of men and women cleared debris from the tunnel ahead. Their murmurs grew louder as we drew nearer.
I couldn’t shake the image of the hulking warcruiser sitting in orbit. Waiting. For what? “Natalie, are you sure this was an accident?”
“Well, there ain’t no fae down here, and we’ve got early warning systems in place. No landing craft or missiles came from the cruiser if that’s what you’re getting at. Maybe it was an accident, maybe not, but right now we’re more concerned with getting people out. Here.” We stopped where a central junction stretched in five directions. Two of the tunnels were blocked. “This is as far as we can get. Kellee said you were good with tek.” She waved at a blocked tunnel. “So… do your thing.”
People stopped digging. Grim, dust-coated faces watched me. Some looked hopeful, others barely looked as though they were mentally in the same place as the rest of us.
I tapped the comms to activate it. “Kellee?” The signal hissed in my ear. “Kellee, can you hear me?” Nothing. I shook my head. “I need to get closer to the section behind the rubble. Is there another chamber nearby? It doesn’t have to be connected.”
“The rec room,” a young woman said, maybe half my age. “When it’s quiet, you can hear the drilling through the walls.”
Natalie led me along more tortuous tunnels, passing more pale faces and blank stares. These people… they couldn’t survive long down here. Their quiet desperation worked niggling concerns into the back of my thoughts. But with the cruiser in orbit, they had no means of escape. They were trapped. And their withered expressions said they knew they were just waiting out the days until the fae came or their filters gave up.
My comms crackled, and a voice tripped into my ear. Just fragments of words. But I knew it. I stopped outside the rec room. “Kellee?”
“Kesh…”
Natalie whirled. “You hear him?”
I waved her question away and closed my eyes, listening hard. “Kellee, move around. I need you to find a better spot. I almost have you.”
“Are you sure it’s him you hear, little saru?”
I snapped my eyes open at the sound of Eledan’s smooth, silky question and spun, looking for the Dreamweaver. He wasn’t here. Of course he wasn’t here. He couldn’t be here.
“What?” Natalie asked, eyes widening as she caught my panicked expression.
“I…” Just Natalie and I stood in the corridor. Eledan was a hundred thousand miles away on a warcruiser. He wasn’t here, playing games in an abandoned mine.
“Did you hear him or not?” Natalie huffed.
“Shh!” I snapped. “Just… just be quiet. Let me listen.”
“I’m not so far away that I can’t hear your heart fluttering, little bird.”
No. This was not the time to fall into madness. He wasn’t here, even if the touch of his words teased through my hair behind my ear. It wasn’t real.
“Kellee? Please…” It had been lies before—the nights and nights we had talked—but I needed him to hear me now. I needed this to be real, not just for me, but for the hopeless people here.
“Kesh!” Kellee’s voice boomed.
“Yes! I hear you. I hear you—”
“Get off Calicto!”
My eyes snapped open.
Eledan wrapped his arm around Natalie’s neck. His long black hair swept forward, over his shoulder and her. He whispered sweet words into her ear, words that held her still and emptied out her mind. Her eyes lost focus. A lurid smile alighted on her lips. Eledan smothered her face with his other hand and yanked.
I heard the sickening crack and watched her collapse.
Not real, not real, not real.
Eledan stepped over her crumpled body.
No, there were hundreds of people here. He couldn’t be real. They would have seen him.
“Hello, Wraithmaker.” He lifted his gaze, looking through delicate eyelashes. “I neglected to thank you for the message you brought me.” Liquescent green power rippled around his fingers. The power of illusion.
A shout sounded behind me, tugging on my awareness and bringing me back from the dream. The teenager who had helped earlier fell to her knees beside Natalie’s body. “What happened?” Her fingers went to her neck, though it was clear from the unnatural angle of the body that Natalie was dead. “You…” She looked up. “Did you do this?” Her hand flew to her mouth.
She thought I’d killed Natalie? “No, no, I…” She couldn’t see the prince because he was in my head.
Eledan arched an eyebrow and came closer. “Killing is all you’re good for.” I watched his lips form the words, lips that were quick to snarl, quick to whisper promises. “And you never did like that one. She was a touch too close to your marshal for your liking.”
No, it was a lie.
Eledan’s lips mimicked a sad frown. “Oh, I can almost hear those thoughts in your pretty head desperately trying to rationalize what you’ve done.”
The woman was screaming. Others would come. If this wasn’t real, then had I killed Natalie? I had killed Kellee’s friend.
Eledan approached, so clearly fae, wrapped in fitted leathers. Leathers painted with his kill marks. The same marks tainted his skin. He was right there, just a few strides from me. So real. So close that the people should see him.
“You can’t see him?” I asked, but my voice was too soft and the screams too loud.
Eledan circled around me. The air tightened with the scent of citrus. He threaded his fingers through my hair, brushing it back from my face. “When did you last inject yourself with the vakaru’s clever nectus oil? It has been too long, no?”
I blinked up at Eledan. He couldn’t know about that, unless none of this was real. And so, if none of this was real, it didn’t matter what I did or said, or what happened next, because I was asleep somewhere, lost to the madness. Please, let me be sleeping.
Eledan’s deft fingers plucked the comms from behind my ear. He studied the small device. “All those nights you spoke with me, revealing your weaknesses, your secrets. You begged him to stay with you, to keep you real. And all the while you were begging me. I know all your little secrets, Messenger.” He leaned in, his gaze filling mine, pulling me down. “I know your desires. A little saru who only really wants to be loved. You poor creature. My kind can never love something like you, and you kill your own kind, so…” He dropped the comms and brushed his fingers across my mouth. “I knew if I created a disaster, plucked on the strings of human compassion, your marshal would bring you back to Calicto.”