The Shattered Dark (15 page)

“Son of a bitch,” she says. “Who the hell are you?”

Well, crap. The game is up. Might as well be polite.

“I’m McKenzie,” I say, holding out my hand for her to shake. She doesn’t take it.

“Who sent you?” she demands.

As if on cue, a fissure opens to my left.

“Lorn,” Sara all but snarls when he steps out of the light. “You brought her here?”

“She didn’t stumble upon you all by herself,” he says, staring at the map, not at
her. “Where is this?”

Good question. I still can’t remember the name of the city.

“It’s at the northern part of the Jythia Mountains,” I say. “The big city on the coast?”

He glances up at me, then stares down at the map. “
This
is Eksan?”

That’s it. “Yeah. That’s where she went.”

Lorn raises an eyebrow, waiting. He’s probably memorized at least one location in
Eksan, but he needs me to say the city’s name out loud to have any chance of fissuring
close to where Aylen did, and I’m not about to name it. Not yet.

“My customers trust me, Lorn,” Sara cuts in. “They don’t expect to be stalked by their
competition.”

Lorn laughs. “Aylen is hardly any competition for me.” He turns to me. “Now, name
the city.”

“Don’t,” Sara says, her fists clenched at her sides. “My business is none of your
business.”

“No one will know I tracked her from here. The city, McKenzie.”

“Tell me where Paige is first.”

His lips flatten into a thin line.

“You gave me your word,” I remind him. “And you
always
keep your word.”

“I promised to give you her location,” he says. “And I will. Just as soon as I learn
where that location is.”

He doesn’t know. Damn it.

Sara
hmmphs
as if I should have known better. I did know better. I came here on a gamble that
didn’t pay out, but I’d do it again. I’d do it again because I owe it to Paige.

“The deal is off,” I tell Lorn.

“The deal is not off,” he says, a warning slipping into his tone. “You have ten seconds.
If you don’t name the city, I’ll leave you stranded here and your
kimki
stranded in Las Vegas, and you’ll never find your friend.”

“You’re not my only option,” I say.

“If I don’t want you to find her, you won’t find her. Five seconds.”

I grit my teeth. I don’t know if he can see that threat through, but I definitely
don’t want to make him my enemy. “You swear you’ll try to find her?”

“I do.”

Another second passes. I curse, then finally relent. “Eksan.”

Lorn gives me a curt nod as he tugs at the cuffs of his sleeves. “I’ll let the rebels
know where to find you. Have a good day, ladies.”

Shadows fill the space he occupied. I squeeze my eyes shut until my hands stop itching
to draw them. When I reopen them, I’m able to focus on Sara.

She glares at me through the twisting shadows. “Get the hell out of my store.”

I
’M NOT ABOUT
to rely on Lorn to send a fae back to get me, so I ask a man on the street to use
his cell phone. Unfortunately, Shane isn’t at the suite when I call. I leave a message
telling him where I am, but I don’t know if he’ll notice the tiny red light on the
hotel phone when he gets in.

At least Lorn stranded me in my world, not the Realm. I blend in here, and if my bank
account weren’t at zero, I’d have the option of booking a flight back to Vegas. I
suppose if worse comes to worst, I can go into my overdraft protection. I shouldn’t
have to, though. Either Lorn will keep his word and send a fae for me, or I can stake
out Sara’s wine store until another fae shows up. I might be able to talk whoever
it is into fissuring me to Corrist on the promise that they’ll be well paid if they
do.

So, I decide to spend the rest of the afternoon at the cafe two doors down. It has
outside seating, and I have just enough change in my pocket to order a cup of coffee.
That ends up being a mistake. It makes me jittery. I’m no closer to finding Paige,
and with each passing minute, I worry more about her and about what’s happening back
at the palace.

An hour passes. Then another. I flip through Naito’s sketchbook. Two more pictures
of Kelia are sketched on its pages. One of them is in the corner of a shadow-reading.
Naito’s ten times the artist I am, but his maps look like a child’s scribbles just
like mine do. I wish I knew where this one leads to—he’s drawn an elaborate frame
around the entire page, so it’s probably somewhere important—but shadow-readers can’t
decipher anyone’s maps but their own.

I miss Kelia. It’s weird, admitting that. I only knew her for a few weeks, but we
were close to being friends. I think she was honest with me, and I think we’d get
along well if she were still alive. I could ask her about Aren. I miss him, don’t
know if I’m doing the right thing with him. I don’t know him any better than I did
two weeks ago. For us to work out, we need to spend time together, time where we’re
not running for our lives or tracking somebody. Not for the first time, I wonder if
it’s a bad idea to try to start a relationship right now.

Sara locks up the wine store. I think about following her, but a flicker of blue light
in the corner of my vision catches my attention. It’s Trev. The last time I saw him
was yesterday back at my apartment. Blood was gushing from a bad leg wound then. Aren
or Lena must have healed him because he’s not even limping now.

He doesn’t see me until I close Naito’s sketchbook and stand. His gaze travels down
to my feet, then back up. “You’re not injured?”

A couple is sitting at one of the other tables, so I just shake my head, tuck the
sketchbook under my arm, and start walking.

“How did you find me?” I ask when I’m far enough away.

“The
kimki
,” Trev says. “He came to the palace with an anchor-stone and your name tied around
his neck.”

Looks like Lorn kept part of his promise. Maybe he’ll keep the rest of it and find
out where Paige is.

Trev increases his pace. I’m
barely
able to keep up. It’s annoying—he knows humans are slower than fae—but I don’t complain.
Trev isn’t my biggest fan. He puts up with me when he has to, but he’s never exactly
liked me. I helped the king hunt down his friends and family. Like most of the rebels,
he has a reason to resent me. Those reasons didn’t disappear just because I joined
their side of this war.

My feet are sore, but I jog to catch up with him when I fall too far behind. “For
what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

He glances my way for a whole half second. “Lena healed me.”

I frown, then realize he’s talking about the remnants’ attack at my old apartment.
He almost bled to death because of me.

“No, not for that,” I say, then I grimace. “Well, yeah, for that, too. But I’m sorry
for what happened before I met you. I didn’t know everything that was going on.”

“You’re forgiven, of course,” he says. His accent makes it difficult to pick up the
sarcasm in his tone, but I’m certain it’s there.

I don’t jog to catch up with him when I fall behind this time. He can either slow
down, or I’ll meet him at the gate. That’s where we’re heading. I’ve never been to
Nashville before, but I’ve seen Atroth’s maps of the U.S., and while I haven’t memorized
every single gate known to exist in this country—there are way too many to keep track
of—I do remember one being on the lake to the east of the city. I’m pretty sure the
highway up ahead runs to the west of it.

It takes twenty more minutes to reach a small, wooded cove on the lakeshore. Trev
dips his hand into the water without a word. After the fissure rumbles open, he reaches
into the draw-stringed pouch tied to his belt and takes out an anchor-stone. Chaos
lusters flicker over his hand when he imprints it. He hands it to me, then holds out
his arm.

It’s awkward, touching a fae who hates you, but I wrap my fingers around his forearm
and brace myself for the In-Between. Cold, harsh air clenches around me, squeezing
for what feels like an eternity, before it spits us back out. My body is stiff and
sore and pissed at me for traveling so soon after Lorn’s hellish fissure. My vision
turns white, the world tilts, and I have to hang on to Trev in order to stay on my
feet.

I’m still freezing. I don’t realize why until I let go of Trev’s arm and force my
eyes to focus. I expect to be in the Realm; I don’t expect to be in a city that is
not Corrist. It’s night here, but the streets are white with snow except for the circles
of blue beneath the magically lit street orbs. Long,
thin icicles cling to the eaves of the row houses lining the street. They’re single-storied,
but there’s quite a distance between their front doors, which means they’re big. We’re
in an upscale part of this city, and something about the architecture—the curved rooftops
and pale blue stucco of the walls—is familiar. I think I’ve been here before.

An uncomfortable, nervous feeling pools in my gut.

“Where are we?” I take a step away from Trev and lock my gaze on the shadows from
our extinguished fissure. I dropped Naito’s sketchbook when we stepped out of the
In-Between. I bend down to retrieve it from the snow-covered ground, my heartbeat
picking up its pace because I don’t know if I can trust Trev.

“We’re in Rhigh,” he says.

The sketchbook slips from my fingers. A gust of wind flips it open before I recover.
I slap it shut, dust off the snow that sticks like powder to its cover. This place
is familiar because I
have
been here before. With Thrain.

I hug the sketchbook to my chest as if it can keep me warm. It was cold ten years
ago, too, but I was wearing long sleeves and a jacket when Thrain abducted me, not
a thin, short-sleeved T-shirt. After three days in this weather, though, the extra
layer of clothing didn’t matter. Thrain didn’t warm the air in the house he imprisoned
me in. I would have frozen to death if Kyol hadn’t found me.

Trev starts walking down the street, toward a multistoried, ornate building. The high
noble’s home, maybe? Rhigh’s gate is in the other direction.

“Trev,” I call out. Either he doesn’t notice my reaction to this place, or he doesn’t
care. It’s probably the latter. He hasn’t asked why I was in Nashville or who took
me there.

I hate being on this street with him—there’s no telling who might be watching from
a window—so I grab his arm and pull him into a narrow walkway. If he didn’t want to
move, he wouldn’t, but he doesn’t shake free until after we’re off the main street.

“Why aren’t we in Corrist?” I demand.

“Lena wants you here,” he returns. That’s it. No elaboration.

If this wasn’t Rhigh, and if I didn’t need a fae to fissure out of here, I’d turn
on my heel and leave. With the exception of Kyol and a few others, this was how the
Court fae treated me. They were usually more considerate than Trev—they never would
have brought me here without a cloak—but they were mum when it came to explanations.
When I was a teen, I didn’t have the confidence to demand more information from them,
then it became a bad habit, doing what they said without knowing the reason why. I’m
not putting up with that from the rebels.

“Why does she want me here, Trev?”

“Because I asked for a shadow-reader.” Aren’s voice comes from my left. A tingle runs
through me when I see him. He wasn’t on the main street before, but he must have seen
Trev and me slip between these buildings. And he must have been outside somewhere
because the wind has made his hair even more disheveled than usual. He doesn’t look
like a bum or an unkempt
tor’um
, though. He looks good. I don’t know how he pulls that off. Maybe it’s the armor
hugging his torso and his arms and legs, or maybe it’s the way his silver eyes drink
me in. Whatever it is, it makes him undeniably attractive.

His gaze drops suddenly, following the path of a chaos luster down my neck, I presume,
then he frowns down at the rip in my jeans. My knee is scratched up and sore from
stumbling into the parking lot in Nashville, but it hurts less than the bruise on
my thigh that I got when Shane hit me with a car. Neither is serious enough to need
healing. Aren must realize that, but he closes the distance between us as if I’m two
seconds away from dying.

“Sidhe,
Trev. She can’t keep warm,”
he says, placing his hands on my shoulders.

His
warm
hands. I step closer, breathe in his cedar and cinnamon scent, then shiver when his
touch sparks through me. I’m sure he feels the lightning, too, but he’s still glaring
at Trev.

“Are you trying to make her sick?”

“I forgot—”

“That she’s human?”
Aren cuts him off.

Trev opens his mouth to say something else, but swallows his words when he focuses
behind me and Aren.

“Lord Hison,”
Trev says instead, with a shallow dip of his head.

Lord Hison, elder of Dice and high noble of Jutur Province, stands only a few feet
away. His midnight blue cloak is embroidered with gold leaves. It looks warm and heavy,
a sharp contrast to his silver eyes, which are cold and so light they almost look
white. That’s the snow reflected in them, I think.