The Shattered Dark (35 page)

Fortunately, the answer is easy. The ledge rises steeply to my left, but it’s not
a sheer drop like where I’m standing, and I think it just might join the trail I was
heading for. I shuffle that way, keeping a hand braced against the cliff face so I
don’t lose my balance. I’m still feeling dizzy.

When I reach the trail again, I look back toward the compound. The main building’s
on fire. Thick black smoke rises from its burning walls and roof. The fae are still
outside it, still fighting. I think I spot Aren, but I’m not sure, and as much as
I want to see him, to have evidence that he’s okay, I can’t stand here and wait. I
need to press on before a remnant spots me.

The ground to my right becomes a cliff face, towering several feet above my head,
and the drop-off to the left is at least a hundred feet straight down. I’m not afraid
of heights, but the dirt under my feet is unstable, and this trail is fucking narrow.
I keep my eyes forward, hug the cliff wall, and inch along. I can practically feel
gravity pulling me down, making my legs feel like jelly and throwing off my equilibrium.

The trail widens in about ten more feet. I’m almost there, so I keep moving, shuffling
my feet along at a slow but steady pace. When I’m just two feet away from being on
sturdier ground, Aren screams my name.

He sounds so angry, so agonized, I almost slip off the ledge. I grab hold of a crack
in the cliff face and whip my head around, looking back toward the compound, terrified
I’ll see a blade spearing his heart.

“McKenzie!” he screams again. He doesn’t look injured. He’s fighting his way toward
the edge of the cliff beside the main building. He kills the remnants attacking him
with proficient swings of his sword. White soul-shadows rise on either side of him,
marking his path.

A remnant lands a kick to his side. God, it looks hard
enough to break ribs. I don’t understand until he drops to his knees at the edge of
the cliff, peers over the side, and screams my name one more time.

This has to be the work of an illusionist, a powerful illusionist. Aren thinks I fell.
I open my mouth to call him—

And am wrenched off my feet before I have the chance.

I land on my back, my head hitting the ground hard. A fae is above me. A remnant.
Tylan.

“Aren!”

His hand goes to my throat, choking off my scream. I cough, swing a fist at his face,
then scramble back toward the narrow trail. Aren’s pain is raw, desperate, like he’s
losing a part of himself. He’s still peering over the edge of the cliff. I don’t think
he realizes he’s surrounded.

“Aren!” My scream is a hoarse whisper.

Tylan flips me onto my back again. His knee presses down on my chest with the full
weight of his body, then he raises his hand. I glimpse the rock clenched in it just
before he slams it down.

I
T’S COLD, DARK
except for the
edarratae
flashing across my skin. I’m in a small room, sitting on a dirt floor. My wrists
have been bound with silver. The metal shackles bite into my flesh, and I have other
scrapes and bruises. Some of them are from rolling off the ledge with the remnant
I killed, the others, I think, are from Tylan dragging me away from Nakano’s compound.

I’ve been unconscious for a while. I don’t know how long, but it’s an hour’s drive
between Boulder and Wiggins, where the nearest gate to the compound was. Tylan wouldn’t
have driven me there, though—a remnant wouldn’t risk being trapped in a car for so
long. So could Lee have taken me to the gate, then? He might have helped Naito out
of the compound, but I doubt the remnants would have just let him walk away. They
might have forced him to drive me to Wiggins.

Maybe one of the rebels saw me being dragged away. Maybe Aren did…

My eyes sting, filling with tears. Aren was surrounded. If he hadn’t gone inside the
compound to find me, he would have been able to fissure, but the tech or whatever
the hell it was Nakano had inside that building crippled him. His
jaedric
armor might have stopped one or two swords from slicing
into him, but I don’t think he could have fought off that many remnants.

I’m not sure he wanted to.

God, I hope I’m wrong about that. I hope he fought back. If he had time to think,
I’m sure he would have—Lena needs him too much for him to give in to his grief—but
the remnants weren’t giving him time.

I close my eyes to hold back the tears, refusing to let them fall.

A tiny squeak makes me reopen them. It sounded like a door opening. I look left, notice
a tiny gap between the wooden wall and the dirt floor. I don’t know what’s on the
other side of the wall. I have no idea where we are, just that it’s cold here.

And quiet. That squeak is the only thing besides the wind that I’ve heard since waking
up. The remnants aren’t holding me in the middle of a city, that much is clear.

I lean my head back against the wooden beam holding up the center of the shack. My
hands are bound in front of me, but a silver cord links the shackles to a metal loop
in the beam. I can’t move more than two or three feet away from it.

I’m pretty much screwed here. The rebels think I’m dead; they’re not going to be looking
for me.

Lena will still be searching for the remnants, though. Maybe someone will tip her
off to where we are.

Or where
they
are. The remnants might not have brought me to their camp. They might have stuffed
me in some remote corner of the Realm, far away from other fae and far away from a
gate.

I swallow down the lump in my throat, trying to fight off the panic and frustration
threatening to take over me. This isn’t the first time I’ve been held captive. My
history with escape attempts isn’t great, but that won’t keep me from trying. I’m
going to find my way back to Corrist, even if I’m stranded in the middle of the Barren.

I draw in a breath, let it out, then the door in front of me cracks open.

“McKenzie?” It’s Paige’s voice. My stomach knots into a mess of emotion. I wouldn’t
be the remnants’ prisoner if she
hadn’t escaped. I wouldn’t be sitting here trying to convince myself that Aren’s alive.

But she wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t tried so hard to hang on to my human life. She
wouldn’t be dying.

“Hey,” I say.

Soft moonlight spills inside when she opens the door wider. “Here. It’s for your head.”

She’s holding something wrapped in a cloth. Ice, I realize when I take it from her.
It’s heavy and cold.

“The remnants don’t have a healer?” I ask.

“Not one who will touch you,” she says, a touch of annoyance in her voice. She looks
completely at ease, though. She’s comfortable with the remnants. She’s comfortable
with fae. I don’t know how she’s adjusted so well in a week. I’m not sure I was ever
this relaxed around Kyol and the Court fae.

I put the ice to my temple. The pressure hurts, but it numbs the pain some, and the
panic I felt a few minutes ago eases as well. Paige is here. A gate can’t be that
far away.

“How did I get here?” I ask.

“Tylan,” she says and doesn’t elaborate. “I’m sorry about your head.”

I’m sorry you’re dying.

She doesn’t know. She wouldn’t be this calm if she did.

Those knots in my stomach tighten further.

“Paige—”

“I know you’re mad,” she says. “But Tylan was right there at the palace, McKenzie.
I didn’t have time to think. He wouldn’t leave without me, and the rebels would have
killed him if they’d caught him again.”

“You’ve only known him a week,” I say, almost grateful she interrupted me. It’s easier
to talk about this than the serum. “He told you I was being held captive. All the
remnants know that’s not true.”

“I know, and I’ve had words with him about that, but, McKenzie, the Court fae didn’t
kill the humans in London. We showed up there
after
the rebels.”

She saw the humans. I wasn’t sure she knew anything about them. Neither she nor Lee
has mentioned them before now.

“The rebels didn’t kill them,” I tell Paige, pronouncing
each word so that she knows there’s no doubt of it. “We received a tip saying you
were there.”

I expect at least a glimmer of surprise in her eyes; there is none.

“We received the same tip about you,” she says, her tone and cadence matching mine.
“I went to London to find you. The remnants didn’t want to take me. They thought it
was a trap, and when the rebels attacked us, they tried to force me to leave. They’ve
been protecting me.”

I remember the fae who wrestled Paige off the stage. She was trying to get away from
the remnant but not for the reason I thought. She wasn’t scared of him; she just wanted
to find me.

Suspicions and theories turn over in my mind. The deaths of the Sighted humans bother
me and not just for the obvious reason. The remnants convinced Paige to support them.
Surely they could have convinced the others. What motive would they have for killing
them? Am I being blind, not considering the possibility that it was someone else?
It’s been easy to blame everything on the remnants. They’re the ones who have attacked
Corrist, they dragged Paige into the Realm, and they want to punish the rebels for
deposing Atroth, their king who had become increasingly violent and extreme.

But what if someone else is puppeteering this war?

That possibility seems like so much wishful thinking. I don’t want Paige and me to
be on opposite sides of this war, and I want to justify her choice, find a way that
we can negotiate a peace. But that’s the thing. Lena has tried to contact the remnants.
Their leadership has an open invitation to meet with her—she’s guaranteed their safety—but
they’ve never responded.

They’d rather kill us than talk to us.

Something squeaks to my left again, but it’s the door behind Paige that moves, swinging
open all the way. Tylan steps inside. Another fae is with him. A brother, perhaps?
They look enough alike. Both have the same shade of brown hair, the same deep-set
eyes, the same sharp-angled nose. The other fae is shorter, though. Stockier. And
he’s also
somewhat familiar. He’s definitely a former Court fae. Kyol thinks one of Atroth’s
higher-ranked officers is organizing the remnants. Maybe this guy is him. He has that
quiet confidence that comes from years of training and experience.

He stares down at me. Even though I hate craning my neck to look up at him, I don’t
bother to stand. I don’t think the short cord between my shackles and the wooden beam
will allow it anyway.

Eventually, he crouches down so that he’s eye level with me.
“I should slit her throat and send her back to them.”

And I’m supposed to believe these fae aren’t the bloodthirsty killers they’ve proven
to be? Right.

I want to translate what he said for Paige, but I don’t know if she’d believe me,
and I don’t want them to know I’ve learned their language, so I stay quiet and give
no indication that I understood his words.

“English, Caelar,” Tylan says beside him.

Caelar’s lip twitches at the request. He doesn’t repeat what he said, though. He just
crouches there, glaring. I think he’s contemplating the most painful way to kill me,
and my stomach churns, remembering the skinned humans in London. With the amount of
hatred contained in his silver eyes, I can believe he slaughtered them himself.

Finally, he says, “You and I worked together once before.”

I give no reaction to that. I worked with a lot of Court fae off and on over the years,
usually when Kyol needed to put distance between us.

“It was soon after you came to the Realm,” he continues. “You were young and wary.
The false-blood Thrain had starved and beaten you, but you wouldn’t let our healers
touch you. We thought you were broken, but you agreed to read the shadows for us.
You hated Thrain that much. Given that, I don’t understand how you can support the
fae who is his prodigy.”

He’s waiting for a reaction, some sign of shock or outrage. I don’t give it to him.
I knew where this was going the second he mentioned Thrain, and the news doesn’t blindside
me. “Aren isn’t Thrain.”

“He is exactly like Thrain,” Caelar all but snarls.

“We’re looking for a fae,” Tylan says quickly, taking a step forward. His posture
is tense, and his gaze is on Caelar, almost as if he expects the other fae to carry
out his wish to send me back to the rebels with my throat slashed. “Her name is Brene.
She’s—”

“Tor’um,”
I finish for him. Caelar’s jaw clenches at the word.

“You know her?” Paige asks.

“She’s in Corrist,” I say, still watching Caelar. His silver eyes are angry and agonized.

Caelar curses, then stands, facing Tylan.
“You were supposed to watch her.”

“I’m sorry, I was busy being captured in Eksan,” he says in English. Then, softening
his tone, he adds, “If I’d known she was there, I would have made sure she escaped
with us. You know that.”