The Shattered Dark (36 page)

“She was there because you’d been captured. She wanted to help. She’s…”
I see the muscles in his neck tighten as he swallows, and I can’t help it. My heart
breaks a little for him. Brene means something to him, that much is obvious.

Paige clears her throat, mutters, “English, please,” under her breath. She’s demanding
the fae speak our language. Please tell me this isn’t why she trusts them. She’s not
a naïve sixteen-year-old. Surely she doesn’t believe they’re translating everything
they say for her.

Caelar turns his back on me, walks to the door, and stares outside. I can’t see anything
past him.

“The rebels won’t win this war,” Tylan says, drawing my attention back inside.

I meet his eyes. “People said that about them taking the palace.”

He lifts a shoulder as if to say,
That’s true.
“The high nobles won’t approve the daughter of Zarrak unless she hands over the
garistyn
. She’s had two weeks to do that. She hasn’t, and she’s losing support every day.”

I frown.
Garistyn
? I’ve heard that word before. Back in Spier when I was shadow-reading with Kyol,
I think. Jielan mentioned it. It has something to do with a king or Descendant.

“They haven’t told you about that, have they?” That’s from Caelar. He doesn’t add
anything else, doesn’t turn around or move. He just stands there, staring outside,
and an uncomfortable feeling gathers in my gut.

“What’s a
garistyn
?” Paige asks the question. I’m grateful. I don’t want to show curiosity or weakness
or anything in front of these fae.

“Kingkiller. You can’t kill a king without consequences,” Tylan says. “They’re Descendants
of the
Tar Sidhe
. You might call them ‘holy.’ The fact is, the high nobles won’t approve Zarrak unless
she turns the
garistyn
over to be executed. She’s protecting the Butcher of Brykeld.”

My stomach sinks. I’m almost dizzy because I think he’s telling the truth. Lena mentioned
it before. She was annoyed because the high nobles were insisting she tell them who
killed the king. I didn’t realize it was this important, though, and Tylan has it
wrong. Aren didn’t kill Atroth. Kyol did.

“Jorreb had nothing to do with the king’s death,” I whisper.

“Some people say the
nalkin-shom
killed him,” Tylan continues. “The silver walls didn’t protect him. She fissured
into his bedroom. Her touch poisoned him, they say. She weakened his magic, and while
he was distracted and vulnerable, she sliced open his throat with invisible metal
from her world.”

I attempted to slice open Lord General Radath’s throat with shrapnel that was embedded
in my arm. The silver walls didn’t protect him because I was fissured to the palace
via a
Sidhe Tol
. Someone’s twisted up and mangled all the details of that day. I never even touched
Atroth. I almost don’t mind fae believing that I did, though. It’s better than their
knowing Kyol killed him.

“You’re going to tell us how to get into the palace,” Caelar says from the doorway.
He leaves without giving me a chance to respond, not that I would have answered the
way he wanted me to.

Tylan watches him go, concern in his eyes. It vanishes when he realizes I’m watching
him.

“Paige,” he says, extending his hand.

“Can I have another minute?” she asks.

He looks at me. “Just a minute. I’ll be close by.”

“He trusts you,” I say, after Tylan leaves.

“About as much as I trust him,” she says. “He’ll be right outside.”

I lift an eyebrow. That doesn’t exactly sound like a vote of confidence.

Paige runs a hand through her perfectly chaotic hair, and an
edarratae
flashes across her face. She scoots closer to me, lowers her voice to a whisper that
I can just barely hear.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you before,” she says. “I’m not relying on what the
fae tell me. They don’t know Lee speaks their language. He’s translated what they’ve
said in Fae. That tip was anonymous, and they honestly believe the rebels killed those
humans.”

“Lee speaks Fae?” I ask.

Paige nods. “I made a deal with him. If he told me what he overheard, I wouldn’t tell
the fae about the serum.”

The serum again. She really doesn’t know the consequences of what Lee did to her.

“Lena would have used the serum against Caelar,” Paige continues. “I couldn’t let
that happen, so I told Tylan about it. Lee was pissed, but…Well, I convinced him to
get the serum.”

Is she
blushing
? There’s not much light in here, and her chaos lusters make it hard to tell for sure,
but I’m almost certain her cheeks are pink. When we were at the palace, she said she
and Lee hooked up after her sister’s wedding. In Paige-speak, that means they slept
together. I think she slept with Lee again to convince him to get the serum. If there
wasn’t a hint of pink on her cheeks, I’d say that was a whorish thing to do, but Paige
never
blushes when she talks about sex. She really is into him.

She clears her throat. “Lee was supposed to just walk in and walk out with it. There
wasn’t supposed to be a fight.”

“Is Lee here?” I ask, hating that any feelings she might have for him are likely to
end very soon.

“Yeah, he’s…” Her gaze flickers to the left. There’s just a wall there, but I have
the impression Lee’s somewhere in
that direction. “He helped Tylan bring you here. I’m not sure if that was his choice
or not. He’s not acting like himself. He’s quiet and angry, I think. I need to talk
to him.”

“Paige,” Tylan calls.

“One second,” she says over her shoulder. Then she turns back to me. “Look, I know
you wouldn’t join the rebels just because you’re in love with a guy, and I was thinking.
I’m
certain
the Court fae didn’t kill the humans in London, but I’ll admit that there’s a chance
that
maybe
the rebels didn’t kill them either.”

“Paige,” Tylan says again.

“I have to go, but…These fae aren’t bad people, McKenzie. I promise.”

I
LET MY
head fall back against the wooden beam. I’m so thirsty. The remnants haven’t given
me anything to eat or drink. They keep asking me how to get into the palace. They
think I know the shifting pattern of safe fissure zones Kyol devised. I don’t, and
even if I did, I wouldn’t tell them.

I think about what Paige said, that these fae aren’t the bad guys, but it’s hard to
believe that with my stomach cramping from hunger and a headache pounding behind my
eyes. The latter is from dehydration. The In-Between will do that to you if you’re
not careful, and I can’t remember the last time I had something to drink.

I’m pretty sure it’s well past 5
P.M.
on Friday by now. I’ve missed my meeting with Jenkins. Maybe I can convince him something
came up, that I came down with the flu or had a death in the family. Of course, before
I can convince him of anything, I have to get out of here in one piece.

I’m staring off into space when there’s a noise from a few feet away. It’s the same
noise I’ve heard more than once since I was brought here, a tiny little squeak. For
all I know, we could be in the middle of a forest. It could be one of a million animals
I don’t know the names of, but on a whim, I make a clucking noise. Immediately, two
bright blue eyes peer in the crack between the ground and the wall.

No fucking way.

“Sosch?” I whisper.

The eyes blink.

It’s him. It has to be him.

I make a kissing noise. His whiskers twitch, and his head turns to the left, then
to the right, as if he’s checking traffic before crossing a street. After a quick
chirp-squeak
, he scurries under the wall and into my arms. Which is kind of awkward considering
my wrists are shackled together.

“You don’t have a picklock on you, do you?” I ask, scratching him behind the ears.
He purrs, then rubs his furry face against my cheek. My nose tickles. Apparently,
kimkis
do shed.

“Did Aren send you?” I ask quietly though I don’t know if
kimkis
can be sent anywhere. From what I’ve seen, they have minds of their own. Plus, Aren
thinks I’m dead. Sosch has found me on his own before; my guess is he’s done it again.

Sosch
chirp-squeaks
, then scurries out of my arms, dragging his long body behind me. He nestles down
between my back and the base of the wooden beam.

“That’s real helpful,” I tell him, but he’s warm. And I’m glad for his company.

I fade off. When I wake up, Paige is sitting against the wall beside the door. Sosch
is still behind me. I don’t think she can see him, but I try to make myself take up
as much room as possible, just in case. I don’t want the remnants to take him away
from me.

When Paige doesn’t say anything, I take a closer look at her, and immediately, my
heart sinks. Her eyes are red, puffy, like she’s been crying.

“You talked to Lee.”

She draws in a breath, nods, then lets it out.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “This is my fault.”

She closes her eyes. “It’s not your fault, McKenzie.”

“I was trying to hang on to my human life,” I tell her. “That’s why I was in school.
That’s why I picked up the phone every time you called and kept agreeing to go on
those blind double dates—which I hated, by the way.”

“None of those guys were right for you.” She smiles before she opens her eyes. “Sorry
about that. I didn’t know you preferred fae.”

“I don’t prefer fae, I just…” God, it must seem that way.

She shrugs, then she picks up the tablet computer resting beside her. It’s so thin,
I didn’t notice it before, but the screen lights up when she touches it.

“I’m surprised this works here,” she says.

“There’s no way to charge the battery, but the Realm doesn’t mess with tech.” The
tech just messes with the Realm, according to some fae. “Do the remnants know you
have that?”

She sniffs. “Yeah, Caelar’s not happy. He’s making me take it back to Earth.”

“He knows what’s on it?”

She looks up from the screen, meets my eyes, and nods. “The serum’s terminal, though.
He’s not going to use it.”

But he would have. He’ll do anything to kill Aren and get rid of Lena.

“It’s funny,” Paige continues, toying with the edge of the tablet. “I was in Bedfont
House because I tried to commit suicide. Now, ten years later, I’m dying, and all
I want is to live.”

It’s not funny at all, but it’s just like Paige to underplay something like this.
Back when we were roommates, she talked lightly about her deliberately reckless behavior—the
street race that resulted in a bad wreck, the time she took a running leap off her
roof and landed in the neighbor’s pool. The bottle of cold medicine she downed that
led to her being institutionalized definitely wasn’t her first suicide attempt; it
was just the first time her dad woke up and realized there was a problem.

I’m glad Paige is admitting she wants to live, though. The nurses and attendees at
Bedfont House might have violated dozens of federal regulations, but the medicine
and psychologists helped her work through her depression.

“Anyway,” Paige says, clearing her throat, “I dated this guy named Rob once. He’s
getting his PhD in chemistry. I’m
going to take the tablet to him, see if he can figure out what’s wrong with us.”

“You’re going to tell him about the fae?” The last part of that comes out a little
high-pitched, partly because it surprises me but also because Sosch shifts, snuggling
closer to my back.

“I don’t know why you didn’t tell me about them,” Paige says. “I would have understood.”

“You would have thought I was crazy.”

“No, I wouldn’t have. I would have—”

“You thought Lee was crazy,” I point out.

She deflates a little. “Well, I’ll make Rob understand. I’m not letting this beat
me.”

Good.
I give her a tight-lipped smile. Out loud, I say, “I’ve been thinking about what
you said before, about the remnants not killing those humans. I think it’s possible
it could be someone else. If we could get Lena and Caelar to meet—”

Paige shakes her head. “Caelar won’t negotiate. He won’t even talk to the rebels because
of Brene.”

“The
tor’um
?”

“Yeah. They were going to…” She frowns, trying to recall a word. “Whatever the fae
equivalent of marriage is. A bond or something.”

“Life-bond,” I say.

“Yeah, that. But then Aren captured her.”

She doesn’t need to say more than that. I know what happened afterward. I’ve seen
her.

“You should see the way he takes care of her,” Paige continues. “It’s sweet. She’s
crazy as hell, but he loves her still.” She draws in a breath, lets it out. “I have
to admit, I, too, wouldn’t mind seeing Aren dead for what he did.”

My jaw clenches. I have to consciously make it relax. Aren’s past is his past. He’s
not a ruthless, barbaric fae; he’s a fae who wanted to save the life of a friend.
I don’t approve of what he did, but I understand it.