The Shattered Dark (39 page)

“He’s made this war personal,” Aren says.

I nod. “That’s why he won’t negotiate with Lena. He wants you dead.” I take another
bite out of the soft wedge of cheese, then add, “He thinks you’re the
garistyn
.”

“Caelar told you about that.” There’s no inflection in his voice.

“He did,” I say, using the same tone Aren did a minute ago. “I won’t let Kyol die.”

He gives me an insipid smile. “I know.”

He retrieves the glass of
cabus
I set aside, starts to hand it to me, but almost drops it when someone pounds on
the door. He’s on his feet, reaching for the sword propped against the wall, when
Trev calls out,
“Lena wants you.”

Aren lets his hand drop without touching his sword. He looks at me and doesn’t say
a word. What? Is he going to pretend he’s not in here?

Trev pounds again.
“She instructed me to break down the door if you don’t open it.”

Aren lets out a breath that’s half sigh, half grumble.

“She’ll want to know details about the remnants,” I tell him, setting the tray aside
and standing.

Reluctantly, he buckles his weapons belt around his waist. He starts to reach for
the door but stops and looks back at me.

“I know I can’t forbid you from helping us, but promise me you’ll be careful.”

“Promise me you won’t be reckless,” I counter.

“I’m never reckless.” He grins, but only to hide his worry. We both know how easily
we could lose each other.

He opens the door. Trev stands at the threshold, his fist raised to knock again.

“You couldn’t have delayed her?”
Aren asks.

“I did delay her,”
Trev says, sounding almost offended.

I think Aren was just harassing him because he gives Trev a brotherly pat on the shoulder
as he passes.
“Dealing with Lorn makes her short-tempered, I know.”

“She’s in the Mirrored Hall,”
Trev calls after us.

Aren waves his hand in acknowledgment, then places it on the small of my back. “Why
don’t you go ahead. Taltrayn will want to hear what you have to say, and I want Naito
there, too. I’ll bring them both to the hall.”

I nod, but before he leaves, I ask, “Did Shane ever show up?”

Aren’s expression tells me the answer. My heart sinks. Lena sent rebels to search
for him, but London is a huge city. If he isn’t at the gate or near the club, they’re
not going to just stumble across him.

“I’ll need to look for him,” I say. “He might have left a message at the hotel or
he might be in a London hospital.” Or a London morgue, but I don’t let my thoughts
linger on that.

He takes my hand, plants a kiss on my palm. “I’ll take you back to Vegas after we
talk to Lena.”

He leaves me then, and I make my way to the Mirrored Hall on my own. I’ve never been
in it before, but I’ve walked past it a time or two when the doors were open. Atroth
only allowed entry to members of his Inner Court, which consisted of a few high nobles,
his lord general and sword-master, and a few other select, privileged fae. It definitely
wasn’t open to humans.

It’s on the same floor as my room, but the residential wing of the palace is sealed
off from the northern wing, which
contains the throne room, the administrative offices, and Lena’s apartments. I have
to go down a flight of stairs and through a corridor that parallels the statue garden.
After I cross the antechamber outside the throne room, I reach another staircase.
This one is elaborate, with silver banisters and polished white marble steps. I’m
halfway up it when I see Lorn start to descend.

“Ah, so you do live,” he says, his face lighting up with pleasure. At least, I think
it’s pleasure. It’s always difficult to tell when Lorn is being sarcastic. “I always
thought humans were breakable things, but you’re proving to be quite resilient.”

“Hello, Lorn,” I say, veering to the right, so I can move around him.

“You might want to delay your meeting with Lena,” he says. “She’s in a foul mood.”

“I’m sure you tried your best to cheer her up,” I mutter.

He puts a hand to his chest as if I’ve wounded him. “Of course I did. It’s not my
fault she expects so much of me.”

I pause on the same step he’s standing on. “Do you know who’s leading the remnants?”

He gives me his most charming smile. “I know everything, my dear.”

Or he pretends to, at least. In this case, though, I think he does know. If he didn’t,
I suspect he’d try to pry the information out of me. No wonder Lena’s mad at him.
He’s not giving us the information we need to end this war. Who knows what else he
isn’t telling us.

“Bye, Lorn.”

“Have a wonderful day,
nalkin-shom
,” he calls after me.

I roll my eyes. I want to like Lorn, but sometimes he makes it difficult to believe
there’s a caring person beneath the apathetic façade he puts up.

I climb the rest of the steps, then make my way to the Mirrored Hall. The room is
lit by hundreds of tiny glass orbs. They hang from the ceiling, throwing their blue-white
light over the length of the room. Lena is the only one inside. She’s standing beside
a long wooden table with her hands clasped behind her back. She’s not facing me or
the doorway, but I think she sees my tiny reflection in the mirror opposite her.

“I’ll kill you if you hurt Aren,” she says without turning.

It’s an empty threat, but I tell her, “I’m not going to hurt him.” I mean it.

A fae enters the hall from a gap that’s almost invisible due to the gilded mirrors
covering just about every square inch of the walls. He’s carrying a silver tray with
two bottles and an assortment of cheeses and fruits. Most of the latter is cut into
cubes and covered with some kind of glaze. The fae sets it down, then asks if Lena
wants anything else. She never once looks at him, just shakes her head no.

After he leaves, I say, “You should be nice to the waitstaff.”

I expect her to protest, to say something about the servants being below her station
or some other typical, I’m-a-noble-and-he’s-a-peon crap, but she sinks down into a
chair.

“I know,” she says. She lets out a breath, and her shoulders sag. “I miss my brother.”

She’s staring at the silver tray, so she doesn’t see my eyes go wide. She’s confiding
in me? What am I supposed to do with that? Never mind that I suck at girl talk, she’s
Lena
. She’s supposed to tolerate me only because she needs my Sight and shadow-reading
skills.

“He’d know what to do with the high nobles,” she says.

“He wouldn’t have the problem of convincing them that a woman can sit on the silver
throne.”

“True.” She looks up, and I think I see relief in her eyes. I understand it. It’s
like she’s onstage every second of her life now. She can’t be anything but confident
when she’s in public. Her supporters have to have faith in her. The high nobles can’t
see a weakness in her resolve. She shouldn’t even let me see a weakness, but I’m not
judging her. She’s exhausted.

“The remnants let you go?” Lena asks, picking up an apple-shaped fruit.

I pull out the chair across from her and sit. “Paige let me go.”

“Naito told us about the serum,” she says. “He told us it’s fatal. I’m sorry.”

My gut twists. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that Paige is dying. She
looked perfectly healthy.

“Will the remnants use the serum?” she asks.

“Paige says they won’t. They know it’s fatal now, too.”

“She trusts them?”

I nod. “And she says the remnants didn’t kill the Sighted humans in London.”

She looks up sharply. “We certainly didn’t kill them.”

“I was thinking…” I draw in a breath, hoping I’m not just trying to justify Paige
sympathizing with the remnants. “Maybe someone else is involved in all of this. Maybe
we’re not fighting the right people.”

She turns the fruit she’s holding in her hand, shining with the blue-white light of
the magically lit orbs hanging above us. “Is it wrong to wish for that? If a false-blood
was trying to take the throne, I think I could convince the high nobles to approve
me.”

“Before I went to London,” I say, “you mentioned you thought you could force them
to vote. Did that not work out?”

Lena gives a short, caustic laugh.

“I’m the one postponing the vote now,” she says, setting aside the fruit as if she’s
lost her appetite. “I’m at least a vote short of what I need. I thought I had Lord
Hison’s support after you shadow-read in Rhigh, but he’s blaming us for the riot at
the gate.”

“That started well before Aren and I were there.”

“That’s what I’ve told Hison,” she says. “But his people continue to talk about the
human who can call the lightning and walk unhindered through a crowd of rioting fae.”

“They say the
nalkin-shom
is untouchable.” That’s from Aren, who’s walking into the hall, with Naito at his
side.

I am so not amused. “This is your fault.”

“Mostly,” he says with a devil-may-care grin. It’s both annoying and extremely enticing.

Naito sits beside Lena, but Aren comes to my side of the table. He picks up one of
the two bottles sitting on the silver platter in the center of the table and opens
it.

“Where’s Taltrayn?” Lena asks.

“He’s at the silver wall,” Aren says, retrieving one of the empty glasses. “When he
returns, a swordsman will have him meet us here.”

“Does he know about Caelar?” I ask, watching Aren pour a red liquid into the glass.
More
cabus
, I presume.

Lena rests her folded arms on the table. “Yes. I mentioned Caelar’s name when I told
him you were still alive.”

Still alive.
Crap. I was primarily concerned about Aren when the remnants captured me because
he was the one who saw the illusion of my death, but Kyol wouldn’t have been unaffected
by the news. He told me himself he cares about me. He still feels the need to protect
me.

Aren sets the bottle of
cabus
down with a soft
thunk
, then slides the glass toward me without raising his gaze from the table.

“Did he have any insight on Caelar?” I ask.

Lena’s silver eyes study me a moment before she answers. “Taltrayn respects him. He
says Caelar is calm, charismatic, and calculating. But we have his weakness locked
in a room underground.”

“Brene,” I say, and Paige’s parting comment to me makes sense now. “We should let
her go.”

Lena raises an eyebrow.

“You want to talk to Caelar, don’t you?” I ask. “It’s a good faith gesture. Tell him
you’ll let Brene go when he meets with you.”

“Brene might be
tor’um
,” Lena says, “but she’s still dangerous. She can fight, and she has information on
the remnants.”

“Information she’s not telling us,” Aren adds softly. Fae might not believe in ghosts,
but his eyes are haunted. Are they haunted because he made her
tor’um
? Or are they haunted because he wasn’t able to save Lena’s father?

I cup the glass of
cabus
between my palms.

“Taltrayn has been asking her questions,” Aren tells me. “No one’s hurting her. She’s
being cared for.”

He misinterpreted my worry; I didn’t think they were abusing Brene.

Lena lets out a sigh. “We’ll search the mountains again.”

“It might not be their only camp,” Naito puts in. He leans forward to grab a wedge
of cheese off the tray, then pops it into his mouth. “And they probably abandoned
it as soon as they discovered McKenzie escaped.”

I still think they should let Brene go, but I don’t voice that thought out loud again.
Instead, I stare at the crimson surface of the glass of
cabus
I’m holding, and something tugs at the edge of my mind.

Aren pulls out the chair to my right and sits. “We need to persuade Hison to vote
for you. When you’re named queen, Caelar will lose support. He won’t give up his war,
but he won’t be a threat to you anymore.”

“He’ll just be a threat to you,” Lena says sourly.

I’m still staring at my
cabus
. If I didn’t know what it was, I’d mistake it for a red wine.

“You’re more important than I am,” Aren says. “Besides, I’m fully capable of taking
care of myself.”

“He has to be killed or captured,” Lena responds. “I won’t allow him to plot my sword-master’s
death.” They continue talking. I know I should be concerned about Aren’s safety—and
I am—but I block out their words. Sara runs a wine store that caters to people with
expensive tastes. Lorn buys from her. He brings it back to the Realm and sells it.

“McKenzie?” Aren’s brow is creased. He must see something in my face.

I look at Lena. “How did you find me?”

“What do you mean?” she asks, frowning.

“You found me on my campus. How did you know I was there? How did you find out my
name?” The few Court fae who knew my name and where I lived on Earth were all trusted
completely by Kyol and King Atroth. When the rebels found me, we were surprised they’d
managed to learn who I was.

“A letter came,” Aren answers. “It had your name and the name of your school.”

“It was anonymous?” I ask.

He nods.

“Like the anonymous note that told you I was in Nashville?”

He nods again. “And it was like the letter that told us Paige was in London.”

My heartbeat doubles its pace.

“We get dozens of tips every day,” Lena adds. “That’s how we get half of our information.”

“Most citizens who want to help are worried about repercussions if the other side
ends up winning,” Aren explains.

“McKenzie,” Lena says, “what are you thinking?”

It’s clear she doesn’t get it—none of them do—but the more I think about it, the more
it makes sense. Atroth was a strong king. Sethan had a lot of support, but it was
quiet support. The reason—the only reason—we took the palace was because we had Kyol’s
help. He told us the weaknesses in the Court fae’s defenses. The rebels slipped inside,
assassinating a few select guards to open up the way for Lena to lead in a whole contingent
of her followers. Everything the rebels did had to be done covertly because they were
no match for Atroth’s Court fae in an open fight. No fae in the last decade, no matter
how charismatic, has been a match for them.