The Shattered Dark (4 page)

T
HE SWORD CRASHES
into the car, shattering my window and cleaving into the doorframe. I cover my face
with my arms, shielding my eyes from the flying glass.

“Hold on!” someone says from the driver’s seat as the car’s tires squeal.

I look at Shane, the human who’s driving, as he spins the wheel, throwing me against
the damaged passenger door. The car makes a wild left turn out of the parking lot
and onto the road.

I grab the oh-shit handle above the door, my heart pounding. “Did he fissure out?”

Shane nods, straightening the wheel. “Just after he ducked. Crazy bastard dove headfirst
into the light.”

The wind whips into my side of the car, throwing tiny shards of glass at me and tangling
my hair. I brush it back with my fingers and hold it in a ponytail while I try to
slow my breathing.

“Here,” Shane says, taking a pink scrunchie off the gearshift and handing it to me.

I stare at it a second, then glare at him. “You stole this car.”

“You want to hold your hair the whole way to the gate, or do you want to use this?”
he asks, not a hint of regret in his
voice. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. He doesn’t have a problem accepting the
money the fae give us—money that’s stolen from U.S. banks—to pay his bills, so why
should he care about stealing a car?

I take the scrunchie.

“It was Aren’s idea,” Shane says, resting his right hand on the gearshift. His shirtsleeves
are pushed up, so the long, wrinkled white scar on his forearm is visible. It’s worse
than any of the scars I have. He won’t talk about how he got it, but I’m sure a fae
had something to do with it.

“You should be thanking me.”

I lift my gaze from his arm to give him a skeptical look. “Thanking you? You hit me
with a car.”

“I saved your life,” he points out.

I roll my eyes but don’t argue. I don’t know Shane well despite being roommates these
past two weeks. He’s not a shadow-reader like me, but he worked for King Atroth, too,
using his Sight to see through fae illusions. I first met him just a few weeks ago,
right after the rebels traded me to the Court for one of their own. I spent one restless
night in his mansion before I returned to the Realm and had my world turned upside
down. That’s when I stopped being the rebels’ prisoner and started to have serious
doubts about working for the king.

“Did you come from the palace?” I ask Shane. He wasn’t home when I left our Vegas
suite. For him to get here as quickly as he did, he must have been with the rebels.

“Yeah,” he says, slowing down. “I talked to Lena.”

Lena, daughter of Zarrak. She’s in charge of the rebellion and claimed the silver
throne after King Atroth was killed. We both wanted to see the other dead not so long
ago, but now, I’m desperate to keep her alive. She’s the best hope I have for ending
this war with my friends still breathing.

Sometimes, I still can’t believe Lena and I are working together.

“You finally agreed to help us?” I ask.

Shane shrugs as he accelerates. “I was getting bored.”

I manage to keep my mouth shut. Barely. If excitement is the only reason he’s joining
the rebellion, nothing will stop
him from switching allegiances if the situation in the Silver Palace gets even uglier
than it is now. I’m sure the remnants wouldn’t hesitate to take him back. The rest
of the humans who worked for the king are already helping them. Lena and the rebels
didn’t move quickly enough tracking them down. The only reason we got Shane is because
he was at the palace when we invaded. Afterward, Lena set him up in the suite with
me because she thought I might be a good influence on him, like my choice of allegiance
would spread to him like a cold or something.

He turns onto a feeder road, and I try to relax. I’m out of danger for now. My heart
rate should be slowing down, but it’s not, and I think I know why. With the whole
fleeing-for-my-life thing, I’ve been able to ignore the worry gnawing at my stomach.
I can’t ignore it any longer. The remnants have Paige.

Paige’s purse was warded. The rebels checked out my place before Trev and Nalst fissured
me there. If the remnants had placed a ward in the typical places—on a door or in
a hallway—Trev or Nalst would have found it, but they didn’t go around digging through
my drawers or picking up every object in my apartment. They had no reason to touch
Paige’s purse. Placing the ward there was a cunning move on the remnants’ part.

I tuck a strand of hair that escaped from my ponytail behind my ear as I stare out
my broken window. We’re passing the turnoff for my college. My
former
college now that I’ve been kicked out. God, I still want that degree. I want a normal
job and a life where I don’t have to worry about someone killing me or the people
I care about.

I pinch the skin between my eyes, trying to release some of the pressure building
behind them. Is there any possible way I could be wrong about Paige? Few people from
the king’s Court knew my name or where I lived on Earth. The remnants shouldn’t know
a thing about Paige. Maybe she left her purse at my place, and the fae thought it
was mine?

“Don’t get on the highway,” I say suddenly, grabbing the steering wheel to keep Shane
from veering toward the on-ramp.

“Hey!” He swipes my hand away but stays on the access road. “We’re meeting Aren at
the gate north of the city.”

“We’re going to my friend’s house first. It’ll only take a minute.” I have to be certain
Paige is really gone.

I’m kind of surprised when he doesn’t argue. We might be on the outskirts of Houston,
but traffic is horrendous. It’s impossible to get through a single intersection in
one minute. He follows my directions, though, and half an hour later we pull up in
front of a town house that’s in the middle of a row of attached homes that all have
the same white shutters, small balconies, and miniscule front porches. The only thing
different is the color of the front doors. Paige’s is pink. I tell Shane to wait in
the car as I climb out of the passenger seat.

It takes a few steps before my muscles loosen up. They’re sore from the fight at my
apartment, and my right leg throbs under my jeans when I put weight on it. Nothing’s
broken, though; I think I just have a deep bruise on my thigh.

A knot of dismay tightens in my stomach when I reach Paige’s pink door.

“Please be home,” I whisper as I knock. After a few minutes pass with no answer, I
step into the flower bed to the right of the porch and peek in through the window.
Only a sliver of the living room is visible through a part in the curtains, but the
little that I see doesn’t look good. Broken glass and something blue are scattered
across the floor. It takes me a second to realize the latter are hundreds of tiny
blue pebbles, the remains of Paige’s fishbowl, I think. She has a betta named Phil
or Max or Johnny or something. She has trouble keeping them alive, so I can never
keep track.

“Is your friend not home?” Shane asks from the porch, not from the car where I told
him to wait.

“The remnants took her,” I say.

Shane frowns. “Come again?”

I step out of the flower bed, feeling sick. Since the fae don’t belong in this world,
they’re able to turn their visibility on and off with a thought. Only humans who have
the Sight are able to see them all the time; the rest of the world has no idea they
exist. Paige won’t have any idea. I don’t know how she’d react if she was grabbed
by invisible fae. She might
think she’s caught in a nightmare or that she’s lost her mind or that she’s possessed
or something. But maybe the remnants will let her see them. Maybe they’ll explain
who they are and what’s happening.

Or maybe they’ll just kill her.

No,
I tell myself, pushing that thought aside. She’s more valuable alive. Alive, they
can negotiate a trade.

“Her purse was at my apartment,” I tell Shane, trying the doorknob. It doesn’t turn,
of course. “I broke a ward when I picked it up. That’s why the remnants came.”

“Hmm,” he says. He presses his lips together, but there’s no worry or sympathy in
his expression. I clench my teeth to keep from saying anything. When I first met him,
I had the impression he was a bit egocentric. He’s living up to that assessment.

Stepping away from the door, I scan up and down the street. An occasional car passes
by, but no one is outside. I can probably time a break-in so that I don’t get caught.

I pick up one of the rocks lining the flower bed.

“You know,” Shane says, “if the remnants do have your friend, it’s highly possible
they know where she lives.”

“You’re worried about them showing up?” I heft the rock in my hand. “Why? You can
just switch allegiances. I’m sure they’d pay you whatever you ask.”

“Ouch,” he says, sounding genuinely insulted.

I hurt his feelings? Whatever. He’s only involved in this war because he gets paid.
This shouldn’t be about money. Our actions have consequences. I didn’t realize just
how dire those consequences were until a month ago. Back when I worked for the king,
I thought the Court captured most of the fae I tracked. They didn’t. It was easier
to kill them than to put forth the effort to take them as prisoners. If I’d known
how much blood was being shed because of my shadow-reading, I wouldn’t have become
so deeply involved in the king’s wars. I’ve caused more pain than I can stand thinking
about.

Before my thoughts darken further, I search the street again. It’s a weekday. Most
people will probably be at work, but I make sure I check the windows of the nearest
homes. It’s hard to see through the sun’s glare on the glass.

“Here.” Shane grabs the rock from my hand. “You keep standing around, and eventually
someone’s going to notice.”

He launches the rock through Paige’s window.

“And, yes,” he continues. “I took a while to make up my mind, but that doesn’t mean
I don’t give a shit.” He grabs the curtain from inside the town house, yanks it off
its hanger, then uses it to knock out the rest of the glass and clear off the windowsill.
“I’ll open the door.”

He climbs inside, and, of course, I feel guilty now. It wasn’t easy for me to change
allegiances; why should it be easy for him? Still, I don’t apologize when he opens
the door. If he really does give a shit, he should act like it more often.

As soon as I enter Paige’s apartment, it’s obvious there was a struggle here. In addition
to the shattered fishbowl, the narrow table behind Paige’s couch is on its side, and
it looks like someone tried to throw a floor lamp across the room. It’s still plugged
in, but the lampshade is crushed. I step over it and head to her bedroom. She fought
there, too, launching her jewelry box at her attacker. Its contents are scattered
through the doorway and into the hall, where shards of glass litter the floor. Paige
put up one hell of a fight.

She shouldn’t have had to put up a fight. She wouldn’t have had to if she wasn’t connected
to me.

“Are you sure the remnants took her?” Shane calls from the front of the town house.
I turn away from the bedroom and head back his way.

“I wish I wasn’t, but yeah. Why?”

He’s standing at the kitchen counter staring into a large, yellow mixing bowl. “There’s
a fish in this.”

I frown, walk to his side, then peer down at a bright blue and very much alive betta.

“If the remnants kidnapped her,” Shane says, “it seems odd that they’d stick around
to take care of her fish.”

“Maybe one of them really likes fish?” I say, even though he has a point. It doesn’t
make sense at all.

I scan the living room and kitchen. Looking for what, I don’t know—evidence, I guess—but
there’s nothing here except the overturned furniture and shattered fishbowl. Maybe
I should have searched Paige’s purse before dropping
it on the floor of my apartment. The remnants could have left a ransom note in it.

“We should go,” Shane says. He’s found a little container of fish food and taps some
into the mixing bowl. “Aren’s waiting.”

I don’t say anything; I just keep staring at Paige’s apartment.

He sets the container down and looks at me.

“The rebels will help you find her,” he says gently, as if he’s trying to reassure
me.

They
might
help me find her. The last two weeks have been rough, though. We won control of the
palace, and Lena has claimed the throne, but convincing the high nobles—the fae who
run the Realm’s thirteen provinces—that her bloodline is pure enough to become their
queen isn’t going so well. Not only that, but the high nobles are hesitant to break
tradition and allow a woman to sit on the silver throne. They’re postponing a vote
on the matter, probably hoping a better option will step forward.

The headache I had on the way here doubles in strength as I head for the door. The
delay on the vote wouldn’t be such a big deal if the remnants weren’t taking advantage
of the uncertainty. They’re launching attacks on the silver walls surrounding the
palace almost daily, and we’re fairly certain they’re encouraging the protests and
near riots that are occurring throughout the Realm. If we could just figure out who’s
organizing them, arrest or kill or make a deal with him or her, then maybe Lena and
the rebels could have a break. They need a break. We all do.

FOR
a people who tend to live a century and a half, the fae are incredibly impatient.
It’s one of the side effects of being able to fissure from city to city or even world
to world in a few seconds’ time. The drive from my apartment to the outskirts of the
city would have taken about twenty minutes without our detour. With the detour, it’s
been close to an hour.

Aren whips open my door before the car completely stops. He isn’t as afraid of human
tech as most of the fae are, but
I’m still surprised he didn’t wait the few seconds it would have taken for me to open
it myself.
Edarratae
protest the contact by flashing up his forearm. They keep flashing when he takes
hold of my elbow. His eyes scan me head to toe, looking for injuries, I’m sure, and
when he doesn’t see any—at least, he doesn’t see any that are serious—he visibly relaxes.