The Shattered Dark (42 page)

Kyol doesn’t budge. Aren does. His hand clenches on the hilt of his sword as he takes
a step forward. The muscles in his forearms and biceps tremble. It’s like he’s fighting
a war with himself.

“Now, Taltrayn,” Lena says.

Kyol’s jaw tightens. He looks at me again, and my heart rips in two. It takes everything
in me not to go to him, comfort him.

He winces, then starts for the exit.

Aren steps into his path.

“The only reason you still breathe,” he whispers, “is because killing you would kill
her.”

I feel sick as I watch Kyol leave. It’s not just because I nearly died today and not
because I’m weak from being healed. Nothing makes sense right now.

I look at Lena. She seems to be the only sane person in the room.

“Aren,” she says. “You should go to your room. Rest.”

“I don’t need rest,” he grates out. He’s staring at the exit Kyol disappeared through.

“Then you must feel well enough to heal the remaining injured,” she says. “Go. And
stay away from my lord general.”

“Aren,” I say before he walks away. He looks at the open doorway. There’s determination
in the way he clenches his jaw. I’m still sitting. I start to rise, knowing I can’t
do it on my own and knowing he can’t help but come to me and help.

I hold on to the arms that hold me, but when I lean into him, he’s rigid, and his
expression is impenetrable.

He swallows. “We’ll talk tomorrow, McKenzie.”

I’m too shocked to stop him when he walks away. His words sounded like a good-bye.

“You can feel Taltrayn,” Lena says. She doesn’t say anything more than that. She’s
waiting for me to understand, but I already do.

“That’s impossible,” I say.

“It
shouldn’t
be possible.”

Kyol formed a life-bond with me. I can feel it, feel him. He’s making his way through
the statue garden, I think. I can’t see what he sees, and I don’t know his thoughts,
but he’s like a blur of emotion just beyond my reach. And now, he’s angry and hurting.

“How did this happen?” I whisper.

“You wanted it to happen.”

My gaze snaps to hers. “I didn’t—”

“I’m not saying you wanted
him
, but a life-bond won’t form unless both parties wish for it to. Kelia certainly didn’t
want
Lorn. She wanted to hurt Naito.”

“Hurt Naito?” Was that before they fell for each other?

Lena waves away my question. “You’ll have to ask him about that. But in your case,
it might have been that you just wanted to live. The bond connected you to Kyol. He
connected you to this world. He allowed you to cling to life long enough for Aren
to reach you.”

I knew that fae share magic through life-bonds, and that the bond makes both fae stronger;
I didn’t know it could help hold someone from the brink of death.

“If he hadn’t done what he did, or if the bond hadn’t taken,” she goes on, “I have
no doubt you’d be dead.”

Not every bond takes. I know that. The two people have to be compatible on some level,
but that’s just it. I’m human, and he’s fae; we shouldn’t be compatible.

“So, I’m the only human-fae bond?”

“Sidhe,”
Lena says. “You’re not
that
special.”

“That’s not—”

“If Kavok were around,” she says, starting for the exit, “I’m sure he’d love to tell
you about the others. There were two of them, if I remember correctly. Neither life-bond
ended well.”

“Where are you going?” I ask, when she’s almost to the exit.

She turns, and one side of her mouth tightens into a smile. “Back to my duties. I’m
going to convince the high nobles that someone else is behind this war. Then I’m going
to have Lorn arrested.”

“With no real evidence?”

“Half the palace is in shambles. They’ll be looking for someone to restore order.
I won’t mention Lorn’s name until I’m certain he’s guilty. The high nobles will assume
I’m talking about a false-blood. That will cause a number of them to change their
minds.”

She leaves then, and I don’t stop her. Kyol’s emotions are becoming clearer, more
potent. I don’t know if the latter is because he’s hurting more or if it’s because
I’m becoming more aware of the bond, but it’s distracting, almost distracting enough
that I don’t catch the significance of Lena’s words.

A number of nobles will change their minds
about her
. She thinks they’ll approve her as the ruler of the Realm now. If they do, this war
might come to an end. The remnants don’t have a Descendant who can challenge her for
the throne. They’ll lose support; Lena will gain it. Some of them will fight on—Caelar,
for example—but they shouldn’t be able to launch the attacks that they have been these
last few weeks.

There may finally be a break in the bloodshed.

ONE
day passes, then another, and another. Aren doesn’t come to me as he promised, and
I’m afraid to seek him out. I’m afraid that I was right, that his last words to me
were a good-bye. I don’t want to confirm them, so I pass the time recuperating from
my wounds and drinking
cabus
.

The high nobles approve Lena as the
interim
leader of the Realm. It’s not what we were hoping for, but she’s confident she’ll
eventually become the Realm’s first queen. She has the power now to restore the provinces
Atroth dissolved decades ago, and since she’s technically the high noble of Adaris,
she’ll be able to cast a vote for herself. The nobles from the other dissolved provinces
will be grateful for what she’s done as well. She’ll have their support.

On the fourth day, I’m close to my breaking point. The life-bond with Kyol has grown
stronger, and his pain, his sadness is killing me. I don’t know if I’ll feel him less
in my
world, but I can’t stay in the Realm, not until I find a way to block out these feelings.
And not without having a damn good reason to stay.

So I finally seek out Aren, hoping he’ll be that reason. He’s on the roof of the palace,
sitting on its edge and looking beyond the silver wall and out over the Imyth Sea.
I think he knows I’m here, but he doesn’t say anything.

Silently, I sit down beside him.

Minutes pass. I’m not exactly sure how many—ten, twenty, maybe a half hour—but the
moon reaches its zenith and is well into its descent when I finally say, “I’ve missed
you.”

Starlight outlines Aren’s profile, and a cool, gentle breeze ruffles through his hair.
With the palace beneath him and Corrist’s mountains in the background, he’s exotically
alluring.

He rests his hand on top of mine, squeezes it. Hope loosens some of the knots in my
stomach. I watch my
edarratae
zigzag down my arm, but when they reach him, he takes his hand away.

“I can’t do this, McKenzie.”

My heart breaks. It’s a tangible thing. The pain is deep inside my chest, slightly
off centered and sharp. There’s no way I can hide it from Kyol. I feel alarm pass
through our bond, then understanding, I think, when he realizes I’m not injured. Guilt
and sadness follow that. I swallow and try to block out his emotions.

“You’re giving up on us?” I ask Aren.

“You don’t understand, McKenzie. The life-bond…I can’t compete with that.”

“I’m not asking you to compete with it.” I turn toward him, take his hand. His mouth
tightens, but he doesn’t pull free this time, not even when a bolt of white lightning
skips from my skin to his. “I love you, Aren.”

He draws in a breath. I move closer until I’m pressed against his side. Just over
two weeks ago, right after we took the palace, he came to me in Vegas. He told me
he’d fight for the chance to be with me, and I chose to give him that chance. I made
the right decision. He might have a dark past,
but he was strong enough to overcome it. He’s become something good. He’s become someone
I respect, and if I have to fight for him now, I will.

I reach a hand up to turn his face toward mine. His expression is pained. I have to
make that go away. I press my lips against his. He doesn’t resist. The feel of his
mouth against mine, the taste of his breath, it’s an exquisite combination of the
exotic and the familiar, and when he shudders, I deepen the kiss. I pour myself into
it, ignoring the tangle of emotions sitting alone somewhere in the palace.

Aren murmurs my name. He murmurs it over and over as he gives in to me. His hands
go to my hips. He pulls me away from the edge of the palace and closer to him. Pressed
together like this, on our knees, with no space between our bodies, I can feel just
how much he wants me.

The
edarratae
are alive inside of me. I move my lips to the curve of Aren’s jaw, then to the base
of his neck, transferring little shocks of lightning to him with my kisses. He’s still
so tense, though. I run my palms down his biceps.

“Aren.” It’s the softest whisper, but once his name touches the air, I’ve lost him.
His grip on my hip isn’t pulling me closer now, it’s holding me away.

He puts an inch of space between us; it feels like a gulf.

“I love you,” he says. “
Sidhe
, I love you, but I can’t do this. You’re his, McKenzie.”

Those last words hit me like a physical assault. I’m still holding on to Aren’s arms,
but like him, I’m not pulling him closer anymore.

“Kelia wasn’t Lorn’s,” I say. My voice sounds frigid to my ears.

“Kelia never loved Lorn.” He releases me to stand.

I stand, too. “You’re holding my past against me.” He has no right to say who I belong
to.

He faces the Imyth Sea. “You should talk to him.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“He could explain the bond,” he continues. “You could work things out.”

“Work things out?” I ask, feeling the coldness in my voice seep into the rest of my
body. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He looks over my shoulder. His expression is closed off.

“You’re pushing me into his arms.”

“I’m giving you the freedom to choose,” he counters. “You need time, McKenzie, to
understand the bond.”

“You’ve already given me all the time I need.”

“Please, go.” He says those two words as if they mean The End. My throat closes up.
The Silver Palace is Lena’s now. Aren and I should be celebrating. We should be in
each other’s arms, wrapped in lightning and loving each other. We should be laughing.
We shouldn’t be breaking up. But there’s a finality in the way he turns his back on
me to lock his gaze on the sea once again.

“This is your decision, Aren,” I say softly. “It isn’t mine.”

I don’t want to walk away from him, but I do, leaving the roof and heading…I don’t
know where. I half expect Aren to realize his mistake and to come running after me.
That’s what
should
happen. He’s risked his life for me over and over again, but he’s giving up on me
because of this life-bond? I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t ask to be linked to Kyol
like this.

I swallow as a wave of pain rushes over me. It’s hard to tell how much of it is Kyol’s
and how much is mine. He lied when we were in Spier. He said he was okay, that he
accepted and understood my decision to leave him, but he wasn’t okay. Every second
he’s been near me, every second I’ve spent with Aren…I’ve been hurting him this whole
time.

I bite the inside of my lower lip, focusing on that pain instead of the other. I’m
not ready to talk to Kyol yet.

“McKenzie.” Naito’s voice pulls me out of a daze I didn’t know I’d fallen into, but
I’m not on the roof anymore, not even on the stairs leading back into the palace.
I’m in the sculpture garden, and Naito is off to my left, sitting on the floor with
his back against a square, ivory planter.

I walk toward him, and say, “Hey,” when I sink to the floor beside him.

“You doing all right?” he asks. That’s the question everyone’s been asking him off
and on these last few weeks. I answer the same way he does most of the time, with
a shrug.

He toys with a frayed hole in his jeans. “Kelia said it was easier to ignore Lorn
when they were in separate worlds.”

Kelia said.
Past tense. And there was a certain acceptance in the way he said her name. He’s
still hurting, but he’s healing.

“I’m sorry we can’t bring her back,” I say.

“We knew there was a chance…” He stops, clears his throat. “I thought I’d be the one
to die. She’s fae. She could fissure out if she got into trouble.”

I wrap my arms around my bent knees. “Do you ever wish you’d never come to this world?”

He gives a short, humorless laugh. “If I hadn’t come to the Realm, I’d still be one
of my father’s pawns.”

He doesn’t regret killing Nakano. Good.

“What will the rest of the vigilantes do now?” I ask.

“The same thing a cult would do if their leader died. Some of them will find new lives.
Some of them will continue to hate and hunt the fae. And, apparently, in a few months,
some of them will die.”

“Paige has the tablet I took from the compound. She’s going to give it to a friend
of hers. Maybe they’ll find a way to live.”

“I hope so,” he says. “My brother…We never got along. My father all but ignored him
because he couldn’t see the fae. Lee went off to school a few years ago. I don’t know
why he went back home. He shouldn’t have.”

There are a lot of
shouldn’t haves
when it comes to the fae, and to life in general.

“I’ll let you know if I hear anything from Paige,” I tell him as I stand.

“You’re going to leave, then?” he asks, looking up.

“Yeah. For a while,” I tell him. I wish I knew how long that while will be.