City of Shadows (26 page)

Samuel was talking, but his voice, the rumble of the car's engines, the swish of the wipers all faded behind Becky's words. And something Nyx had said to me. She'd pinned my hair back, and teased that Samuel might braid it for me.

Something fluttered tight and nervous in my chest. I flicked through more pages and scanned Becky's broken thoughts.

The car bumped onto a curb.

He came here again. He picked someone else. The girl who cries.

I hate him. Hate her.

I wonder where Danny is
…

Another page.

I cried today, and he licked my tears away and laughed. That laugh
…

Another.

His eyes, they capture me, hold me still. They're all I see. Beautiful. Shades of violet—amethyst eyes. He let me braid his hair today. I love him.

Kael had silver and gray eyes.

But Samuel…

I lifted my head and peered through the windshield into the rain.

“Alina, are you ready?”

Samuel took Becky.

I'd asked if he knew her and he denied it. He'd lied. Samuel had been the one who tormented her, twisted her mind, made her love him. How many lies had he spun?

“Yes, I'm ready,” I said, voice distant.

“We're here …”

I tucked the journal back inside my leathers and stepped out into the rain. A tiny voice in my head tried to convince me the words were wrong, Becky was wrong;
it might not be him.
There had to be other fae with the same colored eyes. And the braid. The one he'd cut off after we'd met. Another fae. Or had I been looking so hard for someone to care about, for someone to care for me, that I'd missed the signs?

Construction panels encircled the station. Samuel pulled open a gate. I stepped inside, boots sinking in the mud. Floodlights chased away the dark. Stark white light illuminated the motionless heavy machinery. My feet moved forward while my thoughts raced ahead of me.
All this time … The smiles, the touches. Lies.
Warning signs declared open pits. One such pit yawned beside the old station entrance. Easily the width of two cars, and as deep as the underground tunnels. I hung back, my boots slipping on the wet rubble.

Samuel's
gaze crawled up my back.

He'd lied about Becky. What else had he lied about? The note? Was it even real? Was Kael a part of this—had they worked together? I needed time to think, to clear the thoughts in my head, to see past the rage building within.

A siren wailed outside the construction site. I lifted my head, caught movement in the corner of my vision, and skittered aside. The bar came down, slamming into my cheek and knocking me to my knees in the mud. Pain and noise filled my skull, blurring my vision, and blood burst across my tongue.

“It's hers, isn't it?” Samuel snarled. He lifted the bar over his shoulder. “That journal.” When the bar cracked across the back of my head the world went black for a blink. Mud and grit scratched my lips and tongue. Something warm and wet spilled down my neck. The bar came down across my thigh and a scream tore free. There wasn't time to organize my thoughts, to react, to fight back. I twisted onto my front and dug my nails into the earth.

“All you had to do was distract Kael, but you couldn't stop asking questions, could you?”

I dragged myself forward. Blood blinded my eyes and pain yanked on my consciousness, threatening to tear it away. If I blacked out, it would be over, but I couldn't see, couldn't think through the agony. The world rippled and drifted.

“What a shame to waste all of that potential in a construct.”

The bar cracked across my back. “Sam—” I spluttered.

He hooked his fingers around the collar of my leathers and yanked me up. Disgust twisted his face. His cruel eyes, amethyst eyes sparkled with malice. “Do you know what it's like to lower myself to the level of a creature such as you? To
pretend
to be nice, to fuck you like it meant something? Do you know how sick it made me?”

I fumbled at my side for my daggers, but the world blurred and my head throbbed. “Infinite fae power trapped in a weak human shell. You took too long, Alina. You and your human whining. I can't wait. I'm ready. The London fae are ready. It's our time.” He laughed a cruel curl of laughter that echoed about the construction site. “I'll take Arachne's draíocht right out of you.” He yanked me close and licked his tongue up my cheek. I screamed at him, but the sound never made it to my lips. I raged, kicked, but my body wouldn't respond. His smooth, warm tongue slid easily across my skin, and behind its path draíocht crackled—my draíocht. Strength and warmth draining away, and a hollow cold soaked deep inside.

When he pulled back, blood glistened a stark red on his lips. “Love isn't the worst we can do.”

He held me out at arm's length. I sensed rather than saw the hungry, yawning space below me. With one hand I clawed at his grip, while the other fumbled to get a grip on my dagger.

“Welcome to the new fae world.” He grinned, and in the brilliant floodlights green fragments of draíocht shone in his eyes. “Shame you won't be around to witness it.”

He let go.

The floodlights rushed away. Wind whistled by me. Through the blurred madness, I saw Samuel standing over the pit, his lips twisted in a wicked smile. Hot rage broke over me, but it was too late. Everything was too late.

The shadows rushed in.

Chapter Twenty-One

Breathing. Breathing was important. In and out. The pain receded and rushed in, back and forth, over and under, it gathered me up and crushed me down. Breathe—in and out. It wasn't over. I wasn't letting go. So many things left undone, a life not yet lived. Samuel wasn't taking that from me. Nobody would ever take my life from me.
In and out
.

“I'm about to heal you. To do so, I need to touch you. Your instincts will demand more. Control it. I'd prefer not to add to your pain.”

I heard Kael's whispered words as though they were meant for someone else, someone in another room perhaps. But his eyes, they were fixed on me. Darkness swirled in their silver shimmer.

His cool hands touched against my cheeks, and pain ransacked my body. I bucked and tried to push him off.
He's killing me!
He pressed a hand over my mouth and pushed into me, holding me pinned under his weight.

“Be silent,” he hissed. “We're not alone.”

It hurt. It hurt so much I fled inside myself, shrinking away from the burn, but I glared back at Kael with all I had left. If he was going to kill me, let him look me in the eyes and do it.

He turned his head away, jaw set with tension. “We can't stay here.”

An intense prickling sensation shot down my leg and up the side of my face. My skin crawled and tugged, as though someone was stitching it together. Kael closed
his
eyes and bowed his head. He'd gritted his teeth and was clearly fighting his own battle. The needlelike prickles ran across my back, and a dull ache throbbed where the pain had seconds ago burned.

“Take only what you need,” he hissed.

The strain on his face was my doing, I realized. I was drawing his draíocht into me, or he was giving it freely. Either way, Kael was helping—not hurting. His eyes widened a fraction and immediately the pain subsided, replaced by a tingling numbness. Where was Samuel … ? Did Kael know? Had he seen what happened? Were they working together? Plots, betrayal, and deceit. Where the pain had gone, now confusion sank its claws in.

“Enough?” he whispered—so close his breath cooled my cheek. He lifted his hand away from my mouth.

I nodded, not quite ready to reply. Kael could have let me die.

He let go completely, breaking the touch, but didn't pull back. A shiver swept over me, and finally I could take in my surroundings. Darkness. Dampness. I smelled wet earth and metal and decay. The tunnels. We were in the subway tunnels, but this one was new.
No tracks. Not finished.

Samuel.
Sickness rolled through me. I slumped to the side and pressed a cool hand to my mouth, trying to keep my insides from rolling up my throat.
Samuel tried to kill me.

“Listen well,” Kael whispered, bringing me back to the now, the tunnels, the darkness, and him. “I have no intention of hurting you. If you plan to attack me, I suggest you save it for after we've escaped the tunnels. We're not far from the station. I had to drag you here, away from the lytch.” He hesitated and studied my
face
while his own tightened with concern. “Samuel opened Under's catacombs. All of them. Every beast that came through with us during the Purge roams free.”

I squeezed my eyes closed and pushed the acidic burn of hate aside. Later; I could rage later, but not yet. “He took my draíocht—” My voice fractured. He'd almost killed me.

Kael closed his eyes and bowed his head. I heard the sound of his teeth grinding where he clamped them together. Samuel's betrayal hadn't been reserved just for me.

“He fooled us both,” Kael said. “Played on our dislike for one another to prevent me from looking too closely at him.”

I shifted against the wall, trying to reacquaint myself with a broken body that didn't feel quite like mine. Numb in places, sensitive in others. And inside, I was still in pieces. Samuel had been grooming me from the moment I'd joined the FA. He'd seduced me with lies, and he'd almost won.

Something shuffled in the dark. Kael jerked his head up, waited, and then whispered. “Unless you can tackle the worst of Faerie in your current condition, we need to keep ourselves hidden long enough to find a way out and alert the FA to Samuel's betrayal. My phone won't get a signal in these tunnels.” He checked both ways, up and down the tunnel, but couldn't possibly see much farther than a few feet. The darkness was so thick it seemed to swirl like smoke. “This city is about to be overrun by nightmares.”

“Did you know?” I asked in a broken growl.

Always so proud, so strong, it was an act, just like all the other fae. The Kael who faced me now, he wasn't a general, just someone who'd made a terrible mistake. He didn't reply, but the truth was written plain as day all over his face.

“
He's trying to weave a path back to Faerie. If he's strong enough to hold the path open, we're going to need you to help stop whatever comes through.” His firm fingers locked around my arm. Instincts wanted me to pull away, but I'd yet to fill up those empty parts of me. The smothering darkness churned as he pulled me to my feet. I clutched tightly as his arm, and his grip responded in kind. “You have questions,” he said with a softness I'd have thought him incapable of had I not heard it myself. “So do I. We'll get our answers.”

I leaned against Kael as we quietly moved farther into the darkness. A faint breeze drifted through the tunnels, cooling my face, and bringing with it dust and distant rumbles. Trains, I hoped.

“How are you here?” I asked quietly. The tunnel walls shuddered. I heard rattles and sighs, scurrying things, and my own thudding heart.

Kael's grip on my arm relaxed enough for me to wobble on my own two feet. He nodded, satisfied I was able to stand on my own, and continued forward. “Samuel believed I'd appreciate his secret.” Kael ground his teeth. He glared ahead, avoiding my eyes. “He wanted me to share in his revolution and brought me here to show me exactly what he's capable of. As soon as I felt the nearby flood of draíocht, I expected the worst. We fought.” Kael's throat moved as he swallowed and looked away. “I couldn't bring myself to hurt him. I should have—I …”

“You're not part of this?”

“No.”

With that one word, the tightness in my chest eased a little. Perhaps we weren't enemies, at least, not right now.

“
There were signs,” Kael went on. “I've spent the past few weeks trying to keep the peace. I trusted him, but … there were bespellments. His appetite for draíocht, his
mistakes
… Signs I should have seen.” I thought of Reign's words, how he'd dug up the dirt on Samuel's mistakes and waved them in my face.

“I barred him from the briefing, because I suspected something, but I couldn't—wouldn't see the truth.” Kael saw the questions in my eyes and replied with a sigh, “Samuel is an elder's son.”

The elders. The ones who had purged Faerie. “He told me the elders killed his family.”

“That's true, as far as I know.” Kael stopped and lifted a hand, bringing me to an abrupt halt beside him. The dark sighed around us. Tunnel air threaded through my hair and breathed against my face. Loose earth rattled about our feet as a train passed somewhere close behind the walls. Then all was still once more.

“Elders are forbidden to breed—Faerie has enough problems without more elders disrupting the balance of power.” Kael moved forward, his strides more confident than mine. “It would seem one of them defied their law and bore Samuel in secret. They must have placed him with a foster family, hidden him away, either for his own safety, or as a weapon they might use later.” Kael paused, but only to gather his thoughts.

“In a land built on secrets and lies, neither can be hidden forever. The elders must have discovered the lie and sent the Hunt to execute the boy.” Kael shook his head with regret and smiled despite the gravitas of his words. “Nothing escapes the Hunt. I should have realized then, as soon as he told me that, but he was just a boy.” Kael's pale face tightened with pain, but not the physical kind. “You think me heartless, but I had a son. He fell in the war, as our finest
often
did. I let my past dictate my decisions. Samuel was … He helped me capture some of the family I'd lost.”

I swallowed, tasting the metallic air at the back of my throat. My strength was returning with every step, and with it my thoughts were clearing. There was no doubt; Samuel had used Kael's past to his advantage.