Shadowborn (24 page)

Unsure why I hadn’t opened my thoughts to her before, I went in search of her new mind and found a simple energy within Arianne. It pulsed with a purple hue, and her joy radiated into me like a sunrise on a spring morning, pure and filled with a song that resonated in my soul.

My arms tightened around the plump girl. “I’ll make your world safe, little one.” I smiled when she yawned, flashing me a toothless grin. “I promise you.”

Footsteps pounded up behind me. I turned to find Gallagher sprinting up the street, his fists held tight, and his lips pressed together.

“Oh hell, what now?” I tried to hand the baby back, but she snarled her little fingers into my hair and grunted. “I’m sorry, little one, but I have to go. I’ll come back and see you again sometime, okay?”

Another few starbursts lit up my eyes as her palm brushed my cheek before she went back to her mother. I squinted at Maeve. “What does yellow mean?”

“It means she’ll miss you.”

I groaned at the little sigh in my heart, turned with a wave and waited for Gallagher to reach me.

He panted and drew up to stand before me.

I stared at the tightness around his lips while my stomach squirmed. “What’s happened now?”

“James received a message from Alastair. I’ve delayed the session of Court until we’ve dealt with it.” Hands on his hips, he stared at me with those white marbles of his. “You’re going to want to know now rather than later.”

Somehow, I doubted that.

20

“Perhaps we should go somewhere more … private.” Gallagher’s gaze met mine with obvious effort.

Either he was about to take a trip to freakoutville, or he thought I might. Neither scenario stopped my last nerve from unraveling. “Then wherever we’re going, let’s go.” I gestured with my hands for him to get moving.

“My house is nearby.” Nix started in the opposite direction from the Court castle. “This way.”

I sped after Nix while my mind spun scenarios, each one worse than the last. Had my little chat with Parthalan caused some catastrophic disaster, and he somehow jumped into bed with the shadow freak, Alastair? Had the Magi emerged? Did something happen to Liam? My father? A sense of déjà vu invaded me with the same dread I suffered the year before when Gallagher had shown me a message from my enemy.

Slow gulps of air helped stop my lungs from going into spasm. Too much shit had piled up in my life all at once, and my knees were starting to buckle. Liam’s marriage. The Shadowborn. The elves. My confusion over Nix. Securing the throne so I wouldn’t have to fight every time I went to Court. The Magi’s reason for taking a hit out on me. It all rolled into a giant, thorny ball in the center of my soul.

The sound of both Nix’s and Gallagher’s footfalls—their quick pace lending more urgency to my own—drummed against my ears and raced against my pulse. By the time Nix turned up a pebbled walkway to a two-story shifter with a wraparound porch, I hung onto my sanity by a thread. My muscles hardened to rigid plates, making me work to mount that first step and follow Nix into his house.

I stood like a monument in the middle of a simple living room with plush, white sofas and a fireplace crackling in the corner while Gallagher entered and shut the door.

“What happened?” I blurted the words out like bullets and spun on the hardwood to face him, barely keeping a hold on the power that swelled within me.

“Did something happen last night that might have set off Alastair?” Gallagher held his hands wide as if to show me he wasn’t armed. The gesture struck me as odd—he and I both knew his threat didn’t come from physical force.

“Are you accusing me of something, Gallagher? Because if you are, then out with it before I force it.” A scowl tightened my face. Blue light seeped out of my skin like beads of luminous perspiration. I figured Alastair would have been pissed because of the bus incident, but judging by the wrinkles around Gallagher’s mouth, the shadow guy must have done something beyond heinous.

“No, Lila, not accusing. Just trying to understand why he would have …”

“What, Gallagher?” Nix asked in a soothing tone.

“The hospital where we went in Toronto, do you remember it?” Gallagher lowered himself onto one of the sofas and gripped the fabric until his dark fingers disappeared into the white puff.

“Of course I remember.” I held onto the back of a chair so I wouldn’t smack him. “What happened to the hospital?”
Don’t tell me. Goddess, what did he do?

“James couldn’t get a response when he called to let them know he’d be bringing in the bodies of a few more of Alastair’s victims, so he and Bethany went down to check. The entire hospital—staff, patients, visitors, everyone—is comatose.” He swallowed. “Even Larissa, the telepath I sent there to report back to me.”

Nix reached for me, but I swung wide with a desperate need to work off my frustration—more because of my relief that Liam wasn’t involved and the guilt that followed it.

“You were right to accuse me. I antagonized him last night, and this is how he’s lashing out at me.” I went on to tell them about my conversation with Alastair and how I’d taken control of the driver before one of the Shadowborn had driven him off the road.

“It’s not your fault, Lila.” Nix’s arms hung limp at his sides, the same helplessness emanating from his eyes as I was sure must have been in mine.

“Don’t.” I sped to the wall, turned and came back to my original spot. My Light darkened some more. Deep breaths did nothing to ease the growing fury.

“Let’s not waste energy on regrets.” Gallagher stood, some of the tightness gone from his posture.

I stopped. “Wait. You said there was a message.”

Gallagher nodded. Thin lids closed over his eyes, and the light in the room flickered before going dim.

I braced my back against the wall and prepared myself for whatever image would appear. Last time he’d done it, I had to endure watching Parthalan and Rourke torturing my father. Larissa must have transmitted the message before Alastair took her. Random thoughts passed through my head. Did she have a mate? A child? A family who would be in agony wondering what had become of her soul?

I should know, dammit!

The young girl from the hospital, Juliet, appeared in the middle of the room. Her small hands pressed over her eyes as she squatted on the floor in the middle of a space divided in half by shadow. Body trembling, she rocked back and forth from her heels to her toes, whimpering.

“No.” I stepped away from the wall, my hand reaching for her. “No! Why her?”

“Do you not know?” Gallagher kept his eyes closed, but the image paused. “Can you think of no reason he’d choose a young girl such as her as his motivation for you?”

Kneeling before the projected mirage, I stared long and hard at the girl. The answer came like a kick to the stomach. “Me.”

Nix crouched beside me. “I don’t understand.”

“She reminds me of me—when Parthalan took my mother away.” Alone, terrified, pathetic, with not a soul to give a crap about what might happen to her. Fury blasted through my veins like liquid fire. It was what Alastair wanted, but I couldn’t help it. For a few minutes, I let it burn me alive. I’d destroy Alastair for Juliet. For little Arianne. For the humans. For my people and Liam’s. For all fae.

“How would he even know what happened to Lila before,” Nix asked. “Unless he’s somehow connected with the fae or another race that knows about us.”

Gallagher twitched. “That, my boy, is a question that needs answering.”

“That could mean the Magi know as much about us as the elves do.”
Not good.
With my fingernails digging into my palms, I pushed everything aside and concentrated to assemble my thoughts. “Finish the message.”

Juliet resumed her rocking.

From the dark half of the room, a familiar form emerged and reached out to stroke her hair. “As per my employer’s wishes, to allow you time to settle your affairs, in forty-eight hours you will come alone to the hilltop north of Seven Gates, Lila Gray,” Alastair said in a nonchalant tone.

Well, wasn’t my assassin polite? I stifled an eye roll.

“If you don’t arrive on time, this girl’s fate will haunt you for the rest of your very-long forever. I will destroy her body and tuck her soul away somewhere within my realm. The others souls, I will destroy when I grow bored. But not hers. She will hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing. She will hunger but never eat. She will tire, but never sleep. How long before insanity takes her under? A week? A year? How about a century?”

Juliet’s scream pierced my mind as Alastair fell over her, darkness eating everything in its path, leaving nothing but black for me to see. I leapt at her image, waving my arms around as if searching dark water for someone who’d slipped under.

“Lila!” Nix folded his arms around me from behind. “Stop. It’s not real!”

“Get off me!” I shrugged him off and bolted out the door. Two sets of feet pounded after me.

Wheezing, I continued my sprint down one street after another until I collapsed on my knees on the castle steps. I beat my fist down on them until it hurt.

“Tell me you’re not going.” Nix sat on the step beside me. “She’s just one human girl. You’re the queen of a nation.”

“I need to find him anyway. And you really think he’s going to stop with her if I don’t go? I have to kill him before he takes Liam.”

“What? Since when was the Unseelie king a target?” Gallagher muttered something else as I turned.

“Since I went to Cargun last night and talked to Parthalan.”

Nix shot up, and both he and Gallagher glared down at me.

“Goddess, mother of mercy, Lila Gray. You will be the death of me.” Gallagher stared at the sky, a nerve twitching in his temple.

“Do you seriously have a death wish?” Nix tossed his palms up. “Why would you go there without protection?”

A slow ascent brought me to my feet. “I went there because Alogason and Laerni told me I had to face him, that it was one of the tasks I had to complete before they’d train me how to fight Alastair, that’s why. If I’d told any of you, you’d have done exactly what you tried to do last year and confine me to Dun Bray.” I pinned them with my glare. “Tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll apologize.”

Gallagher and Nix shared a look of defeat. “Tell us everything.” Gallagher’s hands dug deep into his pockets.

I started with the nightmare I’d walked into in Freymoor and everything I had to do before the elves would train me. And about Parthalan.

All three of us ended up sitting on the steps by the time I’d finished.

“And the Unseelie king thinks the elves know something about these ‘Old Ones’, and that they are one and the same as the Magi?” Gallagher hugged his knees to his chest—an odd gesture for such an old fae.

“He’s got a name.” I glared at my aide, but he didn’t let on he noticed. On the wind of a sigh, I added, “Yeah, that’s what Liam understood. He said Galati looked terrified when he mentioned the Magi.”

“Then we must know what they know,” Gallagher said.

“Yeah, way to state the obvious, Gal. I know.”

He shot up in unison with Nix as if they’d somehow synchronized the movement.

“Address the Court about the Unseelie ceremony, and then we must go to Freymoor.” Gallagher didn’t wait for me to respond before swinging up the stairs faster than I’d imagined him capable, his dreads slapping against his back.

“But she hasn’t even slept yet,” Nix bellowed, but the other fae disappeared through the doors of the castle.

“Seriously?” I shot my guard an incredulous look. “How could I possibly sleep now?” If I didn’t relive the terror in that little girl’s eyes when I closed mine, I’d certainly be seeing Liam taking his queen in front of the Unseelie Court.

My weary feet carried me up one step at a time toward the top. Nix’s hands worried over a button on his shirt, his glance darting to me every few seconds as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words.

I didn’t have the energy to help him out. Hell, I didn’t even know what I would find in the Court. Would they want to go to the Black City? Would they refuse? As usual, I’d handle the situation like the total pantser I was and decide what to do on the fly.

21

Neve and Trevor opened the Court doors for me after I took a short detour to my room to change. For once, I decided to wear something nice and put on a red, silk top and black dress pants and brushed my blond hair back into a twist secured with a clip. The black sneakers stayed, but the hem of my slacks covered them.

I entered, surrounded by my usual entourage. They had a lighter step than I remembered before, all smiles and sparkling eyes when they faced me. With the weight of three worlds on my mind, I didn’t have time to decipher the change in their moods. Surely, one game of cards couldn’t have been to blame.

Other than a few coughs and the prickle of thousands of eyes boring into the back of my neck, no one spoke as I walked to the dais at the front. I’d never heard the Court so quiet. A quick glance around the room confirmed every chair supported a butt. They all stared as if they’d never seen me before.

Once at the front, I didn’t have the gumption to jump onto the platform, so I took the stairs at the side for the first time. Nix and Neve followed me up, and the rest of the guards spread out in front of the dais. For a few moments, I stared out at my people, still mostly strangers to me. Feet shifted. Throats cleared. Questioning glances passed back and forth.

“You must …” I began and didn’t know how to finish. They were my people, not backwoods rednecks I could mouth off to and never see again. I only hoped to reverse the damage I’d done. “I don’t … I know I haven’t treated you as I should have, as you deserved to be treated.”

Nix offered a nod of encouragement.

“I won’t apologize for asking you to defend our city, or for helping to restore the human world, but it shames me to say that it took strangers to make me see that I don’t know you the way a queen of the fae should know her people.” It took an embarrassing amount of concentration to sort out the words in my head, to erase the sarcasm. I didn’t know how I’d make it last, but I had to try. “You must think I don’t want to be here, that I think I’m better than you, but I promise, that’s not the case.”