Child of Darkness-L-D-2 (29 page)

He did not know the way exactly, but he relied on his inner compass to guide him. Finding the way into the Darkworld was difficult. Finding a way out would not be. He only hoped they would make it to the Strip and back to the Palace before the Waterhorses did. He did not mention this fear to Cerridwen.

Again, her foolishness—no, her utter stupidity—rankled at him. He heard her wings close, heard the gasp of barely subdued pain as she stepped onto her injured ankle, and he almost stopped, almost turned to her to shake her and demand answers. But he did not. Instead, he simply asked, “Why?”

She did not answer. He wondered if she did not understand what he asked—no, she would understand. She would be thinking of it, herself.

They came to a place in the tunnel where a low concrete shelf, marked out with remnants of yellow and black stripes made by Humans to warn them of some danger that had long since vanished from the Underground, and Cedric lay Malachi there, slumped beside him.

“Won’t they catch up to us if we stop now?” Cerridwen asked, but she sat, anyway. Cedric shook his head, could not look at her. The energy of the battle had left him, too, and it had left him angry and defeated. “They will spend too much time killing those that flee in their immediate path. And when they reach the Strip, they will kill everyone there. We have some time. Not much.”

They fell into silence, listening to a far-off drip of water that echoed through the tunnels.

“Why?” he asked her again, and this time, he did look at her.

She crouched, her wings being too long for her to sit while they were unbound. He’d seen Malachi do this a thousand times, it seemed, and the posture sent a shard of sorrow through him. But Malachi had rarely looked so sad as Cerridwen did now, with her arms wrapped around her knees and her chin resting on them, eyes directed miserably to the floor. “Even if I tell you, it will not be enough.”

Her self-pity erased any he’d had for her, and he snapped, “You could try. Malachi is dying. You are injured. A horde of monsters bears down upon the Lightworld even as we sit here. For the love of the Gods, why would you put yourself, your mother, all of us in such a position?”

His words seemed to hammer her further into herself, and it felt good. For a moment. Then he saw the tears shining on her face, and he remembered that he was not the only one who had been through an ordeal. “Please,” he tried again. “I simply wish to know why you wanted to turn against your own race. Why you thought betraying your mother would—”

“Nothing I can say will justify what I did,” she interrupted. When she looked up at him, it was with hate-filled eyes. “I cannot give you some magical answer that will wipe away all that has happened. I knew that by going to the Elves, I put the Lightworld in danger. I knew it. And now you want to know the reason? Will the reason undo what I have done?”

This was not the girl who had thrown public tantrums at Court, who had defied her mother on so many petty issues that it had become expected for her to act contrary to the wishes of anyone in authority. In the past, Cerridwen would have been all to eager to give him an answer, and that answer would have been an argument to persuade him that she did not truly deserve punishment for her actions, that she was a helpless pawn to the whims of others who controlled her. Perhaps that was what Cedric had been looking for, all along; a reason to hate her, to erase the sympathy he had for her by listening to her contrived explanation of how nothing was her fault, that she was not responsible for anything that had befallen her this day. Now, he was relieved that she would not give it to him.

“I was a stupid child,” she continued. “I thought that Fenrick…I thought that an Elf loved me. Stupid, really. He didn’t know I was who I was. And I thought to warn him about my mother’s plans against the Elves.”

“The plans that I informed you of.” That had been foolishness, on his part. He should have known better than to trust her, when her own mother had not.

“You had no way of knowing what I would do. All anyone expected of me was to sit in the Palace and wait for my mother to die. If she ever did. And I do not say that because I wish for her to die. But did you really believe I would understand how important the information was that you told me?”

“No, I did not.” He’d overestimated her there.

She rested her head on her arms again, closed her eyes as if too tired to continue on. “I have learned my lesson. I know that is small comfort, considering all I have caused. But I have learned something, at least.”

“It is small comfort,” Cedric agreed. “But it is comfort, nonetheless.” And then, though he could not believe it himself, he said, “This would have happened whether or not you had run off. Your actions merely brought it about sooner. The results would have likely been the same.”

How could he just excuse her? That was not his way. He should have wanted to see her tortured for eternity for what she had done. If she had been anyone else—no, that was not true, for there was no one he could think of at Court who grated on him more than she—he would have twisted the knife of her pain until it caused a wound that would never heal. The loss of his friend, who lay dying just inches from him, that was enough to make him want revenge.

But then, he knew he could never hurt her as much as she hurt herself. It was a bit unfair, really. But it was true.

He stood and lifted Malachi onto his shoulders, his every motion causing his body to protest.

“Come on,” he said, offering Cerridwen a hand up. She got to her feet and limped a few steps into the center of the tunnel. He turned away from her. He could not stand to see her pain, not now.

“Keep moving.”

ineteen

P ain.

He had felt pain before. Not like this.

“It will be all right. She will forgive you,” he’d said, and he’d looked at his daughter. And despite what she’d done, despite the foolishness of her actions and the hurt she had caused her mother, he had been proud of her. She’d survived imprisonment, had fought in the battle when she should have run screaming away. Her hair, that same flame-orange as Ayla’s, hung in a matted tangle around her shoulders, her face was streaked with soot and blood. She’d looked so much like her mother, but she’d reminded him of himself. Then, the pain.

The crushing blow of a blade striking his shoulder, the flesh and bone putting up resistance, agonizing resistance under the weight and power that bore down on them, but ultimately splitting, rending, what should have been relief turned to sheer agony in a second’s time. And how long was the second, as the edge drove farther and farther, separated more flesh, more bone, cut through him easily and yet with so much pressure, so much pain. He could not make a sound. He could not fall to escape the thing that burrowed through him, bruising, tearing, cutting.

It was a second, and a lifetime. The weapon that had become a part of him withdrew, and then he could do nothing but fall, the whole of his world. He heard Cerridwen scream, knew that he must protect her, and the knowing was another pain, for he could not. He felt her weight atop him; she’d thrown herself over his body. That extra weight added a warm spike to the pain, to the hot blood that cooled so quickly on his skin. It was a gift, to feel her slight body thrown over his, and his only regret was that the first time his daughter had embraced him should be the moment of his death, and hers, too.

Then the pain took him, washed over his mind with a red-hot veil, and he listened for the sound of wings, dreaded them. But they did not come, and he could no longer think.

He did not wake, not his eyes, but his mind did, and he knew he was moving. Not under his own power. He heard the grunting breath of someone running, felt each step in the pain that jolted through him. But the pain was somewhere else, somewhere beside him. Though he could feel it, it did not consume him. He could not see where he was, but he heard an occasional voice. Cedric, he thought, and Cerridwen?

That was good, that she was not dead.

Eventually, the jostling stopped, and he fell, though hands tried to support him, and hit something hard as though he were a discarded sack. The cold crept into his skin, leached through his clothes, to where he was wet with his own blood and perspiration. He listened for wings. He did not wish to hear them.

He remembered another time when he lay like this, in the dark, in pain, waiting for them. His once-brethren Angels had come for him swiftly then. He had seen how they shined…he did not shine that way himself anymore. And he had felt hatred and despair for the first time. Hatred and despair because of that Faery, whose name he did not know, did not wish to know. His only wish had been for revenge, even as he’d pleaded for forgiveness from the shining creatures he’d once worked beside in service to the Almighty. The pain then had been unbearable, as they’d lashed at his wings, left him a humbled shell. It had been much worse then, because he had never felt it before. He’d never felt this pain before, either, never known the feeling of a mortal wound, but he could bear it. Perhaps because he did not despair, not this time. He’d been saved then, by Keller, who had so easily repaired him with his strange Human tools, who had been so eager to help him become a mortal in this world.

But no amount of Human medicine could help him now, and such a hope was not the reason for his complacent acceptance of the pain, of the death that awaited him. Ayla. He’d wanted to kill her those many years ago, had known his life would be complete when he did. How those feelings had changed, once he’d seen her again. The sight of her, slick with sweat, hair whipping behind her like a thick rope of flame, her every movement calculated and controlled as she slew creatures far larger and more frightening than she, had awakened something in him that had been wholly mortal. The drive to possess her had overcome the need to destroy her, though he did not admit it then. That moment had changed him, and countless moments after, though he had not recognized it at the time. Perhaps it was only something one could see looking back, not something one experienced as it happened. But now, though he was close to death, he could not despair. He had loved her, and she him, and he could not despair the end. He heard a rustling, knew them to be close. He did not wish to go with them, and he would fight, though he did not know how, or if it were even possible. Go away, he told them without speaking. Leave me…I do not want you.

I am not ready.

He heard his soul cry it—how similar it was to the cries he’d heard from those he’d escorted to Aether, and before that, long, long before that, to the Gates. Ready or not, they would come for him. But they receded now, perhaps out of respect? Did they recognize him? Or did they see his rejection of God on him, as he had seen it on so many souls that did not go to the Gates, but were abandoned for the others to collect?

Let the others come. He would fight them, too.

I am not ready.

He was greedy for more time, more life, but above all, he wanted to see Ayla’s face once last time, not in his memory—though she burned through it now, every moment, every glance—

but to truly see her.

Let me see her. Then, I will be ready.

They came to the Strip, and no sounds of screaming, no smell of blood, met them. Cerridwen almost sobbed with relief, almost fell to her knees in gratitude that they were delivered from the Darkworld. But Cedric kept going, and so she did not allow herself that moment of relief.

“Keep moving,” he said, for the hundredth time.

Keep moving. Keep moving. It had become a chant in her mind, punctuating every step, every motion of her wings. Keep moving away from the darkness that followed, though eventually there would be nowhere to go, and it would catch up to them. She did not say this to Cedric, because he already knew, and because he did not say it to her, out of fear of frightening her, if she guessed right. If they did not speak of it, the truth could be avoided. They did not escape death now, merely strove to choose the location. Malachi hung limp over Cedric’s shoulders. Once or twice, Cerridwen tried to use the other sight to see if any energy remained in him, but the skill was too new, and not really a skill yet at all. The moment she looked at him, her focus deserted her. Perhaps that was for the best. She could not make herself acknowledge, not with the word that she knew she must apply eventually, what Malachi was to her. It made her feel ashamed, for the way she’d treated him, and foolish, that she had not figured it out before.

How many hours had she spent staring at the tapestry depicting her mother slaying King Garret, wondering what he was like in life, hating that she had never known? How many nights had she stared into her mirror, trying to find even one feature that resembled the man immortalized in the portraits in the Palace, or some link his sister, the Queene he had murdered?

Too long, it seemed now. No wonder she had not been able to find the King in her plain, mortal features. He was not there, as Mabb’s ethereal Fae beauty was not there, for they were not a part of her.

She’d wondered often, as she’d grown, if her father could still watch her, even in death, and if he would be proud of her. Oh, he had been able to watch her, and she was certain he would not have been proud. She’d treated Malachi with nothing but derision, lashed out at him for daring to be mortal. How stupid she must have seemed to him, flaunting her false heritage. Had it hurt him? How had he not hated her?

All of those times she had prided herself on being her father’s daughter, as she had spewed bile she had memorized from other Courtiers about the distastefulness of mortals and the superiority of the Fae. Gods, did all of them know her secret?

No, they could not have known. There was nothing in her appearance, apart from her wings, that would have marked her out as his. Was there?

She stole a glance at Malachi’s face as he hung, gray and unconscious, over Cedric’s shoulders. There was nothing there that resembled her, but he was nearly dead, and surely that was not a recommendation of anyone’s features.

Only the wings, which flopped heavily and laden with metal from his back, told her the truth. As they crossed into the tunnels of the Lightworld, she realized why hers had always been hidden. “It was because of me, wasn’t it?” she asked Cedric, still keeping her voice low in case the creatures were nearby. “She would not have had you all bind your wings, if it were not for mine.”