City of Shadows (22 page)

He'd once told me he'd never go back.

But that was before he lost everything.

“
So, a group could do this? It doesn't have to be one person …”

“With a large enough source of draíocht and prior knowledge of weaving it, I believe it's possible.”

“But you aren't sure?” I jogged up a set of steps beside Kael.

“No, I'm not sure.” We'd reached the entrance hall. He hesitated by the front door, and turned to settle something of a softer gaze on me. “I'm going to need each and every warrior at my disposal should whomever this is succeed in opening a stable path to Faerie. As much as I am not convinced by you or your motives, I need you.”

“Me or the spirit?”

“All that you are.”

The girl made of fairy dust.
“I'll do what I can, but not for you.” For the people of London who'd get caught in the crossfire, for the fae shoved into the dark for no other crime than being who they are. Kael curtly nodded and opened the door. “General, do you have any leads at all?”

His eyes narrowed, sharpening into suspicion. “Sovereign is entirely capable of everything I've mentioned.”

Of course he'd blame this on Reign. The rock star and the hound were a convenient scapegoat for every fae screwup.

I laughed softly. “Really? You're going to blame this on Reign? He might not much like the life right now, but he wouldn't sabotage his chances at getting back the life he's lost.”

The general wasn't fazed by my words, and that determined glare only reminded me of how little I really knew. “Sovereign has many lifetimes behind
him,
Alina. He'll create another; same as we all will, should the worst happen. Now, unless you have anything else to say, I have many lies to spin for the mayor.”

“Lies?”

A tight smile hooked into his thin lips. “London isn't ready for the truth.”

I returned to the lounge as the fae started to trickle back through the house. Nyx was slumped back in a chair, her boots up on the table. “Hey.” I stopped just behind her. “Have you seen Samuel?”

“Can you believe it?” she asked, ignoring my question. “After all this time, they're trying to open a path back? You couldn't drown me in draíocht to get me back there.”

A TV chatted too loudly behind me. One of the fae immediately switched the channel to London News. I winced at the wide-screen footage of the ogre trashing St. James's Park.

The feed cut to a neatly presented reporter holding a microphone in front of shoppers on Oxford Street. “Why don't they go back to where they came from?” The shopper made a sweeping gesture with her hand, nail polish flashing. “We don't want their trouble here. It's bad enough we got immigrants from overseas, now we gotta pay to keep the fairies fed. I don't pay my taxes so they can sit on their arses all day, lookin' pretty.”

Another few faces, this time a well-dressed older couple. “Before they came, everything was better. You didn't have to worry about the touch all the time. What's the government doin' about it? This isn't the
London
I grew up in.” Cut to a cabbie leaning out of his black cab: “No, I won't take them. Can't risk it. There ain't no knowing what's going on in their heads. I mean, if they kept this secret, what else are they hiding? That general has a lot of questions that need answering.”

The few fae still watching did so in silence. I knew exactly what it felt like to be looked down upon as different, as not wanted, but seeing them experience the same left me hollow. London was their home, as much as it was any one of those people from the news report. They'd been here centuries, hiding, shunned.

Nyx's smile pulled down into a grimace. “The falling property prices, the increase in missing person's cases, even the damn rain? They're blaming it all on the fae. This needs to be stopped before it gets any worse.” She planted her boots, stood up, and headed for the door. “Check the roof,” she called back.

“Huh?”

“For Samuel.”

I lost her in the warren of corridors but made my way to the fire escape. I breathed in the after-rain evening air and welcomed London's background din. Samuel was here, as Nyx had said he would be. He was standing close to the edge, hands buried in his pockets, framed by London's sparkling nighttime cityscape. I hesitated, but only to run my gaze over the cut of his profile. I knew what he was capable of, I'd been at the receiving end of his warrior skills often enough, but I'd never really stopped to see through the warrior to the man beneath. Alone, up here, with his face turned toward a city where tension crackled in the air, he seemed both powerful—in that typically masculine-fae way—and vulnerable.

“
Hey.” My dislike of heights kept me a few feet behind him, but close enough to see the seriousness etched into his face. He turned his head toward the vast Ferris wheel—the London Eye. “You okay?” I asked. “You missed the pep talk.”

“It's no joke, Alina.”

My smile faded. “I know.” I ventured a little closer, just enough for him to be able to glance over his shoulder at me.

“You don't. I was young when the elders purged us from Faerie.” He smiled, but it was a cruel, ironic smile, part snarl. “They killed so many, searching for peace by making war.” He paused, a painful frown sharpening his features, likely from the memories. “Hundreds died, fighting for their right to stay. Our young. Our old. Friends. Family. The Hunt came, rounded us up like beasts, slaughtered the weakest in front of us. That fear, it's …” He looked down, breaking away from my gaze. “We couldn't escape the cut of their blades.”

I wanted to help him, to say the right thing, but I wasn't sure how. What could I possibly say or do to make right what had been done to them? Nothing. Perhaps that was all I need do:
nothing.
Just listen.

I stepped closer, close enough that I could have slipped my hand in his. I wouldn't though. If I tried it, I'd probably end up facedown with his knee in my back.

He turned his face back to London but the city's lights still glittered in his eyes. “We didn't know what awaited us here. We had our own myths about Taerra as you have myths about Faerie. Those myths weren't inviting. We fought with blade, with teeth, and claw. With everything we had. It wasn't enough. Only the Three Spirits combined can temper the elders.”

“Kael mentioned that an elder could weave a path to Faerie.”

He
cast his gaze toward London, his smile sad and knowing, but I knew that look, his thoughts were another world away. “Fae blood is rich with life. Old blood, the bloodlines of families who can trace their heritage back to the time of the Reckoning, they are … different. Draíocht is more a part of them than any other fae. They're able to harvest it, take it into them, manipulate and weave it, as though it's a tangible substance. Those fae, we call them elders.”

He spoke as though in awe, but I knew by now that nothing in Faerie was heroic. Everything there was out to destroy and devour.

A breeze carried with it the hum of traffic and a distant siren. This world wasn't like theirs. “
So beautiful, you'd cry tears of blood. So enticing, you'd sacrifice everything you've ever loved to stay one more day
,” Reign had told me, both afraid of his world and in awe of it.

There's no place like home.
A part of me knew that feeling of coming home and ached to go back. It didn't matter that I'd never seen it, breathed its air, Faerie was a part of me, the same as it was a part of all the fae exiled here.

“We—the fae—we don't belong here,” Samuel said softly. “It takes great courage to move forward when all around you holds you back. We could make it work, but I fear it's coming apart.”

I held his gaze, looked deep into his tricolored eyes and really knew him, as he knew me. Outsiders, looking in. For all his skill and prowess, the loneliness ate at him. Inside, we were more alike than I'd realized.

I swallowed to clear the hitch in my throat. “Do you think the fae—the ones who are trying to open a link back—just want to go home?”

He considered my words for a few moments, turning his gaze once again to London and her sprawling patchwork of old and new. Long evening shadows
played
on his face and darkened his eyes, eyes that studied the city as though searching for answers along its jagged horizon. “No, there's more to it. If we were to return, the elders, the harpy, they would kill us. Taerra has us scattered and divided. This world has softened us, made us weak. If we were to ever go back, we'd have to be strong. Stronger than this world allows for. We'd need more draíocht than can be found here, and an army behind us.”

“Then why meddle with Faerie at all?”

He smiled at the city. “You have Arachne within you. You must know there's only one reason to risk the ire of the elders.”

What I knew of Arachne just told me she'd fought the harpy and Cu Sith, that all three wanted to rule, but none could. Perhaps Arachne, like all fae, wanted to be recognized. The London fae weren't ever going to be satisfied living in the dark. They wanted their freedom back, and more. “Reinforcements?”

He nodded. “They—whoever is doing this—want to prove to the elders that we didn't die here. Quite the opposite. We're alive, and … ” he trailed off, his gaze finding me once more, but this time a fresh hunger glittered in those amethyst eyes.

“And what?”

“The fae could control this city, this land, and its people.”

The general had spoken as though this was the work of a few individuals. Samuel spoke as though the fae all wanted the same thing: to rule. “That's a big leap.”

“Is it? You know what it's like out there; the fae aren't going to be pushed into the shadows. The queen's death was the catalyst. It's inevitable.”

The
icy nip of the breeze sprinkled gooseflesh across my skin. “The FA will stop it.”

“Will we?” He pulled his hand from his pocket and held out a crumpled piece of paper. I took it, unfolded it, and read the neat, tightly packed handwriting:

Their laws are laughable. Love isn't the worst we can do. Their minds are pliable in our hands. We twist their dreams, distort their desires, make them ours. At least now they look upon us with deserved respect, albeit born of fear and suspicion. Control the fae, no more free-roaming rights, no more positions of power. We, the Fae Authority, agree to these conditions; they appear to need reassurance to keep the masses calm. Their contracts are as worthless as the paper they're written on. We do not follow their laws, but we'll pretend to … for now. The pitiful humans of this forgotten world cannot fathom the danger waiting in the dark, seeking the light. We've been buried too long. The death of the queen is proof enough. We cannot live among them, on their level. Such a notion is folly. This leaves only one solution. Rule them, as the gods we are. They will worship whether they want to or not. There is no choice for them to make. We take their choices from them. We own them. Our time is now.

“Who wrote it?” Dread hollowed out my insides, letting the cold rush in, along with a memory, “
London isn't ready for the truth
.”

Samuel didn't reply; he didn't need to. “For the first time since I ran from the Hunt, I have no idea what to do.” He turned away from the edge and strode toward the fire exit.

“Wait.” I followed. “We can't let this go. You know that, right?”

He
stopped at the door, hand on the handle. “Alina, Kael is …” Samuel's shoulders slumped. “You have to understand. He saved me.”

I reached for Samuel's arm. He turned at my touch and looked down at me, not with disdain or frustration, but with concern, those brilliant eyes muted by weariness.

“He's dangerous,” I said.

“Kael has saved all of us in the FA. He gave us purpose when there was nothing left. We'd give our lives and follow him into Magh Meall if he asked us to.”

Magh Meall—the underworld
, my memories supplied. “You'd follow a man with dubious morals, who's killed hundreds of his own men on the battlefield, to your death?”

Anger flashed in Samuel's eyes. He brushed my hand away. “He's made mistakes, as have we all.”

“This isn't a mistake. It's intent. Kael knows exactly what he's doing. Mistakes? I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. You'd think after a few hundred years you'd know better. Granted, I've not been around for long, but still. That little note is practically a confession. He wants to rule the people here. And you're just going to go along with it, because he says so?”

“There's no evidence he's put into action any of what he's written. If anything, he's doing everything he can to stop the unrest.”

No evidence, but plenty of suspicion.
“How did you get this?”

He threw his gaze toward the amber-tinged evening skies.

“Where, Samuel?”

“Tucked into the planner in his desk. I saw it when you were looking for your daggers.”

“
Then there's no doubt.” I folded the note and tucked it into my pocket. “And it's not the only thing he's guilty of. We have to confront him. If you won't, I will.” Kael needed to explain the note himself, face-to-face, and he could explain where Becky was too. No more avoidance tactics. No more vague questions. I was getting direct answers from him if I had to hold a knife to his throat to do it.

I shoved by Samuel, but he caught my arm, jolting me to a halt.

“Don't.” That tone was one he used on his FA brethren. An order.

I bristled and looked down at where his fingers dug in. His grip relaxed but he didn't let go. “Not yet,” he said softly. “If we call him out with the FA behind him, he'll order them to take us in. And they will.”