The Shadow King (2 page)

“I’m well aware, child,” Lalura said testily, moving a little bit to adjust the position of her rump on the pillow. “That’s exactly why you can’t go.”

Now Lalura looked up and settled a very stern, very powerful gaze on Violet. The air in the room grew still, and Pi stopped bouncing. “Violet Arbora Kellen, you must make this journey alone. Something waits for you in those shadows.”

Violet’s throat tightened. “Like… what?”

“That’s something you’ll have to discover for yourself.”

Time skipped, and the space between them shrunk.

“I’d go so far as to say, it might just be your destiny.”

Violet blinked.
Destiny?
But then, the ancient woman who was far more powerful than most of the supernatural population
slowly
stood up, pressed her hand to her back as if it was aching her, and then placed her fingers to her brow. Violet noticed her other hand trembling slightly where it clutched her cane.

It struck her in that moment, just how very old Lalura Chantelle had become. And that made her feel a little odd inside, as if a foreboding were opening up in some dark space, like a black flower blooming, slowly unfolding its harbinger petals.

“But you’ll need to prepare,” said Lalura in her scratchy voice. “There is much studying in your future.”

A part of Violet felt like objecting. It was a natural reaction; her sister was stuck somewhere rumored to be highly unpleasant, and every second counted. But Lalura was right, of course. “Better late than never” was the old adage. No one simply went into the unknown without preparing.

No one who wanted to come back, anyway.

Chapter One

“I hate these people.”

Violet approached her friend from behind. She was seated at her computer, her shoulders hunched in frustration, and in the reflection of the screen, Violet could see she was glaring.

“What’s going on?”

“Have you ever noticed that any time you dare to say anything negative about the weather you’re experiencing, it ends up being nothing more than a goddamn invitation for everyone else to compete with you for ‘Worst Weather’ prize? I mean, never mind that you might be posting about the weather because it’s purely, horribly awful. Never mind that you might just be saying something about it because you’re hoping for a bit of empathy or even
sympathy
, at the very least. No, everyone just has to prove that what you’re feeling is
nothing
compared to what
they’re
going through.”

Vi’s eyebrows lifted. “O
kaaay
. You
are
having a bad morning.” Obviously. Since she’d sent a text to Violet at 7:45 a.m., an hour of day that normally saw Poppy comatose. The text had read, simply: Mornings suck horse balls.

“That’s truly beside the point,” Poppy said.

Vi chewed on her cheek. “You know? You’re right.” It
was
beside the point. Bad morning or not, what Poppy was saying was actually true. “Yes. I
have
noticed that, if you must know.” She pulled up a roller chair beside her friend and looked at the screen. It was Facebook, of course: 3,477 “friends.”

“You don’t hate these people and you know it.” Poppy was an online social butterfly. She loved her Facebook peeps. Was that right? Facebook peeps? Or was peeps for something else?

“I do today.”

“Not one of them felt sorry for you, huh?” Vi leaned forward to read her friend’s post. According to the post, the heat had given her a migraine. She glanced at Poppy side-long. No wonder she was in a bad mood. Migraine pain would do that to the kindest of souls. Not for the first time, Vi found herself wishing Poppy wasn’t human.

Persephone Glacia Nix was her best friend, and had been for twenty years. But unlike everyone else she knew in the Unseelie Realm, Poppy wasn’t a Tuath. She wasn’t even an unseelie fae. In fact, she wasn’t a fae at all.

Poppy was, against all odds – human.

She was simply one of the most strikingly talented human beings Violet had ever known, and just like Violet, she had apprenticed under Lalura Chantelle for years. Her capacity for magic was nearly unrivaled. Violet knew of a few other humans out there who were able to manipulate it the way Poppy did, but they were far between. Most mages were blessed with some other supernatural genetic tendency: Werewolves, Offspring, Akyri, Dragons, and so forth. Poppy was simply a mortal woman. Not that you’d ever know it from watching her perform what she’d learned under Lalura’s tutelage. And from what she’d taught
herself
in her spare time.

“Of course not,” Poppy retorted hotly.

“You know, I’ve often wondered if when it comes to comparing weather, it’s just that everyone else feels like misery deserves company. Sort of an outcry of solidarity thing,” she suggested helpfully.

“
No
.” Poppy didn’t shake her head; that would have hurt. But her scowl darkened. “Why are you defending them? What the hell is the point of that? Do I
look
like I want you to take up for them? Do I
seem
to be in a particularly forgiving mood?”

Again, Poppy was right. “Nope,” Violet shook her head. “No, you don’t. I’m sorry.”

Poppy sighed in frustration, and most likely, pain. “
Listen
to this,” she hissed. She squinted at the screen and read one of the responses to her post about the 89 degree weather and her headache.
“‘That sounds wonderful! Send that warmth this way! I’m so sick of this cold rain! You got it good, girl!’
” She read the words with a nasal whine, clearly demonstrating her distaste for the statement, and probably, at that particular point in time, for the person who’d made it, too.

Violet chewed on her cheek, then nodded. “Okay, you got me. People are apathetic sons of bitches when it comes to the weather. It’s a strange phenomenon. They just become jackasses.”

“
Yeah
, they do. And thank you, that’s what I needed to hear.” She grabbed her purse, pushed away from her desk in her at-home office, and turned to face her friend at last. It was the first time she’d made eye contact with her since Violet had walked into the apartment.

“I’d take the pain away if I could,” Vi told her.

“I know you would.” But healing magic wasn’t something you could learn like warlock magic. It took a natural-born healer to take away someone’s suffering. It made Violet feel very helpless at times.

She changed the subject. “You know, you really should lock your door when you’re home alone. I walked right in.”

Violet often worried about Poppy in the mortal realm. It had such a violent undercurrent to it – and this was coming from an unseelie fae. It seemed to be built on a platform of seething resentment and greed that was ceaselessly fed by fear and distrust. Though attractiveness wasn’t a necessary ingredient of trouble, Violet knew it often helped it along, and Poppy was downright beautiful. She was a “mutt” genetically, who claimed her blue eyes and height were from Norway, her winsome and strong blood was Scottish, and her inability to burn in the sun was from Brazil. Oh – and her love of hockey came from Canada.

She’d been born in Ontario, and raised there until she was five, when a her family moved to the US. She’d been in Seattle ever since.

“The door is warded,” Poppy said. “It’s only going to let in people I like.” She smiled, insinuating that Violet was obviously one of those people. “You feel like coffee?” she asked rather desperately, and her smile faded at once.

There was rarely a time when Violet
didn’t
feel like having coffee, which not only gave her energy, but had a mild opiate-like effect upon the unseelie fae. And she was betting that Poppy, who was suffering from that migraine, felt like having it even more. Any migraineur knew the benefits of caffeine during a ringer of a headache.

“Yes,” Vi replied. “I’ll buy.” She stood. “But let me shield us first.” She wasn’t supposed to cast magic in the mortal realm. It was rather forbidden, in the way that breaking the speed limit was forbidden for mortals. It was usually not caught or even perceived by the fae elders, but on the off chance that it was, it could turn a good day bad in a flash. Still, a simple weather shielding spell behind closed doors would go unnoticed, and her friend was in dire straits.

She cast the spell, which would surround them wherever they went throughout the day, negating the effects of the heat wave they were experiencing. Poppy smiled gratefully, though it was tight around its edges due to pain.

They left the apartment and headed down the block, and as they walked, Violet fingered the ring on her right middle finger. It allowed her to move freely in the mortal realm, which was replete with cold metal: Iron.

Iron was caustic to the fae. She, herself, had always been particularly sensitive to it. She could even feel it in the dirt sometimes. If she was visiting an area on Earth where the ground was red, then despite the ring on her finger, she felt an almost sickening heat and vibration rise up through her legs. She touched the ring now, just out of habit and a need for security, like Linus and his blanket.

“If it makes you feel any better, it’s supposed to cool off again tomorrow afternoon,” she told her friend. Poppy hated heat, and the heat wave was odd for September, especially in Seattle. But it would be short lived.

“It does, actually. Thank you.”

A few blocks from Poppy’s apartment, they passed a huge cluster of signs glued onto the brick wall of an old cannery. The signs declared that PAX Prime, the number one video game convention in the nation, was soon coming to Seattle. Various games and their creators were featured on the posters, but most prominent of all were the notices reminding the gaming public that the next release in the video game sensation, Black Eyed Kids, was about to hit online retail shelves, and that
Shadenigma
, the games’ creator, would be signing advanced copies at PAX.

Violet stopped and stared up at the posters. She wasn’t sure she’d readily admit it to many people, but she was actually a fan of the BEK games for the Nintendo 3DS. She’d played every one of the releases so far, and happily, if barely, made it to every final level, though level fifteen of game four had given her some trouble. Fae were naturally dexterous beings, quick and agile, and that ability to literally react quickly was essential for most video games. Maybe it was cheating. Not that it mattered with a pastime.

But something struck her just then as she stared up at the latest release announcements. All of a sudden, something felt too familiar about the games. There was no other way to describe it than that.

And it was also pretty freaky how quickly they were being released. “You know… this Shadenigma guy is turning these games out so fast,” she said, pronouncing Shadenigma as it was supposed to be pronounced,
Shade-nigma
, “I can’t help but wonder if he’s purely human.”

“I know, right?” Poppy agreed. “It’s been six months since their inception, and this is already game five. Who moves that fast? My niece was hooked on
Five Nights at Freddy’s
until this came along. Now FNAF is apparently yesterday’s news in her circles.”

Violet had sort of meant the non-human comment as a joke, but now… eyeing the poster of the BEK video game series creator who mysteriously went by no other name than the chat name
Shadenigma
, she actually did find herself wondering. Her gaze narrowed on him. She leaned in.

The space around her seemed to thicken, and sound drifted away. The man in the image was little more than a well-built outline in a black hoodie, his face completely hidden but for a bit of strong chin with a hint of stubble. Eyes of an indeterminate color reflected from the darkness in a most unnatural way. She couldn’t even really see them, and yet they seemed to be looking right at her.

She blinked. Sound returned, and the air thinned out again.

Humans could do that eye effect with Photoshop. Couldn’t they? Violet stepped back. “Let’s get to Starbucks.”

Chapter Two

The coffee shop they’d chosen was on the corner of Pike and Melrose, and was probably the largest Starbucks in the country. It was the newly opened Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room, a massive bi-level structure decorated in steampunk piping where you could watch the coffee beans being over-roasted and pay exorbitant prices for a muffin. The bathrooms were co-ed, which Violet and Poppy both had mixed feelings about, and the Wi-Fi was excellent. The seating was a bit sparse given the size of the venue, probably because much of it was relegated to a pricey boutique-styled mini-store where tourists could purchase all manner of coffee-related items, from the beans themselves to leather cup cozies to artisan mugs made solely for the store and using only cruelty-free sand. Or something like that.

All in all, however, the atmosphere was warm and inviting, if you could find a place to settle in, and was especially so if you were lucky enough to grab a cushion or two next to one of the fire places. This time of day, around 8 a.m., the store was more or less deserted. The larger crowds shuffled in during the early afternoon, and hit a peak around 3 p.m. Coffee drinkers were late risers. Which was why they so often needed coffee.