Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

He’s laying it on the table, and I respect Michael Jenner more than ever. I’ve never considered how rapid aging must interfere with a Therian’s ability to interact with humans, to create and establish relationships without revealing their inhumanity. Sure, in the two years I knew Danika, I saw the were-falcon age from a skinny preadolescent to a mature young woman. Physically, at any rate. She wasn’t even five years old when she died.

“Neither of our peoples want to see humans crushed or removed from power in this city,” Jenner continues. “Because if the city falls to the rule of goblins, Fey, or others, they will spread beyond the valley and across this state and into others. Fear and violence will become a way of life, and that way leads to destruction.”

“The Fey don’t want to rule; they’ve been our allies,” Kismet says.

Wyatt laughs. It’s a low, terrible sound that skitters worms of fear down my spine. All eyes are on him, but he says nothing. Arms crossed over his chest, he gives his full attention to Isleen.

She takes the stage again. “You assume the Fey are your friends because they came to you ten years ago and pushed you to create the Triads. You assume the Fey are on your side because they’ve fed you information and occasionally patted you on the head when you’ve done a good job. You assume too much, and you forget that the creatures helping you are not human, care nothing for humans, and are as old as the rivers dividing this city.”

The fear in my spine settles icy cold in my gut. My mind whirls with information. Things I know about the creation of the Triads—Amalie approached Wyatt and the first trained Hunters; Amalie made contact with the officers who became the brass; Amalie set everything about the Triads in motion.

“I don’t get it,” I say, startling myself by speaking at all. “Why would the Fey Council put so much time and effort into the Triads? Just to control us?”

“That,” Isleen replies, “and to amuse themselves.”

“Amuse themselves?”

“Human literature is often incorrect in its records of the ancient races, but humans did manage to capture one aspect of the Fey. They see other races, lesser races, as playthings. They delight in interfering and creating chaos. And, although not immortal, most live an exceptionally long time.”

“So you’re saying that Amalie’s been playing us this whole time? That everything she’s done for the Triads is the setup for some sort of ten-year practical joke?” I can’t reconcile the notion with everything I know, and a quick glance at Baylor and Kismet suggests the same on their end.

“Ten years is half my lifetime,” Jenner says, “and an eighth of the average human’s. But it’s merely a moment to a sprite or a faerie.”

“Or an elf,” Wyatt says. Speaking for the first time, and his words make my stomach twist. He hasn’t changed his posture or taken the floor. His expression is flat, but his eyes blaze with anger even from a distance.

I catch his gaze and hold it. “What are you saying?” I ask.

“That I’ve been a fool. A fool and a puppet, and I’ve been those things for a long, long time.”

Wyatt holds me captive with his eyes and his voice, and it’s as though we’re having this conversation alone. “The system that we put in place has been rotting at its core for years, Evy. Call and Snow were just symptoms of a larger problem—one that I couldn’t see until recently. It took losing everything I’d once lived for to see just how broken things are.”

“The Triads?”

“Mostly. Whatever purpose Amalie ultimately had in mind for us, she chose well when she picked the first Hunters. I was so blinded by grief and rage against the bounty hunters who killed my family that I’d have listened to anyone who pointed me in a direction and said to kill. Most of us had the same grudge against a Halfie or a goblin. We did everything she told us to do.”

An image of Rufus flashes in my mind and with it the secret I’m keeping for him. He didn’t ask me to keep it, sure, but how can I tell Wyatt that one of his oldest, dearest friends helped slaughter his family ten years ago and put him on this path?

“We never questioned an order from the Fey Council or the brass, not once in ten years,” Wyatt continues. “Even the orders that didn’t make sense, that we found difficult to live with.”

I know him. I can see in his eyes and the slight downturn of his mouth that he’s thinking about Rain, the Kitsune he shot in cold blood for the simple crime of loving a human.

“Thinking back on some of them, they made sense as political moves. They drove a big damned wedge between humans and potential ally races.”

“Sunset Terrace,” I say, choking on the words.

Next to Wyatt, Phineas nods and doesn’t bother hiding a flash of grief. Several days before I died the first time, I’d hidden in the Sunset Terrace Apartments with my friend Danika, in order to escape the Hunters who wanted me dead. She helped me escape before the Triads descended and, upon orders from the brass, burned the complex to the ground with all inhabitants trapped within its walls. More than three hundred members of the Coni and Stri Clans—all birds of prey of one variety or another—died that night. The order never made sense, even as a scare tactic to keep the Clans in line, and it was directly responsible for the retaliatory attack on humans at Parker’s Palace.

The brass had to know there’d be a response of some sort, Assembly sanctioned or not, and Parker’s Palace was it.

“You don’t think the Fey Council simply condoned the attack on Sunset Terrace,” I say. “You think they ordered it through the brass?”

“Yes.”

“And I gave them a convenient excuse?”

“Yes.”

“But why—oh fuck.” It comes crashing down like a tidal wave, and everything seems fuzzy and far away for a moment. Weeks ago I accused the brass of purposely murdering the Coni and Stri because they were one of the oldest, most powerful of the Clans. The Coni are bi-shifters, able to maintain human form while still bearing wings strong enough to allow them to fly—like angels, creatures of legend. I tried to expose the brass, to make them accountable for Sunset Terrace, so the Assembly wouldn’t demand Rufus’s life in return. After circumstances secured a stay of execution on Rufus, I’d let the whole thing go.

Goddammit!

“Stone was right,” Kismet says. She sounds like she’d rather chew glass than admit it. Kismet knew what I was after back then, and she nearly killed me for it.

“She was,” Phineas says. “But had she known then, she still couldn’t have gotten to them. They never would have allowed it.”

“How could they have stopped it?”

I have a funny feeling I know what he’s going to say.

“Because the three men you called the brass were no longer human. They were full-time avatars for three of Amalie’s sprites. You were always being given her orders, protected by her whims. She’s been manipulating you. All of you.”

The room tips a little and I drop my head into my hands, elbows braced on my knees. It’s too much, too fast. Everything is falling apart, spinning out of control. And yet it all makes a perfect kind of sense, even down to this morning’s group suicide. The Fey Council has been silent for weeks. They didn’t help look for me when Thackery had me. They hid behind pacifism and refused to get involved when an elf tried to bring a demon into our world. Their invisible fingerprints cover everything. All signs point to the Council.

Wyatt and I had stood in Amalie’s presence in First Break, the underground home of the Fair Ones, and I had felt at peace there. Protected. Did she actually lie to our faces that day, or were her words chosen so carefully that it was all truth hiding behind falsehoods? I don’t know. It seems so long ago. Another lifetime.