Melissa Marr - Radiant Shadows

“Because your life and mine are entangled,” she finished.

“In some way.” He looked out at the parking lot. “Maybe you should stay here in the room, maybe—”

“No.” She was right behind him when she said it.

He looked over his shoulder at her. “Either of my sisters would kill you without compunction. I can’t lose you.”

“I know.” She put a hand on his arm and tugged so he was facing her. “You aren’t using any sort of logic, Devlin. Hounds can’t stay trapped, and even if I could, wouldn’t it at least be safer to have someone with me?”

He growled, a sound that was very not–High Court, but nothing inside of him felt High Court anymore. “I don’t know whether you’re safer in the mortal world or in Faerie. Perhaps stay here , and Irial—”

Ani reached up and pulled him down for a kiss. “No.”

“Call Irial. See if he’d come here.” Devlin hated the idea of Ani trapped in a room with the embodiment of temptation, but he hated the idea of Ani being killed even more.

All of these emotions are… too much.

She felt them all, knew every emotion he was trying to make sense of, allowed him to express them even if his centuries of hiding them kept them from being visible.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“You with me and safe.” He knew it wasn’t logical, but he didn’t want to be apart from Ani.

“One problem solved then.” She picked up the shirt he’d been holding earlier. After she shoved it and the rest of her belongings into the bag, she zipped it. “That’s what I want too. I’m going with you at least as far as Huntsdale. We’ll figure out the rest after we talk to Iri.”

“And Niall. We will consult the Dark King,” he said.

She lifted her bag. “And Gabriel. He’s likely to be difficult. There’s this whole no-dating-the-Gabriel’s-daughter thing….”

Devlin shrugged, but he let her feel the excitement that filled him. “We are, though.”

“We are,” Ani repeated in a soft voice. She stared up at him. “I would fight him for you… well, if he would fight me, but he’s afraid I’m going to get broken.”

For a moment, Devlin stared at her, not wanting to tell her that she was far more likely to break others than to be broken. He was willing to sacrifice everything he’d ever been for her. He brushed his lips over hers. “Gabriel is a fool. You are not invincible, Ani, but you are not mortal-weak. You are a worthy fighting partner.” Devlin reached through a false pocket on the side of his trousers and slid a knife from a thigh sheath. He held it out. “Here. I know you have yours, but… I would give you… if you…”

She took it. “A girl can never have too many weapons.”

He lifted her bag from her shoulder. “You need to wake the steed.”

“Dev?” She gave him a very serious look and put her hand on his chest. “I’ll do my best to be careful with everything you are giving me.”

He didn’t have the words to answer that, so he merely nodded.

She reached out to turn the doorknob, but before she opened it, he put a hand on hers: there were faeries who wanted her dead.

“May I go first?” he asked.

“Today, but not always.” She smiled at him. “You know that if there’s any chance to fight, I won’t sit on the sidelines like some silly High Court faery.”

“You’re the daughter of Gabriel. I wouldn’t expect anything less.” Devlin repressed the surge of happiness he felt at having someone want to fight alongside him.

The Queen’s Assassin was to be alone. He lived and fought alone. Sorcha had always made that detail explicitly clear. She’d given him soldiers and guards to train; she’d allowed him almost complete power in such matters. There were only two rules: unlike in the other courts, no High Court soldiers were to be female, and his own prowess was to be held as an example. His ability to kill efficiently was proof of his other sister’s parentage. The bloodthirstiness Sorcha abhorred in Bananach, she exploited in Devlin.

Ani, without meaning to, challenged every limitation he’d lived by for eternity. He hadn’t truly known what he lacked until Ani’s vibrancy had illuminated the emptiness in his life. He had a fleeting image of training Ani. If they were able to leave Sorcha and live as solitaries, they’d need to be stronger than any other faery they met. Her heritage certainly predisposed her to be so: Gabriel had been the left hand of the Dark Court, the dispenser of Irial’s punishments, for centuries. Other Gabriels had preceded him, and Ani was very much like them. Devlin suspected that expectations of mortality were all that had kept Gabriel from training her to lead her own pack. Devlin knew better: when the last of her mortal blood was consumed by her faery blood, she would be able to stand against most any faery.

He thought of the wolves that attended Ani in her dreams. They were harbingers of the Hunt, but they weren’t feral things pacing near her. They looked to her for guidance.

Was that what you saw, Sorcha? That she would be strong? Or was it merely that she would be mine?

Once the High Queen was retrieved from her dream, Devlin had questions he wanted answered before he left her side.

Rae returned to the room where Sorcha slept. Outside the window, the sky appeared to have dimmed, not into darkness but into a chalky palate as if the color was being leeched away. Neither day nor night existed, only perpetual dusk. It meant Rae was free to roam, but that freedom was of little consolation when the world was vanishing.

“Could you go to the other world?” Rae asked the queen’s attendants. “The mortal world—”

“No.” One of veiled mortals turned to face Rae. “We stay with our queen. If she dies, we die.”

“Why?” Rae stared at them.

“There is nothing for us there. Our queen brought us here, and here is where we stay.” The mortal paused, and longing crept into her voice as she added, “The lives we had there are gone; the people we knew are dead; the rules… it’s not our world now, not with the way time passes.”

The muted light that fell through the window threw gray shadows over the glass-encased bed. The bed had shrunk and now had a more funereal shape. Rae wasn’t sure if the casketlike appearance was a reflection of the shrinking of the queen’s world or something more; regardless of the reason, it was unnerving.

With nothing else to do but await dissolution of the world, Rae entered the queen’s dreams once again.

The leonine guards hissed at her.

“I don’t want to see you,” Sorcha said. Her gaze did not leave the mirror.

“Devlin is bringing Seth to you, but he says that Faerie must be as it should be so Seth can reach you.”

Sorcha gestured at the image in the mirror: Seth was walking down a street. “I can see him. He is not in Faerie.”

“He will be,” Rae insisted. “Maybe you should wake to ready yourself.”

At that, Sorcha did pull her gaze from the mirror. The look she gave Rae was withering. “I need a heartbeat to ready myself, child. I am the High Queen, not some mortal who must work at attempting to achieve perfection. When he comes, I’ll wake, but not before. Go and do not disturb me until he is here.”

There were no more words. One of the winged creatures licked its maw and gave Rae an approximation of a smile. The High Queen’s dreaming guards were extensions of her will, and her will was that she not be disturbed.

Rae shuddered and stepped back into the darkened room in Faerie.

Hours later, the stillness was broken by a scream—and another, and then several more. Through a tall glass window on the far side of the cavernous room, Rae could see an unfamiliar faery striding down the street. As she walked, she slashed out with a battle-ax and flung knives at fleeing faeries. All the while she smiled.