Jennifer Armintrout - Child Of Darkness

“Come in,” Malachi said, all the fight gone from his voice. He looked tired, as if every mortal cell of his body were weary. And in that moment, Ayla lost her anger with him, and it was replaced by that fear which had become all too familiar. Fear that he would succumb to his mortality soon, and that she would waste the time they had in petty arguments. They had already wasted so much time.

Cedric entered, and, spying Ayla, carefully masked his expression. “She has been found.”

Relief weakened Ayla’s knees, and Malachi uttered a quiet, “Thank God.”

“Where was she?” Ayla would not allow even the ghost of the earlier tension to remain. She would not discuss the betrothal now.

“She was on the Strip. Disguised as a Human, watching a game of Human gambling.” He cleared his throat. “I found her there, and brought her here.”

“Thank you.” The fear in Ayla’s breast loosened its hold a bit. She had not ventured into danger, not as much as she could have. “Malachi, do you have a way to contact your search party? To call them back? I do not wish them to go far.”

She did not wish them to go into the Darkworld, where their presence could begin a war.

Wearily, Malachi rose. “I know where they plan to search. I will go to them.”

“No,” she said, realizing too late how commanding she’d sounded, and how little Malachi would appreciate her tone. She forced herself to soften, willed away the anger and anxiety of the night. “You are tired. Send someone, but do not go yourself.”

He should have argued with her; it alarmed her that he did not. He waved a hand to Cedric. “Can you find someone?”

“I will see to it myself.” He turned toward the door, and paused. “Your Majesty, I did not tell the heir of what transpired at the feast tonight. I sent her to her chambers…I thought perhaps you would wish to speak to her, before she heard it from another source.”

“I will speak to her. About your betrothal, and about her disappearance.” Ayla loathed the need to apologize that clawed its way up her throat. She forced it down. “I hope you realize that I am only thinking of what will be best for my daughter. And for you.”

His wings, confined by his robes, rustled under their fabric prison. She saw the movement, a furious shrug, and again the apology that some regretful part of her knew should be delivered tried to escape.

She was Queene. She would not let him force his guilt onto her.

Cedric did not face her. The weight of his words was measured carefully. “I realize that you believe you know what is best, and that you are acting under that belief.”

When he left, he did not slam the door, but it was, without a doubt, closed.

“I do not do this to hurt either of them,” Ayla said helplessly, turning to Malachi. He’d already removed his robe, revealing his now-scarred skin and the metal-patched black wings that had not been seen by the Court in over twenty years.

He looked up at her, not bothering to conceal his anger or hurt. “Get out, Ayla. I am tired.”

She could have reminded him that she was Queene…. But she had never been his Queene. She could have ignored him and stayed…. But she had done so before, and had accomplished nothing. No subtle shift of power between them, no grudging reconciliation. He would forgive her when he chose and no sooner.

It was simple enough to find the search party Malachi had ordered—what had he hoped to accomplish by sending them into the Darkworld?—and convince them to give up their search. He insisted on staying behind, in case there were stragglers, even after the soldiers insisted there would not be.

And there would not be. That was not Cedric’s purpose in staying.

When he’d put enough distance between himself and the guards, he changed direction, and pulled from his shirtsleeve the rolled paper diagram that would lead him to the Gypsy camp.

The tunnels were not named on the drawing. Many of them went unnamed in the Darkworld, so it would not have helped. And only a few symbols, known only to those who were intended to find the place, indicated that it was a map at all. Dika had gone over it with him many times, though he’d protested ever needing to use it. He did not like to be in close proximity to mortals—at least, not large groups of them—and did not know how they would react to his presence. She’d been correct in her assumption that someday, his need to find her would be stronger than his desire to stay away.

He followed the map, doubting every turn, fearful of what might lurk in the shadows. It had been a long time since he’d had to use his battle training, and despite what most outside of the Guild believed, he’d rarely gone on missions as an Assassin, content to orchestrate the assignments and send others to do the fighting. He knew of the horrors that could lurk in these tunnels, knew in theory how to protect himself, but he’d not had the practice for a long time.

It was a relief when the tunnels became less dark, less damp. He knew it was a trick of his mind to equate light with safety, for untold horrors already stalked through both dark and light. But there seemed to be a life energy pulsing along the walls that Cedric could see in bright handprints and hurried smears where shoulders and limbs had brushed the cement in passing. These mortal imprints did not flare with terrified or angry energy, but happy excitement—the feeling of being home.

It was a feeling that Cedric could easily recognize but not truly understand. Faeries did not have homes. A dwelling to return to every night was a prison. The true joy of their existence had always been in the roaming, the never knowing where you would wake that morning or sleep that night. Trooping, that was what they had been made for. It made their lives in the Underground a particularly cruel hell.

Here, the feeling of home was pleasant, not stifling, and he continued on, alert for the rising of sound, which always accompanied the living spaces of mortals. The tunnel bent, and there were no more electric lightbulbs, but grates that let in the starlight. The scent of wood smoke, a smell he hadn’t experienced in decades, drifted up the tunnel, and, sooner than he expected, the buzz of mixed music and conversation. He rounded another bend and staggered on his feet at the sight of his destination.

It was as if the Underground had disappeared. The ground was Earth. Hard packed, dotted with bits of crumbled cement at intervals, but real Earth. The walls were not the carefully constructed tunnels the Humans had burrowed through the ground for pipes and trains and sewage, but rough rock walls that arched high, surrounding a hole with irregular edges and no grates, no barriers between the Upworld and the Underground. Through it, the view of the starry sky was blocked only by the black shapes of trees, reaching into the night above the heads of the mortals below.

And how many mortals! Cedric was certain the Humans here numbered far more than all the creatures on the Strip. Their dwellings were clustered in untidy, winding rows, pieces of property claimed here and there by stakes in the ground. Some of the dwellings were simple cloth tents. Others were built side by side and joined together by common walls of cinderblock and other materials. There were roofs made from blue sheets of mortal plastic or metal hammered flat, and some homes had no roofs at all. Mortal children ran without heed past mortal women stirring pots over communal fires or hanging sodden garments over lines stretched between tents. There seemed to be fire and joy and life everywhere, and for a moment, it truly overwhelmed him.

There was something else, too…. A sense of expectation, of a burden lifted. He remembered Dika’s words, and it froze the joy within him to ice.