Darkest Mercy

Chapter 15

Invisible to mortal sight, Keenan walked through the streets of Huntsdale. It took effort to not fade in the cold. He’d considered waiting, but he needed to return to his court.

He hadn’t expected Donia to welcome him back easily, but in all the years they’d loved and drifted, he’d always been sure of her. Only her. Truths he wasn’t able to admit to anyone else in this world—or in Faerie—he could share with her. He didn’t know what he would do without her. Did I really just lose her? If nothing else, he’d figured that they’d be friends. She knew him better than anyone. She understood how he’d struggled when Beira had struck him down year after decade after century. She has given up on me, on us.

Keenan paused outside Bishop O’Connell, the school where he’d briefly been a student. With Donia at his side, he’d stood in this street more than a year ago watching then-mortal Aislinn; he’d thought all of the Summer Court’s problems would be resolved if he won her. Everything he believed he’d understood about the future was wrong. He shivered and folded his arms over his chest.

I shouldn’t be out here.

As if in answer to his thoughts, he heard the beat of wings, and in the following instant, Bananach descended from the sky to stand in front of him. Like him, she was invisible to anyone other than the fey or the Sighted.

But not weakened by the weather . . . or much else from the looks of it.

The raven-faery was smiling; her previously shadowed wings were solid. They unfolded to full width, casting the street into near-total darkness, and then refolded to lie still against her back. Her arms were bare despite the chill, but she was dressed in pseudomilitary attire: very snug urban camouflage trousers tucked into tall black boots. No human soldier would wear such a fit for their work garb, nor would a faery feel inclined toward false camouflage. Bananach was a singular entity, though. Her sense of humor and her sense of the practical rarely meshed with anyone else’s—faery or mortal.

“Little king,” Bananach greeted him. “You’ve been missed.”

“Not by you, I’d gather.” He forced sunlight to the surface of his skin, hating that he was faced with conflict when he shouldn’t be out in the cold at all, but strangely excited by the possibility of fighting. The Summer Court did not typically thrive on violence, but they were a court of passions, and in that instant, directing his hurt into anger was decidedly appealing.

Keenan reached inside a false pocket in his trousers and unfastened the strap that wrapped around the hilt of the short bone blade that had once been his father’s. Along one side of the blade, fused there with the Summer King’s sunlight, shards of obsidian gave it a serrated edge. He withdrew the weapon.

“You would fight me?” Bananach tilted her head at an inhuman angle. “Have I done you ill?”

“Today? I’m not aware of any, but I am feeling cautious.” Keenan kept the blade tip pointed at the sidewalk for now.

From across the street, three faeries approached. They were solitaries he didn’t know, but they were walking toward Bananach. A trap. He glanced at them only briefly. “Do you intend to strike me down, Bananach? There are those who would respond poorly to that.”

“And there are those who would not.” She widened her eyes. “I debated the matter. I ran the possibilities. In the current schedule, I would find you more useful injured than dead, but if you aren’t cooperative . . .” She shrugged.

One of the faeries broke off from the other two and crossed the street so that her approach would be from behind Keenan. The other two spread out and continued to close in from the street side. That left Bananach in front of him, and the glass front of a shoe store to his side. I hate plucking glass from my skin. He tightened his grip on the blade’s hilt. Sunlight thrummed under his skin; every strand of muscle was a live wire filled with energy. He could turn that sunlight into a blade for his other hand and drive it into Bananach’s flesh.

It wasn’t Bananach who launched herself at him. War watched as all three of her faeries attacked as one. He pushed the bone-and-obsidian blade over a faery’s throat. The faery fell backward, but the other two pressed on him—one behind and one to the side. Keenan angled, trying to fend off the two assaults.

And Bananach stepped forward. He saw the movement out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t react in time. She swiped her talons over his right side, gouging furrows through the cloth and into his skin.

Keenan reacted by pulling back his left hand, the one holding the sunlit blade, and trying to force it into the avian faery’s throat.

She moved too quickly, and it cut her across the shoulder. Instead of responding with anger, she smiled at him.

He felt, rather than saw, her talons sink into his right bicep. The numbness started to creep across his side and radiate through his arm. He turned to look and saw one of the remaining two faeries swing a blade toward his left knee, but before the blow could connect, someone shoved it away.

Bananach backed away temporarily. “You meddle where you are not wanted.”

With confusion, Keenan looked at the faery suddenly beside him. “Seth?”

“Trust me, you’re not my first choice to fight next to, Sunshine, but as much as it would simplify things, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I left you to her tender mercies.” Seth didn’t spare him more than a glance; instead the pierced newly fey boy looked to the street with unexpectedly military attention.

“Auntie B,” Seth greeted her. “You need to reel it in.”

Bananach snapped her beak at him. “Order should’ve kept you in Faerie. You won’t survive here.”

“I will, but if you continue, you will die,” Seth told her as he put himself in front of Keenan. “Your brother heals.”

Bananach grinned—a peculiar sight with her beak-mouth. “The other doesn’t. He won’t.”

The Hounds arrived then like an angry swarm, and before they finished their approach, Bananach and two of her faeries were gone. The third lay lifeless on the sidewalk.

“You do that?” Seth asked.

“I did.” Keenan didn’t look at the dead faery. He had no desire to gloat over the loss of life. He couldn’t say that he was happy the slain faery was fallen, only that he was glad he was not fallen.

I think.

He didn’t cringe, not in front of Seth or the Hunt, but the gouges from Bananach’s talons stung more by the moment.

The Hounds enclosed them in a protective circle. Around them, mortals continued to pass, unaware of the invisible conflict in their midst. They were, however, all easing farther away from the sidewalk where the Hunt waited. As when Bananach approached, the mortals felt an aversion to the faeries. With War, it was the feeling of a discordant presence, but with the Hunt it was the urge to run.

No one spoke for a moment. Neither Gabriel nor Chela was there, but rather than look to another Hound for direction, the Hunt seemed to be awaiting Seth’s command.

“Go see her,” Seth said without looking at him. “They will escort you.”

Keenan stilled. “Her?”

This time Seth did look at him. “Ash. It’s inevitable. No matter which way the threads twist, that’s the next step.”

“The threads . . .” Keenan gaped at him.

“Yeah, the threads.” Seth bit the ring that decorated his lip and looked at the air as if there were answers hovering in it. Then he looked directly at Keenan again and said, “I can’t see everything, or see most things clearly enough, but you . . . you I see.”

“My future?” Keenan felt a fool as he stared down the faery that stood between him and his queen.

He’s a seer.

“Don’t ask,” Seth snarled. “Go to the loft. I just left her to be here, to stop your death, so we’re even now.”

“Even?” Keenan echoed. There were many words the Summer King could choose to describe their standings, but even wasn’t one of them. Seth was a child, a recent mortal, an obstacle to be overcome; Keenan, on the other hand, had spent centuries being near powerless, but still protecting his court—the court that Seth’s very existence endangered.

The Summer King let the heat of his anger slip into his voice and said, “We’ll never be even, Seth.”

“You told me once that you didn’t order my death because it would upset Ash. I came here to keep you from death. That makes us even.” Seth spoke the words in a low voice, but the faeries near them were Hounds. Their hearing was better than most, and at this distance, it was no challenge to listen.

Consequently, Keenan didn’t try to lower his voice. “Killing you wasn’t the right course of action then. If you had died, she would mourn—which she did anyhow when you were in Faerie.” Keenan stepped closer to Seth. Anger that he’d not been able to completely purge filled him. “You left. By choice. She mourned your absence for months. She was in pain, and I was her friend. I waited. I was only her friend for months.”

“During which you knew I was in Faerie.”

Keenan shrugged and immediately decided not to do that again. Carefully keeping the pain from his voice, he said, “If killing you would’ve resolved the situation, I’d have done it. If you stayed in Faerie or got yourself killed, it would’ve been your choice. Why would I cross Sorcha for a mortal I’d rather see out of my way?”

“I get that, but I’m not a mortal now.” Seth bared his teeth in a decidedly not-mortal expression.

“But you’re still in my way.”

“Right back at you,” Seth muttered.

They stood silently for several moments; then Seth shook his head. “You need to go to Ash now, and I need to go to Niall. . . . I am Sorcha’s heir, and”—he looked embarrassed for a moment—“that means that I’m not free to do only what I want.”

“None of us are,” the Summer King said. Then he turned away, moving at a speed that made the mortals he passed clutch their coats and brush hair from their eyes. Some looked around curiously, seeking the source of the gusts of wind that sent dust swirling into the air.