Radiant Shadows

Chapter 20

The fight earlier that morning had left Ani edgy. She shifted in the seat, tapped her hands on the wheel, and could not sit still. Being caged in small spaces had never worked for her. It was worse when she was restless.

Would you like to stop? the steed asked.

He won’t agree, Ani murmured. Devlin sat beside her, silent and unapproachable.

Several turns later, they were on a smaller road. Devlin still did not rouse from whatever contemplation he was in. His eyes were closed.

A thumping noise came from the engine as the steed pulled over alongside the road; beside them a stretch of woods extended into the darkness. Imply that it’s a mechanical thing, the steed suggested. You need a proper run.

“What are we doing?” Devlin opened his eyes and leveled a suspicious glare at her.

“Stopping.” She opened the door and stepped onto the gravel. No cars were in sight. The moon was high in the sky, and the only sounds in the darkness were animals.

Ani took a deep breath.

Devlin opened his door. “Ani?”

She stretched.

“Ani,” he repeated.

“You can come or stay here. I’ll be right back,” she assured him, and then she darted into the woods.

It had been forever since she’d run, and when she had run, Gabriel always kept her carefully surrounded by Hounds. She hadn’t been able to decide her own course. The freedom of running as she wanted was unprecedented in her life— and so was being chased.

Ani wasn’t surprised that he followed. In truth, she was glad. It was unexpectedly thrilling to feel like prey.

Devlin kept pace almost as well as a Hound. It made her wonder what his lineage was.

After about twenty minutes, she stopped, stretched, and waited for him. His emotions were still securely tamped down, unreadable to her.

“You’re exhausting,” he said.

“I’m what?” She leaned against a tree, watching him close the last few yards between them.

“Exhausting, tiring, capable of wearing on my very last bit of peace.” He faced her, as if his attention was only on her, but she had no doubt that he knew where every faery near them was. Because he is a predator too. Most of those faeries had vanished as she and Devlin raced through the woods and along the highway.

“What were you thinking?” His voice lowered enough that she had to suppress a shiver. He was hiding some- thing—several somethings if her instincts were right.

“That I needed a run. You chose to come with me, so don’t go thinking that you’re the one calling all the shots.” She swung her leg to kick him in the face.

He caught her foot. “No. You had your play. We need to go.”

Ani jerked her foot free. She wasn’t very good at taking orders, not even when instinct told her that he was right. “It’s not your life in dang—”

“Don’t.” He held her gaze, and it wasn’t frustration in his eyes. Anger burned there, intense enough that she didn’t need to be Dark Court to feel it.

It was exhilarating. Despite being a creature of the High Court, Devlin had a shadowed core that was everything her own court was supposed to be. He was everything she had wanted to find in her own court: he saw her as an equal, yet he still wanted to keep her safe. He didn’t dismiss her challenges or bow to them.

“Go back to the steed,” he started.

“No.” She leaned closer. “I want answers before I go anywhere with you.”

He jerked a hand through his hair and narrowed his gaze. “Gods. Maybe I should have killed you when you were still a mewling pup.”

Ani froze. “Say that again.”

He turned away.

She grabbed his arm. “Say. It. Again. Now.”

He shook her off with as much effort as he’d need to brush away a moth. “Let it go, Ani.”

“It was you. At our house. You…” Ani stumbled backward and dropped to the ground. She stared up at him. “You killed my dam.”

His marble-white face showed no remorse, no pain for taking away the mortal who’d birthed her. “I keep order for the High Queen. It is my purpose.”

My mother.

“You killed Gabriel’s lover. My mother… Why?”

“It’s what I do, Ani. I put things back in order. My queen has enough trouble with the half-breeds of other courts. Dark Court progeny are unpredictable. Some”—he looked at her pointedly—“are more a threat than others. I was sent to correct the problem.”

“Progeny?” She stared at him.

“Yes.” He stood as motionless as a sculpture, seeming unaware of the awkwardness of his unchanging position, unwilling to sully himself by joining her on the ground.

Feeling like a guest in her own body, Ani stood. Vaguely, she was aware that her hands were dirty from pushing herself off the ground. Every detail felt too crisp then, too real.

Devlin still didn’t move. “You were important enough to attract the High Queen’s attention, and now—” His words ended as Ani stepped closer to him.

She tilted her head so she could stare into his face, and then she slapped him as hard as she could with her dirt- covered hand. “So you killed Jillian? Because her progeny are a threat?”

She lifted her hand a second time, but he didn’t let her strike him again.

“No. Just you were the threat.” He caught her wrist and simultaneously dropped his ridiculous self-control to the point that she could feel his emotions for the first time.

Sorrow-sweet. Afraid. Protective. Longing.

She paused. He didn’t feel like someone who wanted to hurt her. He felt like someone who wanted her safe.

What am I missing here?

She stared at him, letting his emotions roll through her, drinking them down to sate her hunger. “You didn’t kill me before. You won’t now…. Would you kill me if they ordered you to?”

“Bananach does not order me.”

Ani almost smiled at the idea that he could play word games with her. “Nice dodge. Try again. Would you kill me if Sorcha ordered it?”

He didn’t move. “If she ordered me to end your life and I disobeyed, I would be cast out of my court. My vow of fealty”—he held Ani’s gaze—“would be corrupt. I would be foresworn.”

“You are. You’re hiding things from her, hiding me.” She understood then. “You’ve known where I was my whole life.”

He nodded once.

Ani tucked her hands in her back jeans pocket and rocked on her heels. “Why not tell Sorcha where I was? Why spare me? Why not save Jillian too?”

He stared at her for several very even breaths, silent in word, but his emotions ricocheted from excitement to fear to hope. Now that he was off-kilter, she could be nourished to the point of gluttony on only a taste of his feelings.

Like feeding from a king.

Devlin reached out and cupped her cheek in his hand. “Take your taste, Ani. It won’t make you understand.”

Her mouth opened at that. No one outside the court was to know what the Dark Court took for nourishment. Sharing that secret was punishable by starvation up to the point of death.

He lowered his hand from her cheek to her collarbone, so it rested just there on the edge of her throat, above her heart.

Ani wasn’t sure if it was a threat or a caress.

He stood perfectly still, hand motionless against her skin, inhaling and exhaling slowly. “Ask me again.” His voice was soft. “Ask me your question.”

She paused. He wasn’t shutting down his emotions. Where’s the trap?

“Would you kill me?” she asked.

“Not that one.” He brushed a thumb over her bare throat. “Ask the other one.”

She’d been waiting her whole life to ask this question, in this moment, of this faery. “Why did you kill Jillian?”

He leaned in and whispered in her ear, “I didn’t. She’s hidden away in Faerie.”

Ani felt herself stumble, but Devlin caught her before she could fall. He lowered her to the ground. A lifetime of certainty, everything she thought she knew about her past, had shifted. Her mother was alive. It was almost too beautiful to believe. Her vision blurred as tears filled her eyes. The monster she’d feared had saved her, saved Jillian, and risked himself to do so. After all these years of fearing the faery that had changed her life, Ani looked up at him and knew that he was why she was alive. Why Jillian lives. She couldn’t make all of those changes fit into her mind. All she could say was, “My mother.”

He knelt beside her. “She didn’t want you to know, but… I won’t have you hate me. I can’t keep you safe if you hate me.”

“She’s… where? Where is she? Is that where we’re going?”

“No. She’s safe, but we can’t go to her,” he said.

“I thought…” Ani tried to find words for the years of fear and loss, but there weren’t any. “I thought she was dead. That you…”

“It was for the best.”

“Help me understand how. Because of not knowing, I’ve spent my life thinking she died and fearing someone— apparently you—would come back to hurt Tish.” Ani felt tears sliding down her cheeks.

“I had few choices. Sorcha can see everyone but those closest to her or those whose lives matter in her life,” he started.

Ani couldn’t speak, couldn’t do much other than stare at him and wait for the rest.

“If I hid Jill, she wouldn’t be important enough to draw Sorcha’s attention… especially if Jill didn’t remember having children.” Devlin’s emotions went several different directions, but his inflection was unchanged. “The alternative was her death.”

“Do you save many people Sorcha wants killed?”

Suddenly, his emotions were completely blocked from her. “Only you.”

“And Jillian.”

“No. Jillian’s death wasn’t ordered, but… her vanishing would make Irial put you under his care. It was her idea. She would’ve done anything to keep you and your sister safe.”

Ani sat there. She considered reaching out to him, telling him that he’d given her everything by not killing Jillian.

Or me.

Almost an hour passed while they stayed silent beside each other, and then Ani looked up and caught his gaze. “You’re a traditional faery; aren’t you, Devlin? Three questions. That’s the rule, isn’t it?”

“It is, but I’ve already—”

“I want a third question,” she interrupted. “And I want you to promise to answer it.”

He didn’t look away or tell her that she had no right. Instead, he nodded.

“Tell me who you are, Devlin. You know everything about me.” She caught his hand in hers. “You’ve seen every step of my life.”

He startled. “I didn’t. I stayed away…. I only saw you in passing until the other night. I wouldn’t stalk you like that. It’s… unseemly.”

His expression begged for her understanding. The High Court was about restraint, not desire; it was about reason, not impulse. And Ani was realizing that Devlin was violating every trait of his court to be with her, to save her, and to hide her. What she didn’t know was why.

“You know me, my history, my family, and I need to know you.” She didn’t let go of his hand, as if holding on to him was the only thing that would keep either of them from falling apart. It wasn’t about skin hunger; it was about things making sense. Holding on to him made sense. “Tell me who you are. There’s more to what’s going on here.”

His already volatile emotions became so intense she shivered again.

He looked—and tasted—frightened. “In all of eternity, I have acted in the best interests of my queen… until you. And now, War tells me that you are the key to my queen’s death. I should kill you, Ani. I should’ve killed you then. I should kill you now.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“As am I,” he admitted, “but if your living means her death… I cannot sacrifice everything.”

“I know.” Ani didn’t have words that would make things make sense for either of them. That wasn’t really her strength. She went up on her knees so she was face-to-face with him.

He didn’t back away. His heartbeat didn’t race, not really, but she heard it speed.

For me.

Slowly, as if he were spun glass she could break, she leaned in and brushed her lips over his. It wasn’t even really a kiss, just a butterfly brush, but it felt like the sort of kiss that made the world stop turning—which made her even less able to speak.

What follows those sorts of sentences? Or emotions?

Ani started back toward her steed. “Let’s go.”

“Where?” He looked and felt alarmed. “I can’t take you to Jill. She’s in Faer—”

“I know,” she said. Whatever reason the High Queen had for ordering her death presumably hadn’t vanished, and the last thing she wanted was to have Sorcha actively pursuing her too. It hurt to realize that her mother being alive didn’t make her any less gone.

“What are the odds of my surviving? I mean, really?”

Devlin scowled. “Numbers are not what you need to think about. The probability is that Bananach will not stop thinking of you. The statistically likely results are—”

She held up her free hand. “Right. My odds are not good.”

They walked in silence until they reached the road.

“Camping,” she announced. “Rabbit used to take us camping, but only with a host of guards and just for a couple of days.”

“You’re a peculiar creature, Ani.” Devlin started to pull his hand free, but she held on. Just a little longer. She was pretty certain that this wasn’t a side of Devlin she’d be seeing very often.

She walked to the passenger side of the car. “I want to just go roam in the woods.”

“Cities are probably safer.”

Reluctantly, she let go of his hand. “So that’s the predictable answer, right? Bananach would figure you’d be predictable, what with the whole High Court thing. Let’s not be predictable.”

Devlin paused. “If I insist that cities are the better choice? Will you run?”

“No.” She kissed his cheek before she walked away. “You saved my mother and me. You’re deadly enough to keep me safe. And whether you like admitting it or know why, you are all sorts of interested in me. I’m not High Court, but I’m practical enough to sort out the reasons to stay together. I think I’ll keep you for now.”

“You’ll keep me?” He gave her a look that she suspected was intended to be intimidating, but a faery who’d grown up with the Hunt and the King of Nightmares as playmates wasn’t easily browbeaten.

“For now.” She suppressed a smile at the sliver of arrogance in his voice. “You’re not nearly as boring as you pretend, and considering my family, that’s high praise.”

“Indeed.” He put his hand on the passenger door of what was currently an ostentatious red Lexus.

Ani walked around to the driver’s side and looked over the roof at him. A part of her insufficiently used conscience warned her away from him, but for one of the only times in her life, it wasn’t just hunger driving her interest. She liked Devlin.