Radiant Shadows

Chapter 26

Devlin held Ani’s discarded shirt in his hands. He’d kissed Ani, shared a dream with her, and for a few brief moments, his life had been his own. After an eternity of existing as an object in an endless conflict between his sisters, the possibility of living on his own terms was intoxicating—and interrupted already.

Sorcha’s maudlin emotion over Seth was forcing Devlin to choose between staying at Ani’s side to keep her safe from his mad sister or abandoning her because of the solipsism of his other sister. Being near Ani had made him realize he wanted a life that he knew he couldn’t have as the High Queen’s Bloodied Hands. He was made to exist as the fulcrum between Order and Discord; he only had value because he served the will of the Unchanging Queen and reminded War not to kill them all by killing Order.

I want to determine my own path.

Ani returned to the main room. “I have questions. You’re keeping things from me, but they’ll wait. I’ll wait.”

“You’ll wait for what?”

“Answers. You. Time. Whatever this is”—she came over and took his hands—“it’s not going to go away. I don’t really buy the whole fate thing. I know the Eolas claim to know the future, and so do… your sisters, but it’s not always as set as all that. Some things, though, feel like they’re right. You and me? It’s one of those things. I don’t know what they see or why things are such a mess, but in the middle of it all, I do know that being around you is really the best thing that’s happened to me in, well, ever.”

Her words only made him surer that he needed to keep her safe.

“My sisters cannot see your threads.” He looked down at their hands and then back at her as he added, “They cannot see those whose threads are tangled into their own futures… or, they say, into mine.”

She held tight to him and asked, “So I’m in their future or yours? Can you see future threads?”

“I can.” He pulled his hands free and paced to the window of the tiny room. This wasn’t a topic he enjoyed discussing.

“Can you see mine?”

“I tried, but… no.” He didn’t look at her or speak of the fact that this meant that their lives were entangled as far as her future stretched. “The only way for them to see you is through ordinary channels—a faery who carries word to them, or your presence where they can see you.”

“You can’t see my future at all,” she prompted.

He wasn’t hiding his emotions away, not now. Instead, he let Ani feel his worry and his hopes. “I haven’t been able to see your future since you were not-killed… since I didn’t… It’s not that you’ve lacked an existence but because you… we…”

“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.