Radiant Shadows

Chapter 33

Devlin watched his sister, his queen, leave. There were so many questions he needed to ask, so many answers he required, but before that, he had to make sense of what Ani had done. Not only had she shared her blood with him, she’d also offered to nourish him. She had stood at his side against the High Queen. They were bound in ways he had never fathomed possible.

Perhaps we always were.

The Hound, his partner unto eternity now, held his hand in her own. All around them wolves waited.

“We made those trees.” Ani looked up at him. Her words were a question, a demand for verification. “Together.”

“And wolves,” he added. “They are flesh now.”

“Sort of.” She looked at the wolves and said, “Come.”

In a chaotic blur, the wolves began to leap into her body, vanishing inside her skin one after another. Muzzles and tails, blood and bone, fur and muscles, all and each vanished into the skin of the Hound holding his hand.

“It feels different than in dreams,” was all she said when the last one of them had entered her.

“It looks different too.” Devlin could see red-eyed wolves shifting under her skin.

“Oh,” Ani whispered. She looked down at her arms in awe. “They’re here.”

Rabbit pushed away from the tree and came over to stand in front of his sister. “Look at you, all painted up without my help.”

Ani reached out to him. “They left room for your art too, Rab. When you’re ready…”

“Someday.” Rabbit brushed her hair away from her face and gave her a look of pure adoration.

Then he glanced at Devlin. “Sorcha says I’m welcome… but the shop…” His words faded away. “The shop’s gone too. Our home…”

Devlin gestured for Rabbit to walk. “There are other artists here. Many artists. Halflings and mortals.”

“There’s nothing left for me over there.” Rabbit still sounded weary, but not as much as he had when Devlin first saw him at the studio.

“Stay here,” Ani urged, “at least until we figure out what to do. Please, Rab?”

Rabbit nodded.

Without any further discussion, Devlin took Rabbit to the artists’ cottages.

After they had delivered Rabbit to a pristine cottage filled with various art supplies and tattoo equipment, Devlin led Ani to his own home.

When they reached his quarters within the queen’s palace, he found Rae in his previously unused sitting room. A smile played on his lips at the sight of her. No longer hidden away in a cave, she was dressed for court and awaiting him.

“She’s awake,” he told her.

Rae smiled. “And Faerie is intact once more. Such a simple thing, isn’t it? You bring Sorcha’s son home, and the world wakes.”

“Indeed.” Devlin wished he could embrace her. He couldn’t, but he could tell her what he felt. “You saved Faerie. Without you, I wouldn’t have known—”

“Without me, she wouldn’t have been lost in her dreams,” Rae corrected. “Do not forget how she was able to see Seth in the first place.”

“You can do all sorts of things in dreams, can’t you?” Ani’s voice was soft, but there was a fear in it.

“I didn’t create any illusions, Ani.” Rae stayed as still as any prey. She didn’t straighten her arms or legs. “I simply stitched your dreams together.”

“Why?”

Rae shrugged. “You needed each other.”

And in that instant, Devlin understood something he’d not admitted. “You knew.”

The world stilled for Rae. “Knew what?”

Devlin, the center of her world, crossed the room to her. His voice was soft. “All these years, you knew Ani was meant to be in my life. Did you know that when you asked me not to kill her?”

“Oh, Devlin, don’t ask me too many more questions.” She lifted her hand as if she would touch his shoulder. “I knew things I shouldn’t have… or maybe things I was supposed to. Who can predict what threads are the ones that were meant to be?”

“Threads?” He frowned as he tried to piece together some clarity from the clues she’d given him. “What all did you know?”

“I cannot answer that,” Rae whispered. “I wish I could.”

Ani sat on a high-backed chair with one foot tucked under her. The wolves in her skin shifted restlessly, but Rae couldn’t tell if that was in response to Ani’s worry or Devlin’s discomfort. The wolves were a part of the New Hunt, the one that belonged in Faerie, and they’d respond to both Devlin and Ani.

Will this Hunt protect me as well?

Rae waited as Devlin puzzled out the things he was learning. If Rae had her way, she’d tell him that he and Ani were meant to be in Faerie, that the whole order of Faerie was awaiting his understanding of what he could make real. If she had her way, she’d have told him everything years ago, but the Eolas’ injunctions were binding.

“Please, Devlin,” she said. “Think on what you know, but don’t ask me questions I am forbidden to answer.”

A knock at the door of the outer chamber made them pause.

“Stay here.” Devlin walked away to answer it.

Once he was gone, Ani looked at her. “You love him a lot.”

Rae sighed. “Your bluntness is not always charming, Ani.”

The Hound grinned. “I believe you’ve mentioned that before.”

As Devlin returned, the look on his face was dire. “She’s summoned me to the hall.”

Devlin entered Sorcha’s main hall. The insult of being summoned in front of all and any who cared to watch pricked his temper. He tried to suppress it as he had done for eternity, but he was failing. He’d been advisor, assassin, family to her for eternity, yet she beckoned him into her hall in front of the masses.

The High Queen sat on the throne looking emotionless. Behind her, Seth stood with one hand on the back of the queen’s throne. Like Sorcha, his emotions were hidden. Devlin, for a change, did not endeavor to disguise his feelings: he was furious. Sorcha had come near to unmaking Faerie, but she acted as if she were unfazed by her folly.

Devlin crossed the crowded room to the dais. He stopped in front of her, but he did not bow. For the first time, he did not bend his knee to the High Queen.

No one in the room spoke. But they watch—and she knows. He had not spent eternity simply killing for his queen; he knew how to wield unspoken as well as physical threat.

“How much have you hidden? That is the question I am forced to ponder now, Devlin.” Sorcha sounded calm, but there was an edge that was new. There, in front of the denizens of the High Court, she spoke to him like he was nothing.

He crossed a line then that he’d never crossed: he stepped up and grabbed his sister’s arm. “We will not discuss this here.”

“Cease!” she demanded. She tried to pull away, but he tightened his grip.

“You embarrass us both by doing this here,” he whispered.

Seth stepped forward, but in Faerie, he was mortal, and mortal movement was not fast enough. By the time Seth had moved, Sorcha and Devlin were well away from the dais.

Devlin glanced back and said, “The High Queen is not in physical danger.”

The assurance was primarily for Seth, but the rest of the assembled faeries heard the words as well.

Seth nodded.

Sorcha continued to resist. She shoved ineffectually against Devlin’s chest and hissed, “Release me.”

“Sister, you will come gracefully, or we will discuss everything in front of them.”

The High Queen pursed her lips, but she stopped resisting.

Then he dragged his sister-mother-queen across the room and shoved open the door to her garden.

She stepped in front of him, and for the first time in the millennia they’d stood alone together in her private garden, he saw ire shimmering in her eyes. The silver veins in her skin glittered like moonlight storming beneath the surface.

“How was Seth made faery?”

“I don’t see that—”

“How?”

“You know the answer or you wouldn’t be acting like this. I gave him of my own essence to remake him. I did not expect the consequences or emotion, but I don’t regret it.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I wanted a child of my own. I wanted a son, and he needed a m—”

“You had a son, if you weren’t too cruel to admit it….” He pulled his gaze away from her.

“No, I have a brother. You are my brother, made by order and violence. I wanted someone who was just mine.” She grew agitated, not orderly, not in control of her emotions as the High Queen should be. After an eternity of balance with her twin, she was unsettled—because she had made herself so. The High Queen, the Unchanging Queen, had changed.

“It was the right choice,” she insisted. “I needed him. He needed me.”

“Could we sit?” Shakily, Devlin gestured to the space between them.

Sorcha made a table and two chairs appear. He sat and stared at her. After more millennia than either of them likely could recall, Sorcha had changed everything. Devlin wasn’t sure what that would mean for Faerie or the mortal world, but the consequences thus far—Sorcha’s mourning and Faerie’s almost ending—weren’t particularly encouraging.

Carefully, Devlin touched her hand. “What have you done, Sister?”

“Freed myself from her. We’re different from one another now. I have taken a mortal’s taint into myself, given him part of me. Don’t you see? Bananach and I are no longer perfectly opposite.” Sorcha smiled, and the moon glowed brighter overhead. The air tasted purer as her happiness grew. “It was not my intention, but it has… oh, it has given me so much more than I realized I could have. I have a son, a child of my own, emotions I did not understand, and I can see my twin-no-more without feeling unwell. I may even be able to kill—”

“You cannot.” Devlin gripped his sister-queen’s hands. “Think. If you’re wrong, if you’re still bound like that… would you kill us all?”

“If she hurts Seth, I would.” Sorcha yanked free of his grasp. “Maybe it’s time that she’s not the only one to go back and forth to the mortal world. Maybe things need to change.”

“You’re the Unchanging Queen.” Devlin forced his voice to even, despite the growing panic he felt. “You cannot go over there for more than a few moments. Reality will—”

“Adjust. Yes, but is that so awful?” She had the look of a zealot. “Faerie bends to my will, and look how good it is here.”

Devlin felt alarmed by the sensation of a sudden unraveling around him. He closed his eyes, and he saw them, threads tangling and weaving together, lives altered and possibilities ended, deaths they couldn’t overcome. As long as the veil between worlds was open to the twins, but their balance was missing, Sorcha was in danger—and all of Faerie was in danger.

He went to his knees in the garden. “I’m sorry I failed you.”

“I wanted you to be my son,” she whispered, “but I couldn’t have her child as my child. You’re still my brother. Family.”

“I know.” He kept his worries hidden from her. If she learned that Bananach was trying to find a way to kill her son, if she learned that her twin-no-more had asked Ani to kill Seth, the queen of Faerie would be enraged, and an omnipotent angry queen pursuing War in the mortal world was not in the best interests of either realm.

Separating from Bananach meant that Sorcha was feeling emotions she’d never known. It meant that the one faery who held perfect clarity had lost her balance. Until balance was returned, there was little chance of stability.

So how do I rebalance her? He was the only other strong faery in Faerie, and he didn’t have an answer. The answers he needed weren’t going to be found by waiting in Faerie either. He needed to return to the world of mortals.