Authors: Sandy Williams

Tags: #Romance, #Fantasy, #Fiction, #General, #Contemporary

The Shadow Reader (8 page)

BOOK: The Shadow Reader

5.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

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Now I can’t sleep because I might never see Kyol again. I was sixteen when we first met and he was . . . older. The Realm ages people—both fae and humans—slower than Earth. Kyol looked like he was somewhere in his twenties, but he could have been twice that for all I knew. He wasn’t Atroth’s sword-master yet, but he was his friend. He became my friend, and we eventually became
something
. In the last decade, the only nights on which I’ve had a peaceful, restful sleep were the nights when Kyol watched over me. Despite my resolution to lead a normal fae-free life, that hasn’t changed.

I’ve been staring at the ceiling for hours, surrounded by my fears. Occasionally, they loosen their stranglehold and my heavy eyelids close, but the creaks and groans of the inn wake me no matter how soft they are.

Footsteps stop outside my room. I feign sleep as the door creaks open. Someone walks inside, clears a throat. I keep my eyes shut and refuse to twitch.

“McKenzie.”

Even though the sheetless slab of springs beneath me could double as a torture device, I still don’t budge.

“McKenzie,” the someone says, louder this time. I don’t recognize the voice. It’s female, but it’s not Lena.

“McKenzie Lewis.”

I crack open my lids to glare. I end up frowning instead. The light coming in from the doorway is just bright enough to see that the fae staring down at me is wearing human clothing: jeans paired with a tight red top, jingling bracelets, and a triple-layered black-beaded necklace. It’s hard to be sure in the dim room, but it looks like a string of garnets and
premthyste
, a pearllike stone found in the southernmost province of the Realm, is braided through a lock of her dark, silky hair. I think I recognize the pattern the stones make. If I’m right, she’s a daughter of Cyneayen, Tayshken Province’s ruling noble.

“The sun is up,” she says, nodding uselessly toward my boarded-up window. Not even a crack of light peeks between the wooden planks. The banging that gave me such a headache last night was Lena going to town with a hammer and nails. I’d have better luck clawing my way through the wall than through the layer of wood covering the window.

“It’s time to get up.”

“Not back home, it isn’t.” I close my eyes, willing her to go away.

She huffs out a breath. “I have instructions to place you in Lena’s care if you’re uncooperative.”

Well, there’s nothing like a threat to get you going in the morning. I sit up . . . and barely manage to suppress a groan. Despite not sleeping well, I didn’t toss and turn much, and damn, my body’s stiff. I guess jumping fences and dangling off the sides of buildings will do that to you. I rub my neck, trying to massage out some of the pain.

“Aren said you might be sore.” The fae holds out her hand and uncurls her fingers to reveal two little white pills.

“What’s that?”

“Ibuprofen.”

My eyes narrow. “Fae don’t take human medications.”

“They’re not for me.”

Fae anatomies aren’t all that different from humans’, but they’re not supposed to have anything to do with our food or culture. Not that the medicine is directly hurting her. If it was, lightning would be circling the pills in her palm like writhing blue snakes, but nontech items from my world are gradually weakening the Realm’s magic. Of course, we’re not in the Realm right now so the only one hurting here is me.

After reminding myself that poisoning me doesn’t make sense, I pluck the two tablets from her hand. It takes a moment to work enough moisture into my mouth to swallow them. Unfortunately, it’ll take another twenty minutes or so before they kick in.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“I’m . . . Kelia.”

Interesting hesitation there. I’ve never met a fae who, on their first introduction, doesn’t tell me who they’re a son or daughter of. Are we hiding our ancestry, perhaps?

“Is that
premthyste
in your hair?” I’m sure I recognize the stone now. Only a few prominent bloodlines wear name-cords these days. She has to be a daughter of Cyneayen. If I remember Lord Raen, elder of Cyneayen, correctly, he’s notoriously antihuman. He doesn’t speak a word of English and every time I’ve run into him he’s scowled as if I’ve put a bad taste in his mouth. This girl—Kelia—has impeccable English. She’s perfected an American accent and could blend in with a crowd of humans so long as no one around her has the ability to see
edarratae
.

Her lips narrow into a thin line. “Aren wants me to teach you our language.”

I might have called her out for avoiding my question if her statement didn’t give me pause. Teach me to speak Fae? Why the hell would Aren want that? He speaks English. So do Sethan and Lena and anyone else who might need to work with humans. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the rebellion has mastered my language. Plus, won’t I be more of a liability if I can eavesdrop on their conversations? As it is now, they could detail their entire war strategy and I wouldn’t have a clue what they were saying.

“The king’s forbidden that.” It’s not that I don’t want to learn to speak Fae—I’d love to—but I’m used to not knowing it. I’m used to keeping our cultures as separate as possible.

“He’s also forbidden us from learning the languages of your world,” Kelia says without missing a beat. “That hasn’t stopped us. It shouldn’t stop you, not unless you’re afraid of the Court.”

Afraid of the . . . Oh, I see his angle now. “Aren starts big, doesn’t he?”

Kelia’s eyebrows rise. “What?”

“Never mind.” This is a devilishly clever move on his part. He’s making a statement with this offer: the Court might not trust me enough to learn their language, but he does, or so he wants me to believe. Nice try, but I’m not stupid. The only way I might—
might
—have believed his intentions were pure is if I learned their language, then he let me go. Unfortunately for him, he and Sethan both made it clear that’s not an option, not until this war’s over. I won’t fall for Aren’s manipulations.

But I will take advantage of them.

“Okay. I’m game,” I say, standing too quickly. My muscles protest the movement and my vision blackens around the edges.

She stares a moment. “After breakfast.” She starts to turn, then suddenly she grabs my hand.

I ball my other hand into a fist, ready to defend myself.

“Is that a watch?” she asks.

I hesitate. “Um, yeah.” It’s a cheap digital watch, $14.99 at Wal-Mart.

Kelia’s silver eyes widen. “Can I wear it?”

I pull my hand free from hers, rubbing it against my jeans to chase out the tingle of her
edarratae
. “It’s tech.”

“Small tech,” she says dismissively. “Please? I’ll give it back.”

What the hell is wrong with her? Kyol hates it when I wear my watch, and I’m honestly surprised Aren didn’t demand I take it off so he could send it to whatever tech graveyard my cell phone ended up in.

“Please?” she says again.

Well, it’s her magic. I unstrap the watch and hold it out. Chaos lusters spring up her arm when she takes it. Not bothered by their increased activity, she tries to fasten the band around her wrist. It’s obvious she’s never done this before—why would she have?—so I help her insert the metal hook into a hole in the rubber. Beneath the strap, her skin glows a faint blue.

She rotates her wrist, staring mesmerized at the digital face. The light coming in through the door wasn’t quite enough for me to make out the time, but she’s fae. She can probably see the numbers.

“Thank you,” she says without looking at me.

“There’s a . . . You see that little button on the right? If you press it, the face will light up.”

“Really?” She presses it and a trio of needle-thin
edarratae
rush up her finger and spread over the back of her hand like tiny blue spider veins. They disappear when she releases the button and then reappear when she presses it again. After lighting up the watch a dozen times, she finally drops her hands to her sides. The intrigue leaves her face when she realizes I’ve been studying her.

She clears her throat. “It’s time for breakfast.”

I close my eyes and press my palms into my temples. After three solid days of nothing but repeating everything Kelia says and naming everything she points to, I’ve reached my breaking point.

“Enough!” I yell.

“Na raumel e’Sidhe,”
she responds calmly.
In the language of the Fae.

“No. No more. I need a break.” Plus, I can’t remember the Fae word for “enough,” and I’m exhausted. The only times I’ve been left alone since Aren brought me here are when the rebels lock me inside my cell.

Okay. Room. And the rebels haven’t exactly been awful to me. They’ve made sure I have plenty to eat and drink, and no one’s outright threatened me since that first day, but they’re
always
around. They’re always watching, scowling, judging. They might as well have me shackled because I haven’t had a single chance to escape.

Kelia folds her arms and cocks her hip, waiting, but if she thinks she’s even half as stubborn as I am, she’s wrong. I’ve been the perfect student since we began these lessons. I’ve never in my life crammed so much information into my head in so short a period of time, not even the evening I returned from shadow-reading in the Realm and was forced to pull an all-nighter for an exam I should have spent days studying for.

Kelia lectures me in Fae. I don’t have to understand what she’s saying—her tone makes her meaning clear—but at this point, I don’t care if she turns over my supervision to the daughter of Zarrak. I can’t learn one more new word. I won’t.

Kelia finally realizes her words are hitting a wall—a very tired, grumpy, unmovable wall. Her shoulders slump as the fight whooshes out of her.

“Fine,” she says, a petulant purse to her lips. “You hungry?”

“No.” We ate lunch no more than half an hour ago and had a snack a little before that. Besides, I suspect this might be a scheme to get me to start naming foods and cutlery, and I’m serious about not learning another word of Fae today.

I walk to the picnic table and stare at my rock-carved map. My shadow-readings always look like they’re drawn by a schizophrenic. This one is worse than my others, bigger and messier with a series of lines that cut off abruptly only to begin again a few inches to the right when my mental map scale zooms. To a normal human, the final sketch probably looks like a kindergartner’s drawing, but to a fae who hears me name a city or a region, it’s as good as having an imprinted anchor-stone. Without an anchor-stone or a shadow-reader naming the location on his or her map, fae can only fissure to places they’ve memorized. It’s sort of like humans and phone numbers: they
can
remember dozens upon dozens of locations, but if they don’t think about them often or dial in on occasion, they tend to forget them completely.

I plop down on top of my map’s orchard, rest my elbows on my knees, and stare down at my boots. While I ate breakfast my first morning here, Kelia fissured out. Twenty minutes later, she returned with an armload of clothing. Most of it was for her, but she gave me two pairs of jeans, three new tops, and a pair of black leather boots—
high-heeled
, of course, because comfortable flats would make running away far too tempting. The jeans are just a smidgen too tight. Kelia’s assured me they look fine—not that I asked or cared—and that the neckline of my azure blouse isn’t too low, but this is definitely not my normal attire. I shop sale racks and wear T-shirts. This look is way too trendy for me. But not too trendy for Kelia.

She sits beside me on the tabletop, fingers the drawstring pouch tied to her belt, and gazes at the overgrown trailhead cutting through the dense tree line. She’s been doing that for three days now, gazing at the trail. At first, I thought she was waiting for Aren to return. I haven’t seen him since he deposited me in my room and, despite burning curiosity, I haven’t asked where he is. Now I’m not so sure he’s the reason for Kelia’s constant head-turning, not unless she has a crush on him. I’m pretty sure Lena’s in love with the guy—I suspect there are very few fae who wouldn’t want to jump into bed with him—but Kelia never sounds love-struck when she mentions Aren’s name. Maybe she’s worried about the Court finding this place? I can only hope.

As I pick at a thick splinter on the edge of the table, my mood plummets. This is one of the reasons I’ve managed to endure three full days of language cramming. If I let my mind go idle, inevitably I get depressed. It’s been four days now and I’m certain no one misses me back home, not even Paige, who is used to my long, sporadic absences. Those absences are the reason why I live alone in an apartment a couple miles from campus. I tried the dorm thing back when I was a freshman, but after being caught one too many times talking to myself—fae almost always choose to remain invisible to normal humans—my roommate requested to be transferred.

I flick the splinter I tore from the table away and search for a distraction. Anything to take my mind off my life.

“Aren,” I say, grabbing hold of the first image that pops into my head. “Will he come back?”

BOOK: The Shadow Reader

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