Radiant Shadows (Wicked Lovely 4)

Irial frowned up at him. “Be careful with her.”

“She’ll be safer than if she were in your court.” Devlin turned to leave.

“Devlin?”

Devlin paused with one hand on the door.

“Be careful with her as well. Ani’s not like any other faery.” Irial’s look was pitying.

“I am the High Queen’s Bloodied Hands.” Devlin straightened his shoulders and dropped enough of the control he’d held over his emotions to let the dark faery know that pity wasn’t necessary. “In all of eternity, no faery born has overcome me in anything.”

“Aaah. Pride goeth before the fall, my friend”—Irial stood and clasped Devlin’s hand—“but you’ve already fallen, haven’t you?”

And to that, Devlin had no answer.

CHAPTER 14

I

t was finally dark in Faerie, so Rae took advantage of the opportunity to leave the cave for a while. The world around her looked less full than usual, but Rae had long since grown used to the changing landscape of Faerie. The High Queen’s moods determined reality, and some days the queen decided to create a new vista.

Rae drifted over a stream that had been a river previously. On either side, willows clung to the banks in clusters like groups of people in conversation. Thin branches swayed in a light breeze. Reclining on the soil with her bare feet dangling over the edge of the bank was a beautiful faery, one Rae hadn’t met in dreams or in Devlin’s body before. The faery slept on the mud-slick ground, a pile of moss under her cheek as if the earth had formed a pillow just for her. Bits of mud, twigs, and reeds were caught in a fiery mass of hair. Unlike the majority of the High Court faeries, this one looked like she belonged elsewhere, as if she had stepped from some Pre-Raphaelite painting of sensual women.

Rae entered the faery’s dream.

“I don’t know you,” the faery said. In her dream, she was sitting on the bank of a much larger river. Lilacs bloomed at the edge of a lush garden that stretched into the distance.

Rae drew a deep breath. In dreams, her senses were as if real. The perfume of flowers lay heavy on her tongue, so thick that she was near to choking on it.

“Where do you come from?” the faery prompted.

“Perhaps you saw me in the streets, and you’re remembering me.” Rae was used to the High Court faeries resisting her presence in their minds. It wasn’t logical to dream of strangers, so they often needed gentle guidance to accept that she was imagined.

“No.” The faery shook her head. Her hair was unbound, tumbling down her back and trailing behind her onto a flower-dotted ground. There were no twigs or mud entangled in the curls here.

The faery turned away from Rae, staring into the water as if it were a giant mirror. Faces drifted under the surface like Ophelia drowned and tragic. Has she lost someone? Death was so much larger to faeries. When one had the promise of eternity, centuries seemed a blink. Rae had seen the reality of such loss when Devlin considered what he did for his queen. Her orders were blood on Devlin’s hands.

“What do you dream of?” Rae whispered.

The faery didn’t look away from the water. Silver veins like roots crept from the faery’s skin and sank into the earth, anchoring her to the soil. Rae was transfixed by the sight: faeries weren’t ever this unusual in their self- imaginings. They saw themselves much as they appeared in their waking world; their essential representation echoed reality. They were of the High Court, logical in this as in all things.

“My son is gone from me.” The faery looked back at Rae. “He’s gone, and I can’t see him.”

Rae’s heart ached for her. Faeries had so few children that the loss of one must hurt even more than the loss of most faeries. Rae sat beside her, carefully not brushing the roots that extended from the faery’s hands, arms, and feet. “I’m sorry.”

“I miss him.” Six tears slid down the faery’s cheeks. They fell to the soil and rested on the ground like drops of mercury.

Rae gathered them into her hands and carried them to the edge of the river. With her words, she reshaped the water, stretching it and widening it until it became an ocean.

“Seven tears into the sea,” she told the faery.

Then she returned to the faery’s side and knelt. With one hand outstretched, Rae added, “Seven tears for a wish.”

She caught a seventh tear as it fell.

The faery was silent as Rae flung it into the water.

“What do you wish for? As long as you’re sleeping, you can have it.” Rae stayed kneeling beside her. “Tell me what you wish for.”