Darkest Mercy (Wicked Lovely 5)

And Bananach is responsible.

Chapter 15

Invisible to mortal sight, Keenan walked through the streets of Huntsdale. It took effort to not fade in the cold. He’d considered waiting, but he needed to return to his court.

He hadn’t expected Donia to welcome him back easily, but in all the years they’d loved and drifted, he’d always been sure of her. Only her. Truths he wasn’t able to admit to anyone else in this world—or in Faerie—he could share with her. He didn’t know what he would do without her. Did I really just lose her? If nothing else, he’d figured that they’d be friends. She knew him better than anyone. She understood how he’d struggled when Beira had struck him down year after decade after century. She has given up on me, on us.

Keenan paused outside Bishop O’Connell, the school where he’d briefly been a student. With Donia at his side, he’d stood in this street more than a year ago watching then-mortal Aislinn; he’d thought all of the Summer Court’s problems would be resolved if he won her. Everything he believed he’d understood about the future was wrong. He shivered and folded his arms over his chest.

I shouldn’t be out here.

As if in answer to his thoughts, he heard the beat of wings, and in the following instant, Bananach descended from the sky to stand in front of him. Like him, she was invisible to anyone other than the fey or the Sighted.

But not weakened by the weather . . . or much else from the looks of it.

The raven-faery was smiling; her previously shadowed wings were solid. They unfolded to full width, casting the street into near-total darkness, and then refolded to lie still against her back. Her arms were bare despite the chill, but she was dressed in pseudomilitary attire: very snug urban camouflage trousers tucked into tall black boots. No human soldier would wear such a fit for their work garb, nor would a faery feel inclined toward false camouflage. Bananach was a singular entity, though. Her sense of humor and her sense of the practical rarely meshed with anyone else’s—faery or mortal.

“Little king,” Bananach greeted him. “You’ve been missed.”

“Not by you, I’d gather.” He forced sunlight to the surface of his skin, hating that he was faced with conflict when he shouldn’t be out in the cold at all, but strangely excited by the possibility of fighting. The Summer Court did not typically thrive on violence, but they were a court of passions, and in that instant, directing his hurt into anger was decidedly appealing.

Keenan reached inside a false pocket in his trousers and unfastened the strap that wrapped around the hilt of the short bone blade that had once been hi

s father’s. Along one side of the blade, fused there with the Summer King’s sunlight, shards of obsidian gave it a serrated edge. He withdrew the weapon.

“You would fight me?” Bananach tilted her head at an inhuman angle. “Have I done you ill?”

“Today? I’m not aware of any, but I am feeling cautious.” Keenan kept the blade tip pointed at the sidewalk for now.

From across the street, three faeries approached. They were solitaries he didn’t know, but they were walking toward Bananach. A trap. He glanced at them only briefly. “Do you intend to strike me down, Bananach? There are those who would respond poorly to that.”

“And there are those who would not.” She widened her eyes. “I debated the matter. I ran the possibilities. In the current schedule, I would find you more useful injured than dead, but if you aren’t cooperative . . .” She shrugged.

One of the faeries broke off from the other two and crossed the street so that her approach would be from behind Keenan. The other two spread out and continued to close in from the street side. That left Bananach in front of him, and the glass front of a shoe store to his side. I hate plucking glass from my skin. He tightened his grip on the blade’s hilt. Sunlight thrummed under his skin; every strand of muscle was a live wire filled with energy. He could turn that sunlight into a blade for his other hand and drive it into Bananach’s flesh.

It wasn’t Bananach who launched herself at him. War watched as all three of her faeries attacked as one. He pushed the bone-and-obsidian blade over a faery’s throat. The faery fell backward, but the other two pressed on him—one behind and one to the side. Keenan angled, trying to fend off the two assaults.

And Bananach stepped forward. He saw the movement out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t react in time. She swiped her talons over his right side, gouging furrows through the cloth and into his skin.

Keenan reacted by pulling back his left hand, the one holding the sunlit blade, and trying to force it into the avian faery’s throat.

She moved too quickly, and it cut her across the shoulder. Instead of responding with anger, she smiled at him.

He felt, rather than saw, her talons sink into his right bicep. The numbness started to creep across his side and radiate through his arm. He turned to look and saw one of the remaining two faeries swing a blade toward his left knee, but before the blow could connect, someone shoved it away.

Bananach backed away temporarily. “You meddle where you are not wanted.”

With confusion, Keenan looked at the faery suddenly beside him. “Seth?”

“Trust me, you’re not my first choice to fight next to, Sunshine, but as much as it would simplify things, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I left you to her tender mercies.” Seth didn’t spare him more than a glance; instead the pierced newly fey boy looked to the street with unexpectedly military attention.

“Auntie B,” Seth greeted her. “You need to reel it in.”

Bananach snapped her beak at him. “Order should’ve kept you in Faerie. You won’t survive here.”

“I will, but if you continue, you will die,” Seth told her as he put himself in front of Keenan. “Your brother heals.”

Bananach grinned—a peculiar sight with her beak-mouth. “The other doesn’t. He won’t.”