The Shadow Reader

His touch is too intimate. Edarratae flow into me, spiking down my neck and into my chest. I swallow and clench my teeth, trying my damnedest not to enjoy the sensation. I make the mistake of looking into his eyes. He doesn’t look like a killer. The way his hand cradles my head makes me feel safe. I feel like I can trust him. I feel like he . . .

Son of a—

I shove Sosch into his lap and stand. “That won’t work.”

He keeps the seduction charade up another moment before flecks of silver glitter in his eyes. He sets Sosch on the table. “You can’t blame me for trying, can you?”

“I can. I do.”

He laughs. “Of course you do. I meant what I said, though. Your freedom for the Sidhe Tol. A fair exchange, I think, but the offer won’t last long.”

“Your offers aren’t worth shit anyway.”

The light leaves his eyes. “You really do hate me, don’t you?”

“Yes!” I turn away, searching for Kelia in hopes that she’s finished sparring with Naito so we can resume my language lessons. Neither of them is in the clearing, though. They must have taken my unspoken advice and found a room.

“Do you not doubt the Court at all?” Aren asks.

I turn back to him and snap, “Not since Brykeld.”

He flinches as if I’ve just taken a swing at him. He recovers quickly, though, steeling his expression. “Brykeld was—”

“An accident?” I demand.

He slowly stands. “I wasn’t there—”

“Liar.”

“—when it was burned,” he finishes, his eyes narrowing. “I wouldn’t have allowed it.”

“Were you there for the rapes, then?”

A muscle twitches beneath his right eye. “No.”

“Convenient!”

Kyol apologized a thousand times for taking me to Brykeld. He said he never would have done so if he knew how bad it was going to be. I had nightmares for weeks afterward. Even now, more than two years later, I sometimes hear the screams. The rebels locked entire families inside shops with silver-painted walls. They boarded up the windows and doors and then set the structures on fire. The Court fae tried to help, but they were occupied fighting the rebels. I did what I could, ignoring the flames to hack at the buildings with a dead fae’s sword. I came away with deep, ugly burns on my hands, arms, and face. It took one of the king’s healers to repair the damage, and I only saved one fae.

“I gave you the person responsible for Brykeld,” Aren says.

“You were responsible for it.” And I can’t stand here talking to him a second longer. I turn abruptly and head for the inn.

“Madin, son of Vinth,” he calls after me.

I recognize the name immediately, but I don’t stop walking, not until Aren grabs my arm and forces me to face him.

“You know who he was,” he says.

“One of your fae. So?”

A chaos luster flickers over his clenched jaw. “I leaked his location to the Court the week after Brykeld. I handed him to you because of what he did.”

I lift my chin.

His eyes narrow. “Since you’ve been with me, have I done anything that makes you think I’d condone a massacre?”

“No. You’ve been on your best behavior,” I tell him. “When you’re around me. I don’t know what you’re doing when you’re gone.”

“I’m fighting a war. Honorably fighting it.” He lets go of me with a little shove.

I snort. “You don’t know a thing about honor. You allow rapists and murderers to fill your ranks.”

“I don’t have direct control over every single fae who supports the rebellion.”

“You should!”

He opens his mouth to retort, stops. He scans the clearing. So do I. Lena and two other fae watch us from the front porch like our argument is some source of entertainment.

Something bites into the palm of my right hand. I glance down at my fist and force my fingers to relax around my anchor-stone. Yes, I was a fool to keep it. Eventually, Aren’s patience is going to run out. He’ll start listening to Lena and the other fae who want to get rid of me, but he won’t kill me without prying the location of the Sidhe Tol from my lips.

I’ve heard rumors of what he and his people do to get information out of the Court fae they capture. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to resist Aren’s interrogation, not when he decides it’s time for me to talk. I have to escape before then. If I don’t, if they can get to the Sidhe Tol, the rebels will be able to invade the Silver Palace. They might even be able to kill the king.

OVER the next two days, I design and dismiss several dozen escape plans. If the rebels weren’t so damn vigilant, one of them might have worked, but even though I’ve pretended to be resigned to my captivity, they haven’t let me out of their sights. My time is running out—I know it is—so when a fae’s shadow falls over me early in the afternoon, I tense thinking Aren’s finally decided to force me to give him the Sidhe Tol. But it’s not Aren. It’s Sethan, who I haven’t seen since the first night I met him.

“Kelia tells me you’re learning our language quickly.”

I shrug. I’m learning it quickly because all my two- to three-day jaunts into the Realm over the years have added up. The sound and cadence of their speech is familiar; I just needed a little formal instruction to begin understanding the words and phrases.

Sethan pushes aside the jaedric cuirass I had set on the picnic table to dry and sits on the cleared edge.

“Thank you for your help,” he says with a nod to the piece I’m working on now. I use my thick-bristled brush to spread a clear, quick-drying glue over the strips of black bark I’ve stretched over the leather. The bark is tough and nearly impossible to cut. The fae harvest it by pulling off whole pieces from the jaedric tree. Once the paper-thin, lightweight strips dry over the cuirass, they can stop arrows as effectively as police vests stop bullets.

Yes, there’s a certain irony to my making armor for the Court’s enemies, but it gives me something to do. Plus, every so often I stretch only four layers of bark over the shell rather than the five Kelia told me to. Despite her random inspections, I haven’t been caught yet.

“No problem,” I say and pick up another strip of jaedric from the dwindling stack at my feet.

“The Court has treated you well, hasn’t it?”

I stretch the bark across the middle of the cuirass, using my knee to keep one end held in place. Without looking up, I say curtly, “Yes.”

“The king provides for you.”

“Yes,” I answer again. Shadow-reading is my job. The king gives me just enough cash each month to pay my tuition and bills, to buy groceries. I could probably live in a threethousand-square-foot house if I wanted to—Atroth would pay me more if I asked—but I live cheaply because I don’t want anyone asking where my money comes from.

“We could provide for you, too,” Sethan says.

This time, I do look up. “ Are you trying to buy me?”

“It’s preferable to other methods of coercion, is it not?”

I keep my expression blank. “My loyalty’s not for sale.”