City of Fae (20 page)

Andrews lifted his head. “It’s suicide. The queen will kill her.”

“She’s dead anyway.”

“You don’t know that.” Andrews shoved off the kitchen counter. “You’re meant to be some hot-shot ancient fae, why don’t you go see the queen, huh? Do something? This is happening because you didn’t get it right the first time.”

Warren’s lip rippled. “Back down, Detective. You have no idea who or what you’re talking to.”

“It’s okay.” I rested a hand on Andrews’s shoulder. I had days to live, according to Warren. Days in which I could wallow in self-pity, bemoaning a life that wasn’t mine, or try and make a difference. “She won’t kill me … She created me. Maybe … maybe I can get close enough to do some damage.” The memory of her huge and hideous body, with its glistening carapace, poured sickly shivers through me.

Andrews whirled, as though alarmed. For a second, he looked almost surprised. He dropped his gaze to my hand, then his face softened. “Okay … fine. I need to check in with work and inform the right people of what’s going on here.”

“They won’t believe you.”

He hesitated, lips twisting, wanting to deny it. “I can’t just do nothing. My partner was bespelled by the queen. How many others are involved? I can’t sit on this, Alina. I just can’t.”

“Tell the FA.” I glanced at Warren who shook his head; screw him. Someone besides the people in this room had to know what was going on. “They’ll listen to you.”

“And then lock us away behind iron bars,” Warren chimed in.

I shot him a glare, and told Andrews, “Don’t worry about us. I’ll find a way to make it work.” Hey, look at me, sounding like I knew what the hell I was doing when really I didn’t have a clue. “Get the FA involved and, if you can, convince them they need Reign and Warren free, so we can lure the queen in.”

Andrews nodded, “Okay—”

Reign burst through the door. “FA, coming in hot. We have to get out of here, now.” Warren crossed the room in a few strides and was out the door in seconds. Reign hung back, hand out, waiting for me to take it. “Alina, c’mon … You need to come with me now.”

Andrews gave me a reluctant nod. “Go, I’ll tell them everything, and hope they listen.” I didn’t want to leave him. He was caught up in this and seemed so out of place. He must have seen the concern on my face. “I’ll be fine, go.”

I closed my hand around Reign’s, ignoring the tingle, and glanced back as he dragged me from my home. Andrews had already turned away.

“Why are we here?”

“We’re running out of places to go.” Reign dropped his hood and tossed the hotel keycard onto the desk. “We’ll be fine here while Warren replenishes his draíocht reserves.”

The prickly ancient fae would be feeding and, although it was necessary, unease crawled across my skin at the thought of what he’d be doing a few doors down. Reign had said he was careful not to bespell his victims, but I didn’t trust Warren to be as thoughtful.

Two queen-size beds dominated our boxy hotel room. I drifted to the window and opened the curtains. Outside, the waters of Victoria Dock glistened beneath a weak October sun. The docklands of London’s East End had undergone a huge regeneration project in recent years, and where once goods had been craned from ships on the Thames, now luxury apartments and five-star hotels lined the water’s edge. If I stood on my tiptoes, I could just make out the twelve yellow steel masts supporting the millennium dome structure in the distance; the venue for Reign’s concert. The brochure in the hotel foyer said each mast represented the hours on a clock face, due to the prime meridian passing through the structure. Time was fast running out for me. Seeing it with my own eyes reminded me how close Saturday was.

“Are you okay?” Reign asked.

Arms crossed, I didn’t turn, but blinked at Reign’s ghostly reflection in the window. “I’ll be fine.”

He shrugged off his coat and ruffled his hair before dropping onto the bed, hands laced behind his head, lithe body relaxed. I watched his reflection, taking in the sight of Sovereign without him knowing. I hardly knew him, really. But in the days since we’d met, my world had changed. No, that wasn’t strictly true. Before we met, my world hadn’t existed. Did I owe my life to him? I had to wonder what went wrong on the Chancery Lane platform. Why didn’t I kill him, as I’d been designed to do? I distinctly remembered my concerns about a job that wasn’t real, and how he’d intrigued me … The near unconscious rock star fae. I’d wanted his story. It was all I’d cared about, to begin with. Perhaps the queen made a mistake. Whatever magic she used to create my past, she’d made me too real. Too authentic. That fake past became important to me, more so than my mission to kill Reign.

“It happened when we touched,” he said softly.

I jumped, roused from my thoughts by his voice. “What did?”

He turned his head, expression so neutral it had to be forced. “When we first touched on the station platform, I stole your draíocht, and muddied the queen’s control over you.” Lifting his gaze, he peered at the ceiling. “Fae don’t usually trade draíocht. It’s like a tug-of-war, ultimately pointless. When I took yours, thinking you were human, I drew the queen’s draíocht into me and broke her spell; not all of it, or I might have unraveled you right there on the platform.”

“
Unraveled me?
What does that even mean?” I turned my back on the windows and faced him. “Reign, I …” My voice caught. I swallowed, or tried to, but a wedge of emotion clogged my throat. I couldn’t fall apart. Not yet. When this was over, when Saturday came and went, when we tried to stop the queen, failed or succeeded. Only then could I drop to my knees and cry my eyes out. But not yet. I had to keep it together, just for a little while longer. Even if I wanted nothing more in that moment than to crawl under the covers and hide from a world I didn’t belong in.

I lifted my gaze slowly and found Reign watching, fae eyes bright with understanding. It was too much. I turned to face the windows. Shutting him out, drilling the dregs of strength through my limbs. I would not fall apart in front of him. If I shattered, here and now, I might never recover the pieces of myself.

He didn’t mention the emotion he must have seen on my face, and I was grateful for that. “The draíocht here,” he said. “The magic we harvest, the residue of it in your world, it’s weak. But when the queen feeds, she takes the weakened draíocht into her, turning it dark, and powerful. That changed draíocht is in you. The queen, and … and the hound; those things aren’t part of this world. Neither are you.”

I swallowed, and jumped on mention of the hound, watching his reflection closely. “The hound … What is it?” He didn’t respond, didn’t move, didn’t even blink. I waited, but the silence dragged on. Leaning back against the window, I tried his tactic of attempting to stare the answer out of him, but he wasn’t even looking at me. He focused in the middle distance, thoughts far away. “Reign, is it one of your many talents?” I inquired lightly, hoping to lift the mood, just a little, enough to get him to open up.

He rolled onto his side and propped his head up on his hand. “You’re unique, y’know. Constructs don’t have feelings or think for themselves.”

“We were talking about you.”

“No, you were. I want to talk about you.” His fingers tapped out a beat on the bed. “When I took your draíocht on the platform, I thought you were there to kill me. I could barely move to defend myself. Then you looked at me like
I
was the puzzle, with hunger in your eyes.”

“You knew from that moment I wasn’t real?”

He nodded, eyes on me, checking for my reaction. “I knew you weren’t what you appeared to be.”

It bothered me. Everything he’d said, everything he’d done, he’d been watching me, testing me, waiting for me to snap. And I’d thought … what? That he liked me? That we could have been friends? Maybe more? What a joke. I’d pushed him away, thinking the Trinity Law would protect me when in reality, the three laws didn’t even apply to a construct.

“When was the last time you had chocolate cake?” Reign asked, voice light, laced with enthusiasm.

“Huh?”

“Well, you’ve only been around a few days. So, you’ve never had chocolate cake, right?”

Was he deliberately distracting me? Had my thoughts been so easy to read on my face? “I guess.” I remembered cake, but as I scrabbled around my head searching for the memory, the taste, I couldn’t find it. The fake memories were superficial, just skin deep. My lips twisted, frown cutting deep.

“Strawberries?” he asked, getting to his feet and veering around the bed.

“What?”

“Strawberries. Ice cream. Steak.” With each word, his smile grew and a playful laughter brightened his eyes. “And chocolate. Have you eaten chocolate at all in the past few days?”

“No, I …” I hadn’t eaten much of anything, and yet I didn’t feel hungry, at least not for food. There was something … a hunger, a need … not to be alone.

“You haven’t lived.” He announced, with an utterly over the top flourish. “We need to rectify that, right now.”

“Reign, please … I don’t think ….”

He strode to the door, opened it, and turned back, pure wickedness playing in his eyes. “C’mon, live a little, American Girl.”

“You’ll be recognized.”

“It’ll be worth it. I promise.”

“I—”

“Alina”—he purred my name, in that way he must know shortened my breath and quickened my heart—“you can’t spend another minute of your life without having tasted chocolate.”

“But the FA, the queen …” I was already halfway across the room, with no memory of moving. I
wanted
to go with him, to experience things I apparently never had before. The way he smiled, the dance of mischief in his eyes … I couldn’t say no, even though this was his way of avoiding my questions.

“What do you have to lose?” he asked, lowering his voice and giving me the kind of scandalous look that drove the paparazzi wild.

Nothing.

What started off as a sedate meal in a nearby dockside restaurant turned into a veritable feast. I argued there had to be something more useful we could be doing, but Reign brushed my concerns aside. “There is nothing more important than living,” he said, and then added, “and chocolate.” Reign ordered for me, foreign pronunciations rolling off his tongue. There was no way I could eat it all, but he insisted I try. The more peculiar it sounded, the more he urged me on. We tried sautéed vegetables, and salmon, and poached pears, and tangles of pasta, and chocolate fudge cake with ice-cream. I thought I remembered all these things, but I’d been wrong about that too.

He fit right in beneath the subdued lighting and among the chink of crystal glasses. Eventually, I gave up asking if our time was better spent preparing, or hiding, considering we were wanted by the FA, but he’d resorted to giving me the through-the-lashes look, somehow chiding and teasing all at once. “Would you rather spend your time worrying about events we cannot currently change or enjoying the company of London’s most infamous pinup?” He was joking; at least, I laughed like he was. He seemed to take his celebrity status with a large dose of irony.

I really wasn’t dressed for five-star dining—still in the stretchy top and pink leggings—but seated opposite him, watching him soak up the atmosphere, it really didn’t matter. The first law,
look but don’t touch
, had never applied to anyone more. He adapted to any environment, his faeness drawing people to him like moths to the flame. The way he moved, pouring liquid through muscles into long confident strides. How he spoke, never wasting a word, never hesitating. He was remarkable. I couldn’t blame it on bespellment. Not anymore. Which made the curious fluttering sensation deep inside all the more worrisome. It didn’t take long before diners surreptitiously glanced our way. Whether they recognized him or not, it didn’t matter; he was mesmerizing.

Reign talked about his music, how he thrived on the thrill of singing in front of a crowd, how the music spoke for him, through him. He talked about his music like someone might talk about love, and I forgot—just for a little while—about the queen, Reign’s confession, the hound, the fact I might not live beyond the weekend, or how I was a ticking time bomb and could essentially snap at any time. I listened to him talk, watched him taste the cake; drank the sight and sound of him in, knowing that this would end and the horrible reality of my life would stalk me once again.

Reign noticed me shuffling pieces of cake around my plate. “If you don’t want it, hand it over.”

“I don’t think so, pal.” I popped a piece into my mouth, my glare daring him to take the plate away.

He lifted his hands, feigning fear. “I’ve seen what you can do. The cake’s yours.” Retrieving his fork he carved up his own cake.

What I could do … I’d done things, horrible things I hadn’t known I was capable of. What other secrets did I have hidden away?

Reign leaned forward, licking his lips clean of cake, and pointed his fork at me. “We’ll stop her.”

I smiled, but it snagged on my lips, wooden and brittle.
What about me?
I thought. Would I need stopping when the time came?

He dropped his fork and tossed a napkin on the table. “You wanna get outta here?”

Out neighboring diners continued to pretend not to notice us. It wouldn’t be long before someone said his name, then someone else would ask for an autograph, and before long we’d be mobbed. “Sure.”

We left the restaurant and ducked into a nearby bar, packed with enough people for Reign not to be noticed, at least not immediately. Even with his head down, his collars flicked up, he couldn’t hide the predatory gait of his walk or the too-quick flick of his wrists. The fae would never pass as human, and we would never successfully imitate them. So close, human and fae, squabbling for the same top spot on the food chain.

We bought drinks and dissolved into a shadow-draped corner. Music throbbed. Tiny spotlights bred shadows. Reign’s gaze skimmed the crowd, searching for something or someone perhaps. Possibly Warren. We hadn’t heard from him since checking into the hotel. I was fairly certain the prickly fae was capable of looking after himself. “Maybe you should call him?” I suggested.