The Fallen Stars (A Star Child Novel) (41 page)

“You’re a prince,” Willock finally said, his voice almost a whisper.

“What?” I could only stare at him.

“You’re the Prince of Faerie, Kellen.” Willock fell to one knee and extended his hand, offering the amulet to me.

His words swirled around my head like a tornado. I stared at Willock’s hand the amulet that lay on his palm. It came to me that after I claimed it, I would lose my identity and life would never be the same.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

CALI—
END

The light came closer. My suffering would end soon. It had to.

Kellen.

I will always love—

CHAPTER SIXTY

KELLEN—
PRINCE

I managed to get myself out of the house and onto the balcony just in time to throw up over the side. Looking down, I confirmed that I’d hit the patio furniture as I retched. Oh well. The furniture had always been gross-looking—or at least it was now.

When I finally straightened up, I started to wipe my mouth off on the back of my sleeve, only to see that it was covered with blood and filth. Checking the other sleeve, I found the same. I grabbed the bottom of the shirt, the part that fell below the waistband of my jeans, and used that instead. “Ouch!” I’d forgotten about my broken nose.
Wonderful.

“Here.” Willock came out behind me and waved his hand in the air. In a moment, he’d repaired my nose, cleaned up the blood, and presented me with a clean shirt.

“You’re
good
,” I said, tearing off my soiled shirt and discarding it, blood, puke, and all.

“Thanks, but I draw the line at dressing you,” Willock said. Again, the serious look that appeared on his face clashed with his words.

Shivering I pulled the new shirt over my head as quickly as possible. “Thanks. This is much warmer.” I buttoned the buttons of the new shirt and felt a bit of the chill leave me. I looked at Willock. “But…
how?
How is this possible? I’m just a kid from New York.”

“Yes, but your father is the new King of Faerie.”

“What?”

“Your true father, the real Stephen St. James, still lives in Faerie. Arawn sort of converted him into a true faerie and…adopted him, I guess you could say.”

“You know him, don’t you?”

Willock nodded. “We grew up together, Stephen and I. We were like brothers. Arawn did very much the same thing to us that he did with you tonight. He created a glamour of this perfect family life, this fairy tale story. Arawn told me that my father had forgotten about me, and I tried to forget about him. It’s easy to forget that you have another life, another purpose, when you’re given perfection.”

Man, did I get that. “I understand. I turned down perfection once,” I said. “Maybe I would have been better off if I hadn’t.”

“Things happen for a reason,” said Willock.

“Maybe. Tell me more about the “good” Stephen.” I didn’t know what to think about finding out I had a different father entirely. It had been a dream of mine for years; now finding out that it had become my reality seemed surreal.

“We were both content for many years until I found Arawn’s journal and realized none of it was real,” Willock said.

“Arawn wrote all this down in a journal?” I asked. “That seems unlike him.”

Willock’s eyes held years of torment. “I think that he enjoyed reliving the ways in which he tortured others.”

A shudder passed through me.

“I told Stephen the truth about Arawn and we rebelled. Stephen made it aboveground, but Arawn caught me and I received the punishment because it was my idea.”

“What about my father?”

“He went missing for about a week before Arawn lured him home and locked him away. I think that’s when he met your mother. I don’t believe that he even knows about you.”

“Then how do you know that ‘bad Stephen’ isn’t my father?”

“Arawn asked me to sift through his thoughts. I’ve always been particularly good at that. I knew that Arawn was particularly interested in whether or not Stephen had met anyone,” Willock swallowed. “I lied.”

“Why?’ I asked.

“Because Stephen was like a brother to me. And I could tell that he loved your mother. Arawn would have killed her.”

That would have killed me. I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“I’ll get to that in a moment,” Willock said. “My father and I…” Willock teared up, his face cringing, then he composed himself again. “We were working together. Danu had foreseen Arawn’s betrayal and she enlisted both my father and me to help her long ago. She said that Lugh would have been too obvious, but we could infiltrate Faerie and steal her power back when the time came.”

My mind flashed to Dillion, to the way his face had looked when he spoke of Willock as his son.
Was it all an act?

“Nevertheless, the power of Arawn seduced me and I became his lackey even though he called me ‘son’. He made everything seem so wonderful that I abandoned my own father, my own cause, for something that ruined me. Evil.”

“But you didn’t know—”

“Don’t make excuses for me, Kellen,” Willock said. “I turned against the light.”

“Until Cali,” I added.

A tear trailed down his face. “She reminded me in a single kiss of the man I used to be. Of the man I could have been.”

Jealousy surged within me, but I forced myself to tamp it down. “You
are
that guy, Willock. You saved me, you saved all of the people here, and you didn’t have to.”

“I didn’t do it for either you or me. What I did, I did for her…She loves you, and I love her enough to…”

I nodded, digesting this information. I wondered if I could have been big enough, brave enough to walk away like that. “But I still don’t get how this other Stephen can be my father.” My mind tried to sort out the mechanics of it all. How could it be possible that I was the son of someone trapped in Faerie? I’d always been a part of the mortal world, hadn’t I?

“It’s not my place to tell you all of this, Kellen. Some of it your father will have to tell you about himself,” Willock said.

My eyes met his. “Where is he now? Can I see him? If Danu knew all this was going to happen, why not stop it?”

Willock settled on my last question. “Because fate decreed otherwise. There had already been a time of great peace, and now was the time for the darkness to come. It is an on-going battle between the two. Danu would never have tried to twist fate. Yet she knew that you would come one day and she made plans to make sure you had as much help as possible. She wrapped the amulet in a curse that would prevent anyone but you from using it to its full extent.”

“But why
me?
”

“Because you are the child of mortal and faerie, born in the shadow of darkness. The child with the sign of light burned into his skin.”

“What the hell does
that
mean?”

Willock remained calm despite my outburst. “I thought you knew about the second part of the prophecy. Don’t you have a knack for remembering things?” His eyes seemed sad, despite the mocking tone in his voice.

“I do, but there was nothing in the prophecy about—”

Willock held out his palm in front of him and waved his other hand over the top of it in a slow circle, much like an entertainment magician would. The amulet still gleamed in his hand and my fingers clasped around the pendant in my pocket.

The book that I’d read at Tai’s appeared on his palm and he extended the volume to me. My breath hung like a puff of smoke in the air as I expelled it and snatched the book from Willock. Without hesitation, I turned to the page that contained the second part of the prophecy. After reading it, I looked up at him, confused. It was the exact same piece of text that I’d read at Tai’s house. “I still don’t get it,” I said.

Without a word, Willock reached over and turned the page.

The one who refuses immortality in light will receive it in darkness. The child of mortal and faerie, born in the shadow of night, with the sign of light burned into his skin, will lead the immortal world in a new age of rule.

My pulse hammered in my ears, temporarily blocking out all sound. “I don’t have a sign of light burned into my skin,” I said after a moment.

“Yes, you do. Take your shirt off again.”

“You’re insane. It’s freezing.” I shook my head.

Willock just looked at me and I complied with a grumble. Shrugging out of the warmth of my shirt, the cold hit me again. With a snap of his fingers, a light turned on a little way from where we stood on the patio. Walking up to me, Willock held the amulet close to my chest. “Look at your reflection in the window.”

When I initially looked at myself, nothing had changed. An exhausted and uncomfortable guy stared back at me, nothing more. Then I looked at my chest. The emblem, though small, lay directly above my heart and glowed a faint golden color. Willock continued to hold the amulet close to me, but when he pulled it away the marking I’d observed on my skin blended into my flesh and faded.

I breathed in and exhaled, letting my breath out slowly, then looked at Willock. “I don’t want to rule anything without Calienta.”

“The amulet can show you where she is now, Kellen. You have only to claim your birthright. And you can change so many things,” Willock said.

“Can I bring her back?” My voice cracked on the last word.

“If she is truly dead…It is…not advisable.”

I looked down for a moment, shifting back and forth on my feet, before looking at him again. “How can I really trust you, Willock?” Yes, he had saved me so far, but what if he wanted the amulet for himself and it would kill me?

Willock stared me in the eye. “Because when I give you the amulet, I’m going to die.”

I’d known this somehow, known all of it, but it still came as a shock. In the next thirty seconds, I would be taking another man’s life—and I didn’t have a choice.

“Take it.” Willock shoved the amulet into my hand. Still holding on, he cautioned me. “Get your pendant ready to join to it.

Nodding, I lifted up the pendant in my other hand, hovering it above the amulet. The pair of objects seemed to shake in response to one another’s close proximity. Willock began to sweat profusely despite the cold. This would be painful for him. I would forever regret causing him pain, especially since he’d saved my life.

“On the count of three. One, two…three!”

Jamming the pendant onto the grooves in the amulet, I waited. I expected more fireworks or a lightshow at the very least, but it was anticlimactic. The pieces began to fuse together slowly, until they gradually became one.

In the space of several seconds, the silver of the pendant became completely absorbed into the amulet, until it appeared as though the front of the amulet, which had once been smooth, was now embossed with the emblem from my pendant.

As they joined, an indescribable feeling of power flooded my body. It reminded me of my brief experience as an immortal, when Síl granted me high kingship. The power had been too overwhelming, too tempting. This time, with Danu’s amulet, the sense of power and temptation could easily be described as twenty times that—no, maybe
two hundred
times more.

Then the power of the amulet was too much for me and I wanted to get away from it. My fingers twitched as though to drop it.

“Don’t let go of it. Don’t let it out of your sight,” Willock said. He swallowed, lowering himself to the ground. “Show her to me, Kellen. Please, show her to me.”

I wanted to take the amulet and run. Cali was
my
Cali and I didn’t want to share even a fraction of her with anyone. Even though she did not return Willock’s feelings. Even though she’d died. Then again, Willock was responsible for saving my life. How could I let him die without returning this small favor?

“Please,” Willock pleaded. “I need to see her one last time.”

Nodding, I pulled the amulet up so that it was at eye level with Willock.

Willock instructed me. “Close your eyes. Think about her. Recall everything about her that makes her matter to you. Bring that to your mind and then allow yourself to let go of all your fears, all your doubts.”

I did as he suggested.
Cali
. Her hair, her eyes, her body, her mind, her heart—they were all parts of Cali that popped into my head when I thought of her. Now, I would not think of her as dead and gone. I would think of her as alive in my memory always.

“Show me my Cali,” I whispered.

Opening my eyes, I fell backwards onto my butt as the amulet transformed into a window through which I could see Cali. I’d expected to see her as…what, as a ghost, or an angel? I’d had no idea, but to see her
alive
and with Cabhan was not what I expected. Although maybe that meant she’d become an angel now. But she didn’t appear as healthy as an angel might have. She’d been hurt. Bad.
However,
she lived
.

“Did you see—” My words trailed off, as the rest of them didn’t matter. Willock was dead on the ground beside me, his empty eyes still staring at the image of Cali, a peaceful smile on his face. Reaching down, I gently closed Willock’s eyes, my tears falling on his face. “Goodbye, my friend.”

Standing, I looked inside through the window. The house had been trashed almost beyond recognition. Between Arawn’s terrible housekeeping and the explosion, things weren’t looking good. I couldn’t forget the smell from—I assumed—the exhumed bodies of my parents. Unwilling to spend even a moment more there, I walked across the patio until I hit the lawn, gulping in the fresh air. As I looked around the abandoned estate, dawn broke, casting tentative rays over the treetops and down onto the front of my father’s empty house.