Queene of Light Read online

  “The affairs of the denizens of this Underground, mortal or immortal, are not our concern.” Azrael’s sad, kind smile reflected the truth. “You have chosen. And you have fallen.”

  The faces of the Host assembled around them faded. The light grew dimmer. Azrael stepped back.

  “No!” Malachi looked desperately at each one, sickened to know it was the last time and certain there was some way to make them understand. “It was not my choice. I had no will of my own! Even now, my will is that of the Creator!”

  The light around him flared again, and he fell to his knees, knowing what would come. Flashing whips of gold lashed his wings, his back. He’d watched this so many times, wondering why they all cried out as their wings were pierced and torn, certain that mortal pain could not be so unbearable. He’d been wrong. The agony of it stole the breath from his lungs. His fragile mortal hands clenched against the rough stone beneath him, splintering his fingernails and tearing them loose from his flesh. He screamed, not to pray to his absent God, but to release the fearful pressure in his chest, to lessen some of the pain.

  And then, the spectral lashes were gone. Alone in the darkness, Malachi collapsed, unable to support his body enough to prevent crushing his ruined wings. He turned his hot face to press his cheek to the cool ledge. Sticky red oozed slowly across the stone, feathering into the thirsty pores to create a dark, wet stain.

  This would kill him. The pain, the blood, the desperation. No being, mortal or immortal, could withstand such suffering. He closed his eyes, resigned and a bit relieved to know it would not be long now. He waited hopefully for the flutter of wings and the Angel who would return him to Aether. It seemed ages passed, and still they did not come. The searing pain dulled to an agonizing throb, and the wetness at his back congealed. He wondered if it was a sign of imminent death. Many of the souls he’d claimed had been victims of gruesome violence. They had not bled in torrents as he had. But it seemed to take so long.

  At every noise, be it a drip of water or the click of vermin’s claws against the ledge beside him, he startled, sure it was time. His hopes soared, then crashed, and with each repetition the anticipation and disappointment magnified. He remained alone, stranded in his mortal prison, stranded on an island in a seemingly endless sea of filth. If he had the strength, he could find his way to Aether, the place in the Darkworld that the Death Angels had claimed as their fortress. But the halls would be empty to him. Another Angel would not show him their face until the moment of his death. And he did not have the strength. He would wait, for help or for death, it did not matter which.

  Finally something did come along. Slogging through the fetid water, whistling a simple tune that echoed almost sinisterly off the stark walls. A light shone, not the holy white of death. Yellow, mechanical, dirty and dank as everything in this Underground. It bobbed with the movement of its bearer, and as it moved closer, Malachi saw the shape of a man, painfully thin, hair curled from the damp, wearing an odd contraption to keep the water from his garments. He waded to the ledge, took off his strange hat with the light atop it and held it away when Malachi lifted his arm to shade his eyes.

  “Holy shit.” The man sniffed, wiped his nose on his forearm. He looked up and down the tunnel, as if guilty of some crime he’d not yet committed. “What the hell are you?”

  Too fatigued, too ambivalent to bother answering, Malachi looked away.

  “Right. Okay.” The hat clattered against the ledge, and the man muttered as he seemed to be looking for something. Malachi did not care, as long as he left him to die in peace, and soon.

  The sting of something piercing his arm caught him by surprise. He looked from the syringe in the man’s hand to the slightly apologetic expression on his face.

  “Listen, buddy, this is really for the best,” he said, wiping the needle on his shirt before returning it to a pocket. Malachi’s vision faded. His stomach churned. And then he knew no more.

  Three

  T he training room of the Assassins’ Guild was deserted. No one would come to practice or spar at this hour, which was exactly why Ayla had retreated there. The night guard, a retired Assassin, grumbled when she’d roused him to open the door, but she’d not apologized. She needed time to meditate on her failure in the Darkworld, time to formulate the answers to the questions she knew she would face. A more intelligent Assassin would think of a quick lie to cover such shame, but Ayla had no talent for lies. She became tangled in and tripped over even the most simple falsehoods.

  No, she would probe the root of what had gone wrong, find that answer for herself before Garret or, Gods help her, the Guild Master, sought it and she looked a fool.

  Or an incompetent Assassin, which she assured herself she was not. Beneath the high cement pillars of the training room she moved across the rough floor, wielding a simple wooden staff as she moved through her forms. She would start with the easiest weapons and move to the most demanding, working all night if she had to in order to punish herself for her ineptitude and prove she was better than the weakness she’d displayed in dealing with the Darkling.

  The Darkling. How was it that now, when he was almost certainly dead, victim of some insidious predator of the Darkworld, he haunted her? Her shoulder still ached from his punishing hold. She would find a healer in the morning, not Guild employed so there would be no questions. She would find time to slip away to the Strip before she was required to report to the Guild Master.

  She closed her eyes, spinning the staff from hand to hand, reveling in the bite of it against her palms. It had been five years since she’d entered Guild training and first used the clumsy, cumbersome weapon. Her hands had blistered and bled, but she’d endured. Now, her calluses had faded, pampered by the leather grips of her more elegant daggers.

  She was pampered. That was the root of the problem. She’d lost touch with what it was like to be an Assassin for the Queene of the Faery Quarter. Perhaps she should use a staff more often, to toughen herself up.

  No, it was not just her fighting. It was her lack of opportunity to fight. Every morning she would wait hopefully on her bunk until Garret came, somber-faced and shaking his head. The Queene did not fancy Humans, he’d explained once, and Ayla should not expect many assignments to pass her way. It was whispered that Cedric, the Guild Master, was one of Mabb’s many consorts and would bend to her every whim, even if that whim prejudiced him against the Assassins in his charge.

  It was with the Guild Master’s smug face in mind that Ayla whirled through the bow staff forms. But as always, she could not remain angry at him. Her rage was irrational, turning instead to Garret, her mentor. He should defend her. He should demand that his sister lift the ban against Ayla, however it may have come to pass, and procure her better and more frequent assignments. It was his responsibility, after all, and she was his only charge.

  No, Garret was far more content to let Mabb do as she pleased, coddling her and venerating her as if she were a Goddess rather than a mere ruler. As he wished to coddle Ayla, turning her from a hardened Assassin into a soft and willing mate. Judging from the way she’d faltered tonight, his strategy was effective.

  As if called by her venomous thoughts, Garret strode through the arched double doors. The night watchman called something after him, certainly not complimentary, but it was swallowed up by the clanging shut of the doors and Garret’s heavy boots thudding across the floors. For a moment, Ayla expected anger and had to rearrange his sharp features in her mind to resemble the anguish painted on his face.

  “When did you return? I have been ill with worry!” His robes flapped behind him as he hurried to her side.

  In the guise of fixing her braid, Ayla quickly unbound her hair, letting it fall over the mark on her crushed shoulder like a flame-colored veil. “I have only just returned.”

  It was then he became angry, his brow creasing below the antennae that flattened against his dark curls like the ears of a maddened cat. “And you did not come straight to me? You have been g
one two days longer than the assignment called for—”

  “I was to abandon the trail?” she interjected, setting one end of the staff against the ground as she drew herself up straighter.

  “You were to follow the instructions I gave you!” He grabbed her by the arms, dangerously close to the place where the Darkling had left his mark.

  She did not fear him, though she feared his discovery of her bruises and the questions they would provoke. Glaring at him with her coldest expression, the one she’d practiced on countless victims as they’d begged her for mercy, she bit out, “I must finish my exercises.”

  His expression softened and he released her. She knew it pained him to show anger. It made him unattractive. “I apologize. I am merely fatigued. Mabb sent a squadron out to search for you, but they were unable to penetrate the Darkworld border. I feared you were lost.”

  She turned away, dragging the staff to the weapons rack. Mabb’s troops could have easily breached the border of the Darkworld. Unlike the heavily guarded entrances to the Lightworld, the tunnels leading into their enemies’ territory were defenseless. But she would not risk threatening the denizens of the Darkworld with her troops, possibly starting a war. Certainly not over Ayla, who Mabb strongly disliked.

  Ayla reached for a broadsword, though her muscles screamed from overuse and her brain begged for sleep. More training, more time to think, that was what she needed.

  “Ayla, please,” Garret soothed, his footsteps indicating his approach. “You are tired. We can train tomorrow, but now I would like you to sleep. Stay with me tonight. I can take you to Sanctuary in the morning.”

  Sanctuary. The word held such a sweet promise of rest and spiritual calm. She could meditate at Sanctuary, bathe in the pools, be renewed.

  Be free of the memory of the Darkling.

  The very thought of him steeled her resolve to keep working. “I will go to Sanctuary in the morning. Alone.” As I will sleep alone tonight, she added silently.

  Garret gave a heavy sigh. “As you wish it.”

  She watched him as he left, his slender form disguised by his voluminous Guild robes. His wings lay at his back, transparent as water, swirled with gossamer color like oil polluting a puddle. He was much admired by the ladies at Court, as Ayla had seen on the occasions when she’d gone to the Palace to make her reports. To have the attention of the Queene’s brother was an envious thing, and Ayla appreciated her position even if she would not accept his love. It was no secret that her Human father had won her place in the Guild in a gambling house on the Strip, but that Garret had chosen to tutor her, that was a touch of luck she could never count on again. She was grateful to him. Most students and mentors were assigned unless prior arrangements were made, and Ayla had been in no position to buy a better one.

  “But when I saw you in the assembly,” Garret often told her, “I knew I had to be near you, if only as your mentor.”

  She did owe him her gratitude, but she found it difficult to parlay that debt into a lifetime bound to him. And she knew what was whispered about her. That she was proud, that she did not know how unrealistic her expectations were. It was not as if one could aspire higher than an heir to the kingdom. That the kingdom, indeed, their entire plane of being, no longer existed did not matter. Nor did their immortality. Mabb could rule for eternity, so long as she was not harmed. It seemed unlikely that the Queene would fall to injury or illness with her retinue of guards and healers. Still, for a half-breed like Ayla, a match with Garret was more than she should ever have hoped for, and she knew it.

  So did Garret, and that was some of the problem.

  Why could she not simply accept his affections for her own gain? She did not like living in the barracks, constantly guarding her possessions from the Pixies and Tricksters that shared the quarters. Of course, she would not have to worry about her meager possessions if she went to live with Garret in his home outside the Palace. She would have possessions worth guarding. A fine rug instead of the coarse, cold cement of the tunnels beneath her feet. Food and rich wine that she didn’t have to fight for, stolen from the Human world above, where things were clean and worth stealing. There weren’t many luxuries Underground, but Garret would give her anything he could, simply because he wished to.

  She worked through defense with the broadsword, waiting until she was certain Garret had left the Guild compound. It was nearly morning by the time she stumbled from the training room. Soon, it would be the Human noon hour, and the sun that Ayla had never seen would be directly over the surface of the Earth, spilling light into the grates and gutters, illuminating the Underground with secondhand dawn.

  Ayla had not been born yet when the Humans had destroyed the Astral and Etheric planes. Garret had been there, and like all of the Fae who had fought in the wars against the Humans, remembered it well, though nearly three hundred years had passed. He sang songs of it at times, strumming his harp with a look of regret so keen it seemed woven into the enchantment of the music itself. There had been a spiritual war amongst the Humans, one side wielding their sacrificial God like a sword against “nonbelievers.” Like a pendulum swinging, Human society embraced this way of life, then rejected it. It was during the last shift that the boundaries between what they believed to be real and the lands of their dreams and nightmares were severed.

  Garret spoke with disgust about the behavior of the Humans who’d claimed their practices were a revival of the old ways, marketing crystals and oracles and glossy books claiming to hold the secrets to powerful magics. “Some claimed to be Druids,” he’d scoffed once, when he’d used his pipe a bit too much. “Druids. I walked with Amergin. He gave me this harp. The fools, if they had any idea of what it meant to be a true Druid…ah, but half of them don’t even eat animals. They believe it is too cruel.”

  But it hadn’t mattered. With the followers of the One God calling on him in prayer for even the most mundane situations and the pretenders invoking spirits and attempting to force their consciousness onto the Astral plane, the veil rent. The Gods “Seemed to disappear as mist into the air,” as Garret described it, and the creatures the Humans had long thought of as myth had spilled onto Earth with no hope of ever leaving. They were welcomed at first, celebrated even. But when they did not show themselves to be the helpful sprites consumed with admiration for the Human race that the mortals expected, they turned on them.

  It was said the war began when the Fae races drove the Humans Underground, though the story that existed outside the Lightworld was that the Humans had fled below the Earth of their own volition. They abandoned their world for the caverns they had hewn from the dirt, tunnels for sanitation and great vehicles that shook the ground as they traveled on rails. The Humans drilled passages to connect them and create the great cities of the Underground.

  As more Humans fled the world above, a mortal rose as leader among his people. Uttering his name was forbidden in the Lightworld, but Ayla had not always lived there. In her childhood on the Strip, the neutral zone between the borders of Dark and Light, she’d heard him spoken of. Madaku Jah, the Prophet. Or the Traitor, depending who told the tales. No matter if he was reviled or praised, he’d raised an army against the creatures above them and forced them into the very Underground they’d made the mortals endure.

  Now, the tides shifted again. Only a fool would ignore the signs. Another battle brewed, but this one was not against the Humans, the common enemy of the Light and Dark worlds. This war would be fought in the Underground. The grim thought haunted Ayla as she shuffled to the barracks, her body on the verge of collapse.

  Inside, only the Pixies had begun to rouse. They always rose early, desperate for what little sunlight they could get.

  One of them stopped her with a wide grin. “Ayla, you look terrible. Come with us to Sanctuary.”

  “Of course I look terrible. I have been training all night. Now I need rest, while I can still have it.”

  “Suit yourself.” The Pixie flashed another winning smile. An
y creature with a drop of mortal blood would look terrible in comparison to the Fae races, preternaturally young and strong. And they had gotten rest. They had not been plagued with thoughts of a newly mortal creature lying helpless in the Darkworld.

  Neither had she, she scolded herself. There was no reason to think on the creature. Not to pity him. That had been her first mistake. Not to revel in her victory, obviously. All she needed to think of was a good enough reason for her failure.

  So, why then, did she fight for sleep on her hard bunk, ignoring the sounds of the other Assassins as they rose, unable to chase away the memory of the Darkling’s voice and anguished face?

  Four

  M alachi opened his eyes to a strange, mechanical whirring and a pressing weight on his back as he lay on his stomach. He remembered the man in the tunnel, the one who had stabbed him and drugged him, the shock and horror as he realized he would be defenseless against whatever would come.

  Panic seized him, and it was an emotion he did not like. In fact, he did not like any of the emotions he had experienced thus far. He jerked up, bracing his hands beneath him, the bite of cold metal meeting his hands where his flesh had not warmed it.

  “Don’t move, I’m almost done.” The command was most calm, considering the man had abducted him.

  Malachi swallowed, his newly mortal throat as dry as parchment. “I am thirsty.”

  “Sorry, nothing to drink during surgery. It’s unsanitary,” the man responded. A flare of something passed Malachi’s face, and when he peered over the rolled edge of the table he saw the withering remains of those addictive tubes of paper the mortals in the Underground despaired of finding regularly enough to feed their habit.

  Mortals lived in the Underground for two reasons. They sympathized with the denizens of the Underground, or they had been banished from the Human world for practicing magics. But the man’s reason for being there did not concern Malachi so much as what he was doing. “Surgery? I do not understand.”