Naito is still staring behind me. I look over my shoulder just as Kyol reaches our table.
“I need a shadow-reader,” he says. “Quickly.”
I rise automatically, not noticing until I’m already standing that Kyol isn’t focused on me. He’s focused on Naito. Naito meets his gaze but doesn’t say a word for a good six seconds.
“I’m busy.” He returns to reading the documents in front of him.
I don’t know if it’s obvious what Naito is researching—I feel like it should be—but Kyol’s face remains expressionless, even when he eventually looks at me. “Will you come?”
It’s a question I was rarely asked when King Atroth was alive. The fae always assumed I would drop everything and help them, and most of the time, I did. My own fault. I should have stood my ground more often, made more time for myself.
“Yeah, I’ll go,” I tell him. Jenkins doesn’t need my driver’s license and Social Security card until 5 P.M. on Friday, two days from now. I have more than enough time to help Kyol and get back to Vegas, and I want to help him.
I turn to Naito. “You’ll have to cover my watch.”
He doesn’t glance up.
“Naito,” I say again, sharper this time. I see his jaw clench once, twice. Then, when I think he’s going to ignore me indefinitely, he finally says, “Fine.”
I’ll have to trust he’ll follow through on that because Kyol’s already heading for the door. I was avoiding Kyol these past two weeks only because I didn’t want to hurt him, but it doesn’t look like being near me fazes him at all. Maybe I’m a fool to think he still wants me. Maybe he’s completely over me.
I follow him out the door, breaking into a jog when my legs can’t keep up at a walk. Usually, Kyol would slow down for me, but when we exit the archives, he increases his pace.
“We might lose him if we don’t move quickly.”
The urgency makes my stomach tighten. The last time I shadow-read with him was two weeks ago in Montana. It didn’t go well. A lot of fae died securing the Sidhe Tol and fissuring into the Silver Palace. They’ve been dying ever since, and while I want to believe we’ve made it through the bloodiest days of this war, my gut tells me we haven’t. More lives will be lost before the high nobles accept Lena as queen.
FIVE
KYOL ISN’T THE fae who fissures me out of Corrist. He hands me a cloak, a sketchbook, and an imprinted anchor-stone, then lets Taber, his second-in-command, take me through the slash of white light. As soon as the gated-fissure fades away, I release Taber’s arm, trying to ignore the heat swirling in my palm. He doesn’t look bothered by our contact. I’m sure he is, though. The majority of the Realm’s citizens believe humans and human tech damage their magic. Chances are none of the three fae with me now want to get too close to me; they’re just too professional to show it.
They’re all former Court fae who served under Kyol. I’ve worked with Taber before, but not the other two, though I have met Brayan, the tall but stout fae standing to my left, once. He was one of the men guarding the storage room where Kyol was holding Naito and Evan, another shadow-reader, during the war. I haven’t seen him since then, but being with the three former Court fae makes this assignment seem so familiar, I almost feel like nothing has changed these past few weeks. Nothing, that is, except our target. We’re not hunting Aren anymore.
“We’re hunting Dyler, son of Jielan,” Kyol says when he joins us. The shadows from his extinguished fissure twist in the air behind him. Fae can’t see them. They don’t feel the itch to sketch out their peaks and valleys. They don’t need to know if the tiny swirl in the middle of the black haze puts us on the east or west side of the river that cuts through the city. I do, though, and my fingers tighten on the sketchbook in my hand. I wish I had the strapped sketchbook I packed in my suitcase, but this one will work, and it will take only a few seconds to slip the pencil from the spiral and draw what looks to be a marketplace just north of the swirl. If I—
“McKenzie.”
I blink. Kyol’s voice is firm, like he’s called my name more than once.
I give my head a little shake so I can focus on him and not the shadows dancing over his shoulder. In the last ten years, I’ve only tranced out a dozen times looking at them. Two of those times have been in the last week. I think sleep deprivation and constantly being on edge is finally getting to me.
“Are you sure you can do this?” His silver eyes don’t soften like they usually would with that question.
“I’m sure,” I say, keeping my voice neutral as well. We both know I’m the best person for this job. “You said we’re looking for…?”
“Jielan,” Kyol says.
I recognize the name. I read the shadows for him just a few months ago. We were looking for Aren in Jythkrila, but the rebels set a trap for us. For me, really. They’d killed and replaced the inspectors at the city’s gate. The inspectors’ job was to make sure the fae who used the gate paid taxes on the goods they took through it. They’d never approached me before, but one did that time. He feigned interest in the sketchbook I carried. By the time I realized something wasn’t right, he locked his hand around my wrist.
Jielan saved me from the rebels. They were my enemy then, so I was grateful. I thanked him. Now, I’m here to help Kyol capture or kill him.
“Up here,” Kyol says, motioning me toward a ladder. It’s only then that I really take in my surroundings. My impressions from the shadows were wrong. We’re nowhere near a marketplace. The ladder climbs up the side of a gray-and-black brick wall. The building is big, stretching more than fifty feet to either side of me. It’s plain, though, with a flat façade and what looks like a flat roof. My guess is it’s a bregorm, a stack house, which is basically the Realm’s equivalent of a UPS. Jaedric, wood, textiles, and other bulk items don’t just appear in merchants’ stores. They have to be brought there, and the fae who harvest or create them don’t have the time to fissure what they’re selling in small armloads to every merchant who might want them. So they bring them here, stacking them in their local bregorm, where other fae agree to the tedious job of hauling them to the nearest gate.
The stack house is the only building I can see. I don’t know what’s on its other side, but there’s nothing but an open field at our backs. It was near midnight in Corrist, but here, it’s maybe late afternoon, which means we’re a good ways to the east of the Silver Palace.
I grab the first rung of the ladder and start up, thinking maybe I’ll recognize the city when I have a better view. It’s close to a three-story climb, but I make it to the top quickly. As I pull myself onto the roof, I notice the thick band of silver edging the building. The metal prevents fae from fissuring up here or inside, but that’s not the only reason we emerged from the In-Between at the base of the ladder. One of Kyol’s swordsmen lies flat on his stomach on the far edge of the roof. His head is pointed away from us and tilted at an angle that presumably gives him a decent view of the door to the building that’s across the street. From where I’m crouched by the ladder, I can only see a roof and the top edge of a window. No one inside should be able to see me, but if we’d fissured directly up here, there’s a chance they might have seen the flash of light.
I stay low and let my gaze sweep across the rest of the area. We’re on the outskirts of a town. Most of the buildings are spread out, but a strip of structures built closely together is off to my far right. I’m guessing they’re stores of some kind, maybe with a few small residences scattered among them. The street they’re on snakes back and forth, and I think I was wrong about a river cutting through the city. That road is the wavy line I saw in the shadows.