“You know what it’s like to be separated from your love,” Faolán said with all the fervor of the brokenhearted. “Imagine knowing your Jinn lived just beyond your reach, and you were stuck in a place you hated, forced to live there in order to protect the one thing you were forbidden to see.”
Blinking to clear my vision, I looked around, completely unaware of my surroundings. As though waking suddenly from the deepest sleep, I realized I’d been brought back from whatever dark place Faolán had cast me into. The last thing I remembered was standing in the mouth of the granite cave. And now I found myself in a darkened forest, lightless save the silvery glow of the moon overhead, while Faolán held his dagger against my flesh and prattled on like a preacher at his pulpit. “You cannot deny you have experienced the pain of separation.”
Thanks to you, I do know what that feels like, dickhead. But I thought better of lending my voice to the complaint. Faolán held me close, one arm wrapped tight around my waist. Though his words were for me alone, he gazed past me, toward the woman sitting beneath the swaying branches of a rowan tree. Brakae faced us, the two halves of the broken hourglass resting on the ground beside her, the tears in her eyes reflected in the swirling golden light as the sands of time rebelled against the inevitability of what would soon take place. What the hell had happened since I’d been out of it? Something magical bound her too, her helpless expression proof enough that she could force her way free no better than I. She looked at me and then at Faolán, a silent sob escaping her lips. She had loved him once. And that love had driven him to insanity.
“She is the most beautiful creature I have ever beheld,” Faolán said, his voice breaking with emotion. “I never wanted her here. Trapped. Bound to chaos for eternity. How do you think it made me feel to know that the next time I saw her, she might not be the woman I could hold in my arms? What was I supposed to do with a child? Protect her and nothing more. It disgusts me. Time is perverse this close to The Ring-and that perversion is tied to her. It doesn’t have to be, though. I could never stay as long as I wanted. Every visit was a gamble, and too, too short.” Faolán waved the dagger before him in a flourish, as if showing me a point of interest. “Just as you live in the mundane, Moira lives here with Brakae. Of course, Guardians can travel between the realms. She visits the mundane world often, as once I would come to O Anel at my pleasure. And why this rule of nature? I ask you. Why could I not live here with Brakae and Moira with her brother? How better to protect the one I loved than to be with her always? But no. That is not the way. We must maintain the balance.”
“Faolán,” I rasped through a too-dry throat, “it’s not too late to stop this.”
“I should have stopped this millennia ago,” Faolán snarled in my ear. “It is far too late to change course. I will take this hourglass to Kotja A’ma, and there I will merge the realms.” I stared at him, completely uncomprehending.
“You must understand how it all began, Darian,” he continued. “I was a warrior, once. The right hand of the goddess Badb. The Enphigmalé were bred to fight, and we served our purpose, making war against Badb’s enemies. The blood of our foes pooled on the battlefield.” His shoulders slumped as if the weight of his past forced him down. “It was so long ago, the memories are like remnants of dreams.”
I knew how Faolán felt. I had only a century under my belt, and memories from my human childhood were hazy and without detail. I could only imagine what recalling the events from thousands of years ago would be like: lifetimes’ worth of memories slipping through the mental cracks.
“The humans kept their distance from the Fae. Soon their curiosity of the extraordinary turned to fear and hatred.” Faolán’s dreamy countenance faded, and the muscles flexed in his cheek as he clenched his jaw. “War broke out between the humans and the Fae, but they were weak and fragile, and our armies decimated their numbers until few remained. The gods had come to love their human children and could no longer bear to see them killed.”
“You sound bitter, Faolán,” I muttered. “Upset you couldn’t commit genocide when you had the chance?”
“I’d been bred to kill.” His voice was a low growl in my ear. “What do you think?”
“You’re not inherently cruel.” Brakae’s soft voice broke into our conversation. “Faolán, Badb would have never made you a protector if you were nothing more than a vicious killer.”
His smile was sad as he turned his gaze on her. “The Enphigmalé had sworn an oath to serve Badb, and she pulled us from the battlefield. I was the wolf of war no longer. She made me a Guardian. Chosen to protect…”
I pulled away from Faolán’s grasp, hoping he was too distracted to hold me. “Be still,” he growled, and I had no choice but to obey the command. “You’ll hear me out. Badb took the hourglass and broke it in two. The veil was created to protect humanity, and she split the world into separate realms that stood apart from each other, yet existed in a natural accord. Our kind was forced to make a choice: Live openly here, never to visit the mortal realm again, or live there, where we are forced to hide our true selves for the benefit of a lowly, ignorant species. She appointed two Time Keepers to watch over the halves of the hourglasses that maintained the flow of time, and Guardians to protect the doorways to each realm. We were each given a key. My key opened the doorway from the mortal realm into O Anel. And so in the mortal realm I would reside.
“For centuries after the realms had been split, there was unrest. Many sought to seize the hourglasses and thereby control time. So many Keepers died. I’d never cared before. The others before Brakae meant nothing to me. But then I fell in love,” he almost whispered.
“I loved you too, Faolán. How could I not?” Brakae shifted as if she wanted to stand, but something prevented her. “You were fierce and passionate and loyal. A true protector, though you believed yourself nothing but a heartless warrior.” Her voice broke. “You were gentle. Don’t you remember how you comforted me when I was afraid?”
Something glistened in Faolán’s eyes, pooling like mercury. Tears? He cleared his throat and turned his gaze from Brakae as if her words threatened to convince him to change his course. “Everything changed. I no longer wished to live amongst the mundane and watch from afar. Protecting the doorway to O Anel and maintaining the balance of time became an asinine notion. I cared for nothing but her; yet I was forced to abide by tradition and follow the path Badb had laid out for me. I abhorred it. I despise it still. And when I rose up against my goddess, I prompted my brothers-in-arms to do the same. Warriors, bound by oath and blood, they yearned for battle and were more than eager to see an end to Badb’s peace. The Enphigmalé were her first children, her most beloved, and she cast us aside for her precious humans. They wanted revenge as much as I did. We wanted to lift the veil between the realms and see an end to her segregation once and for all. I was betrayed by the woman I loved and the goddess I had worshipped for thousands of years. Badb allowed Moira to raise an army, and Brakae, ever the devoted Time Keeper, kept to her vow to protect the natural order, even if that meant destroying our love in the process. She lured us into an ambush. Well outnumbered, we were easily captured and had no choice but to wait until Badb passed judgment.
“We were sentenced to be frozen in time and made to stand guard for all eternity. And over what?” he shouted. “Nothing! An empty dais and ceaseless time. But before I went to serve my sentence in that solitary green place, I bade an Oracle to help me. Her sister had been killed over the same secret I’d sworn to protect: that of Brakae’s existence in the Faerie Realm. She was all too willing to find a way for both of us to be avenged. Love had sent me to my end, she said, and only love would release me from my prison.”
As Faolán rambled on, I listened with half an ear while I looked around us in search of escape. I wrenched myself free enough to glance behind me, and I noticed that Faolán had shed his glamour completely. Though it didn’t change him much, I found him almost too beautiful for my eyes to comprehend. The strands of his hair glowed faintly in the dark, and his eyes, not a touch of gray left, shone completely silver. Had he been so tall before? And had his skin been so flawless and smooth? He’d fucked with my brain to the point where I had a hard time recalling. But I could see why, in this magical place, Brakae would have been drawn to him. I found it hard myself to tear my gaze away.
“The veil was created to protect humanity!” Faolán shouted, breaking me from my trance. “On either side of the veil, we suffer! But no more!” He exuded the raw charisma of a dictator. It wouldn’t be hard for Faolán to sway others to his cause. “I will set our world aright and rid it of humanity once and for all!”
I expected a Yankee Stadium-sized round of applause and shouts when he concluded his tirade. I’m sure he imagined one. His diatribe did nothing for me except make me want to spit in his face. Clarity returned with every shout of his fervent oration, and I no longer sensed his utter control, though I didn’t doubt it could return at a moment’s notice. Brakae sat helpless, watching us with the calculation of a hunting cat more than that of a curious kitten. I needed her like this: an adult for starters, mature of mind and body, and able to fight if need be. An unsure teenager or wobbly child would do neither of us any good, and I hoped for once that time would be on my side.
“Faolán,” she implored, “this is not you! The man I fell in love with would never have killed innocent people. If you do this, you lose me forever. Is that what you want?”
His demeanor changed from anxious to enraged as he released his hold on me and shoved me to the ground. “I have lost you already!” he railed. “What has passed can never be undone!”
“Exactly!” Brakae said, her tone harsh. “It can never be undone. So why seek revenge? Whom will it punish? No one. This is madness!”
“This is a necessity! And I will do what must be done!”
Faolán had to have fallen far to have once been worthy of Brakae’s love. I found nothing in him even remotely lovable or redeemable. But then again, I’d thought I loved Azriel once. The heart wasn’t only blind; it was deaf and dumb. Tyler’s obsessive nature had infuriated me; yet I loved him fiercely for it. I doubted there was anything he could do to make me fall out of love with him.
Whether Brakae had loved Faolán or not, I had an obligation to protect not only the key to the Faerie Realm, but also time and the natural order. My conscience would not allow me to stand idly by while Faolán killed off every last human on the planet just because he’d suffered a broken heart. Talk about displaced rage. Faolán had been right about one thing: All the events of my life had led me to this one moment. My transformation from human to Shaede; my hidden existence from the world by Azriel’s secrets and lies; my eventual discovery by Xander; my love for Tyler; the blood sacrifice to give life to lifeless statues-all of it had led me to this.
Faolán pointed the dagger at Brakae. “Come here, my love.”
Standing with fluid grace, Brakae made her way to us. Her gait was slow, as if she resisted some invisible pull. I recognized that zombie dance, though I wasn’t sure how Faolán was able to control her. Faerie magic went way over my head. Another encyclopedia’s worth of information I’d have to pay Levi for-if I made it out of here in one piece, and if he was still alive when I got home. Brakae’s eyes, glowing soft blue in the wan moonlight, darted back and forth from me to him and back again. The stern set of her jaw told me she was fighting like hell. The way Faolán drew her to him like a magnet told me she was losing.
“Darian,” he said, so calm I knew something bad was coming, “you have exceeded my expectations of you. You are the strongest Guardian I have ever known, except maybe for myself. Had we met under different circumstances I would have initiated you into our order, given you a place of honor. But you have worn out your usefulness, and I have no need for useless things. Go well into the afterlife.”
He pulled the dagger away from my throat and handed it to Brakae before he shoved me hard into her arms. She caught me against her, looked deep into my eyes, and whispered, “I hope you’re as tough as everyone thinks you are, Darian. Remember, I trust you.” And before I could ask her what the hell was going on, she plunged the blade into my abdomen, low and to the right, carefully-or not so carefully-missing any major organs, just below my ribs.
“Wake up. You have things to do, and you’re wasting time!”
The sound of her voice was a high-pitched buzz increasing in volume as I came nearer to consciousness. A gnat hovering at my ear would have been no less annoying.
“Where is he?” I asked. That sonofabitch was going to pay for what he’d done to me.
The Sprite swirled around my head to the other ear, as if the one she’d been speaking into had malfunctioned or something. “He has stolen time and time’s Keeper. It won’t be long before everything is destroyed.”
Even though I happened to be in the loop on this particular matter, I hated cryptic talk. Just once, I wanted someone to lay it out for me without the fancy subtext. What a serious waste of time.
“Look, Tinkerbell, how about telling me something I don’t already know?” I said, batting all four or five inches of her away from my ear canal. “Wait a sec.” My torso throbbed with every word, and I laid my head back down on the grass to stave off a wave of nausea. “How do I know you’re a Sprite?”
She giggled before circling my head in a dizzying loop. If I hadn’t felt like yakking before, that was sure to do it. All around me, I heard the cacophony of tiny wings buzzing. As my vision cleared and the star-filled sky came better into focus, I realized they weren’t stars at all, but a scattering of Sprites glowing with a faint bluish light. I felt a lot like Gulliver surrounded by all these Lilliputians.
“Lie still,” she ordered in her tiny voice. “You need a Healer, but she hasn’t arrived. We’ll have to make do without her. You’re stabbed.”
“No shit,” I said, rubbing my temple. Brakae fucking stabbed me. What the hell was all that about? Not exactly the best way to ensure your protector is in her best fighting form. “I don’t suppose you or any of your little friends up there know how long I’ve been lying here?”
“Not long for O Anel,” she said.
Wonderful. Just the answer I was looking for. She might as well have said, You’ve been here for-fucking-ever, you idiot!
I pushed the thought of centuries passing in the mortal realm from my mind and focused on what I needed to do to get out of this goddamned backward place. The calm attitudes I’d encountered so far were starting to get on my last nerve. And that nerve was hanging on by a thread. The wound didn’t hurt as bad as the one left by Faolán across my chest, but that wasn’t saying much. Even if I could manage to find a weapon, I doubted I’d be able to wield one. Not to mention that I had no fucking idea where Brakae and Faolán had gone or how to find them.
I looked up to the sky and the floating blue lights descending toward me. Like snowflakes, they landed around me, on top of me, a couple on my forehead for Christ’s sake! “Do you mind?” I said, shaking my head. The Sprites laughed, a sound that reminded me of crickets chirping, and jumped to the ground like a scattering of dandelion seeds.
“Didn’t you hear what I said? You need a Healer, but we can help to at least mend your wounds.” This one seemed to speak for all of them. Maybe they were shy. “If you’ll be still, we can get to work.”
Her sweet voice couldn’t have sounded more annoyed. I had a tendency to get on people’s nerves. And on the nerves of Shaedes. And Sidhe. And Lyhtans. And Fae. Now I could add Sprites to my list. If Tyler could see me now, sprawled out on the grass while itty-bitty creatures administered my medical care, he’d bust a gut laughing. I closed my eyes, reliving our last moments together, wrapped in each other’s arms. Tears stung my eyes, and my stomach twisted with the anxiety of what I might find when I returned home. What if he hadn’t waited for me, or worse, what if he wouldn’t forgive me?
A shiver raced across my skin as the Sprites went to work, walking around on my body as if it were a construction site. In my mind, I pictured them with tiny hard hats and rolled-up sets of blueprints. But when I opened my eyes, I saw their serious faces and urgent concern as they poked around the wounds, sewing them up with sparkling strings that looked like cobwebs.
“This has got to be some of the craziest shit I have ever seen.” I talked more to myself than to the Sprites. But really, I wished I were talking to Tyler. I needed someone who understood how completely surreal these moments were to me. I mean, even as a Shaede, I never thought I’d see little picturesque creatures with transparent wings sewing me up with supernatural thread. I could almost hear The Twilight Zone theme in the distance.
I don’t know what they used, how they did it, or what magic aided them. Warmth radiated from the wounds, but not the fiery heat that had pained me before. The sensation comforted me, and I didn’t even feel the prick of a needle, that is, if they’d used one. Magic lived and breathed in O Anel with a steady pulse I felt all around me. But I also sensed the sadness of this place pressing in on me. “Why is nobody happy here?” I asked. “It seems like a pretty damned nice place to live.”
“There is no consistency this close to O Anel.” This was said by the-what should I call her?-foreman Sprite. “The natural order is all about balance. You cannot have order without chaos. The mundane world keeps order, so we are left with its other half.”
I had yet to see anything even remotely chaotic in this peaceful place. Obviously this Sprite hadn’t seen the real world, where people warred over the silliest things and famine and disease stole the lives of thousands. They’d probably never witnessed a natural disaster or seen the effects of pollution. Faolán had seen it, and it had driven him mad. “You’re wrong,” I said. “This place can’t possibly be chaos. It’s way too perfect.”
The Sprite laughed. I wanted to call her Cindy or Judy. She had that suburban look about her. She reminded me of a soccer mom: efficient and put together, perfectly coiffed and unflappable, like she ran a tight ship, remembered everyone’s schedules, and knew how to keep her brood of children in line. “Chaos isn’t always easy to see. You haven’t been here long enough to recognize it and form opinions based on more careful observation.”
“What’s your name?” I had to know. I was moving on to Vanessa or Carri as possible choices.
“Nila.” Huh, never would have thought of that one, but somehow the name fit with her large brown eyes, russet skin, and shoulder-length brown hair. “The sun rises and sets just as it should in the mundane world. The seasons come and go according to schedule. The tides ebb and flow. That is the order of your world. And you should feel fortunate to be gifted with its stability.”
Stability. That was a joke. But I supposed in a realm where you could see miles of green meadow and suddenly walk into a copse of trees that sprang out of nowhere, the mortal realm might seem to be a fairly stable place. “Where’s Faolán?” I steered the conversation back where it needed to be. “I don’t have time to waste. I can’t let him mend that hourglass.”
Nila eyed my wounds, much like the job foreman I imagined her to be. “A few moments more, if you’ll just sit still.” Testing the flesh with her finger as if judging a baking cake, she added, “And even then you won’t be completely healed. You need-”
“I know,” I said with a sigh. “A Healer.” Running at half capacity wasn’t ideal, though if it was the best I was going to get, I’d have to take it. But a healed body and all the time in the world weren’t going to help me if I couldn’t find Brakae and the bastard who’d taken her. “Where’s Faolán?” I asked again. “Do you know how to find him?”
“Brakae is no fool,” Nila said. “All you have to do is follow the trail she’s left for you. Now lie back,” she said, stomping her foot down on my forehead, “and let us finish up here. As you said, you don’t have time to waste.”