Child of Darkness-L-D-2 (4 page)

He stumbled close enough to see her, and she looked over her shoulder for Fenrick. He was invisible in the darkness, or maybe he’d left her there. She hoped that he’d left. She did not wish for her game to be given away so soon, just as things were becoming interesting between them.

Cedric gripped her by her arms and shook her, nearly knocking the knife from her hands.

“What are you doing here?” he shouted, his hands crushing painfully. “Do you have any idea how dangerous this area is?”

Now, she knew that Fenrick had gone. He would not have let someone lay his hands on her this way. She pushed Cedric back. “How dare you!”

“I should do worse,” he threatened, coming a step closer, looming over her. She laughed, tried to make it sound as scathing and bitter as she had heard from Courtiers.

“No, I mean how dare you follow me here, like my mother’s obedient dog! How dare you show yourself such disrespect!”

“Your mother?” he asked, his expression suddenly confused.

Something mean and vicious blossomed in Cerridwen’s chest. “Yes, my mother. She’s sent soldiers here to find me. Her soldiers, into the Darkworld. And you…you didn’t know?”

“If I had, be assured I would not have let it happen.” He grabbed her arm again, and pulled her toward the crossing of the tunnels.

“You didn’t know, and you didn’t know to come look for me,” she accused. It made more sense, now. Why he’d been so surprised to find her. Why he’d been in the tunnels with no guards. “You were here on your own business.”

“Of a sort,” he admitted sourly. They reached the intersection and he started off in the wrong direction.

She yanked him the right way, preferring to glare at him rather than argue, and tucked the knife into her belt. “And what business could you possibly have in the Darkworld, oh shining beacon of loyalty?”

“My own,” he snapped. “This is not the right way.”

“I was unaware that you were so knowledgeable about the Darkworld.” She pulled free from his grasp. “I will be sure to tell my mother about your expertise.”

“Your mother already knows.” He followed her; she heard his boots splash through a puddle, and a curse. That made her smile.

“You could tell your mother about how I found you.” He sounded no less angry, but it seemed as though he tried to mask his wrath. “Or I could tell her about how I found you.”

“And you would be admitting to your own guilt,” she reminded him, turning a corner. He was not expecting the bend, and she heard a loud exclamation as he collided with the wall.

“Which is why,” he seethed through his teeth, “I suggest we reach an agreement. I will tell her I found you on the Strip, and you will not contradict me. The consequences of that accidental meeting will be far less than the ones attached to the truth.”

“She will still wonder why you left the Lightworld,” Cerridwen pointed out, feeling very satisfied to have the advantage.

But the advantage disappeared as he muttered, “Your mother will be aware of my reasons.”

It was cryptic. Cerridwen did not like cryptic responses. But ahead loomed the path to the Strip.

“Do we have an agreement?” he asked her, no urgency in his voice, no pleading. She crossed her arms, pretending to consider. But this manipulation failed, as well, for Cedric said nothing, made no further offers.

“We do,” she said with a sigh. It would have been so sweet to catch her mother’s favorite in a useful web, but he was right. The punishment her mother meted out to her would be far less severe if she’d been caught somewhere else.

They proceeded to the Lightworld and passed the borders without further speech, but when they approached the Palace, he stopped her.

“When we enter, go straight to your chambers. Wash all of that off your face, and change into something respectable before you are presented to your mother.” He would not look at her. She tilted her chin up, trying to look confident when now all she felt like was a child. “How do I know you will not simply run to her and break our agreement?”

“I will not. With more reason than you know.” With that, he turned and stalked through the Palace gates.

“We have some reason to suspect that she has left the Lightworld.”

The words froze Ayla, the way she imagined a prey animal would cower before a beast. She’d long since retired from the party, but it continued, the noise thrumming like the workings of some great machine throughout the Palace. The dull pounding of drums, punctuated by the sharp staccato of voices raised in laughter, served to cover the startled thump of the blood in her veins. “Where is Malachi?”

“He has organized a few discreet guards into a search formation.” The captain of her guard bowed. “We are keeping this secret, Your Majesty.”

“As well you should,” she said, amazed to find her voice working under its own power. “You may go, now, Captain. Keep me informed of your progress. And bring her to me the moment you find her.”

The guard bowed as he left, but she did not acknowledge him. Instead, she waited, seated on the edge of her bed, staring at nothing. Waited for the guilt to come crashing over her, as it always did. The questions that she would torment herself with: How could she have let this happen? Hadn’t she been a good enough mother to Cerridwen? Of course, she had not. She had been too wrapped up in Court politics and her own selfish pursuits! She could not blame Cerridwen, only herself.

But this time, the guilt did not come. She was angry, angrier than she had ever been with her daughter.

Perhaps it was because Cerridwen had left the safety of the Lightworld. Perhaps it was fear that drove her anger. She certainly knew, better than most at Court, of what danger there was to fear beyond the boundaries of the Lightworld.

No, it was anger. An ugly, naked anger not polite enough to wear a mask of fear for her convenience.

She could not bear to stare at the walls of her room any longer. Beautiful though it might be, with its configuration of electric stars on the ceiling and the grass growing forever verdant beneath her feet, she did not take comfort in fine things the way Mabb had. Tying the ribbons of her bedrobe, she went to the passage in the wall, the one that Cedric had begged her to seal off, rather than risk dying as Mabb had. She had refused for a number of reasons that had sounded sane and logical on the surface. Truly, she had done it because the way to the King’s chamber, now the chamber of the Queene’s Consort, was too public, and she did not wish her servants to know her comings and goings. Mabb, though she had never had an official Consort, nor a King to rule at her side, must have felt the same. Ayla slipped out of the secret door and walked cautiously, looking for guards. Revelers from the party would not be in this part of the Palace, but she did not wish to listen to another report of her missing daughter, or be reassured that she would be found. She went through the passage to Malachi’s chambers and fished the door key from her sleeve, where she wore it loosely tied at her wrist. The door opened and she stepped through just as the main door to the room slammed open and against the wall.

Malachi stood in the doorway, his expression changing from surprise to anger. Ayla moved to quickly close the door behind her, so that no passing servant would see. They stood in the antechamber. Malachi had been Garret’s prisoner there, until Ayla had come to save him. She remembered how she had trembled that night, in fear and uncertainty, and the feeling crept back to her now.

He stared at her, his face gray with fatigue. He looked different now than he had when he’d first come to live in the Palace. Since his fall from his former, Angelic nature, he’d aged as a Human, rapidly. In what had seemed a blink of an eye, his features had become sharper, etched with hard lines. A streak of silver stood out from the ink-black of his hair, and though he was as large and physically powerful as he had been twenty years before, he did not exert himself with the vigor that he had in his youth. Every day he seemed older, the way mortals, distressingly, became. Ayla did not wish to dwell on it, and she looked away from his hard expression.

“How could you do this?” he asked in a raw whisper.

Ayla snapped her head up, glared back at him. “Cerridwen has run off on her own! If you wish to blame anyone, blame her governess, blame her guards!”

“I am not talking about her running off!” He slammed the door closed behind him, and it shook as though it would fall from its hinges. “Do you have any idea what you have done?

To her? To Cedric? They have both run off now, and if I were him I would never return!”

This stunned her. Over the past twenty years, they had disagreed. And how they had disagreed, and over such petty things. But while he’d raged at her—his emotions ran high, another mortal trait—what he said now was somehow more hurtful. Most hurt was her pride, and she sought to defend this crumbling wall without reason. “I did what I had to do! Cerridwen is out of control. She runs from me, she runs from this Palace. At this very instant she is out of the Lightworld altogether. She needs someone who will be better suited to keeping her here, and safe.”

“And she won’t run from Cedric? He is centuries old! She is a child!” He swallowed, and looked as though it pained him. “And what is to say that Cedric would not run from her? And from you?”

“Cedric will do as I command. I am Queene!” It sounded so meaningless, like a child threatening during a tantrum.

Malachi laughed. “Yes, he will bow and scrape, as all of your Courtiers do—because he must. How does that feel, Ayla, to know that those closest to you only do as you ask because they are accustomed to being ruled? To know that they do not do these things out of any love or respect for you?”

“My Court respects me! If they did not, I would no longer be Queene!”

“You would not be Queene if Cedric had not willed it so!”

A knock sounded at Malachi’s door, and they both fell silent, not wishing to continue the fight, but not wanting to admit defeat, either.

“Malachi, I have news.” It was Cedric.

Ayla’s anger had not abated, and she glared at Malachi, defiant, as if daring him to open the door, warning that if he did, she would not relent in her argument with him.

“Come in,” Malachi said, all the fight gone from his voice. He looked tired, as if every mortal cell of his body were weary. And in that moment, Ayla lost her anger with him, and it was replaced by that fear which had become all too familiar. Fear that he would succumb to his mortality soon, and that she would waste the time they had in petty arguments. They had already wasted so much time.

Cedric entered, and, spying Ayla, carefully masked his expression. “She has been found.”

Relief weakened Ayla’s knees, and Malachi uttered a quiet, “Thank God.”

“Where was she?” Ayla would not allow even the ghost of the earlier tension to remain. She would not discuss the betrothal now.

“She was on the Strip. Disguised as a Human, watching a game of Human gambling.” He cleared his throat. “I found her there, and brought her here.”

“Thank you.” The fear in Ayla’s breast loosened its hold a bit. She had not ventured into danger, not as much as she could have. “Malachi, do you have a way to contact your search party? To call them back? I do not wish them to go far.”

She did not wish them to go into the Darkworld, where their presence could begin a war. Wearily, Malachi rose. “I know where they plan to search. I will go to them.”

“No,” she said, realizing too late how commanding she’d sounded, and how little Malachi would appreciate her tone. She forced herself to soften, willed away the anger and anxiety of the night. “You are tired. Send someone, but do not go yourself.”

He should have argued with her; it alarmed her that he did not. He waved a hand to Cedric.

“Can you find someone?”

“I will see to it myself.” He turned toward the door, and paused. “Your Majesty, I did not tell the heir of what transpired at the feast tonight. I sent her to her chambers…I thought perhaps you would wish to speak to her, before she heard it from another source.”

“I will speak to her. About your betrothal, and about her disappearance.” Ayla loathed the need to apologize that clawed its way up her throat. She forced it down. “I hope you realize that I am only thinking of what will be best for my daughter. And for you.”

His wings, confined by his robes, rustled under their fabric prison. She saw the movement, a furious shrug, and again the apology that some regretful part of her knew should be delivered tried to escape.

She was Queene. She would not let him force his guilt onto her. Cedric did not face her. The weight of his words was measured carefully. “I realize that you believe you know what is best, and that you are acting under that belief.”

When he left, he did not slam the door, but it was, without a doubt, closed.

“I do not do this to hurt either of them,” Ayla said helplessly, turning to Malachi. He’d already removed his robe, revealing his now-scarred skin and the metal-patched black wings that had not been seen by the Court in over twenty years.

He looked up at her, not bothering to conceal his anger or hurt. “Get out, Ayla. I am tired.”

She could have reminded him that she was Queene…. But she had never been his Queene. She could have ignored him and stayed…. But she had done so before, and had accomplished nothing. No subtle shift of power between them, no grudging reconciliation. He would forgive her when he chose and no sooner.

Three

I t was simple enough to find the search party Malachi had ordered—what had he hoped to accomplish by sending them into the Darkworld?—and convince them to give up their search. He insisted on staying behind, in case there were stragglers, even after the soldiers insisted there would not be.

And there would not be. That was not Cedric’s purpose in staying. When he’d put enough distance between himself and the guards, he changed direction, and pulled from his shirtsleeve the rolled paper diagram that would lead him to the Gypsy camp. The tunnels were not named on the drawing. Many of them went unnamed in the Darkworld, so it would not have helped. And only a few symbols, known only to those who were intended to find the place, indicated that it was a map at all. Dika had gone over it with him many times, though he’d protested ever needing to use it. He did not like to be in close proximity to mortals—at least, not large groups of them—and did not know how they would react to his presence. She’d been correct in her assumption that someday, his need to find her would be stronger than his desire to stay away.