Page 12 of Night Fae (Monsters of Veridia #3)

The door to Malik's chamber burst open just as he was done dressing, putting on pants and a simple black tunic that had been provided for him.

Two guards burst in.

"Come with us."

Malik blinked at them. Where did they want him to go?

"Move." A hand between his shoulder blades pushed him toward the door.

They marched him through unfamiliar corridors. The palace seemed even bigger in the pre-dawn hours, shadows stretching across marble floors and up ornate walls. Malik tried to map their route in his head but quickly lost track of the twists and turns.

Were they going to take him to Prince Ashelon's chambers? The thought made him shiver. He'd managed to keep his composure last time, but the Prince had barely begun to play with him. Who knew what he might do next?

Instead of moving toward the Prince's chambers, though, they descended a wide staircase and emerged into a courtyard where morning mist clung to vibrant green hedges. A carriage waited, its ebony surface gleaming with inlaid silver. Four horses stood in their traces.

They were beautiful creatures.

Under different circumstances, Malik might have been tempted to try to pet them.

One of the guards opened the carriage door. "Inside."

Malik hesitated. "Where are you taking me?"

The guard's expression didn't change. He simply grabbed Malik's arm and propelled him forward, all but tossing him into the carriage.

The interior was plush and claustrophobic, all deep blues and midnight blacks.

Two people waited inside. Lord Darius, Zev's father, sat with his back straight, his angular face devoid of warmth.

Across from him was an elegant, older fae woman.

Her silver hair was elaborately braided with tiny jewels that caught the light, and her eyes—Zev's eyes, but colder—studied him with clinical interest.

Malik suppressed a shiver.

She had to be Lady Morvena. The Matriarch of Zev's family.

The door slammed shut behind Malik. A lock clicked.

"Good morning," Lady Morvena said, her voice musical and pleasant despite the early hour. "I trust you slept well?"

Malik remained standing, unwilling to sit next to either of them. "Why am I here?"

The woman's lips curved in a smile that didn't reach her eyes. She raised a silver goblet to her lips, and Malik noticed with revulsion that the liquid inside was too dark, too thick to be wine.

"Please, sit," she said. "We've much to discuss."

"I prefer to stand."

Darius flicked his fingers. Shadow magic pulsed through the carriage, and Malik found himself shoved onto the seat beside Lady Morvena. The carriage lurched into motion.

"Where are we going?" Malik tried to keep his voice steady.

"Curious little thing," Lady Morvena observed, addressing Darius rather than Malik. "I see why he's intrigued."

Darius leaned forward, his violet eyes boring into Malik. "Where has my son been all these years?"

The abrupt question caught Malik off guard. "I can't tell you what I don't know."

"You're lying." Darius didn't raise his voice, but coldness radiated from him. "My son nearly killed a guard over you. He surrendered himself for you. What are you to him?"

Zev had nearly killed a guard for him?

That was news.

Malik didn't know what to make of that, but he didn't have time to think about it either.

"I'm his friend," he said.

"Zevran doesn't have friends," Lady Morvena said mildly. "He has uses for people. Tools. Temporary fascinations."

"Like Rhys," Darius added, watching Malik's face closely.

Malik couldn't keep the disgust from showing on his face, knowing what these people had done to the man Zev had loved.

"He told you about him, then." Darius nodded, satisfaction creeping into his expression. "Did he tell you how it ended?"

Malik said nothing. He wouldn't give them the satisfaction. He well knew that Zev and Rhys had planned to flee the Night Court territory together, but thanks to the fae lord before him, Rhys had never made it to their meeting place that night.

"My grandson has always been drawn to distractions," Lady Morvena said, placing her goblet on a small shelf built into the carriage wall. "Fun things he can play with for a while. The wolf was merely the most extreme example."

"Zev isn't like that," Malik said before he could stop himself.

Lady Morvena's eyes gleamed. "Oh? And what is he like, then? Please, enlighten us about the assassin we raised."

The carriage wheels rattled over uneven ground. Through the small window, Malik glimpsed dense forest replacing the manicured palace grounds.

"You didn't raise him," Malik said quietly. "You made him into a weapon."

Darius laughed, the sound sharp and humorless. "Is that what he told you? Poor misunderstood Zevran, forced to kill against his gentle nature?"

"My grandson was born to serve the Court," Lady Morvena said. "It's in his blood. His nature. No matter how he tries to deny it."

She leaned closer to Malik, her perfume like crushed flowers and something metallic. "He will kill for us again. That's inevitable. And when his body obeys before his mind can fight, when he no longer hesitates, we will order him to kill you."

The world seemed to tilt. Malik forced himself to breathe.

"And he will do it," she continued, her voice gentle, almost kind. "Just like he killed the wolf yesterday. Just like he'll kill the others today. There's nothing you can do to stop it."

She was lying. She had to be. But the certainty in her voice made Malik's stomach twist.

"You're wrong about him."

"Am I?" Lady Morvena's smile widened. "We shall see."

The carriage slowed to a stop. Outside, the forest had grown darker, the trees pressing close around them.

"We've arrived," Darius announced, reaching for the door.

Two guards opened it from outside. Darius stepped out first, then turned to offer his hand to Lady Morvena. Malik followed without assistance.

It was nice to get a breath of fresh air after the suffocating atmosphere inside the carriage. The forest smelled like moss and something vaguely like pine resin.

They stood at the edge of a narrow path that wound between ancient trees. The canopy overhead was so thick that little sunlight made it through.

"This way." Lady Morvena gestured down the path. Her guards flanked Malik.

So running wasn't an option, then.

Too bad.

Malik really would have liked to run.

The deeper they walked into the woods, the more things just seemed… strange.

He caught flickers in the corner of his eye as if trees disappeared and reappeared, but he could never catch the moment it happened.

Was he imagining it?

"What is this place?" he asked.

"You'll see," Lady Morvena replied.

The path opened into a clearing where fae in dark robes moved with purpose around what looked like an excavation site.

They'd dug deep into the earth, creating a steep-sided pit at least fifteen feet deep.

Wooden scaffolding reinforced the sides, carved with glowing runes that pulsed with blue light.

A constructed tunnel entrance at the bottom of the pit led deeper into the earth, its supports similarly inscribed with magical wards.

But it wasn't the tunnel itself that made Malik's skin crawl. It was what seeped out of it.

Darkness unlike anything he'd ever seen, not just an absence of light but a presence of nothing. It spilled from the tunnel and flowed against gravity to pool at the bottom of the pit.

"The shadow paths," Lady Morvena announced, gesturing toward the darkness. "Ancient ways beneath the surface of Veridia. Older than the Night Court itself."

Malik stared at the darkness. He'd read about the shadow paths.

The Night Court had long tried to harvest power from them while the werewolves saw them as some sort of sacred entity that kept the world together and whole.

The wolves knew how to travel along the paths to quickly get to anywhere within Veridia, but anyone who tried to do the same came out changed.

The wolves would not share their secrets.

The Court hated them for it.

What were they doing here?

Several fae stood on platforms built along the sides of the pit, using strange instruments to measure the darkness. They kept their distance. Even Lady Morvena and Darius stopped several yards from the edge.

"Why did you bring me here?" Malik made himself ask.

"The shadow paths play a role in keeping up the barriers between worlds," Lady Morvena said. "The very barriers you fell through."

Malik didn't like where this was going.

Darius stepped forward. "We've been wondering. What happens when something like you touches one of these?"

Malik didn't want to find out. "No."

"You misunderstand, dear." Lady Morvena's smile was almost maternal. "I'm not asking."

"You promised Zev my safety," Malik pointed out.

"Don't worry. You'll survive." At a signal from Darius, a guard grabbed Malik's wrist. Another seized his shoulder, locking him in place. They began to drag him toward the excavated pit.

"Stop!" Malik struggled against their grip. "You don't know what will happen!"

"That's precisely the point," Lady Morvena said, following at a leisurely pace. "We want to know."

The guards forced him down the wooden stairs built into the side of the pit. Panic surged through Malik as the cold emanating from the darkness touched his skin.

He fought harder, desperation lending him strength, but the guards were implacable.

Malik cursed.

If only he had more strength.

Or more skill points in persuasion.

But he didn't, and the guards thrust his arm toward the darkness that pooled at the bottom of the excavation.

"Please," Malik gasped.

Lady Morvena just watched from the edge of the pit, head tilted with interest.

His fingers breached the edge of the shadow path.

A hot sensation exploded through Malik's hand, racing up his arm, tearing through his body. He might have screamed—he couldn't tell. The world dissolved around him, reality shredding like confetti.

And then he wasn't there anymore.

He was somewhere else.

Everywhere else.

The visions came like hammer blows. Daniel and Caelen in a vast room, arguing over maps spread across a table.

Adrian and Knox near a lake, laughing with each other.

Lyrian shouting at an older Siren whose voice made the water around them boil.

Jamie—in his bookstore?

And then?—

Zev.

Standing in a forest brighter than the one Malik had just left. His face was expressionless. Blood dripped from the knife in his hand.

At his feet lay the bodies of two werewolves. Their throats had been cut.

The vision shifted again. Zev kneeling in darkness, whispering to shadowy tendrils that reached for him like lover's fingers. The same tendrils that now wrapped around Malik's consciousness, hungry and curious.

Then Malik was falling, tumbling through nothing, feeling pieces of himself being stripped away with each moment of contact. Names, faces, memories?—

The connection broke.

Malik slammed back into his body. His knees buckled, and he collapsed to the muddy ground at the bottom of the pit. He should have felt pain from the impact, but he felt... nothing.

No pain, no panic… nothing.

"Get him up," someone said. The voice sounded distant, muffled, as if reaching him through water.

Hands gripped his arms, pulling him to his feet. Malik didn't resist. Why would he? What did it matter?

"Fascinating." Lady Morvena stood at the edge of the pit, watching closely. "What did you see?"

Malik looked up at her. Words formed slowly in his mind, struggling to connect to the part of him that should feel something—anything—about what he'd witnessed.

He'd seen his friends.

He'd seen Zev after a kill.

Zev had looked about as drained as Malik felt now.

"Speak," Lady Morvena demanded.

Malik saw no reason to.

"That's the way of the shadow paths," Darius said, studying Malik's vacant expression. "They take more than they show. Feed on emotion."

"How long will he be like this?" Lady Morvena asked.

Darius shrugged. "It depends on how much they took."

Malik heard them discussing him as if he were an object, but couldn't summon indignation. He knew, intellectually, that he should be afraid, angry, scared, but those emotions remained out of reach, like a memory of feelings rather than the feelings themselves.

Actually, it was kind of nice.

When the fae couldn't scare him, they had no power over him.

Except that they could still order him around, of course.

"Take him back to the carriage," Lady Morvena instructed the guards.

They half-carried, half-dragged him through the forest. Malik watched his feet moving beneath him with detached curiosity. Left, right, left, right.

In the carriage, he slumped against the cushioned seat, staring at nothing. Lady Morvena watched him with unblinking interest, like a scientist observing a particularly promising experiment.

"We'll need to question him again tomorrow," she told Darius. "I need to know what he saw."

Their words washed over Malik without sticking. Only the image of Zev remained clear in his mind—Zev standing over the dead werewolves, gaze empty.

Hollow.

Just like Malik.