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NAVA
“Is it true that you can speak to bees?” a small child’s voice whispered through the webs of sleep.
Nava blinked, opening her eyes to a dark room and a stranger’s face looming before her. The pungent smell of mold snapped her from a dreamless slumber, her body instinctively scrambling against the wall, trying to get away.
“What?” Blood rushed through her head, thundering inside her ears as she peered past the child’s shoulder. Where was Arkimedes? Or even Devon?
“Are you looking for the large men?”
“Yes.”
“They are in the front room.” The boy moved closer. At this distance, he was close enough to count the freckles on her skin.
Nava eased him back by one of his bony shoulders and took a deep breath. Relax—she needed to relax. “You’re supposed to be over there with your family. Are you Caden?”
“Did the bees tell you my name?”
Surely this was a dream. Right? How else could this child know that she could speak to bees? “No…” True panic settled in the pit of her stomach as the meaning of his words filtered through to her sleepy mind. “How did you know?”
“They tell you when danger is coming, right? Much like my dreams. Are they speaking to you now?” The child looked down at the ground, where three bees were crawling over her boots.
Caden possessed the very rare gift of the Sight. Was that the reason the Crows had murdered his family, even though he was so young?
“Why would they speak to me now? Are—are we in danger?”
As if they’d heard her, Arkimedes and Devon came rushing inside the kitchen, heading straight for her. Their eyes widened when they saw the boy still kneeling beside her. Perhaps, in her panic, she’d called Arkimedes through their bond.
The child’s eyes glazed over as he looked at a spot on the crumbing wall above her head. Like he was lost somewhere all of a sudden. “The male lives in the shadows and lets the demons into our world. He is coming.”
“What’s happening here?”
Arkimedes’s deep voice startled Caden out of his trance. He leaped away and scrambled swiftly around Devon, returning to his side of the room.
“Why was he here?” Devon asked. In the background, the family spoke in hectic, subdued voices.
The man lives in the shadows and lets the demons into our world.
Caden’s words made her blood run cold. Did the child mean Arkimedes’s doppelgänger? The man who had hurt her?
Was he letting the Zorren into this world? The shadow man had recognized her as a Beekeeper, the nemesis of those demons. Had he been working with them all along?
The first time Nava crossed the portal, the God of Shadows had ripped the memories of her father from her as payment and left her alone. She’d never even seen him. But he hadn’t been alone that afternoon, had he?
Why was the other man—if that was even what he was—waiting for her in the portal crossings?
She stumbled to her feet, and a heavy piece of fabric tumbled to the floor as she rose. A black coat. She hadn’t been wearing that, had she? The room spun around her as hundreds of bees suddenly circled her near the ground, expertly moving away from her clumsy feet.
Arkimedes tracked Nava’s gaze, pausing as he spotted the insects, which were now crawling the walls and toward the ceiling. He picked up the coat from the ground and shrugged it on before reaching for her hand. “Let’s go. The bells stopped ringing about half an hour ago, and the streets are full of people. We should leave now and take advantage the sun isn’t out yet, and the morning mist is still thick.”
Had the bees gathered around her because the man in the shadows was approaching, as Caden claimed? Or were they here because the guards were tracking Arkimedes across the city?
“Wouldn’t they recognize you with your shadows—even if it’s dark?”
“We are in the Kingdom of Dark Ones, and there are plenty other shadow-wielding-fae outside, I think the number of people outside will aid our cover.”
Nava allowed Arkimedes to guide her toward the hall, feeling numb with cold and her rushing thoughts. But before they left, she turned and met the black gaze of the siblings by the fire. “Trouble is coming,” she warned them. “Leave this place.”
Arkimedes, Devon, and Nava walked for blocks in vigilant silence, filing past pedestrians who were setting up market stalls on the uneven cobble roads. The buildings’ green copper rooftops contrasted with the terracotta color of their walls, made of bricks in varying shades of red, burnt orange, and ochre.
