Page 29 of Once Broken Faith

“You’ll have to watch us feed.”

“I know that, too.” I glanced to Quentin and Karen. “The others can leave if they need to, but I’m going to stay. I need answers.”

“I want to see,” said Quentin, which seemed brave but ill-thought-out to me. I didn’t say anything. He was going to command a continent someday. The night-haunts who patrolled North America would be subjects of his, as much as anyone else was. Maybe it would make a difference if they felt they were allowed to speak to the High King. They certainly didn’t feel that way now.

“If Quentin’s staying, so am I.” Karen’s voice shook. I turned to frown at her.

“Sweetheart, are you sure?”

She looked at me with cool, bleach-blue eyes, and nodded. “I can handle anything he can handle. Maybe more. He doesn’t spend his days walking through other peoples’ nightmares.”

I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to be strong for me, that I’d love her no matter what. I wanted to remind her that Quentin was older than she was, and that she didn’t have to compete with him. I did neither of those things. Karen was a changeling. I knew what that meant. She was going to spend her whole life trying to prove she was as good as the purebloods around her, and now that more and more people knew about her oneiromancy, she was going to be fighting to be sure they understood she wasn’t there to be controlled. If she wanted to be her own person, she would have to be stronger, better, and capable of standing up to more than anyone around her, or they’d use her blood against her. Every time.

No one in this room would try to do that to her, but that didn’t matter. If you wanted to be steel, you had to be steel every day of your life, until it came naturally; until you no longer had to beat yourself bloody trying to achieve it.

“All right,” I said, and turned back to the night-haunts. “You can go ahead and feed.”

“Ah, milady grants permission!” Egil sketched a mocking bow, his wings rattling like plastic bags rolling down a gutter. Then he straightened, smile fading, and turned to speak to the flock.

The language he used wasn’t English, or Welsh, or anything else I recognized, but it suited the strange accent that sometimes crept into May’s words, the one she only had when she was reaching past the memories she’d received from me and Dare. It was an old language, I knew that much, sweet and fluid and filled with vowel sounds that more modern languages had tucked away as too hard on the ear.

The Luidaeg stepped up next to me. “We had our own language once,” she murmured, in English. “Mother spoke it, when she talked to the children who spent less time around humanity. But it was easier to use the words the mortals had. They were lords of language in those days, spreading across the world and naming everything they saw as quick as a blink. We’ve never been fond of doing labor that we didn’t have to do for ourselves. My tatterdemalion nieces and nephews may be the only native speakers of Faerie left in the world.”

“Can you understand them?” asked Quentin.

“No.” She shook her head, a sweet, bitter smile on her lips. “Words you don’t use fall away and are forgotten. I can’t even speak it in my dreams.” Looking to Karen, she smiled less ruefully, and added, “Don’t try to check that. You won’t like what you find in my head.”

“I don’t like what I find in your sister’s head,” said Karen.

“That’s because her sister is a murderous, psychopathic bitch, and you shouldn’t spend any time in her brain that can be avoided,” I said. “If evil is contagious, your mother will kill me.”

Karen snorted.

The night-haunts stopped speaking.

I turned to see the flock rise, moving like smoke across the water, and descend on the body of King Antonio Robertson. The more solid night-haunts, the ones whose bodies were firm and whose faces were clear, formed an outer ring around the body. The next tier was slightly less solid. They seemed to waver, but I could pick out individual features, like the curve of an ear or the color of an eye. It would have been possible to describe those night-haunts to an artist and get something a family member might be able to identify. And at the center . . .

At the center were the night-haunts who looked like shadows, so faded that their bodies seemed to have no weight or substance. They were the idea of fae, the concept of solidity, and they couldn’t stay as they were forever; the first stiff wind would rip them into nothingness. Then even those parted, easing a ghost toward the body. The night-haunt they’d chosen to eat first seemed to flicker with every step it took, barely holding itself together. The flock guided it to the skin of King Robinson’s neck.

The shadowy night-haunt stopped. The only sound was the rustle of a hundred wings, and my own breath, which seemed impossibly loud in my own ears. The shadowy night-haunt sniffed the air. And then it opened its mouth, revealing teeth that would have been better suited to some deep-sea horror, and sank them into the dead King’s neck.

That was the signal for the rest of the flock to move, swarming over the body like so many leaf-winged piranha. I fought the urge to clap my hand over Karen’s eyes. I fought the urge to clap my hand over my eyes. They ate like beasts, ripping and tearing at the flesh in front of them, moving with such furious hunger that they left nothing behind. When blood was spilled, they were right there, lapping it up, even lifting it out of the fabric of the carpet and stuffing it into their mouths. When they hit bone, they just kept right on eating, chewing down until there was nothing for them to consume but dust and shadow.

The flock pulsed, beating like a heart, and was still. The weaker night-haunts seemed stronger now, thicker and more distinct, even if they still had no coherent faces. The night-haunts like Egil, like the one who wore Connor’s face, had been the last to eat; they looked no different. Most of their sustenance was coming from the lives they had already consumed, and would be for years, if I was correct in my understanding of how they were able to survive on scraps as rare as the dead of Faerie.

The flock parted. King Antonio Robinson, now reduced to the height of a Barbie and accented with autumn-leaf wings, walked to the front. He looked . . . lost. There was no other word for the confusion on his face, or the way his eyes darted from side to side, seeking some explanation. Finally, he settled them on me.

“The changeling knight,” he said, a slight sneer in his voice. I couldn’t be offended. Maybe if he’d been alive, I would have been, but now . . . I couldn’t blame a dead man for his prejudices. It felt somehow unfair. “I . . . am I dead?”

“He’ll be disoriented for a time,” said Egil, his tone so much like Devin’s. Devin had been a bad man, in so many ways, but he’d always taken care of the ones who needed him. Even if he hurt us, he kept us safe from the rest of the world. “Ask your questions. After you do, we’ll be gone.”

“Okay,” I said, and focused on the night-haunt with Antonio’s face. “You’re a night-haunt now. You’ll start remembering that soon, if eating a life is anything like riding the blood. But yes, you died. I’m sorry. You have stopped your dancing.”

“Where are my girls?” He turned to look to either side of himself, searching the air. “Why can’t I find my girls?”

My heart sank. Antonio had been Candela. The night-haunts hadn’t taken everything for a change; not everything had been food to them. “Merry Dancers don’t transition that way, I guess. I’m sorry. They broke when you died.”

“Ah.” His eyes closed. He made no effort to conceal his pain. I was almost grateful for that. If he could hurt that badly over a pair of dancing lights, he truly was King Antonio, if only until the first rush of blood memories began to fade.