Child Of Darkness. Jennifer Armintrout

      “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