Sūnder (Darksoul Book 1) Read online

  Dr. Mitchell paled but forged on. “Because I believe you would be remiss placing his care into the hands of a nurse who doesn’t have the education to understand the importance of—”

  “No, you will not speak of Gabe so,” Sūnder rasped, his mouth pinched with pain but his glare still formidable. “He is my guardian, and would know better than you what I need.”

  Gabe ignored the sputtering doctor and moved to cup Sūnder’s face. “Hey, handsome, you gave me a scare. How are you feeling?”

  “Like a boulder is sitting on my stomach.” Sūnder huffed a laugh that turned into a wince of pain. “From what I’ve heard, we’re not sure what caused the lumps?”

  Gabe couldn’t resist brushing a light kiss over Sūnder’s lips. All the while, the doctor continued to argue the merits of a biopsy. Growling quietly in frustration, he made a decision. Sūnder didn’t need this sort of stress right now. Breaking away from Sūnder, Gabe said, “Ronan, please escort Dr. Mitchell out.”

  His best friend brushed by him, but Gabe didn’t watch as the indignant surgeon was shown to the door. Instead, he focused completely on Sūnder, taking Sūnder’s pulse as he sat on the edge of the bed. “I have a theory that your condition has something to do with you being faeborn. Unfortunately we have limited information to help figure out what is going on with your body. Regardless, I’m not going to allow the hospital to extract a sample.”

  “Which is a good call, because the procedure would have taken a life,” said a voice from the doorway. Gabe turned to see Wÿn and Pip, sans their weapons, walk into the room, followed by A’yrē.

  Valiant and Válora moved closer to Sūnder, protectiveness radiating from them in a silent warning to the newcomers. Ronan returned and wordlessly brushed past Wÿn and Pip to stand behind Gabe again. Gabe didn’t miss the angry look Pip gave Ronan’s back before his expression turned neutral. In response, Gabe glared at Pip. You jackass.

  Glancing at Wÿn, Gabe’s heart skipped a beat. He wanted to believe his reaction was due to excitement, the hope that Wÿn held the knowledge necessary to help Sūnder, and not because looking at Wÿn under the florescent lights reminded him how much he and Wÿn resembled each other. But he knew it was probably a bit of both.

  “King Valiant, Princess Válora, this is Pip Rinne,” Gabe said. “Ronan’s oldest brother, and I’m guessing a green sentinel as well. The other gentleman is Wÿn, one of the elders that we’ve heard so much about over the last few days. They and a few others helped us detain Tālia and the darkhunters who pursued Sūnder.”

  While pleasantries passed back and forth, Gabe examined Wÿn’s features. How could someone who had to be much older look as if he were only in his mid-thirties? The other guardians had said they and faeborn were long lived, but Gabe hadn’t thought to ask exactly how long. Wÿn’s black hair was thick and wavy, like Gabe’s, but where Gabe’s was cut short, Wÿn’s fell past his ears. Wÿn’s skin was a darker bronze, and his eyes more amber rather than Gabe’s black-brown, but the underlying structures, the brows, the shape of their faces were the same. They could be cousins, even brothers, and the thought only brought discontent. Any claim to family Wÿn might have had was lost when Gabe had been abandoned.

  “Wÿn, when you said surgery would have taken a life, what did you mean?” Valiant’s question brought Gabe out of his thoughts.

  “Sūnder is faeborn, and Gabe is correct in that his condition is a part of his nature. If the doctor had taken a biopsy, one of the—” Wÿn glanced at Sūnder’s bared stomach, brows scrunching, “—two dozen lives he carries would’ve been lost.”

  The room became so quiet you could’ve heard a pin drop. Then it erupted, the loud exclamations of doubt, questions, and requests for Wÿn to explain himself causing Gabe’s head to pound. Between the noise, his head, and Wÿn’s mention of lives, plural, Gabe had been thrown completely off balance.

  But when Sūnder struggled to sit upright, Gabe ignored all else—including his own distracted thoughts—to soothe Sūnder and keep him in the bed. This was made easier by the fact Ronan quickly moved to stand between the bed and the agitated collection of family and friends demanding answers. Gabe felt a bit baffled himself. Wÿn’s statement was just ludicrous. But the longer people yelled and argued, the more Gabe ran out of patience, which after a night like tonight was in short supply.

  “That is enough!” Gabe waited until he had everyone’s attention before continuing. “We are supposed to be mature adults. If you can’t act like it, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out. We need answers, and yelling at Elder Wÿn because he gave an unexpected one is counterproductive. All you’re doing is upsetting Sūnder.” Gabe gulped. He’d dressed down Sūnder’s royal family. Way to make nice with the in-laws, idiot. “We’re having a difficult time digesting the information too. I mean—” Gabe rubbed his face with his palm. Sūnder grasped his free hand, and Gabe allowed himself to be tugged closer to the bed. “Wÿn, it sounds like you’re saying Sūnder and I are going to be parents, did I hear you correctly?”

  Sūnder made a distraught noise and Gabe turned away from the others in the room to go back to him. His mate’s red-ringed eyes had a wild cast to them. That couldn’t be good. “Hey, we’ll get through this one step at a time.” Gabe wanted to crawl in bed and hold Sūnder. He wanted to apologize because he was pretty sure the predicament Sūnder found himself in was Gabe’s fault. But any groveling and begging he did would be done in private, not in front of other people, not even Sūnder’s family.

  “One step at a time?” Sūnder asked, the pinched corners of his mouth telling Gabe he was in more discomfort than he let on.

  “You cannot believe what this person says has any merit.” Dr. Lashūl moved closer to the bed, suspicion coloring each word. “What do we truly know about him? Nothing, that’s what. For all we know, this could be another scheme crafted by Tālia of Nellá. It is absurd to think that Sūnder could be pregnant. He’s male, and Panthrÿn males do not have the capacity to become pregnant!”

  Wÿn crowded into Dr. Lashūl’s personal space, flushed and scowling. “No, he’s faeborn, which means he has the ability to give life. Besides, did I say he was pregnant? Did I even use that word? No. Pregnancy denotes the ability for one to give live birth, and that is not the case here.”

  Before Dr. Lashūl could argue, Gabe interjected. “Wÿn, we know very little about faeborn. It seems those who fled Slorèx took almost all the information with them. If there had been anything written down, it was lost. Would you please have a seat and discuss this with us?”

  Wÿn’s shoulders slumped, and to Gabe’s relief, he nodded.

  “You should probably start from the beginning,” Gabe added. “Oh, and Pip, would you mind closing the door? I don’t want anyone eavesdropping. We’ll decide whether the information Wÿn gives us is something we want to share or make public at a later date. For now, I only want to stop Sūnder from hurting.”

  As Gabe waited for the door to close, Valiant, Válora, and A’yrē came over and whispered apologies to Sūnder. Despite Gabe’s increase in strength, he still staggered a bit when A’yrē and then Valiant clapped him on the back. He did manage to refrain from making a pained face, though.

  It seemed to take a long time for everyone to become situated, even though Gabe knew it was only a minute or two. At Válora’s suggestion, Gabe raised the head of Sūnder’s bed so he could see better, but when Sūnder tried to sit up again, he grunted and held his abdomen in pain. It must have been agonizing, because when Gabe pushed him back into the reclining position Sūnder didn’t protest. Concerned, Gabe sat on the bed next to Sūnder, retaking Sūnder’s large hand between his own. Ronan stood on the other side of Gabe, straight and tall, glaring back at Pip. Gabe had hoped Ronan hadn’t lost his family as he’d thought, but since Pip glowered first, perhaps Gabe was wrong.

  Wÿn sat in a chair at the foot of the bed, Pip standing behind him, eyeing everyone and everything in the room, his gaze guarded. It probably was
n’t every day that one of the elders sat among the descendants of the people they’d run from.

  “Even before we came to Earth,” Wÿn began, “Guardians and faeborn were secretive. Especially about how we work together, how guardians are identified—” he glanced at Gabe, “—with a few exceptions, even the extent of our abilities. We did this because we each have vulnerabilities that could be exploited to control us, and we intended to keep others from trying to use guardians and faeborn for purposes we weren’t meant, or even designed, to handle. In some ways, our secrecy was our own undoing. Because not everyone was deterred, especially those who coveted our abilities.”

  Wÿn sighed and glanced at King Valiant. “By the time Panthrÿns became involved, the guardians were tired of the war. They only wanted to care for their sick and injured faeborn. So they fled, leaving much behind. I was a mere child at the time, yet the horrors of those days have never stopped haunting me. I believe that if I had stayed, my fate would have been the same as all the other faeborn—out of my mind from poisoning with no hope of relief, resulting in my sacrificing myself in the boughs of the very Ènt I tried to save.”

  Gabe sat straighter as Wÿn shuddered. “I was under the impression that all the elders were guardians. You don’t look like a faeborn, yet you say you are. I don’t understand.”

  “We are a mixture of guardians and faeborn.” Wÿn’s appearance began to shimmer and change, his bronze skin taking on a dusky gray darker than Sūnder’s. His eyes morphed from light amber to an ice blue with an outer ring of black.

  Behind him, Pip hissed out a breath. “Wÿn, your glamour!”

  Shocked, Gabe stared at Wÿn, who looked like him, but not. He blinked a couple of times because his brain was arguing that he wasn’t seeing things correctly. No one changed appearances like that, ever. And yet, Wÿn watched them all with a wry smile spreading his lips.

  “What is a glamour?” Gabe asked, feeling stupid because he knew what a glamour was, or thought he did. He was well-read in the fantasy genre, but that was supposed to be fiction, not something that could be done in real life.

  “The younger faeborn can’t use their magick to hide what they look like. It takes discipline to constantly visualize yourself looking different than you do, so they practice for decades before they master the ability. For a very long time, the elders kept our faeborn and dròw hidden and separate from the rest of the world. As advancements were made in cosmetics, useful tools became available to us, allowing the faeborn and dròw to camouflage themselves without the use of glamour. Dyes darkened their skin to Earth’s more common black, and for the last few hundred years, the younger faeborn have had access to color contact lenses. All of us initially hid our ears, until the time came when they could be altered surgically.” Wÿn glanced at Ronan. “The green sentinels were lucky, in a way, because the genetics they picked up from the humans not only helped camouflage them, blend them into the general population, but also enhanced their fighting abilities.

  “And now we come to what’s affecting Sūnder.” With that, Wÿn lifted his shirt. Pip’s disgruntled huff broke the sudden, stunned silence as most of them stopped breathing in shock.

  There, on Wÿn’s lower torso, were stripes exactly like Sūnder’s.

  26

  “IN OUR HASTE to abandon E’drijān and leave Slorèx, we left many valuable things behind. One of them being the wild fey. The wee ones are tied to the land at a level that would have made it nearly impossible for them to relocate. Although, having come to know them better since we fled, I’m of the opinion we could have convinced them to leave with us, nonetheless.”

  “I don’t understand,” Válora said, a frown of confusion on her face. “I’m one of the few who knows the most, little though it may be, about faeborn. In all my research, I’ve seen wild fey mentioned only a handful of times, and even then, the reference was vague.”

  Wÿn grimaced. “The scouts we sent to assess E’drijān returned to tell us wild fey are now an L’fÿn folklore. Sad as the knowledge is, it makes sense because the L’fÿns murdered their faeborn. Without faeborn, guardians aren’t identified and wild fey aren’t born to populate the woods. Wild fey are what humans call nymphs, dryads, sprites, pixies, sylphs, faeries, and creatures of that ilk. They care for the forest but are sexless, unable to procreate. Only faeborn can give them life, though they need a guardian’s assistance to do so. Without faeborn, the wild fey would’ve died out.”

  Gabe glanced down at Sūnder’s stomach, trying to imagine little people sprouting inside each of the lumps. Humans did have folklore, and children’s picture books depicted faeries with little bodies and iridescent wings. They were supposed to be mischievous pranksters, according to tradition. Of all the fanciful things Gabe had come to accept as fact in the last couple of weeks, he had to admit that the idea he and Sūnder had brought life to nature spirits was the hardest. And the most terrifying. Did this make them parents?

  “So how— What is Sūnder supposed to do?” Gabe asked, at a loss as to what would be the correct questions to ask.

  “It will take both of you.”

  “Me?” Gabe asked incredulously, his voice an octave higher than he liked. He struggled to appear more in control, since he could feel Sūnder’s anxiety rising.

  Wÿn smiled softly. “Yes, you, Gabe. You need to be the one to remove the eggs from Sūnder. You are the father of these beings, so to speak, and his body will respond to your touch, making it less painful for him and reducing the chances of the little ones being hurt.”

  “Oh, God.” Gabe gulped, immediately thinking back to the conversation with Ronan about the pregnancy clause in the contract they’d signed to attend the Festival in the first place. A high, clipped laugh escaped him.

  Wÿn continued as if unaware of Gabe’s panic. “If we were in the Jade Forest, you and Sūnder would go to its heart. The eggs would then be extracted from Sūnder and placed in a nest among the hot springs. The heat and humidity of the place would incubate the eggs until they hatched and the wild fey flew free. I’ve only seen a hatching once, myself, and it’s amazing to behold.

  “Since we aren’t in the Jade Forest, we have to work around the lack. When SilverHand A’ymon left a message with me about Sūnder being ill—” Wÿn held his hands up when Valiant gave a protective growl. “He was only concerned, and knew you didn’t have the resources to help. A’ymon had noticed how Prince Sūnder winced and sometimes held his stomach, and being a silverhand he knew enough to suspect what might be causing it. I’m glad he called.” Wÿn’s gaze darted to Gabe, and Gabe refused to read anything into the confession. “Prince Sūnder didn’t have to suffer needlessly.”

  Gabe tore his gaze away from Wÿn, knowing the elder was correct but not liking it. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Pip, someone should be waiting in the lobby with an incubator,” Wÿn said, ignoring Gabe’s question. “Would you please go and pick it up?”

  Pip glanced around the room distrustfully, obviously not eager to leave the Elder alone with them. Gabe met his gaze and, narrowing his eyes, silently dared Pip to accuse them of being untrustworthy. With a huff of disgruntlement Gabe knew all too well from their teen years, Pip slipped out the door.

  Turning back to Wÿn, Gabe asked, “Why aren’t there any wild fey here on Earth?”

  Wÿn’s grin held a secretive edge. “Who said there aren’t? Although we didn’t hide them in the beginning, the humans’ religious climate put them in jeopardy, necessitating that we move to less inhabited areas. The fey have remained secreted away because the Mantids thought of them as prey.”

  Mantids might appear human now, but that hadn’t always been so. It was all too easy to imagine the horror of one of the Mantids chomping on a cute little faerie a few hundred years ago.

  As fascinating as the conversation was, Gabe’s curiosity ate at him. Who knew when next he’d have someone around who could answer the questions that had been nagging at him since he was introduced to this world
of guardians and faeborn. And he had time while Pip fetched the incubator. “I don’t understand why the elders hid everybody. Humans had already accepted and welcomed the Mantids, despite the fact their appearance implied they were more monster than friendly alien.”

  “Humans were never the main reason we didn’t reveal ourselves,” Wÿn explained. “We were hiding from the corrupt döminus of the noble houses. They went to great lengths to hurt us, and we have ample evidence the threat is still there. I didn’t want to believe it was, but tonight I fought alongside you against the abominations who call themselves darkhunters. The elders’ caution to this point does have merit, and shouldn’t be criticized by you or anyone else.”

  “But isn’t hiding now redundant?” Gabe argued. “You have to know some of your younger generations are determined to go back to Slorèx.” The returning guardians and faeborn would need guidance, and Gabe didn’t think he and Sūnder were the right choice when there were others who knew more than all of them put together.

  Wÿn glanced at Ronan. “It is imperative that we hide because they are going. If the noble houses attack and annihilate them, we would be targeted next.”

  Frustration rose within Gabe. “Then do something about it! Stand up and tell all of Slorèx what happened. Talk to the ruling houses of Chándaria. They’ve already heard the L’fÿns’ side of the Scarab War and recent events, they need to know yours. For the love of God, talk to someone!” He motioned to Valiant. “Their king is right there. Do you honestly believe he’s incapable of discerning the truth? Or of protecting your people?”

  “Many of us have no desire to return to the Jade Forest. Our home is here on Earth.” Wÿn crossed his arms, his posture defensive.

  Talking to Wÿn was like talking to a brick wall, but Gabe had to try. “But you have relatives, family, who are returning to Slorèx. Are you telling me you’d let them walk blindly into a dangerous situation just because you want to stay? That you won’t even try to safeguard them?” Gabe made a rude noise, unable to articulate how irreprehensible a mindset like that seemed to him.