Child Of Darkness. Jennifer Armintrout

from the others. The rest all watched him with daggers for eyes.

      “You know where Cedric is?” Malachi asked, flicking his gaze over the guards who sat in sullen silence behind him.

      “Do not tell him,” one of the guards advised the young-looking one. “He is not one of us. What Cedric does is between himself and the Queene.”

      “What do you know?” Malachi asked the young guard again, ignoring the others. “I need to find Cedric. I seek him on the Queene’s orders.”

      The Faery squared his shoulders. “On our patrols near the border, we have observed Master Cedric in close contact with a Human. A Gypsy. He has been spotted meeting with her on the Strip. I believe…we all believe…that he goes to the Darkworld to be with her.”

      That, of all things, did not sound like Cedric. But Cedric had always been private. And he’d been so angry at Ayla’s announcement the night before….

      No, Cedric had enough reason to be angry at that, without a Human mistress. Cedric, the most noble and incorruptible of all the Fae in the Lightworld, toppled from his virtuous pedestal by a mortal? And a Darkling?

      “That seems…very unlikely,” he told the guard, though he still let the thought tumble around in his mind. “But I thank you for your trust.”

      He left then. Let them think what they would of him. He’d become so used to the disdain the Fae showed toward all mortal creatures that it only surprised him when one of them treated him with respect. Not Ayla or Cedric, of course, but they alone knew what he had been in his former life. If the rest of the Court knew, well, they might not respect him, but they would fear him.

      He shook off the self-pity that would usually follow such thoughts. Right now, his only concern was finding Cedric. The guard’s story—and the zeal of the other guards to suppress it—troubled him. This was not the first time Cedric had left the Lightworld with no explanation. He always turned up later, but never offered where he’d been. Ayla had not pressed…perhaps she knew any answer would be a lie?

      It would not be like Ayla to voice concerns about Cedric, who was, at times, closer to her than Malachi himself. She rarely questioned him and had never, to Malachi’s knowledge, voiced any displeasure with him, even in private. The Queene bowed to Cedric as much as Cedric bowed to his Queene.

      But now, the faithful servant had gone missing. The guard’s story did not make so little sense, in this reasoning.

      The years had flown—over half of Malachi’s own mortal life—but it had not been so long that he could not remember the ways through the Darkworld, to the Gypsy encampment. He made his way through the Strip, to the entrance of the Darkworld, to the place where the Gypsy markings began. Symbols meant to ward off evil—to ward off the Death Angels whose ranks he’d belonged to—all the things that crawled and slithered in the Darkworld that were so hazardous to mortal life. The symbols were useless. Malachi did not like them, did not need the reminder that there were things capable of destroying him here in the Darkworld.

      He had not been across the Darkworld border since before Ayla had officially become Queene, when he’d returned at Cedric’s pleading. Now, he hoped Cedric would return at his pleading.

      After hours of walking, he found that the camp was the same as he remembered—dirty, crowded, smelling of fire and too many unwashed bodies. It was also guarded still, though on his last visit those guards had not seen him slip in, their eyes blind to the messengers their God sent to bring them home.

      They were not blind to him now. And they were not blind to what he was.

      A group of children chased each other near the mouth of the tunnel, and a Human woman ran to them, crossing herself, looping her great fat arms around them and clutching them to her as she backed away, never taking her eyes from Malachi.

      A warning call in a language Malachi could not understand rang out from one guard to another, and they came toward him warily, as if recognizing him as mortal, but unable to reconcile that with what their stories and legends told them about the Death Angels’ purposes.

      “I am looking for one who is not of your kind,” he called out in the mortal language before they could get too close, before they could seize him, do him harm. They still might; their fear glittered in their dark eyes like the glimmer off of spilled blood.

      “You are one who is not of our kind,” a thin man called to him. “And you are not welcome here.”

      “I will leave, and gladly, once I find who I came for.” He considered for a moment that Cedric might not have told them his identity, that he was masquerading as Human. Among these people, as keen and superstitious as they were, it seemed unlikely that they would not know what Cedric truly was. “He is a Faery.”

      A murmur went through the Gypsies who stood before him. Something that sounded suspiciously like “Tom.”

      Had another Faery come to live among Humans? To have tracked the wrong Lightworlder into the Darkworld would be the perfect end to an absolutely fruitless day.

      The thin man nodded, once. “We cannot take you to him. We can bring him here, to you.”

      “That will be enough for me.” Malachi bowed his head briefly, to show them deference. “I will go into the tunnel, and wait there, so I will not further upset your people.”

      “And after that, you will not come this way again.” It was not a question, but Malachi answered with a nod, all the same.

      He waited, as he had promised, in the tunnel. What would have possessed Cedric to come here, to cast his lot with these strange creatures? All mortal beings were strange, and Malachi did not excuse himself from that description, but Gypsies were among the most bizarre. And for a Fae to knowingly pursue one, when mortal lives were so terribly short and fragile…

      It was something Malachi found himself thinking of far more often lately. The fragility of mortal life, the interminable length of immortality. He was not unaware of how his mortal body had aged. What had been full and strong in youth was now lean and tough. Lines marred his face. Those lines had not been there before, nor had the strands of silver that had grown into his hair. He had more years to live, true enough. But he could not imagine what it would be like to watch Ayla age, wither and die, as she would watch him fade away. Their circumstance, he had thought, was exceptional. Why would another immortal seek out such an unhappy situation?