The Nightshade's Touch: A Paranormal Space Fantasy (Messenger Chronicles Book 3) by Pippa DaCosta

Author:Pippa DaCosta [DaCosta, Pippa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crazy Ace Publishing
Published: 2018-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Talen had guided Shinj, the warcruiser, over the township, enabling us to collect our shuttle, Hapters’s remaining colonists, and Sirius’s scattered flight of fae scouts. The warcruiser groaned her displeasure, but she loosened up as we climbed through thinner air and eventually entered the planet’s orbit. Below us, the once peaceful farming planet bled black like rotten fruit.

I’d wanted to help these people, but somehow, I’d condemned their homes to the unseelie. This wasn’t my fault. If Kellee and Talen had told me even half of the truth, I could have planned. I could have prevented this.

“Sensors back online,” Sota announced from his favorite shelf inside my chamber. He had been rebooting while I had walked the ship, helping people get settled. I knew how unnerving it could be inside a sentient ship, especially as their last visit to a fae ship had been as prisoners. I assured them my ship was different. Some believed me. But some looked at me like Kellee sometimes did—with a heavy dose of skepticism.

“Good.” Earlier, I had spread Talen’s coat out across my bed. The dark fae had torn it to strips, but it was resealing itself. I too had healed the thousands of cuts in a way that wasn’t possible for saru. More questions circled my thoughts as I watched the coat shimmer.

The collective injuries of the crew were minor. Nobody had died and the people were safe. All but Sirius.

“How is the guardian?” I asked Sota.

“Unconscious but stable.”

We would struggle to control the fae scattered among the survivors without Sirius, but we had time before they organized themselves. The fae flight had also regarded me with skepticism, suspicion, and outright hostility. I couldn’t blame them for that. As the face of the Wraithmaker and the Messenger, I was hated and loved on all sides. Around Talen, who had walked the ship beside me, Sirius’s flight had regarded us curiously.

Sota hovered off his shelf and drifted across the room to where I stared at the coat.

“I want to ask you a question,” the drone said.

I looked up. He wasn’t usually careful with his words. Perhaps Talen was rubbing off on him. “Then ask it, Sota.” I smiled reassuringly.

“The others haven’t noticed, but they don’t see you like I do.”

He didn’t need to say any more, because he was Sota and he saw all the things the rest of us missed.

“I noticed immediately after you rebooted me on Arcon. You exhibited fae characteristics then. They’ve been increasing, changing you. I’ve heard the others speak of a bond. Are you bonded with Talen?” Was there a hint of sadness in his voice?

“Yes.”

“It’s changing you.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Did you know it would?”

I looked my friend in his single lens. “No. It’s… I don’t think he meant for it to get this far. The initial bond wasn’t as strong as it is now. But after I helped him break free of this ship, the connection between us widened. Something changed. I don’t know how to explain it. It feels more solid.

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