Free The Shattered Dark by Sandy Williams

And someone would have tried to bring back the king.
    I close my eyes as a rush of pity flows through me. It’s tinged with pain, and it
     takes everything in me to keep it locked down tight. I swallow, trying to loosen a
     tight and raw throat, then, carefully, I ask, “Is that an extinct magic?”
    Naito’s gaze doesn’t waver. It’s almost as if he’s waiting for the pity or skepticism
     to reach my face, but after a handful of heartbeats, some of the tension leaves his
     shoulders. “These documents are filled with references to
banek’tan
. And some of them are recent. This one”—he grabs a loose parchment from one of his
     stacks—“is only twenty years old. A false-blood’s bond-mate was killed. She came back.”
    I bite the inside of my cheek and watch as he picks up another paper.
    “Same thing with this one,” he says. “It’s a little older, but there were dozens of
     witnesses. A fae died in the silver mines of Adaris. His bond-mate was able to bring
     him back. I’ve found twelve stories like these from the past century. Twelve. There
     has to be some truth to them.”
    There’s so much hope in his voice, I almost want to let him believe this. Would it
     be so wrong to? This is the best he’s looked in weeks. He has a reason to live, but
     these…these stories are just that. Stories. They’re rumors. Dreams.I want to believe them, too, but I’ve learned the hard way that life isn’t a fairy
     tale. People don’t come back from the dead.
    No. I was wrong before when I thought it was too soon for him to go back to work.
     He needs the distraction. He doesn’t need to sit around researching dreams that can’t
     come true. It isn’t healthy.
    “What happened to them?” I ask.
    His brows lower. “What do you mean?”
    “These fae who came back from the ether. Where are they now?”
    He blinks, then stares down at the pages in front of him. “I’m not sure.”
    I wait a moment, letting him think things through. “Naito, the
banek’tan
don’t exist.”
    He looks up again, his expression hardening. “Neither did the
ther’othi
.”
    And one point goes to Naito. Fae aren’t supposed to be able to walk the In-Between,
     but Micid could. He was a cruel, sick fae who worked for the previous king and his
     lord general, Radath. Instead of going through the In-Between, the freezing space
     fae pass through when they fissure, he waded in, taking me with him into a dimension
     within a world. We were invisible to everyone, but could still move and interact with
     the world. I suppose I can see why Naito is clinging to this hope, but it’s so, so
     thin. If a fae was ever brought back from the ether, there would be more evidence
     than what’s hinted at in these documents.
    I draw in a breath, let it out slowly, then go for a not-so-subtle subject change.
     “Lena’s having a hard time keeping the palace secure.”
    “Hmm,” Naito murmurs, leaning back in his chair and pulling a book closer. “She needs
     more fae to guard the
Sidhe Tol
.”
    “The
Sidhe Tol
aren’t the problem,” I say. They’re not entirely the problem. A
Sidhe Tol
is a very rare and very special type of gate that allows a fae to fissure into an
     area protected by silver. We know the locations of three of them, but rumor has it
     there are more. No one’s been able to find them,and until two weeks ago, no one but the king and a few trusted advisors knew where
     they were.
I
wasn’t supposed to know where they were, but Kyol fissured me through one once. I
     gave the rebels its location, and then, they learned where the other two were as well.
     They used the
Sidhe Tol
to take the palace. Now, we have to guard them to make sure the former Court fae
     don’t do the same thing to us.
    “The remnants are launching organized attacks from within the silver walls,” I tell
     Naito. “They have illusionists and all of the humans who used to work for the Court.
     Lena needs—”
    “Not all of them,” Naito