Free City of Shadows by Pippa DaCosta Page A

days,” he said.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œAfter you attacked, it took three days for me to recover.”
    Was I meant to be impressed? “The queen patched me up in hours.”
    â€œDo you remember how?” His eyes had widened slightly at mention of the queen.
    I bowed my head and reached out a hand toward the daggers. Kael didn’t move to stop me, so I trailed my fingers along the cool flank of the nearest one and remembered everything the queen had done to me, every moment of when she’d plucked me apart and remade me all over again. I remembered it like a vivid dream; I was there, but not there. I couldn’t explain it to Kael, not without him thinking I was more unhinged than he already did.
    â€œIs it difficult? Remembering?” he asked.
    I frowned and pulled my hand back from the dagger. “Why? Because I don’t have a mind of my own?”
    He studied me with a slight scowl on his sharp features. “I’m merely trying to understand your construction.”
    â€œWe understood each other perfectly when I stabbed you and you gutted me.”
    His thin lips twitched. “You’ve asked me to train you. You said you want to be like me, my warriors. To what end?”
    To buy time while I find Becky—and end you—before
my
time runs out.
I cleared my throat, and with it the vengeful thoughts. “So I can control these dreams, memories, this thing in me.” The words had come in one long rush.
    I bit my lip and turned away, if only to hide whatever he’d see on my face. Fear, probably. I couldn’t let him see me afraid. He had to believe in me, or else he’d never let me close enough to discover what had happened to Becky.
    â€œI’m not convinced I can train you. A construct does what it’s been designed to do. No more, no less. But, I’ve been monitoring your activities, keeping an eye on your existence. As a construct you should have unraveled long ago, and yet here you are, standing in my office, telling me you have
dreams
.” He paused, perhaps considering his next words, but that silvery glimmer of reverence was back in his eyes.
    â€œYou’ve been monitoring me?”
    â€œ The Authority, and my purpose as its leader, revolves around protecting the interracial balance between the London people and the fae. You are something of an anomaly and, from my experience to date, a potential risk to that balance. I originally planned to contain you in Under’
s
catacombs, but in light of our fortuitous meeting and after what you’ve told me, I’m interested in what you believe you know of the queen and how much—if any—of the queen or her spirit still exists in you.”
    â€œHer spirit?” I wasn’t sure if I was more alarmed by the fact he’d been watching me, thinking about locking me up alongside Faerie’s monsters, or that he believed something of the spirit could have survived in me.
    He bowed his head and appeared to admire the daggers, but his gaze went farther, passing through the blades, seeing into his past perhaps. “The spirit Arachne possessed the queen. Arachne is One of the Three.” Arachne, Cu Sith, and the other I knew only as the harpy. The Three. The fae liked things in threes. Always threes. “But you must know this?” Kael asked.
    I did. Reign had told me the spirit Arachne sought out the queen for her talent for weaving, that over time the spirit drove the queen insane—fae fury, he’d called it. In my dreams, I saw only broken images that together created a cascade of emotions. The images faded on waking, but the feelings lingered. Fear, elation, anger. I could believe in the queen’s madness. I’d seen it, felt it, and lived it. But the spirit?
    â€œIf what remains of her truly resides in you,” he said, looking up from the daggers to fix his sharp eyes on me. “It could be significant.”
    Like he’d said, constructs