“How did you do that? You’re not Fae. ”
“Fae isn’t the only game in town. Your illustrious benefactor taught me well. ”
“V’lane?” I said.
“No. ”
Something inside me went very still. “Barrons?”
“He taught me many things. Including Voice. Kneel. ”
“Kiss my ass. ”
“I said kneel before me now. ”
I sucked in a sharp breath. Layered voices resonated around the room, pushing at me, trying to invade my mind, make his will mine. It was Voice as strong as Barrons had once used on me.
I smiled. It was an annoyance, nothing more. It looked like I’d found that place inside me that Barrons had sent me hunting for, where I had the strength to resist Voice. Too bad I still didn’t understand what it was. I had no idea how to use Voice, but it no longer worked on me. I was free. It was another of the things that had changed in me. One more power. “No,” I said. I took a step toward the couch and my gun.
“Look out the window. ” It was a warning. “Touch that gun, they sift. ”
I looked, and jerked. “Dani. ”
“She’s almost as impressive as you. If she could sense the Book, I wouldn’t need you. But she can’t and I do, so you and I are going to come to terms, one way or another. Sit, sheathe the spear, forget anything so stupid as shooting me, and listen. ”
* * *
I would never have obeyed, but beyond the window, out in that cold, rainy day, two Unseelie Princes were holding Dani between them.
Her cheeks were running with blood, and she was shivering violently. She wasn’t cold. She wasn’t even getting rained on. I guessed the UPs didn’t like being wet. She was shivering with heat. Lust. The destroying kind.
Her sword gleamed alabaster, forgotten in a muddy puddle on the dirt lawn. I knew they couldn’t possibly have touched it. Somehow they’d made her throw it away, same as the LM had done to me.
I was seriously beginning to think I’d gotten the short end of the stick. That all sidhe-seers had. What good were we, with all our limitations? We just kept getting shoved around.
I pushed a chair in front of the window so I could keep a constant eye on her. I had no idea what I’d do if the princes did anything other than restrain her as they were now, but I’d do something. They were in static form, clothed. They’d better stay that way. I was looking at two of the princes who’d turned me inside out. Who’d very nearly taken my soul from me. One day I would kill them, if it was the last thing I did. I was wise enough to know today was not that day. “Talk,” I said tightly.
He did. I sipped my coffee—irritatingly, it was good—while the Lord Master told me a story about being thrown out of Faery for defying the queen, for attempting to return their race to the Old Ways when the Fae had been worshipped as the gods they were, instead of living like sheep alongside puny mortals.
He told me how she’d stripped him of his Fae essence and turned him mortal, about finding himself alone in our world, human and fragile. He’d been cast naked, unarmed, and without human currency into the middle of Manhattan, in a subway station. He’d barely survived those first few minutes, had been attacked by a group of mocking, cruel humans wearing leather and chains, sporting shaved heads and hammering fists.
He told me how for a time he’d been out of his mind, horrified by a body that felt pain, that needed to eat, drink, and make waste, how he’d discovered germs and been terrified of death after so many hundreds of thousands of years of not even being able to comprehend it. He’d wandered with no place to rest, no money or understanding of how to care for his finite, weak shape that required so many things and caused so much misery. He—a god—was reduced to scavenging through human trash for sustenance to keep his body alive. He’d had to kill to seize clothing, had to scrounge like an animal. He’d studied his new environment, determined to find a better way to survive so he could then do better than merely survive.
He wanted revenge.
“You see,” he said, “you and I aren’t so different, are we? Both after the same thing. You, however, are misguided. ”
“And you aren’t?” I snorted. “Give me a break. ”
He laughed. “Perspective, MacKayla. Yours is skewed. ” Bit by bit, he told me, he’d clawed his way from the bottom.
When he’d finally learned to satisfy his base requirements, he made a startling discovery: His new form felt more than mere need. The ennui and dispassion of immortality began to melt away. The fear of death awakened unexpected facets of his nature. Emotion stirred in him sensations that being Fae never had and never could. Madness was replaced for a time by sheer lust, but finally his head had cleared. His existence under control, he began to seek power on the human plane, pursuing his agenda.
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Fae knowledge and hundreds of thousands of years of existing had given him a distinct advantage. He knew where to look for the things he wanted and how to use them when he found them.
He’d discovered two of the Silvers at an auction house in London, risked Cruce’s terrible curse, and found his way into Unseelie, where he’d made a pact with the mercenary Hunters to help him regain what was rightfully his and had been wrongfully taken from him: his essential Fae nature.
He trained with a warlock in London, from whom he stole precious copies of pages torn from the Sinsar Dubh, which he’d then traded to Barrons in exchange for a crash course in the Druid arts at which Darroc had excelled, gifted as he was with Fae intellect and understanding of the cosmos.
“Why didn’t Barrons just take the pages from you?”
“We pursued a common agenda for a time. He doesn’t kill anyone he thinks might prove useful in the future. ”
Mercenary to the core. Sounded like the man I knew. “What is he?”
“Consider instead what he is not. He is not the one that hunted me down for what I did to you. Doesn’t that tell you enough, MacKayla? You are a tool to him. His tool works again. He is satisfied. ”
“How did pages get torn from the Sinsar Dubh?” I changed the subject swiftly. If I ignored the knife he’d just driven through my heart, maybe it would go away.
He shrugged. He had no idea. They’d served their purpose. Now he needed the real thing. He’d continued collecting power wherever it could be found. The Hunters taught him to eat lesser Unseelie, to protect his fragile mortal existence.
“Why would they help you?”
“I promised them freedom. And I gave it to them. ” He was an Unseelie hero, he told me, and soon the Seelie would recognize him as such, too. Yes, he had disobeyed his queen. So had many others, who’d never been punished so harshly. Had the crime he’d committed merited a death sentence? There were other Seelie who felt as he did, who wanted a return to the Old Ways. His only crime had been trying to bring about what many of them secretly longed for. He should have been rewarded for standing up for his brethren. Even humans resisted doling out such a horrific punishment, and their blink-of-an-eye lives were so comically short they were worthless. He’d lost eternity, for a single broken rule. He wanted it back. Was that so wrong?
I made a hand gesture when he paused.
“I have not seen that one before,” he said.
“Miniature record player, playing ‘My Heart Bleeds for You. ’ I should care about this why? You made me Pri-ya. ” I narrowed my eyes, studying him. Had he been the fourth? Had this monster touched me?
“You made you Pri-ya. I gave you other options. You refused them. ”
“Do you really think the Unseelie will continue to obey you now that they’re no longer imprisoned?”
“I freed them. I am their king now. ”
“So, what’s keeping one of them from killing you and going after the Book, himself?”
“They’re too drunk on freedom to see beyond the moment. They feast. They fuck. They don’t think. ”
“You never know. One of them might snap out of it. Rulers get toppled all the time. Look at what you were trying to do to your queen. ”
“I have Cruce’s amulet. They fear it. ”
“How long do you expect that to last? You’re not even Fae. ”
“I will be again, as soon as I get the Book. ”
“Assuming one of them doesn’t kill you first. ”
He waved a dismissive hand. “The Unseelie do not wish to rule. After an eternity in hell they wish only to be free to indulge their hungers. ” His face went hard and cold as marble. “But I will not explain my race to a mere human. ”
At that moment, I could clearly see the icy, imperious Fae he’d once been and would be again, given half a chance. He claimed to have been changed by his experience with mortality. If, indeed he had—and there was plenty of doubt in my mind on that score—I could too easily see him changing back, in a heartbeat. “You’re pretty ‘mere’ yourself right now, bud. Cannibalizing your own race. I’ve heard the Seelie court has a special, horrific punishment for that. ”
“Then you’d better hope they don’t find out about you, Mac -Kayla,” he said coolly.
We stared at each other a long moment, then he tossed his long hair and flashed me a smile meant to charm. In another time and place, had I not known who and what he was, it probably would have worked. He was a beautiful, cultured, powerful man, and the jagged scar on his face made him all the more intriguing. I imagined Alina must have found him utterly fascinating when they’d first met. There wasn’t anything remotely like him in Ashford, Georgia.
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As if he’d somehow picked up on my thoughts of her, he said, “I came to Dublin because I learned the Sinsar Dubh had been sighted in the city. That was when I met your sister. ”
I went still inside. I wanted to hear about Alina, even if it came from him. I was starved to know about my sister’s last days.
“How did you meet?”
He’d walked into a pub where she was sitting with friends. She looked up, and he felt as if everyone else in the bar had melted away, just vanished into the background, leaving only him and her. She’d later told him she felt the same thing.
They’d spent the afternoon together. And the night. And the next and the next. They’d been inseparable. He discovered she wasn’t like other humans, that she, too, was struggling with a new state of being she didn’t understand and had no idea how to handle. They learned together. He’d found an ally in his quest for the Book, in his quest to restore his Fae nature. They’d been fated for each other.
“You lied to her. You pretended you were a sidhe-seer,” I accused. “She’d never have helped you otherwise. ”
“So you say. I think she might have. But she was skittish, and I was unwilling to take chances. She made me feel things I did not understand. I made her feel things she’d longed for all her life. I set her free. The way she laughed. ” He paused, and a faint smile curved his mouth. “When she laughed, people would turn to stare. It was so … Humans have a word. Joy. Your sister knew it. ”
I hated him for having heard her laugh, for knowing she knew joy, for ever having touched her, this monster who’d arranged to have me raped, body and soul, and my eyes must have burned with it, because his smile faded.
“I told you the truth. I did not kill her, which means someone else walking around out there did. You are so certain I’m the villain. What if your real villain is closer to you than you think?”
“I’m going to bottom-line this again: You made me Pri-ya. ” I spat, then fished. “You set four Unseelie Princes on me. ”
“Three. ”
I stared. I knew there’d been a fourth. “You were the fourth?”
“That would have served no purpose. I am not Fae at the moment. ”
“Then who was the fourth?” My hands fisted in my lap. Being raped was bad enough. Being raped and not knowing if your fourth rapist was someone you knew was even worse.
“There was no fourth. ”
“Not believing a word you say. ”
“The fourth Unseelie Prince was killed hundreds of thousands of years ago, in battle between the queen and king. That child”—he shot a glance out the window—“killed another when I tried to reclaim you at the abbey. ”
A memory from my fractured state of consciousness surfaced sharply: Lying on the cold stone floor, believing salvation was at hand. A flame-haired warrior. A sword. I remembered. It was a shameful memory. I’d wanted to kill Dani for killing my “master. ” And I was still mad at Dani for killing the prince—but for an entirely different reason: I wanted to be the one to kill the bastards.
“The princes want revenge. They want me to let them have her. They are mine to command. ”
I stared at him, not missing the threat but still trying to digest that there was no fourth prince. How could the LM not have known a fourth was there? Was there a fourth, or had I imagined it?
“What has Barrons tried to make of you, MacKayla? And V’lane? A tool for their purposes. They’re no different than me. My methods have merely been more direct. And more directly effective. Everyone is trying to use you. ” He glanced out the window. “If not for her interference, I would have succeeded. I would have had the Sinsar Dubh by now and been back in Faery. ”
“Leaving our world a complete mess. ”
“What do you think Barrons would do? Or V’lane?”
“At least try to put the walls back up. ”
“You’re so certain?”
“You’re just trying to make me doubt everyone. ”
“If you obtain the Sinsar Dubh for me, MacKayla, I will reclaim the Unseelie and restore order to your world. ”
Not a word in there about restoring the walls. “And give me my sister back?” I said dryly.
“If you wish. Or you may come visit us in Faery. ”
“Not funny. ”
“I did not intend it to be. Whether you wish to believe it or not, she mattered to me. ”
“I saw her body, you bastard!”
His lids half dropped, his mouth tightened. “As did I. It was not done by me or at my direction. ”
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“She told me you were coming for her! That she was afraid you wouldn’t let her out of the country! She wanted to come home!”
His lids lifted. He looked startled. On a human face, I would have called his expression pained. “She said that?”
“She was crying on the phone, hiding from you!”
“No. ” He shook his head. “Not from me, MacKayla. I do not believe she thought it was me. She knew me better than that. Yes, she’d found me out. Discovered what I was. But she didn’t fear me. ”
“Stop lying to me!” I lunged to my feet. He’d killed her. I had to believe that. In the huge sea of unknowns that had become my existence, there was one certainty, and it was my life raft. The Lord Master was the bad guy. He’d killed Alina. That was my absolute. My unwavering truth. I couldn’t let go of it. I couldn’t survive in a state of complete paranoia.
He reached into his coat, took out a photo album, and tossed it on the couch. “I expect you to give this back to me. It is mine. I came in peace today,” he said, “and offered you one more chance at an alternative to war between us. The last time you refused me, you saw what I did. Three days, MacKayla. I will come for you in three days. Be ready. Be willing. ” He glanced out the window. He reached into his coat again and this time pulled out the amulet on its thick gold chain. It glowed at his touch. He looked at it for a moment, then at me, as if debating testing it. I was a sidhe-seer and a Null, impervious to Fae magic. Would it work on me? Expect the unexpected, I reminded myself. I could make no assumptions.
“I will let you keep the child, today. She is a gift from me to you. I can give you many, many gifts. The next price I call due will not be … as you say … refundable. ” He rapped sharply
on the window and nodded.
The princes were gone.
Dani slumped into a puddle of mud.
The LM vanished.
“They made me throw away my sword, Mac,” Dani said, teeth chattering.
I dabbed gently at the blood on her cheeks. “I know, honey. You told me. ” Seven times in the past three minutes. It was all she’d said since I helped her up from the puddle, dug out a metal teapot, opened two bottles of water, heated it over the fire the LM had left burning, and began cleaning her up.
“Dunno how you survived,” she said, and began to cry.
I wiped at her cheeks some more, pushed at her hair, fretted and fussed like my mom and Alina had fretted over me whenever I wept.
She didn’t cry pretty. She cried like a storm breaking loose, a storm that had been brewing for a long time. I suspected she was crying for things I knew nothing about and might never know. Dani was an intensely private person. She cried like her heart was breaking, like her soul was in those tears, and I held her, thinking how strange life was. I’d thought I was fully engaged in life back in Ashford, Georgia, 100 percent invested.
I’d had no idea what life or love was.
Life didn’t explode in the sunshine and pretty places. Life took the strongest root with a little bit of rain and a whole lot of shit for fertilizer. Although love could grow in times of peace, it tempered in battle. Daddy told me once—when I’d said something about how perfect his relationship with Mom was—that I should have seen the first five years of their marriage, that they’d fought like hellions, crashed into each other like two giant stones. That eventually they’d eroded each other into the perfect fit, become a single wall, nestled into each other’s curves and hollows, her strengths chinking his weaknesses, her weaknesses reinforced by his strengths.
I began telling Dani about my parents. About what life had been like growing up in a happy home in the Deep South. About magnolia-scented days and sultry heat, slow-paddling fans and pool parties. She stilled in my arms. After a while, she stopped crying and leaned back on the couch, staring at me like a stray cat with its nose pressed to the window of a restaurant.
When she took off for the abbey, I carefully tucked the photo album the LM had tossed on the couch into my backpack, unopened. I knew without cracking the cover I was going to need time to pore over the pictures, a luxury I didn’t have now.