I lean my head against his shoulder. “Leave this world and find another that won’t matter if I destroy it until I know for sure that I’m in control.”
“Ah. So, you think there are worlds that can be destroyed without mattering,” he mocks lightly.
“I could go to a barren planet with no life.”
“It doesn’t matter what you destroy, but that you destroy. There are two types of people in this world: those who can create and those who can’t. Creators are powerful, shaping the world around them. All beings crave power over their slice of existence. Those who can’t create do one of three things: convince themselves to accept a half-life of mediocrity and seething dissatisfaction, deriving enjoyment from whatever small acts of dominance they manage to achieve over their companions; find a creator to leech onto and exploit to enjoy a parasitic lifestyle; or destroy. One way or another, someone that can’t create will find a way to feel in control. Destruction feels like control.”
I pull back and look at him. “Your point?”
“You’re a creator, not a destroyer. Destruction destroys the destroyer. Always. Eventually. And badly.”
“Your point?”
“The Sinsar Dubh has leeched onto you. There’s no place you can run. The battle goes with you.”
“But I could minimize the fallout.”
“Only to yourself. You might not care as much if it were a stranger on some other world that the Book killed, but I doubt the stranger would care any less, nor would the people who care about that stranger.”
“Okay, not getting this. On the one hand, with the exception of creators, you just told me all people are essentially dickheads. Now you’re arguing for those dickheads.”
“I argue for nothing. I’m merely stating that whether you destroy here or on another world, you’re still destroying. That’s your battle—to destroy or not. Once you start splitting hairs, trying to convince yourself some things are more acceptable to destroy, you’ve already lost the most important war. There’s no advantage in moving your battle to unknown terrain.”
“You think I should stay here and fight, even if it costs the lives of people I love?”
“Your battle is half won. You’re sitting here with me. The Sinsar Dubh isn’t. Make that permanent.”
“But you’re not telling me how.”
“What does the Sinsar Dubh want?”
“I don’t know.” That’s what I’d been wondering before he came in. Trying to figure out its end goal so I could intercept and undermine.
“Yes, you do. It wants to be in the world, living, in control of itself. What do you want?”
“The same thing.”
“Why?”
“Because I could be happy if things ever stopped going wrong!”
“Things never stop going wrong. Life isn’t about waiting for peace to arrive, it’s about learning to thrive in the midst of war. There’s always another one on the way.” He was silent a moment then said, “Why does the Sinsar Dubh want to live?”
“Damned if I know,” I mutter. “Because it’s greedy? Bored? The alternative is not living?”
“Why do you?”
I look at him. Because I love people, I don’t say. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you, see what you do next, celebrate your victories, grieve your losses, make love to you. God, why am I always my clearest only when it looks like I might lose everything?
Because you still believe you can have everything, his dark eyes say. You can’t. We have nothing. Only the current moment. Once you understand that, you know what’s sacred and not, and never lose sight of it again.
“But you have forever. You have every moment.”
“No. Like you, I have but this one. Death isn’t the only foe that steals from you the things you prize. You think a monster has control of you.”
“It does.”
“It is in control only by your consent.”
Bristling, I unlace my fingers from his, rake my hands through my wet hair and say, “That’s not true. I didn’t choose the Book. I didn’t let it in. It took me as a fetus. There was no consenting or refusing.”
“There is now.”
“And your beast was so easy to subdue.” I say, acid-sweet and pissed. He’s acting like it should be simple. Like, why haven’t I defeated it yet?
“Never said it was. But I did it. And I didn’t sit around brooding, vacillating between committing suicide and running away. Both are unforgivable in my book.”
“Stay the hell out of my head,” I snap.
“How did you regain control?”
I worry my lower lip with my teeth for a moment then admit, “I don’t know that I did. It may have simply fallen asleep.”
“Wondered if that would happen.”
“But I was figuring things out at the same time. It was growing weaker and I was growing stronger.”
“And once it has rested?”
“That’s the million dollar question. So, how do I fight it?”
“Become it.”
I stare at him in disbelief.
“Remember the runes that fortified the Unseelie prison walls? They draw strength from resistance. Don’t resist. Become.” He stands and extends his hand. “Come.”
I push up from the floor. “Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you back to Chester’s.” He pauses then says, “Where we will contain you with the stones.”
I stiffen. “You just gave me a pep talk about fighting it. Now you’re going to shut me down? You have no idea what that might do to me, or the Book. It could put us both in suspended animation and I won’t be able to fight it.”
“It may suspend only the Book.”
“Right. Leaving me fully cognizant. Trapped. Forever,” I say sharply. I’d accepted this fate once before. But I was making headway. I was certain I could win this battle, if I just had enough time.
“You said yourself you don’t know if the Book will seize control of you again the moment it awakens.”
My jaw juts. “Maybe I’ve beat it.”
“I don’t like this any more than you do, Mac.”
“I’m bloody well certain I like it far less,” I say heatedly. “You’re not the one about to get locked away.”
“No, I’m the just the one who has to endure you being locked away. There’s no possibility I might be suspended while you suffer. I’ll be aware of every bloody moment of it.”
I wince. Put that way, it sounds a lot like what he went through with his son.
“Ryodan’s out of play, Jada’s holding it together by sheer force of will, the sidhe-seers are in a complete meltdown at Chester’s, Dageus is a major fucking mess, and we have no idea how to stop the black holes. We need something off our plate, and the Book is the thing most likely to cause immediate, catastrophic damage.” His dark gaze shutters. “You’ve not yet done anything as the Book that you won’t be able to forgive yourself for,” he says carefully. “In time.”
I’m still so pissed off by his “off our plate” comment I barely hear him. As if I’m an unappetizing vegetable to be scraped into a Tupperware container and stuck in the fridge. “Then what? I wait passively until you either save the world or don’t? And if you do, you’ll free me to resume my fight? And if you don’t, I’ll get sucked into oblivion by a black hole?” I say irritably. I don’t want to be locked away. I don’t want to be passive. I wasted weeks of my life I can never get back being miserably passive and defeatist. Belatedly, his final comment sinks in and I stare up at him, horrified, because he just made it very clear I’ve already done something I’m going to hate myself for. My irritation is doused by a crushing wave of remorse. I’ve killed someone. Someone I knew. Someone that mattered to me. I close my eyes.
“Now you understand why we must do it. Not only is it possible the Book could destroy our planet far more quickly than the black holes, there are things it could do while in possession of your body that would leave you irrevocably scarred. I don’t mea
n physically. Once you’re contained, I’ll move you to a place where I can remove the stones and you’ll have the freedom to fight.”
I open my eyes. “What do you mean? What kind of place?” Who did I kill? I fist my hands at my sides, desperate to know. Desperate not to know. He’d specifically said Jada and my parents were “fine.” So, it was someone else. Not one of the Nine, because they would be reborn. Sidhe-seers? Children? Innocent bystanders? Christian? Jayne? All of them? Did I slaughter thousands in a single crushing blow?
“A place where your battle can take as long as it must without consequence, without you having to worry about destroying worlds. Even those you think don’t matter,” he adds dryly.
“And you just so happen to know a place like that?” I narrow my eyes. “Oh, God, you were so certain I’d fail, so sure I’d open the Book that you prepared for it!”
“You had an undiscovered country inside you. That gave you two options: pretend it doesn’t exist and never set foot inside it, even though you know it’s governed by a maniacal little Hitler determined to chip away at your borders and conquer you—or march in and start a war. I’d have been disappointed had you done anything less.”
He’d just put into words exactly how I’d felt from the moment I realized the Book was inside me, and both options had terrified me. I’d begun leaning more and more toward the “starting a war” option. Then, at least, I wouldn’t be vacillating. Living in fear of two options would always be harder than biting the bullet and choosing one to confront.
Because living in fear isn’t living.
“But you stopped me from taking a spell for your son. I could have marched in then.”
He smiles faintly. “I never said I was in a hurry for you to start a war. Come.” He extends his hand again.
Instead of taking it, I reach up, lace my fingers in his dark hair and pull his head down. Brush my lips to his, a whisper of a kiss, breath and warmth, barely any friction. I lean against him, motionless, opening all my senses, absorbing the moment, every nuance, committing it to my memory in flawless detail so once I’m trapped in whatever manner I’m about to be trapped, I can re-create him, us together, in my mind. I tip my head back and put all my love in my eyes. Let it pile up and blaze there.
He stares down at me a long moment. A muscle works in his jaw and crimson sparks flare deep in his irises. “Your bloody timing bloody sucks,” he says tightly.
“I thought we’d just established this moment is all we have. That means my timing can never suck,” I say lightly.
He splays his fingers across my jaw, tilts my head back and slants his mouth over mine in a hot, hungry kiss that knifes straight to my soul.
When we finally move apart, I slip my hand into his.
He speaks the words of the feth fiada and we vanish into the night.
To imprison me. Quite possibly forever.
CAGED
* * *
My mother sat on the other side of the bars, crying.
She said she didn’t have a choice: her parents were dead, my dad was gone, she had no friends who could handle me, there was no dog that could keep me safe while she went to work, and somebody had to pay our bills.
She told me I was an especially good girl and she knew I couldn’t help freeze-framing because I was too young to understand the danger it put us in. She said even though I had a mega brain, certain concepts were still beyond my grasp. I don’t think anything was beyond my grasp. I just didn’t have any fear.
She told me one day I would be grown up enough that the cage would no longer be necessary. I thought maybe she’d let me out at night when she was home but she said I didn’t have the self-discipline yet to risk it. She thought I’d run away. I probably would have.
She wasn’t being mean to me.
She was doing what she had to do. For us. She worried about me and was keeping me safe.
Years passed.
We developed routines. Life went on. You don’t know things are strange when you don’t know any different. She was good to me.
She pushed in food through the same slot in the cage that I used to push out bedpans.
In the evenings, after we ate dinner together on the floor, she brought me bowls of warm soapy water and helped me give myself a bath and clean my hair, which she brushed and braided by reaching through the bars.
We played jacks and cards and she bought me coloring books and crayons and hung my best pictures on the living room walls. On special nights we had popcorn and she rented a movie for us.
My birthdays came and went and I was always so excited because each year it was the very best thing that could possibly be happening to me—I was getting OLDER. We marked the occasion each year with my favorite meal of thick Irish stew and soda bread and creamed corn and chocolate ice cream for dessert, while telling each other bodacious stories about all the thrilling things we would one day do when I was free.
She hung a calendar on the wall behind the new sofa she bought to replace the couch I’d broken, and I watched with shining eyes as she crossed off the weeks and months, knowing each black slash took me one day closer to the last calendar she would ever hang.
Though she was gone all day, she left me well cared for with the TV on, lots of blankets and pillows, and all my favorite food, which we could afford again, and bedpans nearby.
When she came home at night, she’d spend hours with me, reading me stories, telling me about her day and all the wonderful things we were going to do when I was OLDER and she could let me out.
I really thought we were going to make it.
I thought one day the door would swing wide and we’d get busy doing all those things we’d missed.
She said that a lot: that we were going to make up for LOST TIME. I heard that word in all capitals, too, colored the dreary shade of dirty snow.
But I think whenever you put other people in a cage—any kind of cage—you start to think of them as less real.
JADA
Jada sat in Ryodan’s office, her arms folded behind her head, long legs outstretched, boots kicked up on the desk, body thrumming with restless energy. Killing time, waiting for something to happen, wasn’t one of her strong suits. In truth, it wasn’t a suit in her deck of cards at all, it was incarceration in a high security prison. Yet here she sat and would continue to sit for days, if it meant getting Mac back.
Cruce had sifted out some time ago, instructing them to return the spear with all haste while he watched the Unseelie princess, and the instant the Book summoned her, he’d sift back and alert them. Christian had vanished hot on his heels, muttering something about seeing to the needs of his clan.
She and Barrons had been analyzing strategies to get the spear back to Mac when he abruptly stiffened, as if listening to something only he could hear. We may just have gotten lucky, he said after a moment. I sense only Mac, nothing of the Sinsar Dubh. Remain here. I’m going to go get her.
And do what?
Bring her back here to contain her with the stones. Easier than trying to get four of us in and out of Mallucé’s.
Jada protested, But if she’s in control, she’s fighting it. And winning. You can’t shut her away now. She needs time.
Have you forgotten the Book has the ability to manipulate precisely that element? I suspect Cruce’s prediction of its moves is correct. With the spear, the Sinsar Dubh will hunt the queen. If it gains her power, too, it will be unstoppable. It’s now or never, Jada.
With every ounce of her being, Jada wanted to disagree. She despised cages of any kind and putting Mac in one was the last thing she wanted to do. Once something was shelved, it became far too easy to keep pushing that item back further and further until, draped with cobwebs and dust, it was forgotten.
Never. And you bloody well know it, Barrons growled.
She said, I’ll summon—Barrons roughly clamped his hand over her mouth, cutting off her words.
Don’t say his name. Don’t even think it. Merely saying it summo
ns him. I don’t want that Fae fuck anywhere near Mac. He has far too much to gain by eliminating her, and nothing to lose. We do this with my men and no one else.
He’d vanished, leaving her alone in Ryodan’s glass house.
Now she glanced around, shrugged, stood up, and set about ransacking it.
Only to find his office as void of personal information about the man as the man himself. The piles of paperwork he used to have were nowhere to be seen, his file cabinets window-dressing, stocked with empty folders, confirming her suspicion that he’d never actually been doing anything other than torturing her. There wasn’t even a single pen or pencil in his drawer.
She narrowed her eyes, remembering the hidden panel where he’d once kept her contract, wondering how many other hidden panels the man had. She’d searched the obvious places. Ryodan was anything but obvious.
She kicked his chair back, knelt on the floor and began feeling around on the desk: top, sides, legs. After a moment she closed her eyes and turned off her brain, dumping her entire awareness into her hands, feeling for the slightest anomaly. It didn’t take her long to find one.
When the panel slid out, she opened her eyes and resumed her seat in the chair. Before her was a shallow drawer with row after row of smooth, square black buttons. She began punching them in order, glancing intently around the office, waiting for something to happen.
The monitors. The bloody monitors. Of course the man-who-would-be-king had a spyglass to watch every inch of his club while perched high atop his lofty throne.
She punched, watched, and punched again as various private areas of the club appeared and passed from view. Nothing much interesting going on.
Wait, what?
She went back two buttons. She’d just caught a glimpse of Kat, who’d been missing for weeks.
There she was again, with Kasteo. They reclined, side by side, on forty-five-degree benches, before an enormous mirror, doing dumbbell wide-flies in perfect rhythm.