Feversong (Fever #9)(117)
“What?” I said. “Do you think he knows something that could help us?”
Ryodan said tersely, “Not a bloody thing. I’ve already questioned him.” Barrons cut him a long hard look and Ryodan snapped, “So what if I did? You fucks kept wandering off and the Highlander was the right material.”
I smiled faintly. So, Barrons had been right. Ryodan kept Dageus from dying because he’d wanted to expand his family.
“That’s not why I brought him up,” Christian said tightly. “I’m taking him home. Tonight.”
“The fuck you are,” Ryodan said instantly.
“The world is ending. He’ll no’ be spending his last days in a cage beneath your bloody club. He’s got himself under control. Mostly. As much as I do, for fuck’s sake. He has the right to leave this world and colonize a new one with his clan. With his wife. He has a family.”
I winced inwardly. Christian had no idea what fate awaited Dageus if we failed to save our world. But then again, no one seemed to have clued in about my fate either, and I wasn’t about to bring it up. I was the Seelie Queen now. Even if I went off world, the moment the Earth died and all Fae ceased to exist, I would, too. Not that I had any intention of leaving Barrons’s side to begin with. But the way I saw it, I was going to die whether I stayed or went, and I sure as hell wasn’t dying without him, not to mention in front of my parents, for heaven’s sake.
Barrons’s gaze whipped to mine and his eyes glittered with crimson sparks.
You did not just hear that, I said with narrowed gaze.
Your emotion was so palpable, I suspect even Ryodan heard you. You will transfer the queen’s power to another Fae and leave this world if all appears to be lost. You will not die here. Or there. Or anywhere.
We’ll discuss this later.
His nostrils flared and he ducked his head, looking up at me from beneath his brows, like a bull preparing to charge, in that familiar constant jackass way that told me I was in for a long, heated battle later. I arched a brow at him. Fine with me. We always had long heated makeups afterward, too.
Ryodan and Barrons exchanged a look, then Barrons said to Christian, “You may take him home.”
Ryodan snapped, “That’s not what I just said.”
“I don’t care. I said he could,” Barrons said softly. “And you and I will do battle over this one. If there was ever a time for a man to be with his clan, it’s now.” To Christian, he said, “Get the hell out of here.”
Christian vanished.
MAC
When people have absolutely no control over the things that really matter to them, they tend to do one of three things: devolve into animals and prey on others, indulging their base instincts (wolves); huddle in herds for comfort and safety from the chaos (sheep); or invoke a rigid daily routine, effecting control over those few things they can while endeavoring to change what seems an inevitable fate (sheepdogs).
Over the next few weeks our world split neatly into those camps. There were more killings of armed guards and mass suicides at the black holes, making still more work for those of us that fell into the sheepdog category. Violent crimes escalated: rapes, murders, thefts, vandalism. People ripped out recently planted trees and drove utility vehicles through flower beds in public commons in a kind of “Well, if I’m going, by God, I’m taking the world with me” attitude that was beyond my ability to comprehend. I share my mother’s mentality about some things—I’d have planted new flowers right up to the moment of extinction. Barrons says that’s because some people can’t stop creating, even lacking both audience and canvas. They create because they must, not for the world but themselves.
Fortunately, the sheep were up to the challenge of tackling a new, more orderly world and went through the Silvers by the hundreds of thousands to one of seven suitable worlds. They came from all over the globe, drawn by word there was a way off planet. Christian had been sifting to various surrounding countries, alerting people to what was happening in Dublin and telling them to get there as quickly as they could, then sifting out farther and bringing people back with him. The last time I’d seen him, he was stumbling, nearly incoherent, from repeatedly sifting with passengers in tow. The Nine, meanwhile, divided their time between excavating the black holes to keep them from touching the earth, and forming troops of colonies with governing bodies and supplies, and escorting them through.
The “sheep,” as I call them, are the backbone of society, and as some of them stepped up to the portals, they shook off their stupor and got downright excited, alive and alert, and I realized sheep could morph into sheepdogs, under the right circumstances.
As I watched them entering the Silvers via portals Ryodan and Barrons established with stacked mirrors, I felt enormous hope for our race. This world was dying. But seven more were being born. The sky was the limit for the future of our children out there among the stars.
The joy I felt at the possibilities for mankind, however, was brutally overshadowed by the fact that if (and it was looking more like “when”) the Earth died, so many of us would, too. Not just those in my inner circle, but billions that simply wouldn’t make it here in time. We had the weight of the world on our shoulders, literally.
On a personal level, it was a complete and total clusterfuck. If, by some miracle, I were able to sing the Song of Making and heal the world, it would unmake everything made by imperfect song: all the Unseelie, Alina, and possibly Christian, Barrons, the Nine, and Dageus would die.