Feversong (Fever #9)(36)
She’d spent her entire reign studying and analyzing possibilities, the better to shape her race’s world, holding none too extreme to entertain.
How then could she deem this one beyond the realm of plausible?
Aoibheal spun to face the towering black Silver that divided the two chambers, light and dark, cozy and cavernous, lovely and frightening. The mysterious portal chilled her. She’d cut her teeth on tales of what lay beyond in the Unseelie King’s eerie realm of eternal midnight and ice. She’d recently been in that realm, until rescued by the O’Connor she’d delicately nudged to be there at her hour of need, but had glimpsed none of it, trapped in her coffin of ice.
She’d not regained consciousness until after the king had taken her from the abbey catacomb, had not foreseen that he would abduct her. She had no idea how she’d been freed from the Unseelie prison, and now her most powerful weapon, the O’Connor sidhe-seer, was possessed by the worst of the Unseelie King—most certainly her enemy.
She knew the legend of the king’s mirror. It was said that only two could pass through the portal and survive. She eyed the enormous, gilt-framed Silver, striving for objectivity, weighing the limited choices she had. It was possible there was a way to escape her prison from the king’s side of the boudoir. The arrogant king was too enamored of his own existence to believe the Queen of the Seelie would risk her own life trying to pass through it.
She smiled bitterly. He didn’t know her.
She would sacrifice everything, confront any unpleasant truth, yield even her immortal life to preserve the future of her race. All that mattered to her was that her people survived. Even if that meant she did not. She was their queen.
If she attempted to cross the threshold and died, what would become of them all? Guilty of the death of yet another queen, might the king finally do something to save their race?
If she tried and survived, it would mean that her entire existence was a lie, that she was far older than she believed she was, and had been born the unthinkable—mortal, human.
One thing was irrefutably true: she would die anyway if she remained where she was. Better to die trying than not.
When the planet collapsed, every Fae realm, including the Silvers and all they contained, would vanish. Except the king himself. Legend held he predated even the First Queen, some even claimed he’d made her. Made them all. And even now he had no care that his creations might cease to exist. Why would he? He would go on.
She glanced back at the concubine, tangled in bed linens with the king.
They touched her, struck a chord somewhere deep within her. Was it possible remnants of memory survived the cauldron? That a love as consuming as the one the concubine had shared with the king left an indelible imprint on a being’s very essence despite the effects of the Elixir of Forgetting?
With every ounce of her being she wanted to deny it. Yet she would not repeat the egotistical mistakes of the stubborn First Queen.
Often, it was only the bold, fearless, risky action that had any hope of circumventing impending doom, as if Fate was amused by the colorfully unexpected, and while she was laughing, one might slip changes past the pernicious bitch.
It was her duty to exhaust all means at her disposal to save her race. No matter how terrifying or distasteful.
She eyed the sleek dark glass, peering through to the shadowy interior of the king’s bedchamber.
Fire to his ice, frost to her flame.
She had no idea where the thought had come from.
But somehow she knew also that it was cold on the other side, his side. So cold it would be difficult to catch her breath.
She shivered at yet another thought that made no sense. She didn’t need to breathe. She was energy and projection.
Setting her jaw, she snatched up the concubine’s long-abandoned cloak of snowy velvet and plush fur.
Pulling it close around her body, she glided toward the mirror.
MAC
I’m lying on a floor, staring at a door.
Where am I? Every muscle in my body—my body!—burns from exertion and my teeth hurt. Why do my teeth hurt?
Groaning, I take stock of myself. Can I move?
Gingerly, I extend a leg.
Fucking ow.
It feels like someone beat me from head to toe. And I need to pee badly. Whatever nefarious deeds the Book committed, it pushed my body to the extreme in the process. I stay still for a long moment, reacclimating to corporeality. The extraordinary clarity I’d attained with no body to distract me threatens to dissipate beneath an onslaught of sensation.
I press my palms to the floor, force my head up like a rearing cobra and peer into a dimly lit, chilly room furnished with neoclassical goth furnishings: a low brocade and velvet chaise, tall-backed chairs with those creepy canopies, an enormous four-poster bed draped in vintage velvets and taffeta.
I know this place.
I despise this place. And now that I’m back in my own skin, I can feel the palpable evil of the monstrous mansion wherein so many murders were committed. Evil leaves a residue, tainting and changing the very molecules of the location where it occurs.
I hear, too, somewhere beyond this room, the dark melody of thousands and thousands of Unseelie clustered close. More than I’ve felt in a single, condensed area since the night I cowered atop a belfry as the sky ran black with a horde of monsters breaking free after an eternity in prison. The discordant song of so many castes mingling nearly deafens me until I dial my sidhe-seer senses back to low volume. It appears the Book chose to surround itself with an army from the Court of Shadows. And what more appropriate place? It must have scoped it out through my eyes when I’d been here with Barrons, the night I stole one of the four stones. I wonder how much it had actually been able to see that night. I wonder if it knows everything I know. I shudder at the thought. Regardless, it knew enough to know this place was here and would suit it.