Feversong (Fever #9)(68)

I stared up at him then shook my head with a wry smile, resisting the urge to slap a hand to my forehead. It was so simple, so clear, and had mystified me for so long. I’d told myself it was just the way we were, preferring a persona of distance in public and another, intimate, sacred one in private.

But that had never been it at all. Or at least not all of it.

I might never know if it was the Sinsar Dubh’s presence inside me that kept me so conflicted about everything for so long and, once it was gone, I finally gained that long-sought clarity of being, or if it had been through the very process of standing my ground and defeating it that I’d achieved such clarity. But it didn’t matter. The end result was the same.

Some shadowy, self-destructive, confused place no longer existed inside me. I was of a single, clear mind. There were goals, and there were methods to attain them. There were my chosen responsibilities and those things I was willing to do to honor them. There were the things I was willing to live with and the things I wasn’t willing to live without. There was a quiet, deep abiding love of myself—flaws and all, and I had plenty—and the world around me, and it had plenty, too.

My eyes shimmered, and later Barrons would tell me they’d glowed with iridescent fire. It’s nice to meet you, too, Jericho.

I pulled his head down and kissed him.





SINSAR DUBH


My enemies underestimate me.

Encumbered by emotion, their faulty brains fail to apprehend the altered variables, particularly the new one introduced by MacKayla walking away from me.

WALKING AWAY FROM ME WILL NEVER BE PERMITTED! SHE IS MY HORSE TO BREAK AND ALWAYS WILL BE!

The force field erected by the stones was designed to hold my essence, doubly trapped: first by the covers of the spelled tome, second by the field. Or first by a body, second by the field. Without the primary barrier, I exceed the prison’s capacity to contain me.

Although it takes time to divine the method and is perilous—for an instant I nearly dissipate into a storm of black dust shaped like a cube—my will is equal to the task.

A small, dark cloud, I hover above the cocooned Unseelie princess.

So thoughtful of them to leave me a body. I would lose cohesion quickly in this form.

Again, the universe favors my supremacy, colludes with me to attain my desires. It recognizes the supremacy of my being.

The runes I plastered upon the dark Fae’s skin fall away at my command, and the princess stirs. When she rolls over, mouth slightly ajar, I aim myself at the aperture and drive myself in.

She goes rigid, screaming, as she resists. But she is puny and I am vast. I possess her quickly, saturating every atom.

I realize the moment I attach to her neural network, unlike MacKayla, who I will torture for all eternity, this Unseelie is incapable of holding me for long. My refusal to jump bodies yesterday was wise.

The only reason MacKayla was able to WALK AWAY FROM ME AND LEAVE ME was because she had a force field with which to winch us apart.

But the stones are here in the White Mansion, where time flows differently. And she is out there where I will soon be.

It would take a month or more, Earthtime, for anyone to retrieve them.

I require very little time to execute my new plan. The bulk of it will be lost making my exit from this place.

My new vessel jerks clumsily when I command it to hurry for the door. Weak, puny thing. But it will last long enough.

I hurry out onto black marble floors, turn left then right, seeking crimson, cursing the ever-changing White Mansion the bastard king fashioned for his concubine. Each wrong turn I take equates to days slipping away Earthtime. A month or more will have passed by the time I escape this maze.

MacKayla will be able to feel me coming once I exit the Silvers but she will believe me body-bound, giving me the advantage.

I will take back what is mine.

Then I will destroy this motherfucking world.





INVISIBLE




* * *





I suppose she must have begun thinking about how different her life would be without me.

She couldn’t travel, couldn’t really make friends or have company in, or even go out at night because what kind of mother would she be if she left her daughter locked in a cage, and didn’t come home?

I sometimes wonder if she met someone who told her things that made her unhappy with our life, because she seemed to change overnight.

She still sat with me in the evenings and did all those mom things but she rarely smiled anymore and she started to get lines around her mouth and eyes. Her lips pulled down much more often than up and I couldn’t reach her through the bars to push her cheeks into a smile.

I was six and a half years old when she fell in love.

She told me about him, how kind he was and how much he cared about her. She told me he was going to marry her. Us. That she would tell him all about me when the time was right.

He took her on trips every weekend, and the first night she left me alone, I cried every time I woke up. But when she came back she was like she used to be when I was little, before I ever freeze-framed, happy and excited, cooing to me and talking about plans for our future again.

Then one night, a week before my seventh birthday, she came home really late and soaking wet, and just walked right past my cage without even looking at me, went into her bedroom and closed the door.

Her expression was so terrible as I’d stared up, excited to see her, that I hadn’t said any of the interesting, funny things I’d planned all day to say.