Feversong (Fever #9)(99)
Still, we were only buying time. According to Jada, now that the ergospheres were manifesting, the holes would have an increasingly destabilizing effect on the environment and grow even faster.
Although I’d told Cruce that my race could be moved to another world and survive, I felt an undeniable (and rather confusing to a sidhe-seer) obligation to save the Tuatha De Danann from extinction. I wondered why they would cease to exist if the Earth did, then recalled the queen saying it was because she’d bound the seat of their power to our planet.
A lightbulb went off in my head and I drew up short in the middle of the street, stunned.
If the power was in our planet, then it seemed logical it was this planet I had to tap into in order to make the True Magic work. Was that the missing ingredient?
I closed my eyes, sought the True Magic, and envisioned it shooting tendrils from my feet into the soil, extending taproots, feathering out and expanding.
Oh, God, I could feel the world! I was part of it and it was warm and breathing, bubbling and shifting. Alive!
And so very sick.
Tears stung the backs of my eyes. Earth was dying. This was what the queen had always been able to feel—the fabric of everything, oceans and beaches, mountains and deserts, where it met in harmony, where it was torn and wounded.
It was overwhelming, and tears rolled down my cheeks from the sheer beauty and sorrow of it.
Her assessment had been accurate. We were nearly out of time. The spheres were more than mere holes in the fabric of our world. They were a cancerous presence, changing matter even in areas they didn’t touch, corroding, eroding the very essence of the weft and weave of reality with their terrible song.
I was right. The holes emanated a Song of Unmaking, the same hellish music I’d heard during my brief stay at Chester’s, trickling up through the ventilation shafts from the black hole deep below, invading my mind even as I’d slept.
Chills suffused me and for a moment I felt the terrible song touch me, threatening, as Alina had said, to tear me apart at the seams. I thrust it away, willed a barrier between us. My newfound ability to feel this world was dangerous. I was connected to all, even the poisoned parts. I had to protect myself.
I pictured the abbey, the fountain on the front lawn.
When I opened my eyes, I was there, the wind carrying a soft fall of fountain spray into my face.
It was that easy. I finally understood why the Fae were able to influence the climate and plant life. They were each connected to the planet to varying degrees, drawing power from its core, according to the abilities of their caste.
I could sift. I could freaking sift! That was one power I was going to miss when I transferred the True Magic to Cruce.
At the front entrance half a dozen sidhe-seers were clustered around Enyo, talking and taking a brief break.
As I approached, Enyo glanced up and stopped speaking mid-sentence. Her brows drew together in a scowl, her gaze moving from my eyes to my hair and back to my eyes again, and her mouth shaping a silent, What the fuck?
The other sidhe-seers greeted me with equally shocked expressions, their eyes the mirror that told me my transformation was becoming more apparent with each passing hour. I said quickly, “The Faery queen transferred her magic to me so we might save this world. Clear the workers out of the abbey. I think I can rebuild it.”
Enyo’s brows reversed their path and climbed her forehead. “Are you bloody kidding me? Why would the Fae queen—”
I cut her off: “Because she learned who she’d once been and no longer wanted to lead. Enyo, it’s a complicated story and we don’t have time for it. The planet is dying faster than we thought. Get the workers out of the ruins. I need practice and you need the abbey back.”
She studied me a long moment, then shrugged and began to bark orders.
The moment the rubble was unoccupied—I had concerns about potentially putting a wall where a person stood—I tapped into the immense bubbling power beneath my feet. This time I kept my eyes open. Cruce never closed his when he was using Fae magic. I wed the power within me to the soil, sinking deeper than before, and gasped.
The earth possessed some kind of awareness. Gaea in all her totality was a living thing with some kind of vast, incomprehensible consciousness. It knew what had once sat here—at every point in time. I might just as easily have urged it to restore the church that had once stood on these grounds, or gone back further and commanded it to let the ancient shian rise.
So that was why the Fae seat of power was embedded in the occupied planet. Worlds had long memories. And time wasn’t at all the same thing to a planet as it was to a human.
Restore the abbey, I invited the powerful twining of forces.
As I watched the sprawling fortress attain insubstantial shape before my eyes, I was struck by a sudden thought: Just how powerful was I now?
Might I restore Jo, too?
The translucent shape of the abbey vanished.
Dimly, I heard dismayed cries from sidhe-seers and knew they, too, had seen it beginning to form then disappear.
I smiled sadly. Of course, I couldn’t. Or, even if I could, I’d be no better than the Sinsar Dubh or the Unseelie King himself. I had no doubt I could use the power for personal reasons, like, say, sifting to a sunny beach to enjoy a few hours in the sun. But I had to work with Nature, not against it. Death wasn’t mine to undo. It made sense to me on a soul level. Reminding me, with a twinge of unease, how wrong it seemed that I’d gotten Alina back.