High Voltage (Fever #10)(92)

I said slowly, wanting to bite back every word, “Because duration of grief seems as if it should be equivalent to the depth of love you felt for the person you lost.” I paused a moment, struggling to get the next words out. “And I wanted to come to you shortly after Dancer died.” I’d been ready long before he’d left. And I’d boxed it the moment I felt it. Who does that? Who moves on so quickly? I’d loved Dancer. He’d deserved better than that!



He went motionless, staring into my eyes. Softly, he said, “You crazy, beautiful, maddening woman, that’s because you trained yourself to live that way. And wisely so. It’s what kept you alive. It’s been your saving grace. You learned young the necessity of leaving the pain behind and embracing the next good thing. Few people ever achieve that clarity. Prolonged grief is self-mutilation; a blade you turn on yourself. It doesn’t bring them back and only keeps you trapped in misery. You were healing the way people should heal but they punish themselves instead. For what—being the one who lived? Those we love will die. And die. And die. Life goes on. You choose how: badly or well.”

I knew that. With my head. But my heart had felt guilt so enormous and crushing, I hadn’t known what to do with it. I’d been out of control from that moment on. Each time I’d passed Chester’s, telling myself I was just checking on it, it was all I could do not to stalk in that door and pick up where our last kiss had left off, when he’d kissed me like I was the many complicated things that I am, when he’d shown me how completely he understood me. I’d wanted to forget my pain but any way I looked at it that was equivalent to forgetting Dancer and I was the one who remembered the people who died, damn it. That was what I did. I noticed the invisible people. I knew what it felt like to be one. I used to think I’d die in my cage and no one would ever even know I’d once been there. I’d simply vanish, unknown, unmourned, forgotten. Sometimes, toward the end, I’d wondered if she’d been trying to starve me to death.

“I couldn’t forgive myself,” I said softly. “It was a betrayal of the love we’d shared. I refused to see you because I knew what I’d do and I couldn’t resolve the conflict. But I would have,” I added heatedly. “Within a few months at most. You could have texted me, checked to see how I was. But you never did. Not once,” I said bitterly. “Your turn. Where did you go? And why were you starved when you got back?”



He smiled faintly, mirthlessly. “I never went anywhere, Dani. I never left at all. I was right here in Dublin the entire time, beneath your feet, under the garage behind Barrons Books & Baubles.”

“What?” I exploded.

“You walked above me once, feeling lost. I tried to send you a thought but the pain was so intense by then, the hunger so consuming, I’m not certain it got through. It was either make Barrons imprison me in a spelled cage I couldn’t escape, where he’d once contained his son, or cut my brand off you, and risk you getting lost. I was never going to risk that. If you’d called me, Barrons would have released me. If you’d used IISS, it would have bypassed the spells holding me.”

I stared. He’d been locked in a cage for two years? Barrons’s son—what the hell? I knew nothing about a son! I filed that away for future questions. Right now all I could think about was Ryodan trapped like an animal, as he’d once been so long ago as a child. As I’d been. We both knew the hell of cages. I would never go back into any kind of prison again. Couldn’t imagine any reason to willingly commit myself to two years of isolation, locked up. Oh, God, the whole time I’d been so angry that Ryodan had left me alone, he’d been alone, too, suffering! He’d been starved because he hadn’t eaten for two years, shut away in the ground!

“I turned into the beast shortly after Barrons completed the final spell, and never changed back again. I knew it would happen when I went in. We can only go so long without eating. After that it was madness. I lost all sense of time. Marked moments by your most intense emotions. My beast raged every time you fucked. My beast wept every time you cried. With some small part of my brain, I kept thinking you’d call and it would end. I’d be free. We’d be free. Together.”



The horror of it flooded my heart. All that time, waiting for me to call. But I never did. “Why?” I cried, incredulous. “I don’t understand!”

Shadows rushed in his silvery, crimson-flecked gaze. I would have killed every man you slept with, Dani. I’d have left a trail of dead men behind you, guilty of nothing more than being chosen to share your bed. You’d have hated me for that. And I couldn’t control it.

“But you controlled it with Dancer,” I said.



Locked beneath Chester’s. I killed three of my men the final night you spent with him. That you loved him and were loved in return was enough to give me an edge over the beast. But lust, ah, Dani, that my beast can’t accept. I couldn’t fight it. I couldn’t win. I’m not human. Despite my appearance, despite my efforts, I’m beast first and it’s not always controllable. That’s what I was trying to tell you when I told you Lor wouldn’t have stayed to watch you dance. We know our weaknesses. If we can’t control them, we avoid them. We live by a rigid code. We didn’t always. Barrons developed and enforced it and one by one we all adhered. You have always been my greatest weakness. You had every right to take men to bed. I had no right to stop it. I stopped myself the only way I could.