High Voltage (Fever #10)(20)
AOZ said derisively, “You’re Fae. You don’t feel and you don’t belong on our world.”
“This is our world,” I said coolly. “And as far as I’m concerned, neither of you belong here. And I don’t care if you were human once, Jayne. You’re not now.”
“Dani, I’ll take the sword to the queen,” Jayne said.
“For which I have only your word. No thanks. I’ll be keeping it. Or,” I fished, dying to see Mac again, “you could bring the queen to me and I’d consider handing it over.” Jayne was a mostly good man. With a fatal flaw. Well, two. One, he was a Fae prince now. Two, he’d not been able to resist taking my sword once before for the sake of the “common good.” Pretty much every phrase that begins with the word “common” instills unease in me. Common knowledge, common good, common welfare. Somehow, “common man” never seems to have much of a say in those “common” definitions. Politicians and kings make those decisions and it’s the “common” man who dies when kings go to war.
“It seems we have an impasse,” AOZ said with silky menace. “Two of us don’t require sleep. You do.” He folded his arms over his chest. “It’s only a matter of time and we’ve an infinity of it. Once you’ve wearied, one of us will take the sword. Or you may choose your successor.”
I glanced at Jayne and knew instantly he wasn’t willing to wait that long. He was already changing, no longer concealing his power, but allowing the facade he’d adopted in order to shield me drop away infinitesimal bit by bit, permitting me time to cave before he turned the full, mind-numbing beauty and horror of a Prince of the Court of Seasons on me.
I shivered. Fae princes are sexual beyond human tolerance. They can instill desire in us, amplify it, feed off it, and throw it back at us a thousand times more potent than it began. It’s too much for us. It chars a woman down to ash inside her own mind, leaving nothing but a willing slave.
I might have run Jayne through with the sword—if he hadn’t already begun letting his glamour fall. Now, if I were to lunge for him, he’d simply blast me with the full strength of it, and I’d be on the floor with no thought left of killing him in my smashed mind.
“You wouldn’t,” I said icily.
“I’m sorry, Dani, but I don’t dare let it fall into their hands. This isn’t personal.”
He’d said the same thing to me years ago when he left me lying in that trash-filled street. “Spell check,” I growled, “when you do something to a person, it’s personal. That’s the funny thing about us persons.” I laid down my mental grid and kicked up into the slipstream.
Nothing happened.
I sighed. Extreme emotion and extreme arousal can short out my sidhe-seer powers, and it always happens at the worst possible times. I’d been working on the extreme emotion flaw and had made progress with it. It wasn’t quite as easy to master the other fault: I had to get aroused to work on it and…well, that hadn’t happened in a while. I cast rapidly about for another option, finding only one. It was a long shot.
“Give it to me now,” AOZ commanded, “and I’ll kill him with it. The Faerie permit only slaves to live and demand worship. We aren’t and don’t.”
As Jayne’s glamour continued to fall by slow degrees—still allowing me time to hand it over willingly—I glanced down to where both of my hands were wrapped tightly around the hilt of my sword. I shuddered as his inhuman sexuality began nudging the edges of my mind, looking for a sweet spot, an easy way in. He was trying to do as little damage as possible. For the moment.
Shivering violently, teeth chattering, I ground out, “Y-You’re w-w-willing to sh-shatter my m-mind for it?” What do you think your queen will do to you? my eyes blazed. I felt tears slip from them as I met his gaze, and didn’t need a mirror to know I was weeping blood.
He said sadly, “Ah, Dani, she will most certainly kill me. But she will have the sword. I’m willing to die to protect our race and yours from these vermin.”
He’d said “our race,” and “yours.” There it was. I knew it. His allegiance was to the Fae, not us. I closed my eyes, grinding my teeth together against the cruel teeth of power now tearing aggressively into the edges of my mind. When I was younger, I experienced a Fae prince’s compulsion twice. And survived. I was older and wiser now.
I took my long shot, focused on the ice in my hand. I welcomed it, beckoned it to spread throughout my body, course through my veins with absolutely no idea what I was embracing. In a battle for your life, your sanity, your race, the weapon you have is the one you use.
I felt a sudden prick of pins and needles through my entire body, a buzzing deep in my flesh as if my limbs were waking up from a long time of being numb. My skin cooled and shivered on my bones, feeling strangely elastic and supple. Blood thunder crashed in my head, slamming against the confines of my skull, as whatever the Hunter had left beneath my skin responded.
And flexed.
And grew.
A wave of dizziness took me and I nearly stumbled as sudden stars exploded behind my eyes and I had a fleeting glimpse of a vast, nebula-drenched nightscape superimposed in the air in front of me. Then it was gone and the inside of my head felt calm and cool and silent as the deepest reaches of space.