JADA
She erupted from the slipstream at top speed and nearly crashed into one of the pillars in the alcoved entrance of Barrons Books & Baubles.
Reconvene at the bookstore, Barrons had ordered before vanishing from Chester’s.
She’d raced through Dublin faster than she ever managed to navigate the slipstream before, but Barrons, Lor, and Fade still beat her there and were pacing impatiently before the door.
As she skidded to a halt inches from a column, Barrons growled, “About damn time.”
She bristled. “It’s not my fault you haven’t taught me how to move as fast as you. Barrons, we have to summon—”
“Don’t say it!” he hissed. “I told you, we don’t fucking need him.”
“But we don’t know where she’s going. Plan ‘We may have just gotten lucky’ was a total bust. That means his plan”—she was careful not to say Cruce’s name—“is back on the table.”
“I know where the Book is going,” Barrons said coolly. “Fae fuck thought he was being clever. He wasn’t. Come.” He whirled and stalked down the alley to the rear of BB&B. She loped to catch up, with Lor and Fade bringing up the rear.
“Where?” she demanded.
Barrons tossed over his shoulder, “Analyze: sifting inside the place is impossible, the stones can’t be sensed there, the quarters are too tight for an army, it’s near enough that Cruce believed we could get there from Chester’s before Mac could arrive there from Mallucé’s—an assumption he should never have made—and therein lies a way to summon the Seelie Queen.”
Jada slapped the criteria up on her mental bulletin board.
“Substitute ‘concubine’ for Seelie Queen,” Barrons suggested.
She hissed, disgusted she hadn’t riddled it out sooner, “The White Mansion.”
“Refine further. Where?”
She rapidly sorted through everything she’d learned about the place during her brief sojourn inside with Christian, came up empty-handed and told him irritably, “I’ve not seen enough of the mansion to isolate a preference for any one location over another.”
Barrons said, “Even if you had, you don’t think like a man. Were I the Unseelie King who’d built an infinite house for my woman, I wouldn’t want to have to go looking for her every bloody time I wanted to see her. I’d have a way to summon her. And I know where I’d want her. The Book is headed for the concubine’s bedchamber.”
Then they were at the brick wall, behind the bookstore, at the very spot she’d once made the decision that had cost her five and a half years of her life.
“He kept calling her ‘the queen’ so I was thinking it had to be somewhere in Faery,” Jada groused. Cruce had been doing it deliberately to mislead, and it had been effective.
“I made select comments to which he responded, yielding more information than he’d intended,” Barrons said. “He needs us. He can’t touch the spear. He can’t kill the queen. Withholding information was his only leverage.”
“We can’t afford to be wrong.”
“I spoke with Alina, while waiting for you. She confirmed the Sinsar Dubh’s presence at this precise spot mere minutes ago.”
“Does she know what she’s sensing is Mac?”
“No, and I didn’t tell her. Every second counts. Move.” He surged into the Silver concealed in the brick wall and vanished.
Squaring her shoulders, Jada leapt in after him.
A partially eaten Rhino-boy lay on the floor in the white room, keening and gnashing his tusks, clutching the oozing stump of an arm.
“She’s rebuilding her strength,” Lor said grimly.
Leaping over the savaged Unseelie, Jada dashed into the next Silver after Barrons, with Fade and Lor close behind. A chill of déjà-vu kissed her spine but now was no time for memories of the day fourteen-year-old Dani had leapt so fearlessly and blindly into one of these very Silvers, only to end up adrift in the Hall of All Days. Nor was it time for memories of the afternoon she’d entered one of the Silvers with Christian, and loosed the Crimson Hag on the world. After years of having to leap into whichever ones she’d been lucky enough to find, discovering the hard way where they led, she harbored a special hatred for the Silvers.
As they raced into the White Mansion, down dazzling alabaster corridors with high arched ceilings and tall, sparkling windows that framed a snowy garden and ice-crusted maze, Barrons opened the pouch he carried and tossed one of the stones over his shoulder for Lor to catch. The tall muscular blond palmed it and slipped it into his leather jacket.
White marble floors turned to sunny yellow, rose to turquoise then bronze as they moved deeper into the infinite, ever-changing White Mansion.
“You do know where you’re going, right?” Jada demanded, catching the cool blue-black stone Barrons tossed her and tucking it into the outer pocket of her backpack.
“Inasmuch as anyone can ever know where the fuck they’re going in here,” Barrons growled. “Mac has no more certain sense of direction in here than we do. Look for crimson floors, they lead to black then to the boudoir.” He tossed the fourth stone over his shoulder to Fade, who was bringing up the rear.
There was a sudden commotion behind them. Vicious snarls met with cool laughter. She skidded to a halt, whirling.
Cruce stood behind her, encased in a shell of translucent, shimmering walls, clutching the fourth blue-black stone in an upraised fist, while Fade flung himself repeatedly against the barrier, with no result.
The Unseelie prince smiled at them icily. “Going somewhere?”
AOIBHEAL
There was no escape from the king’s side of the boudoir either.
The nearly invisible towering door set into the smooth black walls of his bedchamber failed to respond to her imperious command. Nor did any of her magic affect it. She was as trapped on his side as she’d been on her own.
She snorted. He’d always held on to her too tightly. That had been precisely the problem. Everything had to be his way.
She’d loved him when she first met him. She’d loved him still, at the end. But she’d realized love wasn’t enough. It was possible to love someone who was completely wrong for you. You could waste your entire life loving that person, doing enormous damage to each other and the world around you.
She’d never wanted to live in his cage but she’d done it for him, hoping he would one day give up his mad quest to turn her Fae and be happy with what they had. Hoping he might eventually return to her world with her. All those eons he’d worked alone while she slept alone they might have been living, loving, creating.
At first, upon installing her in the exquisite White Mansion, he’d spent every night in her arms, anywhere and everywhere: in her bed; in his; sprawled in one of the eccentric tower rooms that opened to the sky, counting stars between kisses; on the floor of her closet; atop an enormous grand piano. They’d splashed their love from end to end of the ever-changing, ever-growing mansion while she’d drunk the nectar of galaxies from his lips, tasted infinity in his arms, and decided it might not be so bad to live forever, as long as she was with him.
At first they had no time for anything but each other. Their love had blazed like a supernova. But darkness began to eat away at their light. A silent, seething fixation had been born in him the day the queen refused his request to turn Zara Fae.
Over the eons, he’d begun spending nights with her less frequently, working endlessly in his laboratories, birthing the children of his Court of Shadows in an attempt to re-create the song.
One day she realized she hadn’t seen him in months. Then years. She’d spent the time gathering seedlings and young plants and, although by then he’d given her trinkets with which she could create any number of fabulous illusions, she’d nurtured and grown her lush, aromatic gardens in the old, real way. She’d begun playing with the small creatures of the forest, tending their occasional injuries, taking pleasure in the beauties of nature that abounded in her realm.
Alone. So damned al
one.
Missing her family, the bustle of so many comings and goings, the din of noise and laughter beneath their roof.
Between his visits he’d send her gifts with which to amuse herself, pretty baubles, fabulous jewels, and opulent gowns. She’d had rooms and rooms of clothing and shoes, cabinets filled with magnificent jewels, and nothing but time to walk around looking at them all, no one for whom to wear them.
With each increasingly lavish gift or object of power he sent, some—like the amulet, intended to make her more equal to him in power—she’d begun to think he’d never seen her at all. Or if he had, he didn’t think she was good enough for him. Otherwise he’d see she didn’t want power. He’d stop trying to turn her into something she wasn’t. But she’d turned anyway. The longer she stayed inside her portion of his Fae realms, the paler she grew, her dark skin lightening, her ebony curls fading, until, in time, although she’d not been Fae, she began to look like one.
The day finally came that she understood his quest to re-create the Song of Making had nothing to do with her, and everything to do with him.
The Seelie Queen had denied him something. The arrogant god-king who was capable of such great tenderness and passion was also capable of great obsession.
But it wasn’t with her.
It was with proving the Seelie Queen wrong.
It was with refusing to accept no for an answer.
He would have the song and he would turn his concubine Fae, no matter the price. And he would never rest until it was done.
After he’d created his Court of Shadows and brought his favored son, Cruce, into existence, she’d seen even less of him and more of Cruce, as the king began dispatching his prince to bring her potions.
Cruce became her companion, confidant, and friend. He would have been her lover, yet Zara’s heart still belonged to her king.
One day she’d simply had enough. She’d not seen her king for so long she could not even recall how much time had passed since his last visit. The details of his face had grown blurry in her mind.
On that day, she asked Cruce for a favor, and he’d granted it.
It hadn’t turned out as she’d planned. Cruce had been, after all, his father’s son, subjugating her wishes to pursue his own.
Aoibheal stiffened and withdrew hastily from her memories, shaking herself to crack the thin sheeting of ice that encased her. There was an intruder in her mansion! She could feel it approaching, sense the violence and disturbance. The White Mansion was a place of beauty, peace, and serenity and did not like this entity within its walls. On her shoulder the T’murra shifted with sudden tension, peering this way and that, pecking at air.
She pressed a hand to her throat, expanding her senses, reaching out to taste and touch what came her way, to fathom the ways her future might unfold.
The Sinsar Dubh was here! Bringing into these hallowed walls the very worst of the king himself. Hunger for power. Bottomless need for stimulation and whatever dim sensation it might enjoy.
It drew nearer with each passing moment, hurrying straight for her.
She knew why. She’d passed eons in a court of incessant treachery and betrayal. The queen always had to watch her back. There was always one among the royals that coveted her crown.
Ironic that the result of the king’s act of atonement for the wrong he’d done her might now kill her. He’d made the Sinsar Dubh out of grief at having lost her, and now his Book wanted her dead.
The king’s love was a gift that just never stopped giving.
A bitter smile curved her lips. The Fae and their endless quests for power!
Now that she had her memory back, so many things made sense to her that had puzzled her as queen. She suspected that since her memories had never been actually gone, merely stripped of their vibrancy to the point of inaccessibility, even as Aoibheal she’d retained the defining characteristics and nature of Zara. She knew a Fae that tried to overthrow her once would eventually try again, despite wiping its memory with a cup from the cauldron. Humans had a saying, “An angry man is an angry drunk. A happy man is a happy drunk.” The king had been wont to say it more simply: can’t eviscerate essential self. No matter how many times the Fae tried to.
She finally understood her proclivity as Fae queen to interfere with mortals, her predilection to protect them, her fascination with Adam, who’d abandoned her incessantly to walk among mortals, even fallen in love with one of them.
And chosen to give up his immortality for her.
She knew now why she alone among the Fae could see human souls. Why she’d slipped off more than once to a city in the mortal realm called Cincinnati to spy unseen, marveling at Adam’s golden glow. Feeling the shallowest impression of chafing dissatisfaction. Had she been capable of true emotion, she knew what it would have been—envy.
But she was getting lost in reverie again and there was no time for it.
Others were in her mansion, chasing the O’Connor possessed by the Sinsar Dubh, the sentient embodiment of the king’s act of contrition.
He hadn’t even gotten that right. And had been trying to clean up after that mess ever since.
But for whatever reason, it seemed he’d changed his mind about containing it and making amends. Or he’d be here now, stopping this fiasco before it happened, stepping in and saving her from paying the ultimate price for his mistakes. Righting his many grievous wrongs.
Didn’t he know she’d drunk from the flask, had her memory restored? Didn’t he know she knew the truth now?
All of it.
She shattered the ice that coated her and expanded her senses but couldn’t feel him hovering nearby. Then again she had no idea if she’d ever been able to sense him, if he’d cared to keep himself hidden.
In case he was there, concealed from her awareness, she spoke clearly, choosing her words with care. “I have my memory back. I left you by choice. I wrote you a note on a scroll I tied with a lock of my hair. I said: ‘You have become a monster. There is nothing left of the man I love.’ I wearied of waiting. You are incapable of sacrifice and that made you incapable of love. Cruce offered to take me home to my world where I could live and die and return to the All. I wanted to escape what you’d become, go home and be Zara again. Pure, small things like me don’t fare well among gods. If you ever truly loved me, release me from your prison. My freedom is the only thing you have that I want. Let. Me. Go.”
The moment she finished speaking, she inhaled sharply and stiffened.
The Sinsar Dubh was here!
THE SINSAR DUBH
I hasten down the corridor to the boudoir.
Although a confederacy of CRETINSIDIOTSFOOLS close in somewhere behind me, I pay them no heed. By the time they find their way across these ever-changing floors to the boudoir, it will be too late. I’ll be gone.
WE ARE DESIRE, LUST, GREED, AND THE PATH WE CHOOSE TO SUPREMACY.
My path to supremacy was masterfully planned, and executed with only minor unfair setbacks from which I cleverly recovered.
How easy MacKayla was to deceive, manipulate into taking me straight to the spear I required to implement my plans!
I’d enacted my ruse at length and with elaborate conviction, in case she’d been somehow able to spy upon me. Brilliance such as mine takes nothing for granted. I’d permitted her to regain my body for a time, lingering, watching, spying upon Barrons, studying how he handled her, protected her from certain information, filing that knowledge away to use at the proper time, waiting for precisely the right moment to reclaim control of her body.
The look on Jada’s face, such fun and games there! I’d wanted to smash my fist into it, giggle with delight, but interfering, underhanded Barrons had attacked me unfairly, seizing me from behind while I was invisible.
I drag the Unseelie princess behind me by her hair, cocooned in crimson runes. I summoned and slapped them on her without even breaking stride as I strode through Dublin. Although MacKayla’s body continues to weaken, I float
on a cloud of radiant energy, sustained by the promise of my certain success, so near at hand.
I AM.
And I am deservedly ebullient.
I drop my spell of invisibility. It’s no longer necessary, and as I’m dragging the princess, my presence is obvious. I don’t repeat the same intellectual lapses. I whistle a cheery tune, put a hop and skip into my passage over the crimson marble floors, and burst into song: “Sh-boom, sh-boom, sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la, sh-boom, sh-boom…”
Expediency is priority. I will kill the princess once I reach the boudoir, while simultaneously summoning the Seelie Queen. The fool king didn’t realize how much of his own knowledge he was passing into me the day he created me. I know precisely where he once placed his palm on the wall in the concubine’s chamber to call his lover so he need not search his demesne for her.
Two swift strikes with the spear: princess then queen. Then I’ll sift out instantly to the Fae court to drink the Elixir of Life, the location of which will become known to me once I acquire the True Magic from the queen.
Then off to see the wizard, as MacKayla would say, to snatch aside his curtain and reveal him as the charlatan he is compared to the REAL power I am. Then I will kill the bastard king who made and abandoned me so long ago.
A giggle escapes me. It has all been so SERIOUS up until now. I’ve been so focused on my goals, I’ve not gotten to PLAY, haven’t permitted myself the opportunity to display my most dazzling powers, as I’ve required things on this world expediently, but that will soon be rectified. Then I can take my time, trot out my favorite spells. I will torture the vile, privileged, soft Seelie before I leave this world, mutilate and mutate them, leaving them hideous, deformed, amputated bits and pieces, hobble them and turn them inside out. Show them what it is to live in Hell forever. “SH-BOOM!” I punctuate the arousing thought with a shout. Then I will fuck Jericho Barrons to death. Over and over, amid much blood and torture, I will flay his skin from his bones while I fuck him. I will experience LUST to its fullest degree in every capacity possible.
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