“Used with the Song of Making, they can form an impenetrable cage,” he said. “I have never seen them myself, but our histories tell us they were employed on occasion by the first Seelie Queen for punishment and were one of the ingredients used in the walls of the Unseelie prison.”
I jerked. “How could I possibly know anything about runes used to build the Unseelie prison walls?”
“That is precisely what I would like to know.”
I sighed and rubbed my eyes. More questions. They were beginning to gnaw at my sanity.
“You are weary,” he said softly. “On this night for lovers, where would you sleep, MacKayla? In a silken hammock tied between palm trees, swaying over tropical surf, with a devoted Fae lover to attend your every desire? Would you share a Fae prince’s bower? Or would you climb the stairs in a ruined bookstore to sleep alone in the building of a man who has never trusted you and never will?”
Ouch.
He touched my jaw, slid a finger beneath my chin, and tipped my face back. “What a lovely woman you’ve become. You are no longer the child that arrived here months ago. You have been tempered. You display strength and determination, conviction and purpose. But are you wise? Or are you ruled by a heart that foolishly imprinted on the wrong man? Like most humans, are you incapable of change? Change requires an admission of error. Your race devotes itself to justifying its errors, not correcting them.”
“My heart hasn’t imprinted on anyone.”
“Good. Then it may yet be mine.” He lowered his head and kissed me.
I closed my eyes and melted into his body. It was a novel change to have someone believe in me, answer my questions when I asked them, just plain be nice to me, and there was no denying his erotic allure. When his Fae name eased gently into my mouth, teasing, offering, waiting for me to invite it to settle, I breathed into his kiss and he breathed back. Consonants I would never be able to pronounce, with vowels comprised of delicate arias, began to pierce the meat of my tongue, causing my entire body to flush with sensual pleasure.
I inhaled the scent of Fae prince and the intoxicating aroma of spiced roses into my lungs. Not a bad Valentine’s Day kiss, not bad at all.
He took his time giving me his name, letting the impossible syllables work tenderly, slowly, into me, until at last they settled and I exploded, shuddering against him. I stood in the alcove of BB&B, kissing him long after his name was mine again.
I was still glowing when I climbed the stairs and fell across my bed.
“Dude, what happened in here?”
I leaned my broom against a fallen bookcase and turned to see Dani framed in the open door of BB&B, cramming a protein bar in her mouth. Her eyes narrowed as she absorbed the destruction. Morning sunlight shafted into the alcove, framing her auburn curls with a halo of fire. Though the day was bright, nearly windless—a whopping sixty degrees after the recent snow—I couldn’t get warm, even with both gas fireplaces on.
“Close the door, will you?” I said. I’d dreamed of the Cold Place all night. Repeatedly, I’d been jarred to near-waking by some fright—a slip into a treacherous drift, a nameless terror stalking me—but each time the nightmare had sucked me back down.
I’d scaled icy cliffs, searching for the beautiful, sad woman, calling out, certain I would find her just over the next ridge. But at the crest of each summit, the only thing I’d found were dozens of hourglasses, with fine black sand rapidly trickling to the lower half. I’d raced from one to the next, frantically turning them over, but they’d kept emptying again in seconds.
Moments before I’d awakened for the final time, I realized the reason I couldn’t find her was because I’d waited too long. Time had been of the essence and I was too late. She was gone. Hope, like the fine grains of trickling black sand, had vanished, too.
I’d blown it.
I’d showered and dressed, failure weighing heavy on my bones. Desperate to make progress, to see accomplishment of any kind, I’d attacked the debris in the demolished bookstore with a broom and a vengeance. I’d been at it for hours, beating sawdust and splinters from Barrons’ rugs, sweeping broken glass into neat piles.
Dani swaggered in and closed the door. “V’lane said you wanted to see me. Don’t know what for, but seeing I ain’t too busy this morning, figured I’d give you a listen. But it better be different kinda stuff, ’cause last time I saw you, you weren’t talking like no friend of mine.” She preened. “He brought me chocolate. Dude—like I’m his Valentine or something. Me and him, we had a talk. Told him I’m almost fourteen and I’m gonna give him my virginity one day.”
I groaned. She’d actually told him that? Before I’d sent him for her, I’d made him swear to turn off the lethal eroticism. “We’re going to have a long discussion about your virginity and V’lane, as soon as things calm down.”
“News flash, Mac, they ain’t never calming. World is. What it is. This is life now.” Despite her casual swagger, her flippant tone, her eyes were cold. Wary.
Tough words. Tougher truth to swallow. I never would. “It’s not staying this way, Dani. We’re not going to let it.”
“What can we do ’bout it? World’s too big. ’Sides, ain’t so bad. ’Til you go and get all pissy. Thought you and me were, like, peas in the Mega pod and there ain’t no other veggies on the plate. Then you go playacting you’re humping the Lord Monster. Pissing me off.” She shot me a glare crammed full of the words she would never say: You abandoned me. Left me alone. I’m here, but this better be good. She pulled an apple out of her pocket and began munching it.
Last night, before V’lane left, I’d asked him to find her this morning and tell her Barrons had never been dead, that I’d been undercover, and I was sorry for the deception. But no apology-by-proxy could replace the real thing. She needed to hear it from me. And I needed to say it.
“I’m sorry, Dani. I hated hurting you.”
“Dude, get over yourself. Didn’t hurt me. It’d take way more than that. Figured you were PMS’ing. No big. Just wanted to hear you say you were a dick.”
“I was a dick. And it may not have bothered you, but it drove me crazy. Forgive me?”
She jerked and gave me an uncomfortable look. The precocious, gifted teen had been treated one of two ways at the abbey: ordered around or ignored. I doubted anyone had ever bothered to apologize to her for anything.
“Saying you’re a dick was ’nuff, already, jeez. Getting all touchy-feely like a grown-up. Gah!” She stepped around the wreck of the cashier’s counter and tried to flash me a grin, but it came out lopsided. “So, what gives? Mini-tornado blow through?”
“Lose the coat,” I evaded. I could hardly say, After I killed Barrons, he was so pissed off at me that he trashed the bookstore.
“Right. Forgot.”
She shrugged out of it, left it in a puddle of black leather on the floor. Beneath it, she had on skintight black low-ride jeans, a tight sweater, and black high-tops. Her green eyes sparkled.
“With the Book hitching rides, hiding on people, guess we’re all going to be dressing like skanks for a while, huh? Skintight or skin. Dude, everybody’s everything’s gonna be hanging out, and some o’ those fat chicks at the abbey are gonna gross my eyeballs right outta my head. Muffin tops and camel toes, gah!”
I bit my lip, trying not to laugh. That was Dani. Not an ounce of tact. Like the world around her, she was what she was, no holds barred. “Not everybody has superspeed metabolism,” I said drily. And what I wouldn’t give for it. I’d eat chocolate for breakfast, pastries for lunch, and pie for supper.
She polished off the apple and tossed it into a pile. “Looking forward to seeing Barrons, though,” she said enthusiastically. “You? Nah, guess you don’t care. You seen him naked for, what, like—months, din’t’cha?”
There were times I seriously wished she’d bar some of those holds. I was suddenly in a basement again, watching Barrons walk naked across the room, telling him he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.<
br />
I changed the subject hastily. “What’s going on at the abbey? I know you left, but what were things like before you did?”
Her face darkened. “Bad, Mac. Real bad. Why? You thinking of going back? Gotta tell you, don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Good idea or not, I had no choice. According to Nana, when the Sinsar Dubh had escaped the abbey twenty-some years ago, my mother was Haven Mistress. According to Ryodan, the entire Haven had been wiped out that night, with the exception of my mom.
Nana had called me Alina.
According to Ryodan, Alina was the only child Isla ever had. Not only would trying to interrogate Ryodan be an exercise in futility, given how tight-lipped he was, but he was currently dead and I had no idea for how long.
That left Nana or the abbey.
The abbey was closer, and the occupants weren’t nearly a century old and prone to nodding off in the middle of a sentence.
The original members of the Haven might all be dead, but some of my mom’s peers had to be alive still, even after the Book’s recent massacre. Others, besides Rowena, had known my mother. Others knew something—if only rumors—about what happened that night.
And there were those libraries I needed to get into. The ward I’d not been able to pass, the one that had given even V’lane fits. Speaking of which, I’d forgotten to ask him about what had happened to him that day when I’d summoned him to the abbey. I made a mental note to follow up.
I was also toying with the idea of confronting Rowena and trying to force truth from her. I wondered if the power of mental coercion Darroc believed the old woman possessed was a match for the power I’d recently discovered in myself. One of the things holding me back from testing it was that I knew if I did, I’d not only be burning a bridge, I’d be torching the ground I stood on with all sidhe-seers. Whether or not they agreed with Rowena’s decisions, the majority of the sidhe-seers were intensely loyal to her. Another thing holding me back was that I wasn’t sure where that power came from and was reluctant to betray anything the Grand Mistress might use against me. Besides, what if all the runes I had were parasites of some kind that could inflict further damage on our world?
Still, there was another weapon at my disposal I could try. I’d become proficient at Voice and could easily explain it away as a Druid art Barrons had taught me.
“I need answers, Dani. You with me?”
“Ro’ll blow a gasket if she catches us,” she warned. Her eyes sparkled, and she was beginning to blur with excitement.
I smiled. I loved this kid. We were okay with each other again. One more pain in my heart was gone. “Oh, she’s definitely going to catch us. I intend to have a few words with that old woman.” If things went south, I’d keep my power in check and let Dani whiz us out, or I’d summon V’lane. “Want to come along?”
“You’re kidding, right? Wouldn’t miss this gig for the world!”
22
Even with Dani whizzing us in at superspeed, they found us in the south wing in less than three minutes.
Ro must have laid new wards, to sense us and tip her off if we entered the abbey. I wondered how she did it, if it was like witchcraft and required a pinch of hair, blood, or nail. I could too easily see the old woman standing over a bubbling cauldron, dropping items in, stirring away, cackling with delight.
However she’d accomplished it, a group of sidhe-seers led by Kat confronted us at the intersection of two corridors before we were even halfway to the Forbidden Library I’d broken into the last time I was here. I’d left a group searching it while I tried to get past a holographic guardian down yet another seemingly “dead-end” hall in the abbey.
Like us, they wore snug clothes no Book could hide under. I imagined that, between the Shades and the Sinsar Dubh’s visit, things were pretty tense at the abbey.
“What’s in the bag?” Kat demanded.
I opened the translucent plastic grocery bag I’d brought and showed her there was no Book inside it. Once they were assured I wasn’t carrying concealed, they got right to the point.
“The Grand Mistress said you were dead, she did,” Jo said.
“Then she said you weren’t, but we were to be thinking of you as dead because you’d taken the Lord Master’s side, just like Alina,” accused Clare.
“But you aren’t Alina’s sister at all, are you, now?” Mary demanded.
“After we visited Nana O’Reilly,” Kat said, “I spoke with Rowena, and she confirmed what Nana told us about the Haven Mistress being an O’Connor. But she said Isla died a few nights after the Book escaped, and it was believed Alina died as well, although the girl’s body was never found. Regardless, Alina was her only child. So, Mac, who are you?”
Dozens of sidhe-seers stared at me, waiting for my answer.
“She don’t hafta answer to you,” Dani said belligerently. “Buncha sheep can’t even see what’s in fronta your own eyes.”
“Sure we can. We see a sidhe-seer that supposedly doesn’t exist. Worries us some, as it should,” Kat said. “Then there’s you, so determined to defend her. Why would you be doing that?”
Dani compressed her lips into a thin line and folded her skinny arms over her chest. She tapped a foot and stared up at the ceiling. “Just saying, things ain’t always bad just ’cause you don’t understand ’em or ain’t like ’em. That’s like thinking anybody who’s smarter or faster is dangerous just ’cause they got more brains or quicker feet. Ain’t fair. Peeps can’t help how they’re born.”
“We’re standing here, waiting to understand.” Kat turned her level gray gaze on me. “Help us, Mac.”
“Is it true?” I said, point-blank. “Is emotional telepathy your sidhe-seer gift?”
Suddenly self-conscious, Kat tucked her shirt in and smoothed her hair. “Where did you hear that?”
I withdrew Darroc’s notes from the grocery bag, stepped forward, and offered them to her, but she was going to have to meet me halfway to take them.
I hadn’t brought all of what I’d crammed into my pack, just enough for a gesture of good faith. I didn’t give a rat’s ass what Rowena thought of me, but I wanted in with the sidhe-seers. Part of me hated this abbey, where Rowena tightly controlled the sidhe-seers’ power yet had failed to control the greatest responsibility she’d had. Part of me still wanted to belong. My bipolar was showing again.
“I found these when I was undercover,” I stressed the word, “with Darroc. I searched his penthouse. He had notes on everything, including Unseelie I’ve never heard of or seen. I thought you might want to add them to your libraries. They’ll be useful when you encounter new castes. I don’t know how he got the scoop on what happens inside these walls, but he must have had someone on the inside. Perhaps he still has.” Dani had told me someone had sabotaged the wards outside my cell when I was Pri-ya. “You might find it interesting that he says Rowena’s gift is mental coercion,” I said pointedly.
“How do we know these papers aren’t some load of malarkey you’ve been making up yourself?” Mary demanded.
“You decide. I’m through defending myself.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” Kat said. “Who are you, Mac?”
I met her serene gray gaze. Kat was the only one that I trusted to think things through and make a wise decision. The slender brunette was tougher than she looked, levelheaded, calm in times of stress, and I hoped one day she would replace Rowena as Grand Mistress of the abbey. The position didn’t require the most powerful sidhe-seer, like the Haven did, but the wisest, a woman with long-term goals and vision. Kat exuded quiet capability, an almost complete lack of ego, a quick mind, and a solid heart. She had my vote all the way.
If she was indeed emotionally telepathic, she would sense my sincerity when I told her as much of the truth as I knew myself.
“I don’t know who I am, Kat. I really did believe I was Alina’s sister. I’m still not convinced I’m not. Nana said I looked like Isla. Apparently enough that I looked the way s
he expected Alina to appear grown up. However, like you, I’ve heard that Isla didn’t have a second child. If you think that upsets you, imagine what it does to me.” I gave her a bitter smile. “First I find out I’m adopted, then I find out I don’t exist. But here’s a shocker for you, Kat: According to Darroc’s notes, he knew the origin of the sidhe-seers. Supposedly—”
Three shrill blasts of a whistle split the air, and sidhe-seers snapped to attention.
“Enough!” Rowena commanded, as she sailed up behind them, dressed in a smart, fitted suit of royal blue, her long white hair braided in a regal crown around her head. There were pearls at her ears and throat and tiny seed pearls on the chain that draped from her glasses. “That will be all! Restrain the traitor and bring her with me. And Danielle Megan O’Malley, if you think for one bloody moment to whisk her away, think twice. Be very, very careful, Danielle.” Turning to Kat, she said, “I gave an order. Obey it now!”
Kat looked at Rowena. “Does she speak the truth? Is your gift mental coercion?”
Rowena’s brows drew together over her fine, pointed nose. Blue eyes blazed. “You would believe her lies about the claims of an ex-Fae over what I have told you? Och, and I thought you wise, Kat. Perhaps the wisest of all my daughters. You have never failed me. Do not disappoint me now.”
“My gift is emotional telepathy,” Kat said. “He was right about that.”
“The best liar knows to salt his deception with an occasional truth, to lend the flavor of credibility. I have not coerced my daughters. I never will.”
“I say it’s time for truth all around, Grand Mistress,” Jo said. “There are only three hundred fifty-eight of us left. We weary of losing our sisters.”
“We’ve lost more than our sisters,” Mary said. “We’re losing hope.”
“I agree,” said Clare. “Yes,” murmured Josie and the rest.
Kat nodded. “Tell us what Darroc believed about the origin of our order, Mac.”
Rowena glared down her nose at me. “Don’t you dare!”
Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series 5-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever Page 141