Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series 5-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever

by Karen Marie Moning

  Good luck with that, I thought. “He will never give up the stones.”

  “Take them from him.”

  I laughed. “Not possible. You don’t steal from Barrons. It doesn’t work.”

  “If you find out where they are, I will help you obtain them. We will do this, just the two of us. Of course, the Keltar are also necessary to restrain it, but no others, MacKayla. When you and I have secured it for the queen, she will reward you richly. Anything you wish can be yours.” He paused a moment, then said delicately, “She could even restore to you things you have lost and grieve.”

  I stared out at the sea, trying not to be tempted by the carrot at the end of that stick: Alina. Rowena was insisting I work only with the sidhe-seers. Lor was demanding I work only with Barrons and his men. Now V’lane wanted me to ally myself with him and shut everyone else out.

  I trusted all of them about as far as I could throw them.

  “Since the day I arrived in Dublin, everyone has been trying to force me to choose sides. I won’t. I’m not going to choose any of you over the others. We’ll do this together or not at all, and when we do, I want the sidhe-seers to watch, so if anything ever goes wrong again in the future, we know how to stop it.”

  “Too many humans involved,” he said sharply.

  I shrugged. “Then bring some of your Seelie if it makes you feel better.”

  The balmy day suddenly cooled. He was deeply displeased. But I didn’t care. I felt that we finally had a solid plan, one that would work. We had the stones and the prophecy; we just needed Christian. I refused to worry about what we would do once the Book was secured, if the queen should be permitted to read it. I could tackle only one seemingly insurmountable obstacle at a time, and I had no idea how we were going to locate Christian in the Silvers. Too bad Barrons hadn’t branded him, too.

  I had one more question. It had been gnawing at me the entire time we’d been talking. I couldn’t help but feel there was something about myself I needed to know, a truth that would make clear the dreams I’d been having all my life. “V’lane, what did Cruce look like?”

  He lifted a shoulder and let it drop, then folded his arms behind his head and tipped his face to the sun. “The other Unseelie Princes.”

  “You said they kept getting better as the king made them. Was Cruce different in any way?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just something one of the sidhe-seers said,” I lied.

  “When do you plan to attempt to fulfill the terms of the prophecy?”

  “The moment we can get all the Keltar together and I locate it.”

  He looked at me. “Soon, then,” he murmured. “It will be very soon.”

  I nodded.

  “It must be as soon as possible. I fear for the queen.”

  “I asked you about Cruce,” I reminded.

  “So many questions about an insignificant prince who ceased to exist hundreds of thousands of years ago.”

  “And?” Was that petulance in his voice?

  “Were he not dead, I might feel … what is it you humans are so often driven by? Ah, I have it, jealousy.”

  “Humor me.”

  After a long moment, he gave another of those perfectly imitated human sighs. “According to our histories, Cruce was the most beautiful of all, although the world will never know it—a waste of perfection to never have laid eyes upon one such as he. The torque of his royal line was threaded with silver, and his visage was said to radiate pure gold. But I suspect the reason the king felt such kinship to him—before he permitted his love for a mortal to destroy all they could have been—was because Cruce was the only one of the king’s children to bear a paternal resemblance. Like the king himself, Cruce had majestic black wings.”

  25

  Shortly after midnight, I was pacing the alley behind Barrons Books and Baubles, arguing with myself and getting nowhere.

  Barrons still wasn’t back, which was driving me crazy. I planned to have it out with him the moment he showed up. Knock-down, drag-out, air all the dirty laundry between us. I wanted to know exactly how long I could anticipate him being gone if he got killed again. I was on constant edge, waiting, half afraid he might never come back. I wouldn’t be satisfied that he was really alive until I saw him with my own eyes.

  Every time I’d closed my eyes tonight, I slipped into my Cold Place dream. It had been waiting to ambush me the moment I’d relaxed. I’d flipped endless hourglasses of black sand; I’d scoured miles and miles of ice, with increasing urgency, for the beautiful woman; I’d repeatedly fled the winged prince we both feared.

  Why did I keep dreaming the damned dream?

  Ten minutes ago, when I’d woken from it for the fifth time, I’d been forced to accept that I simply wasn’t going to get any sleep without having it—and that was no sleep at all. The fear and anguish I felt in the dream were so draining that I kept waking up feeling even more exhausted than when I’d closed my eyes.

  I stopped pacing and stared at the brick wall.

  Now that I knew it was there, I could feel it—the hidden Tabh’r in the brick, the Silver Darroc had carefully camouflaged within the wall catty-corner to the bookstore.

  All I had to do was press into it, follow the brick tunnel to the room with the ten mirrors, and pass through the fourth one from the left to get back into the White Mansion. I’d have to hurry, because time passed differently inside the Silvers. I would just take a quick look around. See if there was anything I’d missed the first time.

  “Like maybe a portrait of myself hanging on the wall, arm in arm with the Unseelie King,” I muttered.

  I closed my eyes. There it was, out in the open. I’d voiced my fear. Now I had to deal with it. It seemed to be the only thing that explained all the loose ends that wouldn’t connect.

  Nana had called me Alina.

  Ryodan said Isla had only one child (which Rowena confirmed, unless she was lying) and she was dead, and there’d been no “later” for the woman I wanted to believe was my mother.

  Nobody knew who my parents were.

  Then there was my lifelong feeling of bipolarity, of things repressed just beneath the surface. Memories of another life? When I’d been walking around in the White Mansion with Darroc, it had all been so familiar. I’d recognized things. I’d been there before and not just in my dreams.

  Speaking of dreams—how could my slumbering mind conjure up a fourth prince that I’d never seen? How could I have known Cruce had wings?

  I could sense the Sinsar Dubh. It kept finding me, liked to play with me. Why? Because in an earlier incarnation—when it had been the Unseelie King, not a book of the banished knowledge—it had loved me? Did I sense it because I’d loved the earlier incarnation of it?

  I buried my hands in my hair and tugged, as if the pain might clarify my thoughts or perhaps fortify my will.

  See me, Barrons kept saying.

  And, more recently, If you can’t face the truth of your reality, you can’t control it.

  Ryodan had been right: I was a loose cannon, but not for the reason he thought.

  I didn’t know the truth of my reality. And until I did, I was a wild card, something that could flip. The question keeping me awake at night wasn’t whether or not sidhe-seers were an Unseelie caste. That was small compared to my problem. The question that kept me from sleeping was much more alarming.

  Impossible as it seemed, was I somehow the Unseelie King’s concubine? Reincarnated and brought back to life in a new body? Fated for her inhuman lover, destined to a tragic cycle of rebirth?

  And just what were Barrons and his eight? My ill-fated lover split into nine human vessels? That was a doozy of a thought. No wonder the concubine had found the king insatiable. How could one woman handle nine men?

  “What are you doing, Ms. Lane?” As if my thoughts had conjured him, Barrons’ voice slid out of the darkness behind me.

  I looked at him. I’d flipped on the exterior lights outside BB&B, powered by the
store’s immense generators, but the light was at his back and he was heavily shadowed. Still, I would have known it was him even if I were blind. I could feel him on the air; I could smell him.

  He was furious with me. I didn’t care. He was back. He was alive. My heart did a flip-flop. I thrilled to his presence. I would anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances. No matter what he was, what he’d done. Even if he was one-ninth of the Unseelie King who’d begun it all.

  “Something’s seriously wrong with me,” I said, half under my breath.

  “Just now figuring that out, are you?”

  I gave him a look. “Good to see you alive again.”

  “Good to be alive.”

  “Do you really mean that?” He’d made comments about death in the past, which now made sense to me. Apparently he would never experience it, and at times he’d seemed almost … envious.

  “Nice tan. You just can’t stay away from the Fae when I’m gone, can you? Did V’lane take you to the beach again? Did you get a sand burn when he fucked you?”

  “Are you the Unseelie King, Barrons? Is that what you and your eight are? Different facets of you, crammed into human form, while you search Dublin for your missing Book?”

  “Are you the concubine? The Book certainly seems enamored of you. Can’t stay away. Kills everyone else. Plays with you.”

  I blinked. He was always way ahead of me, and he didn’t even know about my dream of the winged prince or my déjà vu experience in the mansion. We’d been thinking the same things about each other. I’d had no idea he’d been wondering if I was the allegedly dead concubine.

  “There’s one way to find out. You keep telling me to see you, to face the truth. I’m ready.” I held out my hand.

  “If you think I’m letting you into my head again, you’re wrong.”

  “If you think you could stop me if I wanted to, you’re wrong.”

  “Aren’t you full of yourself?” he mocked.

  “I want you to come somewhere with me,” I said. Did Barrons know full well what he was and would just never admit to it? Was it possible the king could subdivide himself into human parts and forget who he was? Or had he been tricked into human form, his individual facets forced to drink from the cauldron, and now the most feared of the Unseelie walked the earth with no greater clue to what he was than his oblivious concubine?

  One way or another, I wanted answers. I was sure enough of the truth about myself to run the gauntlet. If I was wrong about him, he didn’t have much to lose, just the equivalent of a few days’ “nap.” And somehow I knew that wouldn’t be the case. I was right about this one. I had to be.

  He stared at me in silence.

  “C’mon, Barrons. What’s the worst that can happen? I lead you into some trap and you die for however long it is you go away? Not that I’m going to,” I added hastily.

  “It’s hardly pleasant, Ms. Lane. It’s also highly inconvenient.”

  Inconvenient. That’s what dying for me back on the cliff had been. An inconvenience. And I’d been ready to wipe out a world for him. “Fine. Do what you want. I’m going.”

  I turned and pushed into the wall.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re—get your ass out of—Ms. Lane! Fuck! Mac!”

  As I vanished into the wall, I felt his hand close on my coat, and I laughed. He’d called me Mac, and I wasn’t even dying.

  “Which mirror now, Ms. Lane?” He glanced around the white room, scanning the ten mirrors.

  “Fourth from the left. Jericho.” I was sick of him calling me Ms. Lane. I picked myself up off the white floor. Once again the Silver had spit me out with entirely too much enthusiasm, and I didn’t even have the stones on me. I didn’t have anything but the spear in my holster, a protein bar, two flashlights, and a bottle of Unseelie in my pockets.

  “You don’t have the right to call me Jericho.”

  “Why? Because we haven’t been intimate enough? I’ve had sex with you in every possible position, killed you, fed you my blood in the hopes that it would bring you back to life, crammed Unseelie into your stomach, and tried to rearrange your guts. I’d say that’s pretty personal. How much more intimate do we have to get for you to feel comfortable with me calling you Jericho? Jericho.”

  I expected him to pounce on the sex-in-every-possible-position comment, but he only said, “You fed me your—”

  I pushed into the mirror, cutting him off. Like the first one, it resisted me, then grabbed me and squirted me out on the other side.

  His voice preceded his arrival. “You bloody fool, do you never stop to consider the consequences of your actions?” He barreled out of the mirror behind me.

  “Of course I do,” I said coolly. “There’s always plenty of time to consider the consequences. After I’ve screwed up.”

  “Funny girl, aren’t you, Ms. Lane?”

  “Sure am. Jericho. It’s Mac. I’m Mac. No more fake formality between us. Get with the program or get the hell out of here.”

  His dark eyes flared. “Big talk. Ms. Lane. Try to enforce it.” Challenge burned in his gaze.

  I sauntered toward him. He watched me coldly and I was reminded of the other night, when I’d pretended to be coming on to him, because I was angry. He thought I was doing it again. I wasn’t. Being in the White Mansion with him was doing something strange to me. Unraveling all my inhibitions, as if these walls had no tolerance for lies, or within them there was no need.

  Then he was staring past me. “I don’t believe it. We’re in the White Mansion. You just casually lead me in here like you’re running errands to the drugstore. I’ve been looking for this bloody place forever.”

  “I thought you’d been everywhere.” He’d never been here? Or did he not remember being here, long ago, in another incarnation?

  He turned in a slow circle, absorbing the white marble floors, the high arched ceilings, the columns, the sparkling windows opening on a brilliant, frosted winter’s day. “I knew where it was supposed to be, but the White Mansion shows itself only when and to whom it chooses. This is incredible.” He walked to the window and stared out. Then he turned on me. “Have you found the libraries?”

  “What libraries?” I was having a hard time looking at him, mesmerized by the glittering winter day beyond his shoulder. How many times had I sat in that snowy garden, surrounded by dazzling ice sculptures and frozen fountains, waiting for him?

  Fire to his chill. Ice to her flame.

  I loved this wing. As I stared out the window, the concubine was suddenly there, but she was faint around the edges, a little misty, a partially realized memory.

  She sat on a stone bench, in a dress of blood-red and diamonds, through which I could see snow and iced branches. The light was strange, as if everything but her was painted in halftones.

  I jerked. The fourth Unseelie Prince, the winged War/Cruce, had just appeared. He was also semi-transparent, a residue from a time long past. At his wrist glinted a wide silver cuff, and around his neck was an amulet, very different from the one Darroc had worn.

  I watched with astonishment as the concubine rose and greeted him with a kiss on both marble-white cheeks. There was affection between them. Once, long ago, the beautiful woman in my dream hadn’t been afraid of him. What had changed? The raven-winged prince carried a silver tray, upon which sat a single teacup and an exquisite black rose. She laughed up at him, but her eyes were sad.

  Another of his potions to change me?

  War/Cruce murmured something I couldn’t catch.

  She accepted the cup. Perhaps I do not want his salvation. But she drank deeply, until the cup was empty.

  “The king kept all his notes and journals on his experiments in the White Mansion, to prevent those in his Dark Court from stealing his knowledge.” Barrons’ voice jarred me.

  I blinked, and the memory was gone.

  “You sure do know a lot about the king.” I was going to say more, but I suddenly felt as if a rubber band attached to my belly button had
contracted, yanking me toward the other end. I’d been too far away, gone too long.

  Without another word, I turned and ran down the corridor, away from him. Gone was all desire to fight with him. I was being summoned. Every fiber in my being was drawn, the same way it was the last time I was here.

  “Where are you going? Slow down!” he called behind me.

  I couldn’t have slowed if I’d wanted to, and I didn’t. I’d come here for a reason, and that reason was where I was being pulled. The black floors of the Unseelie King were calling me. I wanted to be in that boudoir again. I wanted to see him this time, to see the king’s face. Assuming he had one.

  I passed over rose marble, skidded onto bronze floors, dashed through turquoise corridors, and flew through halls of yellow, until I felt the sultry warmth of the crimson wings. I could feel Barrons behind me. He could have caught me if he’d wanted to. He was fast like Dani, like all his men. But he let me run, and he followed.

  Why? Because he suspected the same things I did? Because he wanted it out in the open? My heart was pounding with fear and anticipation to have it finally over, to know what I was, what he was.

  Barrons was suddenly beside me. I glanced over at him, and he gave me a look that was equal parts fury and lust. He was really going to have to get over that fury part. It was beginning to piss me off. I had just as much to be mad at him about.

  “I didn’t have sex with Darroc.” I was mad all over again, itching for physical contact. “Not that I should have to explain myself to you. It’s not like you ever explain yourself to me. But even if I did, even if I was the traitor you’re determined to believe I am, he’s dead, so according to the philosophy of Barrons, who cares? Here I am, with you again. Actions speak, right? You got the action you wanted. OOP detector back under control, tightly leashed. Lead me around by the collar, why don’t you? Isn’t that when you’re happiest? Ruff-ruff,” I mock-barked, seething.

  “You haven’t fucked me since you were Pri-ya. There’s an action for you. Says pretty much all there is to say.”