But you were different. You hungered, you slept, you dreamed, but you were pure. You knew no right or wrong; you were empty. You did not resist me. You were open. I filled you. I nestled down inside you, replicated myself and left it there. You are my child. You suckled at my breast, MacKayla. I was your mother’s milk; I gave you your defenses against the world. On that day, before your body could sustain itself separately, before you ever had the chance to do something so stupid and small as become human, I claimed you. I gave birth to you. Not Isla.
“You’re lying. I’m the king,” I said flatly.
You seek truth? Can you face it?
I said nothing.
The truth is within you. It always has been. It is there in the one place you refuse to go.
I narrowed my eyes. Perhaps I’d been congratulating myself on subduing my inner monster too soon. Don’t talk to it, beautiful girl, the dreamy-eyed guy had said, long ago in Chester’s, long before I’d met the fear dorcha. Never talk to it. I wondered if he’d meant the Sinsar Dubh then. Too late. I was waist-deep in quicksand. Struggling would only hasten my descent.
You have only ever taken what I offered, what I floated to the surface. Dive in, MacKayla. Graze the bottom of your lake. You will find me down there, shining in all my glory. Lift my lid. Know the truth of your existence. If I am evil, we are evil. If I should be “put down,” so must you. There is no sentence you can cry upon me that you must not carry out upon yourself. There is no point in fighting me. You are me. Not a king. Me. Always have been. Always will be. You can’t eviscerate me. I am your soul.
“Those runes I found are my sidhe-seer gifts.”
From the walls of the Unseelie prison? The universe abhors a boring liar. Flamboyance, MacKayla. Get some if you wish to spend an eternity with me.
“It’s because I’m the king. The good part of him. I have his memories to prove it.”
We possess memories from a portion of his existence. It was impossible for him to dump his knowledge without imbuing my pages with the essence of the being that created them. I was sentient from the moment he finished scribing my pages. Do you recall anything that happened before the day the queen denied the king his concubine’s immortality?
I turned inward, searching.
There was nothing. A white expanse of emptiness. It was as if life began that day.
It did. It was the day he wrote his first spell of creation, performed the first of his experiments. We know his life from that day on. We know nothing of his existence before then. And we know little of his life since—only when I tracked and glimpsed him. You are not the king. You are my child, MacKayla. I am mother, father, lover, all. It is time to come home.
Was it possible that it was telling me the truth? I wasn’t the concubine, wasn’t the king? I was just a human who’d been touched by evil before birth?
More than touched. As the king poured himself into me, I am in you. Your body grew around me like a tree absorbs a nail and now waits to be reunited. You miss me. You are hollow without me. Haven’t you always known it? Felt empty, hungry for more? If I am evil, so are you. That, my sweet MacKayla, is your monster within. Or not.
“If you made me, where have you been for the past twenty-three years?”
Waiting for the mewling infant to grow strong before we reunited.
“You needed me to flip. That’s why you tried to kill the people I loved.”
Pain distills. The clarifying emotion.
“You screwed up. You came too soon. I can deal with pain, and I haven’t flipped.”
Lift my cover and embrace your dreams. You want Alina back? Snap of a finger. Isla and your father? They are yours. Dani as a young, innocent child with a bright future? One word can make it so. The walls back up? We will do it immediately. Walls are no hindrance to us. We pass through them.
“It would all be a lie.”
Not a lie, a different path, equally real. Embrace me and you will understand. Do you want the spell to unmake his child? Is that what you want? The key to releasing Jericho Barrons from the eternal hell of watching his son suffer? He has been tortured for so long. Has it not been long enough?
I caught my breath. Of all the things it might say, this was the one thing that tempted me.
I am not without mercy, MacKayla, the Sinsar Dubh said gently. Compassion is not beyond me. I see it in you. I learn. I evolve. Perhaps you do have the good parts of the king in you after all. Perhaps your humanity will temper me. You will make me kinder, more forgiving. I will make you stronger, less breakable.
Memories swarmed through my mind. I knew the Book was sifting through them, manipulating me. It had found the images Barrons showed me in the desert of the child dying in our arms. It embellished upon what Barrons had told me about his enemies, nearly drowned me in images of barbaric men torturing and killing the child again and again.
Behind those images, a father stalked through eternity, hunting for a way to release his son and grant him peace.
And gain it himself.
He gave you everything and has never asked you for a thing in return. Until this. He will die for you over and over. And all he wants you to do is free his son.
There was nothing it had just said that I could argue with.
Open me, MacKayla. Embrace me. Use me for good, out of love. How could a thing given from love be bad? You said it yourself—it is the intention that defines the action.
And there it was in a nutshell, the ultimate temptation: to pick up the Book, crack it open, and read it, looking for the spell so Barrons could unmake his child, because I would be doing it for all the right reasons. Even Barrons had said evil wasn’t a state of being, it was a choice.
The Unseelie King had not trusted himself to retain the power contained within the pages of the Sinsar Dubh. How could I?
I stared at it, debating.
Irony, perfect definition: Barrons had said, that for which I want to possess it, I would no longer want once I possessed it.
If I picked it up—even with the most merciful of reasons in my heart—would I still care about releasing the child once I raised the cover? Would I care about Jack and Rainey, about the world, about Barrons himself?
Foolish fears, my sweet MacKayla. You have free will. I am only a chisel. You are the sculptor. Use me. Shape your world. Be a saint if you wish: Plant flowers, save children, champion small animals.
Was it that easy? Could it be true?
I could make the world perfect.
It’s an imperfect world, Mac, I could almost hear Barrons roaring.
It was. Royally screwed up. Packed with injustices that needed to be righted, bad people and hard times. I could make everyone happy.
You have the amulet. With it you will always have control over me. You will always be stronger than I. I am merely a book. You are alive.
It was just a book.
Take me, use me. It is as Barrons has always told you—it is how you go on that defines you. You make the choices. His child suffers. There is so much suffering in this world. You can make it all go away.
I stared at it, hands flexing. That was the hard thing. The pain. He and his son suffered endlessly and would continue to do so every day, eternally. Unless I could get the spell of unmaking I’d promised him.
I have such a spell. We will lay the child to rest together. You will be his savior. We will free him now, this very night. Open me, MacKayla. Open yourself. I have been unguided. You will teach me.
I bit my lip, frowning. Could I guide the Sinsar Dubh? Would my humanity give me the edge I needed? I turned inward, searching my heart, my soul. What I found there straightened my spine and squared my shoulders.
“I can,” I said. “I can change you. I can make you better.”
Yes, yes, do it now. Take me, hold me, open me, it whispered. Love you, MacKayla. Love me.
I couldn’t wait another moment. I reached for the Sinsar Dubh.
48
The Book was icy beneath my hands,
but the flames in the rubies warmed my soul.
I was touching the Sinsar Dubh.
The contact took my breath away. We were twins separated at birth, rejoined. I’d been waiting for it all my life. With it in my hands, I was complete. I hugged it to my chest, shivering, trembling with emotion. A dark song began to build inside me. The Book was a finger and I was the wine-damp rim of a fine crystal goblet. It slid round and round, playing a melody that came from deep within my compromised soul.
I ran my hands lovingly over the jeweled cover.
I felt the immense power it contained. It inflated me, swelled inside me, made me drunk on it, giddy. The baby I’d once been, who’d known no right or wrong, was still in there. Unborn, we have yet to develop morality. I suspect there’s some part of us that remains that way until death.
We choose. That’s what it’s all about.
When I stopped embracing it, held it away to admire it, the crimson rune that had been hidden in one of my palms pulsed wetly, expanded, and latched tiny suckers onto it, binding the covers closed.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING! the Sinsar Dubh screamed.
“Making you better.” I began to cry as I scooped another bloody rune from the glassy black surface of my lake. I wanted the Book like I wanted to breathe. Now I knew why it had hunted me. I was its perfect host. We were made for each other. With it, I would never fear anything. Rejecting it was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. More bitter still was the knowledge that with each rune I pressed into the boards and binding, I was condemning Jericho and his son to continue living in an eternal hell.
HOW DARE YOU DECEIVE ME?
“The nerve of me.” I wanted to tear the runes off, crack open the Book, take my spell of unmaking. I didn’t dare. If I opened the gold, black, and crimson cover the tiniest sliver, its dark song would rush out and consume me.
She would doom the world, they’d said.
I’d been tempted, so tempted. I wanted Alina back. I wanted the walls up. I wanted Dani to be innocent and young and not my sister’s killer. I wanted to be Jericho Barrons’ hero. I wanted to release him from endless pain. See him walk into the future with hope and maybe even smile every now and then.
YOU SAID THE WORLD WAS IMPERFECT!
“It is.” I pressed another dripping rune into the cover.
But it was my world, filled with good people, like my father and mother, patient Kat, and Inspector Jayne, who were always doing their parts to make it a better place. Unseelie might be overrunning our planet, but we’d been long overdue for a threat to unify us as a race and turn our petty angers away from one another.
There was pain, but there was also joy. It was in the tension between the two that life happened. Imperfect as it was, this world was real. Illusion was no substitute. I’d rather live a hard life of fact than a sweet life of lies.
I flipped the Book over and pressed a rune into its back.
Its voice was muffled, growing weaker.
He will hate you!
That was the crushing blow. I’d been a breath away from what Barrons had devoted his entire existence to getting, and I’d turned my back on it. I’d promised him. I’d told him we would find a way, and I’d failed him. There was no way to lift a single spell of such power from the Sinsar Dubh. It would never have floated it to the surface and given it to me willingly. Even now it was regretting that it had ever floated anything to the surface for me, but it had taken calculated risks, tempting me to look deeper. It had given me what I’d needed to stay alive, to keep me heading toward merging with it, taking it in, letting it have my body and have control. It knew what I wanted now and would never give it up unless I merged with it completely. If I’d raised that lid—even a scant inch, just for a quick peek—looking for the spell, it would have been all over. It would have taken up squatter’s rights and obliterated me. Perhaps some tiny part of me would have remained cognizant, screaming in eternal horror, but not enough to matter.
Ryodan had been right. The Sinsar Dubh was after a body, and it had wanted mine. If I believed its story, it had prepped me to be possessed since before I was born. Waited until I’d become the perfect host. But it hadn’t waited quite long enough. Or maybe it had waited too long. Evil is a completely different creature, Mac, Ryodan had said. Evil is bad that believes it’s good.
I hadn’t understood what he was saying at the time. I did now.
I pressed another rune onto the binding.
I would never lay Barrons’ child to rest now. Never free the man.
Destroy you, bitch! Not the end. Never the end!
Four more runes and the Sinsar Dubh was silent.
I sat back on my heels. My hands were shaking, I was exhausted, and my cheeks were wet.
I was about to lay my hand against the cover to confirm what I sensed, that it was contained—at least as well as it could be until we got it to the abbey—when the invisible barrier restraining Jericho evaporated.
Then I was in his arms and he was kissing me, and all I could think was that I’d done it, I’d survived, but at what cost?
From the day I’d met him, he’d been after one thing and one thing only. He’d been hunting it for thousands of years with singleminded focus.
I was a woman he’d known for a few months. What could I possibly mean to him compared to that?
49
Shocked by the news that Rowena was dead, the surviving members of the Haven took one look at Drustan MacKeltar carrying the Book, identified themselves—and, yes, Jo was one of them—then removed the wards and opened the corridor to allow access to the chamber in which the Sinsar Dubh had originally been interred.
I was thrilled Drustan was carrying it. I wanted nothing more to do with it. I never wanted to touch it again. If I did, I’d have to think about the spell Barrons wanted, how close it was, and how all I’d have to do was lift that cover and …
I shook my head, forcing the thought away.
I’d done my part. It was here, and now it was their responsibility. I’d ridden in the Hummer with the Keltar clan to the abbey as a precaution. It was hard to believe it was almost over. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the other shoe hadn’t dropped yet. In movies, the villain always twitched one last time, and my nerves were a wreck, waiting for it.
Jo and the other Haven members led our procession into the bowels of the stone fortress, followed by Ryodan and the others. The Keltar Druids were next. Barrons and I followed, with Kat and half a dozen more sidhe-seers bringing up the rear. V’lane and his Seelie were due to sift in at any moment.
I kept a careful eye on the Book as Drustan carried it down the corridor, past a now silent image of Isla O’Connor that I could barely look at, into an underground chamber, down more stairs, into another chamber, and down still more stairs.
I quit counting after a dozen flights. It was deep. I was once again underground.
I kept waiting for the Book to somehow sense it was approaching the place where it had been caged for so long and make a final, deadly gambit for my soul. Or body.
I looked at Barrons. “Do you feel like—”
“The fat lady hasn’t sung?”
I love that about him. He gets me. I don’t even have to finish my sentences.
“Ideas?” I said.
“Not a one.”
“Are we being paranoid?”
“Possibly. Hard to say.” He looked at me. Although his eyes were empty of conversation, I knew he wanted to know everything that had happened while I’d been battling the Book but wouldn’t ask until we were alone. The entire time the Sinsar Dubh had been playing its head games with me, all he’d been able to see was me standing in silence with Rowena, me killing Rowena, then me standing in silence near the Book. The illusions it had woven for me had taken place only in my head. The battle had been invisible to the naked eye, but the hardest ones are.
He’d been a silent mountain of barely contained hostility the entire way out here. Since the moment the barrier restraining
him had evaporated, he hadn’t stopped touching me. I was sucking it up. Who knew how he’d feel soon.
I couldn’t get to you, he’d exploded when he’d finally stopped kissing me long enough to speak.
But you did, I’d told him. I heard you roaring. It was what tipped me off. You got through.
I couldn’t save you. His expression had been stark, furious.
I couldn’t save him, either. And I was in no hurry to tell him that.
Did you get it? The spell of unmaking?
Ancient eyes had stared at me, filled with ancient grief. And something more. Something so alien and unexpected that I’d almost burst into tears. I’d seen many things in his eyes in the time that I’d known him: lust, amusement, sympathy, mockery, caution, fury. But I had never seen this.
Hope. Jericho Barrons had hope, and I was the reason for it.
Yes, I lied. I got it.
I would never forget his smile. It had illuminated him from the inside out.
I blew out a breath and focused on my surroundings. There was a small underground city beneath the abbey. Even Barrons was beginning to look impressed. Wide streetlike tunnels intersected neatly; narrower alleys ran off them in dizzying slopes. We passed an enormous hive of catacombs that Jo told us held the remains of every Grand Mistress that had ever lived. Somewhere among those labyrinthine tunnels, hidden in row after row of mausoleums, was the crypt of the first leader of the first Haven. I wanted to find it, run my fingers over the inscription, know the date our order had been founded. There were secrets down here entrusted to only the initiate, and I wanted to know them all.
Kat, too, was a member of the Haven, a secret she’d not betrayed.
Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series 5-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever Page 170