Fever 5 - Shadowfever (36 page)

Not that I wanted to.
Heart slamming in my chest, my legs moved apart. There are different kinds of kisses. I’d thought I’d experienced them all, if not prior to coming to Dublin, certainly after months of being
Pri-ya
, in bed with this man.
This was a new one.
All I could do was hold on to his arm and survive.
“Kiss” wasn’t the right word at all.
He fused us together—my jaws so wide, I couldn’t even kiss him back. I could only take what he was doing to me. I felt the sharp slide of fangs over my tongue as he sucked it into his mouth.
I knew then—as he’d never let me see in our bed in that basement—that he was far more animal than man. Maybe he hadn’t always been, but he was now. Maybe, long ago, in the beginning, he’d missed being a man—if, in fact, he’d been one to begin with. But he didn’t anymore. He’d gone native.
I was kind of astonished by it: What a man he’d chosen to be! He could easily have gone feral. He was the strongest, fastest, smartest, most powerful creature I’d ever seen. He could kill everything and everyone, including Fae. He could never
be
killed. Yet he walked upright and lived in Dublin and he had a bookstore and great cars and collected rare things of beauty. He bitched when his rugs got burned and got pissy when somebody messed with his clothes. He took care of some people, whether he seemed to like doing it or not. And he had a sense of honor that wasn’t animal.
“Honor
is
animal. Animals are pure. People are fucked up. Quit fucking thinking.” He let go of my mouth long enough to speak, then I couldn’t breathe again.
I didn’t play nice. I wasn’t feeling nice. I was plastered at an awkward angle against the couch, completely in his control unless I wanted to try to break my own neck to get free. I wanted to know what spell he wanted, though, so I drew in on myself and volleyed into his head.
Crimson silk sheets
.
I’m in her and she’s looking at me like I’m her world. The woman undoes me
. I flinch. I’m having sex with me, seeing myself from his eyes. I look incredible naked—is that how he sees me? He doesn’t see any of my flaws. I’ve never looked half as good to myself. I want to pull out. It feels perverse. I’m fascinated. But this was not what I was hunting for at all …
Where are the handcuffs? Ah, grab her fucking head, she’s going down on me again. She’ll make me come. Tie her up. Is she back? How much longer do I have?
He senses me there.
Get out of my HEAD!
I deepen the kiss, bite his tongue, and he is violent with lust. I take advantage, diving deep. There’s a thought he’s shielding. I want it.
Nobody home but She for Whom I Am the World. Can’t go on like this, can’t keep doing it
.
Why couldn’t he go on? What couldn’t he keep doing? I’m having sex with him, any way he wants me, while I stare up at him with utter worship. Where was the problem there? Weariness suddenly crashes over me. I’m in his body, and I’m coming beneath him, and I’m checking my eyes warily.
What the fuck am I doing here?
He knew what he was, what I was.
He knew we came from different worlds, didn’t belong together.
Yet for a few months there’d been no lines of demarcation between us. We’d existed in a place beyond definitions, where no rules had mattered, and I wasn’t the only one who’d reveled in it. But the entire time I’d been lost in sexual bliss, he’d been aware of time passing, of everything that was happening—that I was mindless, I wasn’t willing, and when I snapped out of it I’d blame him.
Keep hoping to see the light in her eyes. Even knowing it’ll mean she’s saying good-bye
. I had. Irrational or not, I’d held it against him. He’d seen me naked, body and soul, and I hadn’t seen him at all. I’d been blinded by helpless lust that hadn’t been for
him
. I had been lust, and he’d been there.
Just one time
, he’s thinking as we watch my glazed eyes go even emptier. One time, what? Instead of pushing, I try a stealth attack. I pretend to retreat, let him think he’s won, and at the last minute turn around. Instead of lunging for his thoughts, I stay very, very still and listen.
He pushes my hair out of my face. I look like an animal. There’s no sentience in my gaze. I’m a cavewoman, with a minuscule, prehistoric brain.
When you know who I am. Let me be your man
.
He blasts me from his skull with such force that I nearly pass out. My ears ring and my head hurts.
I’m sucking air. He’s gone.

I walked through Temple Bar with a spring in my step. I’d woken early, taken one look at the sunshine shafting in through my bedroom window, dressed, and headed out to run errands.
The fridge was empty, I had two birthdays I was determined to celebrate before they got any more belated, and I was going to have to do some serious improvising with ingredients to bake a cake. Since Halloween, butter, eggs, and milk were a scarce commodity, but a Southern woman could do a lot with shortening, condensed milk, and powdered eggs. I was going to bake a chocolate cake with thick, creamy double-chocolate fudge icing if it was the last thing I did. Dani and I would watch movies and paint our fingernails. It would be like old times with Alina.
I turned my face up to the sun as I hurried down the street. After what seemed an interminable hiatus, spring had returned to Dublin.
The season of sunshine and rebirth was overdue for me. Though I’d managed to avoid miserable months of cold weather, busy in Faery or the Silvers, it had still been the longest winter of my life.
Spring didn’t
look
any different than winter, but you could feel it in the air—the kiss of warmth on the breeze, the scent blowing off the ocean that carried the promise of buds and blossoms, if not here, somewhere else in the world. I’d never thought I’d miss flies and insects, but I did. There wasn’t a single thing growing in Dublin—and that meant no moths, butterflies, birds, or bees. Not a single flower bloomed, no shoots pushed out from young limbs, not a blade of grass grew. The Shades had decimated the city on their way out, before slamming the door shut with a bang last Halloween. The soil was barren.
I was no horticulturalist, but I’d been doing some research. I was pretty sure if we reintroduced the right nutrients into the soil, in time, we’d be able to grow things again.
We had a lot to reclaim. Trees to remove and replace. Planters and flower boxes to fill. Parks to redesign. I planned to start small, haul dirt back from the abbey, grow a few daisies, buttercups, maybe some petunias and impatiens. Fill my bookstore with ferns and spider plants and begin taking back the night in my own space before spilling over onto the rooftop garden and beyond.
One day Dublin would live and breathe again. One day all these husks of what had once been people would be swept up and buried in a memorial ceremony. One day, tourists would come to see ground zero and reminisce about the Halloween when the walls fell—maybe even mention in passing a girl who cowered in a belfry before helping save the day—then head off to one of six hundred newly restored pubs to celebrate that the human race had taken back what was theirs.
Because we would. No matter who or what I was, I was determined to capture and re-inter the Book, then get to work figuring out a way to put the walls back up. Along the way, I’d find proof that I wasn’t the king, just a human woman with a lot of memories someone else had planted for reasons that would make sense when I finally knew them. I wasn’t the fulcrum of a prophecy that would either save or doom the human race. I was merely the person who’d been pre-programmed by the queen—or who knew? Maybe the king—to track the Book in case it escaped, just like the Keltar had been manipulated: one small part of the equation for sealing it away again, forever this time.
As I sauntered through the morning, I tried to slip back into the mind of the young woman who’d stepped off the plane, taken a cab through Temple Bar, and checked in to the Clarin House late last summer, bemused by the thick accent of the leprechaun-like old man behind the reservations desk. Starving. Scared and grieving. Dublin had been so huge, and I’d been so small and clueless.
I looked around, absorbing the silent shell of a city, remembering the hustle and bustle. The streets had been crammed with
craic
—vibrant life that took itself entirely for granted.
“Morning, Ms. Lane.” Inspector Jayne moved into step with me.
I assessed him quickly. He wore tight khaki-colored jeans with a plain white T-shirt stretched over his barrel chest and military boots laced up outside his pants. He was draped in ammo, pistols in his waistband and arm holster, Uzi over his shoulder. No place for an evil Book to hide. Months ago he’d had the start of a paunch. It was no longer there. He was rangy with muscle, long limbed, and walking like a man who had his feet planted firmly on the ground for the first time in years.
I smiled, genuinely pleased to see him, but it was all I could do not to reach for my spear. I hoped he wasn’t still after it or holding grudges.
“Fine morning, isn’t it?”
I laughed. “I was thinking the same thing. Is there something wrong with us? Dublin’s a shell, and we look ready to burst into a cheery whistle.” The Unseelie-spiked-tea-drinking inspector and I had certainly come a long way.
“No paperwork. I used to hate paperwork. Didn’t know how much of my life it was eating up.”
“New world.”
“Bloody strange one.”
“But good.”
“Aye. The streets are quiet. Book’s laying low. Haven’t seen a Hunter in days. We Irish know to make the most of the times of plenty, for sure enough they’ll be famine again. Made love to my wife last night. Children are healthy and strong. It’s a good day to be alive,” he said matter-of-factly.
I nodded in complete understanding. “Speaking of Hunters, you’ll be seeing at least one in the skies soon.” I filled him in on the outline of our plan—that I would be scouring the streets by Hunter, looking for the
Sinsar Dubh
. “So don’t shoot me down, okay?”
His eyes narrowed shrewdly. “How do you control it? Can you force it to take you to its lair? We could wipe out the lot of them if we could only find the den.”
“Let’s get the Book off the streets first. Then we’ll help you hunt, I promise.”
“A promise I’ll be holding you to. I don’t like using the girl, but she insists. That one’s had a hard enough life. She should be home, somebody watching out for her. Kills like she was born to it. Makes me wonder how long she’s been—”
“MacKayla,” V’lane said.
Jayne was frozen, mouth ajar, mid-step. Not iced. Just immobilized.
I stiffened and reached for my spear.
“We need to talk.”
“Understatement.
You
need to explain.” I spun in a circle, spear up. For whatever reason, I still had it.
“Sheathe the spear.”
“Why haven’t you taken it?”
“I offer you a show of good faith.”
“Where are you?” I demanded. I could hear his voice, but he wasn’t visible and the source of his voice kept moving.
“I will appear when you have given me
your
show of good faith.”
“Which is?”
“I choose to let you keep it. You choose to sheathe it. We will honor each other with trust and confidence.”
“Not a chance in hell.”
“I am not the only one that has some explaining to do. How did you bring the queen out through the king’s mirror?”
“Let me tell you what I don’t understand. Last Halloween I got raped by Unseelie Princes. You told me you were busy carrying your queen to safety on human feet. But now I know the queen had been in the Unseelie prison for—how did you word it?—many human years. Where were you
really
that night, V’lane?”
He materialized in front of me, a dozen feet away.
“I did not lie to you. Not entirely. I told you I could not be in two places at once, and that much was true. However, I misspoke when I said I was carrying my queen to safety. Instead, I was taking advantage of those hours, searching for her in Darroc’s Silvers. I was certain he was behind her disappearance. I believed he had imprisoned her in one of the stolen mirrors at LaRuhe, but I could not search those Silvers until the magic of the realms was neutralized. When I crushed his dolmen for you—which we rebuilt, and I succeeded in retrieving Christian only last night, or I would have come to explain myself sooner—I endeavored to search them then. But Darroc had learned much from journals stolen from the White Mansion, and I was unable to break his wards.”
“You spent the night I was getting raped searching his house and finding nothing?”
“A regrettable decision only because it did not yield fruit. I was certain she was there. If she had been, it would have been worth it. As it was, when I discovered what had transpired, I felt …” He lowered his lids over his eyes, leaving only a thin band of silver glittering beneath his lashes. “I felt.” His mouth shaped a bitter smile. “It was untenable. Fae do not feel. Certainly not the queen’s first prince. I tasted envy of my dark brethren for knowing you in a way I never would. I choked on rage that they harmed you. I grieved the loss of something of incomparable measure I could never have again. Is that not human regret? I felt …” He inhaled slow and deep, then blew it out. “Shame.”
“So you say.”
The smile twisted. “For the first time in my existence, I wanted to experience a temporary oblivion. I was unable to make my thoughts obey me. They wandered of their own accord to matters that were hellish to suffer. I was unable to make them stop. It made
me
want to stop. Is that love, MacKayla? Is that what it does to you? Why, then, do humans long for it?”
I jerked, remembering a moment when I’d considered stretching on the ground next to Barrons and bleeding out next to him.
“I am tired of being in impossible positions. For an eternity, my first allegiance has been to my queen. Without her, my race is doomed. There is no successor to her throne. There is none worthy or capable of leading my people. I could not choose to help you over attempting to recover her. My emotions, to which I had no right, could not be permitted to interfere. For too long I have been all that stands between peace and war.” He locked gazes with me. “Unless …”
“Unless what?”
“Still you point that spear at me.”
I stalked toward him, drawing my spear arm back.
He vanished.
He spoke behind me. “Could it be you are becoming like us?”
I whirled, eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Are you becoming Fae, in the way some long ago were born? I suspect the young Druid also suffers birth pains. It is a most unexpected development.”
“And unwelcome.”
“That remains to be seen.”
Was that his breath at my ear, his lips against my hair?
“It’s unwelcome to me! I’m not going to become one of you. Get it out. I don’t want it.”
I felt his hands on my waist, sliding lower, over my ass. “Immortality is a gift. Princess.”
“I’m not a princess and I’m not turning Fae.”
“Not yet perhaps. But you are something, are you not? I wonder what. I weary of watching Barrons piss circles around you. I tire of waiting for the day you will finally look at me and see that I am so much more than a Fae and a prince. I am a male. With hunger for you that knows no bottom. You and I, more than anyone else in the universe, are perfect for each other.”
He was half a dozen feet away, facing me, looking down into my eyes.
“I do not wish to continue like this. I am divided and know no peace. Pride has prevented me from speaking plainly. No more.”
He vanished and reappeared right in front of me, so close I could see a shimmer of rainbows in his iridescent eyes.
The spear was between us.
I tightened my hand on the hilt. He closed his over mine, pointed the spear at his chest, and leaned into me. I could feel him, rock hard and ready, against me. He was breathing fast and shallow, eyes glittering.
“Accept me or kill me, MacKayla. But choose. Just fucking choose.”

The last time I talked with my mom in person was on August 2, the day I said good-bye and caught a plane for Dublin. We’d fought bitterly about my going to Ireland. She hadn’t wanted to lose a second daughter to what she’d called “that cursed place.” At the time, I thought she was being melodramatic. Now I know she had reason to believe she should never have let Alina go and was terrified to see me follow. I’ve hated that our last words spoken face-to-face were harsh. Although I’ve spoken to her on the phone since then, it’s not the same.

I saw Daddy three weeks later, when he came to BB&B looking for me. Barrons Voiced him to make him go home and planted subliminal commands to prevent him from returning to Ireland. They worked. Daddy went to the airport several times to come back for me but couldn’t make himself get on a plane.

I saw them both again two weeks after Christmas, when I’d surfaced from being
Pri-ya
and V’lane had taken me to Ashford to show me that he’d helped restore my hometown and was keeping my folks safe.

I hadn’t talked to them then. I’d crouched in the bushes behind my house and watched them on the lanai, talking about me and how I was supposedly going to doom the world.
I’d seen them both when Darroc was holding them captive. They’d been gagged and bound.
Then I’d seen them here, at Chester’s, on the night the
Sinsar Dubh
took control of Fade and killed Barrons and Ryodan, but that was only through a glass pane.
Chronologically, it had been nine months since they’d seen me. With the time I’d lost in Faery, being
Pri-ya
, and in the Silvers, it felt more like three months to me, albeit the longest, most crammed-full three months of my life.
I wanted to see them. Now. Although I hadn’t accepted V’lane the way he’d wanted me to, I hadn’t stabbed him, either, which turned out to be fortuitous, because he’d finally gotten around to telling me that we were all supposed to meet at Chester’s today at noon to iron out our plans to capture the Book. He’d been dispatched as a sifting messenger to round everyone up.
I decided my errands could wait. Knowing that we were so close to making a serious attempt at capturing the Book had filled me with urgency to see Mom and Dad before the big meeting. Before the ritual. Before anything else in my life could go wrong. Personal identity crisis aside, they were my parents and always would be. If I’d lived before as someone or something else, that life had paled in comparison to this one.
I blasted into Chester’s, sailed coolly through the bars, which were depressingly packed so early in the day, and headed for the stairs. I had no desire to talk to any of the cryptic denizens of the club.
At the foot of the stairs, Lor and a massively muscled man with long white hair, pale skin, and burning eyes moved together, blocking my way.
I was debating what I might have in my deep glassy lake to use—Barrons had slurped down my crimson runes like truffles—when Ryodan called down, “Let her up.”
I tipped my head back. The urbane owner of the largest den of sex, drugs, and exotic thrills in the city stood behind the chrome balustrade, big hands closed on the chrome railing, thick wrists cuffed by silver, features darkened by a convenient shadow. He looked like a scarred Gucci model. Whatever kind of life these men had lived before they’d become whatever they were, it had been violent and hard. Like them.
“Why?” Lor demanded.
“I said so.”
“Not time for the meeting yet.”
“She wants to see her parents. She’s going to insist.”
“So?”
“She thinks she has something to prove. She’s feeling pushy.”
“Gee, this is nice. I don’t even have to talk,” I purred. I
was
feeling pushy. Ryodan brought out the worst in me. Like Rowena, he’d prejudged me.
“You ooze emotion today. Emotional humans are unpredictable, and you’re more unpredictable than most to begin with. Besides,” Ryodan sounded amused, “Jack’s building up immunity to Barrons’ Voice. He’s been demanding to see you. Said he’ll take the queen hostage if we don’t bring you to him. I don’t worry about the queen’s safety. Rainey likes her, and Jack likes anything Rainey likes. But I have concerns he might debate us to death.”
I smiled faintly. If anyone could win, it was my daddy. I pushed past Lor, clipping him with my shoulder. His arm shot out like a bar across my neck and stopped me.
“Look at me, woman,” Lor growled.
I turned my head and met his gaze coolly.
“If he tells you anything about us, we’ll kill you. Do you understand that? One word, you die. So if you’re walking around feeling cocky and protected because Barrons likes to fuck you, think again. The more he likes to do you, the more likely it is that one of us will kill you.”
I looked up at Ryodan.
The owner of Chester’s nodded.
“Nobody killed Fiona.”
“She was a doormat.”
I pushed the arm away from my neck. “Get out of my way.”
“I would suggest you cure him of his little problem if you want to survive,” Lor said.
“Oh, I’ll survive.”
“The farther away from him you get, the safer you are.”
“Do you want me to find the Book or not?”
Ryodan answered. “We don’t give a fuck if the Book is out there. Or that the walls are down. Times change, we go on.”
“Then why are you helping with the ritual? V’lane said Barrons asked you and Lor to handle the other stones.”
“For Barrons. But if he breathes one word about himself, you’re dead.”
“I thought he was the boss of you guys.”
“He is. He made the rules we live by. We’ll still take you from him.”
Take you from him
. Sometimes I was so dense. “And he knows that.”
“We’ve had to do it before,” Lor said. “Kasteo hasn’t said a word to us since. I say get over it already. It’s been a thousand fucking years. What’s a woman worth?”
I inhaled slow and deep as the full ramifications of what they’d just told me sunk in. This was why Barrons never answered any of my questions and never would. He knew what they would do to me if he told me—whatever they’d done to Kasteo’s woman a thousand years ago. “You don’t need to worry about it. He hasn’t told me anything.”
“Yet,” Lor said.
“But more importantly,” I said, looking up at Ryodan, “I won’t ask. I don’t need to know.” I realized it was true. I was no longer obsessed with having a name and an explanation for Jericho Barrons. He was what he was. No name, no reasons, would alter anything about him. Or how I felt.
“So every woman has said at some point. Are you familiar with the tale of
Bluebeard
?”
Sure. He’d asked only one thing of his wives: that they never look in the forbidden room upstairs—where he kept the bodies of all the wives before them, whom he’d killed for looking in the forbidden room upstairs. “Bluebeard’s wives didn’t have a life.” I studied him. They were all so controlled, so hard and ruthless. “How many have you taken from one another? So many that you hate the sight of one another? Has the merry band of brothers become a walking, talking, immortal Cold War?”
His face hardened. “Strip if you’re coming up.”
I gave him a look. “I have on skintight clothes.”
“Non-negotiable. All of it. Nothing but skin.”
Lor folded his arms, leaned back against the staircase, and laughed. “She’s got a great ass. If we’re lucky, she’s wearing a thong.”
The white-haired man rumbled with laughter.
“You’ve never made anyone strip before,” I said.
“New rules.” Ryodan smiled.
“I’m not—”
“Seeing your parents if you don’t,” he cut me off.
“I don’t want to see them if I have to be naked. My mother would never recover.”
He held up a short robe.
“You planned this.” The prick.
“Told you. New rules. Can’t be too careful with the queen here.”
He didn’t think I’d do it. He was wrong.
Bristling, I kicked off my shoes, tugged my shirt over my head, skinned off my jeans, popped my bra, and stripped off my thong. Then I put my shoulder holster back on, tucked my spear into it, and walked up the stairs naked. I put a little jiggle in my walk and held his gaze the whole time.
At the top, Ryodan practically accosted me with the short robe. I looked back at Lor and the other guard. They were both staring at me. Neither of them was laughing anymore.
The second floor of Chester’s smelled good. I cocked my head, sniffing. Perfume and … cooking? Was there a kitchen up here?
Three women popped out of a wall, talking and laughing, carrying covered dishes, then vanished behind another hissing panel. I was piqued. They knew how to open and close the doors and I didn’t.
Ryodan thrust my clothes at me. “The Keltar women are out of control. They cook. They chatter. They laugh. Idiots.”
I looked at him. He was already stalking away. It was all I could do not to laugh. I stepped to the side of the hall and dressed as I watched him disappear into one of the glass-paneled rooms.
When I began walking again, Lor moved into step beside me. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me—with the hot, fixed gaze of an intensely sexual man who’d seen me naked and jiggling and wasn’t about to forget it soon.
“Jack and Rainey are down here.” He turned left in the honeycomb of glass and chrome, down a hallway I hadn’t even realized was there. The reflective glass walls created a hall-of-mirrors illusion. Chester’s was even larger on the second floor than I’d thought.
“You moved them.”
“Needed a place we could ward better, with the queen here.”
Ahead, Drustan and Dageus were standing in the hallway, talking to a—I stared. Fae? I wasn’t getting a Fae read off him. What was he? Long black hair, gold-dust skin, loads of charisma. Fae but not Fae.
As we approached, I heard Dageus say impatiently, “All we’re asking is that you confirm she’s truly Aoibheal. You were her favorite for five thousand years, Adam. You know her better than any of us. She’s wasted and weak and, though we’re fair certain it’s her, we’d be resting easier if we heard it from one who was once her right hand.”
“I’m mortal, Gab’s pregnant, and I’m not dying in a bloody Fae war. This isn’t my battle. This isn’t my life anymore.”
“We’re only asking you confirm it’s her. We’ll have V’lane sift you out of here—”
“You tell that fuck I’m here, you won’t get a thing from me. No one is to know I’m in Ireland. Not a single Fae. Got it?”
“You believe they’d still hunt you?”
“They have long memories, the queen is weak, and I was never their favorite. Some of them don’t drink from the cauldron as often as I’d like. One look. I’ll confirm it for you, but then I’m out of here. Don’t come looking for me again.”
Dageus said coolly, “You had the chance to kill Darroc. You made him mortal instead.”
Adam’s dark eyes glittered. “I knew one of you bastards would try to blame me for what happened. I let him live. Humans let Hitler live. I’m not responsible for the destruction of a third of the world’s population.”
“Be damned glad none of the casualties were Keltar, or we’d be hunting you ourselves.”
“Don’t threaten me, Highlander. I wasn’t called the
sin siriche du
for nothing, and I didn’t go native without taking precautions. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve. I’ve got my own clan to protect.”
I stared at him as we passed. Suddenly his head whipped around and he stared straight back at me, eyes narrowed. His gaze followed me until I’d passed.
“Who’s she?” I heard him ask.
“One of the queen’s chosen, it seems. She can track the Book.”
“I bet she can,” Adam murmured.
I looked sharply over my shoulder and began to turn around. I wanted to know why he’d said that.
Lor’s hand clamped around my arm. “Keep walking. Visiting hours at Chester’s … well, for you, there aren’t any.”
He stopped at the far end of the hall in front of a smooth wall of glass that was heavily painted with smoky runes and pressed his palm to the panel. As the door slid aside, I looked down and saw that the floor was covered with more runes.
“If you tire of Barrons.” His cold eyes fixed on my face. “Assuming you survive.”
I shot him a look of mock astonishment. “Will wonders never cease? Lor’s idea of a proposition. Somebody catch me while I swoon.”
“Charm takes energy better spent fucking. I prefer a club over the head.” He turned and began to walk away.
I rolled my eyes and, squaring my shoulders, stepped over the runes.
Or rather I
tried
to step over the runes.
They repelled me violently, and every alarm in the building went off.
“I’m not carrying the Book! You saw me naked. Get off me!”
Lor’s arm was around my throat, crushing my windpipe. A bit more pressure and I’d pass out from lack of oxygen.
“What happened?” Ryodan demanded, storming up.
“She tripped the wards.”
“Why is that, I wonder, Mac?”
“Get this prick off me,” I said.
“Let her go.” Barrons had joined Ryodan in the hall. “Now.”
Ryodan looked at Barrons and something passed between them, and I realized they’d been expecting this. They’d known at some point I would demand to see my parents. The only reason Ryodan had let me up was to subject me to this test. But what had it proved?
“Doesn’t change anything,” Barrons said finally.
“No,” Ryodan agreed.
“What?” I demanded.
“The wards recognize you as Fae,” Barrons said.
“Impossible. We all know I’m not. It must be picking up that I’ve eaten Fae.”
“You’ve eaten Fae?” Adam sounded disgusted.
“Do you recognize her? You looked at her oddly when she passed,” Lor said.
“Only that she’s Fae-touched,” Adam replied. “Somewhere in her bloodline. Royal. Don’t know the house. Not mine.”
They were all staring at me. “You guys should talk. None of you is human. Well, maybe Cian and Drustan, but there’s that whole chosen-by-the-queen, trained-as-her-Druids thing. So don’t be staring at me like I’m the freak du jour. Maybe any
sidhe-seer
would set it off. Supposedly the UK had a hand in making us. I never set off the alarms at the abbey that were designed to keep Fae out.”
Or had I? Each time I’d gone there, I’d been found remarkably quickly. Then there was the blond woman who’d barred the corridor with her implacable
You are not permitted here. You are not one of us
. What wasn’t I? A
sidhe
-seer? A Haven member? A human?
“I want to see my parents,” I said coolly.
Barrons and Ryodan exchanged a look again, then Ryodan shrugged. “Let her. Set them up in the room next door.”
“Mac!” Jack exclaimed, rushing me the moment I stepped in the door. “Oh, God, we’ve missed you, baby!”
I disappeared into a bear hug that smelled of peppermint and aftershave. They say scent is the strongest memory association we possess. The smell of my daddy’s hug peeled away the months like calendar pages tossed into a trash can.
I wasn’t Fae, I wasn’t possibly the Unseelie King, I wasn’t going to doom the world. I was safe, protected, right, loved. I was his little girl. Always would be.
“Daddy!” I pressed my nose to his shirt. “And, Mom,” I choked out, burying my face in her shoulder. The three of us clung to one another, hugging like there was no tomorrow.
I pulled back and looked at them. Jack Lane was tall, handsome, and composed as ever. Rainey was smiling radiantly.
“You guys look fantastic. And, Mom, look at you!” There was no trace of grief or fear in her gently lined face. Her eyes were clear, her fine features glowing.
“Doesn’t she look great?” Jack said, giving her hand a squeeze. “Your mom’s a changed woman.”
“What happened?”
Rainey laughed. “Living in a glass room with the queen of fairies might have something to do with it. Then there’s the music coming up through the floors at all hours. And let’s not forget all the naked people dropping by.”