Shadowfever

by Karen Marie Moning

  If they were indeed my own.

  It didn’t escape me that I’d just found exactly what I needed. How lucky to find the fifth of the five Druids necessary to perform the ritual right here, next to whatever it was I’d been led to!

  Too bad I didn’t believe in luck anymore.

  I felt bitterly manipulated. But by whom and why?

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  “Och, what happened to me?” Laughter screeched like metal spikes across chalkboard bells. “That would be you, lass. You happened to me. You fed me Unseelie. ”

  I was appalled. This was what feeding him the flesh of dark Fae had done to him? Whatever transformation Christian had begun back on that world where we’d dried our clothes by the loch had continued at breakneck speed.

  He looked half human, half Fae, and in this place of shadows and ice, he was leaning toward the Unseelie, not their light brethren. With a few finishing touches, he’d look just like one of the princes. I bit my lip. What could I say? I’m sorry? Does it hurt? Are you turning into a monster inside, too? Maybe he’d look better once he was out in the real world, where there were other colors besides black, white, and blue.

  He gave me a darker version of that killer smile, white teeth flashing against cobalt lips in a white-marble face. “Och, your heart weeps for me. I see it in your eyes,” he mocked. The smile faded, but the hostility in his gaze grew. “It should. I’m beginning to look like one of them, aren’t I? No handy mirrors around here. Don’t know what my face looks like and doubt I want to. ”

  “Eating Unseelie did this to you? I don’t understand. I’ve eaten Unseelie. So did Mallucé and Darroc, Fiona and O’Bannion. Then there’s Jayne and his men. Nothing like this happened to me or any of them. ”

  “I suspect it began happening on Halloween. I wasn’t runed well enough. ” The smile morphed from killer to murderous. “I blame your Barrons for that. We’ll be seeing who’s the finer Druid now. We’ll be having words when we meet again. ”

  From the expression on that white chiseled face, I doubted they would be words. “Was Jericho the one who tattooed you?”

  He raised a brow. “So, it’s ‘Jericho,’ is it? No, my uncles Dageus and Cian did the work, but he should have checked me when I was finished, and he didn’t. He let me go into the ritual unprotected. ”

  “And just how pissy would your uncles have gotten if he’d tried?” It was instinct to defend him.

  “He still should have. He knew more about protection runes than we did. His knowledge is older than ours, which is bloody inconceivable to me. ”

  “What happened that night in the stones, Christian?” Neither he nor Barrons had ever told me.

  He rubbed his face with a hand, skin rasping over blue-black stubble. “I suppose it doesn’t matter who knows now. I thought to hide my shame, but it looks as if I’ve ended up wearing it. ”

  He began to walk a slow circle around the black coffin, ice crunching beneath his boots. It was a well-worn path. He’d been here awhile.

  I tried to focus on him, but my gaze kept sliding unwillingly to the tomb. The ice was thick, but if I stared, I could see a shape through the frosted sides. The lid was thinner than the rest of the coffin.

  Was that the blurred outline of a face through the smoky ice?

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  I yanked my gaze to Christian’s too-white face. “And?”

  “We tried to summon the ancient god of the Draghar, a sect of dark sorcerers. They’d worshipped it long before the Fae came to town. It was our only hope to counter Darroc’s magic. We succeeded in raising it. I felt it come alive. The great stones that weighted it deep beneath the earth fell away. ” He paused, letting the echo of his chiming bounce off the walls in ever-diminishing decibels until the icy mountains fell silent. “It came for me. Straight for me. Gunning for my soul. Ever play chicken, Mac?”

  I shook my head.

  “I lost. It’s a wonder it didn’t decimate Barrons. I felt it blast past me and into him. Then it was just … gone. ”

  “So how was that responsible for what’s happening to you?”

  “It touched me. ” He looked repulsed. “It … I don’t want to talk about it. Then you gave me the blood of dark Fae, and that, coupled with the three years I’ve been in here—”

  “Three years?” The words exploded from me in a cacophony of such dissonance that I was surprised the chiming didn’t start an avalanche. “You’ve been in the Unseelie prison for three years?”

  “No, I’ve been in this place for only a few weeks. But I’ve been in the Silvers for three years by my count. ”

  “But less than a month has passed on the outside since I saw you last!”

  “So it’s passing faster for me in here,” he murmured.

  “Which is exactly the opposite of what usually happens. Usually a few hours in here are days out there. ”

  He shrugged. Muscle and tattoos rippled. “Things don’t seem to be working right where I’m concerned. I’ve become a wee bit unpredictable. ” His smile was tight. His eyes were full black again.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to apologize, but I was more pragmatic than I used to be and I was getting tired of being blamed for things. “When I found you in that desert, you were dying. Would you rather I’d buried you in the Silvers?”

  The corners of his mouth twisted. “Aye, there’s the rub, isn’t it? I’m glad I’m alive. And you’ve no idea what that does to me. I used to be part of a clan that protected against the Fae, upheld the Compact, and kept the truce between us and them. Now I’m turning into one of the bloody buggers. I used to think the Keltar were the good guys. Now I don’t believe there are good guys. ”

  “There’d better be good guys. I need five of them to perform the ritual. ” My gaze slid to the coffin again. I shook myself and looked away. Assuming I got out of here with my sanity and life.

  “See for yourself and decide. I’ll fit in with them now just fine. Uncle Dageus once opened himself up to thirteen of the most evil Druids that ever existed and still can’t exorcise parts of them. ”

  So Dageus was the “inhabited or possessed” that the prophecy had mentioned!

  “And Uncle Cian was trapped in a Silver for nearly a thousand years, as if he wasn’t enough of a barbarian to begin with. He thinks all power is good and would do anything he had to in order to keep himself and his wife alive and happy. Then there’s Da, who’ll be useless to you. He took one look at the two of them when they showed up and swore off Druid arts forever. ”

  “That’s unacceptable,” I said flatly. “I need all five of you. ”

  “Good luck with that. ”

  We looked at each other in silence. He smiled thinly after a moment. “I knew someone would come. I just didn’t expect it to be you. I thought my uncles would find this place so I’d better stick close. I couldn’t find the bloody way out, anyway. ”

  “What have you been eating?”

  “Same as we’re breathing. It’s part of hell. No food, no breath. But hunger, ah, the hunger never goes away. Your stomach gnaws at itself constantly. You just don’t die from it. And sex. Och, Christ, the need!” The look he raked over me chilled. It wasn’t nearly as bottomless as a prince’s, but it wasn’t human, either. “You lust in this place, but you can’t jack off. Nothing comes of it but greater lust. I lost a few days to a bad spot there, nearly lost my fucking mind. If you and I had sex—”

  “Thanks but no,” I said swiftly. My life was already too complicated, and if it hadn’t been, this wasn’t the place I’d choose to complicate it more.

  “I suspect it wouldn’t work anyway,” he finished drily. “Am I that revolting, lass?”

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  “Just a little … scary. ”

  He looked away.

  “Still sexy as hell, though,” I added.

  He looked back, flashed me a smi
le.

  “There’s the Christian I know,” I tried to tease. “You’re still in there. ”

  “Once I get out of the Silvers, I’m hoping it won’t be like this. I won’t be like this. ”

  That would make two of us who hoped things would go back to normal, in a hurry, once we left this place behind.

  I glanced at the sepulchre. I was going to have to open it sometime. Face it and get it over with. Was it the king? Did he terrify me? Why? What could possibly be in there that would make me scream?

  He followed my gaze. “So now you know why I’m sitting here. Why are you here? How did you find this place?”

  “I’ve been dreaming about it every night since I was a child, as if I was programmed to come here. ”

  His mouth twisted. “Aye, she does that. Fucks with us. ”

  “She? Who?”

  He nodded at the coffin. “The queen. ”

  I blinked. “What queen?” This wasn’t making any sense.

  “Aoibheal, Queen of the Seelie. ”

  “That’s who’s in the coffin?”

  “Who were you expecting to find?”

  All hesitation gone, I moved to the side of the tomb and stared through the lid.

  Beneath smoky ice and runes, I could see the hint of pale skin, golden hair, a slight form.

  “We’ve got to get her out of here, and fast,” he said, “if she’s even still alive. I can’t tell through the ice. I tried to open it but couldn’t budge it. A few times, I thought she moved. Once, I could have sworn she made a sound. ”

  I barely heard him. Why would the queen be here of all places? V’lane said he was keeping her safe in Faery.

  V’lane had lied.

  What else had he lied about?

  Had he brought her here? If not, who had? Why? And why would opening the lid make me scream? I raked my hair back from my face with both hands and tugged on it, staring down. Something was eluding me.

  “Are you absolutely certain it’s the queen of the Seelie in this coffin?” Why would the queen have been summoning me—the concubine? How did she even know who I was, once I’d been reincarnated? It wasn’t as if I still looked like the concubine. It was absurd to think she’d accidentally chosen me. None of this made sense. I couldn’t think of any reason seeing the queen of the Seelie would make me scream.

  “Aye, I’m certain. My ancestors have been painting her for millennia. I’d know her anywhere, even through the ice. ”

  “But why would she call me? What do I have to do with any of this?”

  “My uncles say she has meddled with our clan for thousands of years, preparing us for the moment of her greatest need. Uncle Cian saw her four or five years back, standing behind the balustrade of our Great Hall, watching us. He said she came to him later, in sleep, and told him that she’d been killed in the not-so-distant future and needed us to perform certain tasks to prevent it—and the destruction of the world as we knew it—from coming to pass. She foretold that the walls would come down. We did our best to keep them up. He said that even in the Dreaming, she seemed hunted, weak. I suspect now she was projecting herself from her tomb here in this prison somehow. She said she would return to tell him more but never did. It sounds like she must have meddled with your family, as well. ”

  She’d used me. The queen of the Fae had figured out who I was and used me, and I resented it. Though I knew she was a far-distant successor, not the original queen who had refused to make me—the concubine, I amended—Fae and grant the king’s wish, and despite that she wasn’t actually the bitch who’d sown hatred and revenge when she might have used her vast power for good, how dare any queen of the Seelie use me to rescue her? Me, the concubine! I hated her without even seeing her.

  Would it never end? Would I eternally be a pawn on their chessboard? Would I just keep getting reborn, or forced to drink from the cauldron, or whatever had happened to me to screw up my memories, and used over and over again?

  I turned away, bile rising.

  “What’s important now is that we get her out of here. I can’t go back the way I came. The Silver that dumped me was two stories up, in the side of a cliff. I was stunned by the fall and can’t find the bloody thing again. Where’d you come in, lass?”

  I dragged my gaze from the coffin to him. How to get him out of here was an entirely new problem I hadn’t even thought about. “Well, you certainly can’t go out the way I came in,” I muttered.

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  “Why the bloody hell not?”

  I wondered how much he’d learned about Fae lore in this place. Maybe my sources were wrong and Barrons had died from some other coincidental cause, not because of the mirror at all. Maybe Christian would hear my answer, laugh at me, and tell me my version was a bunch of baloney, that lots of people and Fae could use that mirror, or that Cruce’s curse had messed it up. “Because I came in through the Silver in the king’s bedchamber. ”

  He was silent a moment. “Not funny, lass. ”

  I didn’t say anything, just looked at him.

  “Not possible, either,” he said flatly.

  I pushed my hands into my pockets and waited for him to deal with it.

  “That legend is famous on every world I visited. There are only two who can pass through the king’s Silver,” he said.

  “Maybe Cruce’s curse changed it. ”

  “The king’s Silver was the first he ever made and of a completely different composition. It was unaffected. It continued to be used as a method of execution long after Cruce’s time. ”

  Damn. I’d really been hoping he wouldn’t say that. I turned my back on him and moved to the side of the coffin. The queen of the Fae would make me scream. I wondered why. I was sick of wondering. It was time for truth.

  Behind me, Christian was still talking. “And, duh—you’re neither of those. ”

  “Doona be duh-ing me, laddie,” I mocked something he’d said to me once, taking a stab at humor before my life got totally wrecked by whatever I was about to discover.

  I pressed my hands to the runes at ten and two. Something clicked. There was a soft hiss of air as the lid raised beneath my hands. I could feel the spring in it. All I had to do now was push it aside.

  “Only the Unseelie King and his concubine can use that mirror. ” Christian was still talking.

  I slid the lid away and looked down.

  I was silent for a long moment, absorbing it.

  Then I screamed.

  29

  To my credit, I didn’t scream for long.

  But the short burst in their hellish language was enough to disturb precariously packed snow and ice. My chiming scream echoed off sheer cliffs. Unlike an echo, however, it grew louder with each rebound and I heard a rumble that could presage only one thing: an avalanche.

  My head whipped around. “Grab her!”

  Christian shook his head, cursing. “Christ, you open your bag of stones. You feed me Unseelie. You scream. You’re a walking—”

  “Just grab her and run! Now!”

  He raced to the coffin, then stood, hesitating.

  “What’s wrong with you? Pick her up!”

  “She’s the queen of the Fae. ” Awe tinged his voice. “It’s forbidden to touch the queen. ”

  “Fine, then stay here with her and get buried alive,” I snapped.

  He scooped her up.

  She was so frail, so wasted by … whatever wastes fairies, that I could have carried her myself, but I had no desire to touch her. Ever. Which was really kind of funny in a dark and disturbing way, if I thought about it. So I didn’t.

  Ice cracked and rumbled high above, showering crystals across the dais.

  We needed no further encouragement. We slipped and slid down the frozen ridge and fled the way I’d come, heading for the narrow fissure between cliffs. It was going to be a close race and a tight squeeze with Christian’s shoulders
and with an avalanche chasing us.

  “Why’d you scream, anyway?” he shouted at me over the rumbling.

  “She startled me, is all,” I shouted back.

  “Bloody great. Next time put a sock in it, would you?”

  Neither of us said anything then, focused on trying to outrun being buried alive. I bounced between the walls of the cliffs like a Ping-Pong ball. Twice I lost my footing and went down. Christian went flying over the top of me but somehow managed to hang on to the frail queen. The avalanche chased us, growling like dark thunder, crashing from ravine to canyon, spraying the deep fissure with snow.

  We finally cleared the claustrophobic path through the cliffs, slid on our asses down a steep hill, then raced across the canyon for the towering fortress of black ice.

  “The Unseelie King’s castle!” Christian marveled as we dashed through the towering doors. He looked up, down, and around. “I grew up on tales of this place, but I never imagined I’d see it. I thought the closest I’d get to one of the legendary Tuatha Dé was standing next to a portrait. And here I am, holding the Seelie Queen, in the Unseelie King’s fortress. ” He gave a bitter laugh. “And turning into one of them. ”

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  I murmured the same soft command that had opened the tall doors and heaved a sigh of relief when they slid silently closed on the thundering rush of snow beyond. Would the avalanche I’d started reach the castle? Pile up outside the doors, sealing us in here more securely than any bolt? I waited for Christian to demand to know how I’d shut them, but he was so engrossed in his surroundings, he’d not even noticed.

  “What now?” His fascinated gaze kept sliding between the frail woman in his arms and the interior of the dark fortress.

  “Now we head for the Silver in the king’s boudoir,” I said.

  “Why? I can’t go through and neither can she. ”

  “I can. And I can get help and bring them back to the mirror to talk to you. We’ll make plans to get you out, figure out how and where to meet. ”

  He cocked his head and studied me a moment. “There’s a thing you should know, lass. My truth sensor works just fine here in the Unseelie prison. ”

  “So?”

  “What you just said wasn’t truth. ”

  “I’m going to go through the mirror. Truth?” I said impatiently.