Shadowfever

by Karen Marie Moning

  Unless he’d concluded that, if I was the concubine, the king himself was destined to come for me at some point, and that was one foe he might not be able to take on, even in beast form. Perhaps he worried that the king would take his OOP detector, and then where would he be?

  But if you ask her one thing about me, Ms. Lane, he’d murmured against my ear, I’ll kill her where we stand, and you won’t get your little test.

  I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. Could he? In the same way he killed Fae, whatever it was? Yet he didn’t offer it as mercy. I wondered what he was feeling as we moved down a rosy corridor. Did he mourn her, this woman who’d run his store for years, this woman he’d trusted with more of his secrets than he’d ever entrusted to me? He hadn’t offered to kill her swiftly, to end her suffering. He’d used it only as a threat to keep me from prying into his business.

  His face was set in hard, cold lines. He looked down at the top of Fiona’s head and his face changed; then he saw me looking at him and it was again a mask of stone.

  He did mourn her—not her suffering or death but that she’d chosen the path that had led her here. I suspected that he would never have stopped caring for her, and taking care of her, if she hadn’t turned on me. But that action had sealed her fate.

  Barrons was one of the most complicated men I’d ever met and at the same time one of the simplest: You were with him, or you were against him. Period. End of story. You got only one chance with him. And if you betrayed him, you ceased to exist in his world until he got around to killing you.

  Fiona had ceased to exist when she’d let Shades into the bookstore to devour me while I was sleeping—thereby stealing his only chance at something he wanted very badly, whatever it was—and the only thing he felt now was a twinge of wishing it hadn’t turned out this way, a whisper of a regret. Not so long ago he’d put a knife through her heart, and if she hadn’t been eating Unseelie, it would have killed her. He’d been ready to kill her in the alley, and not mercifully.

  I stole another look at him, realizing the full extent of what I’d just been mulling over.

  He thought I’d betrayed him by taking up with Darroc when I’d believed he was dead. But he hadn’t excised me from his life. Whatever he wanted from the Sinsar Dubh, he wanted very badly.

  And according to my own assessment of him, once he had it, he would kill me.

  He must have felt my gaze, because he looked at me.

  Something wrong, Ms. Lane?

  My gaze mocked, Is there anything right about this situation?

  He smiled without humor. Besides the obvious.

  I shook my head.

  You’re looking at me as if you expect me to kill you.

  I jerked. Was I that easy to read?

  You’re wondering what kind of man I am and how I feel about all this.

  I stared.

  You think you betrayed me and one day I will kill you for it.

  I’m not sure why I even bother talking. My eyes flashed with temper. I hated being so transparent.

  That you allied with Darroc to attain your goals did not betray me. I’d have done the same.

  Then why are you so pissy?

  That you fucked him will be forgiven once you fuck me. Another woman might run headlong toward absolution.

  I put an end to our discussion by staring straight ahead.

  It was slow going. Fiona couldn’t move very quickly. We proceeded at a snail’s pace through rose halls, to sunshine, to bronze.

  “The libraries,” Barrons said as we passed. “We’ll stop on the way back, since we’re in here anyway. I want another look around. ”

  I felt a sudden tension in the cloaked figure next to me as the dark hood turned my way.

  I didn’t need to be able to see her face to sense the bitterness of her gaze or divine the morbid turn of her thoughts.

  His comment had driven home that he and I would be walking out of here together and she would be dead. And I knew she thought we would be having a fabulous time, dancing and fighting, having sex and living, while her existence would be over, extinguished as if she’d never been born, unmourned, unmissed.

  I felt hatred emanating from beneath that cloak, malevolent and dark, and was glad to see black floors ahead.

  Page 133

 

  I felt like we were prison guards, taking the long, slow, hellish walk to the electric chair. The convict between us would have done anything to escape her sentence, but fate had left her no choice but to crave oblivion.

  “How?” she whispered, as we entered the black tunnel.

  I looked at Barrons and he looked at me. Once we’d stepped onto the black floors, I’d begun to feel the sexual tension this part of the castle inevitably stirred. One glance at his face confirmed he was feeling it, too.

  I was horrified to realize that Fiona must be feeling it, too.

  Barrons replied tightly, “There is a Silver that divides the chamber of the Unseelie King and the concubine’s. Only those two can step through it. All others die instantly. ”

  “Even … you?”

  So she knew he could die. And come back.

  “Yes. ”

  There was that awful wet sound, laughter but not. “She … knows now. ”

  Barrons gave me a look that clearly said, Shut her up or I’ll end it now.

  “Yes. I know all of it, Fiona,” I lied.

  She moved forward, silent once again.

  * * *

  Christian was asleep in the Unseelie King’s big bed, long black hair a silken fan across a pillow.

  If Fiona hadn’t been skinned and in so much pain, I would have pushed her across the white half of the boudoir into the mirror to get it over with, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch her.

  “Who the—What the fuck?” Barrons stalked across snowy furs, through diamond-studded air, to the enormous Silver, staring at the male in the bed.

  I glanced at the fireplace, expecting to see the concubine, trying to figure out how I would explain things to Barrons if the queen’s memory residue was stretched out there, but the furs were empty, the fire banked to low white embers.

  His voice startled Christian awake; the young Scot rolled over and sprang to his feet.

  Silk sheets dripped from his body, leaving him nude and visibly aroused. For a moment I thought he’d gotten rid of the tattoos, but they appeared, moving up his legs, his groin, and his abdomen, then around the side of his chest, before vanishing again.

  I joined Barrons at the edge of the mirror, trying not to stare, but gorgeous naked men are gorgeous naked men.

  I wondered if memories of the king and queen’s lovemaking had been affecting him the way they’d got to me. His eyes glittered with lazy sensuality, and I could too well imagine the bent of his dreams. He might be difficult to pry out of the chamber when the time came.

  He stood on the dark side of the boudoir and looked at me. “I must be dreaming. Bring that sweet ass over here and I’ll show you what God made women and well-hung Scotsmen for. ”

  “Who the bloody hell is that?” Barrons demanded.

  “Christian MacKeltar. ”

  “That’s not Christian MacKeltar!” Barrons exploded. “That’s Unseelie royalty!”

  “Ah, fuck me. ” Christian ran his hands through his long, dark hair, muscles rippling in his shoulders. “Is that really what I look like, Mac?”

  I almost said, I don’t know, I can’t stop looking at your—

  Fiona pushed me.

  The bitch actually shoved me from behind.

  I was so flabbergasted, I didn’t even gasp. I was speechless. I’d come here on a mission of mercy and she’d tried to kill me again!

  She’d concluded from what Barrons had told her that I would die if I touched the Silver, too, and her final act had been to try to take me with her.

  She pushed me hard enough that I
shot straight through the unresisting Silver and crashed squarely into Christian, knocking him backward onto the bed. We got tangled up in each other, trying to get out.

  Behind me, Barrons roared.

  On top of me, Christian made a raw, horny sound and ground himself against me.

  I sucked air between my teeth. Every instinct in my body wanted to have sex, here, now, with anyone. This place was dangerous. “Christian, it’s the chamber. It makes sex—”

  “I know, lass. Been here awhile. ” He raised one of his arms that was pinning me to the bed. “Get out from under me. Move your ass!” he gritted.

  When I didn’t react instantly, he snarled, “Now! I won’t be able to say it again!”

  I looked at him. His eyes were out of focus, fixed on some point inside me, like a Fae prince. I shot out from beneath him and scrambled from the bed.

  He crouched there a moment on his hands and knees, balls heavy, erection huge and flat to his stomach, then he lunged to his feet, trying to cover himself, his hand a hopelessly inadequate shield. He tried to yank a sheet from the bed, but the black silk was king-sized, for acres of bed. Cursing, he began digging among pillows and furs, looking for his clothes, while I tried not to watch and failed miserably.

  Page 134

 

  “Mac!” Barrons thundered.

  My heart was pounding. I wanted Barrons, not Christian, but the man I wanted was on the other side of the mirror, and this damned half-white, half-black boudoir was Ecstasy on steroids with a shot of adrenaline, and it made things so dreamy and confused …

  It was the awful sound of Fiona’s laughter that broke the spell.

  I turned to see her standing right next to the mirror, looking up at Barrons, her hood down.

  She spoke the longest sentence she’d said tonight.

  “How does it feel to want someone more than they want you, Jericho?” Her voice dripped venom. “If she went through that mirror, she belongs to the king. I hope wanting her eats you alive. I hope he takes her from you. I hope you suffer for all eternity!”

  Barrons said nothing.

  “You should have left me to die where you found me, you bastard,” she said bitterly. “All you did was give me a life that made me want things I couldn’t have. ”

  I would have told her it wasn’t like that at all. Barrons didn’t feel that way about me, or about anyone, but before I could say a word, Fiona threw herself at the mirror.

  I braced myself for her to slam into me.

  I was that sure I wasn’t the Unseelie King.

  I was ready for the stench of her to assault my nostrils, her mutilated body to slam into mine. I would deflect her toward the bed, where I would stab her and put us all out of her misery, once and for all.

  Fiona fell over dead the instant she touched the mirror.

  “Hello, Ms. Concubine,” Barrons mocked.

  Oh, if he only knew.

  But Christian didn’t tell him before we left, and neither did I.

  33

  CONS: Why I’m not the king

  1. I was a baby twenty-three years ago. I saw pictures of me, and I remember growing up. (Unless someone planted false memories. )

  2. I don’t even like the concubine. (Unless I fell out of love with her a long time ago. )

  3. I don’t feel like I’m split into multiple human parts, and I’ve never been attracted to women. (Unless I’m repressing. )

  4. I hate Fae, and especially Unseelie. (Am I overcompensating?)

  5. If I were the king, wouldn’t the Unseelie Princes have known me and not raped me? Wouldn’t somebody … recognize me or something?

  6. Where have I been for six or seven hundred thousand years? And how could I not know about it? (Okay, so maybe somebody forced me to drink from the cauldron. )

  PROS: things that make it look like I could be

  1. I knew what the White Mansion looked like inside. I also knew every step I walked in the Unseelie prison. Same with knowing that Cruce had wings. I have a ton of knowledge I can’t explain having. (Maybe somebody planted memories. If they can plant false ones, why not real ones?)

  2. I’ve been dreaming of the concubine all my life and, even though she was unconscious, she managed to summon me. (Maybe she was manipulating me in the Dreaming like she did the Keltars. )

  3. I can conjure runes that are supposedly part of what was used to reinforce the Unseelie prison walls. (Not sure which column this goes in. Why would the king have helped?) (Maybe it’s part of my sidhe-seer gifts. )

  4. The Book hunts me and plays with me like a cat worrying a mouse. (Can’t think of a way out of this one. There’s obviously something different about me. )

  5. K’Vruck poked at me mentally, then said, “Ah, there you are. ” (WTF????)

  6. I can go through the mirror that only the king and concubine can go through, and the queen is the concubine. Barrons can’t. Fiona couldn’t.

  7. When I was in the White Mansion, I could see the concubine but not the king, which makes perfect sense if it was the king’s memories I was living, because when you’re remembering something, you don’t see yourself in the memory, you see who else was there and what happened around you.

  I dropped my pen and snapped my journal shut. Daddy could have used those last two PROs to get me life without parole.

  I needed to perform more experiments with the Silver. That was all there was to it. Once I proved someone else could go through, I could quit driving myself nuts.

  “Right,” I muttered. “More experiments. Sound like someone else we know?” Like maybe an obsessed king that had experimented an entire race of monsters into being. There was no getting around a brutal fact: If my tests failed, my test subjects would die. Was I so desperate to exonerate myself that I was willing to become a murderer? Sure, I’d killed a lot in the past few months, but in the heat of the fight, not premeditated, and Fiona had wanted to die.

  A pure human would be the best test.

  Page 135

 

  I could probably find someone hanging out at Chester’s who was in love with dying. Or too drunk to—

  Was I losing my humanity? Or had I always been a little short to begin with?

  I clutched my head and groaned.

  Suddenly every muscle in my body tensed as if standing up in greeting, even though I didn’t move. “Barrons. ” I dropped my hands and raised my head.

  “Ms. Lane. ” He took a chair across from me with such eerie grace that I wondered how I’d ever believed he was human. He poured himself into the brocade wing chair, like water over stone, before settling into sleek muscle. He moved as if he knew where everything in the room was, in precise measurements. He didn’t walk, stalk, or prowl; he glided with flawless awareness of all other atoms in relation to his. It made it easy for him to conceal himself behind inanimate objects and to assume a similar … structure or something.

  “Have you always moved like that in front of me and I just never noticed? Was I oblivious?”

  “No and yes. You were oblivious. Head up that tight pink ass. But I never moved this way in front of you. ” His look dripped sexual innuendo. “I might have moved this way a time or two behind you. ”

  “Not hiding anything from me anymore?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. ”

  “What does someone like you conceal?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” His glittering eyes raked me with a hard once-over.

  It had been nearly a week since we’d killed Fiona in the Silvers, and my wardrobe was giving me more fits than ever. I was wearing distressed black leather pants with a tattooed gray grunge element and my favorite baby-doll pink tee that said I’m a JUICY girl across the front and had chiffon cap sleeves. I’d tied a Goth scarf around my blond curls and had on a pair of Alina’s dangling heart earrings. My fingernails had grown out and I’d done a French manicure on my hands, and but I’d pain
ted my toenails black. The dichotomy didn’t end there. I had on a black lace thong and a pink-and-white-striped cotton bra. I was having issues.

  “Identity crisis, Ms. Lane?”

  There was a time when I’d have fired back a pithy retort. But I was drunk on the moment: sitting in my bookstore, sipping hot cocoa, staring across a coffee table at Barrons by candle and firelight, with my journal and iPod handy and the assurance that my parents were well and my world was mostly fine except for my own little personality crisis. Friends and loved ones were safe. I breathed. So did the people that mattered to me. Life was good.

  Not long ago, I’d thought I would never step foot in this place again. Never see the faint, sexy lift of his lips that told me he was amused but still waiting to be really wowed. Never bicker and banter and argue and plan. Never bask in the knowledge that, so long as the previous owner of this establishment was alive, this place would stand bastion in far more than mere latitude and longitude, keeping Dark Zones, fairies, and monsters at bay. It was the place of last defense in my heart.

  Although I hated him for letting me grieve, I couldn’t be more grateful that he was unkillable, because it meant I would never have to grieve him again.

  I could never be broken about Barrons. Nothing could hurt me where he was concerned, because he was as certain as the nightfall, he would recur as eternally as the dawn. I still had questions about what he was and concerns about his motives, but they could wait. Time might sort things out in ways pushing and prying never could. “I don’t have any idea what to wear anymore, so I tried to cover all bases. ”

  “Try skin. ”

  “Little chilly for that. ”

  We looked at each other across the coffee table.

  His eyes didn’t say, I’d heat you up, and mine didn’t say What are you waiting for? His didn’t reply, Fuck if I’m making the first move, so I was careful not to say, I wish you would, because I can’t, because I’m … and he didn’t snap … choking on your pride?!

  “As if you aren’t. ”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Really, Barrons,” I said drily. “I’m not the only one who didn’t just not have that conversation, and you know it. ”

  There was the faint, sexy lift of his lip. “You’re a piece of work, Ms. Lane. ”

  “Right back at you. ”

  He changed the subject. “The Keltar moved their wives and children into Chester’s. ”