Shadowfever
Page 154

He freezes. I cant see his face. Hes behind me. Its part of why I can say it. I dont think I could say it to his face and see myself reflected in his eyes.
I wasnt going to unmake the world for my sister. Id loved her all my life. Id known him for only a few short months.
Might have been a bit strenuous for your first attempt at creation, he says finally. Hes trying not to laugh. I tell him I would have doomed mankind for him, and he tries not to laugh.
It wouldnt have been my first attempt. Im a pro. You were wrong. I am the Unseelie King, I tell him.
He begins moving again. After a while, he pulls me around and kisses me. Youre Mac, he says. And Im Jericho. And nothing else matters. Never will. You exist in a place that is beyond all rules for me. Do you understand that?
I do.
Jericho Barrons just told me he loves me.
What was your plan? I ask much later. When we got the Book locked down, how were you going to get the spell you wanted?
The Unseelie have never drunk from the cauldron. All of them know the First Language. I made a few deals, set things in motion.
I shake my head, frowning at myself. Sometimes I miss the most obvious things.
But now I have you.
Ill be able to read it. That was creepy. Now at least I knew why I had such a strong negative reaction to the Sinsar Dubh. All my sins were trapped between its covers. And the damn thing just wouldnt go away. Id tried to escape culpability, and my culpability had had the nerve to take on a life of its own and hunt me.
I understood why it stalked me. Once it had become sentienta mind with no feet, no wings, no method of locomotion and nothing else in all of existence quite like it, except me, and Id obviously despised itit must have hated me. And since it was me, it loved me, too. The Book Id written had become obsessed with me. It wanted to hurt me, not kill me.
Because it wanted my attention.
So many things made sense now that Id accepted I was the king.
Id wondered why the Silvers had always been so hard for me to get in and out of. Cruces curse, which had really been cast by the other Unseelie Princes, had sensed me and tried to keep me out. Of course I knew my way around the black fortress and the Unseelie hell. It had been my home. Every step had been instinctive because Id walked those icy paths millions of times, called greetings to the cliffs, wept for the cruel confinement of my sons and daughters. I understood why the concubines memories had played out before my eyes but the kings had sort of slid into my brain. I knew now why Id known the command to open the doors to the kings fortress.
I might be the king, but at least I was the good king. I preferred to think of myself as the Seelie King,because Id eradicated all my evil. The obsessed maniac whod done experiments on anything and everything to achieve his ends was out there in Book form, not inside me, and that was no small comfort. Id chosen to get rid of my evilId made a choice, like Barrons had saidand Id been trying to destroy those blackest parts of me ever since.
Barrons was speaking. Id forgotten we were talking.
Im counting on you being able to read it. Makes everything simpler. We just have to figure out how to capture it with three stones and no Druids. Im damned if Im letting those fucks near it again.
I looked down at the silver and gold chain, the stone housed in the ornate gilt cage. Did I even need the stones or the Druids to trap my Book, or was the amulet what Id been hunting for all along? I certainly fit into the inhabited or possessed category. I was the king of the Fae inside a female humans body.
I wondered how the concubine had lost the amulet. Who had taken it from her, betrayed me? Had someone abducted her, faked her death, then whisked her off to the Seelie court while Id been insane with grief, busy divesting myself of my sins?
She never would have taken it off willingly, yet here it was, in the world of man. If someone had come for her, might she have cast it off rather than let it fall into the wrong hands, patiently sowing clues, taking her chances that one day events would align, I would remember, and we would escape whatever had been done to us and be together again? Too bad I didnt want to be with her.
Shed always hated illusion. When shed planted gardens and added on to the White Mansion, shed done it in the old ways. The Faery court reverted to nothingness if the Fae attending it failed to maintain it. The White Mansion had been fashioned differently and would stand the test of time with or without her, apart from anyone.
How had she become the Seelie Queen? Who had kidnapped her, interred her in a tomb of ice, and left her to a slow death in the Unseelie hell? What games were being played, what agenda was being pursued? I knew the patience of immortality. Who among the Fae had been biding their time, waiting for the perfect moment, the ultimate payday?
The timing would have to be flawless.
All the Seelie and Unseelie Princesses would have to be dead and the queen killed at the precise momentthere could be no contenders to the throne of matriarchal poweronce whoever it was had merged with or acquired all the knowledge from the Book.
All the power of the Seelie Queen and the Unseelie King would be deposited in a single vessel.
I shuddered. That could never be permitted to happen. Anyone with that much power would be unstoppable by anyone, by any means. He or she would be undefeatable, uncontrollable, unkillable. In a word: God. Or Satan, with the home court advantage. We would all be doomed.