Shadowfever
Page 38

I will not ask Darroc what happened to my parents after I was swept off to the Hall of All Days, and he doesnt offer the information.
If he told me they were dead, too, I dont know what Id do.
I suspect this is another of his tests. I will pass it.
Thats my girl, Daddy encourages in my mind. Chin up; you can do it. I believe in you, baby. Sis-boom-bah! he says, and smiles. Even though he hadnt wanted me to pursue cheerleading, hed still driven me to tryouts, and when Id made the first cut, hed had one of his clients at Petit Patisserie bake me a special cake shaped like a pair of pink and purple pom-poms.
I double over like Ive been kicked in the stomach, and my mouth wrenches wide on a sob that makes no sound because I inhale it at the last second.
Darroc is out there with the princes. I dont dare betray grief. I dont dare make a sound that they might hear.
Daddy was my greatest cheerleader, always telling me wise things I rarely listened to and never understood. I should have taken the time to understand. I should have spent more time focused on who I was inside and less on who I was outside. Hindsight, 20/20.
Tears run down my face. As I turn away from the mirror, my knees go out from under me and I collapse to the bathroom floor in a heap. I curl into a ball, silently heaving.
Ive held it at bay as long as I can. Grief crashes over me, drowning me. Alina. Barrons. Mom and Dad, too? I cant bear it. I cant keep it all in.
I cram a fist in my mouth to stop my screams.
I cant let anyone hear. He would know Im not what I pretend to be. What I must be to fix my world.
There I sat on the couch with him, looking at my sister in all those pictures. And each one reminded me how, when we were little, in every single picture taken of us together, her arm was around me, protecting me, watching out for me.
She was happy in the pictures Darroc showed me. Dancing. Talking with friends. Sightseeing. Hed taken so many of her photo albums from her apartment. Left us with hardly any. As if the paltry few months hed spent with her gave him more right to her possessions than mewhod spent my whole life loving her!
I hadnt been able to trace my fingers over her face in front of him because it would have betrayed emotion, weakness. Id had to lavish all my attention on him. Hed watched me the entire time with those glittering copper eyes, absorbing every detail of my reaction.
I knew it would be a deadly mistakeand the last I ever madeto underestimate the ancient, brilliant mind behind those cold metallic eyes.
After what seemed like years of torture, he finally began to look tired, yawning, even rubbing his eyes.
I forget his body is human, subject to limits.
Eating Unseelie doesnt keep you from needing sleep. Like caffeine or speed, itwires you hard but, when you crash, you crash just as hard. I suspect thats a large part of the reason he never sleeps more than one night in the same place. Its when hes most vulnerable. I imagine it must chafe, to have a human body that needs sleep after having been Fae and not needing anything for eternity.
I decide thats when Ill kill him. When hes sleeping. After Ive gotten what I want. Ill wake him and, while hes still feeling humanly muddled, Ill smile and drive my spear through his heart. And Ill say, This is for Alina and for Jericho.
My fist isnt keeping my sobs down.
Theyre beginning to leak around it in soft moans. Im lost in pain, fragments of memories crashing over me: Alina waving good-bye at the gate the day she left for Dublin; Mom and Dad tied to chairs, gagged and bound, waiting for a rescue that never came; Jericho Barrons, dead on the ground.
Every muscle in my body spasms and I cant breathe. My chest feels hot, tight, crushed beneath a massive weight.
I fight to keep the sobs in. If I open my mouth to breathe, theyll come out, but Im waging a hopeless battle: Sob and breathe? Or dont sob and suffocate?
My vision starts to dim. If I lose consciousness from holding my breath, at least one great cry will explode from me.
Is he at my door, listening?
I dredge my mind for a memory to banish the pain.
When I recovered from being Pri-ya, I was horrified to realize that, although my time with the princes and afterward at the abbey was blurred, I retained every single memory of what Barrons and I had done together in bed in graphic detail.
Now Im grateful for them.
I can use them to keep myself from screaming.
Youre leaving me, Rainbow Girl.
Nothats the wrong one!
I rewind, fast.
There. The first time he came to me, touched me, was inside me. I give myself over to it, replaying every detail in loving memory.
In time, Im able to remove my fist. The tension in my body eases.
Warm in memories, my body shivers on the cold marble bathroom floor.
Alinas cold. Barrons is cold.
I should be cold, too.
* * *
When I finally sleep, the cold invades my dreams. I pick my way through jagged-edged ravines gouged into cliffs of black ice. I know this place. The paths I walk are familiar, as if Ive walked them a hundred times before. Creatures watch me from caverns chiseled into the frozen walls.
I catch glimpses of the beautiful, sad woman slipping barefoot across the snow, just ahead. Shes calling to me. But each time she opens her mouth, an icy wind steals her words. You mustI catch, before a gust carries the rest of her sentence away.