Shadowfever - Moning Karen Marie - Страница 59

Speaking of dreams—how could my slumbering mind conjure up a fourth prince that I’d never seen? How could I have known Cruce had wings?

I could sense the Sinsar Dubh. It kept finding me, liked to play with me. Why? Because in an earlier incarnation—when it had been the Unseelie King, not a book of the banished knowledge—it had loved me? Did I sense it because I’d loved the earlier incarnation of it?

I buried my hands in my hair and tugged, as if the pain might clarify my thoughts or perhaps fortify my will.

See me, Barrons kept saying.

And, more recently, If you can’t face the truth of your reality, you can’t control it.

Ryodan had been right: I was a loose cannon, but not for the reason he thought.

I didn’t know the truth of my reality. And until I did, I was a wild card, something that could flip. The question keeping me awake at night wasn’t whether or not sidhe-seers were an Unseelie caste. That was small compared to my problem. The question that kept me from sleeping was much more alarming.

Impossible as it seemed, was I somehow the Unseelie King’s concubine? Reincarnated and brought back to life in a new body? Fated for her inhuman lover, destined to a tragic cycle of rebirth?

And just what were Barrons and his eight? My ill-fated lover split into nine human vessels? That was a doozy of a thought. No wonder the concubine had found the king insatiable. How could one woman handle nine men?

“What are you doing, Ms. Lane?” As if my thoughts had conjured him, Barrons’ voice slid out of the darkness behind me.

I looked at him. I’d flipped on the exterior lights outside BB&B, powered by the store’s immense generators, but the light was at his back and he was heavily shadowed. Still, I would have known it was him even if I were blind. I could feel him on the air; I could smell him.

He was furious with me. I didn’t care. He was back. He was alive. My heart did a flip-flop. I thrilled to his presence. I would anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances. No matter what he was, what he’d done. Even if he was one-ninth of the Unseelie King who’d begun it all.

“Something’s seriously wrong with me,” I said, half under my breath.

“Just now figuring that out, are you?”

I gave him a look. “Good to see you alive again.”

“Good to be alive.”

“Do you really mean that?” He’d made comments about death in the past, which now made sense to me. Apparently he would never experience it, and at times he’d seemed almost … envious.

“Nice tan. You just can’t stay away from the Fae when I’m gone, can you? Did V’lane take you to the beach again? Did you get a sand burn when he fucked you?”

“Are you the Unseelie King, Barrons? Is that what you and your eight are? Different facets of you, crammed into human form, while you search Dublin for your missing Book?”

“Are you the concubine? The Book certainly seems enamored of you. Can’t stay away. Kills everyone else. Plays with you.”

I blinked. He was always way ahead of me, and he didn’t even know about my dream of the winged prince or my deja vu experience in the mansion. We’d been thinking the same things about each other. I’d had no idea he’d been wondering if I was the allegedly dead concubine.

“There’s one way to find out. You keep telling me to see you, to face the truth. I’m ready.” I held out my hand.

“If you think I’m letting you into my head again, you’re wrong.”

“If you think you could stop me if I wanted to, you’re wrong.”

“Aren’t you full of yourself?” he mocked.

“I want you to come somewhere with me,” I said. Did Barrons know full well what he was and would just never admit to it? Was it possible the king could subdivide himself into human parts and forget who he was? Or had he been tricked into human form, his individual facets forced to drink from the cauldron, and now the most feared of the Unseelie walked the earth with no greater clue to what he was than his oblivious concubine?

One way or another, I wanted answers. I was sure enough of the truth about myself to run the gauntlet. If I was wrong about him, he didn’t have much to lose, just the equivalent of a few days’ “nap.” And somehow I knew that wouldn’t be the case. I was right about this one. I had to be.

He stared at me in silence.

“C’mon, Barrons. What’s the worst that can happen? I lead you into some trap and you die for however long it is you go away? Not that I’m going to,” I added hastily.

“It’s hardly pleasant, Ms. Lane. It’s also highly inconvenient.”

Inconvenient. That’s what dying for me back on the cliff had been. An inconvenience. And I’d been ready to wipe out a world for him. “Fine. Do what you want. I’m going.”

I turned and pushed into the wall.

“What the fuck do you think you’re—get your ass out of—Ms. Lane! Fuck! Mac!”

As I vanished into the wall, I felt his hand close on my coat, and I laughed. He’d called me Mac, and I wasn’t even dying.

“Which mirror now, Ms. Lane?” He glanced around the white room, scanning the ten mirrors.

“Fourth from the left. Jericho.” I was sick of him calling me Ms. Lane. I picked myself up off the white floor. Once again the Silver had spit me out with entirely too much enthusiasm, and I didn’t even have the stones on me. I didn’t have anything but the spear in my holster, a protein bar, two flashlights, and a bottle of Unseelie in my pockets.

“You don’t have the right to call me Jericho.”

“Why? Because we haven’t been intimate enough? I’ve had sex with you in every possible position, killed you, fed you my blood in the hopes that it would bring you back to life, crammed Unseelie into your stomach, and tried to rearrange your guts. I’d say that’s pretty personal. How much more intimate do we have to get for you to feel comfortable with me calling you Jericho? Jericho.”

I expected him to pounce on the sex-in-every-possible-position comment, but he only said, “You fed me your—”

I pushed into the mirror, cutting him off. Like the first one, it resisted me, then grabbed me and squirted me out on the other side.

His voice preceded his arrival. “You bloody fool, do you never stop to consider the consequences of your actions?” He barreled out of the mirror behind me.

“Of course I do,” I said coolly. “There’s always plenty of time to consider the consequences. After I’ve screwed up.”

“Funny girl, aren’t you, Ms. Lane?”

“Sure am. Jericho. It’s Mac. I’m Mac. No more fake formality between us. Get with the program or get the hell out of here.”

His dark eyes flared. “Big talk. Ms. Lane. Try to enforce it.” Challenge burned in his gaze.

I sauntered toward him. He watched me coldly and I was reminded of the other night, when I’d pretended to be coming on to him, because I was angry. He thought I was doing it again. I wasn’t. Being in the White Mansion with him was doing something strange to me. Unraveling all my inhibitions, as if these walls had no tolerance for lies, or within them there was no need.

Then he was staring past me. “I don’t believe it. We’re in the White Mansion. You just casually lead me in here like you’re running errands to the drugstore. I’ve been looking for this bloody place forever.”

“I thought you’d been everywhere.” He’d never been here? Or did he not remember being here, long ago, in another incarnation?

He turned in a slow circle, absorbing the white marble floors, the high arched ceilings, the columns, the sparkling windows opening on a brilliant, frosted winter’s day. “I knew where it was supposed to be, but the White Mansion shows itself only when and to whom it chooses. This is incredible.” He walked to the window and stared out. Then he turned on me. “Have you found the libraries?”

“What libraries?” I was having a hard time looking at him, mesmerized by the glittering winter day beyond his shoulder. How many times had I sat in that snowy garden, surrounded by dazzling ice sculptures and frozen fountains, waiting for him?