Feversong (Fever, #9)

by Karen Marie Moning

One year five days after I first touched my well-pedicured foot to Ireland’s wild soil—August 8: the day the Sinsar Dubh won.

Though I no longer have a mouth, somehow I scream and scream.

She’s in Hell and I put her there. Through desire, lust, greed, and supremacy.

He’d burned himself to the bone in places, to keep her safe, while she’d tried to rescue someone she’d known full well on some level wasn’t there.

The wound you refuse to dress is one that will never heal. You gush lifeblood and never even know why. It will make you weak at a critical moment when you need to be strong.

he and Mac belonged together like earth and sky, night and day, fire and ice.

She stood near the mattress, staring down, watching the virtually nonexistent rise and fall of his chest through narrowed eyes, hands fisted, accepting that she had a profound aversion to seeing him in pain.

She liked knowing he was out there in the world, alive, doing Ryodan-things no matter how much some of those Ryodan-things aggravated her.

Now her emotions were floating on the surface, and everything hurt.

It won’t always, she suddenly heard his voice clearly inside her head. Kill me fast. The dying never gets easier. But, Jada, the living does.

I’ll be back. I’ll always be back.

I’ve always known what you need. Someone to rage at who’s strong enough to take all the pain and fury you have to dish out until you’ve burned it out of your system and nothing is left but a pile of ashes from which the Phoenix rises. Kid, woman, whatever the hell you are—I want to see you rise. Even if you have to hate me.

The most critical, defining battles we wage in life, we wage alone. Against ourselves.

I’m ready. Only one of us is getting out alive. It’s going to be me.

In fact, I feel…good. All because this man sat down next to me. Such a simple thing, such a powerful thing.

“You came to my couch and joined me in my hell.” He smiles faintly. “Maybe you came to mine.”

We have nothing. Only the current moment. Once you understand that, you know what’s sacred and not, and never lose sight of it again.

But I think whenever you put other people in a cage—any kind of cage—you start to think of them as less real.

She despised cages of any kind and putting Mac in one was the last thing she wanted to do. Once something was shelved, it became far too easy to keep pushing that item back further and further until, draped with cobwebs and dust, it was forgotten.

DESIRE, PURPOSE, AND COMMITMENT TO THE PATH I CHOOSE TO WALK, MacKayla says in a voice just like mine.

I will never let the Book touch it. It’s in my kingdom. That makes it mine.

It’s nice to meet you. Finally. Mac.

There were the things I was willing to live with and the things I wasn’t willing to live without. There was a quiet, deep abiding love of myself—flaws and all, and I had plenty—and the world around me, and it had plenty, too.

One day I just knew. I wasn’t her daughter anymore. I was the dog she’d never wanted.

There was a moment back there in the White Mansion. You didn’t move. I wouldn’t have minded if you had.

Strong enough that I was no longer afraid to be gentle. Powerful enough that I could be vulnerable. Scarred enough that I could understand and tread lightly around the deepest scars of others.

You were a woman who knew her own strength. Powerful. Resolute. Beautiful.

You are my world, Jericho Barrons. Not him. Never him.

It felt good. Safe harbor. Port in a storm. Something in me relaxed, a part of me that maybe never even once relaxed in my whole life.

It was as if time stood still when you hugged, and something was made from someone else’s arms around you, which hugging yourself could never replicate.

“Failure is always new information, and those who are willing to suffer it repeatedly make it a stepping-stone to success.”

He put his arms around me and I sank into them. Ryodan’s arms. Around me. So strange. So strong. Invincible.

This man had always been my nemesis, my punching bag, my rival. But he wasn’t now and I was beginning to wonder if he ever had been.

You love them while you have them and when they’re gone, you grieve. That’s life. At least you had them for a while.”

I’d lose my archnemesis and my mentor and the man that felt so much joy you could almost catch in your hands when he laughed. I didn’t want him dead. I wanted him to be immortal and always out there, with something to tell me, doing something to challenge me. I wanted to know he was alive somewhere, always.

Ryodan made me question myself and pushed me to be the most I could be.

He kissed me like I was the empire he was sworn to protect and would die a thousand deaths to keep secure.

One day she’ll choose a mate. She’ll hunger to be a wolf running with a wolf of her own at her side, equals in everything, and when that time comes, she’ll need to know she’s chosen the absolute best. I am that man.

I will never be her first. But one day I’ll be her last.

know a truth: worrying doesn’t make tomorrow better; it only makes today worse.

It was as if his frequency and my frequency made such an exquisite song together that without it I wasn’t alive.

He’d brought out the best and worst in me, the most of everything. And when you got to have someone like that, anything less was empty, pointless.

Love doesn’t die just because the person does. Everything we felt for each other still exists, Dani. It’s in your heart. Don’t turn it off, wild one. Never turn it off again. The world needs you. And you need the world.

I know a funny thing about eyes. Where you let them look is where they take you. Look back and you stay stuck in a lost, forever unattainable past. Look forward and you live.