Burned (Fever #7)

by Karen Marie Moning

She is motionless a long moment. Finally she slices her head once to the left. I laugh. I shove my hand down her pants, the fifth button pops off and clatters across the floor, I push my finger inside her and her knees go out from under her as she clamps down on me, hard. She’s so fucking wet. We go down to the floor together. “I’m sick of feeling like this,” she hisses. “I hate my life. I hate everything about it!” She strangles me with my tie, clumsy in her haste to get it off. Still living in the world where boys undress completely and girls lie back and wait. Only two things need to be naked. “Fuck the tie. Unzip my pants.” She yanks it open so hard she breaks the zipper of my ten-thousand-dollar suit. I pick her up by the waist of her jeans and dump her out of them. She pushes up from the floor to turn but I’m behind her. I shove her back to the floor. “Stay there. I want you this way.” “But you said I could—” “Your turn next.” “This is about me, remember? That’s what you said. I want what I want now.” “Try, Ms. Lane, just try.” To her credit, she does. But I’m stronger. I get my way first, not that she’s complaining from the noise she’s making. Fist in her hair, I spread her legs wide as they’ll go, crush her flat to the floor. Later I’ll take her on her hands and knees. Now I need her still as I can keep her. I grind between her legs and she makes a choking noise. Slick with all that wet she supposedly wasn’t, I drive into her. Air explodes from us both. She arches ...

I leave just before dawn. At the door I turn back and look at her. And shake my head. Her back is to me. She’s wrapped a sheet around herself. “Mac.” She turns slowly and I say Fuck beneath my breath. Already she’s changing. It began when I started putting my clothes on. Now it’s nearly complete. Her eyes are different. Wary, guarded, tinged with that human emotion I despise the most: regret. I was wrong. She wasn’t ready. Not yet. By noon she’ll hate me. By tonight she’ll have convinced herself I raped her. By tomorrow she’ll hate herself.

Then I bend over her, touch her face, whisper the ancient words of a druid spell, and when I am done the only memories she retains of this night are of conversation and threat. She will never know that tonight she was mine.

Don’t hide your mistakes, ’Cause they’ll find you, burn you —“Get Out Alive” by Three Days Grace

Some of us are born more than once. Some of us re-create ourselves many times. Ryodan says adaptability is survivability. Ryodan says a lot of stuff. Sometimes I listen. All I know is every time I open my eyes, My brain kicks on, something wakes up deep in my belly And I know I’ll do anything it takes. To. Just. Keep. Breathing. —From the journals of Danielle O’Malley

I hate mys— “Never say that.” “I didn’t,” I mutter. Not technically. “You are what you are. Find a way to live with it.” “Easier said than done.” “Someone told you life was easy. You believed them,” he mocks.

When R’jan, the Seelie Prince who claims to be the new king, enters, the Unseelie snarl like feral beasts. R’jan reminds me of V’lane, before he dropped the mask, revealing his true Unseelie self, Prince Cruce. Gold-dusted skin pours like velvet over a powerful body; he has the face of a stunning, imperious Archangel. Long blond hair falls past his waist, unbound. He, too, has modified himself into something elegantly human, with fawn leather pants and dark boots, a creamy cashmere sweater, a gold torque at his throat. R’jan laughs and dismisses his dark brothers with a regal, condescending wave as if shooing a bothersome fly from a banquet surely called in honor of him.

LOR “Who am I?” the blonde kneeling between my legs demands. I need to come so fucking bad my teeth hurt. I know the answer she wants. She wants me to call her “mistress.” Like she’s the Dom. She’s already tried to get me to say it twice, sneaking it in like she thinks I won’t notice because of the mind-blowing stuff she’s been doing with her lips and tongue and that flawlessly executed glide of teeth so few women ever master when giving head. She’s wasting her time. It’s never going to happen. There isn’t a submissive bone in my body. I’m alpha to the motherfucking core. I pull her head from my groin and grin down at her. Hot, horny blondes are a dime a dozen at Chester’s. Riots may have sacked Dublin last Halloween and a killer freeze might have shut the city down for a while, but it’s rebounding fast. People have been flooding in, resettling both sides of the River Liffey, drawn by the thaw, restored power, and supplies, but most of all by the endless parade of sexually insatiable Fae that pack the bars and dance floors of 939 Rêvemal Street every night of the week, hunting human lovers. The hottest, most deadly nightclub in Dublin is bigger, better, and badder than ever: Chester’s is Sin Central—if you want it, we got it. “You’re not that good, honey.” I flash her a grin. My comment is guaranteed to spark one of two things: either she’ll get up and walk out pissed or I’ll get even better head. I know by her confidence—and the hungry way she’s been watching me all night...

I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on it. I’m not easy to fool. Well, sans blond hair and curves enough to happily smother a man. She’s dark Fae. Twisted buggers, one and all, some more than others. And she wanted me to call her Princess … Unseelie. Princess. I narrow my eyes, staring up at her. Nah. The dark king never got around to making them. They’re a myth. They don’t exist. Damn good thing, too. The Unseelie Princes are problem enough. Oh, honey, she purrs in my mind, we certainly do. Trapped in a library for a small eternity. One of yours let us out. Good thing, too. Men have too much power on this world. We will fix that. “Get the fuck off me.” You called me mistress. You said you would die for me. I own you. I laugh. “Yeah, right. Try pursuing that thought.” I shove her off me but my hands go the wrong way, fly up over my head, and abruptly I’m slammed flat on my back, with both wrists manacled to one end of the desk. Links snake around my throat. My waist. My ankles. Fuck me. I’m chained. I lunge up, testing the links, snarling. Magic doesn’t work on me. Neither does glamour. Yet both seem to be. What the hell is going on? We are a singular recipe. His final creation. Improved by the Sweeper. She smiles and there are those frigging shark teeth again. I’m immobilized, pants at my ankles, dick sticking straight up, and this bitch has shark teeth. I’m beginning to think this might not be one of my finer nights. “Say it again,” she says, but now she’s all icy, imperiou...

I feel Kat’s tension. I say, “You are in charge at the abbey. She won’t take it from you. If we must enforce it, we will.” “I’m not so sure I’d be entirely sorry to see it go,” she murmurs. I look at her, startled, wondering if I heard her right. She’s looking at Sean, her expression bleak. I ponder the irony that she denounced her mafia parents years ago to escape this very fate, yet now sits with us making barbarous laws in a barbarous time, enforcing them without mercy.

She scans bodies and faces, seeking the one she desires: the more beautiful, the better. She would select one of the mysterious Nine that work behind the scenes of this club, but the monster she hunts may find them too barbaric or perhaps too dangerous to take the bait. Their formidable reputation precedes them into distant lands. She has found mention of the Nine in millennia-old annals, tracked them into present times through paintings and photographs. She has identified six of them by name, knows a seventh only by his long silver hair and dark burning eyes. She found a very old portrait of him in Romania that astounds. She knows two of them are half brothers, with different fathers, although the world would never guess it by looking. She knows the sorrow the one she will permit to live may feel, but her ledgers must be balanced. She has been unable to cement either face or name for the remaining two into the meticulous compartments of her memory. The single time she saw all nine of them in one place, one was hooded, the other’s face too heavily painted to see. Knowledge is power. Kasteo, Barrons, Fade, Ryodan, Lor, Daku.

She nearly smiles at the last name. He was once a gladiator for sheer love of the game, and in another century and land, an epic samurai. She anticipates their battle second most. Their ways are as vile as the Fae, yet two of the six names she knows are not on her list. Two of them she will permit to live.

You can’t seek a weapon to use against it. You must become that weapon, Barrons has said over and over.

Ryodan curses and does exactly what I would have done, lopes alongside and explodes in, managing to dwarf the cavernous interior. “Strip my gears, woman, you’re dead.” I shoot him a derisive look. “I haven’t stripped gears since I was ten.” I step on it and shift rapidly. “Big Wheels don’t count,” Ryodan mocks. “My daddy’s sixty-four-and-a-half Mustang.” After that debacle, Mom and Dad no longer left any keys hanging by the garage door. Sherriff Bowden brought me home. I’d made it a half a mile of screeching, jerking stops and starts that apparently the entire town of Ashford was witnessing out their nosy windows. The pillows I’d packed in to help me reach the pedals and steering wheel had worked as air bags when I hit the telephone pole. It had been a while before Daddy got over that one. Then he’d done what any wise parent would have: taught me to drive. Give me raw, testy, ferocious power any day of the week. I can find the sweet spot in my sleep.

“Has it broken free, lass?” Dageus asks, looking at me. Cautiously, I reach out for the Book entombed, hoping the one inside me doesn’t explode into violent life. KILL THE PRINCE CRUSH HIM DEVOUR HIM DESTROY HIM MAKE HIM BURN!!!!! I grit my teeth to keep from clutching my head and groaning out loud. Yes, it’s still beneath the abbey, and apparently, much as the king despises his book, my book despises the king’s book. Whatever happened to the good old days when books just got along, cozied up together on bookshelves, hanging out, waiting to be read?

I’m no longer certain what worries me more: the danger beneath Chester’s, the one beneath the abbey, or the one inside me. I’d like them all to go away. Reverse order would be just swell. “Do you think things will ever get back to normal?” Barrons gives me a look. “They were normal? Did I miss that century?” Ryodan says, “Fuck normal. Give me a good war any day.” “No shit, boss,” Fade agrees. Drustan snorts. “You’re daft, the lot of you. I’d give my left nut for a century of peace.” The rest of the Keltar heartily agree, adding various body parts to the mix. Surrounded by alpha males that know more magic than all the teachers at Hogwarts, I’m about to ask who’s going to do what to get us through the gate, when it becomes a moot point. Powered by an unseen hand, it begins to move slowly open.

“Why have you brought Unseelie inside our walls, Mac?” Shauna says grimly. I sigh. “I didn’t. They, I—” Shit, how do I explain this one? I blurt, “I was trying to do a spell and it backfired and they’ve been stuck to me like glue ever since.” I practically roll my own eyes. It’s the weakest lie I’ve ever heard myself tell. Dageus gives me a look. Ryodan laughs. “They’re harmless,” I add. “They don’t even kill anything. They just stalk me.” “The Unseelie doesn’t exist that doesn’t kill,” Josie says coolly. Sorcha moves past me, inspecting them from a cautious distance. Then she surprises me by saying, “I’m not certain they’re Unseelie, Mac.” I frown. “What else could they be?” “I don’t know but they’re … different.”

“Dani,” Ryodan whispers. “For fuck’s sake, now isn’t the time. Either of you. I said we’ll discuss it later, Ms. Lane. And Ryodan, we’ll find her.” Barrons snarls, “Focus on the moment.” “I am,” I clip stiffly. “Forgive the fuck out of me if this moment got tangled up with the one you stole from me.” “Easy to thieve that of which one was so eager to be quit,” he barks, harsh and rapid as hostile fire. Ryodan says carefully, “We just did.” “Did what?” I snap, not following him at all. Things are happening too fast. My brain is rubber cement, sticky and nonabsorptive. I should run. I’m in the abbey. They know what I am. They’re going to lock me up. Imprison me next to Cruce. “Find Dani,” Ryodan says. “What the fuck are you nattering about?” Barrons practically shouts. “Who even says words like ‘natter’?” I know the answer. Men who steal people’s memories. “I don’t natter.” “Spell it the fuck out,” Barrons snarls. “Jada,” Ryodan says tightly, “is. Dani.”

I go inside my head and become that other me, the one I don’t tell anybody about. The observer. She can’t feel hunger in her belly or cramped muscles from being in a cage for days on end. She isn’t Dani. She can survive anything. Feel nothing. See what’s in front of her for exactly and only what it is. Her heart doesn’t break a little every time her mom leaves. And she holds no price too high for survival. I don’t let go of myself and seek her often because once I got stuck there and she took over and the things she did … I live in terror that one day I won’t get to be Dani again.

I doona ken the how and when it happens, so I doona ken how to prevent it, short of locking you away and that’s no’ a life. Time is tricky. It may or may not come to pass, but if it does it will test you beyond imagining. If that hour comes, you must hold on to one thing. I shiver again. What? Love. You can only be broken without it. So long as the smallest spark of love, pure, protective, and good, exists within you, that which is Keltar in you will survive. You will return.

You must face the fire. I doona ken how long you must endure. You must hold on, remain aware. You must be prepared when your opportunity arises, or it will fail. Uncle Dageus laughs softly. Every man’s time comes eventually. It will not, however, be yours. With luck, you’ll live forever.

MAC I have a small psychotic break, overwhelmed by too many shocks to process. My brain pulls the plug on my body. I should run. I should figure out how to make my feet move. At the moment they are neither attached to my ankles nor controlled by conscious thought. I flip channels, my remote stuck on three train-wreck movies I can’t stop watching: I​had​sex​with​Barronsand​he​took​my​memory/​they​know​I’m​the​Sinsar​Dubh/​JadaisDani/​WTF​?

“She is who doesn’t belong here. Faulty logic imprisons one Sinsar Dubh while the other is permitted to roam Dublin. It is what it is regardless of the vessel.” “Oh, you should so talk,” I snap. “Dani.” “I. Am. Jada.” “Whoever the fuck you are,” Barrons growls, “you’re not touching Mac.” “Well, you’re not touching me either,” I growl up at him. “Deal with it, Ms. Lane.” “Deal with it?” I say incredulously. “Ms. Lane, my bloody ass. You called me Mac that very night, that first night we met and screwed our brains out, and what do I get ever since? I’ll tell you what I—” “During. You changed. You became the woman after. A stiff blindered horse that spooked on new terrain. I expected better—” “Oh, and because your expectations weren’t met—” “They were bloody well exceeded, which is why the after—” “You think you have the right to just strip the entire experience from one party to the—” “—was such a grand disappointment, and if—” “—event as if they—” “It wasn’t an ‘event.’ It was a motherfucking revelation.” “—don’t even have the right to remember whatever the hell mistake they—” “Which is precisely why I did it. You thought it was a mistake, then you—” “—chose to make, just like they might choose to keep the memory, because after all, they were there and it was theirs and possession is nine-tenths of—” “—started getting all tight-lipped and pissy and I knew if—” “—law.” “I am the law.” “Apparently. Heil.” I click my heels together and salute. “Can’t you two find a better fuck...

erstwhile

adjective adjective: erstwhile former. "his erstwhile rivals"

I’m halfway to Chester’s when I turn the corner and run smack into the Dreamy-Eyed Guy who’s standing outside an old brownstone converted to condos, looking up. I flail for balance, taking a third soaking which I hardly even notice. My savior is here, standing before me in the flesh! He’ll take back his Book and I’ll be visible again and go saunter around in front of Green Camo girl and prove I’m no longer a threat! “There you are,” I exclaim excitedly. “Not quite,” the Dreamy-Eyed Guy says. “But then you aren’t quite either. Quite the couple we make. You’ve chocolate on your face.” Freaking figures. I scrub irritably at my chin, my cheek. “We need to talk.” I snatch the human form of the Unseelie King by his arm before he vanishes on me again. Like other large objects I touch, he remains visible. He locks surreally beautiful eyes with mine, staring right through my invisibility cloak, but why wouldn’t he? It’s an illusion perpetrated by a part of him. “What have you done now, Beautiful Girl?” “Not me. You. It’s your fault.” “Fault schmault. Lies in the stars.” Not about to get sucked into an existential debate, I get to the point. “Get your Book out of me.” “Talking to it?” “No,” I deny instantly. “It talks to me. I almost never answer.” “Cold fire. Jumbo shrimp.” “Huh?” I don’t want the half-mad king. I want the sane one. “Almost never: oxymoron. Risky couplings. Gray lies.” He removes my hand from his arm. “Not my book.” “Bullshit. You made it.” I latch onto his arm aga...

I stomp my foot on the sidewalk, slip and fall on my ass into the overflowing gutter. “Fucking fairies,” I yell, shoving wet hair from my face. “I hate you. All of you. Fuck you, Dreamy-Eyed Guy!”

After drying myself off thoroughly in one of the restrooms, I make every effort to stride purposefully across the crowded dance floors of Chester’s, but were I visible, someone watching would see an erratic zig followed by a stumbling zag that vaguely resembles a drunken bumblebee.

It’s impossible to avoid people who have no idea I’m there. I take two pops to my rib cage from flailing elbows, a backhand to my jaw (they call this dancing?), and a fist to my thigh (really, who gyrates like that?) before I even clear the first subclub. I pause in an unoccupied space between clubs, assessing my surroundings, seeking the clearest path.

“She’s a vessel for the Sinsar Dubh, has virtually unlimited power at her disposal, there for the taking. I’m not certain you or I could resist such temptation.” He’s not? Shit, shit, shit. That’s it. I’m doomed. “She managed it once. She’ll do it again. Mac’s got a light inside her that’s inextinguishable.”

“Fade, get your ass down to Lor’s room and untie Jo.” He’s silent a moment. “It’s none of your fucking business why Jo’s tied up there. Just do it. And I don’t care what that woman says or does, I don’t care if she’s suddenly snatched up by a tornado and dropped straight on your dick, you will not fuck her.” Another silence. “Yes, she’s naked. No, that’s not ‘cool.’ Fuck you, Fade. Forget it. Take one of the waitresses down. You will remain outside the door while she goes in and unties her. Then tell Jo she’s fired.” Silence. “I don’t care what the waitress thinks. Fire her, too.”

“The Unseelie Princesses.” “So far we have seen only the one. Met recently with Jada. They conspire to trade services.” “For.” “Jada offered to kill the Unseelie Princes in exchange for the location of the Crimson Hag. The princess is considering it.”

Ryodan stands up and walks around the desk, a signal even I can read for Lor to get up and leave. I’m surprised he’s letting him. Lor’s got hell to pay, and Ryodan is the devil that collects. Taking his cue, Lor rises. “Sure, boss.” His brow furrows like he’s hunting for words. After a moment he adds, “Like I said earlier, I didn’t go looking for Jo.” “But you plan to fuck her again.” Lor rubs his jaw, sighs but doesn’t answer. Ryodan changes into the beast faster than I believed possible. One instant he’s a man—the next his clothing is in tatters on the floor. A nine-foot-tall, horned, black-skinned slathering monster with feral crimson eyes slams his fist through the wall of Lor’s chest and rips out his heart. The beast holds the bloody thing up—God, it’s still beating!—narrows its eyes then licks it, forked black tongue unfurling with grace around the delicacy. Then he looks at Lor, who’s jerking convulsively, gushing blood from a huge jagged-edged hole in his chest, framed by an explosion of bone fragments, taps him lightly on the shoulder and pushes him over. Despite enormous fangs distorting his words, I have no problem understanding them. “Never. Fucking. Lie. To. Me. Again.” Lor crashes to the floor, dead. The beast drops Lor’s heart on the floor where it lands with a wet splat, turns and swipes the wall panel with a prehensile, taloned claw, and stalks out. I stand staring dumbly, then realize my chance to leave without risking exposure is leaving. As I race throu...

We’re halfway down the hall and I’m hot on his heels, wondering how Ryodan manages to change so swiftly from beast to man, when it takes Barrons a full minute or two to complete the transformation. Then I move on to wondering exactly where Ryodan plans to go naked, thinking maybe I’m about to see the man’s private quarters, which I’m admittedly anticipating, when my hair suddenly shoots straight up in the air, blasted by a brisk wind. I know that gust of wind. It’s Dani, passing me in freeze-frame. Ryodan recognizes it, too. She’s got balls exploding in here when she knows he’s around. We spin instantly to follow her (me much more slowly, I’m beginning to despise my lack of speed compared to theirs) and I barely get out of the way in time to keep from being flattened by a very large, very naked man. I skid back into the office a split second before the door hisses closed. The room appears to be under siege by an army of poltergeists. Drawers are flying open, papers exploding everywhere. I’m stunned to see Lor’s body is already gone. I knew they vanished when they died, I just didn’t know how quickly it happened. It’s as tidy as the way vampires “poof” on Buffy, which I never watched before in my life until a few months ago when I got obsessed with paranormal TV shows, as if I might glean useful clues from them. I frown. But Barrons’s corpse didn’t vanish that quickly in Faery the day Ryodan and I killed him. Then again, that shouldn’t surprise me, nothing works the way you...

“It would seem you do. You broke her finger that night in Chester’s. I’ve not forgotten. I forget no wrong done to her.” “It was unintentional. Sidhe-seer or not, I’m unaccustomed to young humans. Their bones are different.” “I’m no longer young.” “I’m bloody fucking aware of that.” “ ‘I’m aware’ would have sufficed. ‘Bloody fucking’ is superfluous and contributes nothing to the sentence in either connotation or denotation.” “I’ll bloody fucking decide what’s bloody fucking superfluous.”

You lost her. You let her be lost.” “I ripped this city apart for a month looking for her.” “That month was five and a half years for me.” Ryodan flinches almost imperceptibly. “Five and a half years in Hell. Don’t berate me for being. Thank me. She was weak. She needed me. I became.” “She was never weak. She was a child. Treated abominably. Yet she shined.”

She closes her eyes and for a fleeting instant every bit of tension in the fine muscles of her face vanishes. If pressed to define the moment, I’d call it basking, a cat soaking up sun on an icy winter’s day. Savoring something she’s wanted for a long time, and I wonder, did she think of him while she battled whatever demons she faced for the past five and a half years, lost in Faery? Did she hear his voice in her head during her darkest hours? Did she find strength in the hard truths he’d battered her with? Does touching him make her feel the way I do when I press my body against Barrons—like coming home? “I’m all you have left of Dani,” she tells him softly. “Be very careful how you push me, Ryodan. I’m not a little girl. I could turn you inside out. Play you the way you play the rest of the world. You’re not a singularity anymore. I’ve become your equal in every way.” Then she shoves him back and pushes past him with that long-legged gazelle walk, gracefully swipes the palm pad and glides out the door. He may think Jada doesn’t feel, but there is pure fire in the way she moves. She’s sexy, confident, strong. I’ve walked that way myself. It feels good. I glance between him and the door, dying to stay, knowing I should go. I’ve seen more than my brain can process for one day. He drops his dark head forward and stands there, unmoving. As I slip out, just before it slides closed, I hear him murmur, “Ah, Dani, yes you have. As I always knew you would.”

Death is the final chapter in a book you can’t unread. You keep waiting to feel like the person you were before that chapter ended. You never will.

Fact: you can never know another person completely. Fact: you are born alone and die alone. Fact: there is no such thing as safety. Only vigilance, determination to survive, and a willingness to be ruthless about it. Fact: love is not perfect. Fact: neither am I. Those five facts are the bile with which I digest the events of my day.

“You have five minutes of my time.” “Five is all I need,” Ryodan says. Jada gives him a cool smile. “That’s what I’ve heard.”

The truth hits me with the intensity of a two-by-four to my skull. “Your cuff,” I blurt, stunned. I was offered it on several occasions. Never looked at it long because I wanted it so damn much I could taste it. “It was Cruce’s.” My gaze flies to her face. “And it was on his arm when he got iced!” The cuff protects the wearer from Seelie and Unseelie and, according to Cruce, other assorted nasties. If his claims about it are true, with it, Jada could literally walk through a wall of Shades and pass untouched. I stare at the cuff longingly.

“Her brain vanished when her body did,” Ryodan says to Barrons. “Apparently,” Barrons says. “That’s not true,” I say hotly. “The realization startled me. I blurted. Excuse the hell out of me for being stunned to realize the one who was so busy incriminating me for trafficking with the Sinsar Dubh was also trafficking with the Sinsar Dubh. And why isn’t anyone looking accusingly at Jada?” I want to know how the heck she got that cuff off the frozen prince. That worries me. A lot.

Our brother is alive and the Sinsar Dubh is near, we can bring them together and rule the world! They don’t know their brother is the Sinsar Dubh and would destroy them before teaming up with them. “And she just keeps making it worse,” Ryodan marvels. “She is the Sinsar Dubh,” Jada says coolly. “She has it inside her.” “And Dani just joined her,” Barrons observes, fascinated. “As one of our Pri-ya,” Kiall murmurs to Rath, like I’m not standing right here, listening, “we could control both her and the power of the Unseelie King.” “Pri-ya doesn’t work on me anymore. And nobody controls the Sinsar Dubh,” I say irritably, then snap at Dani, “I can’t believe you just ratted me out like that!” I duck and roll again, soundlessly relocating as Rath and Kiall begin to prowl the room looking for me. “You did it first,” Jada says. “The cuff is an invaluable weapon. Dangerous to leave where it was.” “You lost your sword. Admit it.” “I know precisely where it is.” Maybe she does. But wherever it is, for some reason she can’t get to it. “We shall see,” Rath threatens me. “Perhaps it merely takes longer now.” I open my mouth to ask how Dani got the cuff and if the removal of it in any way compromised the integrity of Cruce’s prison, then clack my teeth together before I say anything else spectacularly stupid. At the moment, the Unseelie Princes think I am the Book. Last thing I want them to know is that their long lost brother is, too. As the princes continue stalking, I warn them, “I ha...

“You invite us to this table yet treat us as slaves. You lie, deceive, and manipulate,” Rath snarls. “Oh, gee, we act like far more civilized versions of you,” I mock. “You have information you do not share,” Kiall fires back. “We are no longer allies. Fuck you.” He and his brother vanish. “Uh, did they just sift out?” I say, looking around warily, ready to duck and roll again in a heartbeat. “We are no longer so predictable,” R’jan purrs. “Predictable enough,” Ryodan says. R’jan sifts out an instant before Ryodan gets to him. “My head is not up my ass. The advisor was disposable. We knew you kept secrets. We kept our own.” The Seelie’s words linger on the air, disembodied. “Your wards no longer work on us.” “Your wards don’t work?” I say incredulously. “So they think,” Barrons murmurs. “Och, that was bloody grand,” Drustan growls. “We’ve no sifters.” “Aye,” Dageus agrees. “So now what’s the fucking plan?” Ryodan smiles faintly. “That was the plan.” I gasp when the Unseelie Princess from whom I’m supposedly protecting the Nine sifts into the room, materializing directly behind Barrons and Ryodan. She takes each by an arm. Then all three of them are gone.

squaws

Now, sitting in front of the fireplace, munching a bag of slightly stale chips, I wonder why, in whatever chess game they’re playing, Barrons and Ryodan would want to make the princes think their wards didn’t work on them any longer. I smile faintly. I am getting better at this. Soon I’ll be devising the plans, instead of merely decoding them while they’re being implemented without me.

Because the princes would relax. Encouraging them to further lower their defenses, Ryodan made them believe they were essential to his plan, and power goes to an Unseelie Prince’s head faster than night comes slamming down in Faery.

When one feels threatened, one clears the house before going to bed, but when one feels safe—a foolish thing to ever believe—one doesn’t compulsively check all windows and doors, or is perhaps busy celebrating what one perceives as a victory over one’s enemy. And that’s pre...

It’s holding the severed heads of Kiall and Rath, still dripping a bluish-black blood. “Some crimes,” I quote Ryodan stiffly, “are so personal, blood-vengeance belongs only to the one who suffered them.”

Around enormous fangs, the beast snarls, “You had ample time. You didn’t. Your time ran the fuck out.” Its horns begin to melt and run down the sides of its face. Its head becomes grossly misshapen, expands and contracts, pulses and shrinks before expanding again—as if too much mass is being compacted into too small a form and the beast is resisting. Massive shoulders collapse inward, straighten then collapse again. The princes’ heads thud wetly to the floor. The beast gouges deep splinters of wood up through what used to be a priceless rug, as it bows upon itself, shuddering. Talons splay across the rug and become fingers. Haunches lift, slam down, and become legs. But they aren’t right. The limbs contort, the bones don’t bend where they should, rubbery in some places, knobbed in others. Still it bays, but the sound is changing. Its misshapen head whips from side to side. I catch a glimpse through matted hair of wild eyes glittering with moonlight, of black fangs and spittle as it snarls. Then the tangled locks abruptly melt, the sleek black skin begins to lighten. It hits the floor, convulsing. I can’t help but compare it to the sudden swiftness with which Ryodan transforms. Although both can become the beast quickly, Barrons’s reversion to human is lengthy. I enjoy the beast, Barrons had said. Ryodan enjoys the man.

Barrons lifts his head and stares straight at me, a few feet above my indent on the sofa. “It was my crime, too. I may not have been there to see it, but I’ve seen it in my head every fucking day since.” “I was the one that got raped.” “I was the one that failed to save you.” “And because you blamed yourself—” “I wasn’t the only one blaming me.” “I didn’t blame you for not saving me,” I growl. It’s nobody’s responsibility to save me but mine.” “You blamed me for letting them live.” “I did—” not is what I intended to say. But I’m startled to realize that he’s right.