Shadowfever (Fever #5)

by Karen Marie Moning

32 I stepped out of the shower and looked at myself in the mirror. Since dragging my aching body up the back stairs of BB&B to my bedroom twenty minutes ago, my bruises had faded by forty percent. I traced my fingers across a particularly bad one on my collarbone. I’d thought I heard a crack and was worried something had broken, but it was only a hot, swollen contusion and was healing remarkably fast. What was with me? I might have suspected it was something to do with my being … well, Not the Concubine, but I’d never healed like this when I was a kid. I’d run around with skinned knees constantly. Was McCabe one of my parts? Was that why he hadn’t frozen, too? Could the dreamy-eyed guy be a part? Who else? How many parts did Not the Concubine have? “I am not the king,” I said out loud. “There’s some other explanation.” There had to be. I simply wouldn’t accept it. Tonight had been a rush. We’d run into Jayne, his guardians, and Dani near Fourteenth and cut a wide swath through the city. Dageus, Cian, and V’lane had pummeled; Dani and I had sliced and diced. Barrons had done whatever it was he did, but he’d done it too fast for me to see. After a time I’d stopped trying, too lost in my own bloodlust. When I’d finally quit counting, the death toll had been in the hundreds. How could it feel so good to kill Unseelie if I was their creator? “See? More proof I’m not,” I told myself in the mirror with a nod. My reflection nodded sagely back. I selected the medium heat setting on...