Kingdom of Shadow and Light Page 6

  “Do I speak a language with which you are unfamiliar, or are you unusually dense?” she purrs coolly.

  I roll my eyes. She does snark as proficiently as the woman she resembles. I shoot her a glacial glare, but she only shoots it right back at me. “What is your query?” she snaps.

  “Query?”

  Speaking slowly and scathingly, as if to a complete idiot, she says, “What portion of the Library are you having difficulty accessing?”

  I blink, surprised. “You can tell me where to find things in this mess?”

  “That is the function of a librarian.” As she turns to scan the jumble of oddities gathered from the White Mansion, the piece of fabric slips from her shoulders, and she’s once again nude, I’m once again uncomfortable, and apparently she’s deeply offended as she hisses, “This is not my Library. What have you done with it? It’s but a small portion. You’ve destroyed my filing system!”

  Seething, I grit, “Have you a different form you can wear?”

  “I knew precisely where everything was. Do you have any idea how long it took to arrange the contents with such meticulous precision?” she seethes right back.

  “Don’t make me repeat myself,” I growl.

  “Yes,” she snarls. “I do.”

  “Assume it.”

  She shimmers, shifts, and suddenly Dani is standing in front of me. Nude. Snarling, I pivot sharply. Christ, this just keeps getting worse. Back when I was half mad from the horrifying process of turning Unseelie, I’d clung to the ideal of innocent young Dani as desperately as I’d clung to the tatters of my eroding humanity. Thoughts of her gamine, effervescent charm had driven back the soul-distorting darkness. Seeing her naked makes me feel vile. “Put the bloody cloth back on. Do you have another form besides that one?”

  “You are difficult to please.”

  “Are you covered?”

  “I am,” she says tightly.

  I turn back and suggest just as tightly, “Perhaps you could get smoky and indistinct again.”

  “Perhaps you aren’t the only being that requires a mouth to communicate. If you prefer me smoky, do not expect replies to your queries.”

  A niggling thought takes root in the back of my mind. “How long ago did the Unseelie king create you to manage his library?”

  She cocks her head, her eyes go eerily distant, then, “I have been in existence for seven hundred seventeen thousand three hundred and twenty two years, four months, and seventeen days.”

  “How do you even know that? What are you, a walking cosmic clock?”

  “Perhaps I possess an internal device that records the passage of time.”

  The potential ramification of her lengthy existence sinks into my brain. If the king created these two forms for his librarian three quarters of a million years ago, how then does one explain Mac and Dani? Precisely how deviously—and intimately—did the Unseelie king tinker with his caste of sidhe-seers? Mac and Dani’s birth mothers are known sidhe-seers, but no one has any idea who sired them. Is this why the Sinsar Dubh was able to settle so comfortably within Mac as an unborn fetus? Why Dani possesses such a diverse array of powers, unlike most of her kind? Why, perhaps one of the Hunters, the king’s preferred steeds, selected her to transform into one of their species?

  Was the bloody Unseelie king Mac and Dani’s father? Had he predetermined both their eventual birth and forms eons ago? Cruce was a master planner. The king was Cruce on steroids from hell.

  I voice my suspicion about Mac and Dani’s parentage aloud, to which the draped Dani replies, “There are no references to a ‘Mac’ or ‘Dani’ of which I am aware in the king’s Library. I’m unable to answer your query.”

  “Did the Unseelie king have any children?”

  She sweeps a derisive gaze over me from head to toe, end to end of my still extended black wings and arches a brow.

  “I meant through the actual act of procreation,” I clarify coolly.

  “I have little familiarity with that word.”

  Because Fae don’t procreate. Well, allegedly they don’t. And to think this day had begun swimmingly well. At least, once I’d gotten rid of the bat.

  “Shift back to Mac.” I find her more bearable, although neither form is comfortable to me, especially nude. One woman is intimately bound to Barrons, the other to Ryodan. And although I thoroughly enjoy pissing off the Nine on occasion, this is not one of the ways I’d select to do it.

  She complies, but the moment she shifts to her other form, the dark fabric slips from her shoulders.

  She’s Mac again.

  And naked again.

  As luck would have it, that’s when Kat walks in.

  6

  I am immortal

  I have inside me blood of kings

  JERICHO BARRONS

  MacKayla Lane, her given name.

  Just-Mac, as she stood nose to nose with me, in the flesh, in my bookstore for the first time, demanding information about the Sinsar Dubh. I’d relive that day ten thousand times. The woman from my mural had finally walked in; a formidable darkness feathered in deceptively bright plumage, radioactive with vengeance, passion, and hunger.

  She couldn’t see herself then. But I could.

  Rainbow Girl, ah…that one gets me every time.

  Beautiful monster, beast to my beast, capable of doffing every last vestige of her humanity to do what must be done.

  Queen of the Fae, unwilling successor but no less committed for it.

  The woman who sifts into Barrons Books & Baubles is all of those things to me, and more. I see her in every shade of who she is, has been, and will ever be.

  Patterns have begun to shift. Our future is uncertain.

  Not whether we will remain together.

  I will destroy civilizations, raze worlds, turn back time, shatter the very fabric of existence to assure that.

  But how we will remain.

  7

  Nothing compares to you

  MAC

  “Who’s in danger?” I demand as I materialize in the bookstore.

  Barrons surges up from the chesterfield and stalks toward me, a ripple of dark, tattooed muscle, midnight eyes glittering bloodred as he rakes a feral gaze from my face to my feet and back again. Primitive energy charges the air between us; his beast is close to the surface. Dangerously close. There are times I adore him this way, especially in bed.

  But not like this. Never like this. His beast is devouring him from the inside out, with cruel fangs of starvation. The trousers of his impeccable Armani suit are rumpled and hang loose on his hips, his jacket is wadded on the floor, shirt unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up, tie lying in a shredded heap. An ancient silver cuff is slack on his wrist.

  Whatever he is—Basque, Mediterranean, an ancient unknown race of immortal beings—his skin is pale, stretched taut, and I know, if I press my ear to his chest, I’ll hear no heartbeat. His cheekbones are blades in his chiseled face, and when he speaks, I glimpse fangs. He needs to eat. Now.

  “Travails occur. And will be dealt with,” he growls. “What is this moment?”

  Time, space, problems disappear as I savor the joy of seeing him again, of being alive one more day, at his side. The first time I’ve laid eyes on you in God knows how long. Time, during which, he’d patiently, devotedly stood guard, my eternal bastion, starving to death. What the man wants from me, the man can have.

  Act like it, flashes in his savage face, if only for a moment.

  Between the difficult past and the uncertain future resides the only moment we have any power over: now. We can make that moment ugly or beautiful. We can lose it to fear, or strengthen it with hope. And sometimes, we can only shore ourselves with bracing moments to strengthen ourselves for the brutal ones to come.

  I lunge for him, taking him down to the chesterfield beneath me. We meet in a kiss of such ferocity and hunger that his fangs pierce my lower lip, filling both our mouths with the coppery taste of blood.

  “Not Fae yet,” he murmurs. “You bleed human. Mostly.”

  “Others must never know.” He can employ spells to help me conceal it. I understand his hungers and deepen our kiss, spilling more blood into his mouth. When at last we separate, there’s a hint of color in his face.

  “How long was I in the chamber?”

  “How long did it feel to you?”

  “Centuries.”

  “Mortal time, you were gone two years, one month, and seven days. It’s currently five years, three months, and nine days since the Song of Making was sung.”

  I stare at him, horrified. I thought I’d been gone months, not years. “And you stayed here the entire time? How did you survive without food?”

  “Lor was of assistance on occasion.”

  “What did I miss? How are my parents? Dani? Dublin, the world?” I ask, trying to wrap my brain around such an enormous lost chunk of time.

  “Until recently, things were quite calm. Once you vanished, aside from opening a club in Dublin, the Fae were unusually quiet.”

  I notice he didn’t address my question about my parents or Dani. “And now?” I ask warily.

  “Your mother is missing.”

  My heart slams violently in my chest a single time, skips several beats, and for a moment my lungs are locked down so tight I can’t breathe. I right myself on the chesterfield and clench my hands, resisting the mushroom cloud of fear and fury that’s trying to explode behind my sternum. Although I once joked that my worst nightmare would be a kingdom of imm
ortal Seelie with a full range of human emotions, it’s their very dearth of emotion that makes them a lethal foe. They think and act; patient, detached sociopaths, and, after my battle with the Sinsar Dubh, I understand the monumental advantage of laser-focused thought, unencumbered by feelings. I will be no less remote and controlled. I unclench my hands and inhale slowly. “How long?”

  “Since this morning.”

  “A short time. How is that cause for alarm? She often goes off on her own to—”

  “Her presence can no longer be felt in the mortal realm.”

  “You branded my mother?” Fury blazes in my blood, not because of the brand but because if my mother isn’t in the mortal realm, that means she’s in Faery. Taken there by a Fae. One of my Fae. I’m High Queen. I’ll crush them all. Turn them inside out. Leave them writhing in immortal agony. I have a veritable armory of soul-destroying (not that they have souls) spells to use against the fools. What Fae dare attack my family?

  “Thank me later. And it’s not precisely a brand. Rather a GPS tracker, void of emotional bond. I did the same with your father.”

  “When?”

  “When you were the Sinsar Dubh.”

  Barrons thinks of everything that matters to me. I used to find his heavy-handed tactics irritating. I sometimes still do, but they’re difficult to dispute when they keep saving my life and the lives of those I love. “Can you feel anything else about my mother? Is she frightened? Have they harmed her?”

  He slices his head in negation, and the man who never repeats himself says gently, “Tracker only.”

  “Where is my father now?”

  “At Chester’s with Ryodan.”

  “Safe?”

  “As long as he doesn’t step outside the club.”

  “Have you told him that? Impressed it upon him vigorously?”

  “We haven’t told him your mother’s missing.”

  Because he knows I want to be the one to tell him. And only after I’ve gotten her back. I sink back into the sofa, pressing a hand to my thundering heart. My court just said: Fuck you, MacKayla Lane. We’re coming for you and we’re going to mow down those you love most. “Ryodan better keep him safe,” I hiss.

  “He will.”

  My mother. Gentle, kind, loving, good-to-the-bone Rainey Lane is somewhere in Faery with the monsters I’m ill equipped to rule. Bile rises in the back of my throat. I quell it swiftly. Useless emotion. I can’t hunt her alone. I need Barrons at full strength, and that means he needs to eat. “Go. Eat. I’ll sift to Dani for the latest news—”

  He’s already halfway to the tall black mirror leaning against the wall near the fireplace that leads from our aerie bookstore via stacked Silvers to the White Room, and finally to Dublin below, moving in that fluid, nearly imperceptible way of his. “Dani isn’t available.”

  I freeze, my heart skipping a beat again. “But she’s okay?”

  “She turned into a Hunter. Kat’s your source for information. I’ll meet you back here in one hour.”

  A Hunter? I gape. Lithe as a cat, flame-haired Dani is now an enormous, icy, black, dragon-like thing with fiery eyes and leathery sails of wings? How? Why?

  He pauses and glances over his shoulder, an atavistic rattle stirring deep in his chest. I don’t like leaving you alone, glittering blood-on-black eyes say.

  I smile faintly and raise my fists, opening them to reveal handfuls of crimson runes, dripping blood, inflating and deflating like disembodied hearts, the cores of the Fae I will rip out and shred to ribbons. The only other time I was able to produce such dangerous, powerful runes was with the Sinsar Dubh’s help. I’ve learned, however, that the Seelie queen’s powers and the Unseelie king’s were once not so different, and I, too, can saunter through Dublin as fearlessly as my psychotic nemesis. At the moment, I feel nearly as psychotic. I’ve learned much, Barrons. Let them try.

  The corner of his mouth ticks up in a blend of humor wed to insatiable lust beneath ancient, cold eyes—Barrons gets my beast, thinks she’s beautiful—before he steps into the tall, cobweb-dusted mirror and is gone.

  * * *

  I sift to my father first. I have no intention of telling him Mom’s missing, but I have an unshakable need to ascertain his safety with my own eyes.

  When I arrive at Chester’s, I lose a few moments, staring upward, mouth softly ajar. Dani’s a Hunter, Chester’s has been rebuilt; I wonder what else changed while I was away.

  When I first tracked down 939 Rêvemal Street, looking for the mysterious Ryodan, owner of Chester’s, the nightclub was a heap of collapsed brick and concrete, streetlamps, broken glass, and shattered signage, and I nearly walked away until Dani, with her super-senses, led me to the underground entrance to the dangerous, sordid, fantasy-fulfilling nightclub.

  Chester’s aboveground now soars six stories high, wrought of pale limestone and endless sheets of glass, a brilliantly lit, gleaming citadel that nearly rivals Barrons Books & Baubles as a landmark shattering the darkness of Dublin.

  A set of wide, curved stairs leads to heavily warded titan doors that appear to be steel but are likely forged from the same unidentifiable alloy liberally employed throughout the vast underground sovereignty that holds countless clubs, the Nine’s private residences, and dozens of other, unexplored levels and sub-clubs, including a notorious sex club and a damp, rock-hewn dungeon.

  Although part of me longs to dash up those stairs and walk into the club, absorbing the changes, time is of the essence, so I text Ryodan a quick, “I’m sifting in, don’t freak out,” to which he replies a testy “try,” to which I reply “watch me, jackass” then, holding thoughts of my father, blast through his wards without even feeling them, smirking a silent “take that, Ryodan.” It’s good to be queen.

  I manifest within a suite of rooms on the fifth floor, behind my father, who’s staring out a wall of windows into the night, at a sea of rooftops. I make a soft sound of pleasure at seeing him, and he turns sharply to face me.

  I catch my breath with a sudden chill, as I get that first bitter, poison-in-my-mouth taste of what immortality means.

  My father has aged.

  For a time, after my parents arrived in Dublin, he and my mother seemed to grow younger, more vigorous, energized by their new life. But between losing my sister, Alina, for the second time and me being gone for the past few years, there’s a weariness I’ve never before glimpsed in my charismatic, robust, handsome father.

  And I think: He’s going to die.

  Not a premonition, just a fact.

  Jack Lane is in his late fifties. If I’m lucky, I have three, maybe four decades left with him, given so few doctors, no medical innovations on the horizon, and people scrambling just trying to survive. What once seemed a long time at twenty-two and mortal is a slap in the face to me now.

  I lose a moment, then, realizing something I never thought about before. A year seems so long, especially when you’re waiting for things like prom, high school graduation, college graduation, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or even just Friday so you can celebrate the weekend. We wish away so much of our time, rushing to get to the next good thing.

  But the harsh reality is a year is 365 days, ten years a mere 3,650 days. One decade, an enormously defining period of your life, is less than 4,000 days. If we live to seventy-five, we get 27,375 days. No wonder, to the Fae, we’re short-timers, our lives the mere blink of an eye.

  I’ll still look the same when I hold my father in my arms as he dies.

  The Nine endure this repeatedly yet continue to care.

  I finally understand why Ryodan and Barrons are so meticulous about those they choose as their own and immerse fully, intensely in the present moment. Death will come, grief will rain down again and again, and the only way to survive it and remain an alive, passionate being is to pay the price of pain every time, or you will become as barbarous and icy as the Fae. It’s always going to hurt. But as long as you’re still capable of suffering you’re still capable of joy. Better the depths of hell and heights of heaven than the horror of feeling nothing.