Karen Moning - Shadowfever

Sidhe-seer is only a few letters away from Ban- sidhe: my birth country’s harbinger of death, that shrieking mythic creature driven by fury.

I seek that dark glassy lake in my mind. I stand on the black-pebbled beach. Runes float on the shiny ebon surface, glistening with power.

I bend, trail my fingers through the black water, scoop up two fistfuls, and offer the bottomless loch a deep bow of gratitude.

It’s my friend. I know that now. It has always been.

My fury is too vast for nooks and crannies.

I don’t try to contain it. I let it build into a dark, dangerous melody. I throw my head back, making room for it as it rises. It swells, blasts up my throat, puffs out my cheeks. When it erupts from my lips, it’s an inhuman cry that soars above the trees, rips into the air, and shatters the tranquillity of the forest.

Wolves startle awake in their dens, howling in mournful chorus; boars squeal; and creatures I cannot name scream. Our concert is deafening.

The temperature drops and the forest around me is abruptly encased in a thick silvery coating of ice, from smallest blade of grass to highest bough.

Birds flash-freeze and die, beaks parted, feeding their babies.

Squirrels ice, mid-leap, and drop like stones to the ground, where they shatter.

I glance at my hands. They are stained black, my palms cup silvery runes.

I know now where Barrons ends and I begin.

When Barrons ended, I began.

Me.

Mac O’Connor.

Sidhe -seer that a certain Seelie Prince said the world should fear.

I kneel and kiss Barrons a final time.

I do not cover him or perform any ritual. It would be for me, not him. There is only one thing left that I will do for me.

Soon, none of this will matter anyway.

I had to be ripped in half to stop feeling so torn in two. Divided, never knowing who to trust.

I’m now a woman with a single ambition.

I know exactly what I’m going to do.

And I know how I’m going to do it.

After leaving Barrons’ body, I travel in the direction my guardian demon had been herding me. I believe he must have wanted me to go this way for a reason.

I trust him in death like I never did in life.

What a piece of work I am.

I follow the river for miles. As he disappears behind me, so, too, do I. With each step I take, I strip off another piece of myself. The weak parts. The parts that won’t help me accomplish my goals. And if they are the so-called human parts, oh, well. I can’t feel and still survive what I’ve got to get through.

When I am certain I am ready, I stop and wait for my enemy.

He does not disappoint.

“I thought you’d never get here,” I say, my voice husky from screaming. It hurts to talk. I savor the pain. It’s what I deserve.

The LM is still some distance away, concealed in the forest, but I see the shadows that move too sinuously to be cast by any tree.

“Come out.” I lean back against a tree, one hand in a pocket at my cocked hip, the other at my waist. “I am what you want, aren’t I? What you came here for. What all this is about. Why hesitate now?”

My spear is in the holster beneath my arm, my dirk in my waistband. The black-leather rune-covered pouch holding the three stones the LM wants—three-quarters of what we all hope will form some kind of cage for the Sinsar Dubh —are tucked securely in my backpack, which hangs over my shoulder.

Shapes glide from the darkness: the LM and the last two Unseelie Princes.

Jack and Rainey Lane are not with them.

That would disturb me, except the Mac who loves her parents was in those pieces I left behind with Barrons’ body. Barrons is dead. It’s my fault. I have no parents. No love. No weaknesses. There’s not a single shaft of sunshine in my soul.

I feel immeasurably lighter, stronger.

Darroc—I will no longer call him the LM; even the abbreviation of his smug-ass title implies superiority—has been eating a great deal of Unseelie flesh. Power is thick in the air between us. I’m not sure what comes from him and what is rolling off me. I wonder how his minions feel about him cannibalizing their own. Perhaps what is an abomination to the Light Court is a common vice at the Dark Court, an acceptable hazard of being Unseelie.

As he approaches the circle of silvery light in which I stand, his eyes widen infinitesimally.

I laugh, a throaty purr. I know what I look like. I washed after leaving Barrons and prepared myself with care. My bra is in my backpack. My hair is softly curled and wild around my face. It took time to get the black stain off my palms. There is nothing about me that is not a weapon, an asset, something to use to get what I want, including my body. I’ve learned a thing or two from Barrons: Power is sexy. It shapes my spine, infuses my beckoning hand.

I have not been devastated by Barrons’ death. The alchemy of grief has forged a new metal.

I have been transformed .

There’s only one way I can make his death okay. Undo it.

And, while I’m at it, undo Alina’s, too.

Every person I’ve met who’s known something about the Sinsar Dubh was cryptic about it. No one has been willing to tell me exactly what’s in it. The only thing everyone kept telling me was that it was imperative I find it, and quickly, because it could be used to keep the walls from crashing.

Well, the walls are down now. It’s too late.

Considering that I’ve been hunting this Book with single-minded dedication for months, it’s startling how little thought I’ve given to its contents. I swallowed what I was told and obediently chased it.

I suspect now that everyone was keeping me tightly focused on the goal of finding it in order to keep the walls up, so I’d never get around to thinking too hard about other possible uses for the Sinsar Dubh .

There I was, hunting an object of unspeakable power, surrounded by people that wanted it for reasons of their own, and never once did I think: Wait a minute—what might it do for me?

Darroc told me that with the Sinsar Dubh he could bring Alina back. He said he wanted it to reclaim his Fae essence and exact revenge.

V’lane told me that the Dark Book holds all the Unseelie King’s knowledge, every last damnable bit of it. He said he wants it for the Seelie Queen, so she might use it to restore their race to their former glory and to re-imprison the Unseelie. He believes it contains fragments of the Song of Making, lost to their race so long ago, and that the queen will be able to use them to re-create the ancient melody. I don’t know exactly what the Song of Making is or does, but it seems to be the ultimate in Fae power.

It was Barrons that told me the most. He said the Sinsar Dubh contained spells to make and unmake worlds. Something to do with those fragments of the Song. He never would tell me why he wanted it. Said he was a book collector. Right. And I’m the Unseelie King.

Lying there, holding Barrons’ body, I’d contemplated the Sinsar Dubh ’s potential uses, for the first time, in a very personal way.

Especially the part about making and unmaking worlds.

It had all become perfectly clear to me.

With the Sinsar Dubh , a person could create a world with a different past—and a different future.

Essentially, a person could turn back time.

Erase anything they didn’t like.

Replace those things they couldn’t bear to have lost, including people they couldn’t stand to live without.

I’d torn myself away from Barrons’ body with one purpose.

To get the Sinsar Dubh , and when I did, I wasn’t turning it over to anyone. It was going to be mine . I would study it. Grief had focused me like a laser. I could learn anything. Nothing would stand in my way. I would rebuild the world the way I wanted it.