Karen Moning - Shadowfever

We’ve been making small talk for some time, watching each other intently. I’ve told him about growing up in Ashford, my first impressions of Dublin, my love of fast cars. He has told me more about his fall from grace, what he did, why he did it. We compete to disarm each other with trivial confidences that betray nothing of importance.

As we cross the valley, I say, “Why go to the Unseelie prison? Why not the Seelie court?”

“And give Aoibheal the opportunity to finish me off for good? The next time I see the bitch, she dies.”

Was that why he’d taken my spear—to kill the queen? He’d lifted it without my awareness, just like V’lane had. How? He wasn’t Fae anymore. Had he eaten so much Unseelie that he was now a mutant with unpredictable abilities? I recall being in the church, sandwiched between Unseelie Princes, turning the spear on myself, throwing it, striking the pedestal of a basin, holy water splashing, steam hissing. How had he made me throw it away then? How had he taken it from me now?

“Is the queen at the Seelie court right now?” I cast my net again.

“How would I know? I have been banished. Assuming I found a way in, the first Seelie that saw me would kill me.”

“Don’t you have allies at the Seelie court? Isn’t V’lane your friend?”

He snorts disdainfully. “We sat on her High Council together. Though he gives lip service to Fae supremacy and speaks of walking the earth freely again without the odious Compact governing us— us , as if humans could govern their gods!—when it comes to action, V’lane is Aoibheal’s lapdog and always has been. I am now human, according to my fairer brethren, and they despise me.”

“I thought you said they worshipped you as a hero for tearing the walls down and freeing them.”

His eyes narrow. “I said they will . Soon, I will be heralded as the savior of our race.”

“So you went to the Unseelie prison. That was risky.” I prod to keep him talking. As long as he’s talking, I can focus on his words, on my goals. Silence isn’t golden, it’s deadly. It’s a vacuum that fills up with ghosts.

“I needed the Hunters. As a Fae, I could summon them. As a mortal, I had to physically seek them.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t kill you on sight.” Hunters hate humans. The black-skinned, winged demons have no love for anything but themselves.

“Death is not a Hunter’s delight. Too final.”

A memory flickers through his eyes, and I know that when he found them, they did things to him that made him scream for a long time.

“They agreed to help me in exchange for permanent freedom. They taught me to eat Unseelie. After tracking weaknesses in the prison walls, where Unseelie had escaped before, I patched them.”

“To make yourself the only game in town.”

He nods. “If my dark brethren were going to be freed, they would be thanking me for it. I discovered how to link Silvers and created a passage to Dublin through the White Mansion.”

“Why here?”

“Of all the dimensions I explored, this one remains the most stable, aside from a few … inconveniences. It seems Cruce’s curse had little effect on this realm, other than to splinter dimensions that are easily avoided.”

I call them IFPs but I do not tell him this. It made Barrons smile. Little made Barrons smile.

I think I’m under control, that I’ve stripped away all weaknesses. That committing to my mission has made me impervious. I’m wrong. The thought of Barrons smiling brings other thoughts.

Barrons naked .

Dancing .

Dark head thrown back .

Laughing .

The image doesn’t “gently swim up in my mind” in a dreamy sort of way, like I’ve seen in movies. No, this one slams into my head like a nuclear missile, exploding in my brain in graphic detail. I suffocate in a mushroom cloud of pain.

I can’t breathe. I squeeze my eyes shut.

White teeth flashing in his dark face: I get knocked down but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down .

I stagger.

But he didn’t get up, the bastard. He stayed down.

With my spear in his back. How am I supposed to find my way each day without him here to help me? I don’t know what to do, how to make decisions.

I can’t survive this grief! I stumble and go down on one knee. I clutch my head.

Darroc is at my side, helping me stand. His arms are around me.

I open my eyes.

He is so close that I see gold speckles in his coppery eyes. Wrinkles crease the corners. Faint lines bracket his mouth. Has he laughed so often in his time as a mortal? My hands curl into fists.

His hands are gentle on my face when he pushes my hair back. “What happened?”

Neither image nor pain is gone from my brain. I cannot function in this state. In moments, I will be on my knees, screaming with grief and fury, and my mission will go straight to hell. Darroc will see my weakness and kill me, or worse. Somehow I have to survive. I have no idea how long it will take me to find the Book and learn how to use it. I wet my lips. “Kiss me,” I say. “Hard.”

His mouth tightens. “I am not a fool, MacKayla.”

“Just do it,” I snarl.

I watch him weigh the idea. Two scorpions. He is skeptical. He is fascinated.

When he kisses me, Barrons vanishes from my head. The pain recedes.

On the lips of my enemy, my sister’s lover, my lover’s killer, I taste the punishment I deserve. I taste oblivion.

It makes me cold and strong again.

I have dreamed of houses all my life. I have an entire neighborhood in my subconscious that I can get to only while sleeping. But I can’t control my nocturnal visits any more than I’ve ever been able to avoid my Cold Place dreams. Sometimes I’m granted passage and sometimes I’m not. Certain nights the doors open easily, while others I stand outside, denied entrance, longing for the wonders that lie within.

I don’t understand people who say they can’t recall their dreams. With the exception of the Cold Place dream, which I began blocking long ago, I recall all the others. When I wake in the morning, they’re floating through my mind in fragments, and I can either spring out of bed and forget them or gather up the pieces and examine them.

I read somewhere that dreams about houses are dreams of our souls. In those dwellings of our psyche, we store our innermost secrets and desires. Perhaps that’s why some people don’t remember them—they don’t want to. A girl I knew in high school once told me she dreamed of houses, too, but they were always pitch black and she could never find the light switch. She hated those dreams. She wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box.

My houses are endless, filled with sunshine and music, gardens and fountains. And for some reason there are always a lot of beds. Big beds. Way more than any house needs. I don’t know what the deal is with that, but I think it might mean I think about sex a lot.

Sometimes I worry that there’s not enough room in my brain for both my dreams and reality, that I’m a hard drive with limited gigabytes and one day I won’t be able to maintain the firewall between them. I wonder if that’s what senility is.

Over the years, I’ve begun to suspect that all the houses of which I’ve been dreaming are just different wings of the same great house.

Today I realize it’s true.

Why have I been dreaming of the White Mansion all these years?

How could I possibly have known it existed?

Now that I’m a little over the edge anyway, I can admit something: My whole life, I’ve secretly been afraid that beneath my fiercely focused grooming and accessorizing, I’m, well … psychotic.

Never underestimate a well-dressed bimbo.