I guess the look on my face gave me away because she narrowed her eyes and hissed, “If you can’t be selfless enough to protect the health of the one man that has a chance at figuring out how to save our world, then you need to stay away from him. Far away from him. Like go get lost all over again only never bloody come back this time.” She shoved past me and stormed off down the hall.
I whirled and stalked after her. She’d said something I didn’t understand and didn’t like, and it had sent a chill racing up my spine. “What do you mean ‘protect the health’?” I growled at her back. “What are you talking about? Dancer’s young and strong. He works out and looks amazing. He’s perfectly healthy.”
She whirled, eyes flashing. “Aye, he spends hours working out every day while he ponders his theories—and he shouldn’t. It’s not good for him. Know why he does it? To keep up with you. To get you to see him as a man. He can’t do cardio so he does isometrics, pitting muscle against muscle to build strength without overloading himself. Planks, crunches, tension exercises, and the like. He’s obsessed with looking like those men you hang out with. God! I wish he’d just stop wanting you!”
My stomach had turned into a blender on high speed and was threatening to propel the milk I’d drunk out the lid of my mouth. “Why can’t he do cardio? Why isn’t working out good for him?”
She looked at me a long moment then a bit of the fury eased from her face and her eyes widened faintly. She took a few steps toward me and said wonderingly, “For the love of Mary, you don’t even know, do you? All of us do, but not you.”
Apparently not. Pressing a hand to my stomach, I shook my head.
“He never told you?” she said incredulously.
“Repeating the same bloody question in a slightly different way is still the same bloody question,” I hissed. What the bloody hell was wrong with Dancer? What did everyone know that I didn’t know? “Do I fucking look like I have any idea what you’re talking about?” I practically shouted.
Her face changed as if she was seeing me for the first time. “Well then,” she murmured, “at least I don’t have to keep hating you. I hate hating people.”
“Good to know. So what the bloody hell is it that I don’t know about Dancer?” I ground out between clenched teeth.
She smiled, but it was a terrible, sad smile. “Dani—Jada—whatever it is you’re calling yourself these days—our lad has a bad heart. He came that way. I thought you knew.”
MAC
I opted for no makeup, swiped balm on my lips because they were so dry, stepped back and studied my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
Even with the lights off I could tell my eyes were red and it was obvious I’d been crying, but I could blame that on any number of things and be believed.
I’d curled on the floor of the shower, sobbing for a long time, wondering if all the images the Sinsar Dubh had forced on me were true. Had I done every one of those terrible things? Killed so many, with such chilling brutality and barbarism? I’d laid on the tile floor, reliving each detail the Book had showed me. Owning every bit of it. Jo’s death had been the truth. That told me they very likely all were. I’d done unforgivable things I could never undo. My choice to take a spell from the Sinsar Dubh to save Dani’s life had cost the lives of many others, and there was no way I could make my books on those accounts balance. Not just cost the lives, let us be perfectly precise—my hands, my body, had killed them.
I wallowed in shame and grief.
I shuddered, wept, and screamed.
Then I forced myself to stop, collected the savage murder of Jo and the other unforgivable crimes I’d committed, put them in a box and shut the lid.
I despised using one of the Sinsar Dubh’s tactics but it was effective, and hating myself for my sins would have to wait. As was whatever act of atonement I would eventually make. Not that there was any act of atonement that would mean a thing to those I’d killed.
Putting them away didn’t mean the pain was gone. I carried it. I would always carry it. But because I’d been given the queen’s power, my state of mind was too critical to everyone’s survival for me to let myself fall apart now. It simply wasn’t an option.
It occurred to me, while lying on the floor, that grief’s drink recipe is two parts tribute to the person you loved and four parts feeling sorry for yourself because you lost them. Or, in the case of Jo and the others, four parts extreme self-loathing.
Either way, grief was self-indulgent, and that was something I had no right to be. If we survived, I’d have oodles of time to hate myself all I wanted.
Currently, I was the only one who could wield the Song of Making. And that meant I didn’t get to be anything less than one-hundred-percent focused on our situation. I was a soldier on the front line, and soldiers don’t get the luxury of addressing their issues until the war is over and everyone’s safe.
I began to turn away from the mirror then narrowed my eyes and glanced back. Something about me was different. What was it? I’d dried my hair upside-down as usual, and my eyes were green, not black. My teeth were almost blindingly white since I’d brushed them about a hundred times, trying to not to think about what had been lodged between them.
Frowning, I fumbled behind me for the light switch and flipped it on.
“Holy hell I look like the Khaleesi!” I exploded, jumping back from the mirror. I’d showered and dried my hair in the dark, in no mood to see myself clearly. The streaks of crimson paint were gone and my hair was blonder than I’d ever seen it, nearly white. I tucked my chin down and peered at my part—yep, all the way to the roots. I gathered a handful of it, examining the length, trying to remember how long it had been a few days ago. It sure seemed to be a few inches longer now than I recalled.