Shadowfever

Barrons was speaking. I’d forgotten we were talking.

“I’m counting on you being able to read it. Makes everything simpler. We just have to figure out how to capture it with three stones and no Druids. I’m damned if I’m letting those fucks near it again.”

I looked down at the silver and gold chain, the stone housed in the ornate gilt cage. Did I even need the stones or the Druids to trap my Book, or was the amulet what I’d been hunting for all along? I certainly fit into the “inhabited” or “possessed” category. I was the king of the Fae inside a female human’s body.

I wondered how the concubine had lost the amulet. Who had taken it from her, betrayed me? Had someone abducted her, faked her death, then whisked her off to the Seelie court while I’d been insane with grief, busy divesting myself of my sins?

She never would have taken it off willingly, yet here it was, in the world of man. If someone had come for her, might she have cast it off rather than let it fall into the wrong hands, patiently sowing clues, taking her chances that one day events would align, I would remember, and we would escape whatever had been done to us and be together again? Too bad I didn’t want to be with her.

She’d always hated illusion. When she’d planted gardens and added on to the White Mansion, she’d done it in the old ways. The Faery court reverted to nothingness if the Fae attending it failed to maintain it. The White Mansion had been fashioned differently and would stand the test of time with or without her, apart from anyone.

How had she become the Seelie Queen? Who had kidnapped her, interred her in a tomb of ice, and left her to a slow death in the Unseelie hell? What games were being played, what agenda was being pursued? I knew the patience of immortality. Who among the Fae had been biding their time, waiting for the perfect moment, the ultimate payday?

The timing would have to be flawless.

All the Seelie and Unseelie Princesses would have to be dead and the queen killed at the precise moment—there could be no contenders to the throne of matriarchal power—once whoever it was had merged with or acquired all the knowledge from the Book.

All the power of the Seelie Queen and the Unseelie King would be deposited in a single vessel.

I shuddered. That could never be permitted to happen. Anyone with that much power would be unstoppable by anyone, by any means. He or she would be undefeatable, uncontrollable, unkillable. In a word: God. Or Satan, with the home court advantage. We would all be doomed.

Did they believe me dead? Gone? Apathetic? Think I would just stand by and let this happen? Was this unknown enemy responsible for the condition I was currently in—human and confused?

My power and the queen’s magic. Who was behind this? One of the dark princes?

Perhaps it had been Darroc all along, and the Book had popped that plan like the grape his head had been. Perhaps Darroc had only been taking advantage of someone else’s cunning, riding on the coattails, so to speak, of a more clever and dangerous foe.

I shook my head. The magic wouldn’t have gone to him, and he’d known it. Eating Fae wasn’t enough. The successor to Fae magic had to be Fae.

The concubine had awakened and said a Fae prince she’d never seen before, who had called himself Cruce, had entombed her.

According to V’lane, he’d brought Cruce to the original Queen of the Seelie (the bitch) and she’d killed him in front of my eyes.

Did I possess that memory?

I turned inward, searching.

I clutched my head as images slammed into me. Cruce had not died easily or well. He raged and ranted, was ugly at the end. Denied being the one, denied having betrayed me to the queen. I was ashamed of his death.

But who’d faked my concubine’s death?

How had I been deceived?

Deceived.

Was that the key?

ONLY BY ITS OWN DESIGN WILL IT FALL, the prophecy said.

Limited in form, what was the Book’s design? How did it get around and accomplish its ends?

Its currency was illusion. It deceived people into seeing what it wanted them to see.

Was that why the fear dorcha—who was probably one of my good friends if I had time to pick through all my memories—had given me the tarot card, pointing me toward the amulet?

The amulet could deceive even me.

I’d worried about giving it to the concubine for that very reason. What enormous love, what dangerous trust.

The Book was only a shadow of me.

I was the real thing, the king who’d made the Book.

And I had the amulet capable of creating illusions that could deceive us.

It was simple. In a contest of wills, I was the guaranteed victor.

I felt almost giddy with excitement. My deductions had the ring of truth to them. All arrows pointed north. I knew what had to be done. Today, I could put the Book down once and for all. Not inter it to slumber with one eye open, like the first prophecy had said, but defeat the monster. Destroy it.

After I’d gotten a spell of unmaking for Barrons. Ironic: I’d given all my spells over to a Book to get rid of them, and now I needed one back from it.

Once I had it, I would roust the traitor, kill him or her, restore the concubine to being the Seelie Queen (because I sure didn’t want her, and she didn’t remember anything, anyway), where she would grow strong enough to lead again. I would walk away, leaving the Fae to their own petty devices.

I would return to Dublin and become just-Mac.

That couldn’t happen soon enough for me.

“I think I know what to do, Jericho.”

“What would you want if you were the Book and it was the king?” Barrons asked later.

“I thought you didn’t believe I was the king.”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe. The Book seems to.”

“K’Vruck does, too,” I reminded him. Then there was the dreamy-eyed guy. When I’d asked him if I was the Unseelie King, he’d said, No more than I. Was he one of my parts?

“Have an identity crisis later. Focus.”

“I think it wants to be accepted, absolved—prodigal son and all. It wants me to welcome it back into me, say I was wrong, and become one again.”

“That’s what I think, too.”

“I’m a little worried about the part where it says once the monster within is defeated, so shall be the monster without. What monster within?”

“I don’t know.”

“You always know.”