“You raped me!”
“I saved you, MacKayla.”
“Saving me would have been getting me out of there!”
“You were already Pri-ya when I found you. Your life was ending. I gave you my elixir—”
“Your elixir?” the king said mildly.
“—to stem your wounds.”
“You didn’t have to have sex with me to do it!”
“I desired you. You refused me. I wearied of your protests. You wanted me. You thought about it. You were not even there. What difference?”
“You think that makes it okay?”
“I do not understand your objections. I did nothing that had not already been done by others. Nothing you had not considered. And I did it better.”
“What exactly did you give me?”
“I do not exactly”—he imitated my tone perfectly—“know. I have never given it to a human before.”
“Was it the queen’s elixir?”
“It was mine,” the king said.
“I improved it. You are the past,” Cruce said. “I am the future. It is time for you to be unmade.”
He was going to unmake the king? Was it possible?
“Kids. Pain in the ass. Don’t know why I ever made them. Hell on relationships.”
“You have no idea,” Cruce said. “Getting the queen to kill V’lane was not the first illusion I wove and left for you, old fool, although it was the first you saw. This was.” He bent and grabbed a fistful of the queen’s hair, raising her by it. As he did, her blankets fell away.
The king went perfectly still.
In his eyes I saw the black-and-white boudoir, void of all but empty memories, the endless barren years, the eternal grieving. I saw loneliness as vast and all-encompassing as his wings. I knew the joy of their union and the despair of their separation.
I no longer trusted anyone’s face. I sought my sidhe-seer center, reinforced it with the amulet, and demanded to be shown what was true.
She was still the concubine. The king’s mortal beloved, the one he’d gone insane over, created the Sinsar Dubh because of, walked away from his entire race for.
“As the current queen, her death will grant me the True Magic of our race. I saved her to kill in front of you before I unmake you. But this time when you see her dead, it will be no illusion.”
When the king said nothing, Cruce said impatiently, “Do you not wish to know how I did it, you stubborn old fuck? No? You never would speak up when it mattered. The day you went to battle the queen, I took the concubine another of your famous elixirs, but this time it was no potion: It was a cup stolen from the cauldron of forgetting. She stood in your boudoir while I erased all memory of you. When she was a blank slate, I bent her over your bed and fucked her. I hid her from you where I knew you would never look. The Seelie court. I took V’lane’s place and pretended she was a human I’d become enamored of. Over time, as the courtiers drank from the cauldron and forgot, as Seelie Princesses rose to power and were deposed, she became one of us. I achieved what your potions never did. Time in Faery, our potions, and our way of life made her Fae. Is it not ironic? The day came when she was so powerful she became our queen. She was always there—alive—but you never even looked. I kept her in the one place I knew the arrogant Un-Seelie King would not go. Bedding down with your grudges while I bedded your bitch. Your concubine became my lover, my queen. And now her death will make me you.”
The king’s eyes were sad. “In more ways than you know, if it were true. But another stands in your way.” He glanced at me.
My eyes widened and I shook my head instantly. “What are you trying to do? Get him to kill me? I’m not in his way.”
“Our magic prefers a woman. I believe it would choose you.”
“I have the Sinsar Dubh,” Cruce said. “She does not.”
The king laughed. “You think to become me. She becomes her. Not the only possible.”
I was horrified. I thought I understood what he was saying and didn’t like it one bit.
“Perhaps Barrons becomes Cruce. Who, then, would cry judgment?” the king said.
“Barrons wouldn’t become War,” I said instantly.
“Or me. Depends on the nuances.” The king looked at the concubine in Cruce’s grasp. “Irrelevant, all of it. I’m not done yet.”
She was gone.
“What the—?” Cruce’s hands were suddenly empty. He lunged forward and slammed into an invisible barrier. His eyes narrowed and he began to chant in a voice that made my blood ice, chiming like the full-blooded Unseelie Prince he was.
The king waved a hand and Cruce stopped chiming.
Cruce sketched a complicated symbol in the air, eyes narrowed on the king. Nothing happened. He began to chime again. The king silenced him.
Cruce conjured a rune and flung it at the king. It hit the invisible barrier and dropped. He flung a dozen more. They all did the same. It was like watching a man and a woman fight, where the man was simply trying to keep the woman from hurting herself too much.
Cruce rocked back on his heels and his wings began to open, black velvet and enormous, framing a nude, muscled body of such perfection that my cheeks were suddenly wet. Long black hair streamed down his shoulders; brilliant colors rushed beneath his bronze skin.
I touched my face and my fingers came away bloody.
I was awed by the dark majesty of him. I knew why War was as often revered as feared. I knew what it felt like to be cradled in those wings while he moved inside me.
The Unseelie King watched him, paternal pride glittering in his eyes.
Cruce was trying to destroy him, and he was proud of him.
Like a parent watching his child kick off the training wheels and take off down the drive for the first time without help.
And I knew that Cruce had never stood a chance, so long as the king cared to exist.
The danger would never be whether the king was powerful enough—he was and always would be the strongest of them all.
The true danger would always only be whether he cared enough.
He saw existence completely differently from everyone else. What we might view as defeat and destruction, he saw—like the Book he’d created—far down the arrows of time, as an act of creation.
Who knew? Maybe it was.
But I liked existing here and now, and I’d fight for it. I didn’t have a bird’s-eye view and didn’t want it. I liked padding around on dog paws, kicking up fall leaves and digging in spring dew, sniffing up scents on the ground, and living a life. I was only too happy to leave the flying for those with wings.