Shadowfever

She pushed me hard enough that I shot straight through the unresisting Silver and crashed squarely into Christian, knocking him backward onto the bed. We got tangled up in each other, trying to get out.

Behind me, Barrons roared.

On top of me, Christian made a raw, horny sound and ground himself against me.

I sucked air between my teeth. Every instinct in my body wanted to have sex, here, now, with anyone. This place was dangerous. “Christian, it’s the chamber. It makes sex—”

“I know, lass. Been here awhile.” He raised one of his arms that was pinning me to the bed. “Get out from under me. Move your ass!” he gritted.

When I didn’t react instantly, he snarled, “Now! I won’t be able to say it again!”

I looked at him. His eyes were out of focus, fixed on some point inside me, like a Fae prince. I shot out from beneath him and scrambled from the bed.

He crouched there a moment on his hands and knees, balls heavy, erection huge and flat to his stomach, then he lunged to his feet, trying to cover himself, his hand a hopelessly inadequate shield. He tried to yank a sheet from the bed, but the black silk was king-sized, for acres of bed. Cursing, he began digging among pillows and furs, looking for his clothes, while I tried not to watch and failed miserably.

“Mac!” Barrons thundered.

My heart was pounding. I wanted Barrons, not Christian, but the man I wanted was on the other side of the mirror, and this damned half-white, half-black boudoir was Ecstasy on steroids with a shot of adrenaline, and it made things so dreamy and confused …

It was the awful sound of Fiona’s laughter that broke the spell.

I turned to see her standing right next to the mirror, looking up at Barrons, her hood down.

She spoke the longest sentence she’d said tonight.

“How does it feel to want someone more than they want you, Jericho?” Her voice dripped venom. “If she went through that mirror, she belongs to the king. I hope wanting her eats you alive. I hope he takes her from you. I hope you suffer for all eternity!”

Barrons said nothing.

“You should have left me to die where you found me, you bastard,” she said bitterly. “All you did was give me a life that made me want things I couldn’t have.”

I would have told her it wasn’t like that at all. Barrons didn’t feel that way about me, or about anyone, but before I could say a word, Fiona threw herself at the mirror.

I braced myself for her to slam into me.

I was that sure I wasn’t the Unseelie King.

I was ready for the stench of her to assault my nostrils, her mutilated body to slam into mine. I would deflect her toward the bed, where I would stab her and put us all out of her misery, once and for all.

Fiona fell over dead the instant she touched the mirror.

“Hello, Ms. Concubine,” Barrons mocked.

Oh, if he only knew.

But Christian didn’t tell him before we left, and neither did I.

33

CONS: Why I’m not the king

1. I was a baby twenty-three years ago. I saw pictures of me, and I remember growing up. (Unless someone planted false memories.)

2. I don’t even like the concubine. (Unless I fell out of love with her a long time ago.)

3. I don’t feel like I’m split into multiple human parts, and I’ve never been attracted to women. (Unless I’m repressing.)

4. I hate Fae, and especially Unseelie. (Am I overcompensating?)

5. If I were the king, wouldn’t the Unseelie Princes have known me and not raped me? Wouldn’t somebody … recognize me or something?

6. Where have I been for six or seven hundred thousand years? And how could I not know about it? (Okay, so maybe somebody forced me to drink from the cauldron.)

PROS: things that make it look like I could be

1. I knew what the White Mansion looked like inside. I also knew every step I walked in the Unseelie prison. Same with knowing that Cruce had wings. I have a ton of knowledge I can’t explain having. (Maybe somebody planted memories. If they can plant false ones, why not real ones?)

2. I’ve been dreaming of the concubine all my life and, even though she was unconscious, she managed to summon me. (Maybe she was manipulating me in the Dreaming like she did the Keltars.)

3. I can conjure runes that are supposedly part of what was used to reinforce the Unseelie prison walls. (Not sure which column this goes in. Why would the king have helped?) (Maybe it’s part of my sidhe-seer gifts.)

4. The Book hunts me and plays with me like a cat worrying a mouse. (Can’t think of a way out of this one. There’s obviously something different about me.)

5. K’Vruck poked at me mentally, then said, “Ah, there you are.” (WTF????)

6. I can go through the mirror that only the king and concubine can go through, and the queen is the concubine. Barrons can’t. Fiona couldn’t.

7. When I was in the White Mansion, I could see the concubine but not the king, which makes perfect sense if it was the king’s memories I was living, because when you’re remembering something, you don’t see yourself in the memory, you see who else was there and what happened around you.

I dropped my pen and snapped my journal shut. Daddy could have used those last two PROs to get me life without parole.

I needed to perform more experiments with the Silver. That was all there was to it. Once I proved someone else could go through, I could quit driving myself nuts.

“Right,” I muttered. “More experiments. Sound like someone else we know?” Like maybe an obsessed king that had experimented an entire race of monsters into being. There was no getting around a brutal fact: If my tests failed, my test subjects would die. Was I so desperate to exonerate myself that I was willing to become a murderer? Sure, I’d killed a lot in the past few months, but in the heat of the fight, not premeditated, and Fiona had wanted to die.

A pure human would be the best test.

I could probably find someone hanging out at Chester’s who was in love with dying. Or too drunk to—

Was I losing my humanity? Or had I always been a little short to begin with?

I clutched my head and groaned.

Suddenly every muscle in my body tensed as if standing up in greeting, even though I didn’t move. “Barrons.” I dropped my hands and raised my head.

“Ms. Lane.” He took a chair across from me with such eerie grace that I wondered how I’d ever believed he was human. He poured himself into the brocade wing chair, like water over stone, before settling into sleek muscle. He moved as if he knew where everything in the room was, in precise measurements. He didn’t walk, stalk, or prowl; he glided with flawless awareness of all other atoms in relation to his. It made it easy for him to conceal himself behind inanimate objects and to assume a similar … structure or something.