MAC

You know those movies where lovers have been separated with no idea whether they’ll ever see each other again and, when they finally do, after harrowing trials and tribulations, they dash madly toward one another, and the filmmaker shoots the scene in slow motion so the viewers get to revel in that long, drawn out moment of anticipation, waiting breathlessly for their first passionate embrace?

That’s so not what happened with me and Barrons.

Neither of us moved. We just stood there looking at each other. His dark eyes gleamed with…I had no idea what because I couldn’t currently feel and had no way of identifying emotion. But I chose to believe it was satisfaction, respect, and a “bloody good job, Ms. Lane.”

No one else in the boudoir moved either. They were all staring past me.

I turned and glanced back at the containment field.

Inside a blue-black cage, a dark, angry tornado twisted and darted, flinging itself repeatedly at the walls.

To no avail.

I’d walked away from it. I’d left the Sinsar Dubh behind, trapped forever, in its own private hell.

I was unsatisfied with the outcome. I would only be satisfied when it was destroyed.

“You did it, Mac!” Jada exploded fiercely, punching the air.

I had indeed. But I was still remote and emotionless, and although a part of me almost yearned to stay that way, a bigger part didn’t.

I wanted to feel again, to drink in the moment, the dawning of a new day. I wanted to savor my hard-won freedom. There was so much future ahead of us, if we could manage to save our world. I calculated the odds at slightly better than they had been.

I could feel the unfamiliar presence of the True Magic smoldering inside me. And while part of me thought, Gee, great, now I have another uninvited thing inside me I have to deal with, most of me was thinking how extraordinary it was that by an unexpected twist of fate I’d become the one woman who could wield the Song of Making.

That was a serious plus in our column. Cruce possessed at least some part of the Sinsar Dubh. Dageus was alive with the souls of thirteen ancient Draghar inside him. We had Dani’s and Dancer’s quirky, brilliant minds and Barrons’s and Ryodan’s vast experience with magic and the black arts.

Yes, our odds were definitely better than they had been, with the Fae queen missing, and me possessed.

I slanted my eyes half closed, sank within and embraced all that made me human; the good, the bad, the pretty and not so pretty, and as emotion rekindled, I stared past the Sinsar Dubh’s prison, through the shadows of the king’s ancient, towering Silver to the woman who stood on the other side of it, a dazzling bird perched on her shoulder.

She met my gaze and I thought I detected the faintest trace of sorrow in her lovely, iridescent eyes. I could recognize emotion again.

Then she turned and glided to the now open door on the king’s side of the boudoir and exited through it without a word, vanishing into the White Mansion.

The door swung shut behind her with such force that the floor shuddered and the king’s enormous mirror abruptly went coal black.

The mirror shivered violently then—gilt frame and all—simply popped out of existence, leaving a smooth white wall where once it had hung.

The concubine’s boudoir no longer connected to the king’s.

The tiny flames flickering in the diamonds floating on the air around us abruptly went out, leaving cold, opaque crystals that clattered to the floor, amid petals that no longer smelled spicy but now emitted a strong whiff of decay.

The residue of the concubine vanished from the bed.

The fire in the hearth died.

The chamber was just a chamber, void of all trace of the opulent beauty, passion, and sensuality that had saturated it.

Although I had no idea what had transpired between the legendary lovers, I knew what these events signified: the epic love affair between the Unseelie King and his concubine was over.

Inexpressible sorrow filled me.

I felt as if I’d lost something. I’d liked believing in their immortal love. I’d once lived their passion in these rooms, and the depth of their commitment to each other had been as powerful and seemingly eternal as the Unseelie King himself. Their tortured affair had been wild and romantic, inspiring me, filling me with wonder and no small measure of desire for a similar enduring love. Minus the tortured part.

I frowned, not liking the implications of what I’d just seen.

The Unseelie King had shut the door and turned out the lights. The lights he’d kept burning for hundreds of thousands of years. If the king no longer cared for the boudoir to exist as perpetual testament to his life’s love and obsession, then the king no longer cared. And his interest in human problems had always been fleetingly whimsical at best.

The concubine/Fae queen who might have helped me learn to use the powers she’d transferred to me had just stalked out and slammed the door behind her.

I didn’t need a genius IQ to figure out what their departures meant: no divine aid to humankind would be forthcoming.

Our world was dying.

Months, at best, the concubine had said.

And we were on our own.

MAC

The others began to bicker.

Cruce started it. No surprise there.

Jada was merely proposing we take further measures to secure the Sinsar Dubh in the chamber when he launched into a haughty diatribe about how no one was going anywhere until MacKayla “got her human ass over here,” put her hands on his chest and passed the True Magic of the Fae race to the rightful heir—the only Fae in the room, thereby entitled, no, owed…blah blah blah.