And I realize why I had such a hard time pinpointing the princess.
I wasn’t tuning myself out.
The same dark march is coming from me.
I open my eyes to find Ryodan watching me intently. “There is only one,” I say, and begin pushing through the crowd.
There’s a simple explanation, I decide as we ascend the stairs, then turn down a long glass corridor. A complete copy of the Sinsar Dubh is inside me. I possess all the Unseelie King’s dark magic and spells from which he created his many castes. I probably sound like each and every one of them at varying times. I just never noticed it before because I had no reason to listen to myself.
Still, as I prepare to place my palm to the right of the door leading into Ryodan’s office, I’m assaulted by a sudden image of whatever’s inside swiveling her head and saying, “Hey, sis, what’s up?” Since the day I arrived in Dublin, I’ve never been entirely certain who and what I am. I understand why Barrons rejects labels. You only know who you are in opposition to something, what you choose to fight for and against. The rest doesn’t matter.
“Wait a minute.” I turn back and am darkly amused to see that even my Unseelie “priests” have abandoned me. They huddle, facing one another, chittering with what almost seems nervous dissension ten feet behind Ryodan, who’s standing half the length of the corridor away from me, allowing no opportunity for the princess to turn him into a mindless sexual slave. I forget what I’m saying, momentarily distracted by that thought. I’m a monogamous woman. I don’t like to share. Yet the idea of this man as a mindless sexual slave is … I shake my head. This is Ryodan, I remind myself.
Then Barrons joins him and eclipses the notion. His eyes are brilliant, his body emanating heat and power. If I pressed my ear to his chest, his heart would be thudding, slow and strong.
“How do you know what’s happening in there if you can’t see inside?” I ask Ryodan. The two-way glass is dark from the outside, transparent only from within.
Ryodan places his cell phone on the floor and slides it across the slick glass floor. It stops at my feet. “Tap the Skull and Crossbones app.”
Of course, he has an app for everything. Figures he’d be able to watch the central hub of his universe from the phone that shouldn’t work, via an otherworldly Wi-Fi network that doesn’t exist.
I open the app, blink once then forget how to. “Oh, my gosh, he’s … that can’t be … holy cow.” My face gets hot.
“Give me a break,” Ryodan says irritably. “And give me my phone back.”
I want to keep it. See what else is on there. I’ve heard rumors there’s a level in this club reserved only for the Nine.
Barrons snorts. Barrons has reason to snort. I got the best one. I glance up and give him a charged look.
Yes, you did.
“Quit procrastinating,” Ryodan says. “And get rid of the bitch. My phone.” He extends his hand.
Not a chance. Not when I’m not sure how the princess will react to me.
I place my palm on the wall and the door whisks aside with a faint hydraulic hiss. Sex slams me in the face, scorching, drugging, volatile.
“I said, my phone.”
I stand at the threshold and look in. The princess has her back to me, and Lor is beyond noticing anything. Ryodan and Barrons are another matter. They’re too observant by far. There is also the small matter of the enormous possessiveness I feel where Barrons is concerned.
I step inside and place my palm on the interior panel.
Two males roar in unison.
“Ms. Lane, you will not close—”
“Mac, you will give me my fucking—”
The door hisses closed behind me.
12
“We are family, I got all my sisters with me”
MAC
Once I would have thought what was taking place in Ryodan’s office was no more than what it appeared to be: an Unseelie of the royal caste subjugating a human, getting drunk on the pleasure they siphon from our souls. Immortal, jaded, void of anything that passes as passion, Fae royalty is incapable of emotion, but they can experience it through a human vessel. Especially during sex. Or torture. Preferably both at the same time. They either use the human up completely and kill it or leave a shell of a sex-starved slave. Death is the better option there.
But the Unseelie Princes just shocked the hell out of me, proved themselves to be ambitious and goal-oriented, willing to adopt a mien of civility to achieve their aims, and channel what used to be a maelstrom of uncontrolled hunger into deliberated action.
Considering the Fae have always been matriarchal, I have reason to assume the princesses are no less driven or capable of evolving than their dark counterparts. I wonder where they’ve been all this time. Feeding in private? Learning self-discipline and -control? Plotting to take over our world?
She’s not throwing off the whirlwind of insanity and insatiability with which the princes first razed our world when freed from their prison, nor does she seem bent on the vicious, obsessive hunt of the Crimson Hag determined to complete her gut-gown. She appears composed, even dispassionate. I consider that perhaps like human women, she’s not as governed by hormones, or whatever passes as Fae motivation, as the males. Perhaps the genders of any species share certain traits. As far as I know, it’s the female Fae that bears what few young they manage, and may be biologically more pragmatic, to ensure their offspring’s survival. I hope so because I don’t want to kill her. Not now, not here with so many humans in the vicinity. As much as I want her dead, I have to find another way.
Then arrange a safer place to hunt her.
I take a deep, slow breath and release it. “We could cut to the chase,” I say to her beautiful back. Iridescent, sparkling tattoos shimmer on each side of her spine, furling and unfurling as if caressed by a sultry Fae breeze only she can feel. They vaguely resemble wings.
Silver embellishments glitter along her backbone as if she’s adorned her spine with metal piercings, with more of them on each side of her neck. Though immune to Fae thrall, watching Lor do what he’s doing to her is getting me hot and bothered in a purely human way. No wonder the blondes keep lining up at his bed. He’s a massive, lethal lion of muscle, sex, and power. He growls as he grinds up into her, and the sound is so rough and ready, so freaking hot and sexy, that my heart begins to hammer in the back of my throat and my mouth goes dry. I swallow hard and wet my lips before I continue, “What do you want?”
She glances over her shoulder with that telltale inhuman head swivel, assesses and disregards me.
She should take a deeper look.
“Mac, get her the fuck off me,” Lor snarls. Then he groans again, in spite of himself.
“You will not speak,” the princess commands Lor, and just like that he loses control of his vocal cords. Nice talent. I wouldn’t mind having it myself.
“I said, What do you want?” I repeat coldly.
“Nor will you speak,” she hisses over her shoulder at me.
My vocal cords don’t feel any different. I test them by clearing my throat. It works.
Her head swivels again and she rakes an imperious, frosty glance from my boots to my hair. Her hips never stop moving. “What are you?”
“The one not killing you,” I say, working hard to ignore the graphic sex happening right in front of me. “For the moment. What. Do. You. Want.” I push my hair back, not surprised to realize it’s damp, I’m actually sweating from watching them have sex. I’m overdue for some of my own.
“You are not human.”
“I am, too,” I say flatly. I may not be sure of much, but I was born. I was carried in a womb. And infected there.
“My power works on everything but Fae of the royal castes.”
“You didn’t come here to have sex,” I evade. “You could do that anywhere. You came specifically to this club and chose specifically him. Why?” It’s a ballsy move, stalking so openly into Chester’s, alone, targeting one of the Nine and turning him Pri-ya in the owner’s office. Why haven’t we seen any of the princesses before? Cruce claimed all the Seelie were dead. He’d also claimed no Unseelie Princesses were made. Was anything he told me true? Where has she been? Is she newly arrived, jockeying for position by abducting one of the most powerful males in the city?
She wets blue lips and tilts her head to the side. Her eyes darken to inky pools that are suddenly neon cobalt. Beyond long, thick lashes, vertical slitted pupils dilate and shrink, dilate again as if she’s taking my measure with vision humans don’t possess. For a moment I think I glimpse stars in those pupils. She’s different from the princes. There’s a … vastness to her that exceeds theirs.
He made us last. We are his best. Enhanced.
Without thinking, I seek confirmation of that from the only place I could possibly get it.
Yes, open me, read me, it agrees instantly.
I sigh, resuming my chant, imagining Poe would enjoy that although his narrator was unable to silence the bird, his poem silences my book.
But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door …