“Time does not define the act. Time is impartial; it neither condemns nor absolves. The action contains intent, and intent is where the definition lies.”
Bore me with human law.
“Enlighten you with universal law.”
You convict me of evil intent?
“Unequivocally.”
In your eyes I am a monster?
“Absolutely.”
I should be—how do you say?—put down?
“That’s what I’m here for.”
What, then, does that make you, MacKayla?
“A repentant king. I eviscerated my evil, imprisoned you once before, and I will again.”
How you amuse.
“Laugh all you want.”
You believe you are my maker.
“I know I am.”
My sweet MacKayla, you are such a fool. You did not make me. I made you.
A chill slid down my spine. Its voice oozed satisfaction and mockery, as if it were watching me head straight toward a train wreck and enjoying every minute of it. My eyes narrowed. “Not falling for the chicken/egg discussion. Your evil didn’t make me the king. I was the king, and I turned evil. I wised up and dumped my evil into a book. You were never supposed to live. And I plan to rectify that.”
Not chickens and eggs. A human woman. And you—a tiny little embryo.
My mouth opened on a retort, but I hesitated.
Of all the lies it had woven so far, this one held a startling ring of truth. Why?
What I told you before was true. I took Isla to escape the abbey. And she was pregnant. I did not expect to find you in her. I did not know how humans replicated. As I used her to kill the other humans who had dared to restrain me—ME, locked in a cold stone vacuum for an eternity of nothingness, have you any idea the HELL?—there you were. The wonder. Unformed life in her body. Mine for the taking. I marveled at the beauty of you. Unshaped, unfettered by scruple, unhampered by human weaknesses. Your race and its obsession with sin! You chain yourselves to the whipping post because you fear the sky. It is those chains, those limits, that make the bodies I take so fragile, tear them apart so soon after I possess them.
But you were different. You hungered, you slept, you dreamed, but you were pure. You knew no right or wrong; you were empty. You did not resist me. You were open. I filled you. I nestled down inside you, replicated myself and left it there. You are my child. You suckled at my breast, MacKayla. I was your mother’s milk; I gave you your defenses against the world. On that day, before your body could sustain itself separately, before you ever had the chance to do something so stupid and small as become human, I claimed you. I gave birth to you. Not Isla.
“You’re lying. I’m the king,” I said flatly.
You seek truth? Can you face it?
I said nothing.
The truth is within you. It always has been. It is there in the one place you refuse to go.
I narrowed my eyes. Perhaps I’d been congratulating myself on subduing my inner monster too soon. Don’t talk to it, beautiful girl, the dreamy-eyed guy had said, long ago in Chester’s, long before I’d met the fear dorcha. Never talk to it. I wondered if he’d meant the Sinsar Dubh then. Too late. I was waist-deep in quicksand. Struggling would only hasten my descent.
You have only ever taken what I offered, what I floated to the surface. Dive in, MacKayla. Graze the bottom of your lake. You will find me down there, shining in all my glory. Lift my lid. Know the truth of your existence. If I am evil, we are evil. If I should be “put down,” so must you. There is no sentence you can cry upon me that you must not carry out upon yourself. There is no point in fighting me. You are me. Not a king. Me. Always have been. Always will be. You can’t eviscerate me. I am your soul.
“Those runes I found are my sidhe-seer gifts.”
From the walls of the Unseelie prison? The universe abhors a boring liar. Flamboyance, MacKayla. Get some if you wish to spend an eternity with me.
“It’s because I’m the king. The good part of him. I have his memories to prove it.”
We possess memories from a portion of his existence. It was impossible for him to dump his knowledge without imbuing my pages with the essence of the being that created them. I was sentient from the moment he finished scribing my pages. Do you recall anything that happened before the day the queen denied the king his concubine’s immortality?
I turned inward, searching.
There was nothing. A white expanse of emptiness. It was as if life began that day.
It did. It was the day he wrote his first spell of creation, performed the first of his experiments. We know his life from that day on. We know nothing of his existence before then. And we know little of his life since—only when I tracked and glimpsed him. You are not the king. You are my child, MacKayla. I am mother, father, lover, all. It is time to come home.
Was it possible that it was telling me the truth? I wasn’t the concubine, wasn’t the king? I was just a human who’d been touched by evil before birth?
More than touched. As the king poured himself into me, I am in you. Your body grew around me like a tree absorbs a nail and now waits to be reunited. You miss me. You are hollow without me. Haven’t you always known it? Felt empty, hungry for more? If I am evil, so are you. That, my sweet MacKayla, is your monster within. Or not.
“If you made me, where have you been for the past twenty-three years?”
Waiting for the mewling infant to grow strong before we reunited.
“You needed me to flip. That’s why you tried to kill the people I loved.”
Pain distills. The clarifying emotion.
“You screwed up. You came too soon. I can deal with pain, and I haven’t flipped.”
Lift my cover and embrace your dreams. You want Alina back? Snap of a finger. Isla and your father? They are yours. Dani as a young, innocent child with a bright future? One word can make it so. The walls back up? We will do it immediately. Walls are no hindrance to us. We pass through them.
“It would all be a lie.”
Not a lie, a different path, equally real. Embrace me and you will understand. Do you want the spell to unmake his child? Is that what you want? The key to releasing Jericho Barrons from the eternal hell of watching his son suffer? He has been tortured for so long. Has it not been long enough?
I caught my breath. Of all the things it might say, this was the one thing that tempted me.
I am not without mercy, MacKayla, the Sinsar Dubh said gently. Compassion is not beyond me. I see it in you. I learn. I evolve. Perhaps you do have the good parts of the king in you after all. Perhaps your humanity will temper me. You will make me kinder, more forgiving. I will make you stronger, less breakable.
Memories swarmed through my mind. I knew the Book was sifting through them, manipulating me. It had found the images Barrons showed me in the desert of the child dying in our arms. It embellished upon what Barrons had told me about his enemies, nearly drowned me in images of barbaric men torturing and killing the child again and again.
Behind those images, a father stalked through eternity, hunting for a way to release his son and grant him peace.
And gain it himself.
He gave you everything and has never asked you for a thing in return. Until this. He will die for you over and over. And all he wants you to do is free his son.
There was nothing it had just said that I could argue with.
Open me, MacKayla. Embrace me. Use me for good, out of love. How could a thing given from love be bad? You said it yourself—it is the intention that defines the action.
And there it was in a nutshell, the ultimate temptation: to pick up the Book, crack it open, and read it, looking for the spell so Barrons could unmake his child, because I would be doing it for all the right reasons. Even Barrons had said evil wasn’t a state of being, it was a choice.
The Unseelie King had not trusted himself to retain the power contained within the pages of the Sinsar Dubh. How could I?
I stared at it, debating.
Irony, perfect definition: Barrons had said, that for which I want to possess it, I would no longer want once I possessed it.
If I picked it up—even with the most merciful of reasons in my heart—would I still care about releasing the child once I raised the cover? Would I care about Jack and Rainey, about the world, about Barrons himself?
Foolish fears, my sweet MacKayla. You have free will. I am only a chisel. You are the sculptor. Use me. Shape your world. Be a saint if you wish: Plant flowers, save children, champion small animals.
Was it that easy? Could it be true?
I could make the world perfect.
It’s an imperfect world, Mac, I could almost hear Barrons roaring.
It was. Royally screwed up. Packed with injustices that needed to be righted, bad people and hard times. I could make everyone happy.
You have the amulet. With it you will always have control over me. You will always be stronger than I. I am merely a book. You are alive.
It was just a book.
Take me, use me. It is as Barrons has always told you—it is how you go on that defines you. You make the choices. His child suffers. There is so much suffering in this world. You can make it all go away.
I stared at it, hands flexing. That was the hard thing. The pain. He and his son suffered endlessly and would continue to do so every day, eternally. Unless I could get the spell of unmaking I’d promised him.
I have such a spell. We will lay the child to rest together. You will be his savior. We will free him now, this very night. Open me, MacKayla. Open yourself. I have been unguided. You will teach me.
I bit my lip, frowning. Could I guide the Sinsar Dubh? Would my humanity give me the edge I needed? I turned inward, searching my heart, my soul. What I found there straightened my spine and squared my shoulders.
“I can,” I said. “I can change you. I can make you better.”
Yes, yes, do it now. Take me, hold me, open me, it whispered. Love you, MacKayla. Love me.
I couldn’t wait another moment. I reached for the Sinsar Dubh.