‘They’re protecting the queen with their lives,” Barrons said flatly. “They count.”
We still lost.
Drustan placed the Book on the slab. Barrons took the stones from Lor and Fade and placed the first three around it. V’lane laid the final stone in place. As soon as the four were positioned, they began to glow an eerie blue-black and emit a soft, constant chime.
The entire top of the slab was bathed in blue-black light.
“Now, MacKayla,” V’lane said.
I bit my lower lip, hesitating, wondering what would happen if I refused.
“We voted,” Kat reminded.
I sighed. I knew what would happen. We’d still be down here tomorrow and the next day and the next, arguing about what to do.
I had a really bad feeling about this. But I’d had really bad feelings before that had amounted to nothing more than a case of nerves and, after everything I’d been through, I could understand how I might feel dread merely being in the Book’s presence.
I looked at V’lane. He nodded encouragingly.
I looked at Barrons. He was so inhumanly still that I almost missed him. For a moment, he looked like someone else’s shadow in the bright cavern. It was a neat trick. I knew what that kind of stillness meant. He didn’t like it, either, but had come to the same conclusions as me. Ours was a volatile group. It had voted. If I went against that vote, all hell would break lose. We’d turn on one another, and who knew how ugly things might get?
My parents were here. Did I remove the runes and potentially expose them to risk? Or refuse and potentially expose them to risk?
There were no good choices.
I reached into the blue-black light and began to peel the first rune from the spine. As I pried it away, it pulsed like a small angry heartbeat and left a lesion that pooled with black blood before vanishing.
“What am I supposed to do with them?” I held it in the air.
“Velvet will sift them away as you remove them,” V’lane said.
One by one, I tugged them away and they popped out of existence.
When there was only one left, I stopped and pressed both my hands to the cover. It felt inert. Were the runes on the inside of these walls really enough to hold it? I was about to find out.
I tugged the final one from the binding of the book. It came away reluctantly, squirming like a hungry leech, and tried to attach to me once I’d broken the bond.
Velvet sifted it out.
I held my breath as the crimson rune vanished. After about twenty seconds, I heard a small explosion of gusty exhales. I think we all expected it to morph into the Beast and rain down the end of days on us.
“Well?” V’lane said.
I opened my sidhe-seer senses, trying to feel it.
“Is it contained?” Barrons demanded.
I reached with everything I had, stretching, pushing that part of me that could sense OOPs as far as it could go, and for a brief moment I felt the entire interior of the cavern and understood the purposes of the runes.
Each had been meticulously chiseled into the stone interior so that if lines were drawn connecting them, from floor to ceiling and wall to wall, they would reveal an intricate tight grid. Once the Book had been positioned on the slab and the stones arranged around it, the runes had begun to activate. They now crisscrossed the room with a gigantic invisible spiderweb. I could almost see the tensile silvery strands shooting past my head, feel them slicing through me.
Even if the Book somehow got off the slab, it would be instantly stuck in the first of countless sticky compartments. The harder it fought, the more the web would twist around it, eventually cocooning it.
It was over. It was really over. There was no other shoe that was going to drop.
There was a time I’d thought this day would never come. The mission had seemed too difficult, the odds too strongly stacked against us.
But we’d done it.
The Sinsar Dubh was shut down. Locked up. Caged. Imprisoned. Put to rest. Neutralized. Inert.
So long as nobody ever came down here and set it free again.
We were going to need better locks on the door. And I was going to make a motion that no one in the Haven got to have a key this time around. I wasn’t sure why they’d been able to get in to begin with. There was no reason anyone should enter this cavern. Ever.
Relief flooded me. I was having a hard time processing that it was really, truly over and comprehending all that meant.
Life could begin again. It would never be as normal as it used to be, but it would be a lot more normal than it had been for a long time. With the biggest, most immediate threat out of the way, we could focus our efforts on reclaiming and rebuilding our world. I could get some pots and dirt and start a rooftop garden at the bookstore.
I’d never have to walk down a dark street and be afraid the Book might be waiting for me, ready to crush me with a bone-deep migraine, set my spine on fire, or tempt me with illusion. It would never again possess one of us, never slaughter its way through our midst or threaten the people I loved.
I didn’t have to strip when I went to Chester’s anymore! Skintight clothing was a fad whose time had passed.
I turned around. Everyone was looking at me expectantly. They looked so wired and anxious, I suspected they’d jump out of their skins if I said, Boo. And for a moment I was tempted.
But I didn’t want anything to detract from the joy of the moment. I spread my hands and shrugged, smiling. “It’s over. It worked. The Sinsar Dubh is just a book. Nothing more.”
The cheers were deafening.
50
Well, okay, so maybe the cheers weren’t deafening, but they felt deafening to me, because I was cheering, too, and louder than most. The reality of the situation was that the sidhe-seers cheered, Mom and Dad hooted, Drustan whooped, Dageus and Cian grunted, Christopher looked worried, Christian turned and began to walk away in silence, Barrons scowled as did the rest of his men, and the Seelie glared.
Then the fighting broke out. Again.
I sighed gustily. They really needed to get with the program and learn to celebrate the good times a little longer before dwelling on the problems. I’d been walking around under the sentence of a prophecy that I would doom or save the world and I’d … well, technically, I hadn’t done either. I hadn’t doomed it. But I couldn’t see any way I’d saved it. Unless I’d saved it simply by not dooming it. But, still, I knew the importance of celebrating every now and then to alleviate the stress.
“We cannot restore the walls without the Song,” V’lane was saying.
“Who says we need the walls back up?” Barrons demanded. “You’re roaches, we’re Raid. We’ll get rid of you eventually.”
“We. Are. Not. Insects,” Velvet said tightly.
“I was talking about the Unseelie. I figured you prancing fairy bastards would get off our world voluntarily after helping eradicate your skulking half.”
“I do not prance.” Dree’lia was insulted. “You would do well to recall the delights found in our arms.”
I glanced at Barrons disbelievingly. “You had sex with her?”
He rolled his eyes. “It was a long time ago and only because she pretended to know something about the Book.”
“Lies, ancient one. You panted around behind me—”
“Barrons has never panted around behind anyone,” I said.
His dark gaze shimmered with amusement. Unexpected, but thanks for the defense.
Well, you haven’t. Not even me.
Debatable. Ryodan would disagree with you.
Sleep with another fairy and I’ll turn into V’lane’s personal Pri-ya.
His eyes were murderous, but he kept his tone light. Jealous much?
What’s mine is mine.
He went very still. Is that how you think of me?
Time seemed to stand still while we looked at each other. The arguing receded. The cavern emptied and it was just him and me. The moment stretched between us, pregnant with possibility. I hate moments like this. They always demand you lay something on the line.
He wanted an answer. And he wasn’t moving until he got one. I could see it in his eyes.
I was terrified. What if I said yes and he came back with a mocking retort? What if I got dewy and emotional and he left me hanging all exposed? Worse yet, what was going to happen when he found out I hadn’t gotten the spell to free his son? Would he take down my sign, batten up my beloved store, steal off with his child in the dark of night, burning off like mist in the morning sun, and I would never see him again?
I’d learned a thing or two.
Hope strengthens. Fear kills.
Bet your ass you’re mine, bud, I shot at him. I was staking my claim and I’d fight for it—lie, cheat, and steal. So I hadn’t gotten the spell. Yet. Tomorrow was another day. And if that was all he’d wanted me for, he didn’t deserve me.
Barrons tossed his head back and laughed, teeth flashing in his dark face.
Only once before had I ever heard him laugh like that: the night he caught me dancing to “Bad Moon Rising,” wearing the MacHalo, leaping small couches in a single bound, slaying pillows and slashing air. I caught my breath. Like Alina’s laugh, which used to make my world brighter than the hot afternoon sun, it held joy.
The rest of the occupants faded back in. They’d all gone silent and were staring at Barrons and me.
He stopped laughing instantly and cleared his throat. Then his eyes narrowed. “What the fuck is he doing? We haven’t made a decision.”
“I was trying to tell you,” Jack said. “But you didn’t hear a thing I said. You were looking at my daughter like—”
“Get away from the Book, V’lane,” Barrons growled. “If anyone’s going to be looking at it, it’ll be Mac.”
“Mac’s not touching it,” Rainey said instantly. “That terrible thing should be destroyed.”
“Can’t be, Mom. It doesn’t work that way.”
While everyone was fighting and Barrons and I were absorbed in a wordless conversation, V’lane had taken the bundled queen/concubine from my daddy and was now standing near the slab, looking down at the Sinsar Dubh.
“Don’t open it,” Kat warned him. “We need to talk. Make plans.”
“She’s right,” Dageus said. “ ’Tis no’ a thing to be undertaken lightly, V’lane.”
“There are precautions that must be observed,” Drustan added.
“There has been enough talk,” V’lane said. “My duties to my race are clear. They always have been.”
Barrons didn’t waste any breath. He moved like the beast, too fast to see. One moment he was a few feet from me, the next he was—