30
That was why I’d screamed. I’d been having a hard enough time dealing with the thought that I was the concubine.
As I’d stared into the coffin and recognized her from the White Mansion, it had taken me only a moment to process that, if the concubine was lying in the coffin and I could pass through the king’s Silver, I had a serious problem.
The scream had been instinctive, denial from the very marrow in my bones clawing its way up my throat and past my lips.
If she was the concubine, and I could go though the Silver, too, there was only one other … person—and I was using that term very loosely—I could be.
“And it’s not the concubine, that’s for sure,” I muttered as I pushed through the Silver and slammed into the wall. I’d expected resistance like in every other Silver, but this one—the first ever created—was untainted by Cruce’s curse. I turned at the last moment, cradling her in my arms, taking the brunt of the impact on my shoulder. Not a damned thing about this made sense.
“Mac, what are you doing?” Christian roared, storming toward the mirror.
“Don’t touch it!” I cried. “It will kill you!” I didn’t want him to think for a minute that it wouldn’t and try to come through. It had killed Barrons. I had no doubt it would destroy Christian, and he didn’t have a get-out-of-death-free card. At least not that I knew of. But as had just become painfully apparent to me, I didn’t know much of anything, so maybe he had a whole deck of them. Maybe everyone did but me. Still, I wasn’t going to count on it. I needed him. More than ever before, I needed the Sinsar Dubh contained, and he was one of the five necessary to do it. I understood why it played with me now.
He stopped inches from the mirror and peered at me through it. “Why didn’t it kill her? I’ll know the truth,” he warned.
I adjusted her in my arms, scooped up a mass of her hair, and draped it over my shoulder so it didn’t trail the floor and trip me. I stared back through the mirror at him. “Because she’s the concubine. That’s why I really screamed. I recognized her.”
“But I thought you were the conc—” He gave me a fast once-over. “But you went through the—But that would mean—Mac?”
I shrugged. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“How do you know she’s the concubine?” he demanded.
“The memory residue of the king and the concubine walks these halls. It’s hard not to get lost in them. But I imagine you won’t have quite as hard a time as I had, seeing how you aren’t quite so … personally involved,” I said bitterly. “I have no doubt you’ll see her while I’m gone.” I still wouldn’t look at her. It was too disconcerting. She was frighteningly light, delicate, and very, very cold. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
We stared at each other.
“I won’t believe it,” he said finally.
“It makes too much sense not to be true. There’s no record of me being born, Christian. The Book … it hunts me. I hear it always has.”
“Not buying it.”
“Give me another explanation.”
“Maybe the legends are wrong. Maybe a lot of people can step through the Silver. Maybe it’s all bluff, to keep people from trying.”
My heart lurched when he took a step forward. “No, don’t! Christian, listen to me. I can’t tell you who, but I know you can hear the truth in what I’m saying. I watched the Silver kill someone already.”
He cocked his head, then nodded. “Aye, lass. I hear truth in that, but why can’t you tell me who?”
“It’s not my secret to tell.”
“You’ll tell me one day.”
I didn’t reply.
“I’m still not buying it.”
“Find me an alternative. Any alternative. I’ll happily believe it.”
“Maybe you’re … I don’t know … Maybe you’re their child somehow,” he offered.
“Seven-hundred-thousand-plus years later?” I’d already considered and discarded that thought. Not only didn’t it resonate with my gut feelings, but “It doesn’t begin to explain all the things I know and feel and remember, or why the Book plays with me,” I said. I couldn’t explain how I knew it, but I wasn’t the progeny of the Unseelie King and his concubine. My feelings were far too personal. Far too sexual and possessive. Not a child’s feelings at all. But a lover’s.
He shrugged. “I’ll remain here. But hurry back.”
“Promise me you won’t try to come through, Christian.”
“I promise, Mac. But hurry. The longer I’m in here, the more I feel myself … changing.”
I nodded. As I turned away with the queen/concubine/woman I’d apparently destroyed worlds for, I couldn’t help but wonder where my other parts were.