She narrowed her fibrous eyes, the threads of the tapestry rippling. How could such a being as the mad king fabricate such depth of emotion as she was now seeing?
Emotion was alien to their race in this, its purest essence. They felt but facsimiles of it, enhanced by living with the primitive race she’d chosen to settle her people among, for that very reason. To expand their pale existence, to amplify their wan desires in order to sate them more amply.
Yet on the great round dais, a woman that looked and moved identically to her, gazed down at the being she’d taken inside her body, inside her very soul, and laughed as Aoibheal had never known laughter. Touched as she herself had never touched. Was moved by the king she loathed far more intimately and with greater sensation than she had ever believed possible.
Forget your foolish quest, the woman on the bed said, sobering suddenly. Run away with me.
The king residue was abruptly angry. She could feel it, even as a tapestry. We had this conversation. We will never have it again.
It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t need to live forever.
You won’t be the one left behind when you die.
Make yourself human with me, then.
Aoibheal narrowed her eyes further. A Fae make itself human for a human? Never. Only one, Adam Black, had ever insisted on such an absurd, devaluing action, and there were reasons for his madness that were her fault entirely.
The king displayed the proper Fae response.
Revulsion.
Refusal to abandon the glory that it was to be of the Old Race, the honored ones, the First Race. Perhaps in his case even—the First One. Still…the song had not been entrusted to him. Rather to a female. For good reason. Women were not blinded by passion. They were clarified by it.
As the king rose and towered over the woman he claimed Aoibheal was, she felt what the woman on the bed felt and it was chafing and uncomfortable: tired of fighting for something she knew she would never attain. Weary of trying to make the blind see. Knowing her lover had passed beyond her ability to reach.
But the woman on the bed felt something else Aoibheal could not understand at all.
That love was the most important thing in the universe. More so even than the song. That without love and without freedom, life was worth nothing.
The woman on the bed wept after the king was gone.
The woman in the tapestry watched in silence.
If she must pretend to be that woman to secure her Court’s existence, so be it.
But it would cost the king everything.
26
“Separate the weak from the obsolete, I creep hard on imposters…”
“It can’t be human,” I protested, staring at the thing that looked so heartbreakingly like my sister. “It’s not possible. I’ve heard of doppelgangers but I don’t believe in them. Not this perfect. Not this detailed.” Except for a few minor things, like the diamond ring on her finger.
The imposter was sitting, leaning against the crate, its head swinging back and forth between us, eyeing me warily as if to ascertain I wasn’t about to begin moving toward it again.
I gazed at Barrons in mute pain and protest. Now more than ever, I was wondering if I’d ever escaped the Sinsar Dubh’s clutches that night in BB&B.
You are here and I am here and this is real. Barrons shot me a cool, dark look. Don’t flake out on me now, Ms. Lane.
I stiffened. I never flake out.
Remember that. And don’t do it. Focus on the moment. We’ll figure this out. You’re trying to see the whole fucking picture in a single moment. That’s enough to make anyone crazy. What do you do on a bloody minefield?
Try to get off it?
One step at a time.
He was right. Focus on the moment.
I looked back at the thing masquerading as my sister. It sat, looking as confused and disturbed as it had since the moment I’d first seen it. Then it looked up at Barrons, searchingly. “Who are you? What are you to her?”
Barrons said nothing. Answering questions isn’t high on his list with anyone but me, and that’s only because I have things he wants.
It went on in a rush, “My sister is carrying the Sinsar Dubh. It’s in her clothing somewhere. We have to get it away from her. We have to save her.” It cringed as it spoke the words, snatching a quick glance at me, as if it expected me to suddenly rain death and destruction on its head for speaking those words.
“I’m not carrying the Sinsar Dubh,” I snapped to whatever it was. “It’s inside me. It has been since birth. But it’s not in control of me.”
I hoped.
It blinked at me. “What?”
“My sister died over a year ago in an alley on the south side of the River Liffey after scratching a clue into the pavement. What was that clue?”
“It was 1247 LaRuhe, Jr. But, Mac, I didn’t die.”
I felt like I’d just been kicked in the stomach by a team of frigging Clydesdales. For the teeniest of instants I wondered if it was possible. “Someone watched you die,” I prompted.
“A girl with red hair. She took me to the alley. But she left before I…I—”