We’d talked for hours. About stupid things. About serious things. We’d reminisced. We’d grown maudlin. We’d laughed over silly stories. I’d told her about her funeral (morbid!) and about Barrons (amazing!) and my past year (traumatic as hell).
She’d told me her story, too, from the day she landed in Dublin, to the first time she’d seen a Fae, to discovering what she was. How she met Darroc and had loved him almost instantly.
Still, from day one, something in her gut had warned her not to confide, so she’d lied about her family and me. Then the Sinsar Dubh had begun playing games with her, very similar to those it played when I’d arrived.
Together, they’d learned about themselves—my older sister and her beautiful, exotic fallen Fae. And learned about each other. Over the months, she’d begun seeing significant changes in him, making me wonder briefly what might have happened if I’d met V’lane before I’d met Barrons. I’d have been fascinated, found him frightening yet somehow irresistible, at least for a time, and might even have tried to convince myself he was one of the good guys, blaming his ruthlessness on his alien nature, maybe even convinced myself I could help him evolve. As Darroc had evolved, according to Alina, growing increasingly more human. He’d lost the vestiges of that Fae iciness he’d often evidenced in the beginning of their relationship, that ancient remoteness that had prevented her from telling him many things. He’d become invested in her world, her concerns, and in their future together.
When Darroc asked her to marry him, although she’d been astonished he was willing to be part of such a human ritual she said yes.
Two days later she’d followed him to 1247 LaRuhe and discovered who her future husband really was and what he’d been doing all along. When he’d glanced up and seen her, she’d run, certain he would give chase, but he hadn’t. She’d walked the streets for hours, finally coming to the decision to call me and return home.
He’d broken into her apartment while she was leaving a message for me. She’d been afraid he’d come to kill her. But although they’d fought heatedly, he’d merely stormed out, telling her she needed to pull her head out of her ass and take a good hard look at the world and decide what she wanted. He’d be waiting for her.
Hours later Dani had arrived, telling her that Rowena wanted to meet with her. Numbly, Alina followed.
I knew the rest of the story.
But there was one thing she told me that I hadn’t known.
The young sidhe-seer who’d led her to that alley that day to die had ended up crying as hard as Alina. She’d shaken violently, like she was trying to throw off some kind of physical compulsion. She gnashed her teeth, vomited until there was nothing left but bile, torn at her hair and finally screamed at the end, as if it were she who lay in the alley, dying.
At that point I’d begun pounding tequila shots, trying to numb my heart and make it through the night. Until I could hug Dani and tell her how much I loved her and that none of it had been her fault.
I’d wanted to go find her as soon as I’d awakened this morning, but I forced myself to postpone it until I’d sorted through at least a few hundred files. More even than I wanted to show Dani my love and support right now, I wanted to ensure she had a long future of it.
So, I sat on the sofa in BB&B, with a throbbing head, where I’d been sitting for the past four and a half hours, staring into space, inundated by minutiae and feeling utterly inadequate to the task at hand.
The only thing I’d managed to learn about the song so far was that it had come from a completely different source than the True Magic. The Fae had no idea who’d given it to them or why. It had been gifted with a single imperative: use it only when you must and remember there is always a price.
The second part of that imperative made me uneasy. What was the price?
My imagination ran wild. Would it kill whoever sang it? If we discovered the song, would I die using it?
The rest of what I’d absorbed were nothing but vague myths and legends, some claiming the song was divine, the beginning of life as we knew it, that it had incited the “Big Bang.” Others claimed it came from a race even more technologically advanced than the Tuatha De Danann who had evolved to a higher state of being and passed off the song as a gift to a race they’d viewed as having potential.
Each myth, however, shared the common contention that it called due a price. Several seemed to imply that if the race “wielding it” (there was that damn word again) hadn’t done anything wrong, the price would not be high.
“Wrong” was an exceedingly vague word. I’d done many wrong things. Likewise, “high” was a highly nebulous degree, relative to the person it affected.
My phone vibrated with a new message from Dancer.
Done. Ready to try it. Meet here or there?
BB&B, I texted back.