“It’s mad,” Aoibheal said softly, staring through the shadowy, translucent Silver at the thing that had just burst into the concubine’s boudoir, shouting nonsense. “Utterly and completely mad.”
“Awk! Maaaaad!” the T’murra agreed.
She swept at the bird with her hand, urging it, “Fly now, young one! Go! I’ll not see you harmed, too.”
“Ack! Fly now!” It pecked at her cheek sharply, as if urging her into action.
“I can’t,” Aoibheal said. She was trapped. Was this the fate the king intended for her? Had he decided to terminate her existence in such a cruel, ironic fashion because she’d forced him to face what he’d refused to believe for eons—that his lover had left him by choice? “Go!” She shooed it again. “It feeds on death and destruction. I’ll not give it more of what it wants.”
Still the T’murra kept its talons dug deep into her cloak.
“Get off me!” She smacked lightly at its feathery belly with her hand.
“Ack!” It gave her a look of seeming reproach and lifted off, echoing in a loud squawk, “Give it what it wants!”
The T’murra soared up to the safety of the starry night sky, shrieking the random selection of words over and over again. Even as peaceful Zara, she’d sometimes longed to muzzle her talkative companions’ lovely beaks.
Steeling herself, she turned to face her would-be executioner.
MacKayla O’Connor, the young child whom she’d so often visited in dreams, was now a grown woman, her jeans crusted with blood and entrails, her hair a wild mass of tangled clumps, the look in her eyes completely and utterly insane.
Black irises had obliterated green and, as the Fae queen stared through the shadowy Silver at her, she felt a pale regret. She’d manipulated the O’Connor as she herself had been manipulated. As the Fae king had tinkered with the mortal Zara, so too had the Fae queen tinkered with the mortal Mac.
But regret changed nothing, pale or vivid. The Sinsar Dubh was in full possession of what had once been human, but the golden glow of the O’Connor’s soul was already fading. No soul would survive long, possessed by such evil as what faced her now, with but one goal: to kill her and seize the True Magic of her race.
No. Not her race.
The race she despised.
The race that would soon become extinct without the Song of Making.
And good riddance to it.
The Book would no doubt then seek her elixir, become immortal, thus ensuring the final death of the O’Connor’s soul. She would become every bit as much a monster as the one that possessed her.
Aoibheal narrowed her eyes. She felt the proximity of the others, those who sought to stop the Sinsar Dubh. She felt, too, the presence of the legendary four stones carved from the cliffs of the Unseelie prison, etched with powerful spells, capable of holding the Sinsar Dubh in a state of suspended animation.
The day was not yet lost.
Her lips twisted in an imperious sneer.
He was coming, too!
The one from whom she’d begged her favor; the one who’d lied and, with the offer of a glass of wine to toast her freedom, had stolen her memory then dragged her off to live for hundreds of thousands of years among her enemy. Masquerading as ally at her side. Controlling her, shaping her. Taking what he wanted until what he wanted was nothing less than everything she had, at which point he’d tried to kill her.
Cruce was with them.
“Ack!” The T’murra squawked loudly from above, echoing bits of her earlier words again. “Give it what it wants!”
Aoibheal cocked her head and glanced up sharply, as the T’murra’s words abruptly seemed no longer quite so random.
MAC
This is how it feels to be the Sinsar Dubh.
Only better. I lack even its shallow frustration and glee.
There’s nothing left of emotion nor any desire for it.
I’m perfection of aim, purpose without self.
I’m arrow to goal without ego.
I expand effortlessly into my body to evict the parasite that thinks to take from me what is mine.
I apprehend the small, dark stain of it as if from a great distance.
How dare it walk within my walls?
This is my kingdom.
SINSAR DUBH
I lunge for the mirror, dropping the princess, leaving her behind. Cocooned like Cruce and the Highlander, she presents no threat to me, can’t contend for the True Magic. I am eager to taste my deserved victory and will visit her and my other toys soon, with ample time to savor their suffering. I realize now that the universe was once again favoring me, not working against me as I’d thought, when it permitted Jada to take my spear. Overeager from long incarceration, I would have rashly killed all three. Now I can draw out their tor—
STOP.