Текст книги "Shadowfever"

Автор книги: Karen Marie Moning

Соавторы: Karen Marie Moning,Karen Marie Moning
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

PART II

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

– T.S. ELIOT

There’s truth in your lies

Doubt in your faith

What you build you lay to waste

– LINKIN PARK, “IN PIECES”

Why do you hurt me?

I LOVE YOU.

You’re incapable of love.

NOTHING EXCEEDS MY ABILITIES. I AM ALL.

You’re a book. Pages with binding. You weren’t born. You don’t live. You’re no more than the dumping ground for everything that was wrong with a selfish king.

I AM EVERYTHING THAT WAS RIGHT WITH A WEAK KING. HE FEARED POWER. I KNOW NO FEAR.

What do you want from me?

OPEN YOUR EYES. SEE ME. SEE YOURSELF.

My eyes are open. I’m good. You’re evil.

–CONVERSATIONS WITH THE SINSAR DUBH

15

I never told anyone, but when I first arrived in Dublin, I had a secret fantasy that kept me from buckling during the worst times.

I’d pretend that we’d all been fooled, that the body sent home to Ashford wasn’t really Alina’s but some other blond coed that looked amazingly like her. I staunchly refused to acknowledge the dental records Daddy had insisted on comparing, a perfect match.

As I’d walked the streets of Temple Bar, hunting her killer, I’d pretended that any minute I was going to turn a corner and there she’d be.

She’d look at me, startled and thrilled, and say, Junior, what’s up? Are Mom and Dad okay? What are you doing here? And we’d hug each other and laugh, and I’d know that it had all been a nightmare but it was over. We’d have a beer, go shopping, find a beach somewhere on Ireland’s rocky coast.

I wasn’t prepared for death. Nobody is. You lose someone you love more than you love yourself, and you get a crash course in mortality. You lie awake night after night, wondering if you really believe in heaven and hell and finding all kinds of reasons to cling to faith, because you can’t bear to believe they aren’t out there somewhere, a few whispered words of a prayer away.

Deep down, I knew it was just a fantasy. But I needed it. It helped for a while.

I didn’t permit myself a fantasy with Barrons. I let rage take me because, as Ryodan astutely observed, it’s gasoline and makes great fuel. My fury was plutonium. In time, I would have mutated from radiation poisoning.

The worst part about losing someone you love—besides the agony of never getting to see them again—are the things you never said. The unsaid stalks you, mocks you for thinking you had all the time in the world. None of us do.

Here and now, face-to-face with Barrons, my tongue wouldn’t move. I couldn’t form a single word. The unsaid was ash in my mouth, too dry to swallow, choking me.

But worse than that was the realization that I was being played, again. No matter how real this moment seemed, I knew it was nothing but more illusion.

The Sinsar Dubh still had me.

I’d never really left the street where it had killed Darroc.

I was still standing, or probably lying in a heap, in front of K’Vruck, being distracted with fantasy while the Book was doing whatever it liked to do to me.

This was no different than the night Barrons and I tried to corner it with the stones and it had made me believe I was crouched on the pavement reading it, when all the while it had been crouching at my shoulder, reading me.

I should fight it. I should dive deep into my lake and do what I did best—blunder ahead in a generally forward direction, no matter how bad things got. But as I stared at the perfect replica of him, I couldn’t dredge up enough energy to drive the mirage away. Not yet.

There were worse ways to be tortured than with a vision of Jericho Barrons naked.

I would seek my sidhe-seer center and shatter it in a minute. Or ten. I leaned back against the fireplace with a faint smile, thinking: Bring it on.

The Barrons illusion rose from his half lunge and stood in a ripple of muscle.

God, he was beautiful. I looked up and down. The Book had done an amazingly accurate job, right down to his more generous attributes.

But it had gotten his tattoos wrong. I knew every inch of that body. The last time I saw Jericho Barrons naked, he’d been covered with red and black protection tattoos, and later his arms had been sheathed in them from biceps to wrist. Now the only tattoos he had were on his abdomen.

“You screwed up,” I told the Book. “But nice try.”

The fake Barrons tensed, knees bending slightly, weight shifting forward, and for a moment I thought he was going to launch himself at me and attack.

“I screwed up?” the Barrons figment snarled. He began to stalk toward me. It was difficult to look at his face when there was so much bouncing around at eye level.

“Which word didn’t you understand?” I said sweetly.

“Stop staring at my dick,” he growled.

Oh, yes, it was definitely an illusion. “Barrons loved me staring at his dick,” I informed it. “He would have been happy if I’d stared at his dick all day long, composing odes to its perfection.”

In one fluid motion, he had me by my collar and was yanking me to my feet. “That was before you killed me, you fucking imbecile!”

I was unfazed. Standing toe-to-toe with him was a drug. I needed it. I craved it. I couldn’t end this charade for anything. “See, you admit you’re dead,” I parried smoothly. “And I’m not an imbecile. An imbecile would be fooled by you.”

“I am not dead.” He slammed me back against the wall, pinning me with his body.

I was so delighted at being touched by Barrons-esque hands, so thrilled to be staring into the illusion of his dark eyes, that I hardly even felt my head smack into the wall. This was far more realistic than my brief moments with the memory of him in the black wing of the White Mansion. “Are, too.”

“Am not.”

His mouth was so close. Who cared if it wasn’t really him? It had his lips. His parts. Was one fake kiss too much to ask? I wet my lips. “Prove it.”

“You expect me to prove I’m not dead?” he said disbelievingly.

“I don’t think it’s so much to ask. After all, I did stab you.”

He braced his palms against the wall on either side of my head. “A wiser woman would stop reminding me of that.”

I inhaled his scent, spicy, exotic, a cherished memory that made me feel alive. The electric current that always charged the air between us sizzled on my skin. He was naked and I was up against a wall, and even though I knew I was being played by the Book, I could barely focus on his words. It felt so real. Except for those missing tattoos. The Book knew how big his dick was but couldn’t get the tattoos right. A small oversight.

“I’m impressed,” I murmured. “I really am.”

“I don’t give a bloody fucking hell if you’re impressed, Ms. Lane. I care about one thing and one thing only. Do you know where the Sinsar Dubh is? Did you find it for that bloody fucking half-breed bastard?”

“Oh, that’s just rich.” I snorted with laughter. The Sinsar Dubh had created an illusion of a person, and that extension of the Sinsar Dubh was asking me where the Sinsar Dubh was. “Infinite-regress much?”

“Answer me or I’m going to rip your head off.”

Barrons would never do that. The Sinsar Dubh had just made another mistake. Barrons had vowed to keep me alive, and he’d stayed true to that vow until the very end. He’d died to save me. He would never hurt me and certainly wouldn’t kill me. “You don’t know a thing about him,” I sneered.

“I know everything about him.” He cursed. “About me.”

“Do not.”

“Do, too.”

“Bull!”

“Not!”

“Too,” I spat.

“Not!” he fired back, then exhaled explosively. “Bloody hell. Ms. Lane, you drive me bloody fucking crazy.”

“Right back at you, Barrons. And you can lose all the ‘bloodys’ and ‘fuckings’ anytime now. You’re overdoing it. The real Barrons never cursed that much.”

“I bloody fucking know exactly how many bloody fuckings Barrons would use. You don’t know him as well as you think you do.”

“Stop pretending to be him!” I shoved at his chest. “You’re not and you never will be!”

“Besides, that was before you killed me and decided to replace me with Darroc in less than a month! Grieve much, Ms. Lane?”

Oh, how dare he? Grief was all I was. Grief and revenge, walking. “For the record, you’ve been dead for three days. And I am so not doing this. Get out of here. Go. Away.” I knocked his hands away from my head and stormed past him. “I’m not defending my reasons for doing what I did to you, when you aren’t even really here. That’s too psychotic, even for me.”

He grabbed me and swung me back around. “You’d better believe I’m here, Ms. Lane, and you’d better believe I’ll kill you. You could not have proved your loyalties—or lack thereof—any more completely. You jumped on me the second Ryodan said I was a threat and took me out without an instant’s hesitation—”

“I hesitated! I hated killing my guardian beast! Ryodan told me I had to! I didn’t know it was you!” Great. Now I was arguing with the Sinsar Dubh’s fake Barrons about killing him. Why would it want to do this to me? What could the Book possibly gain from making me live this fight?

“You should have known!” he exploded.

I knew I should end it, stop the illusion now, but I couldn’t.

Being around Barrons has always made me fire on all pistons, and it didn’t seem to matter a bit that I knew this Barrons was a mirage. Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything.

They make you feel so alive that you’d follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix.

“How should I have known? Because you’ve always been so honest with me? Because sharing information is what Jericho Barrons does best, where he really shines? No, because you’d bothered to warn me what might happen if I pressed IYD. Wait, I have it: I should have known because you’d confided in me—in the same trusting and open way we’ve shared so many confidences—that sometimes you turn into a nine-foot-tall, horned, insane monster!”

“I am not insane. I was sane enough to piss circles around you. I killed food for you. I picked up your things. Who else do you know that would have done that? V’lane doesn’t have dick enough to piss with. Your little MacKeltar doesn’t have the balls to own his actions. He certainly isn’t capable of doing what it takes to own a woman!”

“Own? You think women can be owned?”

He gave me a look that said, Oh, honey, of course they can. Have you forgotten so quickly?

“I was Pri-ya!”

“And I liked you much better then!” His eyes narrowed as if he’d only finally processed something I’d said earlier. “I’ve been dead for you for only three bloody days? And you already had Darroc up against my wall out back two nights ago? You waited one fucking day to line up my replacement? I spent weeks worrying about whether he would scrape my brand off your skull and I wouldn’t be able to track you in the Silvers. The entire time I was trying to get back to save your ass from him, you were giving him a piece of it!”

“I didn’t give Darroc a piece of anything!” Get back from what, where? Being dead?

“A woman doesn’t rub herself up against a man like that unless she’s fucking him.”

“You don’t know the first thing about what I was and wasn’t doing. Ever heard of going undercover? Sleeping with the enemy?”

“ ‘I think you should be king, Darroc,’ ” he mocked in falsetto, “ ‘and if you want me, I would be honored to be your queen.’ ”

I gaped.

“Isn’t that what you said?”

“What were you doing—spying on me? And if you’re Barrons, you know better than to believe words.”

“Because your actions speak so well of you, do they? Where did you sleep last night, Ms. Lane? It wasn’t here. My bookstore was wide open. Your bedroom was upstairs waiting. So was your fucking honor.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Honor? Barrons was flinging the word “honor” at me? Er … actually, the Sinsar Dubh was. I couldn’t decide which was more anachronistic. I frowned. There was something wrong here. Something was very, very off. Although “Barrons” and “honor” weren’t two words I’d think to use together in a sentence, I couldn’t come up with a single reason for the Sinsar Dubh to pull this kind of stunt. It had never inflicted such a prolonged and detailed illusion on me before. I could see nothing it might gain by doing it.

“Do you know why I was in the street with you and Darroc tonight?” When I didn’t reply, he snarled, “Answer me!”

I shook my head.

“I wasn’t there to spy on you and your little boyfriend. Speaking of which, what’s it like to slurp down your sister’s sloppy seconds?”

“Oh, fuck you,” I said instantly. “That’s low even for you.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet. I came to kill him tonight. I should have done it a long time ago. But I didn’t get that pleasure. The Sinsar Dubh beat me to it,” he said bitterly.

“Enough already. You are the Sinsar Dubh!”

“Hardly. But I’m every bit as deadly. We can both destroy you. Nothing can save you from me if I turn on you.”

It was past time for this illusion to end. The only reason I’d let it go on this long was because it had begun enjoyably and I’d kept hoping it might turn around. But whatever bizarre game the Book was playing, it wasn’t going to play nice, and this icy, sneering Barrons wasn’t the man I wanted to remember.

“Time for you to go now,” I muttered.

“I’m not going anywhere. Ever. If you think for one minute I’ll let you flip sides mid-game, you’re wrong. I’m invested. You’re in too deep. You owe me. I will chain you up, tie you down, leash you with magic, whatever I have to do, but you will help me get that Book. And when I’ve got it, I might let you live.”

“You’re the Sinsar Dubh,” I said again, but my protest was weak. While he’d been talking, I’d sought my sidhe-seer center—that all-seeing eye that can rip away illusion and reveal the truth beneath it—and I’d focused it like a laser on the mirage.

Nothing had happened. No bubble had burst, no mirage had fractured. My hands were shaking. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs.

It wasn’t possible.

I’d killed him.

And when I’d realized what I’d done, I’d channeled my grief into a weapon of mass destruction. I’d made a plan, with a set-in-cement past and a concrete future.

This … this … inexplicability didn’t fit anywhere in my understanding of reality. Not with any of my goals, not with what I’d become.

“But then again, I might not,” he said. “Unlike some people, I don’t do sloppy seconds.”

I inhaled sharply. I was growing dangerously light-headed. It couldn’t be. He was not actually standing there.

Was he?

It looked like Barrons, felt like Barrons, smelled and sounded like Barrons, and certainly had his attitude.

Screw my sidhe-seer center. I needed juice. And I knew where to find it. I let my gaze drift out of focus and frantically sucked raw power from my glassy lake.

Refocusing again, I turned everything I had on the figment.

“Show me the truth,” I commanded, and blasted it to bits.

“You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you in the ass, Ms. Lane. Case in point: It just did.” He gave me that wolf smile, but it didn’t hold an ounce of charm. It was all teeth, reminding me of fangs against my skin.

My knees gave out.

Jericho Barrons was still standing there.

Towering, naked, and pissed off as hell, hands fisted as if he was about to beat the crap out of me.

Puddled on the floor, I stared up at him. “You’re n-not d-dead.” My teeth were chattering so hard I could barely force the words past my lips.

“Sorry to disappoint.” If looks could kill, the one he shot me would have sunk me six feet deep in scorpions. “Oh, wait a minute. No, I’m not.”

It was too much. My head was spinning and my vision began to go dark.

I fainted.

16

Consciousness returned in slow degrees. I came to on the floor of the bookstore in the dark.

I always thought fainting showed an inherent weakness of character, but I understood it now. It was an act of self-preservation. Confronted by emotion too extreme to handle, the body shuts down to keep from running around like a chicken with its head cut off, potentially injuring itself.

The realization that Barrons was alive had been more than I could deal with. Too many thoughts and feelings had tried to coalesce at once. My brain had tried to process that the impossible was possible, make words for all I was feeling, and I’d silently imploded.

“Barrons?” I rolled over onto my back. There was no reply. I was gripped by the sudden fear that it had all been a dream. That he wasn’t really alive, and I was going to have to come to terms with that unbearable fact—again.

I shot up to a sitting position, and my heart sank.

I was alone. Had it all been a cruel illusion, a dream? I glanced wildly around, seeking proof of his existence.

The bookstore was a wreck. That much hadn’t been a dream. I began to stand and stopped, realizing there was a sheet of paper taped to my coat. Dazedly, I pulled it off.

If you leave this bookstore and make me track you, I will make you regret it to the end of your days. ~Z

I began to laugh and cry at the same time. I sat, clutching the paper to my chest, elated.

He was alive!

I had no idea how it was possible. I didn’t care. Jericho Barrons lived. He walked this world. That was enough for me.

I closed my eyes, shuddering as a crushing weight slipped from my soul. I breathed, really breathed for the first time in three days, filling my lungs greedily.

I hadn’t killed him.

I wasn’t to blame. I’d somehow been granted with Barrons what I’d never gotten with my sister—and I hadn’t even had to demolish the world for it: a second chance!

I opened my eyes, read the note again, and laughed.

He was alive.

He’d ruined my bookstore. He’d written me a letter. A lovely, lovely letter! Oh, happy day!

I stroked the sheet upon which he’d scrawled his threat. I loved this sheet of paper. I loved his threat. I even loved my wrecked shop. It would take time, but I would restore it. Barrons was back. I would rebuild the shelves, replace the furniture, and one day in the future I would sit on my sofa and stare into a fire and Barrons would walk in, and he wouldn’t even have to say anything. We could just sit in companionable or—who cared?—grumpy silence. Whatever bizarre scheme he came up with, I’d go along with it. We’d squabble over what car to take and who got to drive. We’d kill monsters and hunt artifacts and try to figure out how to capture the Book. It would be perfect.

He was alive!

As I moved to stand again, something slipped from my lap and I dropped back down to the floor to retrieve it.

It was the picture of Alina that I’d left in my parents’ mailbox the night V’lane had taken me to Ashford to show me that he’d restored my hometown and was keeping my family safe. The night Darroc had tracked me by the brand on my skull and later abducted my mom and dad.

This was the calling card Darroc had tacked to the front door of BB&B, demanding I come to him through the Silvers if I valued their lives.

That Barrons had left it for me now told me one thing: He had rescued my mom and dad before I’d IYD’d him into the Silvers.

But he hadn’t given me the picture as a present or to make me feel better. He’d left it for the same reason Darroc had. To make the same point.

I have your parents. Don’t fuck with me.

Okay, so he was a little pissed off at me. I could deal with that. If he’d killed me, I’d be a little pissed off, too, no matter how irrational it was. But he would get over it.

I couldn’t have asked for more. Well, I could have, like Alina back and all the Fae dead, but this was good. This was a world I wanted to live in.

My parents were safe.

I clutched the letter and photo. I hugged them to my chest. I hated that he’d stormed off and left me lying on the floor, but I had proof of his existence and I knew he’d be back.

I was the OOP detector and he was the OOP director. We were a team.

He was alive!

I wanted to stay awake all night, basking in the glow that Jericho Barrons wasn’t dead, but my body had other ideas.

The moment I stepped into my bedroom, I nearly collapsed. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since Alina’s death, it’s that grief is more physically draining than running a marathon every day. It wipes you out and leaves you bruised, body and soul.

I managed to wash my face and brush my teeth, smiling like an idiot at myself in the mirror, but flossing and moisturizing was beyond me. Too much effort. I wanted to puddle in a brainless heap, curl up in the comforting arms of the knowledge that I hadn’t killed him. I wasn’t guilty. He wasn’t dead.

I was sorry he hadn’t waited around. I wished I knew where he was. I wished I had a cell phone.

I would have told him all the things I’d never said. I would have confessed my feelings. I wouldn’t have been afraid to be tender. Losing him had clarified my emotions, and I wanted to shout them from the rooftop.

But not only didn’t I have any idea where he went at night, I could barely move. Pain had been the glue keeping my will strong and my bones together. Without it, I was limp.

Tomorrow was another day.

And he was going to be alive in it!

I stripped and crawled into bed.

I passed out while I was still pulling the covers up and slept like a woman who’d hiked through hell without food or rest for months.

My dreams were so vivid, I felt like I was living them.

I dreamed I was watching Darroc die again, enraged that his death was being stolen from me so anticlimactically, my revenge snatched away, in the pinch of a Hunter’s talons. I dreamed I was back in the Silvers, searching for Christian but never finding him. I dreamed I was at the abbey, on the floor of the cell, and Rowena came in and slit my throat. I felt the lifeblood gurgle out of me, turning the dirt floor to mud. I dreamed I was in the Cold Place, chasing the beautiful woman that I couldn’t catch up with, and then I dreamed I’d actually done it—destroyed the world and replaced it with one I wanted. Afterward, I flew over my new world, astride the mighty, ancient K’Vruck. His great black wings whipped my hair into a tangle, and I laughed like a demon while the dissonant, haunting notes of Pink Martini’s remix of “Qué Sera Sera” tinkled like a harpsichord from hell.

I slept for sixteen hours.

I needed every minute of it. The past three days were a surreal nightmare and had exhausted me.

The first thing I did when I woke up was pull Barrons’ note out from under my pillow and read it again to reassure myself he was alive.

Then I dashed down the stairs so fast I slid down the last five steps on my pajama-clad ass, desperate for confirmation that the bookstore was indeed still trashed.

It was. I did a celebratory dance in the debris.

Because it was afternoon and Barrons rarely came around until early evening, I went back upstairs and took a long, hot shower. I conditioned, exfoliated, and shaved.

I leaned back against the wall, stretched out my legs, and watched water splash over the spear strapped to my thigh, letting my mind go blank while I relaxed.

Unfortunately, my mind wouldn’t stay blank and my body wouldn’t relax. The muscles in my legs kept tensing, my neck and shoulders were tight, and my fingers tapped a fast staccato on the shower floor.

Something was bothering me. A lot. Beneath my happy surface, a dark storm was brewing.

How could anything be bothering me? My world was blue skies all the way, despite Dublin’s constant rain. How could I not be blissfully happy at this moment? It was a good day. Barrons was alive. Darroc was dead. I was no longer stuck in the Silvers, fighting myriad monsters and dodging illusions.

I frowned, realizing that was exactly the problem.

At this moment, there was nothing wrong, besides the usual fate of the world stuff I’d become mostly inured to.

I couldn’t deal with that. I’d been compressed, gripped in a painful vise. I’d gotten used to it.

It was things being wrong that had given me shape and purpose and kept me going.

But in the past twenty-four hours, I’d gone from being one hundred percent consumed by grief and rage to having every single reason for feeling those emotions stripped away.

Barrons was alive. Grief—poof!

The man I’d believed had murdered my sister, the one I’d been so committed to killing, was dead. The infamous Lord Master was gone.

That chapter of my life was over. He would never again lead the Unseelie, wreak havoc in my world, or hunt and hurt me. I didn’t have to constantly watch over my shoulder for him anymore. The bastard who’d turned me Pri-ya was beyond my vengeful grasp. He’d gotten his just deserts. Well … he was dead, anyway. His just deserts would have been a whole lot worse if I’d been in charge of doling them out.

Regardless, he’d been my raison d’être for the longest time. And he was gone.

What did that leave me? Revenge—poof!

I’d always envisioned a final showdown between the two of us, and I would kill him.

Who was my villain now? Who would I hate and blame for Alina’s death? It wasn’t Darroc. He’d had a genuine weakness for her. He hadn’t killed her and, if he’d been somehow responsible for her death, he hadn’t known it. Six months in Dublin, and I was no closer to uncovering my sister’s murderer.

With Barrons alive and Darroc dead, there went my all-consuming focus on revenge.

My parents were safe and in Barrons’ care. There was no one I needed to save.

I had no urgent purpose, no express deadline. I felt lost. Directionless.

Sure, I had most of the same primary goals I’d had before I’d gone into the Silvers and everything had gone so terribly wrong, but grief had poured me into a tight box and those walls had shaped me. Now that the box was gone, I could feel myself collapsing into a shapeless blob.

What was next? Where to from here? I needed time to absorb the sudden changes in my reality and recalibrate my emotions. Confusing me even more, beneath the joy I felt that Barrons was alive, I was … well, angry. Furious, actually. There was something seething inside me. And I didn’t even know what. But deep down, underneath it all, I was working up a major temper and feeling … stupid. Like I’d leapt to conclusions that didn’t hold water.

I got out of the shower, thoroughly disgruntled, and picked through my clothes, dissatisfied with them all.

Yesterday I would have known exactly what to wear. Today I had no idea. Pink or black? Maybe it was time for a new favorite color. Or maybe no favorite color at all.

Rain pattered against the window while I dithered. Dublin was once again gray.

I pulled on a pair of gray capri sweats with JUICY stamped across my ass, a zip-up sweatshirt, and flip-flops. If Barrons still wasn’t around, I would start cleaning up downstairs a little.

After all, I’d done what he’d asked.

My parents were free, I was alive, Darroc was dead, and I had the stones tucked securely away in the heavily runed bedroom of a penthouse.

According to my understanding of the law, that made it my bookstore now.

That meant it was also my Lamborghini. My Viper, too.

“It wasn’t my fucking idea, either,” I heard Barrons growl as I descended the rear stairs.

The door to his study was open a few inches, and I could hear him moving around in there, picking things up and putting them back down.

I stopped on the last step and smiled, reveling in the simple pleasure of hearing his voice again. Until he’d been gone, I hadn’t understood how empty the world was without him.

My smile faded. I shifted from foot to foot on the stairs.

My mood might be sunshine glinting off water, but there was a dark undertow beneath the placid surface.

I’d gone further off the deep end than I liked to think about, with the whole decimate-the-universe kick I’d been on. I’d been one hundred percent committed to wresting whatever dark knowledge I’d needed from the Book, no matter the cost to myself or anyone else. I’d been willing to do anything it could teach me in order to replace this world with a new one. All because I’d believed Jericho Barrons was dead.

I hadn’t even had a concrete plan, except to get the Book and wing it, believing I could master whatever spells of making and unmaking it had to offer. Looking back on my behavior, I was stymied by it. Rabid ambition, insane focus.

Alina’s death hadn’t done that to me.

I pushed my hands into my hair and tugged as if the gentle pain might clarify my thoughts. Shed light on my recent temporary insanity.

It must have been the betrayal aspect of it all that had made me so crazy. If only it hadn’t been me who’d stabbed him, I never would have cracked like I had. Sure, my grief at losing Barrons had been intense, but it was the guilt that had crushed me. I’d turned on my protector, and my protector had turned out to be Barrons.

Shame, not grief, had fueled my need for revenge. That was it. Guilt had turned me into a woman obsessed, willing to consider erasing one world to create a new one. If I’d been the one who’d stabbed Alina, if I’d participated in killing her, I would have felt exactly the same way and considered doing the same thing. It wouldn’t have even been love motivating me as much as a desperate need to erase my own complicity.

Now that grief wasn’t a fist around my heart, I knew I would never have gone through with it.

Re-create the world just for Jericho Barrons? The thought was ridiculous.

I’d lost Alina and hadn’t turned into a world-destroying banshee, and I’d loved her all my life.

I’d known Barrons only a few months. If I was going to re-create the world for anyone, it would have been my sister.

Okay, that was resolved. I hadn’t betrayed Alina by not going all Mad Max over her.

So why did I still feel something dark, twisting and turning inside me, trying to get to the surface? What was eating at me?

“Bloody hell, Ryodan, we’ve been over this a thousand times!” Barrons exploded. “The whole bloody way back we talked about it. We had a plan, you deviated. You were supposed to get her to safety. She was never supposed to know it was me. It’s your fault she knows we can’t die.”

I froze. Ryodan was alive, too? I watched him get ripped to shreds and be flung down a hundred-foot ravine. I frowned. He’d said “can’t die.” What did that mean? As in never? No matter what?

He was quiet for a moment and I realized he was on the phone.