Shadowfever - Moning Karen Marie (читать бесплатно книги без сокращений TXT) 📗
He’d loved her, too.
I dropped the album and sat staring into space.
Life was so complicated. Was she bad because she’d loved him? Was he evil because he’d wanted to reclaim what had been taken from him? Hadn’t the same motives driven the Unseelie King and his concubine? Didn’t the same motives drive humans every day?
Why hadn’t the queen just let the king have the woman he loved? Why couldn’t the king be happy with one lifetime? What might have happened to the Unseelie if they’d never been imprisoned? Might they have turned out like the Seelie court?
And what about my sister and me? Would we really doom the world? Nurture or nature: What were we?
Everywhere I looked, I could see only shades of gray. Black and white were nothing more than lofty ideals in our minds, the standards by which we tried to judge things and map out our place in the world in relevance to them. Good and evil, in their purest form, were as intangible and forever beyond our ability to hold in our hand as any Fae illusion. We could only aim at them, aspire to them, and hope not to get so lost in the shadows that we could no longer see the light.
Alina had been aiming for the right thing to do. So was I. She hadn’t made it. Would I fail? Sometimes it was hard to know what the right thing to do was.
Feeling like the worst kind of voyeur, I reached for the photo album, pulled it back on my lap, and began to turn the page.
That’s when I felt it. The pocket was too thick. There was something behind the photo of Darroc staring up at Alina like she was his world, coming inside her.
I slid the photo out with trembling hands. What would I find secreted away here? A note from my sister? Something that would give me more insight into her life before she’d died?
A love letter from him? From her?
I withdrew a piece of old parchment, unfolded it, and gently smoothed it open. There was writing on both sides. I turned it over. One side was covered from upper margin to lower. The other side had only a few lines on it.
I recognized the paper and script on the full side instantly. I’d seen Mad Morry’s writings before, although I didn’t read Old Irish Gaelic.
I turned it over, holding my breath. Yes, he’d translated it!
IF THE BEAST OF THREE FACES IS NOT CONTAINED BY THE TIME THE FIRST DARK PRINCE DIES THE FIRST PROPHECY SHALL FAIL FOR THE BEAST SHALL HAVE GORGED ON POWER AND CHANGED. ONLY BY ITS OWN DESIGN WILL IT FALL. HE WHO IS NOT WHAT HE WAS SHALL TAKE UP THE TALISMAN AND WHEN THE MONSTER WITHIN IS DEFEATED SO SHALL BE THE MONSTER WITHOUT.
I read it again. “What talisman?” How accurate was his translation? He’d written, He who is not what he was. Had Darroc really been the only one who could merge with the Book? Dageus wasn’t what he was. I was willing to bet Barrons wasn’t, either. Really, who of us was? What a nebulous statement. I’d hardly call that definitive criteria. Daddy would have a heyday in court with such a vague phrase.
By the time the first dark prince dies … It was already too late, if that was true. The first dark prince was Cruce, who couldn’t possibly be alive. At least once in the past seven hundred thousand years, he would have shown his face. Someone would have seen him. But even if he was alive, the moment Dani had killed the dark prince who came to my cell at the abbey, it had been too late for the first prophecy to work.
The shortcut was a talisman. And Darroc had had it.
Something nagged at my subconscious. I grabbed my backpack and began to rummage through it, hunting for the tarot card. I dumped out the contents, picked up the card, and studied it. A woman stared off into the distance while the world spun in front of her.
What was the point? Why had the DEG—or the fear dorcha, as he’d claimed—given me this particular card?
I took painstaking note of the details of her clothing and hair, the continents on the planet. It was definitely Earth.
I examined the border of the card, looking for concealed runes or symbols. Nothing. But wait! What was around her wrist? It looked like a fold in her skin until I looked closer.
I couldn’t believe I’d missed it.
It had been worked into the border, cleverly concealed as a sort of pentacle, but I knew the shape of the cage that housed the stone. Around the woman’s wrist was the chain of the amulet Darroc had stolen from Malluce.
The dreamy-eyed guy had been trying to help me.
The talisman from the prophecy was the amulet. The amulet was Darroc’s shortcut!
It had been within my reach the night the Sinsar Dubh popped Darroc’s head like a grape. I’d touched it. It had been so close. Then the next thing I knew I was over a shoulder and it was gone.
I smiled. I knew where to find it.
As a man, Barrons collected antiquities, rugs, manuscripts, and ancient weapons. As a beast, he’d collected everything I touched. The pouch of stones, my sweater.
No matter his form, Barrons was a ferret after shiny baubles that smelled good to him.
There was no way he’d walked away from it that night. I’d touched it.
I slipped the parchment, translation, and tarot card in my pocket and stood up.
It was long past time to find out where Jericho Barrons went when he left the bookstore.
He didn’t go far.
In all the time I’d known him, I was willing to bet he never had.
When I reached the bottom step, I smelled him. The faint hint of spice hung in the air outside his study. The study where he kept his Silver.
The entire time I was Pri-ya, I’d never seen him sleep. I would drift off, but each time I’d wake, he’d be there, lids heavy on glittering dark eyes, watching me as if he’d been laying there just waiting for me to roll over and ask him to fuck me again. Always ready. As if he lived for it. I remembered the look on his face when he’d stretch himself over me.
I remembered how my body had responded.
I’d never done Ecstasy or any of the drugs some of my friends had tried. But if it was like being Pri-ya, I couldn’t imagine wanting to do it willingly.
A part of my brain had still been aware, in a dim sort of way, while my body was out of my control.
If he’d brush a hand over my skin, I’d nearly scream from needing him inside me. I would have done anything to get him there.
Being Pri-ya was worse than being raped by the princes.
It had been hundreds of rapes over and over again. My body had wanted. My mind had been vacant. Yet some part of the essential me had still been there, fully aware that my body was completely out of my control. That I wasn’t choosing. All my choices had been made for me. Sex should be a choice.
Only one had been left to me: more.
When he’d push inside me and I’d feel him begin to penetrate, it had turned me into a wild thing—hot, wet, and desperate for more of him. With every kiss, every caress, every thrust, I’d just needed more. He’d touched me, I went nuts. The world dwindled down to one thing: him. He really had been my world in that basement. It was too much power for one person to have over another. It could put you on your knees, begging.
I had a secret.
A terrible secret that had been eating me alive.
What did you wear to your senior prom, Mac?
That had been the last thing I’d heard, Pri-ya.
Everything from that moment on had really happened.
I’d faked.
I’d lied to him and myself.
I stayed.
And it hadn’t felt any different.
I’d been just as insatiable, just as greedy, just as vulnerable. I’d known exactly who I was, what had happened at the church, and what I’d been doing for the past few months.
And every time he’d touched me, my world had dwindled down to one thing: him.
He was never vulnerable.
I’d hated him for that.
