Read Fever 5 - Shadowfever for Free Online Page B

Interdimensional Fairy Pothole, as I’d dubbed the slivers of Fae reality that splintered our world now that the walls were down?
The walls are alabaster, reflecting the sun, and blaze with such brilliance that I narrow my eyes to slits. The sky beyond the House—I cannot think of it without a capital; it is far more than a mere residence—deepens to a dazzling blue that exists only in Faery, a shade that will never be seen in the human world. There are certain Faery colors that have dimension, are comprised of myriad seductive subtleties upon which the eye could linger for time uncounted. The sky is nearly as addictive as the golden floor in the Hall of All Days.
I force my gaze back to the White Mansion. I explore its lines, foundation to rooftop, terrace to tower, garden to fountain to turret. A Möbius strip of tiered structures on an Escher-esque landscape, it turns back on itself here and there, continuous and unbroken, ever-changing and unfolding. It strains the eye, tests the mind. But I’ve seen Fae in their true form. I find it … soothing. In my dead black heart, I feel something. I don’t understand how anything could stir in there, but it does. Not a full-blown feeling, but an echo of an emotion. Faint yet undeniable.
Darroc watches me. I pretend not to notice.
“Your race has never built a thing of such beauty, complexity, and perfection,” he says.
“Nor has my race ever created a Sinsar Dubh ,” I parry.
“Small creatures create small things.”
“Large creatures’ egos are so big they don’t see the small things coming,” I murmur. Like traps , I don’t say.
He intuits it. He laughs and says, “I will remember the warning, MacKayla.”
After he found the first two Silvers at an auction house in London, Darroc tells me, he had to learn to use them. It took him dozens of tries to establish a static link into the Fae realms, then, once he was inside the Silvers, it took him months to find a way to the Unseelie prison.
There’s pride in his voice as he speaks of his trials and triumphs. Stripped of his Fae essence, he not only survived when his race didn’t believe he would, but he accomplished the goal he’d been pursuing as a Fae, the very thing for which he’d been banished. He feels superior to others of his kind.
I listen, analyzing everything he tells me, looking for chinks in his armor. I know Fae have “feelings” such as arrogance, superiority, mockery, and condescension. Listening to him, I add pride, vengeance, impatience, gloating, and amusement to the list.
We’ve been making small talk for some time, watching each other intently. I’ve told him about growing up in Ashford, my first impressions of Dublin, my love of fast cars. He has told me more about his fall from grace, what he did, why he did it. We compete to disarm each other with trivial confidences that betray nothing of importance.
As we cross the valley, I say, “Why go to the Unseelie prison? Why not the Seelie court?”
“And give Aoibheal the opportunity to finish me off for good? The next time I see the bitch, she dies.”
Was that why he’d taken my spear—to kill the queen? He’d lifted it without my awareness, just like V’lane had. How? He wasn’t Fae anymore. Had he eaten so much Unseelie that he was now a mutant with unpredictable abilities? I recall being in the church, sandwiched between Unseelie Princes, turning the spear on myself, throwing it, striking the pedestal of a basin, holy water splashing, steam hissing. How had he made me throw it away then? How had he taken it from me now?
“Is the queen at the Seelie court right now?” I cast my net again.
“How would I know? I have been banished. Assuming I found a way in, the first Seelie that saw me would kill me.”
“Don’t you have allies at the Seelie court? Isn’t V’lane your friend?”
He snorts disdainfully. “We sat on her High Council together. Though he gives lip service to Fae supremacy and speaks of walking the earth freely