Shadowfever - Moning Karen Marie (читать бесплатно книги без сокращений TXT) 📗

Fire to his chill. Ice to her flame.

I loved this wing. As I stared out the window, the concubine was suddenly there, but she was faint around the edges, a little misty, a partially realized memory.

She sat on a stone bench, in a dress of blood-red and diamonds, through which I could see snow and iced branches. The light was strange, as if everything but her was painted in halftones.

I jerked. The fourth Unseelie Prince, the winged War/Cruce, had just appeared. He was also semi-transparent, a residue from a time long past. At his wrist glinted a wide silver cuff, and around his neck was an amulet, very different from the one Darroc had worn.

I watched with astonishment as the concubine rose and greeted him with a kiss on both marble-white cheeks. There was affection between them. Once, long ago, the beautiful woman in my dream hadn’t been afraid of him. What had changed? The raven-winged prince carried a silver tray, upon which sat a single teacup and an exquisite black rose. She laughed up at him, but her eyes were sad.

Another of his potions to change me?

War/Cruce murmured something I couldn’t catch.

She accepted the cup. Perhaps I do not want his salvation. But she drank deeply, until the cup was empty.

“The king kept all his notes and journals on his experiments in the White Mansion, to prevent those in his Dark Court from stealing his knowledge.” Barrons’ voice jarred me.

I blinked, and the memory was gone.

“You sure do know a lot about the king.” I was going to say more, but I suddenly felt as if a rubber band attached to my belly button had contracted, yanking me toward the other end. I’d been too far away, gone too long.

Without another word, I turned and ran down the corridor, away from him. Gone was all desire to fight with him. I was being summoned. Every fiber in my being was drawn, the same way it was the last time I was here.

“Where are you going? Slow down!” he called behind me.

I couldn’t have slowed if I’d wanted to, and I didn’t. I’d come here for a reason, and that reason was where I was being pulled. The black floors of the Unseelie King were calling me. I wanted to be in that boudoir again. I wanted to see him this time, to see the king’s face. Assuming he had one.

I passed over rose marble, skidded onto bronze floors, dashed through turquoise corridors, and flew through halls of yellow, until I felt the sultry warmth of the crimson wings. I could feel Barrons behind me. He could have caught me if he’d wanted to. He was fast like Dani, like all his men. But he let me run, and he followed.

Why? Because he suspected the same things I did? Because he wanted it out in the open? My heart was pounding with fear and anticipation to have it finally over, to know what I was, what he was.

Barrons was suddenly beside me. I glanced over at him, and he gave me a look that was equal parts fury and lust. He was really going to have to get over that fury part. It was beginning to piss me off. I had just as much to be mad at him about.

“I didn’t have sex with Darroc.” I was mad all over again, itching for physical contact. “Not that I should have to explain myself to you. It’s not like you ever explain yourself to me. But even if I did, even if I was the traitor you’re determined to believe I am, he’s dead, so according to the philosophy of Barrons, who cares? Here I am, with you again. Actions speak, right? You got the action you wanted. OOP detector back under control, tightly leashed. Lead me around by the collar, why don’t you? Isn’t that when you’re happiest? Ruff-ruff,” I mock-barked, seething.

“You haven’t fucked me since you were Pri-ya. There’s an action for you. Says pretty much all there is to say.”

It burned him. Good. It was burning me, too. “This is some kind of pissing contest? Darroc got laid but you didn’t? That’s the only reason you’re mad?” What did he think it said? That I would touch him only if I was sex-starved? Or if the alternative was dying a mindless animal?

“You couldn’t begin to understand.”

“Try me.” If he’d ever just admit to one little feeling about me, I might admit to one about him.

“Don’t push me, Ms. Lane. This place is getting to me. You want the beast on your hands?”

I glanced at him. His eyes were sparking crimson and he was breathing hard, but not from exertion. I knew him. He could run for hours. “You want me, Jericho. Admit it. A lot more than once or twice. I’m under your skin. You think about me all the time. I keep you awake at night. Go ahead, say it.”

“Fuck you, Ms. Lane.”

“Is that your way of saying it?”

“That’s my way of saying grow up, little girl.”

I skidded to a halt, slipping and sliding on the black marble floor. The instant I stopped running, he did, too, as if we were bound by the same tether.

“If I’m a little girl, then that makes you a serious pervert.” The things we did together … I shot him a graphic reminder with my eyes.

Oh, so you’re finally ready to talk about them, his dark gaze mocked. Maybe I don’t want to now.

Too bad. You were always slapping me in the face with reminders. Turnabout’s fair play. But it sure wasn’t a little girl back in that bed, Jericho. It’s not a little girl you’re messing with now.

I poked him in the chest with my finger. “You died in front of my eyes and let me believe it was real, you bastard!” I felt like I was being torn in half—pulled toward the boudoir by destiny, rooted in place by the need to air my grievances.

He knocked my finger away. “Do you think it was fun for me?”

“I hated watching you die!”

“I hated doing it. It hurts every damned time.”

“I grieved!” I shouted. “I felt guilty—”

“Guilt isn’t grief,” he snapped.

“And lost—”

“Get a fucking road map. Lost isn’t grief, either.”

“And—and—and—” I broke off. There was no way I was telling him all the things I’d really felt. Like destroying the world for him.

“And what? What did you feel?”

“Guilt,” I shouted. I punched him, hard.

He shoved me, and I stumbled back against the wall.

I shoved him back. “And lost.”

“Don’t tell me you grieved me when you were really just pissed off about the mess you’d gotten yourself into. I died and you felt sorry for yourself. Nothing more.” His gaze flickered to my lips. I got that. He was once again furious with me and once again perfectly ready to have sex with me. The conundrum that was Barrons. Apparently it was impossible for him to feel anything as far as I was concerned without getting angry about it. Did anger make him want to have sex with me? Or was it that he always wanted to have sex with me that made him so angry?

“I was grieving more than that. You don’t know the first thing about me!”

“And you should have felt guilty.”

“So should you!”

“Guilt is wasted. Live, Ms. Lane.”

“Oh! Ms. Lane! Ms. Frigging Lane! There it is again. You tell me to feel guilty, then you tell me it’s wasted. Make up your mind! And don’t tell me to live. That’s exactly what I was doing that you’re so pissed about. I went on!”

“With the enemy!”

“Do you care how I went on, as long as I did? Isn’t that the lesson you’ve been trying to teach me? That adaptability is survivability? Don’t you think it would have been easier for me to lay down and quit once I thought you were dead? But I didn’t. You know why? Because some overbearing prick taught me that it was how you go on that matters.”

“The word that was supposed to be emphasized there was how. As in honorably.”

“What place does honor have in the face of death? And, please, did you honorably kill that woman you carried out of the Silver in your study?”

“You couldn’t possibly understand that, either.”