This was not what I’d envisioned happening. I’d imagined a small skirmish, with the majority of Fae otherwise occupied. A bit of bear-baiting. We’d saunter off. Laugh. Having stirred up enough shit to get some answers about what was going on in Faery.
As it was, we were the sole focus of a thousand Winter Court Fae, rising, approaching, closing in on us. From below, from above, behind the balustrade and the foyer beyond. They surged in a glittering, icy wave, moving with predatory, inhuman grace.
The power they radiated was exponentially greater than I’d ever felt coming from a court sans royalty, and with my sense wide open, I could tell there wasn’t a single prince or princess anywhere in the club. Royalty’s melody is unmistakable, drums from hell, seductive, hypnotizing, mind-stealing.
The Fae had changed. Even their gazes were different, no longer shimmering a uniform, swirling iridescence. Lethal as razors, they sliced into you, each a unique color, for lack of a better word, though I’d be hard-pressed to name the shade: here, a tint of immortal decay, rot, and graveyards; there, the precise nuance of toxic nuclear war without end; here, the hue of rabid, bone-stripping hunger; there, the stain of madness galloping down on you with thundering hooves.
I used to mock them, these strutting, beautiful, but relatively innocuous Fae without royal blood. They’d struck me as poseurs who weren’t what they pretended to be, bidding us believe they possessed far greater power than they did.
Now your average Winter Court Fae was—I had to force my brain to accept the truth—viscerally terrif
ying.
Objective one accomplished. We knew our enemy was far more powerful than they’d ever been. “The Song definitely changed them, Ryodan,” I murmured as we drew to a halt halfway down the stairs.
“No shit, Sherlock,” he agreed.
In spite of the gravity of our current situation, I smiled.
It was about damned time he’d finally gotten our roles right.
I would give everything I own
IF DANCER HAD LIVED.
There’s a rabbit hole I’ve fallen down a few times.
Sometimes reluctantly, other times, on dark nights, Shaz snoring beside me, one of his downy legs kicking restlessly in dreams, unable to sleep, I’ve walked deliberately to the dirt-crusted edge and plunged down. Gone exploring that fantastical, killing wonderland of madness, monsters, and maybe.
His brains, my superpowers: what kind of babies would we have made?
If Dancer’s heart had been whole, if, say, he’d taken the Elixir of Life, what daring feats of bravery and brilliance might we have accomplished together on behalf of the world?
Batman didn’t have a single superpower, unless you count his inner darkness. Dancer definitely didn’t have that. But maybe inner lightness is a superpower, too, and he had that in spades.
Shazam could have babysat.
NOT.
He might have eaten them. But still, Shaz is the ultimate kid’s best friend. The children we didn’t have would have flat-out adored him, bragged about him to all their friends, and Shaz would have loved that. And if they’d zoomed around, we’d have moved somewhere I could have zoomed along with them and we’d have feared nothing.
I don’t even know if my ovaries work. I don’t know everything Rowena did to me. There were chronological gaps in her narcissistic journals that implied oodles of missing volumes.
Another rabbit hole: I have no idea who my father is. I’m not sure I even had one. All I do know is every journal of the old bat’s I ever found contained zero mention of my patriarchy. Such a complete omission on such a critical topic is, to my brain, completely damning.
So, maybe, those adorable little kids with Dancer’s dark wavy hair and beautiful sea-surf eyes were never a possibility.
Maybe Ryodan’s right.
Maybe I’m not human.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The throne belonged to Conchobar, to Cathain, the witch’s glove
“YOU WILL FIND,” A towering, pale-skinned Fae male with waist-length silver hair purred to Ryodan, pushing through the crowd, “even for an abomination like you, some of us are far more difficult to kill.”
It was two against a thousand. Sucky odds.