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.