I am the Dolan, she repeated, understanding that this ease of power was part of her inheritance, and how she would keep her House strong in his absence. There were so many things that she would have to work for now that her father was gone—every day seemed more difficult—but it seemed that Shadow wasn’t one of them. She hoped that it would give her the edge to survive, to honor her House and his memory.
Starting now . . .
No mages had walked these paths since her father’s death, so the very first silhouette to form out of magic was his own. And next to him, what had to be hers. Yes, that was her, though it was difficult to recognize herself. She seemed like a stranger.
And there were the guards as well, who’d been following them everywhere since the May Fair Massacre. The two imprints they made were full-bodied Shadow, filled with constellations of dark light.
She remembered a few humans, the executives, who had joined them as they crossed the courtyard to enter the big ship, but no sign of their ephemeral passage remained.
Cari could see no one else, no killer, in their group, no mage lurking nearby, but had to witness once again the moment her father staggered. She sobbed openly as it all played out again.
Cari-from-before lunged forward to help him up.
Her father swiped a command at the guards to get her away. She’d missed the gesture before—that her father’s last act was to protect her.
The guards pulled her away as she fought them. Her arms had clawed the air for purchase. Back into a car, where she’d started to shiver herself. One guard sped her away, while the other returned to kneel by her father.
The Cari of today filled with desperation. Who had killed him? Where was the assassin?
She demanded more Shadow, more magic.
And it came to her. Easily.
The Earth was thrown into darkness; a black wind scoured the ground. The ship became a wrecked vessel, foundering on the plain, as ancient trees populated its passage.
But no killer was revealed, no tell-tale sense of person, whom she could later identify.
Too many days had passed. She should’ve come earlier, no matter how sick or afraid she’d been.
A sudden prickling in her mind warned her that someone was near. Now. The assassin?
Who’s there? She whipped around, but saw only the smoking Shadow of Mason’s tall, broad-shouldered form, waiting for her nearby.
A breath on her neck. She whipped the other way. Someone was definitely here. And not as a thumbprint left behind at the scene of the crime. Someone was here now.
Mason shouted Cari’s name from far, far away. He sounded urgent.
So she released her pull on Shadow. Gladly, to get away from this feeling of being watched. Stalked.
The humid gray of the present settled back upon Cari and her vision dulled. Magic washed away from the plain before her, the ship and its wake coming back into the ordinary.
“What happened?” Mason demanded.
A girl! Maeve’s joy sent birds leaping upward from the branches of old trees, bowed with magic, and into the Twilight sky. All the creatures of faerie sang a lament of delight.
And she was just now trying her power. Which meant Caspar was gone to dust and his heir was female. Maeve loved surprises, how they burst within the breast. The stubborn old man hadn’t told her anything!
The Dolan males didn’t fit Maeve well enough for her to see or to feel or to thrill to the pleasures of the mortal world. Neither did males offer the chance to cross into that realm and partake of the pleasures in person. Only a girl afforded that chance.
And Maeve was going to snatch it up. A hunger lengthened her nails to claw for purchase in that realm.
The last female Dolan heir had been such a disappointment—she’d been too obstinate and hard, like the age into which she’d been born. Her death had come before a solemn and gray tribunal of humans. Their faces had been as pinched and cold as the lives they lived. They’d spurned color in their apparel for piety, and had bent the exquisite passions of the body toward the ecstasies of suspicion and hysteria—the witch hunt.
Maeve enjoyed these, too—anything that quickened the blood was good. But not if they killed the Dolan! Her House had spurned her for madness, and the girl wouldn’t do anything to save herself. She’d wanted oblivion, if only to shut Maeve up.
So unkind. So ungrateful.
A loop of rope had gone round the Dolan’s neck.
Maeve promised her power and riches and sex, one last time.
The girl did not reach for Shadow. She hummed to herself, urgently, as if that would block the voice in her head.
A nod from an ugly man in black.
A brief blur of motion. Then a crack, bringing darkness.
Centuries of darkness.
Now Maeve peered through the new Dolan’s eyes at a smoky stack of man nearby.
Much better view. A Dolan girl after Maeve’s own heart.
The man’s features were cast in Shadow, though his soul burned bright blue and sharp like a star in the void. A half-breed. Best of both worlds. His shoulders were wide, legs braced. She giggled, imagining what hung between them. The angles of his form, the cut of muscled youth. She wanted to stroke his naked body with her mouth. Take a bite somewhere juicy.
If the new Dolan heir saw him this way, then yes, Maeve had finally found her match.
She hadn’t had a girl in so long. The Dolans bore too many sons. They didn’t know that desiring sons was a human conceit, not worthy of magic.
But a girl . . . !
The lesser fae that followed in Maeve’s wake made a quailing sound—fear, joy—it didn’t matter as long as the noise lifted to the sky. Twilight’s trees shuddered, the craggy old beasts. They didn’t know fun. Or pleasure.
“Cari,” the man said.
Maeve leaned in to taste his voice. Cari seemed to be made for his throat, his tongue.
Maeve’s heart fluttered. She wanted to be pierced by the star of his soul. Pierce me! She laughed. Human men, young ones, were glorious. She could eat him alive.
Maybe she would.
The new Dolan, Cari, turned at the man’s call. Maeve did too; they’d live in tandem like this. One to another. Flesh to faery.
The new Dolan was a gift.
Caspar had kept his child secret from her. But he’d loved Maeve all the same to have sired a female for his heir. After the years they’d shared, the Shadow she’d delivered into his keeping, just see how he’d blessed her back.
Cari Dolan. Maeve would see to it that she had everything.
Mason grasped Cari by the shoulders, and shook the Shadow from her clouded eyes. He’d seen many mages work Shadow, but this was the first time he’d seen Shadow work a mage.
The Cari he remembered had had control. She’d been a credit to her House, everyone said so. She was the example held up to others—accomplished, graceful, smart. Heir to the old and mighty Dolan House. Liv had been friends to her face, but had hated her behind her back. “Perfect Cari.”
Shy Cari. Sweet Cari. Sly Cari. If you knew what to watch for.
The umbra thing. That had to be it. The Shadow within. Mason had always thought it was a passive ability, an almost intellectual one, considering how present and mindful Caspar had always seemed. Cari, too, for that matter. The Dolans were rarely given to the drama so frequently found in other mage households.
But the way Cari had been overcome just now—her skin taking on that anti-luminescence. The crawl and grasp of Shadow around her body had made him think that she was receding from the world instead of calling on the magic within it.