She agreed with him.
Mason exited on to I-90. “You got no sense of the person behind the mage plague?”
She laid her head back, disappointed herself. “No. Just raw Shadow, the same as with my father’s death.”
“Raw Shadow how?”
She tried to think about how or what it felt like, and came back to Mason in her mind. Mason, always him, mage, stray, or human. He’d fought for her today. “Raw Shadow like yours.”
Xavier held open the palms of his hands, red with blood, stained with soul. These human lives—police officers, peacekeepers—were on the Dolan’s head, not his. That the Mad Queen would hide behind souls revealed her to be the blight on the world that he’d always known. He remembered what she was capable of. This was just the beginning. The world would run red.
He wailed to the sky, begging for grace. But the sky was silent, as it had been for so long.
He knew what that meant: he must persevere.
Maeve shivered with joy. Her daughter was perfection, a monarch emerging from a chrysalis. The girl took her own time, but Maeve would grant her that. Another gift. Time was so difficult to manage anyway; then and now such prickly flowers. Cari’s flesh needed to be still stronger to bear the power, as a ruler does her mantle.
The immortal do not wither, do not die.
The world would be theirs.
“That’s right, an angel,” Mason told Webb over the phone as he paced a small lane between some two-story brick cottages on the Dolan property.
There was no reason to hide the call—after all, his son now lived with Webb—but Mason still found himself looking left-right to see if anyone might overhear. The Dolan clan had stayed out of Cari’s general domain, but everywhere else, family was stashed pending the resolution of the plague investigation. He hadn’t seen many children though, or maybe their parents kept them away from the dangerous stray.
Cari was inside the main house sleeping. He’d gotten them past the entrenched humans outside the compound, though they’d again shouted at the windows and pounded on the hood until Cari lifted the wards for the car. Since this car didn’t have tinted windows, Mason made certain that all of the photos and film taken would come out Shadow black. There were enough images of them circulating already.
Her stepsisters and mother had looked at him with acute loathing to see the smear of blood on Cari’s face and the waxy gray of her pallor. No sparkle from the sisters this time, unless the daggers in their eyes caught the light. If Cari hadn’t been lucid enough to say “not his fault” he’d be under lock and key. But he wouldn’t put it past them to have him watched.
Behind the main house, he paced back the other direction, facing rolling lawn.
“And this angel came after the Dolan?” Webb asked. “Her specifically?”
With one hell of a weapon, now Mason’s.
He drew breath to answer, but Webb beat him. “Of course he would. Why bother with a stray?”
That wasn’t exactly it, but Mason wasn’t about to say that the angel wouldn’t hurt a human. Who knew if the angel would go after a stray? That was the reason Mason had called Webb in the first place: so that Webb would not be complacent about Fletcher’s safety, not around the Order. The kid might not be born to a House, but he was a full mage.
“The truce is ended,” Webb concluded.
Mason bowed his head, kicking a stone across the pavement. “Not necessarily. Brand says that the angel was rogue and that the Order is hunting him as we speak.”
“Rogue. An unlikely excuse.” Webb dismissed it out of hand. “Has the Dolan made any progress toward finding the House that caused the plague?”
“Nothing certain.” Mason didn’t mention Cari’s “inheritance.” Webb already had enough information to potentially screw her with the DolanCo Umbra project. “But I’ll contact you immediately when we have something.”
She’d said that the Shadow was raw.
Mason shook his head. No, she’d said the Shadow was raw . . . like his Shadow.
Because he didn’t have an umbra?
Maybe the source of the plague didn’t have an umbra either. Maybe the source had a soul. What if they were really hunting someone like himself? And if that were the case, how would he go about it?
Set a trap. Lie in wait. Make the perpetrator come to him.
“I’d like to talk to Fletcher.” The one he really wanted to warn, though he had no words for what to say to a kid. Don’t trust anyone? He couldn’t teach him that.
He just wanted to hear Fletcher’s voice; he’d know everything he needed to by the “Hi, Dad.”
“The boys are out back playing soccer.”
“Out back” at Mason’s properties would’ve only required a yell.
Disappointment knifed him. “Tell him I called.” Earlier Fletcher had seemed okay. Except for that moment when he’d said that their lair needed a secret way out. You always need a way out.
“I’ll do that.” Webb summarily cut the line.
There was nothing worse than uncertainty.
And Webb, a father himself, would know this, too.
Mastery. Cari needed it now. Word was that the angel was rogue and that he would be apprehended by the Order soon. Not good enough. Without Mason, she would’ve been vulnerable, made so by the fae within her.
She sat on the end of her bed, post shower, wrapped in a robe and grappling with life. She’d recovered much more quickly than she’d expected. One deep sleep, a good meal, and she could take on Francis Vauclain again. That is, if he still lived. Take on that angel, too.
Fact of life: everything was different. Her father had told her that becoming head of the household would set her apart. She’d anticipated friction over authority with some of her family members. Relationships might grow thin, but they would be made new eventually.
And there was the endless work of her House, the responsibility of turning over the Dolan legacy to the next generation.
But “set apart” had a whole new meaning now.
Her skin felt golden, as if the precious metal had mixed with her blood, turning Shadow into a rare alloy. It was armor and beauty, a kind of forever feeling. She was becoming something, but what that was, she had no idea. “Stronger” barely scratched the surface of what she felt.
She had to figure out what was to be done next.
She’d tried to deny Maeve, with mixed, ultimately unacceptable results. Exhaustion and weakness, leading to a lack of control. That state wasn’t going to work, unless Mason was there every night to put her to bed. She suppressed a smile at the thought.
And she’d used Maeve, with mixed results as well, also unacceptable. Great power, but with yet another loss of control—the jewels, breaking that glass ceiling, putting her mouth on Mason, the common denominator.
She shook him out of her head to concentrate on what mattered.
Survival meant mastering the fae. And with this gold pumping through her body, she thought she might just make some headway.
She needed to find her limits, so that magic didn’t cost her body strength. Too much Shadow and the flesh will weep. The maxim was short one word: Too much Shadow and the flesh will weep blood.
She didn’t attempt to draw on Shadow, as she’d had to do most of her life. She didn’t employ any effort, as she’d had to in the past.
She relaxed into herself and inhaled the perfumed, humid air that had trailed her from her bathroom. The muted tones of her bedroom shifted through the visual spectrum to a palette of ultra-color. In her mind’s eye, the walls became immaterial and she could sense and identify each of her family members scattered as they were throughout the house and grounds. Scarlet, Zel, and Stacia were in her stepmother’s bedroom.