Blood drained from the commissioner’s face as he began to tremble. “Shut your mouth.”
Moira shook her head. “Never again, Scott.” She tilted her head toward Eagan. “This man put a gun to my head and threatened to shoot me and my children if I didn’t leave, Manus. He was so horrified that he had married a fey that he was willing to commit murder to hide it from the humans.”
The floor felt as if it shifted under me, as the reality of what she said sank in. “Holy shit,” I whispered.
“You bitch,” the commissioner said. A gun appeared in his hand before anyone registered his movement. Tibbet came forward as I yanked Moira back. Eagan shouted.
The gun went off.
The flash blinded me. The crackle of essence-fire burned in the air. Something slammed into my face, a searing hot blow beneath my right eye. Pain lanced through my head, then a wash of cold ran down my body. My knees collapsed. Fluid filled my throat as I fell. I coughed a spray of blood into the air. I tried to inhale but choked as more blood entered my lungs. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t breathe. My vision blurred. The room spun in a smear of color and
everything
went
white
29
White.
Sound stopped. The music. The shouting. Gone.
Whiteness filled my vision with nothing to break the relentlessness of it. I coughed, feeling blood in my throat, hot blood welling out of my mouth and down my face. Blood ran into my ears, across my chin, down my neck.
Above me, the white simply was, as if the air itself was color. Or no color. As if nothing else existed except the white. I lay on the ground, if there was ground, on something. The firmness of it pressed against the back of my head, but nowhere else. My head rolled to one side of its own accord, blood pouring out of my mouth. I wanted to sit up, to stand, to reach up and touch my face, but my body did not respond. Numb. I was numb. Paralyzed. Gods, I can’t move myself.
Everything was white. I have been here before. This is where it started. Or ended. I don’t remember which.
Everything around me is white. I lie on my back, staring into a nothingness of white. I am here again. This place. Above me, I see two vast shadow shapes. Powerful shapes speaking with words I do not understand. They move closer.
Bursts of color flare in my vision, fireworks against the white, fading to darkness. More, then more, the darkness closing on me, like the slow closing of my eyes. My mind, like my eyes, closing, like my eyes blinking. Like my mind blinking.
My mind blinked.
I jerked my head up, feeling like I had passed out. People surrounded me, staring at me. Some I recognized, and some I didn’t. Their faces held a multitude of expressions—fear and horror and sadness. Then the screams began.
My mind blinked.
Dylan swims up into my sight again. My head hurts with a ringing as loud as a clock tower. I hold my hands to either side of the knife, not touching it. Blood blossoms on his shirt, deep red blood against a deep red shirt. He doesn’t move. He stares at me and stares at me and stares at me. Terror in . . .
My mind blinked.
They move closer and resolve into people. A man, yes, a man and woman. Their vast shadow shapes are a wash of gray against the white. Huge and tall, he’s taller, but she . . . she is . . .
My mind blinked.
Briallen looks at me in surprise, glowing in the white, a golden Briallen in a sea of white. She lifts her hands, something in her hands is moving, swaying with essence in a rainbow of color.
My mind blinked.
Briallen looks at me in surprise and rushes toward me as I lean over Dylan.
“Tell me what to do.” I hear myself. I hear myself and I hear fear.
My mind blinked.
I stand on a plain, white grass waving against a white sky. It’s not winter, pray, what is this new madness? Where have I come? I turn in place, searching, searching across the plain, searching about the standing stones, but Maeve is not there. Was she? What is this place?
My mind blinked.
. . . the one who leads. He follows, reluctant in his step. The blood fills my mouth, burns in my chest, and I cannot breathe anymore. I try not to breathe. I do not want any more blood in my lungs. Try not to.
They stand over me, huge figures, white on white, then faint wisps of essence coursing over them in pale, pale color. He looks at me with a storm in his eyes, and she . . . she is beautiful. She leans down, leans a long way down, her hand outstretched, reaching down. She touches my chest and the pain . . . stops.
“What are you doing, Mother?” he asks.
She straightens up, so far up and away, her face a light of glory. She stops. Everything stops. I stop. Everything . . .
My mind blinked.
Vize is running. Everything is white. I am running. Everything is white. He looks over his shoulder at me. He looks determined . . . or crazed . . . I can’t tell. Everything is white. One minute we were facing each other, and now everything is white. He stops. He looks surprised. There is someone lying on the ground. Something about him is familiar. Everything is white and there is no ground. There is someone lying in the white. Everything . . .
My mind blinked.
“I can’t do this, Briallen,” I shout.
Briallen kneels by me. Something is not right. Or different. She doesn’t look right. She reaches out but stops.
“You must. I can’t,” she says.
I close my eyes and see white and something black, far, far away. Black like a seed in the white. Briallen sings and then she screams and then I know what to do.
My mind blinked.
My mind blinked.
My mind blinked.
. . . stops. Everything stops. Even me.
“Thinking,” she says.
“You interfere with the Wheel of the World,” he says.
“I am the Wheel of the World. So are you. So is he. So are we all. The all of it is one,” she says.
He leans toward me, ranks of hair cascading down, wild and wind-wet. “He seems familiar to me.”
The light of her face moves with her nod. “He is and was and will be.”
He withdraws, a slow receding of immensity, but I can see his face. “I know what you are thinking,” he says to her.
“Tell me, then. I do not know,” she says.
He laughs, something deep, a rumble from the deep that sounds like time.
My mind blinked.
Vize looks feverish. “It must happen this way. You must let it happen.”
“I won’t let you,” I say.
He looks frightened yet determined as I reach toward him.
He recedes.
My mind blinks.
“He’s dying. That is the Way of the Wheel,” he says.
“I am here. That is the Way as well,” she says.
He laughs again. “Yes,” he says.
“Yes,” she says.
My mind blinks.
My hand reaches out for the staff.
My mind blinks.
My hand reaches out for the knife.
My mind blinks.
My hand reaches out for the ring.
My mind blinks.
My hand reaches out . . .
My mind blinks.
She extends her hand again, down, down, down, it comes, glowing with light, with essence, with her. My hand reaches out for her hand. We touch. Sensation returns. I scream and
everything
goes
white
30
I wrenched forward and coughed, spitting blood into my lap. Spots of light flashed across my eyes, red and white and black. Moira gasped, backing away from me in horror. Her hair had come loose on one side. Blood speckled her white wrap, which slipped from her shoulders to the crook of one arm. I wiped at my mouth, and the back of my hand came away covered in blood.
The commissioner lay facedown at my feet, his arms thrown forward. Beyond him, Tibbet crouched over Eagan where he slumped on the floor against the chair, slack-jawed, chin curled into his shoulder, arms gathered limply in his lap, hands palm up.