It had to go somewhere.
I hadn’t chosen what to do with it. I’d offered it no outlet, no purpose. Nor had I returned it to the earth. Invited yet undirected, it did what any power would do, what it will do again, if I fail a second time.
Explode from me in my purest form—Death.
Gritting my teeth, rigid with the effort of containing the primal force that knows no bounds and obeys no laws once summoned but for those imposed upon it, I tip back my head and gaze upward.
The bat is calm, settled on a timber near a broken pane of stained glass.
Meticulously, I shape the earth-power, aim a tightly channeled gust of frigid air upward while simultaneously inviting a rush of warm wind in through the shattered window, giving the little guy purpose and direction. Bats don’t like extreme cold. As the icy current encroaches from below, it does precisely what any heat-seeking creature would, flaps through the aperture into the warmth I’ve created beyond.
I touch its mind as it leaves. Tell your kind to avoid my castle. Make it legend.
Castledemonbadbadbad.
Yes, I murmur in its mind.
I break contact and instantly shunt the bulk of excess power back to the soil.
As it fades from my body and settles seamlessly into the earth, I laugh out loud—och, bloody hell, what a rush! Finally, I understand what I am and how to control my terrible potency.
Fae and druid are not so different as I thought. Both draw power from nature. Now I must learn to summon only the amount of power necessary for whatever I choose to do. Guileless as a child tasting ice cream for the first time, I’d gorged that day in the Highlands before I’d walked into the pub. I’d nearly gorged again now. Lesson learned.
I push up from the stack of books and stalk across the room to a mirror draped in dark cloth that’s covered with cobwebs. Like the bats, spiders have overtaken my castle, draping their sticky webs everywhere. The maids give me an earful about them, too.
I rip away the covering and stare at my reflection. A towering, dark skinned, raven-haired Unseelie prince with ancient, cold eyes, black wings that unfurl to an eighteen-foot span and trail majestically to the floor stares back at me, torso bare, clad in faded, torn jeans and combat boots.
I’ve wearied of slicing shirts and sweaters, wear little in the privacy of my keep. Tattoos slither restlessly beneath my skin, a torque writhes like a living snake around my throat, and eyes that once flashed iridescent fire settled some time ago into a distant, wintry gaze that glitters in shards of black, blue, and crystalline ice, a cruelly arctic landscape beneath a frosted, sapphire dusk. My eyes don’t match my heart. I ken why people fear me.
This time, instead of trying to summon internal energy to cast glamour, I beckon a dash of power from the soil to restore me to the man I once was. Gently. An invitation, as I was druid-trained. We work together, the earth and druids. We don’t seize or steal.
The young Scot, Christian MacKeltar, is reflected in the glass.
I glance down at my body, marveling—both in the mirror and without, I’m me again! It was that simple. There’s that killer smile the lasses used to love, void of actual death, the eternal five-o’clock shadow on my jaw unless I shave twice a day, the dark hair gathered in a thong at my nape. No longer inhumanly tall, I’m six foot three, lean, muscled, sporting a six-pack and amber tiger-eyes. Christ, I haven’t seen this man in years. No one has.
I reach back to touch my glamoured wings. They aren’t there.
You still haven’t figured out how to cast a glamour that temporarily displaces your wings, allowing you to sit comfortably, have you? Mac said to me not long ago.
“I have now.” I can’t stop smiling. It took me years to figure this out. Knowledge is power. For the first time since I transformed into an Unseelie prince, I feel strong, alive, centered and radiate none of the lethal sexuality of a Fae prince.
I blink at my reflection, dazed. None of the lethal sexuality of a Fae prince. Glamoured like this, I’m a normal man—at least, as normal as a walking, lie-detecting druid can be—with a man’s normal impact on women. A long forbidden fruit is no longer poisoned for me—I can fuck again! No longer will I kill any woman I touch. I can unleash a raging hell of celibacy on a woman. Or ten. I’d begun to think I’d never live to see this day. My mind races, as I try to decide where I might find the nearest warm, willing—
Och, Christ, what is that?
I narrow my eyes, staring into the mirror, opening my senses, but I can only see it, not feel it. It exists…beyond…inaccessible to both the Fae and druid parts of me.
Behind my reflection, a dense black cloud hovers, begins to ooze slowly near. As wide as my wingspan, roughly four or five feet tall, it’s not a Shade; they were all destroyed when the Song was sung. Nor is it a Fae; my wards are powerful and none can enter my kingdom.
I whirl to confront it, but the amorphous, inky cloud rears back and up, retreating to the ceiling. Though it possesses neither form nor face, I feel oddly as if it’s…assessing me. Taking my measure.
As suddenly as it appeared, it vanishes.
I wait for it to reappear. When it doesn’t, I dismiss it. Present problems are problems. I refuse to entertain absent ones. Today is a banner day. I’m no longer at war with myself. No longer must I hide in my dark and stormy castle. I can have sex again. The agony of immortal life without intimacy had been making me feel far less human than turning Unseelie ever did. Dark prince I could deal with. Never taking a woman to my bed would have eventually turned me into the monster I resemble. Isolation dehumanizes. All of us, hero and villain alike, crave intimacy, connection.
I shrug off thoughts of the brief apparition. Draoidheacht is an odd place. Perhaps something I brought here from the king’s capricious library contained this entity, and, if so, it will come again. I’ll discover its nature and deal with it.
At the moment, there’s a single thing on my mind. As I turn hastily for the door to find the nearest willing woman, I catch a stack of books and relics with the toe of my boot; tomes go sliding, artifacts topple, I hear the tinkle of breaking glass and freeze.
Glancing down to confirm my suspicions, I snarl.
I’ve shattered a flask, one that shouldn’t have even been there. I’m careful to store the pernicious beakers on high shelves, well out of the way. But there it is, and I’ve splintered the narrow neck, yet not the voluminous carafe, within which rainbow-hued gems glitter and flit about like thousands of tiny luminous fireflies, as if suddenly agitated.
Or excited by the prospect of freedom.