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It happens so fast that I’m left spinning. Anger, white-hot, flashes through my thoughts and instinctively I pull in magic. The tainted energy floods like white water past an opening dam. My perspective shifts as it fills me and I grow, both in power and in size until I tower over the Fae. I’m as tall as the Tree of Life itself.
The dim light of the Tree offends me. Piercing my skin like thousands of tiny needles, an irritant that must be stopped. An annoyance. I turn and reach towards it, intent on destruction.
ChapterTwelve
“Quinn!”Dugald and Moira yell my name, but the sound of their voices is distant.
More than a long tunnel, they come from another world. Destruction calls, warm and comforting. Destroy the light, destroy the noise, bring back blessed silence. Peace. Peace at long last.
I reach and the tree is almost within my grasp, then something stops me. I pull back, closing my hand into a fist, and strike. The invisible barrier reverberates like a gong. The noise blasts through my head, shattering thoughts.
The darkness filling my thoughts breaks apart, and for an instant I’m me, thinking clearly, but my body is a separate thing. Acting of its own accord and striking the barrier again. I try to stop it, will it to not do this, but it feels as if I’m on a speeding train and I can’t. It doesn’t respond to my command.
“Quinn, this is not you,” Queen Mab says. I glance sideways, and she too has grown in size until she is as big as I am.
“You shall not do this, Quinn,” the Fair Queen says from my right. Looking, she too is huge.
The two Queens gesture in a mirror reaction to one another. Queen Mab and the Fair Queen grow in brightness until they’re blindingly bright. My eyes burn, then the burning is in my head and casting out the darkness.
I shrink to normal size and stumble as my head spins. Gasping I bend over and heave, struggling to control my stomach and the dizziness in my head. Dugald is at my side, pulling my hair back into one hand and rubbing my back.
“You’re okay,” he says, speaking in a soft voice.
“Sorry,” I gasp, cold sweat covering my face as I shake my head.
The dry heaves pass and I stand up. The Tree is before me, dim, but still alight. Its branches stretch over my head. Each branch, every leaf even, has dark veins. Some of the branches are barren, having lost most of their life.
I touch a low, empty branch and trace my fingers along it. The tips of my fingers tingle. I feel the life inside of it, clinging to existence, resisting the dark even now. Barely there, buried in rot, but ready to come to life at the call of a new spring.
A spark inside of me responds to that hint of life. A buzz in my chest but deeper, in my guts. A trickling of power that while similar to what bringing in magic was before is different. It’s unique and it takes a moment to realize why. It’s mine. I turn back to the Queens.
All eyes are on me, watching and waiting to see what I do next. I don’t blame them in the slightest. I lost it, and right now there is nothing worse than me giving in to the dark. Which I almost did.
“I’m sorry.” I meet each of their eyes in turn.
Each of them nods in acceptance, until Siobhan and I lock eyes. She smiles wryly and chuckles.
“An interesting display, Destroyer,” she murmurs. “Applause.”
I don’t try to keep from rolling my eyes at her. I’ll never understand the vampire; she’s too alien.
“We’ve spent enough time here,” I say. “The men I’ve left behind are in trouble, Duncan is too. And what about my mother? Is she…” My throat clenches and I struggle to finish the thought, unable to say it out loud.
“It is possible,” Queen Mab says.
“If she is, then she’ll be in the same realm as Duncan,” the Fair Queen says. “Or so I would think.”
“What realm? How do I get there?”
“Dubnos,” Mab says.
“You cannae be serious,” Moira interjects with a gasp. “Quinn cannae travel there.”
It’s clear she’s upset if for no other reason her accent thickens and she’s speaking to her Queen without honorifics. I watch her, but something about Dugald pulls my attention. He is staring at the ground, shoulders hunched, and looking very much like the child with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Dugald?” I ask. He doesn’t look up but shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Dugald, what?”
“It makes sense,” he says without looking up.
