Radiant Shadows by Melissa Marr Read Free Book Online Page B

was making Devlin want the release of a fight.
    He looked over the crowd, but it wasn’t Niall or Seth that he saw on the floor: Bananach stood in the shadows across the room. Her presence explained the extra urge to violence. Just as being near Sorcha made him feel calmer, being near Bananach made him feel disorderly urges.
    If Sorcha knew that her mad twin was in the club favored by Seth, the illogical anxiety the High Queen had experienced of late would worsen. If Bananach injured Seth, Sorcha would be… He couldn’t fathom what she would be. However, he was certain that he needed to convince Bananach to leave before Seth arrived. It would be preferable if Seth returned to Faerie—at least until the likelihood of true war in the mortal world was past. If Seth were injured, Sorcha might very well involve herself in battle with Bananach, and that could not end well for anyone.
    Devlin didn’t observe social niceties as he went toward Bananach. Instead, he pulled his glamour around him like a shadow to hide his presence and shoved mortals from his path.
    Necessary logical aggression.
    “Brother!” Bananach smiled at him and casually knocked a mortal to the ground.
    A small fight broke out as two guys both blamed the other. One threw a punch. The one on the floor came up swinging.
    “How are you, Sister?”
    “I am well.” She flicked her wrist out and cut a thin line on a mortal who wasn’t in the squabble yet. It wasn’t much of an injury, but her talon-tipped fingers were bloodied. Neither her presence nor the quarrel were random, but he wasn’t yet sure what her agenda was just then, only that she had one. War might start in madness, but to flourish it must be calculating—and Bananach was the embodiment of war.
    Her intermittent madness was increasingly absent as she became more powerful. The visible presence of her strength was in her shadowed wings—which were shadows no more. They’d been made manifest. Bananach drew strength from the growing intercourt conflicts and mistrusts, and her strength enabled her to increase the conflicts. It was a deadly cycle—one he didn’t know how to end. Bananach had manipulated the courts, inner-courtfactions, and her sister until they were on the precipice of war. He’d seen her do so over the centuries, but this time he was afraid that they wouldn’t escape without more deaths than he could comfortably sanction. The last time she’d been so effective was when the now-dead Winter Queen, Beira, had killed the last Summer King, Miach. Miach had been Beira’s opposition, her lover, and father to her child. The consequences of his death had set the courts off balance for nine centuries.
    Devlin pulled out a chair for his sister. Once she sat, he dragged another chair over and sat beside her. “Had you wanted to quarrel?”
    “Not with you, dear.” She patted his hand absently as she watched the mortals fighting. “If the Dark Court could feed from mortals’ emotions and faeries’ emotions… that would change things, wouldn’t it? Imagine if I could make it so.”
    “They can’t. You can’t,” Devlin pointed out. The Dark Court thrived in times of discord, but they were denied access to the throngs of emotional mortals all around them.
    “Perhaps.” She traced a jagged line down her forearm with one talon-tipped finger. “Or perhaps I just need the right sacrifice.” She stretched her arm out, turning it so the blood dripped into his glass. “Blood makes Faerie stronger. She forgets, pretends she’s not like us.”
    Devlin wrapped his hand around the glass of wine andblood now swirling together. “Sorcha is not like you, and you”—Devlin lifted his glass in a toast—“are not like her.”
    War stabbed a passing mortal. “We are all—faeries, mortals, and other creatures—alike.” She stood and stabbed the mortal a second time. “We fight. We bleed.” She looked across the room at someone and smiled. “And some of us will die.”
    The