Epilogue

I stood on the staircase and looked at the manor. This was, I had learned, what it was; it wasn’t just the mansion itself that I now owned, but also a sizable chunk of land around it, which was apparently the distinction.

I had not been expecting to live here. I had been fully expecting to pawn it off along with the rest of Cormac’s belongings. But it wouldn’t actually have brought much, with how far out into the ass end of nowhere it was. And it was, I had to admit, pretty much ideal for my needs in some ways. Out so far into a post-industrial wasteland that it was all the way into the forest, plenty of room to work with, a landed estate sufficiently large that neighbors were a complete nonissue even without it being all the way out in fucking Fairywood. The trip into town would be a pain in the ass, but not an unreasonable one.

I had still been resistant to the idea of living in anything that could be called a landed estate, or the manor house therein. But Saori liked the idea, surprising no one, and she’d decided to fight dirty and rope Raincloud in on the pleading. I could hold up under a vixen applying bedroom eyes or a puppy applying, well, puppy eyes. I did not think I could reasonably be blamed for caving under the pressure of both.…

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Waking up was slow, difficult, and deeply unpleasant. I normally woke up quickly, but this hadn’t been sleep. It hadn’t even been like sleep, just a window of unconsciousness while I was seizing. And coming back from that usually felt a lot like this; there was a feeling like I was trying to push my way back while swimming in honey, the resistance and drag making every cognitive movement a struggle. I dragged myself out of it, but it took a while, and I was still dazed.

But I hadn’t been out long. Not long at all, in fact, which was convenient. That part was hard to predict; longer periods of unconsciousness usually indicated a more severe seizure, but it wasn’t consistent. I tended to be out for anywhere from five minutes to an hour; this seemed to have been on the short end of that range, under ten minutes.…

Chapter Thirty-Six

It seemed like Shadow had stepped up out of absolutely nowhere. But it hadn’t, nothing of the sort. I knew that, because as soon as I saw it, I realized that I’d been seeing it. Shadow hadn’t been invisible, hadn’t even been behind a veil. It was more like I just…hadn’t registered it as important. It was like I’d known that it was there, but its presence didn’t register as significant enough to even pay attention to.

Which was an impression that didn’t change as it moved, and that may have been the strangest thing I’d experienced all month, which was saying things. There was a little bit of anxiety as I suddenly realized it was there, and then a little bit of hope as I parsed what I was seeing.

But both emotions felt…muted, washed out. There was no real force behind them; I felt apathetic in a way that was obviously, deeply unnatural, and that fact should itself have been disturbing, but it wasn’t. It didn’t seem important.…

Chapter Thirty-Five

A throne room. An actual, literal fucking throne room. Because of course he had one of those. If I’d learned anything about him, and despite having never met the Sidhe nobleman I felt I had learned far more than I wanted to at this point, it was that Cormac Goldenblade was not prone to subtlety.

I was strangely but deeply glad that my kingmaker position had been better situated to side with Ekaterina. Sure, she was a bitch who took vendettas more seriously than could possibly be healthy, and her followers were violent, impulsive, and somewhat idiotic. I still found myself feeling a sort of kinship with her just on the basis of hating this guy.…

Chapter Thirty-Four

“You know, this guy really is fantastic at making me hate him without even having to meet him first,” I commented to no one in particular. “Like, top tier punchability. Five of five stars, would stab in the kidney again.”

“I did tell you it was a mansion,” Lily reminded me.

“Yeah, but that can include a lot of things,” I pointed out. “Some people, for example, do mansions that are tasteful and understated. Or at least aesthetically tolerable.”…

Chapter Thirty-Three

I still felt a little out of sorts the next day. The sunlight was too bright, the world felt simultaneously overstimulating and undersaturated, and I was an odd mixture of exhausted and restless that had more than a passing resemblance to mania. I’d gotten some sleep, and it hadn’t been troubled by nightmares for once, but I was still tired.

But I was, in several ways, out of time. It had to be tonight. So while I was feeling dissociated and strung out, I was still a little bit southeast of Homestead Cemetery.

I didn’t have an exact address; Toby had only been able to narrow it down to this neighborhood. I didn’t think that was going to be a problem. It would be, if I were planning a surgical strike or something. But for what I had in mind, it was plenty. I just went to the right general area and started wandering around.…