Page 57 of The Unseelie War
The silence that followed was deafening. Ava could see the debate playing out on Abigail's face—duty versus love, principle versus pragmatism, the weight of thousands of lives hanging in the balance.
“I will need time to consider this.” Abigail bowed her head.
“Midnight.” Valroy bowed his own head to kiss the top of hers. “You shall have until then to make up your mind.” He glanced up at the strange aurora lights dancing overhead. “It seems appropriate, somehow. Does it not?” Valroy spread his wings and took to the air. Within moments, he was gone, leaving only the echo of his ultimatum.
The group stood in stunned silence for a long moment. It was Ibin who spoke first. “We can't let that knobhead win.”
“Nor can we let him slaughter the Seelie,” Nos added grimly.
“There has to be another way…” Lysander’s tone lacked conviction. Or hope.
Ava felt the crushing realization that once again, everything hinged on choices she didn't feel qualified to make. But this time, there was something else too. A growing anger that burned hotter than her fear. “I need to talk to that raging twat-waffle myself.”
Serrik blinked at the invective. “Who?”
“ThefuckingMorrigan!” Ava turned away from the group, heading toward the door to the opera house. “This is all her game. Her console, her setup, her rules! And I'm sick of playing it blind. I’m going to go get the cheat codes.”
“Ava, wait—” Abigail called after her.
“No.” Ava spun around, fury making her face warm. “No more standing around debating. No more accepting that this is just howthings have to be. She created this mess—Valroy, Serrik,me.She's been pulling strings from the beginning, and I want to know why.”
“You can't just summon a goddess,” Bitty said nervously, picking at the hem of her shirt.
“Oh yeah? Fuckin’watchme.” Ava's power was already beginning to respond to her anger. She felt reality bending around her like heated glass. “I’m the Weaver now. I'm connected to the same cosmic forces she is, aren’t I? And if she wants to play games with our lives, then she can damn well explain the rules. I’m going to put some space between us, though, in case I rip another hole through space-time or some shit.”
Serrik stepped forward. “I shall come with you.”
“Serrik—”
“No.” His voice was firm. “You may need my assistance in holding reality together.” He reached out his hand to her.
Ava looked into his golden eyes and saw the same anger there that burned in her own chest. The fury of someone who had spent too long being manipulated, too long accepting that their pain was necessary for some greater purpose.
“Fine.” She took his hand. “But we do this my way.”
“As you wish, Weaver.”
Together, they headed for the opera house, leaving the others to grapple with Valroy's ultimatum. But Ava's mind was already elsewhere, focused on the confrontation to come. The Morrigan had set this game in motion—had created the very beings who were now tearing reality apart in their cosmic dance of love and war.
It was time for the puppets to have a word with their maker.
Whether she wanted to hear from them or not.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ava led Serrik away from the opera house, through the chaotic streets of the merged city. Well, cities. She needed space—room to work without accidentally bringing down buildings on their friends when she inevitably lost control of her power.
The transformed landscape was getting weirder and weirder. Abigail was right. This was a ticking clock. She had to stop and stare as a building in front of her slowly dissolved, its bricks wandering off into dust, before its missing sections were reconstructed from the singing trees of Tir n'Aill.
Street signs had become bone structures that clunked liked hollow wind chimes, displaying text in three different languages—English, the First Language, and something that looked like it belonged in a theoretical physics textbook.
As they walked, Ava caught glimpses of other impossibilities. A chunk of the Public Gardens was floating about twenty feet off the ground, complete with jogging paths where confused-looking people were still going about their routines.
Above them, flying through the air, a pod of what appeared to be mechanical whales swam in formation, their bronze hulls gleaming in the strange aurora light that danced overhead.
“This is so beyond fucked up,” Ava muttered, stepping around a lamppost that was growing flowers instead of providing light. The flowers themselves were doing the job instead, each one shining in a different color. “I still don’t get why half the people we’re seeing aren’t just having straight-up panic attacks. How’re they just going about their days?”
“They must believe they are still dreaming. Humans are remarkably adaptable.” Serrik observed, his tone clinical. “The mind has remarkable capacity for self-deception when faced with the impossible. It is easier for them to believe that this may simply be the result of a night of excess or illness than to think that what they see before them, which was heretofore impossible, has now become possible.”
