65
" They are each other’s opposite, although, I suppose, not antithesis. That would be summer to winter, autumn to spring. Yet as they stand near each other, Winter, so icy and pale, Autumn so dusky and warm, it drives home to me how elemental the Fae are, the embodiment of the seasons themselves. "
― Karen Marie Moning , Kingdom of Shadow and Light (Fever, #11)
68
" Before I began turning into an Unseelie prince, I was an ordinary Highlander with a healthy sex drive, you know, that kind of constant male background music of sex-sex-sex, find-it-have-it-drown-in-it-before-more-perfectly-good-sperm-die playing to an easy, sensuous beat in my head. While every now and then a woman came along that made that music ratchet up to a hard-core version of NIN’s “Closer,” rendering me a bit dense when it came to the finer nuances of our relationship (those women were usually whacked; don’t ask me why nut jobs are so much hotter in bed), nothing in my life prepared me for falling victim to the sexual appetites of an Unseelie prince, burdened with a killing lust. I slake my lust, the woman dies. "
― Karen Marie Moning , Kingdom of Shadow and Light (Fever, #11)
69
" Gaze drifting out of focus, I clear my mind and commune with the power pulsing in Faery as strongly as it does in mortal soil, petitioning it to return the Winter Court to its former state and realize with a soft gasp that something fundamental to the universe hungers for order to be restored. It doesn’t want disorder. It doesn’t like destruction. It lists toward evolution, not devolution. I couldn’t possibly know—at least not yet, give me a few thousand more years—each and every Winter Court Fae, but the earth bore the intimate imprint of their beings, had resonated with their footsteps for millennia. I lift that memory, beckoning, adding my power to it, suggesting they be whole again. Well done, Barrons says quietly. Even though I felt the precise moment things shifted back into balance, I’m still astonished when I refocus and behold the beauty of the Winter Court, teeming by the thousands, whole and unharmed in the courtyard "
― Karen Marie Moning , Kingdom of Shadow and Light (Fever, #11)
70
" Who even dreams up that kind of shit? What the bloody hell was the Unseelie king thinking when he created his royal caste? Did Death really have to be the death of anyone he fucked? Did the half-mad king sit around and cackle about that particular bit of nastiness? Did he even care? I suppose the original Death must have instinctively known how to mute his killing Sidhba-jai, or learned in time to control it, or simply hadn’t cared that he killed while slaking his needs. Then again, confined to the Unseelie prison, perhaps he never got to slake his needs, which would go a long way toward explaining how rabid the Unseelie princes were when the walls finally came tumbling down. I know I’d be mad as a hatter after three quarters of a million years of celibacy, whether hobbled by a Fae sex drive or an average dose of male testosterone. I wasted the rest of the day after Mac left, tamping down my raging desire to find the nearest willing woman and passing it, instead, with Kat and Sean, trying to teach the black Irish nephew of Dublin’s most notorious, deceased crime mobster, Rocky O’Bannion, what I’d learned about how to control our power. Sean and I walked the final paltry acres of grass in my kingdom, over and over, and bloody well over again, as I endeavored to instruct him on how to sense the earth beneath his boots and draw power from it without scorching the ground to charred ruin. "
― Karen Marie Moning , Kingdom of Shadow and Light (Fever, #11)
71
" Over and over again, growing increasingly hostile as he went, he blackened the earth, drawing with the magnet of his rage the storm of the bloody century to my demesne. Worms screamed in anguish as they burned. Moles, disturbed from slumber, whimpered once then crumbled to ash. I suffered the soft implosion of larvae not yet formed enough to rue the beauty they were losing; subterranean life in all its dark, earthy grandeur. The occasional burrowing snake hissed defiance as it was seared to death. Sean O’Bannion walks—the earth turns black, barren, and everything in it dies, a dozen feet down. Hell of a princely power. Again, what the fuck was the Unseelie king thinking? Was he? Incensed by failure, Sean insisted hotly, as we stood in the bloody deluge—it wasn’t raining, that scarce-restrained ocean that parked itself above Ireland at the dawn of time and proceeded to leak incessantly, lured by the siren-song of Sean’s broodiness decamped to Scotland and split wide open—that I was either lying or it didn’t work the same for each prince. Patiently (okay, downright pissily, but, for fuck’s sake, I could be having sex again and gave that up to help him), I explained it did work the same for each of us but, because he wasn’t druid-trained, it might take time for him to understand how to tap into it. Like learning to meditate. Such focus doesn’t come easy, nor does it come all at once. Practice is key. He refused to believe me. He stormed thunderously and soddenly off, great ebon wings dripping rivers of water, lightning bolts biting into the earth at his heels, Kat trailing sadly at a safe distance behind. I was raised from birth to be in harmony with the natural world. Humans are the unnatural part of it. Animals lack the passel of idiotic emotions we suffer. I’ve never seen an animal feel sorry for itself. While other children played indoors with games or toys, my da led me deep into the forest and taught me to become part of the infinite web of beating hearts that fill the universe, from the birds in the trees to the insects buzzing about my head, to the fox chasing her cubs up a hillside and into a cool, splashing stream, to the earthworms tunneling blissfully through the vibrant soil. By the age of five, it was hard for me to understand anyone who didn’t feel such things as a part of everyday life. As I matured, when a great horned owl perched nightly in a tree beyond my window, Uncle Dageus taught me to cast myself within it (gently, never usurping) to peer out from its eyes. Life was everywhere, and it was beautiful. Animals, unlike humans, can’t lie. We humans are pros at it, especially when it comes to lying to ourselves. "
― Karen Marie Moning , Kingdom of Shadow and Light (Fever, #11)
72
" I counseled myself to patient, repeated attempts despite Sean’s pissy attitude. I had the advantage of being druid-trained; still, it took me years to figure out that the earth is the seat of my power, and how to nuance and finesse it. Sean’s lost in an inner darkness of his own creation and can see nothing—wants to see nothing—beyond it. He believes on some level he deserves to be lost in despair. I was in that desperate, bleak hell for a long time, too. I hated everyone and everything, blamed everyone and everything. And as long as I felt that way, I made no progress. We’re fools to think injury or bad luck occurs from a single happenstance, or can ever truly be blamed on anyone or thing. We own our fates, we choose to get up in the morning, we choose to go out into the world and live, so we’re always at least one part complicit. That doesn’t mean we’re at fault for what befalls us, merely that we must own what’s befallen us, in order to continue forward in a meaningful way. Regardless of what hand life deals us, we are what we are, and railing against it makes not one bloody iota of difference and only keeps us trapped where we don’t want to be and, honestly, don’t belong. You must be meticulous about the thoughts you send out into the universe. It’s listening. Argue for your limits and, sure enough, they’re yours. You have to argue for your dreams. "
― Karen Marie Moning , Kingdom of Shadow and Light (Fever, #11)
78
" This is my idea of a sex dream? Clearly, I need more practice. Scrambling to the edge of the bed, she claps a hand to her mouth, and laughs. “I belched!” she proclaims delightedly. “I always wondered what it would feel like.” She frowns. “Ugh. Like a wee gaheena was trying to crawl up my throat. Not a pleasant sensation at all. But once it started coming out, it felt wonderful.” She’s perching, long, sexy legs dangling over the edge of the bed (butt-ass naked and hot as fuck) and gazing admiringly up at me. I lean in and sniff. Christ, my subconscious is warped. I’m not only dreaming of the defiant, bitchy librarian, but I’ve made her drunk on Guinness before coming to my bed. The things my slumbering brain chooses to link together stupefy me sometimes. “You’re sloshed,” I inform the figment of my warped imagination testily. She belches again and laughs again, clearly ecstatic about her drunken state. “I am! I’m having another event. This is the best day. I was exhausted from crashing into the side of the bottle and I got thirsty so I drank some of the stuff in the bottle then stretched out to rest but I must have fallen asleep and—” Her face darkens abruptly and she hisses, “When I fell asleep, you great, big, fat blundering oaf,” she stabs a finger at me, and her (Mac’s) breasts jiggle so erotically that I barely even register what she’d just called me, “I nearly drowned in that nasty, smelly stuff. What kind of person does that to another person? Seals them in a stinking bottle they could drown in without a single thing to occupy themselves with.” “You’re not a person and you can’t drown.” “I’m every bit as much a person as you are. And I can, too, drown.” “Lie. "
― Karen Marie Moning , Kingdom of Shadow and Light (Fever, #11)
79
" One: the old earth gods got revenge somehow and did something to make the Fae turn on themselves. Good for the old earth gods, Barrons enthuses, dark eyes gleaming. I cut him a look. One, I’m their queen, remember. I’m responsible for them, and we still don’t know where my mother is. Two, someone got the Unseelie king’s power— Although the king abdicated power, he still has not chosen a successor. That power roams, undecided, watching. You didn’t tell me that. How do you know? It lurks in the bookstore on occasion. Watching him. Of course it would. The mural on the ceiling of Barrons Books & Baubles that I could never see clearly until a few years ago, mortal-time: Barrons "
― Karen Marie Moning , Kingdom of Shadow and Light (Fever, #11)
