The mindless, heedless, reckless end of all thought and light and life.
No wonder the White Court used it as a curse.
It was the first time I’d felt that one, too, felt it as a tangible, real thing, chewing into me from a mad Outsider, its claws twisting, fangs clamping, to rake at my spiritual self.
But it also got worse.
My spiritual self was stuck there. I mean, the whole point of the greater circle was to contain beings physically and spiritually. Simultaneous eye contact with my Sight wide open had drawn my essence, my spirit, maybe my soul even, into the circle with the Hunger.
Now it was a cage match.
I wasn’t getting out until it was over.
My physical body was sagging and would have fallen without Lara’s support.
“What’s happening?” she demanded of Mab. “What is happening?”
Mab’s voice came coolly through the chilly chamber. “He has successfully detached the demon from your brother’s physical form,” she said. Her breathing slightly labored? As much as I liked to think of myself as a rebel to the forms of the White Council, I didn’t lightly break the Laws of Magic, and I’d never, ever screwed with time. Neither had anyone I ever knew. I had no idea how heavy a lift it was—but I knewhow powerful Mab was, and if it had taxed her, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be messing with that one anytime soon.
“What does that mean?” Lara snapped.
“Your Hunger exists in a state of balance,” Mab said, with about as much excitement as an announcer at a golf tournament. “Your brother’s demon is quite mad. Dresden contends with it. It seeks to devour him utterly.”
“What can we do to help?”
“Nothing,” Mab said. “Nothing whatsoever. This is up to him.” The Queen of Air and Darkness paused, and then added, absently, “Also, your brother’s heart is failing. He is dying.”
Lara’s head snapped around, her expression horrified. “Thomas?”
And the whole time they talked, the cold became increasingly vicious, increasingly bitter, taking up more and more and more of my consciousness.
The Hunger rose over me, growing stronger by the second, the cold growing deeper, forcing me to bend backwards before its rising power. I was entwined with it, with its thoughts, with its pain and desperate emptiness, a personification of the void itself. I knew that it would devour the energy of my spirit without a second thought, and when it was finished with me it would take whatever was left of my brother, even if doing so meant its own destruction. The thing was simply that focused upon devouring all that it could reach.
The cold of it threatened to drown me. And the most horrible part of it was that…
I thought about it.
I’d been through a lot. Hurt a lot. Lost a lot. The pain of the burdens I bore had only grown, year after year. I could have ended that pain. Could have let go. Could have found the ultimate end of suffering. Part of me thought about it. Thought about letting that emptiness consume me. Thought about letting the cold take me and feeling nothing, not pain, not doubt, not uncertainty, not shame, not grief—not ever again.
And all I had to do was not fight.
I thought about it.
But I had promises to keep.
And then I started giggling.
I mean, seriously. Me. Not fighting.
That would be something suspiciously close to sensible, and that had never been my style.
I opened my eyes and met the Hunger’s silver ones and felt my lips spread into a wolfish smile.
It stared back at me, eagerness and hate and madness in its swirling silver eyes.
“Stupid bastard,” I snarled. “Using cold? On the Winter Knight? You should read more.”
The Hunger’s inhuman face twisted in something between frustration, pure confusion—and fear.
