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Squirrels ice, mid-leap, and drop like stones to the ground, where they shatter.

  I glance at my hands. They are stained black, my palms cup silvery runes.

  I know now where Barrons ends and I begin.

  When Barrons ended, I began.

  Me.

  Mac O’Connor.

  Sidhe-seer that a certain Seelie Prince said the world should fear.

  I kneel and kiss Barrons a final time.

  I do not cover him or perform any ritual. It would be for me, not him. There is only one thing left that I will do for me.

  Soon, none of this will matter anyway.

  I had to be ripped in half to stop feeling so torn in two. Divided, never knowing who to trust.

  I’m now a woman with a single ambition.

  I know exactly what I’m going to do.

  And I know how I’m going to do it.

  3

  After leaving Barrons’ body, I travel in the direction my guardian demon had been herding me. I believe he must have wanted me to go this way for a reason.

  I trust him in death like I never did in life.

  What a piece of work I am.

  I follow the river for miles. As he disappears behind me, so, too, do I. With each step I take, I strip off another piece of myself. The weak parts. The parts that won’t help me accomplish my goals. And if they are the so-called human parts, oh, well. I can’t feel and still survive what I’ve got to get through.

  When I am certain I am ready, I stop and wait for my enemy.

  He does not disappoint.

  “I thought you’d never get here,” I say, my voice husky from screaming. It hurts to talk. I savor the pain. It’s what I deserve.

  The LM is still some distance away, concealed in the forest, but I see the shadows that move too sinuously to be cast by any tree.

  “Come out.” I lean back against a tree, one hand in a pocket at my cocked hip, the other at my waist. “I am what you want, aren’t I? What you came here for. What all this is about. Why hesitate now?”

  My spear is in the holster beneath my arm, my dirk in my waistband. The black-leather rune-covered pouch holding the three stones the LM wants—three-quarters of what we all hope will form some kind of cage for the Sinsar Dubh—are tucked securely in my backpack, which hangs over my shoulder.

  Shapes glide from the darkness: the LM and the last two Unseelie Princes.

  Jack and Rainey Lane are not with them.

  That would disturb me, except the Mac who loves her parents was in those pieces I left behind with Barrons’ body. Barrons is dead. It’s my fault. I have no parents. No love. No weaknesses. There’s not a single shaft of sunshine in my soul.

  I feel immeasurably lighter, stronger.

  Darroc—I will no longer call him the LM; even the abbreviation of his smug-ass title implies superiority—has been eating a great deal of Unseelie flesh. Power is thick in the air between us. I’m not sure what comes from him and what is rolling off me. I wonder how his minions feel about him cannibalizing their own. Perhaps what is an abomination to the Light Court is a common vice at the Dark Court, an acceptable hazard of being Unseelie.

  As he approaches the circle of silvery light in which I stand, his eyes widen infinitesimally.

  I laugh, a throaty purr. I know what I look like. I washed after leaving Barrons and prepared myself with care. My bra is in my backpack. My hair is softly curled and wild around my face. It took time to get the black stain off my palms. There is nothing about me that is not a weapon, an asset, something to use to get what I want, including my body. I’ve learned a thing or two from Barrons: Power is sexy. It shapes my spine, infuses my beckoning hand.

  I have not been devastated by Barrons’ death. The alchemy of grief has forged a new metal.

  I have been transformed.

  There’s only one way I can make his death okay. Undo it.

  And, while I’m at it, undo Alina’s, too.

  Every person I’ve met who’s known something about the Sinsar Dubh was cryptic about it. No one has been willing to tell me exactly what’s in it. The only thing everyone kept telling me was that it was imperative I find it, and quickly, because it could be used to keep the walls from crashing.

  Well, the walls are down now. It’s too late.

  Considering that I’ve been hunting this Book with single-minded dedication for months, it’s startling how little thought I’ve given to its contents. I swallowed what I was told and obediently chased it.

  I suspect now that everyone was keeping me tightly focused on the goal of finding it in order to keep the walls up, so I’d never get around to thinking too hard about other possible uses for the Sinsar Dubh.

  There I was, hunting an object of unspeakable power, surrounded by people that wanted it for reasons of their own, and never once did I think: Wait a minute—what might it do for me?

  Darroc told me that with the Sinsar Dubh he could bring Alina back. He said he wanted it to reclaim his Fae essence and exact revenge.

  V’lane told me that the Dark Book holds all the Unseelie King’s knowledge, every last damnable bit of it. He said he wants it for the Seelie Queen, so she might use it to restore their race to their former glory and to re-imprison the Unseelie. He believes it contains fragments of the Song of Making, lost to their race so long ago, and that the queen will be able to use them to re-create the ancient melody. I don’t know exactly what the Song of Making is or does, but it seems to be the ultimate in Fae power.

  It was Barrons that told me the most. He said the Sinsar Dubh contained spells to make and unmake worlds. Something to do with those fragments of the Song. He never would tell me why he wanted it. Said he was a book collector. Right. And I’m the Unseelie King.

  Lying there, holding Barrons’ body, I’d contemplated the Sinsar Dubh’s potential uses, for the first time, in a very personal way.

  Especially the part about making and unmaking worlds.

  It had all become perfectly clear to me.

  With the Sinsar Dubh, a person could create a world with a different past—and a different future.

  Essentially, a person could turn back time.

  Erase anything they didn’t like.

  Replace those things they couldn’t bear to have lost, including people they couldn’t stand to live without.

  I’d torn myself away from Barrons’ body with one purpose.

  To get the Sinsar Dubh, and when I did, I wasn’t turning it over to anyone. It was going to be mine. I would study it. Grief had focused me like a laser. I could learn anything. Nothing would stand in my way. I would rebuild the world the way I wanted it.

  “Come.” I smile. “Join me.” My face radiates only warmth, invitation, pleasure at his presence. I am the last thing he expected. He believed he would find a terrorized, hysterical girl.

  I’m not and never will be again.

  He motions the princes back and takes a casual step forward, but I see the studied grace in the movement. He is wary of me. He should be.

  Coppery Fae eyes meet mine. How did Alina fail to see that those eyes were not human, no matter how human his body appeared?

  The answer is simple: She did. She knew. That was why she lied to him, told him that she didn’t have any family, that she was an orphan. Protected us from the very first. She knew there was something dangerous about him, and she wanted him anyway, wanted to taste that kind of life.

  I don’t blame her. We are flawed. We should have been banned from Ireland for everyone’s good.

  He assesses me. I know he passed Barrons’ body. He’s trying to figure out what happened but is unwilling to ask. I suspect nothing could have convinced him more surely than seeing Barrons dead that the MacKayla he thought he was dealing with wasn’t home anymore. His gaze drops to the thin, jagged-edged silvery runes on the ground encircling me, bathing me in cool, eerie light. His eyes widen again as he scans them, and, for the briefest of instants, he looks rattled.

  “Nice work.” His gaze flick
s between the runes and my face. “What are they?”

  “You don’t recognize them?” I counter. I sense deception. He knows what they are. I don’t. I’d like to.

  The next thing I know, his copper eyes lock with mine and a vibrant blue-black light blazes from his fist. I hadn’t even seen him reach inside his shirt for the Hallow.

  “Step out of the circle now,” he commands.

  He’s not using Voice. He’s holding the amulet, one of the four Unseelie Hallows, an ornate necklace that houses a fist-sized stone of inexplicable composition. The king created it for his concubine to enable her to bend reality to her whim. The amulet reinforces an epic person’s will. Months ago, I sat at a very exclusive auction in an underground bomb shelter and watched an old Welshman pay in excess of eight figures for it. He’d had stiff competition. Mallucé had murdered the old man and taken it before Barrons and I had been able to steal it. But the wannabe vamp couldn’t use it.

  Darroc can. I believe I could, too—if I can get it from him.

  I held it once, and it responded to me. But, like many things Fae, time imbued it with a degree of sentience and it had sought something from me—a binding, or pledge. I’d not understood—or, if I had, hadn’t been willing to make it, afraid of what it would cost me. I’d lost the Hallow to Darroc when he’d Voiced me into turning it over, before I learned to use Voice myself. I’d have no compunction about exploring the amulet’s desires now. No price is too high.

  I feel the blue-black power it radiates, lacing his command with compulsion. The pressure is immense. I want to leave the circle. I could breathe, eat, sleep, live without pain forever, if only I would leave the circle.

  I laugh. “Throw me the amulet now.” Voice explodes from me.

  The heads of the Unseelie Princes swivel and they regard me. It’s hard to tell with them, but I think they suddenly find me very interesting.

  A chill runs up my spine. There is no fear, no terror left inside me, yet those … things … those icy, unnatural aberrations … they still manage to affect me. I have not looked directly at them yet.

  Darroc’s hand tightens on the blazing amulet. “Step out of the circle!”

  The pressure is crushing. It can be eased only by obeying.

  “Throw me the amulet!”

  He flinches, raises his hand, snarls, and jerks it back down.

  For the next few minutes, he and I each try to bend the other to our will, until we are finally forced to concede that we are at an impasse. My Voice does not work on him. Neither amulet nor Voice works on me.

  We are matched. Fascinating. I am his equal. My, what a creature I’ve become.

  He circles me, and I turn with him, a faint smile curving my lips, my eyes alight. I am charged. I am exhilarated. I’m pumped on the power of my runes and myself. We study each other as if confronting a new species.

  I offer my hand, an invitation to step to my side.

  He looks down at the runes. “I am not that great a fool.” His voice is deep, musical. He is beautiful. I understand why my sister wanted him. Tall, golden-skinned, there is an otherworldly eroticism to him that being made mortal by his queen did not eradicate. The scar on his face draws the eye, begs the finger to trace it, to learn the story behind it.

  I cannot ask how great a fool, because it would betray that I don’t know what my runes are.

  “What happened to Barrons?” he says after a time.

  “I killed him.”

  He searches my face, and I know he is trying to come up with any scenario that might explain the way Barrons was mutilated and killed. If he examined the body, he saw the spear wound, and he knows I carry it. He knows I stabbed him at least once.

  “Why?”

  “I wearied of his incessant boorishness.” I wink. Let him think me mad. I am. In every sense of the word.

  “I didn’t think he could be killed. The Fae have long feared him.”

  “Turns out the spear was his weakness. It’s why he never wanted to touch it.”

  He absorbs my words, and I know he’s trying to decide why a Fae weapon could kill Jericho Barrons. I’d like to know, too. Was it the spear that dealt the killing blow? Would he have died of that wound eventually regardless of whether Ryodan had slit his throat?

  “Yet he armed you with it? You expect me to believe that?”

  “Like you, he thought I was all fluff and no teeth. Too stupid to be worth suspicion. ‘Lamb to the slaughter’ was how he liked to phrase it. Little lamb killed the lion. Guess I showed him, huh?” I wink again.

  “I burned his body. There is nothing left but ash.” He watches my face carefully.

  “Good.”

  “If there was any way he might rise, he never will now. The princes scattered his ashes to a hundred dimensions.” His gaze is piercing now.

  “I should have thought of that myself. Thank you for finishing it so well.” My mind is on the new world I plan to create. I’ve said good-bye to this one.

  Copper eyes narrow, glittering with scorn. “You didn’t kill Barrons. What happened? What are you playing at?”

  “He betrayed me,” I lie.

  “How?”

  “It’s none of your business. I had my reasons.” I watch him watch me. He wonders if the rape of the Unseelie Princes and my time in the Hall of All Days has unhinged me. He wonders if I’m unbalanced enough to have gone crazy and actually killed Barrons for pissing me off. When he glances down at the runes again, I know he thinks I have enough juice to have pulled it off.

  “Step out of the circle. I have your parents and will kill them if you don’t obey me.”

  “I don’t care.” I scoff.

  He stares. He heard the truth in my words.

  I don’t care. An essential part of me is dead. I don’t mourn it. This is no longer my world. What happens here doesn’t matter. In this reality, I’m already on borrowed time. I will rebuild a new one or die trying.

  “I’m free, Darroc. I’m really, truly free.” I shrug my shoulders, toss my head, and laugh.

  He sucks in a sharp breath when I say his name and laugh, and I know that I’ve reminded him of my sister. Did she say those words to him once? Does he hear joy in my laughter, as he once heard in hers?

  He stalks a tight circle around me, eyes narrowed. “What changed? In the days since I abducted your parents and today, what happened to you?”

  “What happened to me started happening a long time ago. You should have kept Alina alive. I hated you for that.”

  “And now?”

  I look him up and down. “Now is different. Things are different. We are different.”

  His eyes search mine, left to right and back again, rapidly. “What are you saying?”

  “I see no reason we cannot be … friends.”

  He tries the word. “Friends?”

  I nod.

  He contemplates the possibility that I am sincere. A human would never entertain the notion. Fae are different. No matter how much time they spend among us, they just can’t nail the subtleties of human emotion. It’s that difference I’m counting on. When I left Barrons, all I wanted was to lay in wait for Darroc, use my runes and my newfound dark glassy friend to kill him the moment he appeared.

  I exorcised it swiftly.

  This ex-Fae turned human knows more about both the Seelie and Unseelie courts, and the Book that I am determined to possess, than anyone. When he has told me everything he knows, I’ll relish killing him. I’d considered allying myself with V’lane—and when I’m done taking everything I need from Darroc, I still may. After all, I’ll need the fourth stone. But V’lane doesn’t seem to have any real knowledge about the Book, aside from a few old legends.

  It’s a better bet that the Unseelie know more about the Dark Book than the Seelie Queen’s right hand. Maybe even where to find the prophecy. Like Barrons, Darroc has actually seen pages of the arcane tome. I was forced to concede that hunting the Sinsar Dubh was an exercise in futility until I discovered how to con
trol it. But Darroc has never stopped his search. Why? What does he know that I don’t?

  The sooner I pry his secrets from him, the sooner I learn to contain and use the Sinsar Dubh, the sooner I can stop living in this agonizing reality that I will have no hesitation about destroying to replace with my world. The right one. Where everything ends happily ever after.

  “Friends work toward common goals,” he says.

  “Like hunting books,” I agree.

  “Friends trust each other. They don’t barricade each other out.” He looks at my feet.

  The runes came from within me. I am my circle. He doesn’t know this. I kick them aside. I wonder if he has forgotten my spear. As heavily laced with Unseelie as he is, a single prick would sentence him to the same slow, gruesome death that Mallucé suffered.

  When I step out, he slowly looks me up and down.

  I see the thoughts that flash through his eyes as they travel over my body: kill her/fuck her/assault and bind her/explore her uses? It takes a lot to make a man kill a beautiful woman he has not yet slept with. Especially if he enjoyed her sister.

  “Friends don’t try to coerce each other,” I say with a pointed look at the amulet.

  He inclines his head and slips it back inside his shirt.

  I offer my hand with a smile. Barrons taught me well. Keep your friends close …

  Darroc takes it, leans down to place a light kiss upon my lips. The tension between us is a palpable thing. One sudden move from either of us and we’ll be all over each other, trying to kill each other, and we know it. He keeps his body pliant. I infuse my limbs with languor. We are two scorpions with coiled tails, trying to mate. It is no more than I deserve, the punishment of letting him touch me like this. I sentenced Barrons to death.

  I part my lips beneath his, but demurely, teeth standing guard. I exhale a soft whisper of a breath into his mouth. He likes it.

  … and your enemies closer.

  Behind us, the Unseelie Princes begin to chime softly like dark crystal. I remember that sound. I know what it precedes. I tighten my hand on his. “Never them. Never again.”

  Darroc turns to them and barks a harsh command in a language that hurts my ears.