In this conjunction of events, he would claim the True Magic and rule the only true court of the Fae with both the queen’s and, soon, the king’s power.

  The Highlander pup would never inherit the reign. There were two ways he might kill the prince-who-should-never-have-been, and he was, as yet, uncertain which method he would employ.

  Barrons would be out of the running once Masdann lured him into the Dreaming and stranded him for eternity in a padded room, leaving his body a useless, catatonic shell.

  The old bastard would finally have to pass the dark crown to his legitimate heir, his finest prince, and only full-blooded Unseelie prince that remained: Cruce.

  Before long, the Shadow Court would be the only Fae in existence, Cruce would be king, MacKayla would be his consort, and all would be right with the world.

  24

  I trip through your wires

  KAT

  Deep in the Underneath at Arlington Abbey, four levels down, three of the abbey’s governing body, the Shedon, gathered in a stone passageway, staring into a brilliantly lit chamber beyond.

  “By the saints, that can’t be what I think it is,” Katarina McLaughlin exclaimed, horrified by the sight that loomed beyond the open doorway.

  The pull of the chamber on the other side was nearly irresistible, even to Kat, who’d nearly perfected the art of resisting irresistible lures. Standing in the corridor, she felt she was being stretched thin, tugged and distorted, dragged inexorably forward whether she wanted to step through that doorway or not. Time ran differently beyond the narrow threshold at her feet, with a palpable temporal distortion rippling before their eyes.

  “It fits the description we’ve read,” Enyo Luna said.

  “Who else knows it’s here?” Kat demanded.

  “Only Rhiannon, and she won’t breathe a word of it,” Colleen MacKeltar said. “Not that she’s able to at the moment. She’s been in bed since yesterday. We had to carry her up to her room after she shattered the ward protecting the chamber. The undoing of it nearly shattered her.”

  Kat scrutinized the pair of sidhe-seers. These were two of her most levelheaded, focused members of the Shedon. And they were hiding something. “Where was Decla when it happened?”

  Colleen and Enyo exchanged an uneasy look, then Enyo said, “Helping Duff at the catacombs.”

  “It was just the three of us,” Colleen said.

  Kat shook her head. She couldn’t hold Enyo and Colleen responsible for Decla wandering off. She knew why Decla would prefer to work near the dead and also knew when the independent sidhe-seer got it in her head to strike off on her own, nothing and no one could stop her. It’s more peaceful, Decla would say. They didn’t need me. Everything was fine.

  But it wasn’t. The Shedon and their teams had an unbreakable rule: Never split up while exploring the Underneath. Stay together at all times. There were sound reasons for that rule.

  There was a secretive, treacherous city beneath Arlington Abbey, riddled with corridors that narrowed to passages barely wide enough to accommodate a child turned sideways before exploding into streets as wide as ten-lane thoroughfares. It was packed with nooks and crannies, crypts and strange multistory abodes that hinted at long-dead, unusual denizens of inhuman ilk. It housed catacombs and caverns, opulent libraries and eclectic conservatories, chambers filled with thousands of impossible-to-open trunks, or gadgets stuck to a ceiling too high to reach without scaffolding, more chambers crammed with items they could neither identify nor assign any apparent purpose.

  It was as if all of the universe’s unwanted, dangerous, and obsolete things had been relegated to a cast-offs warehouse beneath their home. And from the looks of things, that warehouse had been accumulating cosmic detritus since the dawn of time.

  Each new section to which they gained access offered only more doors, more challenges, mysteries, and dangers. Here were stairs that led to a blank wall. There were doors that opened on yawning abysses—or worse, appeared to have a floor, which was but a masquerade concealing a deadly abyss. In the past two and a half years, they’d lost seven women to one threat or another.

  Until Kat, herself, nine months ago, had formed teams based on invasively deep empathic readings of their psyches, careful and thorough assessments of their gifts and curses, strengths and weaknesses.

  Since that time, they’d not lost a single woman.

  Yesterday, however, they might have lost one.

  With a talent for neutralizing wards and spells, Rhiannon was delicate-boned, kind, and wide open, with no barriers protecting her mind and heart. She was obsessive, selfless, and constantly getting hurt, physically, emotionally, or both.

  Decla was lean and strong, with a supernova-bright, diamond-hard mind, and a healthy sense of self-preservation honed from a young age. She had gotten her bachelor’s from the School of Hard Knocks, had a master’s in sight, and a PhD in death. Decla could see death shadowing another person, had, for quite a few years as a child, believed everyone saw it. Once she’d begun talking, she’d learned the hard way they didn’t and, worse, didn’t appreciate that she did.

  She was ten when she discovered her gifts came with a seductive side. If she acted quickly enough, she could intercept and redirect death.

  To someone else.

  That was the price.

  To save one person, she had to choose who would die instead and escort the shadowy companion only she could see to that person. Stand with it and ensure the act was completed. And death, when it came to the wrong person, was far more terrible than it would have been otherwise, as if death resented the redirection and lashed out with fury at the interference. Kat had no idea how many times Decla had redirected it by the time the twenty-seven-year-old had had the breakdown that sent her fleeing to their motherhouse in Ireland in search of a teacher, forgiveness, and a way to learn to control and live with herself.

  Decla and Rhiannon reinforced each other, were doubly strong together, chinking each other’s weaknesses.

  “Rhiannon spent five days working to break the ward on the door before she succeeded,” Colleen said.

  “How did she break it?”

  Colleen and Enyo exchanged another guilty look, then Colleen said, “We weren’t exactly standing right here in this exact spot when she neutralized it.”

  Kat sighed. “In which exact spot were you standing?”

  “We were down there.” Enyo pointed about twenty feet away, to a small metal door in the stone wall of the passage. “Inside, digitally scanning scrolls.”

  “You know better than to leave a sidhe-seer alone in the Underneath.”

  “She’d been at it for five bloody days, Kat,” Colleen groused. “You know how she gets. The more difficult a ward is to defeat, the more fixated Rhiannon becomes. She wouldn’t give up. We kept begging her to walk away. Leave it, forget it. There are countless other things to discover down here. Our goal is to create a detailed map, not break into every single chamber, especially when half the ones we get into contain something we either don’t understand or nearly kills us. We couldn’t stay here with her every single minute watching. We were nearby. We could hear her murmuring.”

  “We didn’t think she had a chance of breaking it. She’d tried everything. Then we heard her scream,” Enyo said. “She was unconscious when we found her.”

  “Why wasn’t I told any of this until now?” Kat said.

  “It happened yesterday while you were at Draoidheacht. You looked exhausted when you got back last night. We know how hard your days with Sean are. We took turns standing guard all night and brought you down the moment you came into the breakfast hall. Is it what we think it is?” Colleen said.

  Kat stared through the doorway for a long moment then said, “The instant Rhiannon can function, bring her back down here to re-ward the door. Stronger than it was before. If she could break it, someone else might be able to, too. Until she secures it, I want both of you standing guard. Stay together at all times. That means—”

  “I know, I know,” Colleen said, groaning. “Buckets for toilets. Power bars and water bottles. No cellphones, no distractions.”

  Kat said, “Tell no one else it’s here.”

  “It is what we think it is, then,” Enyo pressed, dark eyes glittering with a bit more fascination than Kat would have liked. Enyo was the adventurous one. Born inside a tank in the middle of a war zone, she thrived in dangerous situations, sought them a bit too eagerly for her own good.

  “I’ve never seen it myself, but Mac and Dani have and, from their descriptions, I would say yes.” What other monumentally risky things were they responsible for safeguarding? What else had been dumped on their doorsteps? She was beginning to regret that they’d ever begun the mapping of the Underneath.

  First, they’d discovered that the Sinsar Dubh, the ancient, sentient, evil book of dark magic created by the Unseelie king, had been housed beneath their floors for millennia, unknown to all but the inner circle of the Haven.

  Then, a few years ago, they’d discovered the Light Court of the Fae had long ago entombed countless ancient earth gods in the Underneath, as well.

  Adding insult to injury, one of those very gods, Balor, reinvigorated by the Song of Making, had the temerity to set up his war camp in the secretive and sprawling city beneath their home.

  That was the catalyst that had propelled the Shedon, the governing body of the abbey, to begin aggressively exploring and cataloging what else had been hidden beneath their feet.

  Now this. For heaven’s sake, was each and every one of the most dangerous parts of the universe secreted away beneath their beds?

  “It’s a bit difficult to look away from,” Colleen murmured.

  “That’s only a small part of the problem,” Kat agreed. It did more than obsessively compel the eye, it seduced. It whispered in silken, urgent tones, Oh, do come in. Stroll my lovely corridor, gaze upon yourself and all things possible, herein lie the doorways to your wildest dreams. Everything is here. Everything you ever wanted. Come in, come in!

  But it was corrupted. One’s odds of finding nightmares down that eternal hallway were far higher than realizing one’s dreams. Christian had gotten lost in there and would have died, if not for Mac. Dani had been cheated of five years of her life before finding her way home.

  The chamber into which Rhiannon had finally managed to gain access opened onto an endless, dazzling expanse of gold.

  Gleaming golden floors. Towering golden walls. No ceiling to be seen. The gilded walls shot up to a dizzying height, vanishing beyond the eye’s ability to follow.

  And on those glittering walls hung millions—no, billions—no, an infinity of mirrors of every shape and size.

  Four levels beneath Arlington Abbey, Rhiannon had shattered the ward that kept this very dangerous and very-necessary-to-reclose door from opening onto the vast temptation and seduction of the Hall of All Days: the cosmic nexus the Unseelie king had constructed a million years ago as a sort of interplanetary/interdimensional travel agency for the Fae. Once, one had only to gaze into one of the mirrors, choose a destination, and step through.

  But Cruce’s curse had corrupted all the traveling Silvers, and now the destinations the mirrors reflected bore no relation to the reality one found on the other side. One might choose a tropical beach and end up on a fire world with no oxygen, only death by instant incineration. Some even claimed, from inside the Hall, one could travel forward or backward in time, if one knew how.

  Staring at the infrequent piles of crumbling bones littering the Hall, Kat reminded herself of yet another danger the Hall held—if you stopped moving, failed to choose a mirror, the Hall lifted a memory from your mind and wove it into a reality around you. You could get lost in the illusion, never eating, never sleeping, until you died.

  A gust of cold air abruptly blasted through the doorway, and they shivered.

  “That happens sometimes,” Enyo said, closing the door hastily. The moment it was shut, the chill lessened but it was still colder in the passageway than it should have been, and they could hear the sound of a distant wind moaning beyond the closed door. “Any idea what causes it?”

  Kat said grimly, “Mac told me when someone or something enters the Hall of All Days from one of the mirrors, it kicks up a fair bit of a storm in the Hall.”

  “You mean things are entering our Underneath and walking around in there?” Colleen said. “Possibly headed our way?”

  “Which is exactly why you’re going to be standing guard with the door closed and securely barred until Rhiannon seals it again,” Kat said. When Mac told her stories of the Hall, she’d admitted she’d wondered at its sheer size, wondered just what kind of being could reach the enormous mirrors high up on those towering walls.

  Kat fervently hoped they never found out.

  * * *

  “Mommy, I haven’t seen the Spyrssidhe in ever so long,” Rae said worriedly, as Kat helped her get changed into her pajamas for bed.

  “You like the Spyrssidhe, don’t you?” Kat smiled, as she slipped Rae’s shirt off and smoothed her hair. Her smile faded abruptly as she spotted the marks marring her daughter’s back. After an absence of more than three long, lovely, reassuring years, the spots on her daughter’s shoulders had returned.

  This time, they were different. Bigger. Angry, textured red welts.

  Precisely where a pair of wings might grow.

  “Are you itchy?” Kat asked softly.

  “No.”

  “Your back doesn’t itch?”

  Nibbling her lower lip, Rae shook her head.

  “What did you do today?”

  “Played dolls with Anna at school. She likes to play Faerie queen. But her queen is mean and picks on everybody. I don’t think that’s how the queen really is.”

  “Did you go outside?” The only other time Rae had sported such spots, Kat told herself it was an unusual reaction to pollen; her daughter had sprawled in the grass, perhaps gotten bug bites.

  “No. Teacher wouldn’t let us. Too rainy.”

  “Then how do you know the Spyrssidhe aren’t around?”

  “They come to my window at night. But they haven’t in so very long! I’m afraid something’s wrong. I asked Bess today and she got her umber and went out and looked in their houses. They’re empty. She said she was going to talk to you about it.”

  Kat hadn’t seen the head of the abbey’s daycare today. Ciara had collected Rae and brought her to their suite of rooms.

  “I’ll check on the Spyrssidhe tomorrow.”

  “Promise? You won’t forget? I’m worried. I think something’s wrong. I can feel…” Rae trailed off, nibbling her lower lip.

  “What, honey?”

  Rae shrugged and held up her arms for her pajama top. As Kat slipped it over her shoulders, she slid her palm over one of the spots. It was rough and leathery. And hot, very hot. “Your back’s not bothering you at all?”

  “No. It feels good. Like it’s getting stronger. But I am growing up,” Rae said proudly. “I’m almost five!”

  “And we’re going to have a big birthday party for you.”

  “And everyone at the abbey will come. Even the Spyrssidhe,” she announced brightly. “Even Daddy.”

  Kat flinched. In nearly five years, Rae had never said anything about her father. She’d never asked why, though all her friends had mothers and fathers, she had only a mother. Kat hoped it was because she felt so loved that she wanted for nothing, missed nothing. “What do you mean, Rae?”

  “He visits me in dreams,” she said as she burrowed beneath the covers and pulled the blankets up to her chin. “He says we’ll meet soon. I think he means my birthday. Oops! I wasn’t supposed to tell you that. He wants it to be a surprise. Don’t tell him I told you.”

  No, no, no. This was not happening. No one was visiting anyone in dreams. The only person (and she was using that term very loosely) she knew who could visit in people’s dreams was dead, destroyed when the Song of Making was sung. With each passing year, Kat had grown more certain of it, relaxed a bit more.

  “What—” Kat broke off, recalibrating her voice to a calmer tone and tried again, “What does your daddy look like in your dreams?”

  “Not much like me at all,” Rae said, and yawned. “But he says I’ll look more like him when I get older. So, I guess, maybe when I’m five. I’m sleepy, Mommy. Forget I told you and act surprised, okay?”

  25

  All I have to do is dream

  MAC

  Sprawled on a sofa at Chester’s, my dreams are strange and uncomfortable things.

  It’s no surprise that I dream of the last subject about which I wrote.

  Cruce.

  Barrons is there, watching everything, absorbing the tiniest details, as I relive my many encounters with the Unseelie prince called War.

  The first time I met Cruce, he was masquerading as V’lane and trying to persuade me to help the Seelie queen (whom he’d already interred in a coffin of ice, in the Unseelie prison, to die, but I didn’t know that then). A prince of the Dark Court stood before me that day, camouflaged by three of the king’s amulets, lying through his teeth to me.

  In the museum when Cruce used the Sidhba-jai on me, making me strip again and again.

  The night he drove the Shades from Barrons Books & Baubles, and saved me from the gruesome death-by-Shade Fiona had arranged for me.

  In Faery, when he gifted me with an afternoon of playing volleyball with an illusion of my sister on powder sand. I’d lost a month of mortal time for that “gift.”