After learning there was no trace of Dani at Ixcythe’s castle and the Seelie claim they didn’t take her, Ryodan informed us we were only gone a day, and Barrons and I conclude the rumors Christian has been hearing about the Song resolving time disparities between realms are correct.

  While we were gone, Ryodan re-warded all of Chester’s in case the Fae somehow shattered his underlying spells, then focused his efforts on adding wards to a single room in the club he believes is impenetrable.

  Barrons, Ryodan, and I are sitting in that room now. Lor and those of the Nine not guarding my mother are out searching for Dani and Shazam.

  The urbane owner of Chester’s leans back in his chair, arms behind his head, muscles bunching beneath his crisp shirt. His silver eyes are flinty, cold. When I met with Kat at Draoidheacht, she gave me only a brief sketch of what happened with Dani while I was away, but I know Dani and Ryodan consummated a long overdue, volatile yet pretty much perfect relationship, against enormous odds, after thinking they might never get to be together. I know, too, they’ve snatched only brief times as humans since. Now Dani’s gone, stolen from his bed, and he will raze everything in his path until he gets her back. We all will. Dani is family. “The Seelie are becoming mortal again,” he murmurs. “Do we have any idea how long until they are?”

  I slice my head to the left, fisting and unfisting my hands convulsively.

  His eyes narrow. “Do you know where the Elixir of Life is, Mac?”

  I slice my head again. “No. I need to search my files. I don’t contain the queen’s memories. I hold endless notes in an endless filing system that’s impossible to navigate.” The last time I queried my inner store of knowledge about the tonic that made the Seelie immortal, I’d gotten tens of thousands of files, all tabulated under the name of whatever Fae signified most largely in that file. Big help there. The queen is a walking repository for…well, in my opinion, a flood of complete detritus, as if part of her duty as their leader was to carry the entire history of the Fae within her. Every last damned detail. If life ever gets back to normal, I’ll implement a new filing system and dump the obsolete.

  There’s no way to query: Where did the queen keep the Elixir of Life? I can only query the potion itself then begin sorting through each bloody file, hoping I get lucky.

  Ryodan says, “We’ll find Dani and your father and let the Seelie fucks die. No way we’re making them immortal again.”

  Amen to that. “Cruce is still alive. I want him dead, too.” All Fae must die. Queen’s edict.

  “You knew Cruce was alive?” Kat exclaims behind me. “How long have you known? Why didn’t you tell me? I might have been able to protect Rae!”

  I whirl in the direction of her voice. Christian, Kat, and the librarian just sifted in and are standing near the door.

  Ryodan surges to his feet, snarling. “Did you have any difficulty at all sifting in?”

  Christian shrugs. “I didn’t feel a thing. I figured you’d taken your wards down for some reason.”

  Crimson flames leap in Ryodan’s gaze. “That was some of my finest work. The wards on this room should have slammed you back to Draoidheacht and left you unconscious. It took more blood than I care to waste.”

  “Get her out of here,” I say to Christian, jerking my head at my doppelgänger. “Are you crazy? That’s Cruce’s daughter.” How dare he bring Lyryka into Chester’s again?

  “I’m aware of that,” Christian says coolly. “He abducted Rae and Sean from my lawn at Draoidheacht. Apparently my wards don’t work either. Nor does my perimeter alarm. Bastard has a way of bypassing or neutralizing everything.”

  I close my eyes. It just keeps getting worse.

  “It gets worse, Mac,” Kat voices my thought.

  “Christ, seriously?” My eyes pop open.

  “There was a prince with Cruce that I’ve never seen before, and I couldn’t sense him with my sidhe-seer senses. If he’d been glamoured, I wouldn’t have known he was Fae. Mac,” she continues urgently, “there’s an Unseelie out there sidhe-seers have no way of detecting. Do you know how much damage even one Unseelie prince like that could do to us?”

  Yes. If he was intelligent and determined, he could wipe out our entire order of sidhe-seers in time. My world is crumbling around my ears.

  Seelie have become emotional, mortal, and regained knowledge of wards and powers we don’t possess.

  New Unseelie have appeared that we can’t sense or keep out.

  More of my people have been taken, and we don’t know where any of them are.

  Scowling, I pinch the bridge of my nose, thinking. How is it possible that there’s an Unseelie that’s undetectable by sidhe-seers? The Unseelie king created us specifically for that purpose: to be able to sense all Fae, Light and Shadow Court.

  I close my eyes again, heart sinking.

  There’s only one explanation.

  The aberration wasn’t made by the Unseelie king.

  It was made by someone else, a new type of Unseelie we were never calibrated to sense.

  There’s only one being in existence with both the talent and ambition to create a new type of Unseelie: the prince called War who stood and watched while the first Unseelie Court was made, took notes and secreted away ingredients and ultimately betrayed his king by stealing his woman and trying, eventually, to steal the Seelie throne.

  “Mac, quit icing my bloody club,” Ryodan growls.

  “Brrr! Turn the temperature back up,” Kat complains.

  I open my eyes to find my fury has crusted the conference room, and everyone in it, with a thin layer of ice. Frosty stalactites are sprouting from the ceiling. Even the cobwebs in the corners glitter with frost. Absently, I will it all away and warm the room. “I know where the prince came from and why Cruce let us think he was dead. He cloistered himself in a chamber like mine where he used the king’s recipes to build a new court.” The moment I say the words aloud, I know it’s true. It’s too logical not to be. It’s why he never came to claim the True Magic. He didn’t want it. He was busy building a new Shadow Court, to seduce the Unseelie king’s power into choosing him.

  The king’s power is far greater than the Seelie queen’s, but it wasn’t until after I sang the Song, shortly before I sequestered, that it was up for grabs. Once the Unseelie king abdicated power and stepped down, he didn’t choose a successor. Five years later, the king still hasn’t decided. Which shouldn’t surprise me, because time means nothing to the ancient, half-mad entity.

  Now I’m furious with the Unseelie king, as well, for leaving us in this predicament, for letting his power continue to surf about, not choosing.

  “What in the world is that?” Kat exclaims, staring up.

  I tilt back my head and see a dense black fog seeping into the room from above ornate crown moldings. It slithers in through cracks, paper-thin, and assembles itself into a sooty cloud, roughly five feet tall and fifteen feet wide. I probe gently at it with both my sidhe-seer senses and the queen’s. Pulsing with gargantuan power, it holds a sentience that unnerves me. Vast, dispassionate. Familiar. I’ve rolled in that great being’s wings too many times not to recognize the essence of it and, as he’s so fond of saying, can’t eviscerate essential self. Or conceal it.

  The kingly power just drifted in, and hangs above our heads. Did my mere thoughts summon it? Can I talk to it? Curse and rail at it? Reason with it?

  “It must have followed me here,” Christian growls, staring up at the ceiling. “Sorry, Ryodan. I have no bloody idea where it came from. But I believed it trapped.”

  Ryodan’s eyes narrow to slits. “Followed you. Trapped where?”

  “It’s been hanging around Draoidheacht. I’ve seen it three times now. I suspect it escaped from one of the Unseelie king’s artifacts. But I thought it was bound to the castle, to that artifact from which it escaped.”

  Ryodan laughs softly.”You don’t know what it is.”

  “I’ll sort it out, and find a way to ward it within my keep.”

  “Good luck with that,” Barrons says dryly. “It’s the Unseelie king’s power. It’s been spending time at the bookstore, as well.”

  “That’s the king’s power?” Christian blinks up at it then looks back at Barrons. “I can understand it hanging around you, but why the bloody hell would it watch me?”

  “Apparently, it thinks more highly of you than you do,” Ryodan says, amused.

  “I barely know how to use my power. I just learned to control it.”

  I say, “Good. Cruce has competition. The king hasn’t chosen yet, and he’s considering two other contenders, Barrons and you, Christian.” Personally, I don’t see anyone but Barrons getting it. Assuming he wants it. The mural on the ceiling of the bookstore was painted long ago showing me as the Fae queen and Barrons as the Unseelie king. I’d give my eyeteeth to know who painted it and why.

  Kat says, “Perhaps it’s undecided because Cruce only managed to create a single—”

  “No,” I cut her off. “I know him. If he has a prince, he’s got an entire Shadow Court. He’d never create royalty first. He’d build from the bottom, perfecting, just like the king before him.” And he’d make sure it was bigger, better, and more badass.

  “Then you sing the Song and destroy them again,” Kat says firmly. “I get my daughter and Sean back. Christian or Barrons gets the Unseelie king’s power. End of problems.”

  “I may never figure out how to use the Song, and who’s to say Cruce didn’t perfect his court this time? Perhaps the Song wouldn’t destroy them.” To Barrons, I say, “Am I right in thinking there are more chambers like the one I sequestered in?”

  Lyryka clears her throat. “There are seven chambers beyond time. The king created multiple rooms for his concubine, each better than the last until, finally, he constructed the White Mansion, where she could live forever, without aging.”

  “You do know she’ll be reporting everything she heard to Cruce if she gets the chance,” I say to Christian. “She must not have that chance. Bottle her. Now.”

  “It’s equally possible I won’t tell him a thing,” Lyryka says tightly.

  “I won’t let her out of my sight. If I’m otherwise occupied, I’ll cork her flask. Satisfied?”

  Far from it, but the look in Christian’s eyes tells me I’m in for a fight if I push, and I don’t want to fight with my friends. “Where are these chambers?” I ask Lyryka.

  “Five are in the Unseelie prison, three of those five are inside the king’s castle. The other two are in the White Mansion.”

  “The ones in the king’s castle would be perfect for Cruce’s needs,” I muse. “The king’s laboratory is beneath it.”

  “I stacked Silvers long ago to the one you sequestered in, which was in the White Mansion,” Barrons says. “You spliced it off and moved it to the bookstore. It’s no longer inside the prison.”

  Lyryka says testily, “I was unaware one of them had been moved. I need to notate the correct tome. Precisely which one did you move, and precisely where did you put it?”

  Nobody answers her.

  “Would Cruce have been safe from the Song of Making if he was in one of those chambers?” I ask Barrons.

  “Assuming the Song destroyed all Unseelie, and assuming I am Unseelie since I’m Cruce’s daughter, it’s logical to conclude being sealed away, even in a spelled bottle, prevents death by Song,” Lyryka says. “You can ignore me if you wish, or you could make use of me. I have an enormous amount of information at my disposal.”

  “So do I,” I mutter. And that’s part of the problem. Internal inundation of minutiae.

  “Those are the odds I would have played,” Barrons says. “He also demanded the bracelet from you when you formalized the Compact. Perhaps the two, together, afforded protection.”

  I conclude grimly, “That’s where Cruce is. In the prison, with his new court.” I glance at Lyryka, wondering if she’ll confirm.

  She throws her hands in the air and snaps, “How would I know? I’ve never been out of the Library and, until recently, I wasn’t even sure I believed there was anything in existence besides the Library. My father tells me nothing, unless he’s giving me an order.”

  I don’t need her confirmation. I know him. It’s just like when he pretended to be a Seelie for hundreds of thousands of years, hiding in plain sight. Patience is his middle name. Manipulative, devious fuck is his first. “Whatever he’s up to, he’s going to take action soon or he wouldn’t have let Kat know he was still alive.” I narrow my eyes at Lyryka. “Or, his daughter told him she’d slipped and told us, so he knew his time was up. Or, he had her supposedly ‘slip.’ ”

  Lyryka protests, “I didn’t tell him, nor did I—”

  “Oh, give it up, we don’t believe you.” To Barrons, I say, “We can access the prison through the White Mansion.”

  “Unacceptable,” Barrons says flatly. “You’re the only one who can pass through the king’s mirror in the boudoir, and we don’t know if you’d survive it now, without the Sinsar Dubh inside you. The Silver may no longer recognize you as containing essence of king. And you’re not going alone anywhere, Ms. Lane. Not in your current frame of mind.”

  “Get a fucking grip on your priorities, Mac,” Ryodan growls. “You can’t postpone finding Dani just to march off to the Unseelie prison and kill Cruce because you’re angry.”

  “It wouldn’t be just because she was angry,” Kat says sharply. “Cruce took Rae and Sean! Who are you to decide in what order we recover the people we love?”

  Ryodan’s eyes glitter with crimson ice. “The one who loves Dani, and she’s goddamn first.”

  “My father is,” I correct.

  “Then who?” Kat demands. “Dani then Rae then Sean? Mac, she’s a child.”

  I ignore them and demand of Barrons, “How did you gain access to the prison?” I don’t know how to find Dani or the Elixir at the moment, which means I can’t find my dad, but I do know where Cruce is. My options are to go sit somewhere in a corner and search my files or go kick Unseelie ass, and at the moment kicking Unseelie ass, or any offensive ass, is highly appealing.

  “One of the Silvers tucked into the wall behind the bookstore leads there.” He adds pointedly, “Only if I employ a specific spell on the surface. Otherwise it leads elsewhere.”

  Clever, clever man. He plans for everything. As I should have. And he just made it clear I can’t dash off to confront Cruce by myself because I need him to employ the necessary spell to grant me access. I glance back at Lyryka. Or rather, at myself. I can’t bear the sight of a Fae and certainly not one that looks like me. “Bottle her,” I order again. “I’m ordering you as queen to keep her sealed away.”

  “I believe she can help us, Mac,” Christian tries again. “She’s intimately acquainted with every book and artifact in the Unseelie king’s library.”

  “I gave you an order.” He could say I’m not his queen. That technically he’s Unseelie. But after holding my gaze a long moment, he chooses not to go down that path.

  “I want to help,” Lyryka says with desperation in her voice. “Please don’t lock me away again. Please give me a chance.”

  My laughter is brittle and sharp as knives. “I’m sure you want to help. So you can steer us in the wrong direction while your father implements his plans to take over our world with his new court.” To Christian, I say, “Pull your head out. She’s Cruce’s spy. His weapon. Carefully shaped and calibrated by him to do his bidding. Nothing more. Her worth to him lies only in how he can use her. No one is important to Cruce but himself.”

  Lyryka flinches and says bitterly, “Perhaps after a small eternity, I’ve begun to figure that out myself.”

  “Stop looking like me!” I snarl at her. “Change your glamour to look like someone else!”

  She stares at me a long moment then says quietly, “The only other person I can look like is your friend, Dani. I understand she’s missing, and I’m not certain that would be more comfortable for you.”

  Right, she’s using quiet and reasonable tones, and I sound like a hot mess. I feel like a hot mess, and my head’s going to explode if I don’t get some breathing room without so many people and problems in it. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, she won’t even show us her true form because her allegiance is to Cruce, and you want to let her help us? You’re all batshit crazy!” I surge to my feet, whirl, and stalk out the door, slamming it behind me.

  * * *

  “I took Rae to see Sean for the first time today.”

  I flinch. I don’t want company, so I say nothing. Keeping my back to Kat, I continue staring over the balustrade, at the many sub-clubs of Chester’s, seeing nothing but my mother’s face superimposed on a dance floor as I tell her Jack Lane is dying.

  “In retrospect, I realize how foolish that was of me. I think it was bringing them together that made Cruce come.”

  Still, I say nothing. If she thinks her mistake of taking Rae to Sean is as terrible as what I’ve done, she’s mistaken. The world is in chaos, four of the people we love are missing, and I’ve killed my father.

  “I knew all along Rae might be Cruce’s child. It didn’t matter. I love her more than life. She’s my daughter, regardless of who her father is.” She pauses a minute then says, “I imagine there’s another mother somewhere that might say the same about Lyryka.”

  “You did not come here to argue for the librarian.” If Christian doesn’t bottle her, she’s going to taste the cold iron of my spear.