This fact makes my stomach hot and sick, too.

  I suspect he took this new daughter of his off to live at his new Shadow Court, permitting her freedom, alongside his courtiers, no doubt eating and drinking and touching, and one day, she, too, will take lovers.

  At a court I didn’t even know existed.

  In a kingdom I’ve never seen.

  My new acquaintances don’t trust him and want him dead.

  I don’t trust him either.

  There isn’t a single book in the Library about an Unseelie prince named Cruce. I’ve searched high and low for stories about my father. The few times I inquired about their absence (and was always treated to a look of scathing rebuke!) he claimed his grand exploits remained unrecorded because he’s been forced to hide, that we have long shared a separate yet similar cruel isolation.

  Lie upon lie.

  In Fae and mortal realms alike, he who controls the press controls the world. I believe he took all the books that captured him in verse and volume to be certain I would never discover who and what he really is.

  A tyrannical, selfish bastard who orders me to do this or that, find this or that, don’t do this or that, and never, ever show your true form, not even to him, who has no intention of releasing me.

  In addition to containing no volumes about my father, the Library has not received any new editions in quite some time. I had no idea Aoibheal was gone and had passed her power to a mortal queen, no idea there were hybrid princes and the like. He kept me from knowing what was going on in the world. I wonder if he banned all the messengers that deliver new tomes. Perhaps he killed them. I wonder if books and artifacts have been piling up outside the door of the corporeal Library for a long time. I would never know.

  How did the Fae queen put it?

  Her worth to him lies only in how he can use her. No one is important to Cruce but himself.

  Seething, I push up from the floor, summon a mirror, and hang it on the inside of the bottle.

  I drop glamour and revert to my true form and, as I settle into it, I sigh with pleasure.

  Smiling, I turn this way and that.

  Then I stand still, locking gazes with my reflection, facing truths irrefutable and long overdue.

  34

  Cannibal class, killing the son

  CRUCE

  “Come, child,” Cruce said to Rae, patting the sofa beside him.

  “Where did you put my daddy?” the tiny girl demanded. With a wary expression, she remained where she was, arms crossed, jaw jutted, staring defiantly up at him, dark eyes snapping.

  Cruce said, “He’s not your father. It was I who came to you in dreams. Sean isn’t even full Fae.”

  “Neither am I,” the child said matter-of-factly.

  Cruce smiled. “Though your wings have not yet come in, you know what you are.”

  “The Spyrssidhe told me. I smell good to them.”

  “Did you tell your mother?”

  Rae shook her head. “No. She worries a lot. I thought I’d wait till I was older.”

  “She needn’t worry anymore. You’ll live with me.”

  “Why?”

  “You need someone to teach you about being Fae. She can’t do that.”

  “Why? She knows a lot about the Fae. That’s what the whole abbey is for.”

  “She can’t teach you the things I can, show you the wonders I will show you. Would you like to see our kingdom?”

  “This isn’t my kingdom. I live up there.” Rae pointed at the ceiling. “With my mommy and daddy.”

  Cruce growled, “I’m your father, and I’ll—”

  The child puffed out her lower lip, eyes darkening with anger. “No! I want my daddy back, and you are not. And if you hurt my daddy, I’ll hurt you.”

  Cruce was silent a moment, staring down at the truculent beast, wondering if all children were such grand pains in the ass, as the old king had said on more than one occasion. Was it possible, he wondered, that this child truly was Sean’s and not his?

  But he sensed his own essence within her, the same as Lyryka. He was certain she was his. And, unlike Lyryka, Rae would one day look as magnificent as any Unseelie royalty. She might be a half-blood, but she pulsed with the power of a pure Fae, as potent as any in his court. He was avid to learn what new talents she possessed.

  Perhaps, he mused, the blending of Fae with sidhe-seer—who’d been tinkered with by the king himself, and had precious drops of his blood coursing through their veins—yielded as pure an Unseelie as a coupling among their own kind.

  If so, there was an entire abbey to be plundered and a new Shadow Court to plunder it, thereby adding sidhe-seers gifts and knowledge to their arsenal. “Why do you think Sean is your father, not me?”

  “Because he loves me,” Rae said simply. “You don’t love anyone but yourself.”

  Cruce threw his head back and laughed. “Ah, child, you and I will have such grand times.” Then he murmured, “Masdann.”

  The prince appeared.

  “Put the little princess to sleep and keep her there until I’m ready to speak with her again.”

  “No!” Rae cried. “I don’t want to sleep! I want to go home! I want my mommy and daddy!”

  “As you wish, my king,” Masdann replied.

  After the child was subdued and lay slumbering upon the sofa in an enchanted dream, which Masdann would deftly shape, altering her beliefs about her origins, Cruce stared down at her, musing, for the large part quite pleased.

  “How long will it take to reprogram the child?”

  “You seek to alter powerful underlying beliefs. That requires repeated, traumatic sojourns in the Dreaming.”

  She was as lovely as any Unseelie, and Cruce imagined MacKayla would enjoy having her. If mating with a sidhe-seer created such offspring, mating with the soon-to-be ex-queen would create an entire stable of noble, blooded allies.

  “Convince the child MacKayla is her mother, and I her father.”

  Perched on the sofa beside Rae, Masdann inclined his head. “Would you care to join us in the Dreaming?”

  Cruce shook his head. He had another daughter to attend. A more difficult one.

  Lyryka.

  Many eons ago, when Cruce was a young prince and the king was otherwise occupied, before the Seelie queen knew the Unseelie existed, Cruce attempted to birth his own court within hers.

  He’d theorized that, unlike the Seelie, the Unseelie might sire children, since their immortality sprang from different sources. The Unseelie had never drunk the Elixir of Life. Why wouldn’t they be able to sire bairns? A handful of the Seelie were still fertile, though fewer children were born with each passing century.

  To test his theory and further his aim of infiltrating the Light Court, using spells and artifacts unearthed from the king’s library, Cruce abducted a Seelie prince, donned his glamour, and seduced the verdant princess of Summer.

  V’lane was not the first Light Court prince he impersonated, nor would he be the last.

  When the princess discovered she was carrying a child, she was eager to gain audience with the queen to share the thrilling news. After millennia of barrenness, a royal bairn was to be born!

  But Cruce persuaded the princess to conceal her pregnancy, urging that others at court might, out of jealousy and spite, attempt to harm their unborn child. He proposed they slip away, birth it in private, then present it at court, to everyone’s envy and dismay.

  He’d taken the princess to a faraway isle and remained at her side until their daughter arrived.

  The day of Lyryka’s birth was not one of his finest.

  He’d imagined their child might be dark-skinned—which was why he’d chosen the tawny princess of Summer, not pale Winter—perhaps have unusual eyes, possess abilities not seen before among the Seelie, but all the differences would be explained away by the Fae’s continuing evolution, their powers diversifying, increasing, their forms adapting to new and greater magic.

  The Seelie had no reason to think any other type of Fae existed but them. They wouldn’t discover the Shadow Court for another forty-two thousand years.

  Because the child would be unmistakably Fae, the queen would be delighted to have a new prince or princess and embrace whatever variations with which their offspring came. Cruce had come to understand the Light Court well in the time he’d spent there. Their minds were as void of imagination as their bodies of passion. When they encountered something they couldn’t explain, they readily accepted the first lie that reinforced their version of reality in which they reigned supreme in all ways.

  Translated: The Seelie believed they were too superior to be deceived. Exploiting that egotistical weakness, he’d fed them lie after lie, cementing a foundation for future lies.

  He’d toyed with the idea of impregnating many Seelie females, to increase variations, ensuring even the most questionable of his offspring would be accepted, and one day the Light Court would be so diluted with his seed, he would rule it through all four royal houses.

  But his union with a Light Court Fae proved a bitter disappointment.

  As if the universe itself reviled their union, it marked the child in a manner that ensured he would never attempt it again, one that betrayed his and his court’s existence.

  That very day, Cruce tested another of his theories. If a Seelie was entombed in the ice of the Unseelie prison, he suspected that Seelie would eventually die, their essence leached away by the antithetical nature of the Shadow Kingdom.

  It wasn’t as if he could let the princess live after what she’d seen.

  That test, at least, proved successful, and, in a world where Fae could be killed by only one of three weapons (no one knew about the third but he and the king), Cruce was pleased to discover a fourth weapon of which not even the king was aware. Over time, he’d used that weapon on his enemies again and again, most recently interring the ex Queen Aoibheal/Zara.

  The princess was still shrieking with horror at the sight of their babe, raging at Cruce’s betrayal, demanding answers, threatening to go to the queen, when he sealed her in a coffin, warded it shut, and buried her deep beneath the ice. She’d survived mere months; she had ceased fighting at the end.

  After entombing the mother, Cruce sat back and pondered the troublesome babe for a time before gouging a chasm deep in the ice in which to toss it.

  It was a kindness to kill it.

  Yet, as he continued to study it, aware of his own essence within it, he decided perhaps the experiment wasn’t a complete waste, and the child could be of use. He had need of a dedicated ally to work toward his goals.

  He would be her world. She would love and obey him. He was, after all, her father. The only being she would ever know. And, one day, far in the future, he would do her another kindness. When it was time. There were few kindnesses a child such as this could expect in her life.

  Although immortal, he had infinite plans for his future, and he loathed wasting any part of the present. He’d been spending long hours in the king’s library, searching obscure scrolls, absorbing their ancient history, tracking down spells, determined to match the king in knowledge and power.

  Before long, the child would be old enough to catalog the jumbled collection, absorb and distill information, regurgitate it swiftly, sparing him the drudgery, freeing him to turn his attention elsewhere. She would uncover artifacts of importance in the vast, shambolic library where things were piled haphazardly; nothing was where one thought it should be, and many things weren’t even what one thought they should be.

  She could organize the place. She would have eternity to do it, and nothing else to occupy her time.

  He would afford her a life, such as it was, and she would be grateful for it. And one day, far in the future, he would release her from her bottle for the last time. That day had come.

  It was time to bring Lyryka home.

  35

  Is she not right? Is she insane?

  IXCYTHE

  Ixcythe manifested in the too-bright castle of the Summer kingdom, wincing, narrowing her eyes against cruel, razor-sharp rays of sunlight.

  How she despised this place.

  It was sweltering, the sun a violence to her eyes. Her gown began to drip the moment she sifted in, further incensing her.

  She’d materialized in Summer’s ballroom, which was draped with garish swaths of colored silks that spilled from ornate columns and framed no less than seven large, brilliantly sparkling, three-tiered fountains, adding yet more light and humidity to the already overpowering, steaming clime.

  Her nostrils flaring with repugnance, she adjusted her core temperature, stabilizing her gown. A ballroom for holding dances and feasts and other manner of revelry. The absurdity of it. It was no wonder Summer had long failed to secure a seat on the High Council. No wonder her court was weak and simple. She was as much a wastrel as that human god of the Bacchae, Dionysus!

  She was pleased, however, to hear the unmistakable sounds of battle beyond the castle walls. Though Severina had barred her keep against her court, she’d not mastered the complex art of vanquishing sound.

  Leaning forward at the waist, hands behind her, summoning icy daggers behind her back, Ixcythe hissed, “How dare you summon me?”

  Severina regarded her impassively from the other end of the long ballroom. “Azar told me you betrayed emotion to the queen. The human imposter now knows we are becoming mortal.”

  “She would have figured it out anyway,” Ixcythe snarled. “It was but a matter of time.”

  Severina surprised her by allowing, “I agree. And we have more pressing problems to address.”

  Ixcythe stiffened, sensing Azar’s arrival a moment before he appeared. She felt as if all her nerve endings were exposed, hypersensitive to every facet of her existence. Life, with emotion, with memory, staring into a future that promised death was a constant barrage of fiery blades to the coolness of her skin.

  While holding the poisoned human in the fragment of Faery, into which no one could sift, she’d discovered the beast that consorted with the imposter queen had tampered with it, suspending it, preventing it from moving even one breath closer to death. Clever, useful beast. She could smell him on the human.

  He’d used magic with which she was unfamiliar, and she’d wasted hours trying to undo his spell, to no avail, all the while her desire to possess the canny beast growing. Whatever magic he’d used upon the human prevented her from even touching him. It was as if he’d erected an invisible rubbery barrier around his entire body, several inches above his skin. The poison wasn’t affecting him, and she could do no damage to him. She was encountering resistance and failure at every turn.

  “You summoned?” Azar demanded, looking at Ixcythe.

  “I did,” Severina corrected sharply. “Winter is not the only one with information to offer and plans to refine.”

  Azar’s gaze swiveled to the Summer princess. “Why have you brought us here?”

  Her mouth curved in a triumphant smile. “Because I succeeded where you failed. I have found the Elixir of Life.”

  Ixcythe’s eyes narrowed and she straightened, retracting the daggers of ice back into her hands. “How dare you drink it first?” she hissed. Did the simple princess of Summer think she could withhold it from them? Dare she provoke two royals to attack her at once?

  “I didn’t!” Severina denied heatedly. “I summoned the two of you the instant I returned here with it.”

  “Where did you find it?” Azar demanded skeptically.

  “At the queen’s castle, beneath a floorboard in her boudoir.”

  “I ripped out the entire floor of that castle,” Ixcythe thundered. “There was no flask hidden in it.”

  “It would appear, in your frenzy of emotion and carelessness, you missed it,” Severina snarled. “It was buried beneath a mound of rubble.”

  Azar studied her, embers of disbelief in his gaze. “Why didn’t you drink it?”

  “Where is it?” Ixcythe demanded icily.

  Severina withdrew a flask from the folds of her gown. “Our first queen could not have imagined a time such as this might come to pass when all the Tuatha De Danann would require it again.” Her sunny eyes darkened with the fury of storms as she held the flask aloft for them to see. “There is a single drop left. Enough for only one of us.”

  Ixcythe went motionless.

  Across the ballroom, Azar, too, went unnaturally still.

  Ixcythe knew why. Both were contemplating attacking Severina, seizing the flask and gulping down that last precious drop, unwilling to betray their intent by the slightest motion.

  The moment was perilous.

  Both, too, she knew, were reconsidering it for the same reason Severina hesitated to take it.

  It would be one thing if Ixcythe might drink it and live forever, ruling an immortal court.

  But all the Fae would die over the next few centuries.

  Leaving her no court to rule.

  No mirror, no reflection of her existence.

  Leaving her utterly and completely alone. As surely alone as if trapped within the dark heart of a mountain.

  Severina inclined her head, golden gaze dripping mockery. “Precisely why I didn’t take it, Ixcythe. We do not fare well, alone, do we?”

  An understatement at best. Prolonged solitude was a death sentence for a Fae. Unseen by others of their kind, they would fade, grow transparent and insubstantial and, with each passing eon, slip deeper into madness, until they collapsed into dust and vanished on the wind. Humans once penned a tale in which a Fae required clapping and belief to survive. It wasn’t far from the truth. Such solitary confinement had been meted out as punishment from time to time.