It took a Fae a small eternity to die alone, the largest portion of it spent stark, raving mad.

  Ixcythe shuddered, remembering. Each time the queen had enforced that punishment, it served to remind her couriers they were immortal by her sufferance. They could be disposed of, slowly and horrifically, if they crossed her. Or even just tortured for a few centuries. If commanded to choose between fates, Ixcythe, indeed, all Fae, would choose death by spear or sword over the terrible, lingering demise.

  “Perhaps,” Azar growled, “we can study and re-create it.”

  Ixcythe laughed, brittle and bright. “Have you forgotten who we are? We forswore studies an eternity ago.”

  “We abduct humans, force them to study and re-create it,” Severina offered eagerly.

  Ixcythe shook her head, rejecting the idiotic idea. “We would all be dead long before their technology reached levels sufficient to create such a potion. Humans are still in the dark ages, compared to the species that created the Elixir. It was the result of tens of thousands of years of scientific achievement, by a highly evolved society that then eschewed the rewards of the very science they’d prized.”

  “It is said,” Severina pressed, “the species from whom we stole it still lives on that world. We visit them again. Seize many flasks this time. Of the three of us, one is stronger. More determined to succeed. Ruthless. A natural born leader.”

  Ixcythe raised a brow and mocked scornfully, “You think so highly of yourself?”

  Severina replied, “Whether I care for you or not, Ixcythe—and we both know I don’t—I think that highly of you. If one of us is to drink the potion then make the taxing journey to that world to collect more of the Elixir, it is you who must do it, Ixcythe.”

  Flattery. There was a game here, of that Ixcythe was certain. The princess of Summer preyed upon Winter Fae every time they drank from the Cauldron and erased memory, during those perilous early years they floundered, unable to distinguish friend from foe.

  “I know my strengths and weaknesses,” Severina pressed. “I lack your determination and focus. Azar is powerful, but you are, by far, the most cunning among us. If anyone can restore immortality and save our species, it’s you, Ixcythe.”

  “You trust that I would bother myself to elevate the rest of you once I was immortal?”

  “None of us wish to spend eternity alone,” Severina reminded. “I seek immortality for all the Fae. I believe you do, too. You are our best chance to succeed, and I’ll do everything in my power to help you. Including relinquishing to you the last precious drop of the Elixir.”

  Ixcythe gathered her gown in both hands and strode across the ballroom. By the time she’d reached Severina, Azar was there as well.

  He met her gaze, eyes narrowed. Be wary, Ix, he said silently within her mind. Sev is not your friend.

  Inclining her head, Ixcythe plucked the flask from Severina’s hand. She turned it this way and that, studying it.

  They’d all seen the bejeweled flask that contained the Elixir on those rare occasions the queen (particularly Aoibheal, who’d had an unnatural fondness for humans, which had recently become all too clear) had dispensed it to one mortal or another.

  This was, indeed, that flask.

  Or a very clever replica.

  Cleverness wasn’t one of Severina’s strong suits.

  At the bottom of the flask, a thin bead of liquid rolled. Severina was right. There was only enough left for one of them.

  “You’ll do it?” Severina pressed. “You’ll drink it and find us more? You’ll save our species from extinction?”

  Ixcythe slipped the flask into her gown. “You were right about me, Severina,” she said.

  Severina nodded, eyes alight with hope. “I knew I was. Drink it now. Let us all share in the glory of your restored immortality!”

  “I am more cunning.”

  “You are,” Severina agreed. “Vastly more cunning than I. Drink it now so we can all savor watching you regain what we all will have soon.”

  “And I have a vastly more clever idea of what to do with the last remaining drop of the Elixir of Life,” Ixcythe purred with a cruel smile.

  Azar’s autumn eyes gleamed as he intuited her thoughts. “Of course you do, Ix. I concur.”

  Ixcythe favored him with a smile. Once, the pair of them had been more than lovers. They’d finished each other’s sentences, completed each other’s thoughts. “The queen possesses far more power than I. She has the ability to sift worlds. Once, she even possessed the ability to sift time. She can obtain a new flask of Elixir more quickly and certainly than I.”

  “Yet she lacks the proper motivation,” Azar murmured.

  Ixcythe nodded. “She is mortal, with human emotion, driven by passion to protect the wrong species. She doesn’t understand us. Can’t fathom why we wish to be the way we are.”

  Azar laughed softly. “We give her the last drop, scorching away emotion, destroying her soul.”

  “Make her like us. We become her people. Those she will fight to save.”

  “This is a terrible idea,” Severina hissed. “You can do it now, Ixcythe. Drink and be restored! Save us!”

  “You have great faith in me. I, too, know my strengths and weaknesses. I may not succeed. But a queen will.”

  Severina argued, “But if we use it on the queen, it will take too long for her emotion—”

  “Not so long,” Azar cut her off. “We’ll survive longer. Within a few decades, she’ll barely be human, and find the thought of living forever without company as unpalatable as we. Once we’re immortal again, we find a way to depose her and seize the rule.”

  “This is a dreadful idea,” Severina cried. “One of the stupidest I’ve ever heard. There are too many variables. Countless things could go awry. I should be the one to say what to do with it. I’m the one that found the potion.”

  Ixcythe cast her a withering glare. “I’m the one that has the potion.” She challenged with icy menace, “Or are you fool enough to try to take it from me?”

  Azar shifted position, moving to stand before Ixcythe, honoring her with his stance, crossing his arms, legs splayed wide, in the protective position of a royal guard. “Make that fool enough to try to take it from us both, Severina,” he growled.

  “You’re making a mistake. I warn you, it will turn out disastrously and only call down more suffering upon us. I will play no part in this foolish fiasco.”

  Eyes flashing with anger, Severina vanished.

  Smiling, Azar took Ixcythe’s hand. “We don’t need her. We never needed anyone else, Ix. The two of us will secure the future of the Fae then…” He trailed off, raking her with an appreciative, frankly carnal look.

  She snatched her hand away. “Don’t touch me again without my permission, and clear your mind of such unsavory frivolity. We have a far more difficult seduction to plan.”

  36

  Déjà vu, I’ve just been in this time before

  MAC

  “Where the hell is Dani?” Ryodan snarls the moment I open my eyes. He towers over me, hands fisted, glowering down, silver eyes narrowed and cold. “Why didn’t you bring her back with you? Is she hurt? Is she in danger? Answer me! Where the bloody fuck is she?”

  Barrons is on the floor beside me. “Give her a fucking minute,” he growls.

  Ryodan cuts him a savage look. “She had a minute. She’s been out for five. Her eyes are open, she can bloody well talk.”

  I stare up at Ryodan, marveling because I’ve never heard him ask so many questions in, like, ever, nor have I seen such unguarded emotion. His hands are fisted, three muscles jump in his jaw. I realize Dani has been gone for weeks and he has no idea why or where she is. There’s been no enemy to attack, no castle walls to storm. It must be eating him alive just as it would Barrons. I missed so many significant events while I was gone.

  Dani’s relationship with this aloof, brilliant man was consummated without my being the tiniest part of it. I’ve not heard a single detail from her, and I want a lot of them. I feel as if my daughter ran off and got married while away at college, leaving me shut out and trying desperately to reinsert myself into the picture.

  Ryodan loves Dani with the same unwavering commitment and ferocious loyalty that Barrons loves me. Good. Because I have no idea how to rescue her, and I hope to hell the man who eternally has a deck of aces up his sleeve holds a few killer cards to play now.

  Groaning, I shove myself to a sitting position but don’t try to get up yet. I’m shaky and weak. “How long was I out?” I ask as I reach up to feel my face. When I’d gotten slammed into the wormhole it felt like my brain sloshed brutally against the confines of my skull. I’d been certain bones were broken, but my face seems okay. Unfortunately my stomach isn’t faring as well, prolonged somersaulting turned it into a vat of aggrieved acid, and I can’t recall the last time I ate. I’ve been rushing from one crisis to the next since the moment I left the chamber. I don’t even know how many days I’ve been awake, or whether to count Fae-time or mortal. Or even how much sleep I need. Will I simply topple over and pass out at some point? I’m starved, exhausted, and bitchy-hangry.

  I feel like crying. It’s too much: the savage, emotional, dying Fae; our only way into the Unseelie prison shattered; the impossible choices I’m being forced to make; Cruce ruling a new Shadow Court that sidhe-seers can’t detect; my father dying in a place I can’t access; my mother unaware Dad is doomed and I’m the reason; Sean and Rae in the underworld with the villain, and now, oh, God—Dani!

  What I saw when I sifted to that deadly place demolished my heart.

  I wish she’d seen me, but she’d had her back to me the entire, all too brief time. Not that I was exactly visible (although a Hunter obviously had no problem detecting and whacking me back to Chester’s, I’m pretty sure, with its enormous tail), but we’re talking about Dani’s super senses and, perhaps, if she’d been looking, she’d have glimpsed my faint outline and known we’d located her and would get there, one way or another.

  As I’d battled to remain suspended in that suffocating place between places, one foot poking through the door into an environment in which no human, or even Fae, could survive, horror and fury had crashed over me in towering waves.

  I glance back at Barrons. Do you die in the vacuum of space?

  Dark eyes grim, he inclines his head. I once took a cursed Silver that dumped me in the midst of an asteroid field. I swelled to twice my size and froze to death.

  I close my eyes. I want to scream my fury to the heavens, demand whatever mad gods arrange events to correct them right now because this is the biggest load of crap ever.

  Dani is in a cage.

  Locked away behind bars. Again.

  Alone.

  There were two cages floating in space, miles apart.

  In the one nearest me, Dani stood tall, defiant, naked, back to me, weaponless, hands fisting with fury, staring across the vast starry blackness at the other cage where Shazam clung to the bars, shuddering, his great violet eyes gushing faucets of tears.

  I didn’t need empathic skills to feel their pain.

  I can never forget Dani nearly burning herself alive trying to save a stuffed substitution of Shazam. None of us will ever forget it. Their reunion was one of the happiest days of her life. Her delicate features had glowed with joy, supernova bright.

  Dani and Shazam love with the pure, unconditional love of mother and child.

  I know Dani. She’ll give her life to save Shazam.

  Which means we have to figure out a way to save them both, fast.

  “If Mac doesn’t start talking, I’m going to rip her bloody fucking head off,” Ryodan says, very softly.

  A thick, animalistic rattle, atavistic and chilling, rumbles in Barrons’s chest.

  “Figuratively,” Ryodan adds tightly. “Not literally.”

  “Wise man.” Barrons’s voice comes out hoarse and unnatural, as if around teeth too large for his mouth.

  “By the saints, you’re one of the beasts that fought beside us at the abbey!” Kat breathes, stunned, staring behind me at Barrons, and I don’t need to turn to know that his eyes are glittering bloodred, fangs are protruding, his face is darkening, and he’s sprouting the stumps of horns, betraying his beast. His half brother spoke words that threatened my life, though we both know Ryodan would never harm me. Deep in the belly of this club, Barrons, Christian, Ryodan, and I once swore a blood oath to be eternal allies, protect one another, unite to battle common foes, never turn against one another, and guard one another’s secrets as our own.

  Ryodan cuts Kat a lethal look. “Forget you said that. Or that you saw what you think you saw. Which you clearly didn’t see. Because if you did, I’d have to kill you.”

  “Right,” Kat says instantly, averting her gaze from Barrons. “Absolutely. Didn’t see a thing.”

  “The Hunters have Dani,” I tell them. “She and Shazam are caged, separately, a few miles apart.”

  “Where?” Ryodan demands. “On what world?”

  I shake my head. “Not on a world. They’re suspended, floating in space.”

  “Bloody fucking hell, who comes up with this shit?” Christian curses.

  “Alive, though,” Ryodan roars, as if daring me to deny it.

  “Alive,” I say hastily. “Sorry, I should have said that first.”

  “Unharmed,” he insists with irrefutable certainty.

  “Not so much as a scratch on either of them,” I assure him.

  He plunges both hands into his short, dark hair, eyes narrowed, lips drawn back, baring his teeth, looking nearly as animalistic as Barrons on a seriously bad day, and begins to prowl the conference room. “Then, why didn’t you sift into her cage and bring her back? Why is she not here?”

  “There was a force field of some kind around both cages,” I tell him wearily. “Keeping me out and likely keeping in the oxygen they’re breathing. I couldn’t penetrate it. I tried to sift to her, but it was impossible, so I had to recalibrate to sift near her. Then I had to kind of…hang between here and there because I couldn’t breathe, and if I’d stayed any longer, it would have killed me. I’m not sure I wasn’t dying when the Hunter swatted me out of there. I’d lost control of keeping one foot in both places. I stumbled. I didn’t see a Hunter, but I caught a whiff of brimstone and the cold increased dramatically when something enormous knocked me into a wormhole of sorts. I woke up here.”

  “But why would the Hunters cage Shazam and Dani?” Kat exclaims. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  Ryodan clips tightly, “Shazam broke the rules for Dani. I wondered if there’d be hell to pay. Looks like there is.”

  “How are we going to get them back?” Kat asks, her eyes glistening with the sheen of barely repressed tears.

  I realize she’s exhausted, too. Her daughter and soul mate were abducted by Cruce, and Kat loves Dani as deeply as I do. On top of that, she feels everyone else’s worry and pain, despite her stoic nature and immense mental barriers.

  I sense the disturbance of space and time at the same instant Christian stiffens and whirls toward it.

  A slot opens in the air, a piece of parchment flutters to the floor.

  I don’t even see Barrons move toward it. He’s simply there, holding it, scans it, and looks at me. “You need to eat. You need rest.”

  “Read it to me,” I growl. I felt the icy draft of air that chased the missive through. I know Ixcythe was on the delivering end, and apparently she’d been spying on me when Christian used the technique to communicate with us in Faery.

  “You haven’t stopped since you left the chamber,” Barrons growls back. “Your body was shaking even while you were unconscious. You’re weak.”

  “I. Am. Never. Weak. Read it,” I repeat grimly, pushing to my feet, concealing the wobble in my legs rather superbly, if I must say so myself.

  A muscle works in his jaw, then he shoves the piece of paper at me.

  We will return your father to you.

  Meet us in the grove where we met before.

  Come alone.

  Don’t keep us waiting.

  We won’t.

  I glance at Ryodan, feeling as if I’m being ripped in two.

  “Describe everything you saw. I need landmarks.”

  The information is why I fought to remain. I describe the precise colors and shape of the triple-columned nebula, down to the last detail of it, the gold-and-lavender planet, the layout of the stars.

  “Go,” he says then, flatly. “I’ve got this. I’ll work on getting Dani back. You contend with your father.”

  “Bring her home, Ryodan.” My words contain the urgent fervency of a prayer.

  His smile is cold and dangerous, and I realize if anyone can figure out a way to take on the Hunters and win, it’s this man.

  “Bet your fucking life on it, Mac.”

  * * *

  “You do know you’re not going alone,” Barrons says as we close the door behind us and begin walking down the hall.

  I glance up at him. “I had no intention of it. Ixcythe doesn’t make the rules.”

  “You’re eating before we go.”

  I summon a power bar from the stash I keep at the bookstore in case Dani drops by, rip it open, shove it in my mouth, and chew once before swallowing. It takes less energy to summon something that already exists than creating it from scratch.

  “And now you’re eating like Dani,” he says dryly.