But my life works a bit differently.

  You must be careful with each and every one of your wishes, with where and how you direct your will. I hold great power; therefore my responsibility is greater, too.

  My wish, all my wishes, were granted in that single second.

  The king’s darkness rushed into me and, as it crammed my tiny being with more than I could hold, the power exploded right back out and, because the thoughts were in my brain and the desires in my heart, I destroyed the Unseelie and the old gods.

  I scoured the planet of all but human life. Made the world safe from the Fae.

  I remember the look on Barrons’s face when I stumbled, horrified, down the stairs, great black wings trailing the risers, and he must have felt what happened, because he was rushing up the stairs to find me.

  We met at the landing.

  I sifted out instantly, leaving him roaring at empty space, and came here, to the graveyard, where I don’t dare remain long, because he’ll find me. He’ll go to all the places he knows I’ll go. He’ll stalk me incessantly until he finds me. He’ll try to “talk me down.” But there is no coming down, or back, from this. I will never forgive myself for the things I’ve done, and, when you can’t forgive yourself, you can neither love nor be loved. You keep making the same mistakes, over and over. Like the king.

  “Goodbye, Daddy,” I whisper, wiping tears from my cheeks. “I love you. To the moon and back.”

  Then I tip my head and stare up at the sky, eying my new home.

  Out there, among the stars. Avoiding the hell out of Dani because I can’t face her either.

  I wonder if this was why the king did it: created, constantly created. An act of atonement, not just for his concubine but for his very existence.

  Because once—just like me—he destroyed the precious things entrusted to his care.

  48

  And she ran to him and they started to fly

  CHRISTIAN

  We split up at the Unseelie prison, Barrons, Ryodan, and I.

  I recall the blood oath we swore beneath Chester’s, when they revealed to me what they are, and what they’d done to my uncle Dageus. I now carry one more secret to guard.

  Deep beneath the garage behind Barrons’s Books & Baubles, Barrons has a powerfully warded room of Silvers that contains more than a hundred mirrors of all shapes, colors, and sizes, and one of them took us straight to the Unseelie prison. I couldn’t discern where most of the others went; he rushed me past them at slightly less than the speed of light. But I saw one that featured continuously changing scenes, a few of which I recognized from history books.

  He’d shoved me into a mirror, and we made our exit from within a towering wall of blue-black ice.

  I know this place. I despise this place. How dare Cruce bring Lyryka here? The prison is her antithesis.

  But I know he did. Cruce never makes idle threats. Threats from him are something he’s already decided, and he’s merely biding his time for the right moment, which usually means whichever moment causes the greatest harm to others while amusing him the most.

  She was frightened of him, I could tell. I also know, if he brought her here, it’s because he’s done with her. What kind of monster could keep Lyryka in a bottle for three quarters of a million years? And if he hadn’t been completely done with her before she told me I was Death and turned me into a weapon capable of killing him, he certainly is now.

  Long ago, I would have iced the moment we arrived in the Unseelie hell, but I don’t, and although Barrons and Ryodan do, they shake it off, cracking the ice by jogging in place.

  Motion is key to surviving in the worst of Fae realms: keep moving, always moving. And if you think the next place might be better, think again. Hall of All Days, case in point.

  Then Barrons and Ryodan incline their heads, turn, and take off, racing away, side by side.

  “Hey, wait,” I shout after them.

  “What?” Barrons turns, growling, still jogging in place.

  “Aren’t we sticking together?”

  “We have different goals, which must be accomplished in different places. Time is of the essence, Highlander,” Ryodan grits over his shoulder.

  I blink. They just explained something to me instead of stalking off wearing identical scowls. I know what that means.

  Barrons cuts me a dry look. “It means we believe you can take care of yourself.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I say with a faint smile, taking a page from Lyryka’s book. “That wasn’t an expression of faith, it was bloody well an explanation, and that fucking means you like me.” Boo-yah. The Nine are my tribe now. And I’m keeping them.

  With an amused laugh, I turn and strike off for the ridge where once before, what feels like another lifetime ago, Cruce buried the Seelie queen.

  * * *

  Lyryka isn’t there.

  I squat by the ex-queen’s sepulchre, glowering, trying to decide how the hell I’m supposed to find Lyryka in the vastness of the Unseelie prison that stretches impossibly wide and long and once housed a million Unseelie or more. She never had a problem finding me. She said she imprinted on me in some fashion.

  I rock back on my heels, knowing it’s impossible to sift in this place, so it’s not as if I can take a page from Mac’s book and sift directly to a person—which I’ve never managed without a token—och, wait!

  I reach into the pocket of my jeans and extract Lyryka’s note, where she scripted my name, with great care, adding her charming heart over the “i.”

  Closing my eyes, I focus on the myriad aspects of Lyryka. Infuriating, funny, eclectic as hell, horny as hell (thank you very much—I wonder for the thousandth time what she looks like), a walking repository for countless Fae secrets, brilliant and widely read but innocent and trusting and seemingly so young, despite her advanced age.

  I snort with laughter. Irritable. So bloody testy, but all it does is get my blood pumping hot and stalky. I adore when her nose crinkles and I know she’s about to snap at me. No filter. What she thinks explodes out, both from her mouth and emblazoned on—

  Got her.

  I open my eyes. I’ll be damned. I think she’s calling for me. Drowsy and fighting sleep, but she keeps slipping back into it.

  Direction doesn’t compute here. No north, south, east, or west. I know only she’s “that way” as I turn toward her.

  I know also that I’ll find her atop a high ridge, some hundred miles from where I stand, in a graveyard, concealed behind illusion.

  Shoving her note back in my pocket, scythe tucked close to my side, spreading my wings, I explode into flight.

  * * *

  It takes what feels like an hour to figure out which part of the landscape is Cruce’s illusion. I hack into icy cliff after cliff with my scythe before finding the sweet spot and, when I do, the runes on my scythe spit a shower of sparks, causing me to study it thoughtfully, suspecting the weapon might do more than merely kill the Fae.

  Time drags because I feel her slipping away, over and again. Not dying, not even close, her light is too strong to be dimmed so quickly, even in this place, but Cruce must have drugged her, because she keeps getting faint, then I’ll feel a violent struggle, before she gets faint again.

  Then I’m through his illusion and I gape, stunned and furious, thinking, How the fuck many Fae has Cruce killed? I thought he’d attempted the murders only of Aoibheal and now Lyryka, but apparently he succeeded at murder, hundreds of times.

  I soar over the graveyard, dialing into Lyryka’s essence, and abruptly, her sepulchre is below me, and I’m landing lightly atop the raised platform of ice, scrubbing away snow to peer through the blue-black frozen lid of her coffin.

  She’s slumbering deeply now and—holy hell.

  She no longer looks like Mac or Dani.

  This, ah, yes, this is Lyryka. But of course it would be.

  Christ, she’s beautiful.

  But duality always has been my poison.

  It takes the blood of Death to break Cruce’s wards and, the moment I do, they explode into the air and vanish, and I know instinctively they shot straight to Cruce, to alert him his wards were broken.

  I smile, cold as Death.

  Because. I. Am.

  Let Cruce come.

  Bloody hell, let the bastard come!

  I scoop Lyryka from the ice, cradling her gently in my arms, and lift off again, heading back to the Silver to return her to the world in which she belongs.

  Our world.

  49

  Copycat trying to cop my manner

  Watch your back when you can’t watch mine

  MAC

  I wake from a drugged sleep, surfacing slowly, miserably, from a dark, bottomless loch of nightmares.

  In each of them, I was Cruce’s consort. In each of them, I hated who I was. I’d raged silently inside, seething with denial and fury, while my mouth shaped words I would never think, never say to him. Not in a million years.

  It felt as if someone was controlling my dreams, trying to subtly reprogram me, convince me that I’d never loved Barrons, that it had always been Cruce and only Cruce for me.

  I wrestle a tangle of quilt from my head that I somehow managed to nearly tie around my skull, I suppose while thrashing violently against the appalling events happening in my dreams.

  “Ah, there you are,” Cruce purrs. “I’d begun to think I might have to join you in that mound, help you extricate yourself.” His eyes narrow, fixed on my face, then drop lower, darkening and narrowing with lust.

  I know how I wake up. My mouth gets swollen when I sleep. Mom always called it the “collagen kiss of youth.” My hair is tangled and sticking up, but men seem to like bedhead and—oh, bloody hell, that’s what he’s staring at.

  I get hot when I sleep and strip without waking. My boobs are on full display.

  I instantly summon the glamour of clothing.

  It doesn’t work.

  Of course it doesn’t.

  Cruce has neutralized my powers.

  Yanking the quilt up over my breasts with a snarl, I pat frantically around beneath the covers for my shirt.

  Cruce holds it up, smiling, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Then he tosses it over his shoulder to the floor. His gaze is hard, lust-filled, and hungry, and I wonder if his smile ever reached his eyes. Was he always glamouring them? Or did they change slowly during the centuries he spent cloistered here, working to expand his kingdom and power?

  “Yield, MacKayla. You can’t win. Not against me. I had you beneath me once, and you experienced nothing but pleasure. How were your dreams last night? You’ll be getting a repeat tonight. And every night. Until you comply. Masdann tells me it’s traumatic to the dreamer, reprogramming their reality. I may join him tonight in your dreams. Watch you struggle. Inevitably, you’ll fall. He’s reprogrammed others before. Give in, MacKayla. Accept defeat and make the best of things. Don’t be plebeian. It’s beneath you. Beneath creatures like us.”

  I stare at him, horrified, blanket clutched to my chest. “You created a prince that can walk in the Dreaming, didn’t you? He’s been messing with my dreams!”

  What a fearsome power to hold! Was Cruce so great a fool? Like the king before him who fashioned amulets capable of weaving illusions even he couldn’t penetrate, had Cruce created a weapon that might one day be his downfall? Did they never learn? How easily such a prince might slip into Cruce’s dreams, convince him over time, he—the prince of Dream—was king, not Cruce at all. What a danger such a prince would be! Talk about holding a tiger by the tail.

  Oblivious to his own idiocy, Cruce inclines his head, starry eyes glittering. “Yes. And he is mine to command. Masdann,” he murmurs.

  The next events are so bizarre and unexpected they seem to unfold in slow motion.

  The door to the chamber opens.

  Jericho Barrons walks in.

  Cruce turns to smile at him.

  I blink. Cruce smiles at Barrons. As if he’s happy to see him. He doesn’t instantly sift to establish safe distance between them. He merely smiles, sitting at ease, no more than ten feet away.

  “You summoned, my liege,” Barrons murmurs.

  “I did, Masdann.”

  My eyes widen further, and my heart sinks like a stone, and I growl, “You. Did. Not. Make a prince of dreams that looks exactly like Jericho Barrons.” And dresses like him, wearing an elegant Italian suit, crisp white shirt, and a crimson tie.

  Cruce smiles. “Ah, but my lovely MacKayla, I did. And one day you will gaze upon his face and believe him your greatest enemy. And when such a day comes, you will never see him again. Masdann has been walking in your world, masquerading as Barrons. He fooled even Ryodan. He fooled even you. Twice on the sofa at Chester’s, he visited you. Twice, he touched you, conversed with you. And You. Never. Knew.”

  If my eyes go any wider they’ll surely pop from my skull. “That was Masdann? He’s the one that told me to go for a walk and I ended up in your web?” I exclaim, stupefied. I refuse to believe it. I can’t. That was Barrons. I know Barrons. No one could imitate Jericho Barrons well enough to fool me.

  Cruce inclines his head. “Also Masdann who read your notes while you slumbered and reported the contents back to me. Masdann who guided your dreams that day, helping you recall each time we were together, encouraging you to warm to me.”

  I remember those dreams. I thought Barrons was watching me in them. But it was the prince that looked like Barrons who’d made me revisit my encounters with Cruce. It was Masdann, not Barrons, who’d lingered long on the kiss we’d shared to seal the Compact.

  It was Masdann who’d touched my shoulders, reminded me that my heart was my greatest power. And it was Masdann, the second time he’d come to my sofa yesterday, telling me he’d returned only to get tattoo implements to bind the Hunter they’d found, and I should get outside, go for a walk.

  I’m so horrified I can’t speak.

  Cruce created an Unseelie prince that looks exactly like Barrons, that possesses the ability to make me dream anything he wants, with the goal of reprogramming everything that I believe is true about myself and my world. And it might work.

  “Even if it takes a hundred years,” Cruce says softly, eyes glittering with triumph. “But I warn you, don’t take too long. I grow impatient to have you willingly at my side.”

  Shuddering, I look from the prince that wears Barrons’s face and body so convincingly well, to Cruce and back again. I might have had sex with Masdann and never known. He’s a flawless copy.

  “The Damhan-allaidh were of considerable assistance,” Cruce tells me.

  Here it comes, more bragging about how clever he is, but I’m more than willing to listen because my future is bleak; I’ll gamely indulge him as long as he wants to talk. It’s more time wasted that he’s not messing with my head, literally, in dreams.

  “They’re ward-breakers, but you never figured that out.”

  So that’s why every damned Fae in the book could sift into Chester’s and Christian’s castle.

  “The moment Barrons, Ryodan, or Christian placed a new ward, the Damhan-allaidh neutralized it. Most were simple to break. Wards are easily shattered when one possesses a powerful enough ingredient, which I used as the foundation of their caste.”

  “Are they sentient? Or are they like the Shades?” I ask, desperate both to keep him talking and to learn all I can about the castes I will one day escape. My gaze drifts to Barrons again and again. I can’t help it. He’s Jericho, but not. He’s a complete stranger. He returns it impassively, saying nothing, a manservant, awaiting Cruce’s next command, whatever it may be.

  This is the being that’s going to erase the love of my life from my mind and heart. Turning Barrons’s face into that of my enemy. I’m powerless, naked, and have no cellphone. I’m trapped in a chamber with Cruce and an Unseelie prince from which there appears to be no escape.

  “Highly sentient and quite lovely, don’t you think? You should see the forms they can adopt. They’re exquisite, inventive designers.”

  “If I cooperate, will you save my father?” It’s the only thing I can think of to say at the moment. The appearance of the Barrons-prince, the fact that he fooled even me has totally fucked with my head. I actually talked with Masdann and thought the prince was Barrons. He touched me, and I didn’t know it was an imposter. The complexity and cleverness of Cruce’s plans are stupefying.

  He clucks reprovingly. “Forget about such things as your old family. You have a new one, and soon the earth won’t exist anymore, MacKayla. I have no use for it. I no longer need the power at the core. I have other sources and other plans. I’ve come to despise this world. It’s time for it to end. Let it go. It doesn’t matter.”

  My face must betray my abhorrence, because he adds, with a sigh, “If it makes you happy, I will grant Jack Lane a swifter, less painful death.” To Masdann, he says, “Where is Barrons now?”

  “Securing a Hunter. He and Ryodan intend to use it to search for Dani.”

  “I didn’t think the Hunters were still around,” Cruce says.

  “Recently returned, drawn by momentous events unfolding. They cooperate with Barrons without even the force of binding spells,” Masdann replies, cutting a look my way. “They seem to like him.”

  Wait, what? A tangle of thoughts explodes in my mind all at once.