No longer do their heads swivel in an eerie, inhuman fashion; they have adopted human mannerisms and movements right down to the smallest nuance. The black wings I felt closing around my naked body as I died a thousand deaths beneath them are gone, concealed by glamour.

“I thought they were at war with each other,” I say.

Kat says, “I thought they were insane, terrifying and revolting. We were both wrong. They recently joined forces. I hear the Crimson Hag has them worried.”

“Christian,” I murmur, and try hard not to think of what he must be enduring.

“He saved us, you know. Possibly the world. Dani was hesitating, trying to decide between her sidhe-seer sisters and the Hoar Frost King. It would have destroyed her to carry the deaths of our entire abbey on her conscience. His sacrifice spared her that horror. We owe him a tremendous debt.”

“Any word on Christian’s whereabouts?”

“His uncles are searching. All of us at the abbey are eager to help mount a rescue, if they find him.”

Although it horrified me that he’d given himself up to the Hag, it also relieved me because it meant the man I knew was still in there, despite the madness. Deep down, he still cared about the world around him. I made a mental note to ask Barrons to aid in the search. He could lean on Ryodan to enlist some of the Nine to go scouting. We couldn’t just leave Christian out there, being tortured and killed over and over. We owed him rescue for the sacrifice he’d made. What he was suffering in the Hag’s sadistic hands would only drive him deeper into Unseelie madness. We needed to save him before he lost all trace of his fundamental humanity.

The princes ascend the stairs, identical but for a few inches’ height difference. I realize I’m looking directly at them without weeping blood. I glance at Kat to see if it’s just me or if she, too, can regard them directly. She can. And is — with fascination.

“They’ve fed enough to gain control of themselves,” I say softly. When they first arrived in Dublin they were like rabid animals from long confinement and starvation, and flat-out terrifying. “They’re studying us, learning from us.” I get it: pacify the sheep before the slaughter. A panicked kill makes for a soured stew. These two, the worst of the Unseelie, are now the ultimate bad boys. Women will flock to them, lemmings on a suicide march over a cliff.

These are my rapists, the ones that turned me inside out, ripped my mind from my body and shredded it. They are also, unfortunately, hot as hell.

I want them dead.

Yes, yes, yes, KILL, the Book surges to life again.

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December; and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

The rhythm takes over. I roll the many internal rhymes and dazzling alliteration over my tongue silently while I assess the princes, building the syllables, brick by brick, into a mental wall.

My rapists are dressed like Barrons. Sleek. Masculine. Sexy. It pisses me off.

“Son of a bitch,” Kat says softly. Kat doesn’t curse. “Do you know how my girls will react to them? Cruce is bad enough.”

“Son of a bitch,” I agree.

Behind the balustrade, four long cherry tables make a square.

The Unseelie Princes take one side.

Barrons, Kat, and I take the opposite.

It’s all I can do to not lunge across the space separating us and attack them. Two things stay my hand: Barrons wants them alive, and I’m afraid I’ll black out again. Kat is vulnerably human.

After a few moments, Ryodan drops into a chair beside us, sandwiching Kat and me between a gentle hum of power. He pushes a hand through thick, dark hair, cut close at the sides, and assesses me with that clear, analytical gaze of his. I meet it impassively. His chiseled features are untouched by lines, and I’d guess him frozen in time, however he stopped aging, at about thirty, plus however many thousands of years he’s actually lived.

Like all of Barrons’s men, he’s powerfully muscled and sports multiple scars, the most prominent running from his jaw down his neck and over his chest. He appreciates the finer things in life and pursues them without scruple. I want to know the history these men will never tell me. Although an animal exists beneath each of their skins, Ryodan hides his the best. He’s the businessman of the Nine of whatever-they-are, managing financial concerns, maintaining their vast empire.

Barrons is the taciturn, primal leader of their small immortal army, the one to whom they all answer. He usually lets Ryodan do his talking. Probably because Barrons knows he would lose patience the moment one of his orders isn’t instantly obeyed and butcher everyone in sight. Ryodan excels at chess, crushes his opposition in five or fewer moves. Barrons eats the board, with blood for ketchup.

“Got a lot of Unseelie outside the bookstore, Mac,” Ryodan says.

“Got a lot inside Chester’s,” I rejoin coolly.

“He understands our needs,” one of the Unseelie Princes says.

“They don’t trail me everywhere I go,” Ryodan says.

“Then again you understand them, too, from personal experience,” the prince reminds me silkily.

I ignore it. “Guess you don’t smell as sweet,” I tell Ryodan.

“Or as rotten,” he returns.

“I’ve been testing wards on them.” Barrons puts the issue to swift rest.

Ryodan laughs but lets it go.

The six of us sit eyeing one another in silence. There is no air in the room, only hostility and rage. I breathe shallowly of it and slide my hand to the comforting hilt of my spear. And snatch it away, assaulted by horrific images again.

“You will remove the ward that prohibits our sifting, or you will take away her spear.” The taller of the princes speaks to Barrons, but his gaze is moving, hot, sexual, devouring, over my body.

Barrons goes so motionless next to me that for a moment I’m not sure he didn’t just vanish in that stealthy way of his. I inhale shallowly, wondering if this meeting is going to end before it even begins.

Then Barrons says softly, carefully, “Ms. Lane.” I feel the tension in his body, mirroring the same tightly coiled rage in mine.

“I’m not giving you my spear,” I say just as softly. “It can deal with it.” Time was, they could weave the illusion that they’d taken it from me, but I got wise to their trick and it doesn’t work on me anymore.

“I am not an ‘it.’ I am Prince Rath of the second royal Unseelie House created,” the tall Unseelie says coldly. “My brother is Kiall, from the third. Once, you whimpered our names. As you begged us for more. Without the spear you are nothing. Human. Weak.”

Neither Barrons nor I speak for a moment. Then he says, tonelessly, “I’m not removing the wards.”

“Fine, they can leave,” I say just as tonelessly. I am nothing, my ass. They don’t know about my inner psycho.

Barrons shoots me a look. I feel it on my ear, needling me to turn my head.

“Look at me,” he commands.

I scowl but look.

You said you trusted me to protect you. If I drop the ward, others can sift in. Unacceptable risk. Do not push me. My beast wants them dead.

Well, at least our beasts are in agreement, I retort saccharine-sweet. Seething, I slip the spear from my sheath and slap it into his palm before I get any more reminders of this afternoon.

Rath and Kiall rustle and chime in the bone-chilling, inhuman fashion that had been their only mode of communication when they first arrived in Dublin, crazed with hunger. I’d felt that chiming deep in my bones, as my mind slipped away. When Barrons hands the spear to Ryodan, who tucks it beneath his jacket, they resume their polished facade.

“Right, he can have it but I can’t,” I grouse.

“He does not consider past minor insult bar to future gain. Women are weak that way. Valuing things that mean nothing at all. Lamenting events they clearly enjoyed,” Kiall says, raking me with a knowing, intimate sneer. “What was lost that night? Nothing. What was gained? An experience beyond compare. Your human women kill each other for our amusement, to eliminate the competition for the privilege of such a night with us.”