I lob it high, straight over the dock. The prince does exactly what I was pretty sure it would do: catches it. A human would recognize what I threw, but I’m betting it won’t. Whether or not it does, its reaction isn’t at all what I expected. I figured worst-case scenario, it would pitch it over its shoulder.

The fecker tosses it right back at me!

Like an idiot, I catch it, too. I think there are two kinds of people in life: those you can throw something at that will instinctively duck and bat it away and those that will instinctively grab it. I’ve always been a grabber. I’ll take offense over defense any day. I rubberneck in freeze-frame and assess my situation: Jayne is clueless that we’re here because he can’t hear us over the racket the caged monsters are making. The grenade in my hand is going to explode in five, four, three—

“No, you take it,” I say, and lob it high, right back at the prince.

He catches it, closes a hand around it, and I see a flash of light in his fist. Then he opens his hand and black dust falls to the ground. If I could make out its expression, it might have just given me a total smirk.

Well, feck me. What is it made of? Galvanized steel?

Suddenly I know where the second prince is because the temperature in the space behind me just dropped forty or so degrees. The hairs on the back of my neck frost and I shiver.

I lunge into reverse freeze-frame but it blocks me and I slam back into its icy, powerful body.

Feck feck feck! I slam it into forward. It’s there before me. I twist and duck but crash into it sideways. We do this whiz/block thing about ten more times, with me cramming candy bars in my mouth. We’re moving like an orchestrated dance. It seems to read my body’s smallest cues, anticipate my moves. The thing is wicked fast! All I can make out is a tangle of long black hair and the brilliant flash of kaleidoscopic tattoos rushing beneath its dark skin.

I drop low and roll past it, then spring up to flee, but it grabs me from behind and yanks me back into it. I can’t stop shivering. I have to get away. It makes a sound against my ear that I heard a lot of Ryodan’s men making on level four when they were all having sex, low and rough and strained. I hear myself making a noise I didn’t even know I knew how to make.

I turn into a Dani-grenade, fighting with all I’ve got. It ain’t happening to me like this!

I punch, I kick, I bite. It doesn’t fight back. It bands its arms around me from behind and keeps me pulled back hard against its body, waiting for my fury to turn into something else.

And it does.

I’m losing myself!

I can feel my mind slipping away!

I’m changing into something I don’t want to be and I can’t stop it! Is this what Mac went through? How did she stand it? Three princes at once, then Cruce, too!

I don’t want this! It isn’t supposed to be like this! I’m supposed to lose my virginity in some awesome, superspectacular, sensational way. Not like this!

But everything inside me is going gooey like rich, warm, velvety chocolate fondue that’s so thick and sweet and scrumptious that I want to swim in it, let it cover my head, take me down deep into a place where I don’t have to think anymore and I don’t have to fight anymore and I can just be without always having to struggle to stay on top and protect myself and win all the time.

I want to get naked here in the street. I want to do it every which way, standing up and lying down, doggy style and reverse cowgirl. Long black hair is tangling around my neck, sliding like hot silk. It’s arms around me feel like the best slow dance I ever imagined, not that I imagine wussy things like slow dancing with Dancer or anything but I’m having a hard time breathing right, it’s getting all shallow and caught in my throat.

It makes a sound like dark wind chimes caught in a storm, beautiful and brittle. The haunting melody scrapes across my nerve endings, turning each one into a tiny mass of orgasmic tissue.

I’m lost. I press back against it. It’s hard where I’m soft and pretty much perfect in every way.

“Och, Dani my darling, you’re not giving me a single reason to wait for you to grow up. You’re giving me a thousand reasons not to.”

It’s Christian! I’m so glad it’s him, not one of the other princes! I turn around in his arms and tip my head back. “Hi, Christian!” I beam at him. He’s hotter than the other princes. I’m glad I got him. I’ll take the others, too, but I want him first. “I want to grow up. Now. Hurry.”

“Not. Like. This.”

I reach up and pull Christian’s head down for kisses but he knocks my hands away. It makes me mad. I grab him again. He shoves me and I stumble.

He slaps me then. Hard, across the face. My ears ring from the violence of his blow. I wet my lips and give him a look. Pain isn’t what I need. I need him to ease my pain. I might be a virgin but my body knows how to move, what to do. It’s kind of embarrassing, but at the same time I like it. Sex is powerful. It makes all your cells feel hyperalive. How didn’t I know that? I want to explore it. I want to learn it inside and out like everything else I do. I feel amazing! Like I’m about to learn stuff I got no idea about and it’s going to change me forever. When this is done, I’ll be a woman. Not a child anymore. I’m fascinated by the idea.

I’m not ready for it!

I’m racing toward it, can’t get there fast enough.

He slaps me again. “Stop looking at me like that. Get mad at me. Hate me for what I would do to you. I’ll kill you if you keep looking at me like that! I’ll fuck you until you die!” he hisses.

Suddenly the Unseelie prince who was across the dock from me is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him. They begin to argue in Unseelie and I can’t understand a word they’re saying but I get the tone. The other prince is pissed.

A third prince sifts in. Or a second, if you’re counting Christian as an almost-prince. They look so much alike, I wonder if maybe he’s already gone through the final change in the short time since I saw him last. Yesterday, being so close to him didn’t mess me up this badly. Did something happen to him overnight? Is it because there’s more than one prince here and they amp each other up? Did he really just say something weird about waiting for me? My brain is a mess. None of my circuits are working.

I can’t stand up to the princes. For all my superhero powers, here I’m nothing. I’m as weak and helpless and doomed as any other person. I’m a willing victim, ready, waiting, eager to be destroyed. I know with one part of my mind how horrifying that is, but with another part of my mind — a much larger one — I don’t care. Being a victim to eternal pleasure sounds like the most perfect state of existence I could ever imagine.

I stare at them. My cheeks are wet. I want to look away but I can’t. I wipe my face and my hands come away bloody from my tears. I try to back up but there’s superglue on the bottom of my boots. The spell Christian had begun to shatter is weaving itself around me again and I can’t do anything to stop it. I’m standing ten feet away from three death-by-sex Fae and I don’t see any way to get out of this one. Could Christian actually protect me from them if I don’t want him to? Because if they move even one inch closer, I’m not going to want him to.

“Get behind me, kid,” Lor growls from somewhere behind me. It seems mere thoughts of Ryodan conjured his men. If I could move, I’d go limp with relief. I can’t. I stand there.

Lor grabs me and shoves me behind him. He’s got half a dozen of his dudes flanking him and they circle in around me.

They face off with the princes, and just when all hell is about to break loose between them, one of Jayne’s men barks a sharp command because they spotted us, and the Guardians swing their guns our way.

Then the Unseelie trapped in the cages must see their princes standing outside because they start roaring and howling at the top of their lungs, I guess trying to get them to set them free.