HOW DARE YOU DECEIVE ME?

“The nerve of me.” I wanted to tear the runes off, crack open the Book, take my spell of unmaking. I didn’t dare. If I opened the gold, black, and crimson cover the tiniest sliver, its dark song would rush out and consume me.

She would doom the world, they’d said.

I’d been tempted, so tempted. I wanted Alina back. I wanted the walls up. I wanted Dani to be innocent and young and not my sister’s killer. I wanted to be Jericho Barrons’ hero. I wanted to release him from endless pain. See him walk into the future with hope and maybe even smile every now and then.

YOU SAID THE WORLD WAS IMPERFECT!

“It is.” I pressed another dripping rune into the cover.

But it was my world, filled with good people, like my father and mother, patient Kat, and Inspector Jayne, who were always doing their parts to make it a better place. Unseelie might be overrunning our planet, but we’d been long overdue for a threat to unify us as a race and turn our petty angers away from one another.

There was pain, but there was also joy. It was in the tension between the two that life happened. Imperfect as it was, this world was real. Illusion was no substitute. I’d rather live a hard life of fact than a sweet life of lies.

I flipped the Book over and pressed a rune into its back.

Its voice was muffled, growing weaker.

He will hate you!

That was the crushing blow. I’d been a breath away from what Barrons had devoted his entire existence to getting, and I’d turned my back on it. I’d promised him. I’d told him we would find a way, and I’d failed him. There was no way to lift a single spell of such power from the Sinsar Dubh. It would never have floated it to the surface and given it to me willingly. Even now it was regretting that it had ever floated anything to the surface for me, but it had taken calculated risks, tempting me to look deeper. It had given me what I’d needed to stay alive, to keep me heading toward merging with it, taking it in, letting it have my body and have control. It knew what I wanted now and would never give it up unless I merged with it completely. If I’d raised that lid—even a scant inch, just for a quick peek—looking for the spell, it would have been all over. It would have taken up squatter’s rights and obliterated me. Perhaps some tiny part of me would have remained cognizant, screaming in eternal horror, but not enough to matter.

Ryodan had been right. The Sinsar Dubh was after a body, and it had wanted mine. If I believed its story, it had prepped me to be possessed since before I was born. Waited until I’d become the perfect host. But it hadn’t waited quite long enough. Or maybe it had waited too long. Evil is a completely different creature, Mac, Ryodan had said. Evil is bad that believes it’s good.

I hadn’t understood what he was saying at the time. I did now.

I pressed another rune onto the binding.

I would never lay Barrons’ child to rest now. Never free the man.

Destroy you, bitch! Not the end. Never the end!

Four more runes and the Sinsar Dubh was silent.

I sat back on my heels. My hands were shaking, I was exhausted, and my cheeks were wet.

I was about to lay my hand against the cover to confirm what I sensed, that it was contained—at least as well as it could be until we got it to the abbey—when the invisible barrier restraining Jericho evaporated.

Then I was in his arms and he was kissing me, and all I could think was that I’d done it, I’d survived, but at what cost?

From the day I’d met him, he’d been after one thing and one thing only. He’d been hunting it for thousands of years with singleminded focus.

I was a woman he’d known for a few months. What could I possibly mean to him compared to that?

Shocked by the news that Rowena was dead, the surviving members of the Haven took one look at Drustan MacKeltar carrying the Book, identified themselves—and, yes, Jo was one of them—then removed the wards and opened the corridor to allow access to the chamber in which the Sinsar Dubh had originally been interred.

I was thrilled Drustan was carrying it. I wanted nothing more to do with it. I never wanted to touch it again. If I did, I’d have to think about the spell Barrons wanted, how close it was, and how all I’d have to do was lift that cover and …

I shook my head, forcing the thought away.

I’d done my part. It was here, and now it was their responsibility. I’d ridden in the Hummer with the Keltar clan to the abbey as a precaution. It was hard to believe it was almost over. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the other shoe hadn’t dropped yet. In movies, the villain always twitched one last time, and my nerves were a wreck, waiting for it.

Jo and the other Haven members led our procession into the bowels of the stone fortress, followed by Ryodan and the others. The Keltar Druids were next. Barrons and I followed, with Kat and half a dozen more sidhe-seers bringing up the rear. V’lane and his Seelie were due to sift in at any moment.

I kept a careful eye on the Book as Drustan carried it down the corridor, past a now silent image of Isla O’Connor that I could barely look at, into an underground chamber, down more stairs, into another chamber, and down still more stairs.

I quit counting after a dozen flights. It was deep. I was once again underground.

I kept waiting for the Book to somehow sense it was approaching the place where it had been caged for so long and make a final, deadly gambit for my soul. Or body.

I looked at Barrons. “Do you feel like—”

“The fat lady hasn’t sung?”

I love that about him. He gets me. I don’t even have to finish my sentences.

“Ideas?” I said.

“Not a one.”

“Are we being paranoid?”

“Possibly. Hard to say.” He looked at me. Although his eyes were empty of conversation, I knew he wanted to know everything that had happened while I’d been battling the Book but wouldn’t ask until we were alone. The entire time the Sinsar Dubh had been playing its head games with me, all he’d been able to see was me standing in silence with Rowena, me killing Rowena, then me standing in silence near the Book. The illusions it had woven for me had taken place only in my head. The battle had been invisible to the naked eye, but the hardest ones are.

He’d been a silent mountain of barely contained hostility the entire way out here. Since the moment the barrier restraining him had evaporated, he hadn’t stopped touching me. I was sucking it up. Who knew how he’d feel soon.

I couldn’t get to you, he’d exploded when he’d finally stopped kissing me long enough to speak.

But you did, I’d told him. I heard you roaring. It was what tipped me off. You got through.

I couldn’t save you. His expression had been stark, furious.

I couldn’t save him, either. And I was in no hurry to tell him that.

Did you get it? The spell of unmaking?

Ancient eyes had stared at me, filled with ancient grief. And something more. Something so alien and unexpected that I’d almost burst into tears. I’d seen many things in his eyes in the time that I’d known him: lust, amusement, sympathy, mockery, caution, fury. But I had never seen this.

Hope. Jericho Barrons had hope, and I was the reason for it.

Yes, I lied. I got it.

I would never forget his smile. It had illuminated him from the inside out.

I blew out a breath and focused on my surroundings. There was a small underground city beneath the abbey. Even Barrons was beginning to look impressed. Wide streetlike tunnels intersected neatly; narrower alleys ran off them in dizzying slopes. We passed an enormous hive of catacombs that Jo told us held the remains of every Grand Mistress that had ever lived. Somewhere among those labyrinthine tunnels, hidden in row after row of mausoleums, was the crypt of the first leader of the first Haven. I wanted to find it, run my fingers over the inscription, know the date our order had been founded. There were secrets down here entrusted to only the initiate, and I wanted to know them all.