I chose black and red for the tattoos on Barrons’ body. Tonight I wear my promise to him that I will make things right.

“Isn’t your army coming with us?” I ask as we step from the penthouse. The night is cool and clear, the sky glittering with stars. The snow melted during the day, and the cobblestone streets are dry for a novel change.

“Hunters abhor the lesser castes.”

“Hunters?” I echo.

“How did you expect to search for the Sinsar Dubh?”

I’ve ridden one before, with Barrons, the night we tried to corner the Book with three of the four stones. I wonder if Darroc knows this. With his clever mirror hidden in the back alley of Barrons Books and Baubles, there’s no telling how much he knows about me. “And if we find it tonight?”

He smiles. “If you find it for me tonight, MacKayla, I will make you my queen.”

I give him a once-over. He’s dressed richly, in Armani tweed, cashmere, and leather. He carries nothing. Is the key to merging with the Book knowledge? A ritual? Runes? An object? “Do you have what you need to merge with it?” I ask point-blank.

He laughs. “Ah, it’s to be the full frontal attack tonight. With that dress,” he says silkily, “I had hoped for seduction.”

I lift a shoulder and let it fall in a carefree shrug that matches my smile. “You know I want to know. I don’t see any point in pretending otherwise. We are what we are, you and I.”

He likes that I classify us in the same category. I see it in his eyes.

“And what is that, MacKayla? What are we?” He turns slightly to the side and bites out a sharp command in an alien tongue. One of the Unseelie Princes appears, listens, nods, and vanishes.

“Survivors. Two people who won’t be ruled, because we were born to rule.”

He searches my face. “Do you really believe that?”

The street cools and my coat is abruptly dusted with tiny shimmering crystals of black ice. I know what that means. A Royal Hunter has materialized above us, black leathery wings churning the night air. My hair stirs in an icy breeze. I glance up at the scaled underbelly of the caste specially designated to hunt and kill sidhe-seers.

A great Satanic dragon, it tucks its massive wings close to its body and drops heavily to the street, narrowly missing the buildings on either side.

It’s enormous.

Unlike the smaller Hunter that Barrons managed to bend to his will and “dampen” the night we flew across Dublin, this one is one hundred percent undiluted Royal Hunter. I get a sense of immense ancientness. It feels older than anything I’ve seen or sensed flying the night sky. The hellish cold it exudes, the sense of despair and emptiness it radiates, is intact. But it doesn’t depress me or make me feel futile. This one make me feel … free.

It takes a delicate mental jab at me. I sense restraint. It doesn’t have power, it is power.

I jab back with my glassy lake’s help.

It chuffs a soft noise of surprise.

I return my attention to Darroc.

Sidhe-seer? the Hunter says.

I ignore it.

SIDHE-SEER? The Hunter blasts into my mind so hard it gives me an instant headache.

I whip my head around. “What?” I snarl.

A great black shape, it crouches in the shadows. Head low, the underside of its chin brushes the pavement. It shifts its weight from taloned foot to foot, as its massive tail sweeps the street clean of long-unused trash cans and husks of human remains. Fiery eyes blaze into mine.

I feel it pressing at me mentally, carefully. Fae legend says that the Hunters either aren’t Fae or aren’t entirely Fae. I have no idea what they are, but I don’t like them inside my head.

After a moment it says, Ahhhh, and settles onto its haunches. There you are.

I don’t know what that means. I shrug. It’s out of my head, and that’s all I care about, I turn back to Darroc, who resumes our conversation where it left off. “Do you really believe what you said about being born to rule?”

“Have I ever asked you where my parents are?” I counter with a question that it hurts my heart to ask, hurts my soul to even think, but I’m in an all-or-nothing mood. If I can get what I want tonight, I’m out of here. My pain and suffering will end. I can stop hating myself. By morning, I could be talking to Alina again, touching Barrons.

His gaze sharpens. “When you first saw that I was holding them captive, I thought you weak, ruled by maudlin attachment. Why have you not asked?”

I understand now why Barrons was always insisting I stop asking him questions and judge him by his actions alone. It’s so easy to lie. What’s even worse is how we cling to those lies. We beg for the illusion so we don’t have to face the truth, don’t have to feel alone.

I remember being seventeen, thinking I was head over heels in love, asking my date at the senior prom—tight-end hot-Rod McQueen—Katie didn’t really see you kissing Brandi in the hall outside the bathroom, did she, Rod? And when he said, No, I believed him—despite the smudge of lipstick on his chin that was too red to be mine and the way Brandi kept looking at us over her date’s shoulder. Two weeks into summer, no one was surprised when he was her boyfriend, not mine.

I stare into Darroc’s face and I see something in his eyes that elates me. He’s not kidding about making me his queen. He does want me. I don’t know why, perhaps because he imprinted on Alina and I’m the closest thing that remains. Perhaps because he and my sister discovered who they were together, and what they were capable of, and conjoined self-discovery is a powerful bond. Perhaps because of my strange dark glassy lake or whatever it is that makes the Sinsar Dubh like to play with me.

Perhaps it’s because part of him is human, and he hungers for the same illusions the rest of us do.

Barrons was a purist. I get him now. Words are so dangerous.

I say, “Things change. I adapt. I cut away what is unnecessary as my circumstances change.” I reach up and caress his face, brush my index finger to his perfect lips, trace his scar. “And often I find my circumstances have not worsened, as I initially thought, but improved. I don’t know why I refused you so many times. I understand why my sister wanted you.” I say it all so simply that it rings of truth. Even I am startled by how sincere I sound. “I think you should be king, Darroc, and if you want me, I would be honored to be your queen.”

He sucks in a sharp breath, his copper eyes glittering. He cups my head and buries his hands in my hair, playing the silky curls through his fingers. “Prove that you mean those words, MacKayla, and I will deny you nothing. Ever.”

He angles my head and lowers his mouth to mine.

I close my eyes. I open my lips.

That’s when it kills him.

I’ve had a few paradigm shifts since the day my plane landed in Ireland and I began hunting Alina’s killer—big ones, or so I thought—but this one takes the cake.

There I stand, eyes closed, lips parted, waiting for the kiss of my sister’s lover, when suddenly something wet and warm slaps my face, drips from my chin, drenches my neck, and runs into my bra. More splatters my coat.

When I open my eyes, I scream.

Darroc is no longer about to kiss me, because his head is gone—just gone—and you’re never ready for that, no matter how cold and hard and dead you think you are inside. Being sprayed by the blood of a headless corpse—especially someone you know, whether you like him or not—gets you on a visceral level. Doubly so when you were about to kiss that person.

But even more upsetting is that I don’t know how to merge with the Book.

All I can think is: His head is gone and I don’t know how to merge with the Book. He eats Unseelie. Can I put his head back on? If I do, can he talk? Maybe I can patch him up and torture it out of him.