Their desires were illogical. But desires usually were. She had a few of her own that defied reason.

She knew the name she’d taken for herself upset them. But no one had called her Dani for longer than she could remember, and she’d wanted a fresh start to put the past behind her.

She was home.

Life began now.

As she’d learned to live it.

When she realized she’d been gone a virtually insignificant amount of time, Earth-time—a fact nearly beyond her comprehension at first—she’d known those at the abbey would never follow an abruptly older Dani as readily as they would an unknown warrior. Much depended upon the presentation of facts—more so than the facts themselves. Since they’d “met” her as Jada, many of the sidhe-seers still had a hard time believing she’d ever once been the rebellious, calamitous teen.

Even if she’d continued calling herself Dani, those people she’d been closest to would have found her disturbing. They would have rejected she’d come back at nearly twenty, under any name—because what they couldn’t accept was that she’d lived five and a half years of life without them and was different now.

But not entirely.

Everything she’d done since her return demonstrated who she was, what she believed in, the things she lived for. She’d begun recruiting sidhe-seers, rescued the abbey, started training the women to be the warriors they should always have been, as the prior Grand Mistress had unforgivably failed to do. She’d hunted her past enemies, protected her past allies. She’d obsessed over repaying a debt to Christian.

Still, sheep, as she’d once called the willfully blind, perceived things in black and white. Saw only that a fourteen-year-old explosively emotional child who tried to outrun her issues by darting into the Silvers had come back a mature, self-possessed woman and was, in their opinion, the wrong version of her.

They’d rejected her completely.

With the exception of Ryodan, hadn’t even recognized her. And he’d rejected her, too. Decided the “other” part of her that was so useful when necessary had taken her over entirely, as if she were that bloody incompetent. Couldn’t even see her looking right at him with Dani’s grown-up eyes.

Adaptability, he’d said, was survivability, and she’d been listening. Now he condemned her for her method of adaptation without even knowing her challenges or choices.

She found that immensely offensive.

Perhaps a more tactful woman wouldn’t have provoked Ryodan with comments that Dani was dead or scorned the teen she’d once been, but just as he had all those years ago, he’d irritated her, offending her even more because she’d believed herself beyond such a response—never a reaction, because reacting could be so deadly.

When she first returned, she had been beyond such responses, hardened by savagery and frozen by a glacier of grief in her heart, but day-to-day life in Dublin wasn’t the same as battling her way home with a single, consuming purpose. It was more complex, and certain people seemed to possess the ability to bring out the worst in her. She’d forgotten she had those parts. Attachments were chains she’d taken pains to avoid, yet here she was, stuck in the middle of link after link.

Recent weeks had been muddied with emotional humans, both inside the abbey and out, fragments of flawed relationships, subtle traps lurking everywhere she turned, time spent in a Hummer with two of those she’d intended to kill before she reconsidered the timing and perhaps even the intention, a past she’d put away, all of it stirring things in her she’d never wanted to feel again.

She’d survived by not feeling.

Thoughts were linear. Feelings were grenades, pin out.

Thoughts kept you alive. Feelings drove a person to leap into a Silver that took them straight to Hell.

Five and a half years, most of it alone.

Before that, fourteen years, eternally misunderstood.

Back in Dublin, in charge of over five hundred sidhe-seers, and growing every day.

Still alone. Still misunderstood.

She turned from the window and glanced in the mirror. Gone was the wild, curly hair that had driven her crazy that first, treacherous year in the Silvers until she hacked it off with a knife. Although it was long again, she’d learned to control it with product and heat. Her sword was the only adornment she wore, breaking the stark black of her attire. She met the emerald-eyed gaze of her reflection levelly before turning away from it and settling in a chair behind the desk, waiting.

She knew what they’d come for, and would work with them because her city was in danger, the world’s fate at stake and she couldn’t save it by herself. She knew what she was: one of the strongest, therefore a protector of those not as strong. She would function as part of a team, despite the peril to her inner balance, because the world depended on it.

They’d brought Dancer with them, whom she’d hoped to continue avoiding. She would accept his presence because his mind expanded into unexpected places and in the past he’d grasped things she’d missed. There was no question his inventiveness was a valuable commodity. She understood the danger the black holes presented, and hadn’t fought so ruthlessly to get home only to have it stolen from her again.

They’d been young together. Exploding with excitement for the next adventure, wild and free.

He still was.

But she was no longer the swaggering, cocky, impassioned teen she’d been, and he, too, would despise her for stealing his friend.

They were predictable.