She snorted. He’d always held on to her too tightly. That had been precisely the problem. Everything had to be his way.

She’d loved him when she first met him. She’d loved him still, at the end. But she’d realized love wasn’t enough. It was possible to love someone who was completely wrong for you. You could waste your entire life loving that person, doing enormous damage to each other and the world around you.

She’d never wanted to live in his cage but she’d done it for him, hoping he would one day give up his mad quest to turn her Fae and be happy with what they had. Hoping he might eventually return to her world with her. All those eons he’d worked alone while she slept alone they might have been living, loving, creating.

At first, upon installing her in the exquisite White Mansion, he’d spent every night in her arms, anywhere and everywhere: in her bed; in his; sprawled in one of the eccentric tower rooms that opened to the sky, counting stars between kisses; on the floor of her closet; atop an enormous grand piano. They’d splashed their love from end to end of the ever-changing, ever-growing mansion while she’d drunk the nectar of galaxies from his lips, tasted infinity in his arms, and decided it might not be so bad to live forever, as long as she was with him.

At first they had no time for anything but each other. Their love had blazed like a supernova. But darkness began to eat away at their light. A silent, seething fixation had been born in him the day the queen refused his request to turn Zara Fae.

Over the eons, he’d begun spending nights with her less frequently, working endlessly in his laboratories, birthing the children of his Court of Shadows in an attempt to re-create the song.

One day she realized she hadn’t seen him in months. Then years. She’d spent the time gathering seedlings and young plants and, although by then he’d given her trinkets with which she could create any number of fabulous illusions, she’d nurtured and grown her lush, aromatic gardens in the old, real way. She’d begun playing with the small creatures of the forest, tending their occasional injuries, taking pleasure in the beauties of nature that abounded in her realm.

Alone. So damned alone.

Missing her family, the bustle of so many comings and goings, the din of noise and laughter beneath their roof.

Between his visits he’d send her gifts with which to amuse herself, pretty baubles, fabulous jewels, and opulent gowns. She’d had rooms and rooms of clothing and shoes, cabinets filled with magnificent jewels, and nothing but time to walk around looking at them all, no one for whom to wear them.

With each increasingly lavish gift or object of power he sent, some—like the amulet, intended to make her more equal to him in power—she’d begun to think he’d never seen her at all. Or if he had, he didn’t think she was good enough for him. Otherwise he’d see she didn’t want power. He’d stop trying to turn her into something she wasn’t. But she’d turned anyway. The longer she stayed inside her portion of his Fae realms, the paler she grew, her dark skin lightening, her ebony curls fading, until, in time, although she’d not been Fae, she began to look like one.

The day finally came that she understood his quest to re-create the Song of Making had nothing to do with her, and everything to do with him.

The Seelie Queen had denied him something. The arrogant god-king who was capable of such great tenderness and passion was also capable of great obsession.

But it wasn’t with her.

It was with proving the Seelie Queen wrong.

It was with refusing to accept no for an answer.

He would have the song and he would turn his concubine Fae, no matter the price. And he would never rest until it was done.

After he’d created his Court of Shadows and brought his favored son, Cruce, into existence, she’d seen even less of him and more of Cruce, as the king began dispatching his prince to bring her potions.

Cruce became her companion, confidant, and friend. He would have been her lover, yet Zara’s heart still belonged to her king.

One day she’d simply had enough. She’d not seen her king for so long she could not even recall how much time had passed since his last visit. The details of his face had grown blurry in her mind.

On that day, she asked Cruce for a favor, and he’d granted it.

It hadn’t turned out as she’d planned. Cruce had been, after all, his father’s son, subjugating her wishes to pursue his own.

Aoibheal stiffened and withdrew hastily from her memories, shaking herself to crack the thin sheeting of ice that encased her. There was an intruder in her mansion! She could feel it approaching, sense the violence and disturbance. The White Mansion was a place of beauty, peace, and serenity and did not like this entity within its walls. On her shoulder the T’murra shifted with sudden tension, peering this way and that, pecking at air.

She pressed a hand to her throat, expanding her senses, reaching out to taste and touch what came her way, to fathom the ways her future might unfold.

The Sinsar Dubh was here! Bringing into these hallowed walls the very worst of the king himself. Hunger for power. Bottomless need for stimulation and whatever dim sensation it might enjoy.

It drew nearer with each passing moment, hurrying straight for her.

She knew why. She’d passed eons in a court of incessant treachery and betrayal. The queen always had to watch her back. There was always one among the royals that coveted her crown.

Ironic that the result of the king’s act of atonement for the wrong he’d done her might now kill her. He’d made the Sinsar Dubh out of grief at having lost her, and now his Book wanted her dead.

The king’s love was a gift that just never stopped giving.

A bitter smile curved her lips. The Fae and their endless quests for power!

Now that she had her memory back, so many things made sense to her that had puzzled her as queen. She suspected that since her memories had never been actually gone, merely stripped of their vibrancy to the point of inaccessibility, even as Aoibheal she’d retained the defining characteristics and nature of Zara. She knew a Fae that tried to overthrow her once would eventually try again, despite wiping its memory with a cup from the cauldron. Humans had a saying, “An angry man is an angry drunk. A happy man is a happy drunk.” The king had been wont to say it more simply: can’t eviscerate essential self. No matter how many times the Fae tried to.

She finally understood her proclivity as Fae queen to interfere with mortals, her predilection to protect them, her fascination with Adam, who’d abandoned her incessantly to walk among mortals, even fallen in love with one of them.