I HAVE NO NEEDS, BITCH! IT IS YOU WHO ARE FLAWED!

It’s nothing but need. Empty, greedy, black-hole-sucking need. And it knows it, so it tells itself lie after lie, weaves an elaborate illusion of superiority, in hopes of escaping the horrific awareness that it is fatally, damningly flawed, missing something of the divine the rest of us have.

An epiphany takes gentle root within me.

The Sinsar Dubh has no hold on me.

The only hold it ever had was that it managed to latch onto me when I was unaware, innocent and young, and didn’t know such monsters existed.

I’m no longer unaware, innocent, or young.

I don’t need to evict it.

I can simply walk away.

When I rise from the chair, those in the boudoir panic and begin to roar at one another.

But not Barrons.

He stands motionless, searching my eyes through the crackling blue-black wall, and slowly, very slowly, the corner of his mouth ticks up in a smile.

I smile back as I move toward the perimeter of the prison that can’t contain me, wasn’t designed to do so, because I’m not the Sinsar Dubh and never was.

I have an unfortunate hitchhiker.

It’s time to kick it out of the car.

As I step into the containment field, the Sinsar Dubh screams, DON’T YOU DARE LEAVE ME! DON’T YOU KNOW YOU CAN’T EXIST WITHOUT ME? I LOVE YOU, MACKAYLA! I’M THE ONLY ONE THAT LOVES YOU! I’M NOT DONE WITH YOU! I WILL KILL YOU! GET BACK HERE! I WILL DESTROY—

I’m beyond the containment field of the stones.

I’m free.

I can no longer hear the Sinsar Dubh’s threats and taunts.

And never will again.

Lingering in the ether, the Unseelie King retrieved the small scroll tied with a lock of his lover’s hair from where he carried it near his heart. He rolled the tiny thing in his enormous palm.

He knew now.

She’d left him by choice.

He’d suspected the Elixir of Remembering had only a nominal chance of success. He’d created it when he realized he was losing memories to the relentless march of time. He’d wanted to keep each moment of his existence alive, vivid in detail, visceral and immediate. Imbibed on a daily basis, the elixir conferred the result he’d desired.

But as he’d feared, drinking it hundreds of thousands of years after the Cauldron of Forgetting had done its damage restored only the details, none of the context or associated feelings. She was Zara, yet possessed none of the spectacular passion and fire that had so ensorcelled him. As icy as the First Queen had ever been, she wanted nothing more from him than her freedom.

He’d been a fool to believe he’d been given a second chance.

Dropping the scroll, he ground it to dust beneath his heel then vanished, seeking solitude where old gods do, among the stars.

MAC

You know those movies where lovers have been separated with no idea whether they’ll ever see each other again and, when they finally do, after harrowing trials and tribulations, they dash madly toward one another, and the filmmaker shoots the scene in slow motion so the viewers get to revel in that long, drawn out moment of anticipation, waiting breathlessly for their first passionate embrace?

That’s so not what happened with me and Barrons.

Neither of us moved. We just stood there looking at each other. His dark eyes gleamed with…I had no idea what because I couldn’t currently feel and had no way of identifying emotion. But I chose to believe it was satisfaction, respect, and a “bloody good job, Ms. Lane.”

No one else in the boudoir moved either. They were all staring past me.

I turned and glanced back at the containment field.

Inside a blue-black cage, a dark, angry tornado twisted and darted, flinging itself repeatedly at the walls.

To no avail.

I’d walked away from it. I’d left the Sinsar Dubh behind, trapped forever, in its own private hell.

I was unsatisfied with the outcome. I would only be satisfied when it was destroyed.

“You did it, Mac!” Jada exploded fiercely, punching the air.

I had indeed. But I was still remote and emotionless, and although a part of me almost yearned to stay that way, a bigger part didn’t.

I wanted to feel again, to drink in the moment, the dawning of a new day. I wanted to savor my hard-won freedom. There was so much future ahead of us, if we could manage to save our world. I calculated the odds at slightly better than they had been.

I could feel the unfamiliar presence of the True Magic smoldering inside me. And while part of me thought, Gee, great, now I have another uninvited thing inside me I have to deal with, most of me was thinking how extraordinary it was that by an unexpected twist of fate I’d become the one woman who could wield the Song of Making.

That was a serious plus in our column. Cruce possessed at least some part of the Sinsar Dubh. Dageus was alive with the souls of thirteen ancient Draghar inside him. We had Dani’s and Dancer’s quirky, brilliant minds and Barrons’s and Ryodan’s vast experience with magic and the black arts.

Yes, our odds were definitely better than they had been, with the Fae queen missing, and me possessed.

I slanted my eyes half closed, sank within and embraced all that made me human; the good, the bad, the pretty and not so pretty, and as emotion rekindled, I stared past the Sinsar Dubh’s prison, through the shadows of the king’s ancient, towering Silver to the woman who stood on the other side of it, a dazzling bird perched on her shoulder.

She met my gaze and I thought I detected the faintest trace of sorrow in her lovely, iridescent eyes. I could recognize emotion again.

Then she turned and glided to the now open door on the king’s side of the boudoir and exited through it without a word, vanishing into the White Mansion.

The door swung shut behind her with such force that the floor shuddered and the king’s enormous mirror abruptly went coal black.

The mirror shivered violently then—gilt frame and all—simply popped out of existence, leaving a smooth white wall where once it had hung.

The concubine’s boudoir no longer connected to the king’s.

The tiny flames flickering in the diamonds floating on the air around us abruptly went out, leaving cold, opaque crystals that clattered to the floor, amid petals that no longer smelled spicy but now emitted a strong whiff of decay.

The residue of the concubine vanished from the bed.