It made me feel lost.

If my mom wasn’t smarter than me, and I was dependent on her, who was going to take care of us? I’d pretty much decided it was up to me to take care of her.

Then I woke up in a cage and knew we were in a world of shit.

Mega brain. I was born with it. Don’t know how. Don’t know why. Maybe Ro had something to do with it, but if she did, she’d been messing with my mother before she ever even had me. Knowing Ro, she probably made me in some kind of test-tube experiment, mixing humans with an exotic Fae she’d trapped, and who knows, maybe part of a Hunter along with eye of newt and toe of frog, fertilizing my mom in vitro.

I have no idea why I came out like I did.

But I like it most days. I like it all days.

Except for days like today. Which I haven’t had another one of since, well, since the night I found myself back in Dublin, and that other night, when I was eight. I guess three really shitty days in twenty years isn’t too bad. Oh, and the night Mac found out I’d killed Alina. Four days. Whoops, the day the Unseelie princes took my sword. Okay, five days. Still not bad. I watch other people. Some of them cry over a Hallmark card commercial. Every time one comes on.

I scrubbed my eyes with my fists then feathered my fingers out over my sinuses, which were now completely clogged with snot.

That’s what you got for crying.

A headache. And I was so hungry I could eat a horse, saddle and all.

And my damned hair was curling again. All this blasted humidity.

I rolled over, yanked out my last silvery pod and was about to drink it when I thought twice, wiped my nose, tried to scrub rain from my face, but it just kept drenching me, and ate two protein bars instead. The pod was the last thing I had from Silverside. I couldn’t give it up.

I stretched out on my back, soaked to the skin, propped my feet up on the wall and stared up through the rain at the stones. I knew a thing or two about losses: slow, steady erosions became landslides. Turning the hill into a muddy, shapeless mess. You had to figure out how to keep the things that mattered to you.

“Shazam,” I told the wall. “I’m coming back for you. I swear it.”

I said the same words each time I came here.

And each time, I thrust all emotion away, eventually pushed to my feet, squared my shoulders and headed straight back to the crushing weight of responsibility and perverse expectations of the world.

But one day I wouldn’t.

MAC

After the others left the bookstore and Barrons vanished into his study where I could hear him moving around, I dimmed the interior lights to a soft amber glow, nuked myself a cup of hot chocolate, and curled up on the Chesterfield near the fireplace. Beyond exhausted, I longed to stretch out and sleep for days, but I wasn’t yet ready for this auspicious day to end.

With my recent sins firmly locked in a box, I took a moment to sit down and absorb with elation that this was the day I’d defeated the Sinsar Dubh.

There was no longer another sentience inside me, plotting, planning, manipulating, and deceiving, terrifying me with endless possibilities of the horrific things it might make me do. I’d done them. It was over. And although I’d done damage, I hadn’t K’Vrucked the world.

I was free.

Finally alone in my body, I could feel the difference—and it was incredible.

Back when I was a kid, growing up, in Ashford, Georgia, alien, vividly detailed sounds and images had often popped into my head for no reason I’d been able to discern.

I’d hummed along with music I’d never heard before. I’d suffered nostalgia induced by mental images of stunning, opulent chambers and exotic lands I’d never seen and didn’t believe existed. I’d gotten such frequent visions of a naked, beautiful woman staring at me with passion and lust that I’d finally begun to wonder if I was repressing lesbian tendencies.

But now all of the Unseelie King’s memories were gone and I felt infinitely lighter, clearer. And not a lesbian.

I no longer had to second-guess every thought and feeling I had.

At least, at the moment, I didn’t.

Although part of me hoped the True Magic came bundled with the ex-queen’s memories and knowledge, as that would make it so much easier to figure out, another part of me really hoped it didn’t.

Still, if I suddenly began getting bleed-through of intrusive, alien thoughts, at least I’d know where they were coming from, and I didn’t think for a minute they’d be as hard to deal with as the Sinsar Dubh had been.

During my brief interrogation by the sentience on the world with three moons, I’d realized how appropriate the appellations Light Court and Dark Court were for the Seelie and Unseelie. The king’s memories had always held some kind of shadowed murkiness, a masculine darkness. They’d been visceral, blunt, cast in harsh shades of icy blues, bleached whites, and inky blacks.

The presence I’d encountered today was the polar opposite: brilliant as a sun, radiant, gentle, feminine, and the flowers on the vast mound had been every color of the rainbow plus countless more. I’d felt right there. Good. Part of something Nature herself embraced.

I wondered at the origins of the Fae. Wondered how the Seelie could be so emotionless and icy when the Magic I’d felt today was so warm and welcoming. I wondered if the True Race had always been the way they were now, or if something had happened to change them.

Then I wondered no more because Barrons entered the room and my body quickened with interest, desire, anticipation, lust.

He passed behind me, lightly touched my hair, and headed for the door. “Get some sleep. You need it,” was all he said.

I opened my mouth to ask where he was going then remembered all the reasons I never asked Barrons that question and said instead, “Jericho.”

He stopped walking instantly, turned, and stared at me through the low light. “Mac.”

“Do you have to go?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then why are you?”

His dark gaze was inscrutable. “Because this is what we do. You and I. Leave each other alone.”

Whuh. I went still, processing what he’d just said. I’d heard it completely differently than he’d said it. I’d heard: You, Ms. Lane, have always set the pace, the ground rules, determined the way we behave with each other. I toe your motherfucking line.

I opened my mouth to shape the question, And if I’d like to change that? Then realized the cowardice inherent. It was hypothetical, fishing, seeking reassurance, shifting the weight of any decision or commitment back to him. It was refusing to put myself on the line by actually telling him what I wanted from our relationship.