“We have to make plans to move humans off world, Jericho.” I turned my mind away from myself and toward our many problems. “This planet may die, but that doesn’t mean the end of the human race. They can live on another world, colonize.”

“Ryodan and I are already on it. Years ago we mapped paths in the Silvers to worlds that could sustain human life. We knew this world might one day become more hostile than we desired.” He was silent a moment, then added, “Still, we failed to consider it might one day cease to exist entirely. We’ve never faced the risk of permanent death until recently. Now all of us face the threat of complete annihilation.”

Or eternal hell. Reborn in a black hole to die again and again. I traced my fingers down the sharp angle of his jaw, touched his lips, vowing silently that I would never let that happen.

He caught my hand and kissed each finger then said, “When you think of the lives your opening the Sinsar Dubh cost, think also that if you had not, you would not have become the Fae queen, thereby gaining the only magic that may save this world.”

“You think the lives of the few are worth the lives of the many.”

“The universe works in mysterious ways. When you live long enough, you begin to see a grander purpose and pattern, larger than any of us.”

“The only way that grander purpose works for me is if I manage to save the Earth. I don’t know what I have or how to use it.”

“We’ll figure it out. But if it looks like we can’t, you’re going off world, too.”

I drew back and looked at him. The old me would have bristled, snapped an angry denial. The new me simply kissed him then drew back and said gently, “No, I’m not.” I would live and die beside this man. But I would never leave him.

He smiled then, white teeth flashing in his dark face, rolled me beneath him and stretched his body over mine and unleashed a storm of passion on my body while above us thunder rolled and lightning cracked as an end-of-days deluge broke loose over Dublin.

MAC

When I woke up, Barrons was gone. I amused myself with the thought that I’d so thoroughly exhausted him that he’d had to go eat to regain his strength. I’d tried to exhaust him. I was the one who’d ended up passing out on the Chesterfield. No surprise there.

Last night had been incredible, worth the horrors I’d endured, to end up here, now, the way I was.

I rolled over onto my back and mouthed a silent thank-you at the ceiling for putting me through my recent ordeal. I’d known, the night we’d defeated the corporeal Book, that there was a serious imbalance of power and personal fortitude between me and Barrons, and it had eaten at me. It was an imbalance I no longer felt.

A scrabbling at the front door jarred me from my thoughts. Sighing, I pushed my hair out of my face—holy crap, it was nearly to my waist!—poked my head up and peered over the back of the sofa.

I narrowed my eyes and tried to process what I was seeing.

Little fairies were stuck like colorful tree frogs to every rain-soaked inch of glass on the front of the bookstore.

Peering in at me.

I peered back.

We did that for a few minutes. I had no idea what they were thinking but I was pretty much just thinking, What are these sparkly little spotted and striped things and why are they decorating my store? It was a type of Fae I’d never seen before; diminutive and dainty like the death-by-laughter Fae but less flashy, earthier.

I finally pushed myself up, walked to the window and touched my hand to the glass, tracing the shape of a small, delicate female with sandy spots and tawny hair.

She shivered and began to chirp excitedly.

Then they all started to chirp and clamor and scrabble about on the wet glass.

Baffled, I moved to the door and carefully opened it. They remained hanging in the air, plastered to whatever force field Barrons had erected around the store that kept Fae out with the exception of Cruce, when he was permitted. All were slender, velvety-skinned, some had spots in every shade of green with mossy hair, others with gray and white stripes and silvery hair. There were sunny yellow ones with lemon curls, dark brown ones with short muddy shocks of hair, pale blue with cerulean manes, rose beauties with pale pink braids. It was a veritable rainbow of fairies, with varying patterns and designs on their skin.

I waved my hand in a shooing gesture and they peeled away to permit my exit. As I moved out into the alcove, thousands of fairies the size of my hand began to drop from the sky in flashes of brilliant color. I poked my head out past the column and glanced into the street. Fae were plastered to the sides of every building, falling away, landing in the puddle-dotted street where they instantly sank to their knees, bowed their heads and crossed their arms over their chests in an unmistakable gesture of…

Fealty?

Abruptly their chirping was no longer unintelligible.

“Our queen! Our queen! Isn’t she lovely? Oooh, she’s so beautiful!” Trills of excitement rippled through them.

“What are you?” I asked the crowd of tiny beings. “I mean, what caste and why have I never seen you before?”

A slender gray-spotted fairy sloshed forward through a puddle and bowed low. “O Austere and Beneficent Queen, the Spyrssidhe have long been forbidden at court.”

“Why?”

“We were deemed unacceptable and banished, exalted liege,” she said.

“She speaks to us! She speaks to us!” rippled through the crowded, rainy street. “She may hear our petition!”

“By the prior queen?” I asked.

She nodded sadly. “Cast out into the world of Man, to make our homes in trees and streams, among rocks and flowers and the gardens of Man. We felt the rising of a new and different queen and came to petition you, gracious and wise Queen, in hopes you would hear our plea and reconsider our fate.”

All this “queen” stuff was a bit much but I knew better than to downplay my status. I’d learned my lesson the day I told the Hunter I wasn’t the king. He’d said I couldn’t fly anymore if I wasn’t. Until I got a better handle on things, I’d do my best to incur and keep the respect and cooperation of the Fae. “Why were you banished?”

A male fairy with copper and tan spots pushed through, knelt in a puddle before me, put one hand to his breast and bowed deeply. “O Munificent Queen, unlike the others of our race, our hearts failed to ice.”