“And I tried to kill you in your cell when you were a mindless whore, but you wouldn’t die! I slit your throat. I suffocated you. I gutted you, I poisoned you! Still you came back. Finally I painted over the wards to let them take you and destroy you!”

“You painted over the—you were going to give me back to the princes?” I was flabbergasted. She had tried to kill me. I hadn’t just dreamed it. I shoved both thoughts from my mind. I wanted answers and, from the look of her, she wasn’t going to last long. Voice echoed out of me, reverberating off the walls. “Why did you kill Alina?”

“Are you daft? She consorted with the enemy! My spies followed her to his house and saw him with Unseelie! ’Twas reason enough. Then there was the prophecy! I’d’ve killed her at birth if I could’ve. If I’d known she was still alive, I’d’ve hunted her!”

“Did you know who she was when you killed her? Did you know she was Isla’s daughter?”

“Och, of course,” she sneered. “I had Dani lure her to us when my girls told me they’d spotted an untrained sidhe-seer, same as I sent her to you! Alina Lane, she called herself, but I knew the instant I saw her who she was. Isla, all over again, plain as day! And my Kayleigh dead because of her mother!”

I wanted to strangle her with my bare hands, choke the breath out of her. Over and over.

“Did you know who I was when you saw me that first night?”

A troubled look creased her brow. “ ’Tis impossible. You can’t be. You weren’t born. I’d have known were Isla pregnant! Women talk. They never spoke of it!”

“How did the Book get out?” I demanded.

A crafty light entered her eyes. “You think I let it out. I did no such thing. I do the work of angels! An angel came to me and warned me that the spells holding it had weakened. It bid me enter the forbidden chamber and strengthen the runes. Only I could do it. I had to be brave! I had to be strong! I was both. I see, serve, and protect! I have always been there for my children!”

I caught my breath. The Book seduced. I was willing to bet there had been no angel. The old woman charged with protecting the world from the Sinsar Dubh hadn’t strengthened the runes. She’d erased them.

“I did as the angel instructed. ’Twas your mother who let it out!”

“What happened the night the Book escaped? Tell me everything!”

“You are an abomination. The doom of us all.” The light in her eyes was matched by a craftier smile. “I’ll die here, well I ken it, but I’ll not be giving the likes of you any peace. Isla was a traitor and a whore, and you’re more of the same.” She grabbed my hand and thrust her small frame forward on the spear, twisting it as she went. “Ahhhh!” she cried. Blood gushedfrom her mouth.

She died sudden, mouth open, eyes wide.

Disgusted, I dropped her and stepped back, watched her fall to the floor. The Sinsar Dubh whumped to the floor. I stepped back hastily.

Behind me, Barrons was roaring. I glanced over my shoulder. He was hammering at an invisible barrier, his eyes wild, shouting.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “I have it under control. I saw through it.” I was trembling, cold and hot and nauseated. It had all been so real. It felt as if I’d killed my mother, even though my brain knew I hadn’t. For a short time, I’d believed the lies. And my heart hurt as if I’d lost a family I’d never had.

I looked back at Rowena. She stared up at the ceiling, eyes empty, mouth slack.

The Sinsar Dubh lay between us, closed, seemingly inert, a massive black tome with many locks.

I had no doubt it had chosen Rowena for her knowledge of wards so she could carry it past Barrons’ protective spells, straight into the heart of our heavily warded world.

I thought back, isolating the moment the illusion had begun. From the instant I’d stepped out of the Silver tonight, nothing had been real.

Rowena and the Sinsar Dubh had been waiting to ambush me in the bookstore the moment I’d appeared. It had skimmed my mind, picking out the details I would find most convincing.

I’d never left the study, never followed Barrons into the rear conversation area, or sat on the couch, or met my mother. It had “tasted me” on many occasions. It knew me. And it had played me like a virtuoso, sawing away at one heartstring after the next.

Creating a “father” for me had been a masterstroke. It had married memories to longings and given me what I wanted most: family, safety, freedom from crushing choices.

All to get me to hand over the amulet, to con me into placing the one thing capable of deceiving both of us into Rowena’s hands.

And if I had—oh, God, if I had! I would never have known from that moment forward what was real and what wasn’t.

I’d been so close to doing it, but the Book had made two mistakes. I’d fed it a thought about Barrons and it had immediately altered him to bring him in line with my expectations. Then I’d fed it a false memory, amplified it with the amulet, and it had played it right back at me.

I had no doubt the real Barrons had been walled off from me the entire time. The Barrons who had stood beside me in the bookstore had been an illusion the Book had constantly tweaked, according to the feedback it had been getting from me.

Almost had you … it purred.

“Almost only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes.” I stared down at the Sinsar Dubh, with its black cover and many complicated locks. But something wasn’t right. It had never looked right to me.