I consulted my memories. I remembered the day the Unseelie King had created it. This was not what he’d made. “Show me what is true,” I murmured.

When the Sinsar Dubh’s true form was revealed, I gasped. Sung into existence from slabs of purest gold and shards of obsidian, it was exquisite. I’d summoned crimson stones from one of the galaxies the Hunters liked to fly that housed tiny dancing flames. And although I’d put locks on my Book, top and bottom, they were decorative, never meant to secure it. My encryption was protection enough.

Or so I’d thought.

I’d made it lovely. I’d hoped the beauty of its binding might temper the horror of its contents.

I smiled sadly. For a brief time I’d believed I was Isla’s daughter. No such luck. I was the Unseelie King. And it was long past time for my battle with my darker half to end. According to the prophecy as I understood it, I’d triumphed over my “monster within.” It had been my hunger for illusion, to lose myself in a life I’d never had.

I fisted my hand around the amulet. It blazed with blue-black light. I was epic. I was strong. I had created this horror and I would destroy it. I would not be defeated.

Not defeat, MacKayla. I want you to come home.

“I am home. My bookstore.”

Is nothing. I will show you wonders beyond your imagining. Your body is strong. You will hold me and we will live. Dance. Fuck. Feast. It will be grand. We will K’Vruck the world.

“I’m not holding you. Ever.”

You were made for me. I for you. Two for tea and t-t-t-tea for two.

“I’ll kill myself first.” If I thought it might come to that, I would.

And let me win? You would die and let me rule? Allow me to encourage you.

“That’s not what you want, and you know it.”

What do you think I want, sweet MacKayla?

“You want me to forgive you.”

I have no need of absolution.

“You want me to take you back.”

In, sweet thing, take me in. Warm and wet like sex is warm and wet.

“You want to be the king. You want to turn us evil again.”

Evil, good, create, destroy. Puny minds. Puny caves. Time, MacKayla. Time absolves.

“Time does not define the act. Time is impartial; it neither condemns nor absolves. The action contains intent, and intent is where the definition lies.”

Bore me with human law.

“Enlighten you with universal law.”

You convict me of evil intent?

“Unequivocally.”

In your eyes I am a monster?

“Absolutely.”

I should be—how do you say?—put down?

“That’s what I’m here for.”

What, then, does that make you, MacKayla?

“A repentant king. I eviscerated my evil, imprisoned you once before, and I will again.”

How you amuse.

“Laugh all you want.”

You believe you are my maker.

“I know I am.”

Mysweet MacKayla, you are such a fool. You did not make me. I made you.

A chill slid down my spine. Its voice oozed satisfaction and mockery, as if it were watching me head straight toward a train wreck and enjoying every minute of it. My eyes narrowed. “Not falling for the chicken/egg discussion. Your evil didn’t make me the king. I was the king, and I turned evil. I wised up and dumped my evil into a book. You were never supposed to live. And I plan to rectify that.”

Not chickens and eggs. A human woman. And you—a tiny little embryo.

My mouth opened on a retort, but I hesitated.

Of all the lies it had woven so far, this one held a startling ring of truth. Why?

What I told you before was true. I took Isla to escape the abbey. And she was pregnant. I did not expect to find you in her. I did not know how humans replicated. As I used her to kill the other humans who had dared to restrain me—ME, locked in a cold stone vacuum for an eternity of nothingness, have you any idea the HELL?—there you were. The wonder. Unformed life in her body. Mine for the taking. I marveled at the beauty of you. Unshaped, unfettered by scruple, unhampered by human weaknesses. Your race and its obsession with sin! You chain yourselves to the whipping post because you fear the sky. It is those chains, those limits, that make the bodies I take so fragile, tear them apart so soon after I possess them.

But you were different. You hungered, you slept, you dreamed, but you were pure. You knew no right or wrong; you were empty. You did not resist me. You were open. I filled you. I nestled down inside you, replicated myself and left it there. You are my child. You suckled at my breast, MacKayla. I was your mother’s milk; I gave you your defenses against the world. On that day, before your body could sustain itself separately, before you ever had the chance to do something so stupid and small as become human, I claimed you. I gave birth to you. Not Isla.

“You’re lying. I’m the king,” I said flatly.

You seek truth? Can you face it?

I said nothing.

The truth is within you. It always has been. It is there in the one place you refuse to go.

I narrowed my eyes. Perhaps I’d been congratulating myself on subduing my inner monster too soon. Don’t talk to it, beautiful girl, the dreamy-eyed guy had said, long ago in Chester’s, long before I’d met the fear dorcha. Never talk to it. I wondered if he’d meant the Sinsar Dubh then. Too late. I was waist-deep in quicksand. Struggling would only hasten my descent.

You have only ever taken what I offered, what I floated to the surface. Dive in, MacKayla. Graze the bottom of your lake. You will find me down there, shining in all my glory. Lift my lid. Know the truth of your existence. If I am evil, we are evil. If I should be “put down,” so must you. There is no sentence you can cry upon me that you must not carry out upon yourself. There is no point in fighting me. You are me. Not a king. Me. Always have been. Always will be. You can’t eviscerate me. I am your soul.