“You set Darroc up.”

“I encouraged where encouragement was useful.”

“You want to be king,” I said.

Cruce’s iridescent eyes flashed. “Why would I not? Someone needs to take over. He turned his back on his children. We were an accident of creation he sought to contain and hide. He fears power? I do not. He refuses to lead our people? I will champion them as he never did.”

“And when they weary of your rule?” the king said. “When you realize you can never please them?”

“I will make them happy. They will love me.”

“So all gods think. At first.”

“Shut up, old man.”

“Still you wear V’lane’s face. What do you fear?” the king said.

“I fear nothing.” But his gaze lingered on me a long moment. “I fight for my race, MacKayla. I have since I was born. He would conceal us in shame and condemn us to a half life. Remember that. There are reasons for all I have done.”

Abruptly his golden mane was raven, his gold-velvet skin bronzed.

Iridescent eyes emptied. A torque threaded with silver slithered around his neck. Beneath his skin, kaleidoscopic tattoos crashed like waves in a turbulent sea. He was beautiful. He was horrifying. He was soul-destroying. A nimbus of gold surrounded his body.

And his face, oh, God, his face, I knew that face. I’d seen that face. Bending over me. Holding my head in his arms. Cradling me.

While he moved inside me.

“You were the fourth at the church!” I cried. He’d raped me. With his other dark brethren, he’d turned me into a mindless shell of a person, left me shattered and naked in the street. And I would have remained broken forever, except that Barrons had come charging in after me with men and guns, taken me away, and put me back together again.

The Unseelie Prince cocked his head, looking every bit as unnatural as his brothers. Sharp teeth gleamed white against the dark skin of his face. “They would have killed you. They had never had a human woman. Darroc underestimated their ardor.”

“You raped me!”

“I saved you, MacKayla.”

“Saving me would have been getting me out of there!”

“You were already Pri-ya when I found you. Your life was ending. I gave you my elixir—”

“Your elixir?” the king said mildly.

“—to stem your wounds.”

“You didn’t have to have sex with me to do it!”

“I desired you. You refused me. I wearied of your protests. You wanted me. You thought about it. You were not even there. What difference?”

“You think that makes it okay?”

“I do not understand your objections. I did nothing that had not already been done by others. Nothing you had not considered. And I did itbetter.”

“What exactly did you give me?”

“I do not exactly”—he imitated my tone perfectly—“know. I have never given it to a human before.”

“Was it the queen’s elixir?”

“It was mine,” the king said.

“I improved it. You are the past,” Cruce said. “I am the future. It is time for you to be unmade.”

He was going to unmake the king? Was it possible?

“Kids. Pain in the ass. Don’t know why I ever made them. Hell on relationships.”

“You have no idea,” Cruce said. “Getting the queen to kill V’lane was not the first illusion I wove and left for you, old fool, although it was the first you saw. This was.” He bent and grabbed a fistful of the queen’s hair, raising her by it. As he did, her blankets fell away.

The king went perfectly still.

In his eyes I saw the black-and-white boudoir, void of all but empty memories, the endless barren years, the eternal grieving. I saw loneliness as vast and all-encompassing as his wings. I knew the joy of their union and the despair of their separation.

I no longer trusted anyone’s face. I sought my sidhe-seer center, reinforced it with the amulet, and demanded to be shown what was true.

She was still the concubine. The king’s mortal beloved, the one he’d gone insane over, created the Sinsar Dubh because of, walked away from his entire race for.

“As the current queen, her death will grant me the True Magic of our race. I saved her to kill in front of you before I unmake you. But this time when you see her dead, it will be no illusion.”

When the king said nothing, Cruce said impatiently, “Do you not wish to know how I did it, you stubborn old fuck? No? You never would speak up when it mattered. The day you went to battle the queen, I took the concubine another of your famous elixirs, but this time it was no potion: It was a cup stolen from the cauldron of forgetting. She stood in your boudoir while I erased all memory of you. When she was a blank slate, I bent her over your bed and fucked her. I hid her from you where I knew you would never look. The Seelie court. I took V’lane’s place and pretended she was a human I’d become enamored of. Over time, as the courtiers drank from the cauldron and forgot, as Seelie Princesses rose to power and were deposed, she became one of us. I achieved what your potions never did. Time in Faery, our potions, and our way of life made her Fae. Is it not ironic? The day came when she was so powerful she became our queen. She was always there—alive—but you never even looked. I kept her in the one place I knew the arrogant Un-Seelie King would not go. Bedding down with your grudges while I bedded your bitch. Your concubine became my lover, my queen. And now her death will make me you.”