He smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“In m-m-m-my p-puh …” I trail off. I don’t even have the energy to say pocket. I give him a longing, starving look and I know he gets the picture.

He looks across me. I realize I’m surrounded by Guardians. Good, they can carry me to Chester’s and help me get patched up!

“Have you got it?” Jayne says.

“Got it, Captain.”

I go ice cold in a way that has nothing to do with cars or frozen people. I try to lunge to my feet but succeed only in flopping on the pavement like a beached fish. “D-D-Don’t you d-d-d-d-dare—”

“It’s been six days, Dani.”

Six days? How long did I sleep at Chester’s?

“You should have come. If you’d kept your word, I might have continued trying to put up with it. But I won’t allow the fate of our city to rest in whimsical hands. The sword is ours now, for the good of Dublin. We take far more of them off the streets than you do. In time you’ll understand it always should have been this way.”

“Y-Y-You—”

“Don’t try to take it back. Your first warning is your final one. I won’t treat you like a child if you do.”

“K-K-Kill y-you!” I explode. I still can’t feel my hands or feet but I feel my head. It’s about to explode. He has no right. It’s my sword!

“Don’t make it war, Dani. You won’t win.”

I try to tell him he better kill me right here and now because there’s no way they can keep my sword from me. I’ll take it back the second I’m on my feet again. There’s no place on Earth, feck, there’s no place in all of heaven or hell that they’ll ever be safe from me again! But I’m too light-headed to talk. Dizzy. My vision’s getting weird.

“She’s awful bloody, Captain. She gonna live?”

“She’s tough,” Jayne says.

“Maybe we should do something.”

“We can’t help her, not even a little, or she’ll be able to take it back.”

I flop on the pavement, unable to do a thing to stop them. I’m vulnerable, completely at his mercy.

And he’s not having any.

I won’t have any for him when the time comes.

He’s leaving me here, to live or die on my own. I’ll never forgive. I’ll never forget.

They walk away. Just like that they leave me in the middle of a dirty street like a dog that got hit by a car, bleeding and helpless and alone. Dead if another car comes along. I’ll remember that, too, when I see him again. Dude, they could have at least moved me to the sidewalk, balled up a shirt or something for a pillow beneath my head.

Something really bad happens to me then. Worse even than everything that’s already happened to me in the past few days.

I feel woozy and strange and all the sudden it’s like I’m outside of my body, watching me. But the me lying in the street has long blond hair and is looking up at the redheaded me with tears in her eyes and telling me she can’t die yet because she’s got people to protect. She’s got a sister named Mac back home in Georgia and she just left her a message, and if she dies, Mac will come over to hunt her killer because she’s stubborn and idealistic, and she’ll die, too. But I don’t seem to be able to feel anything about what’s happening, and none of it seems real, so I walk away just like Jayne did.

My stomach heaves and I puke my guts out right there in the middle of the street. I can’t even get on my hands and knees to do it. Lying on my back, I get sick all over myself. Not the blond-haired me that’s the ghost of Alina, but the real, red-haired Dani that’s really lying in the street wondering if she’s going to bite it this time. And if there’s something wet on my face that isn’t blood or vomit … Nah. Ain’t.

Eventually I get the feeling back in my hands and feet. I guess they thaw. I fumble for a candy bar. I curl in a ball in the street and eat every candy bar I’ve got and plot revenge.

Don’t make it war, he said, and I won’t.

I don’t have to.

He already did.

EIGHTEEN

“I can be your hero, baby”

I find her stumbling through the streets, bleeding to death. If not for all that hair, I might not have recognized her. She’s covered with blood, it’s on her clothes, matted in her curls, crusted on her face. Her long coat is flayed and hangs in tatters from her shoulders. It looks like she went through a dicer.

I don’t see her sword anywhere. I look around, nothing shiny in the streets but her.

I roar and she clamps her arms around her head and falls to her knees, and I remember how much noise I’m capable of making and kick myself. I deafened a human woman I recently had sex with. I broke her arm, too. I didn’t mean to. I can’t get used to what’s happening to me. Try living your whole life one way then abruptly being something else. It’s not easy to remember what you are every single bloody fucking second.

Except enraged. That, I’m aware of all the time. It never diminishes, never stops. The blackouts where I lose chunks of time are getting more frequent, lasting longer.

She topples in the street. I throw myself from the roof, land on the balls of my feet, and gather her in my arms. Where was I when she needed me? Fucking another faceless woman. Trying to defuse the constant lust.

She feels so slight against my chest.

I’m not surprised to feel myself trembling. I’m touching my goddess.

“Och, lass, what’ve you done to yourself now?” I push hair from her face. There’s so much blood that I can’t see what’s causing it. How is she even walking? It makes me crazy that she’s in this city, without a guardian or consort, always getting into trouble. I want to lock her up somewhere I can keep her safe forever. Someplace white and shining and beautiful, where nothing ever goes wrong.

Her brain has more muscles than her body, and less sense. Her passion for life pushes her limbs further than they were meant to go. She’s going to burn herself to ash if she doesn’t find someone or something that takes her all the way down to ground zero and recharges her. She needs to crash as hard as she lives or she’ll die young. I can’t stand the thought of her dying. If I knew how, I would make her Fae so she would never die. Doesn’t matter that I hate being it myself, or that she would, too. Immortality is immortality.