“He isn’t my pretty college boy.”

Our gazes locked.

“But I still think he’s pretty pretty,” I said, just to antagonize him.

See you in bed with him like I saw in the Silvers, I’ll kill him.

I blinked. I did not just see that in Barrons’ eyes.

He evaporated from the chair and reappeared five feet away, standing in front of the fire, his back to me.

“They expect to have him back any day now.”

I wanted to be there when they got Christian out, but the Keltar had made it clear they didn’t want me around. I should never have told them I’d fed their nephew Fae flesh. I wasn’t sure if they found it cannibalistic, sacrilegious, or both, but it had certainly offended them. I’d gone light on details about what it had done to him. They’d find out soon enough.

I shivered. The time was approaching. We would be doing the ritual soon. “We need to have a meeting with everyone. Keltar, sidhe-seers, V’lane. Iron out the details.” What would happen when we finally had the Book under lock and key? How did Barrons think he was going to use it once it was contained? Did he know the First Language? Was he that old? Had he learned it over time, or been taught? Did he plan to let us re-inter it at the abbey again, then sit down and read it?

And do what with the knowledge?

“Why don’t you just tell me what you want the Sinsar Dubh for?”

No longer staring into the fire, he faced me.

“Why do you keep moving like that? You never used to do it before.” It was unnerving.

“Does it unnerve you?”

“Not at all. It’s just … hard to follow.”

A haze of red slithered through his eyes. “Doesn’t faze you at all?”

“Not a bit. I only want to know what changed.”

He shrugged. “Concealing my nature requires effort.” But his eyes said, Think you accepted the beast? Stare at it, day in, day out.

Not a problem.

“The queen came to—”

“She’s conscious?” I exclaimed.

“—briefly before she went under again.”

“Why does it always take you so long to tell me the important things?”

“While the queen was lucid, Jack had the presence of mind to ask her who sealed her in the coffin.”

Expectancy straightened my spine. “And?”

“She said it was a Fae prince she’d never seen before. He called himself Cruce.”

I stared, stunned. “How is that possible? Is anyone who’s supposed to be dead actually dead?”

“Doesn’t seem like it.”

“Did he have wings?”

He gave me a look. “Why?”

“Cruce does.”

“How do you—ah. Memories.”

“Does it bother you? That I’m …” Not the Concubine. I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“No more human than I? On the contrary. You’ve either lived a very long time or you prove reincarnation. I’d like to know which it is, so we’d know whether you can die. Eventually the Unseelie King will come looking for you. He and I are overdue for a talk.”

“What do you want the Book for, Barrons?”

He smiled. Well, he showed me his teeth, anyway. “One spell, Ms. Lane. That’s all. Don’t worry your pretty little head.”

“Don’t talk down to me. It used to shut me up. Doesn’t work anymore. A spell for what? To change you back to whatever you were before? To let you die?”

His eyes narrowed and the rattlesnake stirred in his chest. He looked at my face closely, as if reading the tiniest nuances of the way my nostrils flared on each breath, the shape of my mouth, the movement of my eyes.

I raised a brow, waiting.

“Is that what you need to think of me? That I want to die? Must you dress me up in chivalry to find me palatable? Chivalry demands a suicidal bent. I don’t have one. I can’t get enough of life. I get off on waking up every day for infinity. I like being what I am. I got the best end of the deal. I’ll be here while it’s happening. I’ll be here when it ends. And I’ll stand up from the ashes and do it all over when it begins again.”

“You said somebody beat me to damning you.”

“Melodrama. Did it curry favor? You kissed me.”

“You don’t feel damned?”

“God said, Let there be light. I said, Say please.”

He was gone. No longer standing in front of me. The bookstore seemed empty and I looked around, wondering where he’d gone so quickly and why. Had he melted up against a bookcase, faded into a drape, wrapped himself around a pillar?

Suddenly there was a fist in my hair, behind me, pulling my head back, arching my spine up from the sofa.

He closed his mouth over mine and pushed his tongue in, forcing my teeth wide.

I grabbed his arm, but as sharply as he had my head pulled back, all I could do was steady myself.

He wrapped his other hand around my neck, forcing my chin higher, kissing me more deeply, harder, keeping me from resisting.

Not that I wanted to.

Heart slamming in my chest, my legs moved apart. There are different kinds of kisses. I’d thought I’d experienced them all, if not prior to coming to Dublin, certainly after months of being Pri-ya, in bed with this man.

This was a new one.

All I could do was hold on to his arm and survive.

“Kiss” wasn’t the right word at all.

He fused us together—my jaws so wide, I couldn’t even kiss him back. I could only take what he was doing to me. I felt the sharp slide of fangs over my tongue as he sucked it into his mouth.

I knew then—as he’d never let me see in our bed in that basement—that he was far more animal than man. Maybe he hadn’t always been, but he was now. Maybe, long ago, in the beginning, he’d missed being a man—if, in fact, he’d been one to begin with. But he didn’t anymore. He’d gone native.

I was kind of astonished by it: What a man he’d chosen to be! He could easily have gone feral. He was the strongest, fastest, smartest, most powerful creature I’d ever seen. He could kill everything and everyone, including Fae. He could never be killed. Yet he walked upright and lived in Dublin and he had a bookstore and great cars and collected rare things of beauty. He bitched when his rugs got burned and got pissy when somebody messed with his clothes. He took care of some people, whether he seemed to like doing it or not. And he had a sense of honor that wasn’t animal.