I hooked my thumbs in my jeans pockets. “Go on.” I smiled. There was nothing he could say that would ever make me trust again in something so mystical and fundamentally flawed as a Fae name embedded in my tongue, but I wanted to see how far he might go to get back into my good graces.

“Aoibheal was my first priority, MacKayla. You know that. Without her, all else is insignificant. Without her, the walls can never be rebuilt. She alone is our hope of reclaiming the Song of Making.”

The Fae were matriarchal, and only the Seelie Queen could wield the Song of Making. I knew very little about the Song, just that it was the stuff from which the walls of the Unseelie prison had been forged, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Roughly six thousand years ago, when the Compact had been negotiated between our races, apportioning shares of the planet, Aoibheal had jury-rigged an extension of those ancient walls to separate Fae and human realms. Unfortunately, her tampering had weakened the prison walls, enabling Darroc the Lord Master to bring them all crashing down on Halloween.

So why didn’t Aoibheal just sing them back into existence?

Because in typical Fae infighting fashion, the Unseelie King had killed the long-ago Seelie Queen before she’d been able to pass on her knowledge to the next one. Aoibheal, latest in a long succession of queens to rule with diminished power, had no idea how to sing the Song of Making. They needed me—OOP detector extraordinaire—to find the one remaining clue to re-creating the Song: the Sinsar Dubh, a deadly book that contained all the dark magic of the Unseelie King. The king had been close to discovering it when his mortal concubine killed herself, and he’d abandoned his experiments that had created the dark half of the Fae race.

“And only I can find the Book she needs to do it,” I said coolly. “So who’s expendable?”

His eyes narrowed minutely and he glanced sideways. Pink Mac wouldn’t have even noticed it. I wasn’t her anymore. My spine snapped straight, and I went nose to nose at the ward line with him. If I could have reached through it and grabbed him by the throat, I would have. “Oh, God, you actually thought that through and decided it was me! You knew I was in trouble and didn’t help me!” I snarled. “You believed I would survive it! Or was it that you figured I’d be even easier to use if I was Pri-ya?”

His iridescent eyes blazed. “I could not be in two places at once! I was forced to choose. The queen would not have survived the night. It was imperative she survive.”

“You son of a bitch. You knew they were coming for me.”

“I did not!”

“Liar!”

“By the time I learned what they’d planned, it was too late, MacKayla! Despite my powers, I failed to foresee how dangerous Darroc had become. None of us foresaw it. We believed the walls would weaken further on Samhain, we even believed more of the Unseelie would escape, but we did not believe Darroc could succeed in bringing the walls down completely. Not only did he accomplish the unthinkable, he managed to block all Fae magic as thoroughly as he demolished your human grids. For a time that night, not one of us could sift. Not one of us could change form. Not one of us could draw upon the birthright of our magic. I was forced to carry my queen to a new hiding place on human”—he sneered the word—“feet.”

“While I lay on my human ass and your fairy”—I sneered the word—”brethren fucked my brains out and nearly killed me.”

“But failed, MacKayla. But failed. Remember that. You are queenly in your own right.”

“So the end justifies the means? Is that what you think?”

“Do they not?”

“I suffered,” I gritted. “Horrible, unspeakable things.”

“Yet you stand here now. Toe to toe with a Seelie Prince. Impressive for a human. Perhaps you are becoming what you need to be.”

“What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger? That’s what you think I should take away from this?”

“Yes! And be glad for it.”

“Let me tell you something.” I fisted my hand in the collar of his shirt. “What I will be glad for is the day the last one of you is dead.”

He went oddly, completely still.

I shook him. He didn’t budge.

I blinked, then got it. He was frozen. I’d Nulled him. Nulling is a rare sidhe-seer talent and, according to Rowena, I’m the last Null alive. I can freeze a Fae with the mere touch of my hands. I can turn it on or off at will, the same way Fae Princes can control their lethal eroticism. I hadn’t even been thinking about Nulling, but apparently my hostility toward his race in general had come across as intent to Null. Since he was already frozen, I punched him a few times, indulging my rage at all things Fae.

Then I focused on my sidhe-seer center and forced it to relax.

A muscle worked in his perfect jaw. Oh, yes, he’d been brushing up on his human gestures. “Punching me was not necessary.”

Oops. I’d forgotten they were only frozen when I Nulled them, not oblivious. Oh, well. “But it sure felt good.”

“Well done, MacKayla,” he said tightly.

“For freezing you? I’ve done it before.”

“Not that.” He looked down at my hand.

I looked down at it, too. Then past it, to my feet.

I was over the ward line. I’d stepped right through it without even realizing it. Not only that, I was holding a Seelie Prince by the collar and I wasn’t remotely aroused. No matter the form V’lane had donned in the past, I’d never stood so close to him without having to battle the irresistible impulse to have sex with him, right then and there, even when he’d been toned down as far as—according to him—he could go.

I leaned into him, pressed myself against his perfect Fae body. He molded to me instantly, slid his arms around me, dropped his face to my hair. He was hard, ready.

I felt nothing.

I drew back and looked up. There was that minute contraction and widening of his eyes again. Astonishment. Why? What had astonished him when he’d first seen me? That I had recovered from being Pri-ya? Or something more—a thing virtually inconceivable to him?

I stretched on my toes, pulled his head down, and kissed him. His response was instant and held every bit of one hundred and forty thousand years of sexual expertise—but not one ounce of that elusive, deadly death-by-sex Fae quality.

I pushed back and stared at him. I could feel intense sexual arousal rolling off him, but no more so than I would coming off any man. There went that muscle in his jaw again. Was it possible he wasn’t muting himself? I’d heard that if you took certain poisons but didn’t die, you acquired immunity. Had I drunk enough Poison de Fae? “Unmute yourself,” I demanded.