I smiled.

It was the start of a brand-new day.

The wards knocked me on my ass the moment I tried to leave the property.

“Ow!” I rebounded like a rubber ball off a brick wall and landed on the lawn. Or, rather, what was left of the lawn, which was dirt. I was in a Dark Zone. It wasn’t winter but Shades that had stripped the yard of life. Mother Nature left grass, even in her harshest moments. Shades left nothing. Barrons must have brought me here after they’d already claimed the neighborhood. What better place to hide a weapon from the enemy than deep in their own territory? Especially since he and they seemed to have a tacit agreement to leave each other alone.

I took off my MacHalo—it was light enough that I wouldn’t need it again until nightfall, and I suspected the Shades that had devastated this area had moved on to more-fertile ground, anyway—hooked it onto a strap on my pack, and rubbed my head. The wards had nearly split my skull. My molars hurt, even my scalp felt bruised. I hadn’t seen that coming. I narrowed my eyes. Faint silver runes glistened on the sidewalk I’d just tried to cross. Wards were sneaky things, often hard to see, made doubly so this morning by a thin coating of frost. But now that I knew they were there, I could discern the telltale shimmer of Barrons’ subtle work, vanishing east and west around both sides of the house. Although I knew he was meticulous, I still walked the perimeter, looking for a gap.

There wasn’t one.

I decided it must have been an aberration that the wards had repelled me so violently. Barrons warded things out. He never warded me in. I stepped onto the lightly iced sidewalk in a different place.

I went flying backward again, teeth vibrating, ears ringing.

I sat up, growling. The nerve. If I hadn’t been determined to leave before, I was now.

“He has warded me out, as well, MacKayla. Or I would have come for you long ago.”

V’lane’s voice preceded his appearance. One moment I was glowering at the air, the next at V’lane’s knees. For a moment, I kept my gaze fixed there. A woman might feel a little terrified after what I’d been through—not that I did, just that some other woman might.

V’lane is Seelie, one of the alleged “good” guys, if any of the Fae can be called that, but he’s still a death-by-sex Fae, same as those masters of killing lust that had so recently devolved me into the lowest common denominator. All Fae royalty, whether light court or dark, can turn humans Pri-ya with sex. And like his darker, deadly Unseelie brethren—when in his natural high glamour—V’lane is too beautiful for a human to look at directly. I’m no exception. The dark princes had made my eyes bleed. V’lane could, too, if he felt like it.

Since the day I met him, he’d been using his death-by-sex magnetism on me to varying degrees, although I now knew just how “gentle” his coercion had really been compared to what he could have done in his efforts to make me help him track the Sinsar Dubh. We’d had an ongoing battle about what form he would assume in my presence, with him always turning on too much sexual charisma and me always insisting he “mute” it.

I raised my gaze to the inevitable perfection of the Seelie Prince’s face, bracing myself for the impact.

There was none.

He stood before me with every bit of his death-by-sex Faeness dampened. For the first time since I’d met him, I was able to look directly at him, absorbing his inhuman, incredible perfection without being affected by it. V’lane looked as close to a human male as he could get, in jeans, boots, and a loose linen shirt half unbuttoned. He was apparently unaffected by the frigid weather—or perhaps the cause of it. Fae can affect the weather with their moods. His beautifully muscled golden body was no more perfect than that of any airbrushed model; his long golden hair no longer shimmered with a dozen seductive, otherworldly shades; his flawlessly symmetrical features might have graced any magazine cover. The only aspect of his Fae nature he’d retained were those bottomless, ancient, iridescent eyes. He was still something to see: tawny, sexy man with alien, glowing eyes, but I was not assaulted by a frantic desire to tear off my clothes, I didn’t feel a tingle of lust, not the faintest sensation of being weak at the knees.

And he’d done it without my even having to ask.

I wasn’t about to thank him. It was the least he could do after what his race had done to me.

He studied me while I studied him. His eyes contracted slightly, then widened infinitesimally, which on a human face meant very little but on a Fae’s was an expression of astonishment. I wondered why. Because I’d survived? Had my odds really been so low?

“I have been monitoring these wards and sensed the disturbance. I am pleased to see you, MacKayla.”

“Thanks for the rescue,” I said coldly. “Nice of you to show up when I needed you. Oh, wait,” I barked a sharp little laugh, “I remember now. You didn’t. In fact, your name crashed and burned when I tried to use it.” If he’d never given me his name on my tongue, I wouldn’t have been so fearless that night. I’d been lulled into complacency, believing I had a Seelie Prince available at the snap of my fingers to sift in and sift me out to instant safety. It had made me feel invincible when I shouldn’t have. And when I’d needed him the most, it had failed. Better never to have depended on it at all. I should have kept Dani by my side that night. She could have whisked me to safety.

He spread his hands, palms up, and bowed his head in a gesture of subservience.

I snorted. The holier-than-thou Seelie Prince was bowing his head to me?

“A thousand apologies could not atone for the harm my brethren were permitted to inflict upon you. It sickens me that you were—” He broke off, bowing his head even more deeply, as if he couldn’t bring himself to go on.

It was a completely human gesture.

I didn’t trust it one bit.

“So.” I picked myself up off the ground and dusted off my new leather coat. “What’s your excuse for failing me on Halloween? Barrons said he was stuck in Scotland. Actually, he said it was ‘complicated.’ Was it complicated, V’lane?” I asked sweetly, as I slung my gun around the back side of my shoulder. It banged into my backpack. I liked the solid, reassuring weight of my weapons and ammo.

He winced at the tone of my voice, not missing the arsenic in the sugar. While I’d been busy being Pri-ya, V’lane had obviously been busy expanding his repertoire of human expressions. Still, these expressions were different than that first one. They were too large for a Fae, overblown. Iridescent eyes met mine. “Exceedingly.”