Gone again.

I look from V’lane to Darroc. V’lane is staring in Darroc’s general direction. Darroc is staring hard at the Unseelie Princes. They’re having a silent battle over me and my weapon, and it infuriates me that I have no control. One instant, V’lane takes my spear; the next, Darroc gives it back. It flickers in my fingers, solid then gone, solid then gone.

I shake my head. This could go on all night. They can play their silly games. I have more important things to do—like get enough sleep that I’m sharp enough to be on the hunt. I’m dangerously exhausted. I no longer feel numb. I’m brittle, and brittle can crack.

I’m preparing to turn and walk away from it all, when the sound of automatic gunfire shatters the night.

The Seelie hiss, and all those capable of sifting vanish—including V’lane—leaving roughly a third of them still standing in the street. They turn on their attacker, snarling. As the bullets hit them, some of the lesser castes flicker and stumble. Others turn toward us and launch themselves into the Unseelie to escape.

I hear the voices of Jayne and his men, shouting to each other, closing in behind them. I catch the glint of a rifle up on the rooftop a block down and know snipers are moving in.

Good. I hope they take down hundreds of Fae tonight, cart them off and imprison them with iron. I hope Dani makes rounds and kills the ones they catch.

But I’m not about to die from friendly fire in this screwed-up reality. I have a whole new world waiting for me in the future.

I turn to the Unseelie Prince to command it to sift me out of here. My enemy, my salvation.

Darroc barks a harsh order.

The prince’s hands are on me and it’s sifting before I even manage to get the words out.

TIME IS THE ONLY TRUE GOD, AND I AM FOREVER. THEREFORE, I AM GOD.

Your logic is flawed. Time is not forever. It is always. Past, Present, and Future. There was a time in the past when you did not exist. Therefore, you are not God.

I CREATE. I DESTROY.

With the whimsy of a spoiled child.

YOU FAIL TO DIVINE THE MASTER DESIGN. EVEN THAT WHICH YOU CALL CHAOS HAS PATTERN AND PURPOSE.

—CONVERSATIONS WITH THE SINSAR DUBH

11

I stand on a balcony, staring out at the darkness. Snow swirls around my face, lands in my hair. I catch a few flakes in my hand and study them. Growing up in the Deep South, I didn’t get to see a lot of snow, but what I did see didn’t look like this.

These flakes have complex crystalline structures, and some are tinged with faint color at the outer edges. Green, gold, dirty like ash. They don’t lose cohesion on the warmth of my skin. They’re tougher than the average snowflakes, or I’m colder than the average human. When I close my hand to melt them, one of the flakes cuts into my palm with sharp edges.

Lovely. Razor snow. More Fae changes in my world. Time for a new one.

Time.

I ponder the concept. Ever since I arrived in Dublin at the beginning of August, time has been a strange thing. I have only to look at a calendar to confirm what my brain knows—six months have passed.

But of those six months, I lost the entire month of September to a single afternoon in Faery. The months of November, December, and part of January were calendar pages torn from my life while I was in a mindless, sex-crazed oblivion. And now part of January and February had flashed by in a few days, while I was in the Silvers.

All told, in the last six months, four of them whizzed past, with me virtually unaware of the passage of time, for one reason or another.

My brain knows it’s been six months since Alina died.

My body doesn’t believe a word of it.

It feels like I found out my sister was murdered two months ago. It feels like I was raped on Halloween ten days ago. It feels like my parents were kidnapped four days ago, and I stabbed Barrons and watched him die thirty-six hours ago.

My body can’t catch up with my brain. My heart has jet lag. All my emotions are raw because everything feels as if it took place over a short period of time.

I push my damp hair back from my face and breathe deeply of the cold night air. I’m in a bedroom suite at one of Darroc’s many strongholds in Dublin. It’s a penthouse apartment, high above the city, furnished in the same opulent Louis XIV Sun King style of the house at 1247 LaRuhe. Darroc certainly likes his luxuries. Like someone else I know.

Knew.

Will know again, I correct.

Darroc told me he keeps dozens of such safe houses and never stays more than one night in any of them. How am I ever going to find them all to search for clues? I dread the thought of remaining with him long enough for him to take me to each for a night.

I fist my hands. I can handle this. I know I can. My world depends on it.

I unclench my hands and rub my sides. Even hours after the Unseelie Prince touched me, my skin is still chilled in the shape of its handprints. I turn away from the cold, snowy night, close the French doors, and scatter my remaining runes at the threshold, where they pulse like wet crimson hearts on the floor. My dark lake promised I would sleep safely if I pressed one into each wall and warded the thresholds and sills with them.

I turn and stare at the bed, in the same daze I’ve been functioning in for the past several hours. I shuffle past it to the bathroom, where I splash cold water on my face. My eyes feel swollen and gritty. I look in the mirror. The woman that looks back frightens me.

Darroc wanted to “talk” when we arrived. But I know what it was really about. He was testing me. He showed me pictures of Alina. Made me sit and look at them with him and listen to his stories, until I thought I might go insane.

I close my eyes, but my sister’s face is burned into the backs of my eyelids. And there, standing next to her, are my mom and dad. I said I didn’t care what happened to them in this reality, because I’m going to make a new one, but the truth is I’d care in any reality. I’ve just been blocking it.

I will not ask Darroc what happened to my parents after I was swept off to the Hall of All Days, and he doesn’t offer the information.

If he told me they were dead, too, I don’t know what I’d do.

I suspect this is another of his tests. I will pass it.

That’s my girl, Daddy encourages in my mind. Chin up; you can do it. I believe in you, baby. Sis-boom-bah! he says, and smiles. Even though he hadn’t wanted me to pursue cheerleading, he’d still driven me to tryouts, and when I’d made the first cut, he’d had one of his clients at Petit Patisserie bake me a special cake shaped like a pair of pink and purple pom-poms.