I knew that. I’d seen him step from it, coated with crystals of iced blood. I’d felt the gust of icy soul-numbing air. “And you killed the woman you carried out of the Silver why?” My voice was spun sugar on a knife’s edge.

“Because I wanted to.” He matched my sugary lightness of tone. “Didn’t expect that, did you, Ms. Lane? Not only an answer but an incrimination, in your book. Come,” he said, and his dark gaze glittered with sudden impatience. “The night won’t last forever.”

“What’s the Unseelie prison like?” I wanted to know if it was the cold place I sometimes went to in my dreams. If so, how could I possibly know of it?

“Multiply the chill in my Silver by infinity.”

“But what does it look like?”

“No sun. No grass. No life. Just cliffs and cliffs of ice. Cold. Darkness. Despair. The air reeks of it. There are three colors there: white, black, and blue. The fabric of the place lacks the necessary chemical compositions for any other colors to exist. Your skin would be as white as bleached bones. Your eyes, dull black. Your lips, blue. Nothing grows. There is only hunger without sustenance. Lust without satisfaction. Pain without end. There are monsters there that have no desire to leave, because they are such monsters.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked as we headed out back to, I assumed, select an incredible car from Barrons’ incredible collection.

“Enough. Tell me, Ms. Lane, if you could go back to the day Alina was leaving for Trinity and stop her, would you?”

“Absolutely,” I said without hesitation.

“Knowing that this would all play out anyway? The Book was already loose. This was going to happen whether or not she came to Dublin. Just a different variation on the same destructive theme. Would you have kept her in Ashford to keep her alive, never learned what you are, and most likely died in complete ignorance at the hands of some Fae?”

“Isn’t there a third option?” I said irritably. “What’s behind door number three? Haven’t you ever seen Let’s Make a Deal?”

He gave me a look.

Obviously not.

“What are we driving tonight?” I asked, as I reached for the doorknob.

I am not riding that.” There were times when I had to put my foot down with Barrons. This was one of them.

“Shut up and get on.”

If I’d shaken my head any more violently, my neck would have snapped.

“On. Now.”

“In your dreams.”

Our “ride” was a Royal Hunter.

Barrons had somehow gotten a Hunter to land in the alley between BB&B and the garage—one of those terrifying beasts whose primary purpose was to eradicate my kind from the face of the earth. Admittedly, it was one of the smaller ones—the size of a narrow two-story house rather than a five-story apartment complex—and it wasn’t throwing off that massively deadly feel of the ones Jayne had shot at, but still, it was a Royal Hunter, the caste responsible for murdering countless sidhe-seers for thousands of years. And he expected me to touch it?

I hadn’t sensed it because it was somehow … dampened.

It crouched there, blacker than pitch, looking all Satanic, with leathery wings and fiery eyes, horns and a forked tail. Its labored exhalations puffed gusts of smoke down the alley into what used to be the biggest Dark Zone in the city. The space between the bookstore and the garage was twenty degrees colder than the rest of the night.

I reached inside my coat for my spear.

“Don’t you dare,” said Barrons. “It’s under my control.”

We stared at each other.

“What did you have to offer a Hunter to get it to do this? How does one mercenary pay another?”

“You should know. How are your precious principles lately?”

I scowled at him. After a moment, I released my spear.

“It can cover the city far more quickly than we can in a car. Your … IFPs, as you call them, don’t bother it, making it the wisest choice of transport.”

“I’m a sidhe-seer, Barrons. It’s a Hunter. Guess what Hunters hunt? Sidhe-seers. I am not getting on it.”

“Time is short, Ms. Lane. Move your ass.”

I poked mentally at the Hunter to glean its intentions, expecting to encounter a roiling pit of homicidal sidhe-seer thoughts.

There was nothing but a wall of black ice. “I can’t get to its mind.” I didn’t like that one bit.

“And tonight it can’t get to yours, so leave it alone and do as I say.”