A Fae sifts in!

Wantneedsexdie blasts me. Hesitation ain’t me! I jab my sword into its gut. It looks down. Thing is stunned, disbelieving. We stare at each other. Unbearable perfection. My cheeks get wet like last time I looked at a prince, and I don’t have to wipe them to know it’s blood. If just looking at it makes my eyes bleed, how did Mac survive three of them touching her? Doing things to her? Even mortally wounded, it’s forcing me to my knees. I want to let it do anything it wants to me. I want to obey it. I want to call it Master. Ro says they’re the equivalent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, so who’s my sword stuck in? Death, Pestilence, Famine, or War? Dude, what a kill! I’d pat myself on the back if it wasn’t taking everything I got to keep from pulling my sword out of it and turning it on myself. It’s fecking with me. Trying to take me with it. Its iridescent eyes blaze in what I’m pretty sure is its dying attempt to incinerate me. Then we’re both falling to our knees: it ‘cause it’s dead, and me—I’m so fecking embarrassed—’cause I think I just had my first ever orgasm killing an Unseelie Prince. That’s wrong. I hate it. I hate that it made me feel that now. It wasn’t supposed to be that way.

Then Barrons is in the cell.

Then there’s another Unseelie Prince sifting in behind me. The thing is so powerful, my sidhe-seer senses pick up on it before it becomes corporeal. I spin, lunge, but I don’t get the rush of killing it, because the bastard takes one look behind me and vanishes.

I get that. I’m not stupid. It was more afraid of Barrons than of me and my sword.

I whirl to face him, to demand answers, because I’m not letting him take Mac anywhere until he explains a few things, but the look in his eyes shuts me down.

Way to go, Dani, the look says. You’re not a kid, say his eyes. You’re a warrior, and a bloody fine one at that. His look takes me in, measures me up and down, and reflects me back at myself, and in the glittering black mirror of his gaze, I am one hell of a woman. Barrons sees me. He really sees me!

When he picks up Mac and turns away, I swallow a dreamy sigh.

I’m gonna give Barrons my virginity one day.

Mac: in the cell at the abbey

I am heat.

I am need.

I am pain.

I am more than pain. I am agony. I am the other side of death denied the mercy of it. I am life that should never have been.

Skin is all I am. Skin that is alive that hungers that aches that needs to be touched to endure. I roll and roll, but it is not enough. It makes the pain worse. My skin is on fire, flayed by a thousand red-hot blades.

I have been on the cold stone floor of this cell for as long as I can recall existing. I have never known anything but this cold stone floor. I am hollow. I am barren. I am empty. I do not know why I continue to be.

But wait! In my stasis is there something? Is this change?

I lift my head.

There is other-than-empty near!

I crawl to it, beg it to make my agony stop.

The other-than-empty tries to put things in my mouth and make me chew. I roll my head away. Resist. Not what I want. Touch me here. Touch me now!

It does not. It goes away. Sometimes it returns and tries again.

Time has no meaning.

I drift.

I am alone. Lost. I have always been alone. There has never been anything but cold and pain. I touch myself. I need. I need.

The other-than-empty comes and goes. Puts things in my mouth that smell and taste bad. I spit them out. Those are not what I need.

I drift in my stasis of pain.

Wait! What is this? Change again? Am I to know something besides agony?

Yes! I know this! He Who Made Me is here! My prince has come. I rejoice. An end to my suffering is at hand.

Wait—what is other-than-empty doing?

My prince is … no, no, no!

I scream. I hammer other-than-empty with my fists. The other-than-empty is hurting my master with a long shiny thing. He is ceasing to be! Take me with you, I beg! I cannot endure. I am pain! I am pain!

The other-than-empty kneels beside me. Touches my hair.

My prince is gone.

The other made him cease to be!

I collapse. I am grief. I am despair. I am desolation. I am the cliffs of black ice from whence my masters come.

Change again?

Another He Who Made Me has come? Am I to be saved after all? Granted mercy at my master’s hands?

No, no, no! He is gone, too. Why am I being tortured?

I am agony. I have been forsaken. I am being punished and I do not know why.

But wait …

Something looms over me. It is dark and powerful. It is electric. It is lust. It is not one of my princes, but my body arches and steams. Yes, yes, yes, you are what I need!