“You know what Christian told Mac when you weren’t present?” Barrons said softly.

Ryodan said nothing.

“If I ever see roaches in my bookstore…” Barrons didn’t bother finishing the threat.

“Roaches?” Lor muttered. “What the fuck’s he talking about?”

“The Seelie queen is missing,” Ryodan said. “The Unseelie don’t give a shit if this world is destroyed. They aren’t bound to this planet like we are. Fae magic is destroying the world. It may be the only thing that saves it. The Highlander wasn’t supposed to die on that mountain. It wasn’t part of my plan. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my fucking vagina to be inside a black hole.”

That was certainly a visual.

“Me neither,” Lor muttered. “I like my vaginas pink and smaller. Much smaller,” he added. “Like way the fuck tight.”

I rolled my eyes.

Ryodan said, “This could be the end of us.”

The end of the Nine? I’d always kept in the back of my mind that if things got really bad on this world, I’d just grab everyone I love, along with everyone else we could round up, and travel through the Silvers to another planet. Colonize, start fresh. Unfortunately, erroneously, I’d only been thinking if things on this world got “really bad,” assuming there would still be a dangerous planet the Nine would certainly be able to battle their way off of again. I’d never considered that there might be a time this planet didn’t even exist. I knew the black holes were a serious problem but I hadn’t fully absorbed what the small tears in the fabric of our universe really signified and what they might do long term. I’d overlooked the ramifications of the Nine being reborn on Earth.

And if Earth was no longer…

“We’ve got to fix those fucking holes,” Lor growled.

I nodded vehement agreement.

“Your plan?” Barrons said.

“We conceal his existence,” Ryodan said. “We push him through the change. Get the best minds on the problem and fix it. Once it’s resolved, the tribunal can do whatever the bloody hell they want. Like give me a fucking medal and the free rein I deserve.”

“Jada,” Barrons said.

“And the kid because he gets physics, which, while no longer accurate, may help us understand what we’re dealing with. Mac. She’s got the bloody Book. Between her and the Highlander, we may just have more Fae lore than the Fae.”

But I can’t read it, I wanted to protest. What the hell good was it?

I shivered again, this time with a much deeper chill. I knew something with sudden, absolute certainty.

They were going to want me to.

“Fuck.” Lor was back to his one-word assessment of life, the universe, and everything.

Fuck, I agreed silently.

2

“Seasons don’t fear the Reaper…”

Inverness, Scotland, high above Loch Ness.

Christian had once believed he’d never set foot there again except in half-mad dreams.

Tonight was madness of another kind.

Tonight, beneath a slate and crimson sky, he would bury the man who’d died to save him.

The entire Keltar clan was gathered in the sprawling cemetery behind the ruined tower, near the tomb of the Green Lady, to return the remains of Dageus MacKeltar to the earth in a sacred druid ritual so his soul would be released to live again. Reincarnation was the foundation of their faith.

The air was heavy and humid from a nearby storm. A few miles to the west, lightning cracked, briefly illuminating the rocky cliffs and grassy vales of his motherland. The Highlands were even more beautiful than he’d painstakingly re-created them in his mind, staked to the side of a cliff, dying over and over. While he’d hung there, the long killing season of ice had passed. Heather bloomed and leaves rustled on trees. Moss crushed softly beneath his boots as he shifted his weight to ease the pain in his groin. Parts of him were not yet healed. He’d been flayed too many times to regenerate properly; the bitch had scarcely let him grow new guts before taking them again.

“The body is prepared, my lord.”

Christopher and Drustan nodded while nearby, huddled in Gwen’s embrace, Chloe wept. Christian was amused to realize he, too, had nodded. Say “my lord” and every Keltar male in the room nodded, along with a few of the females. Theirs was a clan of all lairds, no serfs.

It seemed a century ago he’d walked these bens and valleys, exhilarated to be alive, riveted by his studies at university and his more private agenda in Dublin: keeping tabs on the unpredictable, dangerous owner of Barrons Books & Baubles while hunting an ancient Book of black magic. But that was before the Compact the Keltar had upheld since the dawn of time had been shattered, the walls between man and Fae had fallen, and he himself had become one of the Unseelie.

“Place the body on the pyre,” Drustan said.

Chloe’s weeping turned to quiet sobs at his words, then a wild guttural keening that flayed Christian’s gut as exquisitely as had the Crimson Hag’s lance. Dageus and Chloe had fought impossible odds to be together, only to end with Dageus’s pointless death on a cliff. Christian alone bore the blame. He didn’t know how Chloe could stand to look at him.

Come to think of it, she hadn’t. She’d not once focused on him since they brought him home. Her swollen, half-dead gaze had slid repeatedly past him. He wasn’t sure if that was because she hated him for causing her husband’s death or because he no longer looked remotely like the young human man she’d known, but the worst of the dark Fae. He knew he was disconcerting to look at. Although his mutation seemed to have become static, leaving him with long black hair, strangely muted tattoos, and, for fuck’s sake, wings—bloody damned wings, how the hell was a man supposed to live with those?—there was something about his eyes that even he could see. As if a chilling, starry infinity had settled there. No one held his gaze, no one looked at him for long, not even his own mother and father. His sister, Colleen, was the only one who’d spoken more than a few words to him since his return.

What remained of Dageus’s body was positioned on the wood slab.

They would chant and spread the necessary elements, then burn the corpse, freeing his soul to be reborn. When the ceremony was done, his ashes would drop into the grave below, mingle with the soil and find new life.