He splays his fingers across my jaw, tilts my head back and slants his mouth over mine in a hot, hungry kiss that knifes straight to my soul.

When we finally move apart, I slip my hand into his.

He speaks the words of the feth fiada and we vanish into the night.

To imprison me. Quite possibly forever.

CAGED

* * *

My mother sat on the other side of the bars, crying.

She said she didn’t have a choice: her parents were dead, my dad was gone, she had no friends who could handle me, there was no dog that could keep me safe while she went to work, and somebody had to pay our bills.

She told me I was an especially good girl and she knew I couldn’t help freeze-framing because I was too young to understand the danger it put us in. She said even though I had a mega brain, certain concepts were still beyond my grasp. I don’t think anything was beyond my grasp. I just didn’t have any fear.

She told me one day I would be grown up enough that the cage would no longer be necessary. I thought maybe she’d let me out at night when she was home but she said I didn’t have the self-discipline yet to risk it. She thought I’d run away. I probably would have.

She wasn’t being mean to me.

She was doing what she had to do. For us. She worried about me and was keeping me safe.

Years passed.

We developed routines. Life went on. You don’t know things are strange when you don’t know any different. She was good to me.

She pushed in food through the same slot in the cage that I used to push out bedpans.

In the evenings, after we ate dinner together on the floor, she brought me bowls of warm soapy water and helped me give myself a bath and clean my hair, which she brushed and braided by reaching through the bars.

We played jacks and cards and she bought me coloring books and crayons and hung my best pictures on the living room walls. On special nights we had popcorn and she rented a movie for us.

My birthdays came and went and I was always so excited because each year it was the very best thing that could possibly be happening to me—I was getting OLDER. We marked the occasion each year with my favorite meal of thick Irish stew and soda bread and creamed corn and chocolate ice cream for dessert, while telling each other bodacious stories about all the thrilling things we would one day do when I was free.

She hung a calendar on the wall behind the new sofa she bought to replace the couch I’d broken, and I watched with shining eyes as she crossed off the weeks and months, knowing each black slash took me one day closer to the last calendar she would ever hang.

Though she was gone all day, she left me well cared for with the TV on, lots of blankets and pillows, and all my favorite food, which we could afford again, and bedpans nearby.

When she came home at night, she’d spend hours with me, reading me stories, telling me about her day and all the wonderful things we were going to do when I was OLDER and she could let me out.

I really thought we were going to make it.

I thought one day the door would swing wide and we’d get busy doing all those things we’d missed.

She said that a lot: that we were going to make up for LOST TIME. I heard that word in all capitals, too, colored the dreary shade of dirty snow.

But I think whenever you put other people in a cage—any kind of cage—you start to think of them as less real.

JADA

Jada sat in Ryodan’s office, her arms folded behind her head, long legs outstretched, boots kicked up on the desk, body thrumming with restless energy. Killing time, waiting for something to happen, wasn’t one of her strong suits. In truth, it wasn’t a suit in her deck of cards at all, it was incarceration in a high security prison. Yet here she sat and would continue to sit for days, if it meant getting Mac back.

Cruce had sifted out some time ago, instructing them to return the spear with all haste while he watched the Unseelie princess, and the instant the Book summoned her, he’d sift back and alert them. Christian had vanished hot on his heels, muttering something about seeing to the needs of his clan.

She and Barrons had been analyzing strategies to get the spear back to Mac when he abruptly stiffened, as if listening to something only he could hear. We may just have gotten lucky, he said after a moment. I sense only Mac, nothing of the Sinsar Dubh. Remain here. I’m going to go get her.

And do what?

Bring her back here to contain her with the stones. Easier than trying to get four of us in and out of Mallucé’s.

Jada protested, But if she’s in control, she’s fighting it. And winning. You can’t shut her away now. She needs time.

Have you forgotten the Book has the ability to manipulate precisely that element? I suspect Cruce’s prediction of its moves is correct. With the spear, the Sinsar Dubh will hunt the queen. If it gains her power, too, it will be unstoppable. It’s now or never, Jada.

With every ounce of her being, Jada wanted to disagree. She despised cages of any kind and putting Mac in one was the last thing she wanted to do. Once something was shelved, it became far too easy to keep pushing that item back further and further until, draped with cobwebs and dust, it was forgotten.

Never. And you bloody well know it, Barrons growled.

She said, I’ll summon—Barrons roughly clamped his hand over her mouth, cutting off her words.

Don’t say his name. Don’t even think it. Merely saying it summons him. I don’t want that Fae fuck anywhere near Mac. He has far too much to gain by eliminating her, and nothing to lose. We do this with my men and no one else.