Such as when I force her to watch her own hand feeding starry runes to the black holes, exponentially expanding their growth, destroying her planet in a matter of mere days, instead of the months it might currently take.

WAKE THE FUCK UP. THERE ARE ALWAYS MORE WORLDS.

I will rule all of them.

I will be feared, revered, obeyed, got-it-made in the motherfucking shade.

Fragile MacKayla, so easily broken. She gets attached to things: people, places, even pieces of clothing, as if it fucking matters what she wears, where she lives. As if any of the people around her are actually real. No one is real but me. They are things, not alive. Not like I am.

I’m disappointed she buckled so soon. I’d indulged myself in additional festivities en route to the White Mansion, the results of which, sadly, she didn’t get to see. I’d wanted her to watch the splendid feats I’d done with her hands but she’d been GONE, so near to DEAD I’ve begun to wonder if I’ll even get the chance to torture her more.

I’ll revive her. She can’t escape me. That’s a certainty in my world: we will ALWAYS be together. I will always have my sad little horse to break and repair, break and repair.

She will watch me K’Vruck her world and everything in it. Brilliance such as mine demands an audience. I won’t be cheated of my chance to watch her do what she does best—BLEEDBLEEDBLEED—and revel in being ME not It as It spews emotion all over the place. I won’t be deprived of the opportunity to see It realize, fully understand, how clever, powerful, and brilliant I am. One of those priceless, perfect moments I gather like luminous pearls where, in the horrified comprehension in It’s gaze I know It KNOWS It helped orchestrate It’s own destruction. That’s the moment I crave, desire, lust for, when my toys realize THEY are to BLAME for their own fucking fate. I wonder if anyone drank my poisoned water at the abbey and bled out, ruing that I wasn’t there at the moment they realized what they’d done to themselves. They didn’t HAVE to take a drink. They CHOSE to. I am not to blame. THEY KILLED THEMSELVES. But there will be endless opportunities for such rich experiences soon.

When I kick open the door to the boudoir, I draw up, surprised into a moment of near-immobility.

Triumph saturates my being.

Again I’m vindicated by the universe.

Chance favors the prepared mind. The universe adores the bold, fearless conqueror and seeks to aid him.

No need to summon the queen.

She’s already here.

I leap into the room, drag the princess in behind me, slam the door, and exclaim brightly, “SH-BOOM!”

AOIBHEAL

“It’s mad,” Aoibheal said softly, staring through the shadowy, translucent Silver at the thing that had just burst into the concubine’s boudoir, shouting nonsense. “Utterly and completely mad.”

“Awk! Maaaaad!” the T’murra agreed.

She swept at the bird with her hand, urging it, “Fly now, young one! Go! I’ll not see you harmed, too.”

“Ack! Fly now!” It pecked at her cheek sharply, as if urging her into action.

“I can’t,” Aoibheal said. She was trapped. Was this the fate the king intended for her? Had he decided to terminate her existence in such a cruel, ironic fashion because she’d forced him to face what he’d refused to believe for eons—that his lover had left him by choice? “Go!” She shooed it again. “It feeds on death and destruction. I’ll not give it more of what it wants.”

Still the T’murra kept its talons dug deep into her cloak.

“Get off me!” She smacked lightly at its feathery belly with her hand.

“Ack!” It gave her a look of seeming reproach and lifted off, echoing in a loud squawk, “Give it what it wants!”

The T’murra soared up to the safety of the starry night sky, shrieking the random selection of words over and over again. Even as peaceful Zara, she’d sometimes longed to muzzle her talkative companions’ lovely beaks.

Steeling herself, she turned to face her would-be executioner.

MacKayla O’Connor, the young child whom she’d so often visited in dreams, was now a grown woman, her jeans crusted with blood and entrails, her hair a wild mass of tangled clumps, the look in her eyes completely and utterly insane.

Black irises had obliterated green and, as the Fae queen stared through the shadowy Silver at her, she felt a pale regret. She’d manipulated the O’Connor as she herself had been manipulated. As the Fae king had tinkered with the mortal Zara, so too had the Fae queen tinkered with the mortal Mac.

But regret changed nothing, pale or vivid. The Sinsar Dubh was in full possession of what had once been human, but the golden glow of the O’Connor’s soul was already fading. No soul would survive long, possessed by such evil as what faced her now, with but one goal: to kill her and seize the True Magic of her race.

No. Not her race.

The race she despised.

The race that would soon become extinct without the Song of Making.

And good riddance to it.

The Book would no doubt then seek her elixir, become immortal, thus ensuring the final death of the O’Connor’s soul. She would become every bit as much a monster as the one that possessed her.

Aoibheal narrowed her eyes. She felt the proximity of the others, those who sought to stop the Sinsar Dubh. She felt, too, the presence of the legendary four stones carved from the cliffs of the Unseelie prison, etched with powerful spells, capable of holding the Sinsar Dubh in a state of suspended animation.