Sinking to the ground.

EATING Jo SLOWLY and with great GUSTO.

YES, YES, I tell It, YOU ARE CORRECT, THAT IS WHAT WAS IN YOUR TEETH. BITS OF JO WERE CAUGHT BETWEEN THEM. YOU ATE YOUR FRIEND. YOU KILLED HER, AND I MADE MY EYES GREEN FOR HER SO SHE DIED BELIEVING IT WAS YOU.

I feel It then.

The weakness I’ve come to know and cherish in my lovely bird in the cage. The surface of Its false facade cracks and emotion begins to seep in. It is so easy to break, so simple to control. I can never be broken in such fashion. I am superior.

Before they have time to place the final two stones, I recover control of my body and leap into the Silver.

As we pass through the gelatinous membrane, I realize, with utter incredulity, that I am being SCRAPED from MY limbs, MY eyes.

The bitch has somehow taken control BACK!

Then we’re through, mere inches from the queen, and MacKayla yanks me up short, a strike of a spear away from my goal.

All I require is control of my hand to kill the bitch queen and take what is mine.

I stare with bottomless hunger at Aoibheal from behind eyes I can’t influence, unable to affect so much as a finger. Again I assault MacKayla with images, this time of the woman I impaled on a spiked fence en route to the bookstore. The young, handsome man I left with nothing between his legs, bleeding in the street. The child I stabbed through the eye with my spear then twirled in the air as if on a skewer before tossing it into a crumpled heap.

It’s the last one that gets It.

It falters. I seize control of my hand, raise the spear and—

IT FREEZES ME AGAIN!

“I’m not dying for them,” the queen sneers contemptuously. “They’re not my people. They never were. You want the power of the Fae race? Fine. Take it.”

Aoibheal slams her palms into my chest.

MAC

But my eyes were green, I think dispassionately as the queen’s hands slam into my chest. Didn’t she notice?

Or perhaps she didn’t care, unwilling to take the chance I might lack the stamina to see my battle through.

Ancient power rushes into me, penetrating my sternum, burrowing deep, and I feel as if my body is being filled with dense brilliance. It gushes into me, in an endless flood.

Too much, too much, I can’t possibly hold it!

Then the queen is shoving me backward, into the mirror, back to the concubine’s side of the boudoir as she issues an imperious command through the Silver to Barrons: “She will be immobile for several minutes while she absorbs the True Magic. You must contain her. Now!”

I’d tell Barrons it’s not necessary because I’m in control, but I can’t affect my vocal cords, my mouth. Nor can the Sinsar Dubh. We’re both in a state of suspension, immobilized by the transference of the queen’s blinding, stupefying power. It feels as if five tons of concrete just got dumped into a quart jar. I’m not Fae. How is this even possible? Will it destroy me? Tear us apart? Is that her point, her purpose?

I remain at the ready—the composed, untouchable thing I’ve become—to defeat the Sinsar Dubh for good, the moment the power transfer is done.

Assuming we survive.

The Book tried its best to restore emotion to me and nearly succeeded.

But failed.

I’m beyond emotion now. I bear no guilt, no sins. I know neither right nor wrong. There is only aim and purity of purpose, the path I’ve chosen to walk.

Distantly, I hear Cruce roar furiously, “Why would you give it to a human? I was here! I am the worthy successor yet you gave it to her.”

Aoibheal says, “I know everything now, Cruce—you who were once my treasured friend. My memory is restored. You betrayed me. You promised to return me to my world and let me die.”

“I gave you everything! I gave you immortality—”

“I never wanted it,” she snarls. “You knew that!”

“But to give it to a human?” he sneers. “Can she even carry it?”

“This one can,” Aoibheal says, and I hear something in her voice and realize she did notice that my eyes were green. She knew it was me, not the Book. And did it anyway. Why?

“You took everything from me,” she says to Cruce. “But even that was not enough for you. In time, I might have chosen to pass my power to you as I faded, risk a patriarchal rule. I saw your strength. Even, at times, your wisdom. But you tried to steal it from me.”

“For the good of our kind!”

“Your kind,” she says with an icy laugh, “not mine, and your kind is beyond hope now. The moment the Earth dies—thanks to yet another of the king’s reckless acts of creation—the entire race of the Tuatha De Danann will expire; each and every one of you. Think no longer of yourself as immortal. You have mere months at best.”

“We will leave this planet,” Cruce hisses.

“Run as far as you want. It will do you no good. I bound the seat of our race’s power to the Earth.”

Cruce inhales sharply. Then says disbelievingly, “What the fuck were you thinking? Planets die! You know that!”

She laughs mirthlessly. “And now, so will the Fae. The instant the Earth does.”

I can do nothing to arrest the velocity with which Aoibheal shoved me into the Silver. After what seemed several long moments of passing through it, I explode from the sticky membrane, go flying backward through the air, and crash violently to the floor.

My head snaps back and smacks marble with such force I see stars.

Then darkness claims me and I see no more.