When I regain consciousness, I’m in a chair, in the middle of the concubine’s boudoir, unable to move.

My eyes are open, and beyond twinkling diamonds suspended on air I see the cocooned body of the Unseelie princess, the thunderous-faced Cruce, being forcibly restrained by stony-eyed Fade and Lor, ashen-faced Jada, eyes enormous and full of grief, and beyond her the residue of the concubine, reclining on her plush white bed.

Barrons. My beautiful Barrons stands in front of me, dark gaze glittering with crimson flecks, mouth drawn back in a silent snarl.

The shimmering blue-black containment field of stone connecting to stone stretches between us from floor to ceiling, vanishing around my sides where I see no more of it but know my prison is complete. And as I suspected, it renders both the Book and me fully inert while leaving both of us fully cognizant.

That’s okay. It’s done. The Sinsar Dubh is contained and can no longer harm anyone.

Not true, sweet thing, it purrs. I have YOU and an eternity to punish you for what you’ve done. Before, I was alone beneath the abbey. Now, I have a TOY. And I WILL break free again. It’s only a matter of time. And tiiiiiiiiiiiime, it croons with guttural glee, is on my side, YES IT IS!

It resurrects the images it fed me before, slamming them into my brain in gruesome detail.

I have no idea if I did the things it shows me, if I really killed Jo so horrifically, causing her such hellish pain, while she believed it was me, or if everything is merely an illusion the Sinsar Dubh feeds me.

But here and now, it’s irrelevant.

I know what it’s doing. Trying to distract me while it searches for the True Magic inside us, in hopes of using it to quell me, and break free of our prison.

But it’s too late.

I’ve already found it.

Legs splayed, arms folded, I stand atop the shining vault of power the queen passed us, blazing with purpose and power.

I will never let the Book touch it.

It’s in my kingdom.

That makes it mine.

MACKAYLA, it says in a singsong voice. I KNOW YOU’RE IN HERE. OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE! COME OUT COME OUT WHEREVER YOU ARE! STOP BEING SO TIRESOME. YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT ME. ALL YOU DID WAS TEMPORARILY SUSPEND EMOTION. THAT DOESN’T MAKE YOU MY EQUAL. YOU CAN NEVER BE MY EQUAL. I AM SUPERIOR IN EVERY WAY.

No, it’s not. I may have turned off my emotion but I can turn it back on.

It has no emotion to turn on. That is its two-dimensional, flat, miserable, unsatisfying existence.

I’m fully formed, missing nothing, needing nothing to leech onto. I have worlds of possibility inside me. It has none. It’s empty, so empty that it tries desperately to fill itself by stealing from others.

The Sinsar Dubh is the true cardboard cutout, empty, flat, and flawed, with its parasitic needs scribbled on its face for all to see.

I HAVE NO NEEDS, BITCH! IT IS YOU WHO ARE FLAWED!

It’s nothing but need. Empty, greedy, black-hole-sucking need. And it knows it, so it tells itself lie after lie, weaves an elaborate illusion of superiority, in hopes of escaping the horrific awareness that it is fatally, damningly flawed, missing something of the divine the rest of us have.

An epiphany takes gentle root within me.

The Sinsar Dubh has no hold on me.

The only hold it ever had was that it managed to latch onto me when I was unaware, innocent and young, and didn’t know such monsters existed.

I’m no longer unaware, innocent, or young.

I don’t need to evict it.

I can simply walk away.

When I rise from the chair, those in the boudoir panic and begin to roar at one another.

But not Barrons.

He stands motionless, searching my eyes through the crackling blue-black wall, and slowly, very slowly, the corner of his mouth ticks up in a smile.

I smile back as I move toward the perimeter of the prison that can’t contain me, wasn’t designed to do so, because I’m not the Sinsar Dubh and never was.

I have an unfortunate hitchhiker.

It’s time to kick it out of the car.

As I step into the containment field, the Sinsar Dubh screams, DON’T YOU DARE LEAVE ME! DON’T YOU KNOW YOU CAN’T EXIST WITHOUT ME? I LOVE YOU, MACKAYLA! I’M THE ONLY ONE THAT LOVES YOU! I’M NOT DONE WITH YOU! I WILL KILL YOU! GET BACK HERE! I WILL DESTROY—

I’m beyond the containment field of the stones.

I’m free.

I can no longer hear the Sinsar Dubh’s threats and taunts.

And never will again.

Lingering in the ether, the Unseelie King retrieved the small scroll tied with a lock of his lover’s hair from where he carried it near his heart. He rolled the tiny thing in his enormous palm.

He knew now.

She’d left him by choice.

He’d suspected the Elixir of Remembering had only a nominal chance of success. He’d created it when he realized he was losing memories to the relentless march of time. He’d wanted to keep each moment of his existence alive, vivid in detail, visceral and immediate. Imbibed on a daily basis, the elixir conferred the result he’d desired.

But as he’d feared, drinking it hundreds of thousands of years after the Cauldron of Forgetting had done its damage restored only the details, none of the context or associated feelings. She was Zara, yet possessed none of the spectacular passion and fire that had so ensorcelled him. As icy as the First Queen had ever been, she wanted nothing more from him than her freedom.

He’d been a fool to believe he’d been given a second chance.

Dropping the scroll, he ground it to dust beneath his heel then vanished, seeking solitude where old gods do, among the stars.