Darroc’s hand tightens on the blazing amulet. “Step out of the circle!”

The pressure is crushing. It can be eased only by obeying.

“Throw me the amulet!”

He flinches, raises his hand, snarls, and jerks it back down.

For the next few minutes, he and I each try to bend the other to our will, until we are finally forced to concede that we are at an impasse. My Voice does not work on him. Neither amulet nor Voice works on me.

We are matched. Fascinating. I am his equal. My, what a creature I’ve become.

He circles me, and I turn with him, a faint smile curving my lips, my eyes alight. I am charged. I am exhilarated. I’m pumped on the power of my runes and myself. We study each other as if confronting a new species.

I offer my hand, an invitation to step to my side.

He looks down at the runes. “I am not that great a fool.” His voice is deep, musical. He is beautiful. I understand why my sister wanted him. Tall, golden-skinned, there is an otherworldly eroticism to him that being made mortal by his queen did not eradicate. The scar on his face draws the eye, begs the finger to trace it, to learn the story behind it.

I cannot ask how great a fool, because it would betray that I don’t know what my runes are.

“What happened to Barrons?” he says after a time.

“I killed him.”

He searches my face, and I know he is trying to come up with any scenario that might explain the way Barrons was mutilated and killed. If he examined the body, he saw the spear wound, and he knows I carry it. He knows I stabbed him at least once.

“Why?”

“I wearied of his incessant boorishness.” I wink. Let him think me mad. I am. In every sense of the word.

“I didn’t think he could be killed. The Fae have long feared him.”

“Turns out the spear was his weakness. It’s why he never wanted to touch it.”

He absorbs my words, and I know he’s trying to decide why a Fae weapon could kill Jericho Barrons. I’d like to know, too. Was it the spear that dealt the killing blow? Would he have died of that wound eventually regardless of whether Ryodan had slit his throat?

“Yet he armed you with it? You expect me to believe that?”

“Like you, he thought I was all fluff and no teeth. Too stupid to be worth suspicion. ‘Lamb to the slaughter’ was how he liked to phrase it. Little lamb killed the lion. Guess I showed him, huh?” I wink again.

“I burned his body. There is nothing left but ash.” He watches my face carefully.

“Good.”

“If there was any way he might rise, he never will now. The princes scattered his ashes to a hundred dimensions.” His gaze is piercing now.

“I should have thought of that myself. Thank you for finishing it so well.” My mind is on the new world I plan to create. I’ve said good-bye to this one.

Copper eyes narrow, glittering with scorn. “You didn’t kill Barrons. What happened? What are you playing at?”

“He betrayed me,” I lie.

“How?”

“It’s none of your business. I had my reasons.” I watch him watch me. He wonders if the rape of the Unseelie Princes and my time in the Hall of All Days has unhinged me. He wonders if I’m unbalanced enough to have gone crazy and actually killed Barrons for pissing me off. When he glances down at the runes again, I know he thinks I have enough juice to have pulled it off.

“Step out of the circle. I have your parents and will kill them if you don’t obey me.”

“I don’t care.” I scoff.

He stares. He heard the truth in my words.

I don’t care. An essential part of me is dead. I don’t mourn it. This is no longer my world. What happens here doesn’t matter. In this reality, I’m already on borrowed time. I will rebuild a new one or die trying.

“I’m free, Darroc. I’m really, truly free.” I shrug my shoulders, toss my head, and laugh.

He sucks in a sharp breath when I say his name and laugh, and I know that I’ve reminded him of my sister. Did she say those words to him once? Does he hear joy in my laughter, as he once heard in hers?

He stalks a tight circle around me, eyes narrowed. “What changed? In the days since I abducted your parents and today, what happened to you?”

“What happened to me started happening a long time ago. You should have kept Alina alive. I hated you for that.”

“And now?”

I look him up and down. “Now is different. Things are different. We are different.”

His eyes search mine, left to right and back again, rapidly. “What are you saying?”