I listen, analyzing everything he tells me, looking for chinks in his armor. I know Fae have “feelings” such as arrogance, superiority, mockery, and condescension. Listening to him, I add pride, vengeance, impatience, gloating, and amusement to the list.

We’ve been making small talk for some time, watching each other intently. I’ve told him about growing up in Ashford, my first impressions of Dublin, my love of fast cars. He has told me more about his fall from grace, what he did, why he did it. We compete to disarm each other with trivial confidences that betray nothing of importance.

As we cross the valley, I say, “Why go to the Unseelie prison? Why not the Seelie court?”

“And give Aoibheal the opportunity to finish me off for good? The next time I see the bitch, she dies.”

Was that why he’d taken my spear—to kill the queen? He’d lifted it without my awareness, just like V’lane had. How? He wasn’t Fae anymore. Had he eaten so much Unseelie that he was now a mutant with unpredictable abilities? I recall being in the church, sandwiched between Unseelie Princes, turning the spear on myself, throwing it, striking the pedestal of a basin, holy water splashing, steam hissing. How had he made me throw it away then? How had he taken it from me now?

“Is the queen at the Seelie court right now?” I cast my net again.

“How would I know? I have been banished. Assuming I found a way in, the first Seelie that saw me would kill me.”

“Don’t you have allies at the Seelie court? Isn’t V’lane your friend?”

He snorts disdainfully. “We sat on her High Council together. Though he gives lip service to Fae supremacy and speaks of walking the earth freely again without the odious Compact governing us—us, as if humans could govern their gods!—when it comes to action, V’lane is Aoibheal’s lapdog and always has been. I am now human, according to my fairer brethren, and they despise me.”

“I thought you said they worshipped you as a hero for tearing the walls down and freeing them.”

His eyes narrow. “I said they will. Soon, I will be heralded as the savior of our race.”

“So you went to the Unseelie prison. That was risky.” I prod to keep him talking. As long as he’s talking, I can focus on his words, on my goals. Silence isn’t golden, it’s deadly. It’s a vacuum that fills up with ghosts.

“I needed the Hunters. As a Fae, I could summon them. As a mortal, I had to physically seek them.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t kill you on sight.” Hunters hate humans. The black-skinned, winged demons have no love for anything but themselves.

“Death is not a Hunter’s delight. Too final.”

A memory flickers through his eyes, and I know that when he found them, they did things to him that made him scream for a long time.

“They agreed to help me in exchange for permanent freedom. They taught me to eat Unseelie. After tracking weaknesses in the prison walls, where Unseelie had escaped before, I patched them.”

“To make yourself the only game in town.”

He nods. “If my dark brethren were going to be freed, they would be thanking me for it. I discovered how to link Silvers and created a passage to Dublin through the White Mansion.”

“Why here?”

“Of all the dimensions I explored, this one remains the most stable, aside from a few … inconveniences. It seems Cruce’s curse had little effect on this realm, other than to splinter dimensions that are easily avoided.”

I call them IFPs but I do not tell him this. It made Barrons smile. Little made Barrons smile.

I think I’m under control, that I’ve stripped away all weaknesses. That committing to my mission has made me impervious. I’m wrong. The thought of Barrons smiling brings other thoughts.

Barrons naked.

Dancing.

Dark head thrown back.

Laughing.

The image doesn’t “gently swim up in my mind” in a dreamy sort of way, like I’ve seen in movies. No, this one slams into my head like a nuclear missile, exploding in my brain in graphic detail. I suffocate in a mushroom cloud of pain.

I can’t breathe. I squeeze my eyes shut.

White teeth flashing in his dark face: I get knocked down but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.

I stagger.

But he didn’t get up, the bastard. He stayed down.

With my spear in his back. How am I supposed to find my way each day without him here to help me? I don’t know what to do, how to make decisions.

I can’t survive this grief! I stumble and go down on one knee. I clutch my head.