“We need to talk.”

“Understatement. You need to explain.” I spun in a circle, spear up. For whatever reason, I still had it.

“Sheathe the spear.”

“Why haven’t you taken it?”

“I offer you a show of good faith.”

“Where are you?” I demanded. I could hear his voice, but he wasn’t visible and the source of his voice kept moving.

“I will appear when you have given me your show of good faith.”

“Which is?”

“I choose to let you keep it. You choose to sheathe it. We will honor each other with trust and confidence.”

“Not a chance in hell.”

“I am not the only one that has some explaining to do. How did you bring the queen out through the king’s mirror?”

“Let me tell you what I don’t understand. Last Halloween I got raped by Unseelie Princes. You told me you were busy carrying your queen to safety on human feet. But now I know the queen had been in the Unseelie prison for—how did you word it?—many human years. Where were you really that night, V’lane?”

He materialized in front of me, a dozen feet away.

“I did not lie to you. Not entirely. I told you I could not be in two places at once, and that much was true. However, I misspoke when I said I was carrying my queen to safety. Instead, I was taking advantage of those hours, searching for her in Darroc’s Silvers. I was certain he was behind her disappearance. I believed he had imprisoned her in one of the stolen mirrors at LaRuhe, but I could not search those Silvers until the magic of the realms was neutralized. When I crushed his dolmen for you—which we rebuilt, and I succeeded in retrieving Christian only last night, or I would have come to explain myself sooner—I endeavored to search them then. But Darroc had learned much from journals stolen from the White Mansion, and I was unable to break his wards.”

“You spent the night I was getting raped searching his house and finding nothing?”

“A regrettable decision only because it did not yield fruit. I was certain she was there. If she had been, it would have been worth it. As it was, when I discovered what had transpired, I felt …” He lowered his lids over his eyes, leaving only a thin band of silver glittering beneath his lashes. “I felt.” His mouth shaped a bitter smile. “It was untenable. Fae do not feel. Certainly not the queen’s first prince. I tasted envy of my dark brethren for knowing you in a way I never would. I choked on rage that they harmed you. I grieved the loss of something of incomparable measure I could never have again. Is that not human regret? I felt …” He inhaled slow and deep, then blew it out. “Shame.”

“So you say.”

The smile twisted. “For the first time in my existence, I wanted to experience a temporary oblivion. I was unable to make my thoughts obey me. They wandered of their own accord to matters that were hellish to suffer. I was unable to make them stop. It made me want to stop. Is that love, MacKayla? Is that what it does to you? Why, then, do humans long for it?”

I jerked, remembering a moment when I’d considered stretching on the ground next to Barrons and bleeding out next to him.

“I am tired of being in impossible positions. For an eternity, my first allegiance has been to my queen. Without her, my race is doomed. There is no successor to her throne. There is none worthy or capable of leading my people. I could not choose to help you over attempting to recover her. My emotions, to which I had no right, could not be permitted to interfere. For too long I have been all that stands between peace and war.” He locked gazes with me. “Unless …”

“Unless what?”

“Still you point that spear at me.”

I stalked toward him, drawing my spear arm back.

He vanished.

He spoke behind me. “Could it be you are becoming like us?”

I whirled, eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Are you becoming Fae, in the way some long ago were born? I suspect the young Druid also suffers birth pains. It is a most unexpected development.”

“And unwelcome.”

“That remains to be seen.”

Was that his breath at my ear, his lips against my hair?

“It’s unwelcome to me! I’m not going to become one of you. Get it out. I don’t want it.”

I felt his hands on my waist, sliding lower, over my ass. “Immortality is a gift. Princess.”

“I’m not a princess and I’m not turning Fae.”

“Not yet perhaps. But you are something, are you not? I wonder what. I weary of watching Barrons piss circles around you. I tire of waiting for the day you will finally look at me and see that I am so much more than a Fae and a prince. I am a male. With hunger for you that knows no bottom. You and I, more than anyone else in the universe, are perfect for each other.”