I gestured to my mouth and nudged Alina, who told them, “She can’t talk. If she opens her mouth, the song will come out. Cruce gave it to her on the condition she didn’t use it for four hours. We’ve got two minutes to go.”

It was a testament to what a bizarre bunch of people we were that no one even asked any questions. They all just nodded and waited, resolute soldiers, for whatever happened next.

I absorbed our small group, looking from cherished face to face.

Alina. She met my gaze levelly and smiled faintly. “Good to go, little Mac.”

Clenching my jaw so I wouldn’t blurt a reply or burst into tears, I turned my gaze to Dani and Dancer, who were standing off to the side, holding hands, and although Dancer looked tired, his eyes were brilliant with excitement. Dani’s face was marble, chiseled and hard as stone, her gaze cold, but I knew my girl well, and when she felt the most—at this moment hoping with every cell in her body the song would work miracles on his heart—was when she tried the hardest to hide it. She stole a quick glance at Ryodan, and the hand that wasn’t holding Dancer’s fisted and her face solidified even more. For a moment her eyes flickered and emotion nearly broke through, but she got control of herself again.

Ryodan stood as far from the pair as he could while still being in the group, near enough to the black hole that his shirt was fluttering in the wind, his stance rigid. I thought of the brand Dani wore and suspected last night had been difficult for him. I wondered just how much he’d felt of her passion, her pleasure, and love for Dancer. Ryodan glanced at Dani and his gaze went from her face to their joined hands. He smiled faintly but it didn’t reach his eyes. They remained ancient, cold, eminently self-contained.

He whipped that silvery gaze to me then and spoke inside my mind. If I don’t make it, help her rescue Shazam. ASAP. And that means as-soon-as-the-fuck-possible-nothing-else-has-priority. Swear it.

I nodded.

Take care of her.

Always.

And tell her not to vibrate on the kid. His heart can’t handle it. It generates a subtle electrical charge.

I blinked. Well, I had my answer. The brand broadcast pretty much everything. I nodded again and he looked swiftly away.

Christian. I met his gaze and he smiled faintly and shrugged as if to say, I never thought it was going to get better anyway. Then he threw back his dark head and laughed.

Dani shot him a look. “Dude,” she said admiringly.

How Christian had changed. How we’d all changed. Keeping the best parts, letting the worst drop away.

I looked at Barrons.

It was entirely possible in a very short time only Dani, Dancer, and I would still be standing here.

Barrons glided toward me in that eerie, fluid fashion, stopped and laced our hands together.

We would hold on to each other until the last.

Sun, moon, and stars, I told him.

He inclined his head. Of all the years, this one with you has been my finest. Fire to my ice, Mac.

Frost to my flame, Jericho.

Forever, we said, and it was a vow far more powerful and binding than any ring or piece of paper.

There was nothing more to say. If we hadn’t said it already, we’d fucked up and no reparations could be made at this late hour.

But his eyes said he was proud of the woman I’d become. And my eyes said that I was proud he was my man. And we smiled at each other, then he said something I never thought I’d hear Jericho Barrons say. He said—

“Fuck!” Alina exploded. “Mac, the Sinsar Dubh is here!”

For a moment I simply couldn’t process what Alina had said. We’d left the Sinsar Dubh trapped in the boudoir. It could only be here if (a) it had broken free of the stones, (b) found a body to carry it, and (c) escaped mere minutes after we’d left.

I couldn’t feel it at all. My sidhe-seer senses were completely muted by the presence of the song inside me. I spun wildly, trying to locate it, then shot a frantic look at Alina and she pointed behind me.

I whirled to find myself ten paces from the Unseelie princess we’d left cocooned in the boudoir.

Her mouth stretched impossibly wide, reminding me of Derek O’Bannion when he’d been possessed by the first Book, revealing rows and rows of whirling, sharp metal teeth. For a moment I thought she was going to eat me, bite off my head and swallow it, but she convulsed as if retching then abruptly a dark storm exploded from her jaws.

It darted straight for me.

I couldn’t sift. I had little True Magic, but I had the song, and I needed to sing it, now, to destroy the Sinsar Dubh once and for all. I opened my mouth but the inky cloud the Unseelie princess had retched narrowed to a thin funnel of toxic dust and shot straight for it. I clamped my teeth shut again so hard it hurt my entire skull. Then Barrons was lunging, trying to intercept the dark storm in his own impossibly wide jaws, transforming into the beast as he moved.

The cloud retracted into the Unseelie princess and, as I watched, stunned, Barrons twisted in midair, slapped a crimson rune on her I’d not even known he’d been carrying and had no idea where he’d gotten it from, then grabbed her by the shoulders and ground his mouth to hers in a savage kiss.

He sucked the Sinsar Dubh right out of the princess’s body in one long lip-locked inhale.

The Unseelie princess collapsed, dead, to the ground.

And all I could think was, Barrons could kill with a kiss? I thought I’d known what he was. I narrowed my eyes. I’d kissed that lethal mouth many times.

He whirled and bore down on me, eyes obsidian, full black, no crimson sparks, nothing left of my Jericho at all, and he roared, “Fucking sing, Mac, I can’t hold it long!”

The shadow exploded out of his mouth as he spoke. He shuddered violently and clawed at the air, and forcibly sucked the Sinsar Dubh back in.

I shot Alina a frantic goodbye, locked eyes with Barrons, and I opened my mouth and released the Song of Making.

I will never be able to put into words what it is. Frequency that elevates to a level of being we don’t yet understand while rendering insignificant the many daily burdens we think we carry. The song was made in Heaven, if such a place exists, by angels, spun of the divine.

For a time I was nowhere and everywhere listening to—no, being—music of such exquisite perfection that I was whole and right and I knew absolutely everything and understood it all. Each detail of existence was revealed, without enigma or confusion. I apprehended myself, the world, others, with exquisite clarity. Our entire existence was fluid and living and, as a race, a planet, a universe, it was all connected and we were all part of one another. And when we hurt one another, we hurt ourselves. And when we warred, we hurt the universe, and that was ourselves. And we were so stupid sometimes I couldn’t believe the song even hung around and let us use it.