Picture this: Two people are in a room. One’s a sociopath, one’s not. Who has the advantage?

The sociopath. Because it knows it’s a sociopath. The empath doesn’t. The empath thinks they’re playing by the same rules. They aren’t. They aren’t even playing the same game.

There are no rules with a sociopath. There’s only—

DESIRE, LUST, GREED, AND THE PATH WE CHOOSE TO SUPREMACY.

The words explode in the vacuum around me, stunning me.

I crane my awareness, as if I might turn this way and that, peering into darkness I can’t see with eyes I don’t have.

I just heard the Sinsar Dubh!

Because I’m finally starting to see through its games? Because this motherfucking empath knows it’s standing in a room with a psychopath? Ah, suddenly we’re playing the same game.

Now we both have no rules. I cast aside all my preconceptions, everything I thought and believed about the Sinsar Dubh, and begin at ground zero. What is the Book really? How much control over me does it really have?

I realize, much to my surprise, that it’s oddly fascinating being nothing but a consciousness. It’s strangely…freeing. Not that I’d choose to stay in this state, but it’s much easier to focus my thoughts. I feel no pain. Nothing hurts or itches or is getting stiff from sitting in one position too long. I’m not worried about how my hair or nails look because I don’t have any. I’m not hungry. I don’t need to go to the bath—

Oh, God, but it does now!

The mouth I don’t have wants to laugh. I wonder how that’s going for it, as it tries to acclimate to the demands of my body with no instruction manual. It suffers limits it never used to have. Like the Unseelie, newly released from their prison, it must be ruled by endless, stupefying hunger—only unlike them, it now has a body it has no experience in caring for, and will make mistakes.

Good. I hope it’s struggling.

Not too much, I amend hastily, because I’d really like my body back in one piece. I hope it flounders just enough to fuck it up royally.

My copy of the Sinsar Dubh has never been corporeal except for a few murderous hours, and now it needs to pee, and eat, and wash (I hope), and do all those other taxing, distracting things humans have to do on a daily basis.

It occurs to me that these early hours, or days or whatever is passing, are when it’s going to be at its weakest, while it adjusts. I hope Barrons figures that out.

A coldly analytical sentience studied me my whole life, probing for weaknesses.

Two can play that game.

SOMETHING’S HAPPENING TO ME! WHAT IS IT?

The Book’s panicked thought echoes like thunder off mountains, thrilling me. I expand my awareness, reaching out, pressing at the indefinable limit of walls I feel somewhere around me. Why are we bleeding into each other? Is it playing a game with me? Trying to trick me, lull me into some other mistake? Are there any more mistakes I can even make? Or is it weakening for real?

I’m not alone. It’s in here, too. In me. We’re both in me. A barrier separates us but a barrier can be breached.

I will hunt it.

I will find it. Study it. Identify its cracks and flaws and weaknesses that can be exploited. I dredge up the information I learned in my abnormal psych course—surprisingly easy in here with no distractions—and reflect upon the characteristics of borderline personalities. This isn’t a battle of magic, it’s a battle of “frame”—that construct of reality we adopt as our own, what we believe about ourselves and our relation to the world. I have to change the Book’s frame the way it changed mine, chipping away at it, recasting it so it loses control. But first I have to get to it.

I WILL NOT LOSE CONTROL OF THIS VESSEL AGAIN!

I’d smile if I had a face. Yes. That’s it. You will. You will lose and I will win.

Something is happening to the Book, changing its circumstances, and whatever it is threatens its ability to hold my body. Is it me? Is my growing understanding weakening its hold? I expand my awareness and get slammed by a wave of bone-deep exhaustion. It’s the first sensation I’ve felt since the Book turned me into a Mac-in-the-box. Is something cranking my handle?

Oh, God, I know what’s happening! It needs to sleep. With its consciousness tethered to my physicality, it will eventually pass out. It has to. It can’t run my body around forever, or it would die. Bodies pass out when overexerted. What will happen to it then? What will happen to me?

I’m the constantly vigilant one now. I suffer no weariness, no need for slumber. I’m hyperalert, as clear as Ryodan’s castle of glass in which everything is visible and can be studied.

It speaks again, three words weakly.

Did. Someone. Poison.

I wait, stretching, craning, pressing outward with all my will.

Abruptly, the sensation of walls confining me vanishes and I feel like I’m being sucked out of my box by a hydraulic vacuum cleaner, decompressing, expanding, growing.

For a long, terrible moment I feel as if my consciousness is being torn in half, as if something is struggling to hold me in my box but I’m kicking and flailing, trying to break free. The tension becomes unbearable.

Abruptly, pain slams into me.

Pain everywhere! I’m staggered by it.

I open my eyes, desperate to see what’s causing the pain—

Holy shit.

I.

Open.

My eyes.

AOIBHEAL, QUEEN OF THE FAE

“You asinine fool, let me out of here!” Aoibheal shook her fist at the ceiling of the candlelit, flower-strewn boudoir in which she was trapped. Sparkling diamonds, illuminated from within by tiny twinkling fireflies, scattered around her fist and spiraled away through the air.

Her words, like all the others she’d spoken, threatened and cajoled, fell on deaf ears—if the uncaring Unseelie King was even listening. If he hadn’t wandered off, distracted by some amusement, fickle bastard that he was. She’d even tried telling the ceiling that she remembered who she was and she loved him again, but if the king was eavesdropping, her lie had been unconvincing.

Even here, trapped within a portion of the Silvers, Aoibheal could feel the turmoil of her court; the bitter acrimony among her castes with the deaths of the princes; the rising of new princes; and the suffering deep within the planet.

She felt, too, the birth of the massive, malevolent power inside the O’Connor sidhe-seer upon whom she’d so heavily relied. The Sinsar Dubh was no longer contained and now roamed Dublin, more aware, more dangerous than its prior incarnation. Moving with intent, purpose, and a plan. She knew she was targeted in its crosshairs, yet had no idea how upcoming events might unfold. This world and all its occupants had fallen off the grid of her projected possibles.