But my eyes were green, I think dispassionately as the queen’s hands slam into my chest. Didn’t she notice?

Or perhaps she didn’t care, unwilling to take the chance I might lack the stamina to see my battle through.

Ancient power rushes into me, penetrating my sternum, burrowing deep, and I feel as if my body is being filled with dense brilliance. It gushes into me, in an endless flood.

Too much, too much, I can’t possibly hold it!

Then the queen is shoving me backward, into the mirror, back to the concubine’s side of the boudoir as she issues an imperious command through the Silver to Barrons: “She will be immobile for several minutes while she absorbs the True Magic. You must contain her. Now!”

I’d tell Barrons it’s not necessary because I’m in control, but I can’t affect my vocal cords, my mouth. Nor can the Sinsar Dubh. We’re both in a state of suspension, immobilized by the transference of the queen’s blinding, stupefying power. It feels as if five tons of concrete just got dumped into a quart jar. I’m not Fae. How is this even possible? Will it destroy me? Tear us apart? Is that her point, her purpose?

I remain at the ready—the composed, untouchable thing I’ve become—to defeat the Sinsar Dubh for good, the moment the power transfer is done.

Assuming we survive.

The Book tried its best to restore emotion to me and nearly succeeded.

But failed.

I’m beyond emotion now. I bear no guilt, no sins. I know neither right nor wrong. There is only aim and purity of purpose, the path I’ve chosen to walk.

Distantly, I hear Cruce roar furiously, “Why would you give it to a human? I was here! I am the worthy successor yet you gave it to her.”

Aoibheal says, “I know everything now, Cruce—you who were once my treasured friend. My memory is restored. You betrayed me. You promised to return me to my world and let me die.”

“I gave you everything! I gave you immortality—”

“I never wanted it,” she snarls. “You knew that!”

“But to give it to a human?” he sneers. “Can she even carry it?”

“This one can,” Aoibheal says, and I hear something in her voice and realize she did notice that my eyes were green. She knew it was me, not the Book. And did it anyway. Why?

“You took everything from me,” she says to Cruce. “But even that was not enough for you. In time, I might have chosen to pass my power to you as I faded, risk a patriarchal rule. I saw your strength. Even, at times, your wisdom. But you tried to steal it from me.”

“For the good of our kind!”

“Your kind,” she says with an icy laugh, “not mine, and your kind is beyond hope now. The moment the Earth dies—thanks to yet another of the king’s reckless acts of creation—the entire race of the Tuatha De Danann will expire; each and every one of you. Think no longer of yourself as immortal. You have mere months at best.”

“We will leave this planet,” Cruce hisses.

“Run as far as you want. It will do you no good. I bound the seat of our race’s power to the Earth.”

Cruce inhales sharply. Then says disbelievingly, “What the fuck were you thinking? Planets die! You know that!”

She laughs mirthlessly. “And now, so will the Fae. The instant the Earth does.”

I can do nothing to arrest the velocity with which Aoibheal shoved me into the Silver. After what seemed several long moments of passing through it, I explode from the sticky membrane, go flying backward through the air, and crash violently to the floor.

My head snaps back and smacks marble with such force I see stars.

Then darkness claims me and I see no more.

When I regain consciousness, I’m in a chair, in the middle of the concubine’s boudoir, unable to move.

My eyes are open, and beyond twinkling diamonds suspended on air I see the cocooned body of the Unseelie princess, the thunderous-faced Cruce, being forcibly restrained by stony-eyed Fade and Lor, ashen-faced Jada, eyes enormous and full of grief, and beyond her the residue of the concubine, reclining on her plush white bed.

Barrons. My beautiful Barrons stands in front of me, dark gaze glittering with crimson flecks, mouth drawn back in a silent snarl.

The shimmering blue-black containment field of stone connecting to stone stretches between us from floor to ceiling, vanishing around my sides where I see no more of it but know my prison is complete. And as I suspected, it renders both the Book and me fully inert while leaving both of us fully cognizant.

That’s okay. It’s done. The Sinsar Dubh is contained and can no longer harm anyone.

Not true, sweet thing, it purrs. I have YOU and an eternity to punish you for what you’ve done. Before, I was alone beneath the abbey. Now, I have a TOY. And I WILL break free again. It’s only a matter of time. And tiiiiiiiiiiiime, it croons with guttural glee, is on my side, YES IT IS!

It resurrects the images it fed me before, slamming them into my brain in gruesome detail.

I have no idea if I did the things it shows me, if I really killed Jo so horrifically, causing her such hellish pain, while she believed it was me, or if everything is merely an illusion the Sinsar Dubh feeds me.

But here and now, it’s irrelevant.

I know what it’s doing. Trying to distract me while it searches for the True Magic inside us, in hopes of using it to quell me, and break free of our prison.

But it’s too late.

I’ve already found it.

Legs splayed, arms folded, I stand atop the shining vault of power the queen passed us, blazing with purpose and power.

I will never let the Book touch it.

It’s in my kingdom.

That makes it mine.

MACKAYLA, it says in a singsong voice. I KNOW YOU’RE IN HERE. OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE! COME OUT COME OUT WHEREVER YOU ARE! STOP BEING SO TIRESOME. YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT ME. ALL YOU DID WAS TEMPORARILY SUSPEND EMOTION. THAT DOESN’T MAKE YOU MY EQUAL. YOU CAN NEVER BE MY EQUAL. I AM SUPERIOR IN EVERY WAY.

No, it’s not. I may have turned off my emotion but I can turn it back on.

It has no emotion to turn on. That is its two-dimensional, flat, miserable, unsatisfying existence.

I’m fully formed, missing nothing, needing nothing to leech onto. I have worlds of possibility inside me. It has none. It’s empty, so empty that it tries desperately to fill itself by stealing from others.

The Sinsar Dubh is the true cardboard cutout, empty, flat, and flawed, with its parasitic needs scribbled on its face for all to see.