I choke on the last marshmallow I’m trying to swallow whole. I kick up into fast-mo and try to fast-cough it out but it doesn’t work. Belatedly it occurs to me fast-mo might not have been the brightest move. Friction and mucus expand the confection like a waterlogged tampon. It swells in my throat and shuts down my airway.

I thump myself on the chest with a fist. Doesn’t help. I’m about to give myself the Heimlich over the back of a chair when Lor pounds the center of my back and the marshmallow splats out onto the coat of arms above the fireplace.

“Dude, no need to shove,” Dancer says. “I give her the Heimlich all the time. She doesn’t chew when she eats.”

I turn around and Dancer’s picking himself off the floor, looking irked. And tired. I wonder when he last slept. I forget he’s not superpowered like the rest of us just because he’s got a superbrain.

“Clean it up, Dani,” Kat says. “It’ll bake onto the medallion.”

I grab a napkin off the biscuit tray, not feeling so cocky anymore. There were casualties. I’d managed to let myself forget that for a sec. “Christian sacrificed himself because I couldn’t make up my mind.”

“An Unseelie prince sacrificed himself,” Kat echoes, like she has no clue what to make of it.

I don’t either. Why did he give himself up just to make my decision easier? I would have made a decision in another sec or two. We would have lost a lot more sidhe-seers to the Crimson Hag. Was it his way of proving he wasn’t full Unseelie yet? Maybe he was trying to make up for killing the woman he had sex with, or it was his idea of another wedding present.

“It’s pretty clear he’s obsessed with you, honey,” Lor says.

“Was obsessed,” Ryodan says. “The Hag took him out. Saved me the trouble and good fucking riddance.”

Now I have double the reason to track down the bitch and kill her. I have to free Christian so we can be even and call it quits between us. “We lost sidhe-seers,” I say. “One of them was Tanty Nana. She was too old. She should never have been out there to begin with.”

We’re all quiet a sec, thinking about her and the others that died.

Then Ryodan stands up and says to me, “Come on, kid. Let’s go.”

“Huh? Where?”

“You live with me now.”

“Bull-fecking-crikey!”

“She’s moving back into the abbey,” Kat says.

“Bull-fecking-crikey!”

“The Mega can take care of herself,” Dancer says. “If you bloody idiots didn’t just see that, you’re blind. Give her room to breathe.”

“Fecking crikey!” I agree totally. I adore Dancer. I shoot him a look that doesn’t bother trying to pretend otherwise.

Ryodan says, “She needs rules.”

Lor says, “Boss, all she needs is somebody to train with, vent some of that boundless fucking energy.”

Kat says, “What she needs is—”

While they’re all busy discussing my needs that they don’t know the first fecking thing about, I make like the wind and blow out, sure to bang the door loud on the way.

I steal Ryodan’s Humvee and head for the city.

He’ll never catch me in one of the buses or big trucks that are the only other vehicles at the abbey.

I wish I could have brought Dancer with me but I never would have escaped if I’d slowed myself down.

Ain’t nobody knows what I need better than me. They’re probably all back there, still bickering, trying to decide how to control me and run my life.

I snicker. “Dudes. Never. Going. To. Happen.”

FORTY-FOUR

“This is not the end, this is not the beginning”

So I’m blowing through the streets of Dublin after ditching the Humvee on the main road where Ryodan or one of his dudes is sure to spot it on their way back to Chester’s because no matter how bugfuck he makes me, I got no desire to take something of his permanent-like. He’d probably hunt me for for-fecking-ever, instead of just trying to boss me around for-fecking-ever. That dude’s radar is something I don’t want to be any bigger on.

Live at Chester’s, my fecking petunia!

“Ass,” I mutter with a scowl. Petunia is one of Mac’s words. Her and Alina grew up so stupid and sweet they never even said “feck” until their early twenties when they started seeing Fae. Up till then they had their own cute little vocabulary for things. I hate cute. I hate thinking about Mac. I remember seeing her for the first time, sitting on a bench at Trinity looking all soft and pretty and useless, then finding out she was really made of steel like me and my sword. I remember feeling like my world was finally going to change and bygones might somehow miraculously turn into never-fecking-have-beens.

I miss her. I hate knowing she’s in this city somewhere, walking up and down streets just like me, thinking thoughts about killing Fae and saving the world and killing me, and she’s on one street and I’m on another and those streets can never meet or one of us is dead.

After how great my day was I can’t believe I’m thinking broody thoughts. I hurry through Temple Bar, dodging cars and streetlamps and all kinds of stuff half buried in piles of ice-crusted snow. Now that the Hoar Frost King is gone, the snow should start melting. I couldn’t be more ready for summer! I don’t tan. I freckle. Dancer likes freckles.

“Summer,” I say, grinning. It can’t come fast enough! They’ll plant gardens at the abbey, grow a mixed veggie medley like the one I had at Chester’s. I’ll definitely be dropping by more once stuff starts growing! I can load myself down with bars and take a few long freeze-framing trips around Ireland, looking for cows or goats or sheep. Maybe even pigs. “Fecking-A, bacon!” My mouth waters just thinking about it.