I read it again. “What talisman?” How accurate was his translation? He’d written, He who is not what he was. Had Darroc really been the only one who could merge with the Book? Dageus wasn’t what he was. I was willing to bet Barrons wasn’t, either. Really, who of us was? What a nebulous statement. I’d hardly call that definitive criteria. Daddy would have a heyday in court with such a vague phrase.

By the time the first dark prince dies … It was already too late, if that was true. The first dark prince was Cruce, who couldn’t possibly be alive. At least once in the past seven hundred thousand years, he would have shown his face. Someone would have seen him. But even if he was alive, the moment Dani had killed the dark prince who came to my cell at the abbey, it had been too late for the first prophecy to work.

The shortcut was a talisman. And Darroc had had it.

Something nagged at my subconscious. I grabbed my backpack and began to rummage through it, hunting for the tarot card. I dumped out the contents, picked up the card, and studied it. A woman stared off into the distance while the world spun in front of her.

What was the point? Why had the DEG—or the fear dorcha, as he’d claimed—given me this particular card?

I took painstaking note of the details of her clothing and hair, the continents on the planet. It was definitely Earth.

I examined the border of the card, looking for concealed runes or symbols. Nothing. But wait! What was around her wrist? It looked like a fold in her skin until I looked closer.

I couldn’t believe I’d missed it.

It had been worked into the border, cleverly concealed as a sort of pentacle, but I knew the shape of the cage that housed the stone. Around the woman’s wrist was the chain of the amulet Darroc had stolen from Mallucé.

The dreamy-eyed guy had been trying to help me.

The talisman from the prophecy was the amulet. The amulet was Darroc’s shortcut!

It had been within my reach the night the Sinsar Dubh popped Darroc’s head like a grape. I’d touched it. It had been so close. Then the next thing I knew I was over a shoulder and it was gone.

I smiled. I knew where to find it.

As a man, Barrons collected antiquities, rugs, manuscripts, and ancient weapons. As a beast, he’d collected everything I touched. The pouch of stones, my sweater.

No matter his form, Barrons was a ferret after shiny baubles that smelled good to him.

There was no way he’d walked away from it that night. I’d touched it.

I slipped the parchment, translation, and tarot card in my pocket and stood up.

It was long past time to find out where Jericho Barrons went when he left the bookstore.

He didn’t go far.

In all the time I’d known him, I was willing to bet he never had.

When I reached the bottom step, I smelled him. The faint hint of spice hung in the air outside his study. The study where he kept his Silver.

Theentire time I was Pri-ya, I’d never seen him sleep. I would drift off, but each time I’d wake, he’d be there, lids heavy on glittering dark eyes, watching me as if he’d been laying there just waiting for me to roll over and ask him to fuck me again. Always ready. As if he lived for it. I remembered the look on his face when he’d stretch himself over me.

I remembered how my body had responded.

I’d never done Ecstasy or any of the drugs some of my friends had tried. But if it was like being Pri-ya, I couldn’t imagine wanting to do it willingly.

A part of my brain had still been aware, in a dim sort of way, while my body was out of my control.

If he’d brush a hand over my skin, I’d nearly scream from needing him inside me. I would have done anything to get him there.

Being Pri-ya was worse than being raped by the princes.

It had been hundreds of rapes over and over again. My body had wanted. My mind had been vacant. Yet some part of the essential me had still been there, fully aware that my body was completely out of my control. That I wasn’t choosing. All my choices had been made for me. Sex should be a choice.

Only one had been left to me: more.

When he’d push inside me and I’d feel him begin to penetrate, it had turned me into a wild thing—hot, wet, and desperate for more of him. With every kiss, every caress, every thrust, I’d just needed more. He’d touched me, I went nuts. The world dwindled down to one thing: him. He really had been my world in that basement. It was too much power for one person to have over another. It could put you on your knees, begging.

I had a secret.

A terrible secret that had been eating me alive.

What did you wear to your senior prom, Mac?

That had been the last thing I’d heard, Pri-ya.

Everything from that moment on had really happened.

I’d faked.

I’d lied to him and myself.

I stayed.

And it hadn’t felt any different.

I’d been just as insatiable, just as greedy, just as vulnerable. I’d known exactly who I was, what had happened at the church, and what I’d been doing for the past few months.

And every time he’d touched me, my world had dwindled down to one thing: him.

He was never vulnerable.

I’d hated him for that.

I shook my head, scattered the broody thoughts.

Where would Barrons go to be alone, relax, maybe sleep? Beyond the reach of anyone. Inside a heavily warded Silver.

With the scent of him still hanging in the air, I ransacked his study.

I was feeling ruthless and tired of playing by rules. I didn’t know why there should be any rules between us, anyway. It seemed absurd. He’d been in my space since the moment I’d met him, larger than life, electrifyingly present, shaking me up and waking me up and making me just this side of insane.