“I never said it was easy,” Isla said softly, eyes dark with remembered grief. “I despise what it made me do. I live with it every day.”

“But it’s been tracking me,” I protested.

“Sensing your bloodline, looking for me,” Isla said.

“But I’m epic,” I said numbly. Wasn’t I? I was so tired of not knowing my place in things.

Was I going to doom the world? Was I the concubine? Was I the Unseelie King? Was I even human? Was I the person who was supposed to re-inter the Book?

The answer was no to all of the above. I was just Mac Lane, bumbling around, getting in the way a lot, and making stupid decisions.

“You are, darling,” Isla said. “But this isn’t your battle.”

“Your destiny is another day,” Pieter said. “This is only the first of many battles we’ll be called upon to fight. There are dark times ahead. Even with the Book contained, there’s still the matter of the walls between realms. They can’t be rebuilt without the Song of Making. We have our work cut out for us.” He smiled. “Your brothers have their talents, too. They can’t wait to meet you.”

“Oh, MacKayla, we’ll be a family again!” Isla said, and began to cry. “It’s all I ever wanted.”

I looked at Barrons. He wore a grim expression. I looked back at Pieter and Isla. It was all I’d ever wanted, too. I wasn’t the king. I’d been born. I was a person with a family. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. But my heart was already trying.

Family reconciliations aside, Barrons didn’t like the change in the game plan, and neither did I.

We’d spent months building to this moment, and now, on the eve of battle, in walked my biological parents, telling us we were no longer necessary. They would fight the war and finish it.

It chafed.

“Can you track it?” Barrons demanded.

Pieter answered. “Isla can. But it can sense her, as well, which made it too dangerous for her to be in Dublin until we were certain MacKayla had the amulet.”

“How did you know I had it?” I said.

“Your mother said she felt you connect with it tonight. We came at once.”

“I thought I felt you connect with it once before, at the beginning of October last year,” Isla said, “but the feeling was gone almost as suddenly as it came.”

I blinked. “I did touch it last October. How did you know that?”

“I have no idea,” she said simply. “I felt the joining of two great powers. Both times I felt you, MacKayla. I felt my daughter!” Her face crumpled. “I felt Alina once, too.” She looked away, stared into the cold fireplace for a long moment, then shivered. “She was dying. Could we please have a fire?”

“Of course,” Pieter said immediately. He rose and moved to the fireplace, but Barrons beat him there.

He glared at Pieter.You may be trying to claim the woman, his eyes said, but make no mistake, she and the fucking fireplace are mine.

After a long moment, Pieter shrugged and moved back to the sofa.

“We’ll sleep on it,” Barrons said. “Leave now. We’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

Pieter snorted. “We can’t leave, Barrons. This has to end here, tonight, one way or another. There’s no time to waste.”

I couldn’t stop looking at Isla. There was something about her face. Looking at her made me think of Rowena. I guess because the old woman had persecuted us for so long. “Why does it have to end tonight?”

Isla gave me an odd look. “MacKayla, don’t you feel it?”

“Feel wh—” I broke off. I hadn’t been trying to feel it. I’d been keeping my sidhe-seer volume all the way down for so long it had become instinct. “Oh, God, the Sinsar Dubh is heading straight for us.” I opened my senses as far as I could. “It’s … different.” I looked at Isla, who nodded. “It’s more intense. Like it’s all pumped up and ready. It’s been waiting for this.” My eyes widened. “It’s got a suicide bomber again, and it’s going to blow us all to hell if we don’t stop it!”

“It knows I’m here,” Isla said. Her face was pale, but her eyes were narrowed with determination that I recognized. I’d seen it in my own face. “It’s all right,” she said with a tight smile. “I’m ready, too. It may have stolen my children and torn my family apart twenty-three years ago, but tonight we’re putting it back together.”

Pieter and Isla excused themselves for a moment and stepped away, talking in hushed, urgent tones.

I sat on the chesterfield with Barrons, watching them. This was all so surreal. I felt as if I’d stepped through the Silver into an alternate reality, one with a happily-ever-after. This was exactly what I’d wanted: a family, a safe haven, no responsibility to save the day.

Then why did I feel so deflated and off kilter?

Out there in the night, I could feel the Book coming. It had slowed for some reason, nearly stopped. I wondered if it was swapping “rides.” Maybe it had found a better one.

In spite of myself, despite my love for Jack and Rainey, looking at my biological parents was doing something funny to me. Knowing that they hadn’t wanted to give me up had released a knot of tension I hadn’t even known I’d been carrying. I guess some part of me had felt like the devil-child that everyone was afraid of, who’d been banished only because no one had wanted to kill a baby. But all these years my real parents had been out there, missing Alina and me, longing for us. They’d hated giving us up and had done so only for our own safety. We were connected by a mother–daughter bond. We were going to be a family again. I had so many questions!