“V’lane, don’t open it!” I cried. “I think it’s inert, but we don’t have any idea what will happen if you—”

It was too late. He’d opened the Book.

Arms spread, hands splayed on either side of it, head down, V’lane began to read, his lips moving.

Barrons flung himself at the wall. He bounced off.

V’lane had shut us out.

Ryodan, Lor, and Fade joined him, and moments later all five Keltar and my dad were at it, too, pounding on the walls, blasting into it with their shoulders and fists.

Me, I just stood, staring, trying to make sense of it, thinking back to the day I’d met V’lane. He’d told me he served his queen, that she needed the Book in order to have any chance at re-creating the lost Song. At the time, the only thing I’d been worried about was finding Alina’s murderer and keeping the walls up. I’d very much wanted the queen to find that Song and reinforce them.

However, he’d also told me it was legend that if there were no contenders for the queen’s magic at the time of her death, all the matriarchal magic of the True Race would go to the most powerful male.

Surely he wouldn’t have told me that if he’d planned all along to be the one. Would he? Was he that stupid?

Or so arrogant that he’d given me all the clues, laughing the entire time, as the “puny human” failed to put them together?

If he read the entire Sinsar Dubh, would that make him—unquestionably—the most powerful male, stronger even than the Unseelie King?

I hadn’t seen a single Unseelie Princess. Not one. All the Seelie Princesses were—according to V’lane—missing or dead.

What if he finished reading the Book and killed the queen?

He would have all the dark knowledge of the Unseelie King and all the magic of the queen. He would be unstoppable.

Was he the player who’d been manipulating events, biding time, waiting for the perfect moment?

I felt for my spear in the holster. It wasn’t there. I inhaled, nostrils flaring. How long ago had it disappeared? Had he taken it to kill the queen? Would he even need it? Once he’d absorbed the Book, could he simply unmake her?

Was I being totally paranoid?

This was V’lane, after all. He was probably just looking for the fragments of the Song for his queen and once he’d found them he would close the deadly tome.

I sidled in for a better view.

The men were blasting the walls with everything they had. Christopher and Christian were doing some sort of chant, while the others hammered at it. Nothing they did was having the slightest effect.

Peering between them, I suddenly got a clear look at V’lane. Unruffled by the assault on the walls he’d erected, he stood, head thrown back, eyes closed. His hands weren’t spread on each side of the Bookas I’d thought.

They were on it, a palm pressed to each page.

How was he touching an Unseelie Hallow? The pages were entrancingly beautiful, each made of hammered gold, embellished with gems, covered with a strikingly bold, dynamic script that rushed across the pages like ceaseless waves. The First Language was as fluid as the original queen had been static.

V’lane wasn’t reading the Sinsar Dubh.

The spells scribed upon the gold pages were vanishing from the Book, passing up his arms, into his body, leaving the pages empty. He was draining it. Absorbing it. Becoming it.

“Barrons,” I shouted to be heard over the roars and grunts as bodies imploded with an unyielding barrier, “we’ve got a serious problem!”

“Same page, Mac. Same bloody word.”

51

When I was fifteen, Dad taught me how to drive. Mom was terrified to let me behind the wheel. I hadn’t been that bad. I remember swerving wide around a bend, narrowly missing a mailbox, and asking Daddy, But how do you stay on the road? What keeps people from just running off it? It’s not like we’re on rails.

He’d laughed. Ruts in the road, baby. They aren’t really there, but if you keep doing it over and over, eventually you begin to feel them, and a sort of autopilot kicks in.

Life is like that. Ruts in the road. My rut was that V’lane was one of the good guys.

But be careful, Jack had added, because autopilot can be dangerous. Drunk driver might come at you head on. The most important thing to know about ruts is how and when to get out of them.

I was immobilized by indecision. Was V’lane really one of the bad guys? Was he really trying to usurp all Fae power and rule? Was I supposed to intervene? What could I do?

As my mom and I watched, Kat, Jo, and the other sidhe-seers joined the assault on the walls. I was about to step in myself when my mom said, “Who’s that handsome young man? He wasn’t here be—” She froze, mid-word.

So did everyone in the cavern.

The Keltar stopped chanting. Barrons and my daddy were frozen mid-lunge. Even V’lane was affected, but not completely. The spells moving up his arms slowed from a fast-moving river to a stream.

I looked where my mother had been pointing and lost my breath.

He was by the door. No, he was behind me. No, he was right in front of me! When he smiled at me, I got lost in his eyes. They expanded until they were enormous and I was swallowed up in darkness, drifting between supernovas in space.

“Hey, beautiful girl,” the dreamy-eyed guy said.

“Butterfly fingers,” I managed finally. “You.”

“Finest surgeon,” he agreed.

“You helped.”

“Told you not to talk to it. You did.”