My eyes narrow. “If you know how to merge with it, why did you insist I bring the stones into the tunnel with me when you took my parents captive? Why are you so interested in them?”

“It is said the stones can immobilize it. I have had little success getting near it. If I cannot get close enough on my own, I may need to use them. I have you to track it, the stones to corner it, and I can do the rest.”

“Is it because you eat Unseelie? Is that why you’d be able to do it?” I can slice, dice, and devour with the best of them. See Mac gorge.

“Hardly.”

“Is it something you are? Something you did? Something you know how to do?” I hear the franticness in my voice and it appalls me, but if he has some way of bypassing the whole absurdity of getting the fourth stone from V’lane, gathering the five Druids—Barrons seemed pretty sure one of them was Christian, and he’s still lost in the Silvers—figuring out the prophecy, and performing some complicated ceremony, I want to know what it is! If there’s a shortcut, any chance I can reach my goal in a matter of hours or days rather than trying to live through agonizing weeks or even months, I want it! The less time I have to spend in this hellish reality, the better.

“Look at you, MacKayla, all flushed and glowing, salivating over the idea of merging with the Book.” The gold flecks in his eyes begin to glitter again.

I’d know that look on any man’s face.

“So like Alina,” he murmurs, “yet so unlike her.”

It’s a difference he seems to appreciate. “What is it about you? Why will you be able to merge with it?” I demand. “Tell me!”

“Find the Book, MacKayla, and I will show you.”

When we finally locate the room with the Silver in it, it’s just as Darroc described: empty of furnishings, save a single mirror, five feet by ten.

The mirror appears to have been inserted seamlessly into whatever the walls are made of in the House.

But my mind’s not on the Silver at all. I’m still reeling from what Darroc told me.

Another piece of the puzzle that had been giving me fits clicks into place. I’d been perplexed by his determination to get the Book, when none of us knew how to touch it, move it, corner it, do a single damned thing with it, without getting taken over, turned evil, then killed, after being forced to kill everyone around us.

Along with wondering why Darroc hadn’t been more brutal, I’d wondered why he was hunting it when he’d never be able to use it, when even Barrons and I had been forced to admit that chasing the thing was pointless.

Yet Darroc had never relented. He’d kept his Unseelie scouring Dublin for it incessantly. The whole time I’d been stumbling in the dark, trying to figure out the four, and the five, and the prophecy,Darroc had been following a much easier path.

He knew a way to merge with the Sinsar Dubh—and control it!

There’s no question in my mind that Darroc’s telling the truth. I have no idea how or where he got this information, but he definitely knows how to use the Sinsar Dubh without being corrupted.

I need that knowledge!

I watch him through narrowed eyes. I’m no longer in a hurry to kill him. Fact is, I’d kill to protect the bastard at this point.

I mentally refine my mission. I don’t need the prophecy, stones, or Druids. I’ll never need to ally myself with V’lane in the future.

I need one thing: to uncover Darroc’s secret.

Once I have it, I can corner the Book myself. I don’t have any problems getting near it. It likes to play with me.

My hands tremble with excitement that’s difficult to contain. Trying to fulfill the absurd conditions of the prophecy would have taken forever. My new plan could be achieved in a matter of days, bringing my grief to a swift end.

“Why did you bring Unseelie through the dolmen in the warehouse at LaRuhe when you had a Silver you could have used instead?” I employ small questions to lull him. Get him off guard. Then I’ll sneak a big one in. Like most men-who-would-be-king, he likes to hear himself talk.

“Low-caste Unseelie are distracted by anything upon which they might feed. I needed a short passage, void of life, through which to herd them. I would never have gotten them out of this world and into yours. Besides, many of them would not have fit through such a small opening.”

I remember the horde of Unseelie—some wispy and diminutive, others fleshy and enormous—that had poured through the giant dolmen the night I’d caught my first glimpse of the crimson-robed Lord Master and realized, much to my horror, that he was my sister’s boyfriend. The night that Mallucé had nearly killed me and would have, if Barrons hadn’t miraculously appeared and saved me. I try to evict the memory, but it’s too late.

I’m in the warehouse, trapped between Darroc and Mallucé …

Barrons drops down next to me, long black coat fluttering.

Now that was just stupid, Ms. Lane, he says, with that mocking smile of his. They would have figured out who you were soon enough.

We battle Darroc and his minions. Mallucé injures me badly. Barrons carries me back to his bookstore, where he heals me. It’s the first time he ever kisses me. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before.

Once more he saved me—and what did I do when he needed me?

Killed him.

The silent scream is back, welling up inside me. Biting it down takes all the strength I possess.

I stumble.

Darroc catches my arm and steadies me.