“Too many humans involved,” he said sharply.

I shrugged. “Then bring some of your Seelie if it makes you feel better.”

The balmy day suddenly cooled. He was deeply displeased. But I didn’t care. I felt that we finally had a solid plan, one that would work. We had the stones and the prophecy; we just needed Christian. I refused to worry about what we would do once the Book was secured, if the queen should be permitted to read it. I could tackle only one seemingly insurmountable obstacle at a time, and I had no idea how we were going to locate Christian in the Silvers. Too bad Barrons hadn’t branded him, too.

I had one more question. It had been gnawing at me the entire time we’d been talking. I couldn’t help but feel there was something about myself I needed to know, a truth that would make clear the dreams I’d been having all my life. “V’lane, what did Cruce look like?”

He lifted a shoulder and let it drop, then folded his arms behind his head and tipped his face to the sun. “The other Unseelie Princes.”

“You said they kept getting better as the king made them. Was Cruce different in any way?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just something one of the sidhe-seers said,” I lied.

“When do you plan to attempt to fulfill the terms of the prophecy?”

“The moment we can get all the Keltar together and I locate it.”

He looked at me. “Soon, then,” he murmured. “It will be very soon.”

I nodded.

“It must be as soon as possible. I fear for the queen.”

“I asked you about Cruce,” I reminded.

“So many questions about an insignificant prince who ceased to exist hundreds of thousands of years ago.”

“And?” Was that petulance in his voice?

“Were he not dead, I might feel … what is it you humans are so often driven by? Ah, I have it, jealousy.”

“Humor me.”

After a long moment, he gave another of those perfectly imitated human sighs. “According to our histories, Cruce was the most beautiful of all, although the world will never know it—a waste of perfection to never have laid eyes upon one such as he. The torque of his royal line was threaded with silver, and his visage was said to radiate pure gold. But I suspect the reason the king felt such kinship to him—before he permitted his love for a mortal to destroy all they could have been—was because Cruce was the only one of the king’s children to bear a paternal resemblance. Like the king himself, Cruce had majestic black wings.”

25

Shortly after midnight, I was pacing the alley behind Barrons Books and Baubles, arguing with myself and getting nowhere.

Barrons still wasn’t back, which was driving me crazy. I planned to have it out with him the moment he showed up. Knock-down,drag-out, air all the dirty laundry between us. I wanted to know exactly how long I could anticipate him being gone if he got killed again. I was on constant edge, waiting, half afraid he might never come back. I wouldn’t be satisfied that he was really alive until I saw him with my own eyes.

Every time I’d closed my eyes tonight, I slipped into my Cold Place dream. It had been waiting to ambush me the moment I’d relaxed. I’d flipped endless hourglasses of black sand; I’d scoured miles and miles of ice, with increasing urgency, for the beautiful woman; I’d repeatedly fled the winged prince we both feared.

Why did I keep dreaming the damned dream?

Ten minutes ago, when I’d woken from it for the fifth time, I’d been forced to accept that I simply wasn’t going to get any sleep without having it—and that was no sleep at all. The fear and anguish I felt in the dream were so draining that I kept waking up feeling even more exhausted than when I’d closed my eyes.

I stopped pacing and stared at the brick wall.

Now that I knew it was there, I could feel it—the hidden Tabh’r in the brick, the Silver Darroc had carefully camouflaged within the wall catty-corner to the bookstore.

All I had to do was press into it, follow the brick tunnel to the room with the ten mirrors, and pass through the fourth one from the left to get back into the White Mansion. I’d have to hurry, because time passed differently inside the Silvers. I would just take a quick look around. See if there was anything I’d missed the first time.

“Like maybe a portrait of myself hanging on the wall, arm in arm with the Unseelie King,” I muttered.

I closed my eyes. There it was, out in the open. I’d voiced my fear. Now I had to deal with it. It seemed to be the only thing that explained all the loose ends that wouldn’t connect.

Nana had called me Alina.

Ryodan said Isla had only one child (which Rowena confirmed, unless she was lying) and she was dead, and there’d been no “later” for the woman I wanted to believe was my mother.

Nobody knew who my parents were.

Then there was my lifelong feeling of bipolarity, of things repressed just beneath the surface. Memories of another life? When I’d been walking around in the White Mansion with Darroc, it had all been so familiar. I’d recognized things. I’d been there before and not just in my dreams.

Speaking of dreams—how could my slumbering mind conjure up a fourth prince that I’d never seen? How could I have known Cruce had wings?

I could sense the Sinsar Dubh. It kept finding me, liked to play with me. Why? Because in an earlier incarnation—when it had been the Unseelie King, not a book of the banished knowledge—it had loved me? Did I sense it because I’d loved the earlier incarnation of it?