I was appalled. This was what feeding him the flesh of dark Fae had done to him? Whatever transformation Christian had begun back on that world where we’d dried our clothes by the loch had continued at breakneck speed.

He looked half human, half Fae, and in this place of shadows and ice, he was leaning toward the Unseelie, not their light brethren. With a few finishing touches, he’d look just like one of the princes. I bit my lip. What could I say? I’m sorry? Does it hurt? Are you turning into a monster inside, too? Maybe he’d look better once he was out in the real world, where there were other colors besides black, white, and blue.

He gave me a darker version of that killer smile, white teeth flashing against cobalt lips in a white-marble face. “Och, your heart weeps for me. I see it in your eyes,” he mocked. The smile faded, but the hostility in his gaze grew. “It should. I’m beginning to look like one of them, aren’t I? No handy mirrors around here. Don’t know what my face looks like and doubt I want to.”

“Eating Unseelie did this to you? I don’t understand. I’ve eaten Unseelie. So did Mallucé and Darroc, Fiona and O’Bannion. Then there’s Jayne and his men. Nothing like this happened to me or any of them.”

“I suspect it began happening on Halloween. I wasn’t runed well enough.” The smile morphed from killer to murderous. “I blame your Barrons for that. We’ll be seeing who’s the finer Druid now. We’ll be having words when we meet again.”

From the expression on that white chiseled face, I doubted they would be words. “Was Jericho the one who tattooed you?”

He raised a brow. “So, it’s ‘Jericho,’ is it? No, my uncles Dageus and Cian did the work, but he should have checked me when I was finished, and he didn’t. He let me go into the ritual unprotected.”

“And just how pissy would your uncles have gotten if he’d tried?” It was instinct to defend him.

“He still should have. He knew more about protection runes than we did. His knowledge is older than ours, which is bloody inconceivable to me.”

“What happened that night in the stones, Christian?” Neither he nor Barrons had ever told me.

He rubbed his face with a hand, skin rasping over blue-black stubble. “I suppose it doesn’t matter who knows now. I thought to hide my shame, but it looks as if I’ve ended up wearing it.”

He began to walk a slow circle around the black coffin, ice crunching beneath his boots. It was a well-worn path. He’d been here awhile.

I tried to focus on him, but my gaze kept sliding unwillingly to the tomb. The ice was thick, but if I stared, I could see a shape through the frosted sides. The lid was thinner than the rest of the coffin.

Was that the blurred outline of a facethrough the smoky ice?

I yanked my gaze to Christian’s too-white face. “And?”

“We tried to summon the ancient god of the Draghar, a sect of dark sorcerers. They’d worshipped it long before the Fae came to town. It was our only hope to counter Darroc’s magic. We succeeded in raising it. I felt it come alive. The great stones that weighted it deep beneath the earth fell away.” He paused, letting the echo of his chiming bounce off the walls in ever-diminishing decibels until the icy mountains fell silent. “It came for me. Straight for me. Gunning for my soul. Ever play chicken, Mac?”

I shook my head.

“I lost. It’s a wonder it didn’t decimate Barrons. I felt it blast past me and into him. Then it was just … gone.”

“So how was that responsible for what’s happening to you?”

“It touched me.” He looked repulsed. “It … I don’t want to talk about it. Then you gave me the blood of dark Fae, and that, coupled with the three years I’ve been in here—”

“Three years?” The words exploded from me in a cacophony of such dissonance that I was surprised the chiming didn’t start an avalanche. “You’ve been in the Unseelie prison for three years?”

“No, I’ve been in this place for only a few weeks. But I’ve been in the Silvers for three years by my count.”

“But less than a month has passed on the outside since I saw you last!”

“So it’s passing faster for me in here,” he murmured.

“Which is exactly the opposite of what usually happens. Usually a few hours in here are days out there.”

He shrugged. Muscle and tattoos rippled. “Things don’t seem to be working right where I’m concerned. I’ve become a wee bit unpredictable.” His smile was tight. His eyes were full black again.

It was on the tip of my tongue to apologize, but I was more pragmatic than I used to be and I was getting tired of being blamed for things. “When I found you in that desert, you were dying. Would you rather I’d buried you in the Silvers?”

The corners of his mouth twisted. “Aye, there’s the rub, isn’t it? I’m glad I’m alive. And you’ve no idea what that does to me. I used to be part of a clan that protected against the Fae, upheld the Compact, and kept the truce between us and them. Now I’m turning into one of the bloody buggers. I used to think the Keltar were the good guys. Now I don’t believe there are good guys.”

“There’d better be good guys. I need five of them to perform the ritual.” My gaze slid to the coffin again. I shook myself and looked away. Assuming I got out of here with my sanity and life.