CONTENTS

Alpha

Copyright

About

Dedication

Title Page

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

ALPHA

Book Three of

War of the Alphas

SM REINE

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

This book is sold DRM-free so that it can be enjoyed in any way the reader sees fit. Please keep all links and attributions intact when sharing. All rights reserved.

Cover model photos sourced from Taria Reed at The Reed Files.

Copyright © SM Reine 2015

Published by Red Iris Books

1180 Selmi Drive, Suite 102

Reno, NV 89512

SERIES BY SM REINE

The Descent Series

The Ascension Series

Seasons of the Moon

The Cain Chronicles

Preternatural Affairs

Tarot Witches

War of the Alphas

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ABOUT ALPHA

No longer an Omega, Deirdre Tombs has found her animal. She only had to die and rise from her own ashes to discover it.

And she’s returned with a purpose.

For the first time in history, the role of Alpha is up for election. If Everton Stark took charge, he would disband the ruthless government organization that has made life miserable for shifters like Deirdre.

One problem: Stark doesn’t want to run. He only wants vengeance against his wife, Rhiannon, who killed many of his followers and stole the Ethereal Blade.

While Stark is focused on revenge, Rhiannon is focused on winning the election for Alpha. Victory means tearing the Winter Court apart with civil war. It means riots. It means unleashing a deadly unseelie assassin that devours souls. Anything to get her dragon shifter mate in power…with Rhiannon at his side.

For Edgar, my Ace. I’m sorry.

I

A yellow moon crested over New York City.

Moonrise was an event so predictable that it could be used to set watches, though it hadn’t always been that way. The moon used to rise during the day, sometimes. The hours that it appeared had varied based on season and geography. There had been formulas that allowed astronomers to calculate when and where it would appear.

Then Genesis had struck.

Now moonrise occurred whenever the sun went down, and moonset preceded sunrise by mere moments. This event, against all rational scientific expectation, seemed to occur in exactly the same fashion regardless of where the observer stood on the Earth.

It was magic, no doubt about it, and that magic extended beyond the illusion of the turgid moon’s clockwork arrival. It reached to the surface of the Earth, influencing spells cast by witches, government policy, and, most frightening of all, the shapeshifters who lived predominantly in North America.

Now that full moonlight touched New York City, the change was coming.

“Crap,” breathed Mallory Reilly, hurrying to finish her paperwork.

There were still three shifters waiting to check into her safe house, and those were three more shifters than she had space to hold. She had an overflow room where all of them would be able to shift together, but she had to run it through the registration program to make sure that their species were compatible first.

The software—and the overflow rooms—were very new, implemented in response to an incident at another safe house. Two shapeshifters had killed each other in the parking lot overnight because there hadn’t been enough rooms to lock them away.

Obviously the software hadn’t been tested enough. Mallory’s computer was crapping out on her.

“What’s taking so long?” asked one of the werewolves.

“I’m so sorry.” Mallory banged on her keyboard. “I want to get you guys in, I do, but—”

“There’s no time,” said Ember Bane, another werewolf. His flesh rippled, sweat slicked his forehead, his eyes glowed.

He was already starting to transform.

They were out of time.

“Two werewolves and a cougar shifter,” Mallory murmured.

What harm could come out of sticking them in a room together?

They were going to have to find out.

This had only become a problem very recently. The fact that three shifters—three of them!—were seeking shelter for the transformation meant that they’d rejected Rylie Gresham as their Alpha. If they didn’t acknowledge her as their leader, then she couldn’t gentle their transformations on the full and new moons.

More and more shifters were rejecting Rylie Gresham now, especially since she had announced that she was putting her position as Alpha up for election.

Mallory had never seen so many people in need of shelter at her safe house.

And the damn computer wasn’t working.

She slapped the button to unlock the stairwell. “The overflow room is on the right as soon as you get downstairs,” Mallory said. “Don’t worry about check-in. I’ll lock up behind you.”

“Thank the gods,” Ember breathed.

He moved from the window, allowing Mallory to see that another woman—someone who wasn’t a shifter—had entered the secure parking lot. The newcomer strode toward the registration window.

January Lazar was a famous reporter, and famously difficult. She had made a name for herself by interviewing Rylie Gresham, then became notorious by giving air time to Rylie Gresham’s worst enemy. A terrorist who wanted the Alpha dead. Everton Stark.

If January Lazar was at Mallory’s safe house, then it could only mean bad things were about to happen. Mallory needed to protect the charges she had already checked into the safe house. She hit the button to lock down the stairwell even though the three shifters hadn’t gotten inside yet.

“What are you doing?” Ember shouted. His werewolf friend, Dolf, slammed his fists against the door.

“Great question,” January said. Her heeled pumps rapped against the parking lot as she strode up to the window. “What are you doing?”

“We only allow shapeshifters here, ma’am,” Mallory said. “No press within the perimeter of the fence. You have to leave.”

“Are you going to make me leave?” January asked.

It was a tempting thought. Mallory fingered the charms dangling next to her window as she considered it. She had a few rudimentary spells that could be used to knock down an escaping shifter, but January Lazar was human. The spells might kill her.

“If I have to,” Mallory said.

Ember Bane cried out, and it sounded like a howl. His cry was echoed by the cougar shifter’s a moment later.

They were changing.

“Unlock the door, don’t unlock the door, it’s up to you,” January Lazar said. “I can do my piece here as easily as downstairs.” A few feet from the registration booth, she assembled a tripod and set her camera on top of it. She would be able to film the three shifters pounding against the door now as the moon rose.

There were laws against video recording at safe houses meant to protect the privacy of the inhabitants. January Lazar knew that, and she obviously felt no fear of repercussions.

Now another pair of people were entering the parking lot. The streetlights gave Mallory a great view of their faces.

Everton Stark had arrived.

“Are you filming?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” January said.

The cougar shifter recognized him and stopped trying to break into the safe house. “Everton Stark!” She crossed the parking lot to fall at his feet.

January moved the camera to film it.

The transformation was rapidly overtaking Bianca Grant. Her whole body shook with the change. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she fought against it, bucking with pain.

Stark glanced at the camera to make sure it was focused on him, then kneeled in front of Bianca. He lifted her chin with a knuckle. Their eyes met. “Your transformation doesn’t hurt,” he said. “Change quickly, and change in peace.”

Bianca’s eyes went blank. She stopped shaking.

Within seconds, the animal form took over her. Fur covered her body. Her face elongated into a muzzle. Her knees reversed direction.

A mountain lion stood where she had been kneeling.

The werewolves tripped over their own feet to rush to Everton Stark.

“Stay away from him!” Mallory called. “He’s dangerous! An enemy of the state!”

They ignored her, but Stark’s companion didn’t.

The woman who had arrived with Stark leaned down to look at Mallory through the window. “Hi there. I’m Deirdre Tombs.”

“I know you.” She had seen Deirdre Tombs alongside Everton Stark in several videos online. The woman was just as deadly as the man. Mallory’s fingers slipped under the desk, searching for the panic button that would notify the Office of Preternatural Affairs of an emergency.

“Great. So you’ve seen me killing people.” Deirdre formed her fingers into the shape of a gun and poked them against the glass. “Pop.”

She wasn’t even holding an actual gun, but Mallory flinched.

“Don’t push your panic button,” Deirdre said. “We’re not planning on getting any visits from the Office of Preternatural Affairs tonight. Okay?”

Mallory’s forefinger came across the swell of the panic button.

All it would take was one tap, and the Office of Preternatural Affairs would come running.

But they could only come so quickly.

They wouldn’t arrive in time to save her from Everton Stark and Deirdre Tombs.

Stark was making the werewolves change now. They shifted from one form to the other peacefully, calmly, and January Lazar filmed it all.

Despite her years working at a safe house, Mallory had never actually watched any of the shifters change. She was a witch. The weakest of the gaean classes. She knew to keep at least two locked doors and a handful of wards between her and the shifters on the nights of the moons.

It was a horrifying thing to see, that change. The way that their bodies distorted and rearranged had to be painful. Bones broke and tore through the skin in multiple places.

There was blood. There were also other fluids, which Mallory didn’t even want to identify.

But the shifters looked so calm as they changed.

Stark was doing that to them. That was powerful stuff.

Mallory didn’t want to think about what he could do to her.

She dropped her finger from the button, even though relenting made her heart sink.

“Good. That’s good.” Deirdre was so friendly, so encouraging. “What’s your name?”

“Mallory,” she said.

“Okay, Mallory. If you keep being cooperative, then there’s no reason for anyone to die tonight. Understand? I’d love it if tonight ended without anyone dying. So I’m going to need you to unlock all the doors inside the safe house,” Deirdre said.

“Why?”

“Mallory, my friend, we just talked about this. I need you to be cooperative. Okay?”

Deirdre still wasn’t actually holding a gun. She didn’t look all that threatening, either. When she spoke, she flashed a gap between her upper front teeth, which made her look cute rather than traditionally beautiful. A man’s flannel shirt over cheap jeans concealed her curves.

She could have been any random shifter.

Except that she’d come with that guy.

“Okay.” Mallory clicked through the new software to find the override for the locks on the interior doors. Most of the shifters who’d checked in that night were werewolves. They might beat each other up, but they probably wouldn’t manage to kill anyone.

Deirdre glanced at the moon—the first sign of nervousness she’d shown. “Be fast about it.”

“Fast as I can,” Mallory said.

She found the override in the software. She shut her eyes, whispered a prayer, and clicked it.

A quiet alarm chimed within the booth, alerting her to the fact that the doors were unlocked after hours.

Deirdre stiffened. “What’s that?”

“It’s just warning me the doors are unlocked,” Mallory said. “That’s all.”

“Does it call back to the OPA?”

“No, I think—I don’t know, I don’t think so. This program is new. I’m not sure. But I don’t think it does.”

Deirdre called over her shoulder. “Hey! Stark! We might have a problem.”

Everton Stark rounded on them. The shifters had finished changing and now two hulking wolves and a cougar sniffed around his feet. It said a lot about the man’s presence that standing between beasts of that size didn’t diminish him in the slightest.

“No, no, no we don’t, there’s no problem,” Mallory said. “I’m cooperating. I’m doing exactly what you said. I unlocked the doors.”

“What’s that alarm?” Stark asked.

Even through the window—enchanted glass meant to withstand physical assault from super-powered shifters—he was a terrifying man. Not tall, but broad and barrel-chested, with arms that looked like cabers.

“She unlocked the inside doors and it started going off,” Deirdre explained to Stark. “She says that it won’t call the OPA. At least, she thinks it won’t call the OPA, but she’s not sure.”

He pressed a hand against the window, as if to test it for strength. The glass groaned.

Mallory’s eyes flicked toward the charms hanging from the inside of the frame.

“Did you call them?” Stark asked.

“No,” she said.

He seemed to weigh his options, considering the woman, the shifters at his back, and the reporter filming it all. “Open the stairwell.”

“What?”

He stared at her, giving her the full weight of his golden-eyed stare. All shifters Mallory had met had golden eyes that were superficially identical to his, but something about Stark’s was impossible to look away from.

“Come on, Mallory,” Deirdre said. “Play ball with us.”

“It’s just—if I open the doors—”

Stark slammed a fist into the glass. Cracks spiderwebbed around his knuckles, spreading rapidly to the edges of the frame.

Mallory leaped back with a shriek, her office chair falling underneath her. She tripped over it. Caught herself on the wall.

“Open it,” Stark said.

She had already opened the doors to the cells underground. If she opened the stairs too, then she would release every temporary resident of the safe house: twenty-five moon-sickened shifters who were beyond Rylie Gresham’s control.

The wards surrounding the safe house’s parking lot were good, but not that good.

Stark slammed his hand into the glass again.

“Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll do it!” Mallory cried.

The lock for the main door was easy to find. Her hands shook as she deactivated it.

Stark punched the glass a third time. It didn’t stand a chance against him. His hand went through it. He ripped the glass away, smearing blood over the jagged edges as though it didn’t hurt him.

Mallory squeezed herself in the corner of the booth, screaming. But he reached her easily.

He yanked her through the window, and Mallory struggled to grab the defensive charms on her way out. The glass did hurt her. She wasn’t a shifter. She didn’t heal quickly like they did. Shards scraped down her arms, and she cried as he tossed her to the pavement.

The air was crisp and wet with the memory of rain. Stark and Deirdre towered over Mallory, backlit by January Lazar’s light.

“I did everything you asked,” Mallory said. “I’ve obeyed.”

“You did,” Deirdre said. “But if your alarm does summon the OPA…” She shrugged. “We’ll need a hostage to get out of here. Hang tight. I’ll get back to you in a minute.”

Hang tight? What else was Mallory supposed to do? She hugged a charm under her arm to hide it, dampness of the pavement soaking through her slacks, and she shivered. She’d managed to grab one charm from the booth but not one of the good ones—it was a spell to help her stay awake for the long night shift.

January’s camera focused on her, and Mallory could only imagine what she must have looked like: mascara streaking, face puffy with tears, bleeding freely from her arms.

Deirdre Tombs opened the door to the safe house stairs.

“No!” Mallory cried, curling into the smallest ball she could manage.

Nothing came out of the stairwell.

The shifters might not have realized that their rooms had unlocked yet. The doors didn’t open automatically.

“I’ll return shortly,” Stark said, and he vanished down the stairs.

There were still three large, predatory animals prowling around the parking lot. They looked to be sedate while under Stark’s control, but that didn’t mean much.

Stark had been killing people for months to draw attention to his cause. He had done it primarily by ordering innocent shifters to murder.

And it worked.

Making an example of people had given him a platform. It was the reason that Mallory knew who he was by name and by face. He was more famous than most actors at this point.

Watching the shifters prowling, waiting for Stark to return, she couldn’t help but fear that her death would be the next step for his platform.

Deirdre crouched in front of Mallory, haloed by January Lazar’s light. “Hey,” she said softly, voice quiet enough that the camera might not pick it up. “I know you’re scared, but I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. Okay? I promise that you’re safe with me.”

Mallory wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. “You said you’d shoot me.”

“I know.” Deirdre glanced at January, then shifted her body so that the camera could only film her back. She dropped her voice. “I’m not like Stark. I don’t hurt people for fun. I’m going to get you out of here alive.”

She sounded earnest.

Slowly, Mallory’s heart decelerated.

“I just need your help,” Deirdre said, and that got Mallory’s heart going faster again.

“Help with what?” Mallory asked.

January Lazar moved the camera closer to get more of their conversation. Deirdre scowled at it. “Get that out of my face,” she said.

“You’re part of this, Ms. Tombs,” January said. “People will want to know you.”

Howls echoed from the depths of the safe house.

Stark had opened the doors.

Mallory whimpered as claws scrabbled against the stairs. The shifters emerged one at a time, emerging from underground single file because they were too large to navigate the stairwell alongside each other.

All those people she had checked in before moonrise—ordinary, compliant American citizens—were animals now, wild eyed and slavering.

A wolf the size of a car stalked toward Mallory.

“No!” she cried, clutching the useless charm.

Deirdre wrapped her arms around Mallory. The shifter woman’s skin was warm. Painfully warm, in fact. Like she was radiating pure sunlight.

The wolf stuck its nose between them. Deirdre shoved its muzzle away. “Back off.” It pushed more insistently, wet breath wheezing over them. Its tongue made a wet slurping noise as it licked its fangs. Deirdre shoved again. “Give me room!”

Stark’s hand closed on the ruff of fur at the wolf’s neck. “You heard her. Don’t touch Deirdre Tombs.”

“Or the witch,” Deirdre added.

Stark glowered.

She repeated herself. “Or the witch.”

“Or the witch,” he echoed from between his teeth, as though it hurt him to say it.

He dragged the wolf away.

Twenty-eight shifters, mostly wolves, stood in the parking lot, and all of them were giving their full attention to Everton Stark. It was impressive to see so many massive shifters showing submission to a single human man. He walked among them with no fear.

January Lazar filmed it all.

“Look at them,” Stark said. “See how they obey me?”

“Amazing,” the reporter sighed.

“I’m Everton Stark, and I am an Alpha,” he said directly to the camera. “You don’t need Rylie Gresham. None of us do.” He turned to the shifters. “If you choose, you can be on your own tonight. Run through the city. Be wild. Find others like you and know freedom. Or you can come with me. Join me. Join my movement, and help me fight.”

He flung his arms out.

With howls and yips, the shifters exploded into motion, racing across the parking lot.

A lot of them didn’t go anywhere. More than a dozen stuck around, hoping to ally with Stark.

The rest fled, unleashed on New York City.

There was no way Mallory would be keeping her job after that night.

“You didn’t mention the election,” Deirdre said. “You should have mentioned the election. ‘My name is Everton Stark, and I approve this message.’” She turned to January Lazar. “Can you edit that in at the end?”

“Shifters don’t elect Alphas,” Stark said with the tone of a man who had been through the same argument a million times and had no patience left for it.

“I wish I could get a video of you shifted, Mr. Stark,” January said. “Want to give me some footage?”

“No,” he said curtly.

“Why not? I bet you’re an impressive animal.” She pushed his arm playfully, as unafraid of the man as he was of the shifters surrounding them. She was probably right to think that she wasn’t in danger. He needed her to spread his message, after all.

“No,” Stark said again. The remaining shifters milled around him, sticking their noses under the hem of his shirt, inhaling his odor. “How was that, January? Do you have enough?”

“Yes, it was great,” January said. “Perfect. You look like a modern Che Guevara. Or Moses!” She added the second name thoughtfully, as though trying to decide which metaphor she wanted to push to the masses. She tapped her forefinger against her chin.

“Do you need anything else?”

“Election,” Deirdre muttered under her breath.

“Nope, I think we’re good! This is going to be beautiful for sweeps week.” January kissed the side of her camera, leaving the imprint of her shiny gloss on the plastic casing. One of the werewolves stuck his nose up the reporter’s skirt. She pushed the hem down. “Bad dog. No.”

“They aren’t dogs,” Deirdre said.

January gave her an exaggerated wink. “All men are dogs, even when they walk around on two legs.” She waved a goodbye. “I need to edit this package if I want to get it on the news today. Ta ta, furry woodland friends!”

Mallory didn’t dare move as January Lazar carried her camera out of the parking lot, leaving her alone at the scene.

Well, as alone as she could be with twenty shapeshifters.

She was hoping that Stark and Deirdre would follow January and take the freed shifters with them. She hoped that they’d forget she even existed.

Stark glanced up at the moon. “We’re out of time. Get downstairs, Tombs.”

Deirdre turned to Mallory. “Can you prepare to lock one of the safe rooms for us? Just one to keep me inside all night?”

“What? Why?”

“Because—” Deirdre began.

A floodlight blazed down onto the parking lot.

Mallory shielded her eyes, squinting up at the source. She could barely make out the shape of a helicopter overhead.

A voice piped over a loudspeaker.

“Everton Stark, you are under arrest. Drop your weapons, get down on the ground, and do not shapeshift.”

In an instant, Mallory was off the pavement, Everton Stark’s arm hooked around her throat. A gun pressed against her temple.

We’ll need a hostage to get out of here.

Mallory was a hostage.

She cried and beat at his arm, but Stark was pure, primal strength. He didn’t budge. Even if she’d been able to get away, she wouldn’t have gotten far. She was surrounded by warm, furry bodies, waiting for an excuse to bite her.

“We’re leaving,” Stark shouted at the helicopter. “If you follow us, I will kill this woman.”

“No you won’t,” Deirdre said under her breath.

“I will,” Stark said, quieter than before, speaking directly to Deirdre.

“I’m drawing a line here. The witch lives. Her life isn’t currency.”

“We aren’t having this debate, Tombs!”

The helicopter dropped a few inches. Black ropes spiraled down from its belly, and agents slid down on harnesses, preparing to encircle them.

Stark popped a few shots off at the descending agents. Cries erupted overhead. The smell of gunpowder clung to Mallory’s sinuses, ears aching with the volume of the gunshots. Her ears were ringing. Everything was muffled.

The OPA had sent agents down despite his threat. The meaning was clear: they didn’t care if Mallory survived the confrontation.

Agents dropped. A few landed on their feet among the shapeshifters, lifting silver-plated riot shields to defend themselves. A few collapsed in piles of body armor, gushing blood from bullet wounds that Stark had delivered.

The shifters closed in around the agents. Yips and snarls and gunshots exploded through the night.

Stark’s gun shoved harder against Mallory’s temple.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

But then his gun moved away again.

“Tombs!” Stark shouted. Deirdre had grabbed his hand, preventing him from shooting their hostage.

Mallory ripped away from Stark. She fell into Deirdre’s arms, tears streaming down her cheeks, lungs hitching as she cried. “Run!” Deirdre said.

And then she followed her own advice, pulling Mallory along with her, forging a path through the crowd of shifters.

Shifters were supernaturally fast. As a witch, Mallory was not. She couldn’t keep her feet underneath her as she stumbled after Deirdre, dragged by the shifter’s grip.

After a few clumsy feet, Deirdre hauled Mallory off the ground, slinging her over her shoulder.

Upside down, Mallory watched as Stark fired at the OPA agents. He moved so quickly, jerking left to right as he ran, zigzagging across the parking lot.

He was dodging bullets, she realized with a shock.

The man can dodge bullets.

Deirdre skidded to a stop. “Dammit!”

Under her arm, Mallory saw several more OPA agents blocking the gate of the parking lot with their bodies, lifting fully automatic weapons.

They were going to shoot at Deirdre and Stark.

And Mallory would be caught in the crossfire.

“No!” Mallory shrieked.

A dark shape hurtled out of the sky and slammed into the ground so hard that it cratered.

Blades and guns flashed.

The OPA agents fell in rapid succession, collapsing like bowling pins.

Once they’d all hit the ground, the new arrival stood tall and tossed her hair back from her face.

It was a woman with dark olive skin and wings. Not wings like the angels that Mallory had seen on the news, but metal wings, jagged and cruel. There was blood and ragged flesh on the tips of her shimmering feathers.

She wasn’t holding a weapon. She’d killed the agents with her wings, clearing a path to escape the safe house.

Mallory burst into tears again.

The winged woman didn’t attack them when Deirdre raced past. She had already moved on to the other agents that had jumped out of the helicopter, bladed wings flashing in the streetlights as blood sprayed.

The helicopter was following Deirdre and Stark, though. It was keeping its light focused on them.

Stark tried to shoot out the light, but his gun clicked empty.

“Here!” Deirdre shouted.

She shifted her weight, tossed him another gun. She never even broke her stride.

Stark aimed at the light. It blazed down on him, haloing his rugged, square face in unflatteringly harsh light, illuminating his brown hair so that it almost looked red.

One more gunshot. Just one.

The light went out.

“Move,” he barked, shoving Deirdre.

The safe house receded behind them, shrinking into the distance as they pounded down the sidewalk. There weren’t a lot of cars or pedestrians on their street. Not at night, and not in that neighborhood. Not so close to vampire territory.

Vampire territory. Jesus. A pair of murdering terrorists were dragging Mallory toward the vampires, chased by a whole army of shapeshifters who had been changed by the light of the moon.

All she’d wanted to do was read a book and get through the night shift without falling asleep on her desk.

Now it seemed like she wasn’t going to survive until morning.

“Please let me go,” Mallory begged. The blood was collecting in her head, blurring her vision and making her dizzy.

“She’s slowing you down,” Stark said. “Get rid of her. I don’t care how you do it, but do it.”

Deirdre jogged into a side alley, spilling Mallory unceremoniously on the wet pavement.

The witch tried to scramble away on hands and knees, but fear made her clumsy; she fell over a bag of rotten trash, collapsing onto her side with a wail.

“Whoa, hey, relax,” Deirdre said. “You’re okay.”

“Don’t kill me.” Mallory could barely speak through the tears. “Please.” She could still hear the helicopter, knew it had to be close, knew it wouldn’t be long until the OPA caught up with them and turned her into collateral damage.

“I promised you weren’t going to die tonight.” Deirdre squeezed Mallory’s hand. The shifter’s fingers were hot and dry. Almost painfully hot. “Take care of yourself.”

Stark looked furious at the act of kindness, but he only turned and stalked away without speaking.

Mallory might have been imagining it, but she thought that Deirdre looked like she glowed as she followed him.

II

The horses started neighing, the dogs bayed, and the parrot screeched within her cage all at the same time. Chadwick Hawfinch removed the needle from his vein and set it on the coffee table before standing.

“Trilby! We have a visitor!” Chadwick Hawfinch called to his partner, rolling out his aching arm. The veins on that side were glowing an electric blue.

Trilby didn’t respond. She was puttering around in the storeroom, rearranging their stock, taking inventory, making notes on what they needed to order and from which vendors. But she would already know that they had visitors, even if she hadn’t heard Chadwick. It was impossible to miss the parrot’s screeching.

Crackers never screamed when her cage was covered. Not unless she sensed a particularly dangerous predator nearby.

And there were few predators deadlier than Everton Stark.

They were out there, sure. Just not a lot of them.

He checked the security cameras and found Everton Stark rendered in grayscale on his monitor. The Alpha was still on the outskirts of the neighborhood. The animals had sensed his approach from blocks away.

It was part of the reason that Chadwick kept a veritable zoo in his building, right in the middle of New York City. His animals were more sensitive to security threats than any spell he could buy.

Sure, the horses didn’t like being kept in stalls in the basement of his high-rise. Sure, they died all the time. But that was what they were for. The horses didn’t need to survive long for him to extract their blood.

Chadwick opened the lobby doors and disengaged some of the wards protecting his building. Stark wouldn’t have been able to get through all those spells without help. They should have kept anything short of a second Genesis from crashing down on his high-rise.

By the time he’d dismantled the wards, Stark was sauntering up the sidewalk outside the high-rise, swathed in a jacket with a hood that covered his eyes and revealed his ruddy red-brown beard. The man was as big around the chest as any of Chadwick’s draft horses, and equally graceful.

Crackers shrieked within her cage again. She was the most sensitive of all his animals, and the most obnoxious.

“Shut up, you ugly parrot!” he snapped.

She stopped screaming. Silence radiated from underneath the blanket on her cage.

He hadn’t actually expected her to do what he ordered. Maybe the dumb bird was finally learning.

Chadwick met Stark outside the door. It was the polite thing to do. He was a country boy at heart, and nobody had better manners than country folks. “Everton!” he greeted with as warm a tone as he could manage.

Stark glowered. He always glowered. He was a miserable, grumpy shifter with a raisin where most people kept a heart. “I need your basement.”

Chadwick played stupid. “My basement?”

“You know what I mean. I need what’s under it.”

There was a bomb shelter underneath Chadwick’s basement. It had been installed by the high-rise’s previous owners—paranoid werewolves who had been convinced that the Office of Preternatural Affairs planned to wipe them out from a distance using radiation.

Stark had contracted with Chadwick to use the bomb shelter as a hideout months earlier, and he wasn’t the only one. Several people had contracts with Chadwick for the use of his high-rise. It was protected by some of the most advanced spell work on the East Coast; he’d even gotten a mage to put in a layer of wards. Consequently, some of the greatest villains of the post-Genesis world paid great sums of money for the right to hide on Chadwick’s property.

His reputation easily generated ninety percent of his lucrative business. Chadwick didn’t want to damage that reputation.

If Stark stuck around, it was going to be more than damaged.

Once rumor got around that Chadwick had sold one of his clients out, he’d lose a lot of street cred, which was worth millions.

Even so, there were things more valuable than money—things like Chadwick’s life—and the ones who’d bought Stark’s death had made the stakes clear.

“Let me in,” Stark said, stopping in front of the lobby doors.

“You’ll upset the horses,” Chadwick said. That was true, at least. They always lost their marbles when Stark came around.

“I don’t give a damn about your horses. I’ve got the OPA on my tail and a full moon rising.”

Stark couldn’t take a hint. The man was a bully, and he was going to die for it that night.

Chadwick stepped aside to let him enter. “Tell you what. Let me have Trilby sedate the animals real quick. It’ll be time for a bloodletting in about a half an hour anyway.” He gestured to the desk across his lobby, where he kept drinks for everyone who came to do business with him. “Want to have coffee while we wait?”

“No,” Stark said. “I need your shelter.”

Stubborn, awful man. “Won’t be long at all,” Chadwick said with forced cheer.

Trilby was currently bustling around the plants under the windows, humming to herself as she watered them. Chadwick caught her attention by waving at her. “Sedate the horses! Give ‘em a little juice!”

“A little juice” was their code, a way for Chadwick to tell her that things were about to get deadly.

The old woman headed toward the basement elevators without looking back. Amazing how fast she could move in her slippers and muumuu.

Stark didn’t follow Chadwick toward the desk with the coffee. He remained stiff by the front door, eyes on the elevators as Trilby headed down.

“Coffee’s already on,” Chadwick said. “I’ve got one of those new Behexed things. Potion pods, blood pods, coffee pods. Does darn near anything you could want. Won’t take long, as I said.”

“I hate your parrot,” Stark said, boots glued to the welcome mat.

Chadwick laughed. “Me too. She’s in her cage today.” He waved at the corner, where it was still silent under the white drape. “Don’t worry about her—she’s actually shut up for once.”

Stark finally moved through the lobby. The wards on the high-rise hummed in response. Everton Stark was something prehistoric and powerful—a bear wolf, a creature that hadn’t walked the Earth since humans came about—and the wards knew exactly how dangerous he was.

Not dangerous enough, though. There were things on the planet even older and deadlier than that guy.

Chadwick was going to enjoy watching him die.

“I need you to disarm, as usual,” Chadwick said as he grabbed a couple of mugs that fit the Behexed. “You know how it is. It’s in the contract and all.” So was keeping Stark’s relationship with Chadwick confidential, but Stark would be dead before he realized those terms had been violated.

Stark opened his jacket to reveal an underarm holster. He set a handgun on the desk, then pulled another, smaller gun out of his belt, and a third from his boots. Stark also produced two knives from within his sleeves and set those alongside the other weapons.

“That’s everything,” Stark said, letting his jacket fall closed around him again.

“Don’t mind if I check, do you?” Chadwick asked.

Stark grunted.

Chadwick activated a charm with a twist of his fingers, snagging the spell out of the air. It would make all weapons within the room glow. The magical light came from the table and the silver knife that Chadwick was wearing.

Stark had been honest about his weapons. There really was a first time for everything.

“You must be having a bad week if you needed to come here.” Chadwick gathered the weapons and put them into his safe. Enchantments buzzed as the locked clicked shut.

“The worst kind of week,” Stark agreed.

“I expected you to be excited about the upcoming elections,” Chadwick said. “You’ve been polling well. Have you seen the latest numbers?”

“I don’t watch polls.”

“You’ve got thirty percent of shifters saying they’re going to vote for you. Thirty percent! That’s a lot of shifters.”

“Shifters don’t hold elections. We earn our roles through blood. The Office of Preternatural Affairs wouldn’t yield to me even if I won.”

“Probably not, if they’re on your tail,” Chadwick said. “What’d you do tonight? Raid another benefits office?”

“A safe house.”

“See, why you gotta go and do that? You’re just agitating the OPA. It’s like poking a hornet’s nest with a stick. It’s so much easier to keep out of their sight. They’ll let you conduct your business if you don’t make a bother of yourself.”

“Not all of us want to sell animal blood to vampire junkies,” Stark said.

“Junkies, huh? You’re not usually singing that tune when you come to me for more lethe.”

Stark glowered. He could glower all he wanted, but that didn’t change the fact that he was one of Chadwick’s biggest buyers.

The shifter Alpha was an addict. He’d been buying more and more pallets of lethe in recent weeks, going through easily twice the amount that any man should—even a shifter his size.

Chadwick poured coffee for both of them. Stark didn’t take the second mug.

“Shouldn’t take Trilby long at all to get the horses down,” Chadwick said again.

He thumbed the button on the monitor to switch it to the basement cameras. The woman was still trying to get down to the bomb shelter. She was so painfully slow.

Chadwick would wait.

He slid a hand into his pocket. There was a stone the size of his palm in it, warm with the buzz of sidhe magic.

Stark still hadn’t taken the coffee.

“I didn’t put any potion in it, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Chadwick said. “Have a drink. Really. Enjoy.” It was going to be the man’s last drink, after all.

“What do you know about the unseelie sidhe?” Stark asked.

Chadwick stiffened. “Huh?” Stark couldn’t know about the visit from Melchior the day before. He just couldn’t.

“The unseelie sidhe,” he repeated.

“Oh, uh—well, the sidhe mostly hide in the Middle Worlds. No real presence on Earth to speak of.” He laughed and hoped that it didn’t sound too nervous. “I don’t do much business with those people.”

“Did you know they have a lot in common with shifters?” Stark said. “If a shifter had everything human stripped away from him, leaving a purely magical gaean core alive, the result would be a sidhe. Did you know that?”

That didn’t sound like a rhetorical question.

“No?” Chadwick ventured.

“I expected you to be an expert.”

The long look that Stark gave him said that he knew. Somehow, he knew that the unseelie had visited the high-rise before his arrival. He knew that they wanted Stark dead. And he knew that they had paid Chadwick enough to make arranging that death worthwhile.

Chadwick ripped the stone the unseelie gave him out of his pocket. “Don’t have to be an expert,” he said. “All I have to do is activate this, and they’ll be here in moments. I could give you a head start if you want. Thirty seconds. Seems like the least I could do, after all the business we’ve done together this year.”

Stark rubbed a hand over his beard. “A head start. That’s the best you’ll give me?”

“Better than you deserve,” Chadwick said.

“Fine,” Stark said. “Do it, Tombs.”

“Tombs?” Chadwick asked. But Stark hadn’t been speaking to him.

Hands settled on Chadwick’s shoulders. “Hi,” said a female voice from behind him.

And then he exploded into flame.

“Holy gods!”

Deirdre leaped back from Chadwick Hawfinch, jerking her hands away from him.

It was too late. The man had already been consumed by fire.

And he hadn’t just been consumed. All of the moisture had evaporated from his body in an instant. His final breaths rattled in his chest. A wail squeezed out of him, small and pathetic, as he tipped forward onto his knees.

Embers scattered across the floor when he struck.

Chadwick landed on his face and didn’t move.

Deirdre turned to Stark, hands uplifted, white with heat.

“Wow,” she said.

He looked impressed. And he wasn’t an easy man to shake.

Stark nudged the body with his boot and the skin crumbled to ash. Chadwick had probably died as soon as she touched him. His clothing was still smoldering.

The fire spread to the decorative rug beside him, sweeping toward the table with the Behexed. Black smoke gushed through the lobby, stinking of sticky-sweet meat and the artificial fibers of his clothing.

Deirdre bit back a cry of surprise, leaped onto the rug, and stomped at the fire with her boots.

Stark whipped a blanket off of the nearest chair and threw it on the smoldering body. It smothered the flames, but it was far too late to help Chadwick Hawfinch.

Deirdre stood over the lumpy blanket, stomach churning with sudden regret.

“Wow,” she said again.

Ever since she and Stark had left the asylum, Deirdre had been practicing her newfound pyro abilities. She’d been burning things. Little things. Pieces of paper, some grass, a garbage can. It hadn’t been easy, not once—she could barely increase her temperature on command, much less set fire to anything.

But it had been easy to kill this man, and she wasn’t even sure that he had deserved it.

Deirdre swallowed hard. “Remind me. Who was this guy?”

“He’s a major supplier who trades on the black market,” Stark said. “This high-rise is his base of operations. Nobody lives in the apartments upstairs. His only source of income is selling contraband and harboring fugitives.”

Tension eased out of Deirdre’s shoulders. If that was true, then Chadwick Hawfinch had deserved to die. “So you knew that he was the kind of person who would betray you to the highest bidder. You knew that the unseelie would have contacted him.”

“And now I have this.” Stark peeled the unseelie charm out of the Chadwick’s hand. Bits of burned skin clung to the side.

Deirdre’s nose wrinkled. “That’s—wow, that’s really gross. Do you need to touch that?”

“Yes.” He delivered a swift kick to the side of the blanket-covered body. It made a strange crumbly noise.

Deirdre wasn’t sure if she was feeling elation or panic. They were so similar in many ways. Her heart was pounding, her head was spinning, and she couldn’t seem to catch a breath.

She had wanted to kill Chadwick. That had definitely been her intent. But even though she’d visualized her flames consuming him, she hadn’t really expected that to happen. She’d been planning to beat him up like a good Beta would in defense of Everton Stark.

“Oh my gods,” she whispered.

No, it was definitely panic.

Deirdre’s legs wobbled as she approached the kennels in the back of the lobby. The dogs had barked when she first entered the high-rise, but had fallen silent quickly. They had been beaten too many times. The will had been kicked out of them.

They cringed in their cages when they saw her coming.

“What are you doing?” Stark asked without looking up from the sidhe stone, running his fingernails through the engravings, as though searching for a seam.

“I’m releasing the dogs.”

“Why?”

Deirdre unlocked the cages. The dogs didn’t come out until she backed away, giving them room.

As soon as they stepped out of their kennels, they started running.

The lobby doors were still open. The dogs vanished into the darkness of night. Deirdre hoped that whatever they found out there would be better than what they had suffered inside. The vampires probably wouldn’t bother them, and at least they would have a chance out there on their own.

When she turned around, she was startled to realize Stark was looking at her.

“Did you need the dogs for something?” Deirdre asked. “Was that a problem?”

He returned his attention to the stone. “No.”

Now that the dogs were gone and Chadwick Hawfinch was dead, Deirdre gave herself permission to sink into one of the lobby chairs. She stared blankly at the coffee table. There was rubber tubing and an empty syringe on the edge nearest her. Implements for injecting lethe.

She shut her eyes and relaxed back against the chair.

Only days earlier, Deirdre had died after getting stabbed with a silver knife. It was a surefire way to kill any shifter, but overkill for someone like Deirdre—an Omega, a shapeshifter who couldn’t shift shapes, weaker than the rest of her kind by every metric. She healed slower. She moved slower. Her senses were duller.

She was so much easier to kill than every other shapeshifter.

But apparently “easy to kill” and “easy to keep dead” were two very different things.

Deirdre spread her fingers out to watch the flames licking between them. Her palms burned pleasantly.

It was a strange thing, this fire. It moved like feathers rippling in the wind, appearing and disappearing in time with the pulse of her blood. Her burning flesh didn’t hurt. That was obviously an immunity unique to Deirdre, since she’d charred Chadwick Hawfinch to a crisp within seconds.

Stark pressed a button on the security monitor to switch to the basement camera.

“Trilby?” Deirdre asked.

“Dead,” he said.

Vidya had gotten into the basement without attracting Chadwick’s attention and killed Trilby Hawfinch before she could hide. The valkyrie’s wings were retracting now that she didn’t have anyone to kill. They would be gone in moments. It was amazing how quickly she could hide her true form.

Stark ripped one of Chadwick’s charred hands off and used it to open the safe. He took his guns out one by one and returned them to his holster.

“The bird?” Stark asked.

Deirdre stood on trembling legs and pulled the covering off of the parrot’s cage. The rear door stood open. “I let her out a window.”

“I told you to kill the parrot,” Stark said, sliding the knives back into his sleeves.

“I thought I’d save my murdering mood for someone more deserving than a bird.”

Stark’s eyes glinted. “You never met that bird before.”

He flipped a switch inside of the safe to disengage the last of the high-rise’s external wards. The shifters that they’d unleashed from the safe house streamed into the high-rise, nails clicking against the linoleum floor, paws scrabbling, wheezing with the exertion of running through vampire territory.

Stark marched toward the elevator, leaving Deirdre no choice but to follow him. Her feet barely seemed to touch the ground. She was always flying now, the way that she flew over rooftops when free running, and it made her giddier than lethe.

She had just murdered a man and was surrounded by fugitive shifters.

And she was giddy.

III

There were stables in the basement underneath Chadwick Hawfinch’s high-rise. Each stall held a single gaunt, sickly horse whose muscles had atrophied from long weeks trapped in the basement, its flesh pocked by needle marks.

When Stark and Deirdre entered the stables, most of the horses shrieked, reared onto their hind legs, and beat at the insides of their enclosures with blunted hooves. A few of them lifted their heads weakly and then went back to staring blankly at the walls.

The basement smelled like droppings and sweat and copper pennies. Worse, it smelled like perforated intestine.

Vidya had killed Trilby messily. Violently.

The valkyrie stood among her remains, reaching over one of the stable doors to pet a horse that seemed to have lost the will to fight back.

“My gods,” Deirdre said, staring around the squalor in the basement. “What is this place?”

“It’s a farm,” Stark said curtly.

She shot a sideways look at him.

Stark had never been friendly. Not exactly. But he and Deirdre had been growing close in their sick way. He had trusted her, divulged secrets to her, leaned on her for support as his Beta.

He’d even killed everyone on an airplane to save her life, and then kissed her.

Deirdre assumed that kiss had meant something. Probably something like “Stark hates me slightly less than he hates everyone else.”

But ever since they’d left the asylum, he had become distant. He barely spoke to her. Deirdre chalked it up to brooding over his ex-wife, who was rebelling against the unseelie queen without his help, but she was afraid that his mood might have been more personal than that.

She was afraid that he knew the truth.

Deirdre approached the nearest stall. Its thick walls shielded her from the wild flailing of hooves, but allowed her to see the equipment on the inside.

A pump was mounted on the interior of the stall. Tubes hung from hooks, tipped by rusty needles. Medical tape was piled on the shelves. Dirty milk jugs were scattered around the door.

“What exactly is this farm producing?” Deirdre asked.

She answered her own question when she spotted a jug sitting against the back wall, beyond all the stalls. Deirdre hooked a finger in the handle and lifted it to look. The fluid inside was sludgy, almost black in the darkness. Horse blood.

“Do vampires actually drink this?” she asked. “I didn’t think horse blood would be a close analog to human blood.”

“Chadwick Hawfinch told them it was the real thing. And it’s cheap enough that people will go along with it to enjoy the idea that they’re really drinking blood.” Stark’s upper lip curled. Deirdre suspected the disapproval wasn’t directed toward Chadwick Hawfinch for deceiving his vampire clients, but for the OPA laws that forbade vampires from consuming human blood.

The horses grew more agitated as Stark entered the empty center stall, still carrying Chadwick Hawfinch’s charred and severed hand.

Stark bared his teeth in a growl, golden eyes flashing.

The horses in the adjoining stalls skittered away from him so quickly that they slammed into the opposite walls. Amazing how Stark’s aura of fear worked on herd animals just as well as human beings.

He pressed Chadwick’s hand against the rear wall. A rune Deirdre hadn’t noticed flared with magic.

A door appeared where there had been nothing but smooth concrete before, and it swung open to reveal a set of stairs leading underneath the first basement level.

Vidya moved to enter, but Stark stopped her. “Watch the shifters upstairs. Keep them under wraps until sunrise.”

She went to the elevator obediently without hesitation.

That left Stark and Deirdre alone.

Her stomach knotted as she moved downstairs into the sub-basement, leaving the thrashing horses behind. Stark tossed Chadwick’s hand into one of the other stalls before going downstairs.

The bomb shelter was spacious and well lit, with several cots along one wall and cabinets of food along the other. The rear was cordoned off to be a shooting range. And the guns—there must have been at least three dozen different kinds of guns racked along with melee weapons, like swords, whips, and silver chains.

Stark shoved the door shut behind him. It locked automatically with a heavy thump.

It was quiet in the bomb shelter. Very quiet.

Deirdre stood near the weapons racks as Stark engaged the wards, hands moving over the runes confidently. He wasn’t trying to lock anyone out. He was trying to lock Deirdre in.

She had died and come back from the dead.

Again.

Stark was assuming this was a trend, not a coincidence. And this was the first full moon since she’d come back to life.

It was brave to lock himself in with the woman who had just accidentally incinerated a man with her questionable new shapeshifting powers.

She licked her dry lips. “How long should it take before I start to transform? I’ve never shifted before, so it should be like any other first-time shift, right?” He prowled around the room, checking the cabinets. He found maps rolled up in one and spread them out on a table. “Stark?”

He weighed the edges of the maps down with pocketknives and the sidhe rune stone.

Deirdre went to the opposite side of the table.

The maps that Stark had pulled out didn’t display state boundaries, cities, or even topography. She recognized the vague outlines of forest and mountains as being local geography. But the other colorful splotches on it didn’t make sense, nor did the seemingly random radiating lines that reminded her of cobwebs.

“Is this a map to the Middle Worlds?” she asked, starting to turn the maps in her direction. She poked at it gently with her forefinger to make sure that she didn’t set anything on fire. “Ley lines, I mean?”

He planted his hands on the paper to hold it down. “Niamh said that you were planted in my pack by Rylie Gresham,” Stark said.

There it was.

He knew. He knew what she had done, where she had come from, and why she had been sticking around with him.

Stark knew she was a traitor.

It was amazing he hadn’t already killed her a third time.

“It’s the full moon,” Deirdre said. “I could change at any moment. Don’t you want to talk about what’s going to happen?”

“Niamh says you’re a traitor. That’s what I want to talk about.”

A hard lump formed in Deirdre’s throat.

If Niamh knew that Deirdre was a traitor, why hadn’t the swanmay told her that she knew? Deirdre had suffered in the wake of Gage’s death alone, concealing the truth from everyone—including her friends—when she could have had Niamh’s help the entire time.

Because Niamh was a traitor, too.

A traitor for a different faction, but a traitor nevertheless.

Deirdre wasn’t sure if it hurt worse that Niamh had killed her, or that Niamh had been lying to her the whole time. Either way, she had wasted so much time watching Jacek that she’d missed the real threat.

And now Stark knew.

“Niamh stabbed me,” Deirdre said. “I don’t know that she’s the most trustworthy source of information on all things Deirdre.” Stark rounded the table. Deirdre fought the urge to back away, shoulders tensing as he grew nearer by the inch. “Plus, Niamh is kind of a bird-brain. She’s not much brighter than the swan she’s supposed to turn into.” It wasn’t the nicest observation to make, but she wasn’t going to bandy words when the woman had stabbed her.

Stark grabbed Deirdre by the elbow and turned her to face him. He might not have been afraid Deirdre would burn him, but she was—she tried to step out of his grip. He didn’t allow it. “Tell me you aren’t allies with Rylie Gresham.”

She set her jaw. Swallowed hard. “Yes, I was allied with Rylie Gresham. She asked me to join your pack and report back on what you did…with Gage’s help.”

Stark’s hands tightened. “Give me a reason not to kill you right now.”

“The fact you’re asking for a reason means you’re not going to do it,” Deirdre said. “If you wanted me dead, you’d have already killed me.”

“Traitor,” Stark said. His tone was soft. Dangerous. “You called the OPA tonight, didn’t you? You told them that we would be at the safe house. You’ve been informing them about my movements.”

“No, I didn’t,” Deirdre said. “And I don’t plan to tell them another damn thing about you. I regret everything I did for them in the past.”

“Then what are you still doing here? You’ll get nothing else from me.”

Deirdre was surprised by the question.

What was she still doing with Stark?

When she didn’t respond, he continued. “I made you Beta, and you had the OPA sent to the asylum. They would have arrested many of my closest allies if the unseelie sidhe hadn’t killed them first.”

“Yeah, but I also tried to give you the Ethereal Blade. I’ve killed people for you, and I’m with you now. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

Stark’s fingers dug into her arms.

She visualized the Alpha consumed by flame, the same way that she had imagined consuming Chadwick Hawfinch. She had been afraid when he had done that. Afraid that the criminal kingpin would hurt Stark. Now she was afraid that Stark would hurt her.

Yet the flames didn’t rise. She didn’t glow, much less catch fire.

He released his grip on her.

“Get out of here,” he said harshly.

Deirdre would have loved him to banish her days earlier. But now it felt like a punch to the gut.

Why hadn’t she already left Stark?

Because she believed in him. Because she believed the world needed him and his vision for the future.

Because they weren’t done yet.

This time, when Stark walked around the table, it was Deirdre who pursued him. “Hear me out. Rylie Gresham had the Ethereal Blade, right? Who wields the Twin Blades?”

He straightened out the map, uncapped a marker, started tracing some of the ley lines.

Deirdre took a deep breath. “I think Rylie Gresham is the Godslayer.”

She expected that announcement to have some impact on Stark, but he didn’t even blink.

He’d spent ten years seeking revenge for Genesis. Deirdre had just told him that the woman responsible was his rival Alpha, and he didn’t seem to care. Not at all.

“If Rylie is the Godslayer, then that means she’s responsible for even more than I realized. She’s not redeemable. I was wrong to have ever helped her. But by announcing this election, she’s given us a tool to remove her without causing innocent deaths among the gaean and mundane populations. We need to focus on making you win the popular vote.”

Stark exploded with motion, flipping the table over with a roar.

The weapons on its surface crashed to the floor, taking the maps with them.

He swung a fist at Deirdre, so fast that she couldn’t react in time. His knuckles connected with her cheek. She smashed into the table. Her head rang, and flames leaped over her skin, echoing the healing fever.

When Stark approached her to strike again, she swept out a leg, hooking it behind his ankle.

She jerked him to the floor.

He shifted his weight to throw himself over her. Stark’s hand clamped down on her throat.

Deirdre grabbed a fistful of his shirt.

And her fist leaped with flame.

“Stop it!” she squeezed out, struggling to breathe through his grip. “I’ll incinerate you!”

“You don’t have enough control,” he growled.

His weight pressed down harder. Tighter. Cutting off her oxygen supply. There was so much hate in his eyes.

Deirdre could barely speak. “Want to bet your life?”

She pressed her flaming fist to his chest. She heard sizzling, smelled the meat cooking, saw his face flush with the healing fever as his body rushed to repair the damage she inflicted. But Stark didn’t draw back.

Black spots flashed in her vision. Her head swam.

And then he lifted his weight.

Her throat opened and oxygen filled her lungs. Deirdre coughed. The fire in her hands went out.

Stark loomed over her, fury and the healing fever making his face ruddy under the beard, eyes like shards of gold filed down to a knife point. “You’re no better than Rhiannon. You lied to me this entire time, and—”

“And you beat me, and forced me to beat my friends, and ordered me to kill my boyfriend. Bitch all you want, but stones, glass houses, etcetera. Even if I’m a monster, you’re still a better monster than I am.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re a better monster every day, Tombs.”

Stark made that sound like a compliment.

Deirdre was suddenly uncomfortable having him crouched over her. Not in pain. Just…uncomfortable. “Speaking of Rhiannon…”

“Don’t.”

“She bleeds red,” Deirdre said.

Stark seemed to lose interest in fighting. He climbed off of her. “I saw that.” He shook his fist at nothingness, as though clenched around her throat again. “I almost ripped her heart out. I saw the blood.”

“That means she’s not unseelie and can’t be the unseelie queen.”

“She performs unseelie magic,” Stark said. “She used compulsion on me. She opened a portal to the Winter Court in my asylum and brought the sidhe to kill my people.” His voice grew harsher. “On top of all that, she’s mated to a shifter. She may be some rare breed of red-blooded sidhe.”

“Or she might be an ordinary human witch who’s using the unseelie to springboard herself to power. Witches are the weakest gaean faction. Do you think Rhiannon would ever be satisfied being one of the weakest gaeans in the world?”

He surveyed Deirdre with mistrust. “You talk like you know her.”

“I don’t need to know her because I know you,” Deirdre said. “I can guess what kind of woman you’d marry.”

Stark reached down, offering Deirdre a hand.

She hesitated before taking it.

He pulled her onto her feet. “Rhiannon’s ruthless,” he said with no small amount of pride. “But if she’s not the unseelie queen, then who is? Where is she? And how does Rhiannon control the Winter Court?”

“Great questions,” Deirdre said. “I’d love to know the answers.”

“Then stay with me,” Stark said. “Remain my Beta. Help me find the Winter Court and burn it to the ground with Rhiannon, Melchior, and Niamh inside of it.”

“Are you actually giving me a choice?”

“You are the powerful shifter I always believed you to be. Of course I want you to come with me. I told you from the beginning that I prefer my followers to be enthusiastically consenting, and that hasn’t changed.”

But was that really the only reason he wanted her to come along? Because she could be powerful, assuming she figured out how to control her flaming powers?

Stark was standing close to her, forcing Deirdre almost to the lockers. The look he gave her wasn’t one of an Alpha with his ally.

Her fist had burned a crater into his chest.

“It’s not long until the election,” Deirdre said. “Rylie is the Godslayer. We need to get her out of power, Stark. We can’t go marching through the Middle Worlds with an army until that happens.”

“The election doesn’t matter.”

“If you really think that, then why did we meet January Lazar at the safe house tonight? Wasn’t that your idea of an election ad? Because I bet you anything it’s going to improve your position in the polls.”

“Forget the polls. I’ll need more followers to defeat the unseelie,” Stark said. “As soon as I find the juncture in the ley lines that will let me reach the Winter Court, I’ll take everyone I’ve gathered to kill Rhiannon.”

“Look at the facts: the sidhe have been underground since Genesis, so they don’t have a following like you do. Melchior won’t win the election. If you defeat Rylie, you’ll defeat all the candidates in the election, including Rhiannon.”

“Stop. Talking. About. The election.” Stark stepped forward on each word until Deirdre’s back hit the lockers. He braced an arm beside her head, leaning over her. They were almost the same height. He shouldn’t have been able to look so intimidating. But Stark was so much more frightening than that.

Deirdre squared her shoulders, trying not to shrink away. “You’re a household name. You have political clout. We’ve got momentum and we’ve got to hit Rylie hard before you lose it.”

He gave a harsh laugh. “Is that what you think?”

“Yeah, that’s what I think. You’re the best chance we have at making real change, and I’m not going to watch you let that slip away from us.”

“How can I ever trust you again, knowing how you came to me? Knowing that you’ve betrayed me?”

He sounded so bitterly angry, in an inhuman place beyond rational thought.

This wasn’t about Deirdre lying to him. This was about his wife being alive, knowing that he was searching for her, and mating with a dragon shifter anyway.

She wasn’t going to be able to talk with him rationally when his emotions weren’t rational.

Deirdre pushed against his chest, hard enough to make him step backwards. “You’re pissed. I get it. Now get over it. Hit me, make me toe the line, show me who’s boss, and shake it off.”

Stark stepped so close again that their noses were only an inch apart. “Do you want me to hit you?”

She pushed him again. “If that’s what it takes, yeah. Do it. You were ready to kill me two minutes ago. Follow through. Let’s get this crap out of your system so that we can move on to more important things, because if you let your wife mess with your head, you’re going to lose everything.”

The way he glared at her made Deirdre think that he was going to take her up on it. There was so much hate in him.

But Deirdre pushed again.

“Don’t tempt me, Beta,” Stark said. “I won’t let you deprive me of my revenge.”

“You shouldn’t. But keep your eye on the target.” Deirdre fisted his shirt in both hands. “Rylie Gresham. The Godslayer. She made Genesis happen. She killed my father. She created the orphanages that abused me throughout my entire life. She’s keeping our people down. We can get revenge, but it needs to be the big target. The election. The OPA. Rylie Gresham.”

Stark breathed heavily, shoulders heaving with the force of it, as though he’d been running laps around the bomb shelter.

Deirdre shook him gently.

“We’ve got to beat Rylie Gresham,” she said again, softer than before. He put his hands over hers. His skin was cool in comparison. “Prove to me that you’re the man I think you are. You’re the guy who can fix every screwed-up thing that was done to me as a kid. You can defeat Rylie Gresham and make our world the place it needs to be.”

“She’ll die too,” Stark said. “But Rhiannon and Melchior need to die first.”

She wasn’t getting through to him.

Deirdre released Stark, pacing away from him, rubbing her hands over her face.

What time was it? She felt hot and antsy, like she’d heard that she should on the night of a full moon, but she wasn’t transforming yet.

She couldn’t organize her thoughts.

“When do I change?” Deirdre asked, scratching the inside of her left arm. She hadn’t worn an intake bracelet since coming back to life, but she still felt itchy where the needles had been embedded in her skin. “I want to get this night over with.”

“Fine,” Stark said. He caught her face in his hands, staring deep into her eyes. “Change into your animal.”

There was compulsion in his voice.

He was ordering her to shift shapes using the talent that Rhiannon had attributed to sidhe magic.

Deirdre still didn’t feel anything.

But she caught herself gazing into Stark’s eyes, caught in the deep gold color of his irises. It reminded her of what she had seen after she died a second time—those rolling, grassy fields, with an oppressive sun smashing down on her as its heat consumed her.

She couldn’t remember more than that. Just the fire of the overbearing sun and grassy fields.

Deirdre wasn’t even certain that she hadn’t hallucinated it.

Stark’s compulsion still did nothing to her, and she still didn’t transform.

“Damn,” he said.

Why wasn’t Deirdre changing? She wasn’t an Omega anymore, was she? She’d been reborn with new powers, and she had assumed that meant that she would have finally unlocked her animal. “Maybe I’m not really a shifter,” Deirdre said, slumping against the wall. “Maybe I’m a sidhe too.”

Stark didn’t like that she was including him among the sidhe. His scowl deepened. “I’m a shifter.”

“Who cares? There’s not that much difference between sidhe and shifters anyway.”

“There’s a difference,” he said sharply.

“Okay. You’re a shifter. But maybe I’m not! Maybe I don’t have an animal form.” She flung her hands into the air in frustration. “I’m not waiting this out down here. I can barely breathe. I’m going upstairs to get air.”

“If you leave now, don’t come back,” Stark said. “I’m leaving for the Middle Worlds as soon as I find a path there. If you won’t help me, then I don’t need.”

The rejection stung more than she expected. “Fine. I’ll stop inconveniencing you with the ideals I thought that we shared.” She stalked toward the stairwell.

“Rylie Gresham will be at the United Nations the day after tomorrow,” Stark said.

Deirdre stopped in the open doors. “How do you know that? I haven’t seen anything on the news about Rylie making any appearances.”

“She’ll be there.” Stark picked the table up, put the maps back on its surface. He spoke again when she tried to leave. “Don’t you want to know what you are?”

“Of course I do,” Deirdre said. “I’ve never wanted anything so bad in my entire life. But I don’t think I’m a dragon, and I have no idea what else I could be. What kind of shifter randomly catches fire? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“I have,” Stark said. “There used to be ancient firebirds tied to the cycle of life and death. They would die repeatedly, only to be reborn from their own ashes. They’ve been extinct for millennia. But I learned of them when researching my own unusual animal, as they roamed the Earth at similar times.”

Deirdre clenched her hand on the doorway. Her fingernails dug into the metal. “Don’t tease me. Give me a word. A name. Anything.”

His gaze bored through her, intent and cold. “Phoenix, Tombs. You’re a phoenix.”

IV

The high-rise was far from the tallest building in New York City, or even the neighborhood. But being up on the roof still gave Deirdre an excellent vantage point.

Helicopters swept a few blocks away, skimming the streets with blazing spotlights. The OPA was still looking for Stark and Deirdre. They were close, but not close enough.

It didn’t matter if the OPA discovered where Stark was hiding. He had a high-rise filled with shapeshifters in their super-powered animal forms, and they were smack in the middle of vampire territory at nighttime. Weak as vampires were, they were strongest at night—strong, and thirsty.

No human OPA agent would be stupid enough to attack Stark that night.

Stupid, stupid Stark.

Deirdre dropped her coat to the roof and stepped onto the edge. The view of the street so many hundreds of feet below was dizzying. Nothing stood between her and a very long fall.

She spread her arms, wiggled her toes over the edge.

Her daddy, Alasdair Tombs, had always said that she was a graceful girl. He’d said that she moved like she could fly. Maybe he’d meant it literally. He could have known something about her that nobody else had. He was her father, after all.

Deirdre wanted to fly.

But now that she stood in the chilly rain, she couldn’t summon the fire that had licked over her flesh earlier, much less an animal form. She just felt cold. Like nothing had changed since she died in the asylum, killed by a woman that Deirdre had considered her closest friend.

Phoenix.

That was the word Stark had given her for her animal. Deirdre had never heard of such a thing before. It sounded like some kind of mythological bullcrap—but then, didn’t dragons seem just as fake? And it was impossible to deny Melchior’s existence.

What if she jumped? Took a headlong dive off the side of the building and trusted that she’d find her wings before pancaking on the pavement below?

She’d come back from two deaths already. Risking a third would be tempting fate.

Deirdre stepped back to the relative safety of the roof, feeling sick and disappointed and exhausted.

There was nothing she could do about the transformation. Not yet. But she might be able to do something to help Stark with the election, even if he was determined not to participate.

Deirdre pulled her cell phone out. It was a burner, a cheap device she’d picked up earlier that day when Stark was making plans with January Lazar. She dialed Rylie’s phone number.

Someone responded on the fourth ring.

“Hello?” That wasn’t Rylie’s voice. It was a young woman—or maybe a boy, it was hard to tell.

“Who is this?” Deirdre asked. “I need to talk to Rylie.”

“This is Benjamin,” he said. “Who are you?”

Benjamin was one of Rylie’s numerous children. He was ten years old, a mundane human by some fluke of genetics that had spared him from being born a shifter. “This is Deirdre Tombs. Your mom gave me this number to reach her personally. What are you doing answering it?”

“Her bedroom phone rang,” he said. “She’s not home.”

Of course she wasn’t. She might have already been on her way to the United Nations.

“Can you tell me how to reach her?” Deirdre asked.

“Uh…I better not. Dad says he doesn’t want Mom talking to you anymore, and also that he’s going to kill you the next time he sees you.” Benjamin added that part matter-of-factly, as though murder threats were normal behavior. It probably was when both of your parents were werewolf Alphas.

Rylie’s mate, Abel, had been kind to Deirdre the last time they’d met. Apparently his opinion of her had changed rather abruptly.

Steal one enchanted sword and suddenly Deirdre was unpopular.

Who would have thought?

She hung up. There was no point in trying to convince Benjamin to get Deirdre in touch with Rylie. He was just a kid, and this fight wasn’t his.

Rylie Gresham had made time to talk to Deirdre when she wanted something out of her. Now that Deirdre wanted something out of Rylie, the Alpha was inaccessible. She wouldn’t pick up her phone.

Hot anger filled Deirdre.

Stark had said Rylie would be at the United Nations, so Deirdre would be there, too.

She pocketed the phone and climbed up on the edge of the roof again. The UN building wasn’t visible from where she stood, though she knew where it was. It would have been underneath the moon, over behind the skyscraper that blocked her view. Not a very long walk.

An even shorter flight.

Deirdre spread her arms and shut her eyes.

Stark said that she was a phoenix. A firebird. She should have had wings.

But the moon was high in the sky, shining with brilliant rays that pierced the clouds and bathed her in milky light, and she still wasn’t changing.

“Why?” Deirdre asked the moon.

It didn’t have a response for her.

The long night passed. New York City’s gaean energy swelled and ebbed like the ocean. Everton Stark felt the shapeshifters transforming across the city one by one, their animal forms blinking into existence the way that the stars appeared after sunset.

But even once the last of the shifters in New York had shed their humanity, Deirdre Tombs was still human.

And that wasn’t going to change. Not that full moon, and not on any other moon. It didn’t seem to matter how many times she’d died. She was still an Omega.

Stark watched her for a long time from the shadows at the rear of the roof, standing behind an air conditioning unit that rumbled so loudly that it masked the sound of his motions. He had plans to make, allies to gather, a wife to murder. But for the moment, he couldn’t seem to draw himself away from the rooftop.

He had watched Tombs burn. He had put her into the oven himself.

Yet here she was, standing on the edge of the roof, arms spread and coat lifted by the wind.

She was alive. Breathing.

Still very much a puzzle.

Stark forced himself to turn from Tombs, taking the elevator back down to the lobby. The high-rise was tall. Very tall. And the elevator was slow. He had plenty of time to think about Deirdre Tombs on the way down to the lobby, distracted by the enigma of the woman and the things he wasn’t sure he wanted to do with her.

He wasn’t so distracted that he failed to notice someone waiting for him in the lobby.

Vidya had escorted the shifters into the higher floors, so the lobby should have been empty. But now a man stood near the front doors, surveying the burned smear on the ground that used to be Chadwick Hawfinch.

“Stark,” he greeted.

Stark clenched his jaw. “Lucifer.”

He wasn’t certain if Lucifer’s name was the one given to him at birth or a codename. Many people assumed pseudonyms when entering the mercenary profession.

Either way, it described him perfectly.

Lucifer was truly the morning star. One of the deadliest gaeans that Stark had ever known, and easily the most powerful vampire in New York City. He was the kind of pale that came from staying out of the sun for a decade. His skin was the color of the scorched desert earth, his lips a few shades paler, his irises a few shades darker.

There was blood caking his fingernails. Stark wasn’t interested in how that had happened.

“It seems you’ve killed my favorite supplier,” Lucifer said, nudging the body with his toe. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“He sold me out to the unseelie.”

Annoyance twisted Lucifer’s mouth. “Color me unsurprised. Have you broken into the stock room of lethe yet?”

“Not yet. I will.” Chadwick Hawfinch had been smart enough to apply extra layers of security on the room where he stored lethe, but Stark was confident that he’d be able to penetrate the wards given enough time.

“I want half of the drugs,” Lucifer said.

Stark’s eyes narrowed. “Why should you have any?”

“Because I’m going to help you win the election.” Lucifer strolled around him, arms loose at his sides, motions graceful. Stark could tell that he was prepared to draw a gun. Even vampires needed silver to slaughter a shifter. “I’ve heard that your allies are avoiding you. I can bring them back into the fold.”

“They’re avoiding me because they don’t want the unseelie to kill them,” Stark said. “They’re putting their bets on the unseelie murdering me before I have time to track down and murder them. They’ll all die if they don’t return to me.” He didn’t think that would be necessary. They would come to heel as soon as he took care of Rhiannon and Melchior.

“You have all the leadership nuance of an atomic bomb, as always,” Lucifer said.

This was coming from the vampire who kept his flunkies jacked up on lethe so that they couldn’t rebel against him. “I can handle everything on my own.”

“Clearly.” Lucifer flashed elongated canines when he smiled thinly. “You’re an addict who just killed the most reliable supplier of lethe to New York City. You’re handling things great.”

“Should I have let him live after his betrayal?”

“Everyone betrays everyone else. Don’t act so wounded. We’re all only out to help ourselves.” Lucifer pressed a button on the Behexed. A stream of blood trickled into his mug. “You need to win the election. If you don’t, then the unseelie will, and we’ll have a bigger problem on our hands.”

“Always about this damn election,” Stark said.

“Not taking it seriously? Hmm. That’s funny. Because I’m sure the unseelie are. They didn’t have a clear path to victory until that idiot Alpha volunteered to start elections.” The Behexed finished, and Lucifer pulled the mug out. He wafted the scent of the blood toward his nose. “What do you think will happen when the unseelie have control?”

“Nothing. They won’t win.” Because of Deirdre’s incessant yammering, Stark knew that he was a close second in the polls, and the unseelie didn’t rank. Most people didn’t realize the unseelie would even be eligible to hold the Alpha position.

“Once the unseelie have power, they’ll ensure they can keep it by eliminating all opposition who present a genuine threat.”

“Then the vampires have nothing to fear,” Stark said.

Lucifer’s thin smile vanished. “I want you to win, Everton. You don’t care about the vampires and that means you’ll give us room to grow. Subsequently, I’m going to restore your allies so that you can kill the unseelie queen, and you’re going to give me half of Chadwick Hawfinch’s stock of lethe in return.”

“I don’t plan to run in the election.”

“It’s too late for that.” Lucifer sipped from the mug of blood. He licked the stain of crimson off his upper lip. “I hear you’ve run through your second Beta in as many months.”

Stark was on Lucifer in an instant.

He slammed the vampire into a wall, pinning him using a hand in against throat. Lucifer felt fragile under Stark’s grip, dusty and dried out and brittle, like he might snap in half with just the right amount of force.

“The only way you could know my Beta died is if you heard it from the unseelie,” Stark growled.

Lucifer was relaxed in his grip. A smear of blood marked the corner of his mouth. “A vampire’s venom is almost as intoxicating as lethe. My boyfriend is highly ranked among the unseelie. He tells me things.” A faint smile. “I’m sure he’d tell you things too, if we were friends.”

Stark didn’t have friends. He didn’t need friends.

“Why would you help me if you’re involved with the unseelie?” he asked.

“My boyfriend is loyal to Ofelia Hawke, the true queen,” Lucifer said. “He’d love it if I helped take Rhiannon down. See how this could help all of us? Everyone can be happy if you and I cooperate.”

Stark considered this information. “I could use an informant, but I’ll only give you twenty-five percent of the lethe.”

“I also want to be given special privileges when you’re elected as Alpha,” Lucifer said. “An opportunity for the vampire faction to grow undisturbed.”

That was an easy thing to promise, considering Stark couldn’t be elected if he didn’t run for the supposed office. “Fine.”

“Then we’re in agreement,” Lucifer said smoothly.

Stark stepped back. Lucifer straightened his collar, wiped his thumb over the corner of his mouth, sighed deeply. “You only get everything if you bring back my allies in time for me to assault the Winter Court,” Stark said. “I want them here, in this building, in three days’ time. If you can’t do that, you get nothing.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Lucifer said. “I have plans.”

He took a sideways step into the shadows.

With a flurry of darkness, Lucifer vanished.

V

Deirdre wandered the streets of New York alone. Even vampire territory was quiet on a full moon. A shapeshifter in his human form was an equal match for a vampire; once in his animal form, the vampires didn’t stand a chance at survival.

She had never felt lonelier than she did that night, following the full moon as it peeked at her from between the buildings.

Niamh would have seen the humor in the situation. She probably wouldn’t have even understood why Deirdre was so upset that she could set fire to things but couldn’t turn into her animal—whatever it was, phoenix or dragon or a really feisty Bic-lighter-shifter.

But at least Deirdre wouldn’t have been alone. At least she wouldn’t have had to dwell in her thoughts, her memories, and the things she couldn’t remember.

Like what had happened after she died.

Again.

There was a noise from the end of the street. A shout. A scuffle.

Deirdre wasn’t alone after all. A woman was being pulled into an alley by a pair of vampires.

She was kicking wildly, but she obviously had no self-defense knowledge, and she was helpless against their preternatural strength. She flailed uselessly as only a mundane person could.

Deirdre stooped at the mouth of the alley to snap a leg off of a discarded wooden chair. All gaeans had a singular elemental weakness—iron for the sidhe, silver for shifters—and vampires were cursed with the most pathetic of all the weaknesses: wood. Poke them in the heart with a stick and they fell to pieces.

The victim kicked helplessly as they dragged her into the shadowy depths of the alley. They were removing her from street view before doing whatever vampires did best, probably.

“Hey,” Deirdre snapped. “Drop the mundane.”

The vampires turned at the sound of her voice.

“Hell,” one of them breathed. “It’s her.”

She spread the sides of her jacket to expose her underarm holster. The stake jutted out of her fist. “Am I getting a reputation? Don’t tell me. You guys are big fans of January Lazar.”

“No, I’m a big fan of you.” Deirdre was so shocked when the male vampire shook her hand that she didn’t even think to pull back. It felt like shaking hands with a fish in a grocery store refrigerator. “My name is Vince, and it’s such an honor, Miss Tombs.”

“Ms. Tombs,” she corrected automatically. Her urge to be a smart-ass overrode even the strongest sensation of shock. “How have you heard of me if not from the news?”

“I do follow the news. It’s just that I’m your fan—I don’t like January Lazar,” Vince said. “But the benefits office. Wow. It was great. And that documentary about life in the asylum with Stark—wow.”

“Documentary?”

“The one that came out yesterday,” the female vampire said. “On YouTube.”

Stark must have done something with the footage that Andrew had been filming at the asylum. Deirdre hadn’t seen any of it. She could only imagine how it would make her look.

Her life would probably be a lot happier if she tried not to imagine it.

“So if I tell you to leave this woman alone, you’ll leave her alone?” Deirdre asked.

The vampires exchanged looks. Deirdre couldn’t tell what breed the male one was, but she suspected the female was a vrykolakas, judging by the ruddy skin and shaggy hair. A Greek vampire. They really got all types in New York.

“It’s just that she’s with GCD,” Vince said.

Deirdre had no idea what the GCD was. “I don’t care if she’s with the OPA or the NFL or any other three-letter organization. If she’s not trying to kill you, then you don’t get to try to kill her. Let’s be a little more civilized than that, huh?”

“But we’re against the GCD.” He said this with the tone of someone worried that there was a hidden camera recording the conversation, like it wasn’t possible that Deirdre was serious.

She made a shooing motion with her hands. “Go find someone to drain. I’m sure there’s a volunteer spread-eagle at Original Sin with your name on him as we speak.”

“I am pretty hungry,” the vrykolakas muttered.

Gods, they were pathetic. Deirdre was confident that her former roommate, Jolene, could have done far better if she’d unleashed her predatory side. These things were shriveled, underfed, and pale—hardly any kind of threat.

“All right,” Vince said.

He tugged his vrykolakas companion down the alley.

Deirdre lifted the woman out of the trash. “Thank the gods you found me when you did,” she said, clinging to Deirdre with a little too much familiarity.

It wasn’t until they got to the nearest street light that Deirdre realized whom she had rescued. “Mallory? You’re Mallory. You’re the witch from the safe house. What are you doing in vampire territory?”

“This is where you ditched me,” Mallory said. “You—you just left me here, like three hours ago. Five hours ago. I don’t know.”

“Then what are you still doing here?”

“You were running really fast when we left the safe house. I have no idea where I am. Where else would I go?”

“Somewhere, anywhere, outside of vampire territory in the middle of night.” Deirdre glanced at the moon. She didn’t feel any urge to howl at it or shapeshift or anything else. She was probably safe to hang out with a helpless witch. “Okay, let’s find somewhere safer for you to be.”

Mallory edged away from Deirdre. “Aren’t you a shifter?”

“Not really,” she said, heart aching. “Where do you live?”

“Scarsdale.”

“Wait, really? And you work for the OPA?”

“I want to help shifters,” Mallory muttered. She wouldn’t meet Deirdre’s eyes.

Deirdre warmed to the witch a fraction. “Okay, I can’t get you to Scarsdale. Do you have any friends or family nearer than that? Preferably accessible by subway?”

“There’s a GCD polling station somewhere in Chelsea. They’re probably there tonight, getting stuff ready for the election. It’s at this old school, William Harris.”

She knew where that was. “All right. I can get you there. Come on.” The vampires who attacked Mallory had already vanished, leaving the streets empty and quiet again. The rain was so light that Deirdre couldn’t even feel it. She only saw the signs of it in the faint ripples on the damp pavement. “So what’s a GCD polling station?”

“For the election?” Mallory patted down her pockets. She produced a crumpled flyer. “We’re the Gaean Citizens for Democracy, a volunteer organization. We’re setting up polling stations, transporting people on voting day, providing security to make sure everyone can vote safely… That kind of thing.”

Deirdre hadn’t heard of them, but she hadn’t exactly been paying attention to the news since Rylie’s announcement. She’d been a little too busy hiding out with Stark. And also being dead.

“You guys have gotten your act together quickly,” she said, turning a quick circle to get her bearings. They weren’t far from the elementary school.

“We’ve been hoping something like this would happen for a while. There was actually a petition a couple years ago. We already had a lot of volunteers from that, and it made it easy to get mobilized.”

“Huh.” She pulled Mallory around the corner. “I’d be curious to see what you guys have got going on there.”

Mallory tucked her hair behind her ear, glancing nervously around the empty street. “You probably shouldn’t go inside the school with me. As the vampires showed, you’re kinda recognizable, and most people don’t know what I know.”

“What do you know?”

“That you’re not like him,” the witch said. “You’re not his Beta. You’re his Jiminy Cricket.”

Deirdre lifted her eyebrows. “Say that again?”

“Haven’t you ever seen Pinocchio?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“You’re Everton Stark’s conscience,” Mallory said. “You’re the force of good trying to push him closer to a political center.”

Deirdre snorted. That was an awfully romantic way to say “terrified woman who was volunteered to spy on his pack.”

Mallory seemed to recognize where they were now. She picked up her pace, taking obvious care to stick to the lighted parts of the sidewalk. “Don’t laugh. Stark would have killed me if you weren’t there tonight. I can only guess how many lives you’ve saved by working with him.”

“You wouldn’t guess how many people I’ve killed working with him,” Deirdre said.

The witch missed a step. “Um, it’s over here.”

She didn’t need to point out the polling station. It was the only lighted building in the neighborhood.

“There you go,” Deirdre said, stopping at the edge of the block. The windows were so bright that she could see inside, but it wasn’t enough to sate her curiosity. “I guess I’ll leave you here.”

Her wistfulness must have come out in her tone because Mallory stopped halfway to the fence. “Do you want to come in?”

“No, you’re right. I shouldn’t.”

“Five minutes should be okay. You can see the setup for the election. It’s the least I can do now that you’ve saved my life twice.”

“Okay.” Deirdre pulled up her hood and shrank into her jacket. “Lead on.”

The gymnasium was warm, dry, and barely bigger than the cramped rooms at the asylum. Deirdre had a hard time imagining how children had ever gotten much recreation in there, even before the neighborhood lost all of its children.

A row of curtained booths were set up along the back, opposite the narrow stage. A group of people were clustered around the sign in table.

“I thought you were working tonight,” said one of the men, whose eyes widened at the sight of Mallory.

“Yeah, I ran into a friend,” Mallory said. “So I took the rest of the night off. How’s it going here?”

“The registered voters list showed up while you were out. Take a look at it.” He pushed a clipboard toward her.

Deirdre wandered toward the booths while Mallory conferred with the other volunteer.

The setup looked just like a normal election, with one major difference: each of the booths had a large rune printed on the side. Deirdre spread her fingers over one of them. The rune was a little bigger than her palm, and she didn’t recognize it. She had never paid that much attention to the spells people cast around her.

She flipped the curtain open. Instead of a computer on the inside, there was a single page, like those in a witch’s Book of Shadows. There were names printed on each side and no obvious way to mark a vote.

She traced her fingertip over Stark’s name. It glowed at her touch.

“It’s not active yet,” said a man from behind her.

Deirdre turned to see the volunteer that Mallory had spoken with. He was a stocky guy with an open, friendly face. “It looks pretty cool. When’s it gonna go live?”

“Day of the election,” he said. “It’ll run from midnight to midnight. But we’re asking to get a couple extra days to make sure everyone who wants to vote can get in.”

“Are you using the normal voter registry? Like Democrats and Republicans and Green Party and…?”

“We’ve got those lists, yeah. But the spells are set up so anyone can vote once. Anybody with gaean blood in them.” He looked incredibly smug about that. “The OPA planned on pushing for voter IDs, but what are vamps supposed to do if they can’t get out during business hours to register? Or the shifters living out on the farms? Everyone deserves a voice.”

Deirdre felt a smile growing over her lips. “How are those vamps and shifters going to vote?”

“Absentee ballots, mostly. We’ve been organizing those too. We’re sending them out tomorrow.”

“Seems like you’ve thought of everything.”

“How often do we get a chance to influence our lives on this scale? The Alpha is a big deal. Everyone needs to get in on this.” He thrust a hand toward her. “I’m Darryl, by the way.”

She shook his hand. “Uh…I’m, um…” She tried to think of a fake name and failed. The only thing she could come up with was Niamh, and just the idea of the swanmay made her stomach churn.

“You’re Deirdre Tombs,” Darryl said. “Mallory told me.”

She glanced at the witch, who was talking to more volunteers now. Judging by her vigorous hand gestures and all the nervous glances cast in Deirdre’s direction, Mallory was relating the confrontation in the alley. And probably what happened at the safe house, too. She was going to get the news out before January Lazar did.

It wouldn’t be long before everyone knew who Deirdre was.

“I should go.” Deirdre only made it two steps to the door before Darryl stopped her.

“You belong here as much as anyone else,” he said. “We’re not going to call the OPA or anything.”

It might help Deirdre if they did. Maybe they’d be able to get a hold of Rylie Gresham, even if she couldn’t. “Thanks.”

“We’re hoping Everton Stark’s going to throw in with the oath,” Darryl said. “Any word on that?”

Deirdre had no idea what he was talking about, but she hated to look stupid. Obviously she needed to catch up on the news. “That’s not up to me. I just shoot things that he wants to be shot.”

“But you can talk to him. It’d make a big difference if he agreed to the terms.” Darryl toyed with the curtain to the voting booth. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but if you could just talk to him…”

“Nobody just talks to Stark,” Deirdre said.

“If anyone could, it’d be you.”

Sure, if she wanted to get her face broken. Or kissed. She wasn’t sure which would be worse. “I should go,” Deirdre said, backing away.

Darryl followed her. “There’s been a lot of talk about how the OPA isn’t going to let him win, even if he gets the popular vote. People are afraid. Worse than that, they’re getting angry.” He waved his tablet vaguely at her. “People are talking about rioting on the forums.”

“People talk about a lot of stuff on the internet they don’t actually plan to do.”

“Not like this,” Darryl said.

Deirdre glanced over at the sign in table again. The volunteers were watching her talk to Darryl.

The volunteers looked like normal people. Mothers, sons, neighbors from down the street, the guy who ran the bodega on the corner. If there were riots, these volunteers wouldn’t be the people causing pain. They’d be the people getting hurt.

“Anyway…thanks for bringing Mallory to us,” Darryl said. “It means a lot to us.”

He didn’t try to stop her when she headed for the exit this time.

But when she passed the voting booths, a label on the back of the nearest one caught her eye. It said, “Manufactured by Hardwick Industries.”

The name tugged at her.

“Hardwick,” Deirdre muttered.

Like Pierce and Jaycee Hardwick, two of the unseelie sidhe?

She hadn’t seen them since the meeting at Original Sin. They hadn’t been at the assault on the asylum. But they were definitely working for Rhiannon, and their name was on the back of the voting booth.

She waved to Mallory. “Hey! Over here!”

The witch jogged over to Deirdre. “Something wrong?”

“Is Hardwick Industries related to Hardwick Medical Research?” Deirdre asked, pointing out the label.

“I think so,” Mallory said.

“Are you telling me that Hardwick Industries is behind the design of the voting booths?”

“No, they just donated them for the election. It’s old stuff. I think these were built before Genesis.”

“Did you know that the owner of Hardwick Industries is a high-ranking member of the unseelie?”

Mallory shook her head. “This is all a magical election. They just donated the booths, not even the books inside. There’s no magic in the equipment that they gave us.”

“Are you sure? What about this?” Deirdre tapped the rune on the side.

“That was added after they were delivered. It couldn’t have been interfered with. Trust me, we’re watching this election for integrity. We’re watching very closely.”

Deirdre wanted to trust her.

The sight of so many people working for democracy made Deirdre feel hopeful in a way that she hadn’t felt for a long time. Maybe she had never felt hopeful quite like that. Stark certainly inspired her, but it was a fearful feeling.

These volunteers believed in the election, and they were working to make it happen.

“Thanks for everything you’re doing,” Deirdre said.

Mallory smiled nervously. “You’re welcome.”

VI

Deirdre spent the next day and night at an OPA shelter for homeless gaeans. The kind of facility she hadn’t had to use since moving in with Jolene in Montreal. The admission process took no more than a swipe of her thumbprint, and then they knew everything about her: name, age, status as Omega. The looks the staff gave her weren’t as friendly after that.

It was warm and dry at the shelter, though, which was all she needed. It kept her out of the rain. It let her watch January Lazar’s latest report on Stark and provided a dinner of tasteless hamburger.

And if Rylie Gresham had wanted to find her, she could have. They could have easily flagged Deirdre in the system. Agents could have arrested Deirdre within minutes of setting foot in the shelter.

But they didn’t.

She kept her hood up all day. Nobody looked at her long enough to realize who she was, even though she was almost as notorious as Stark these days. The shelter’s other inhabitants were too absorbed in their problems to worry about hers.

After lockdown and lights out, Deirdre rested on the cot with her head on her hands, staring at the ceiling.

She listened to the other gaeans shifting in the room. It was a gymnasium that used to hold basketball games before Genesis. There should have been room for everyone, and then some. But every cot was filled. The smell of bodies and blood clogged the air. Someone was coughing, lungs clogged with silver. Someone else was asking around for blood.

Deirdre didn’t need to sleep there. She would have been far happier finding a bench in a park to spend her night, even with the rain.

But it was a reminder of the reality that existed outside of her strange, insular world filled with unseelie politics, backstabbing best friends, and the frustrating man named Everton Stark.

This was the real world. This miserable, dingy basketball court where fifty-six gaeans were sleeping because they didn’t qualify for housing or had lost it for some reason. Rain dripped through holes in the roof. Low-paid staff offered stale rations and synthetic blood as a last-minute snack.

So many people lived like this all the time.

This was why Deirdre needed Stark to change the world. Not for personal gain. Not in pursuit of power. Not because Rylie was the Godslayer and she deserved to suffer vengeance—even if she did.

The gaeans needed Stark because the world was like this, all dark and bleak, and people deserved better. They deserved the freedom that came naturally to shapeshifters, loose in the wilderness as predators hunting prey.

They deserved an election.

Deirdre slept somehow.

Her dreams were filled with fire.

When morning came around, the gaeans were turned out of the shelter. Deirdre bought coffee, spiked it with vodka she bought at the corner store, and walked to the United Nations to meet Rylie.

Genesis had wrought large-scale destruction all across the world, and the United Nations building in New York City had been no exception. Like the White House, it had been practically leveled. Unlike the White House, officials had elected to rebuild it from scratch rather than attempting to restore its former glory. They had bought a large plot of land on the shore where condominiums had been pulverized by Genesis and put the design of the building up for bids.

The ethereal faction had won the contract to build the new United Nations center, and the craftsmanship of the angels was obvious in every inch of the skyscraper. The new tower was the tallest building in the world, and looked frighteningly fragile, like a needle of bone and glass that pierced the clouds. The skeletal upper floors were reminiscent of a tree’s branches, permitting officials both human and otherwise to arrive by air. The building’s root-like tunnels extended into the earth, which was how members of the infernal faction visited.

The purpose of the United Nations had been expanded after Genesis. No longer did solely human world leaders meet within its radiant walls. Angels, demons, and gaeans held seats during meetings.

That meant it was also one of the most secure buildings in the world, as well as the tallest. Deirdre couldn’t get within a hundred feet of its ground-floor entrance.

However Stark had gotten his intelligence, he had been right about one thing: there must have been a meeting that day. A dirigible was trundling toward the spire of the UN building.

Deirdre hung out with the tourists who were gawking from outside the perimeter. It was early in the morning, but there were already a lot of people using the UN building as a photo opportunity. Schoolgirls made faces in front of it while others pretended to prop it up with their hands, like it was the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

She drained her coffee mug and tossed it aside, squinting up at the reflective surface of the tower. Even from outside the chain demarcating the perimeter, she could tell that the metal of the building had been textured like tree’s bark. There were grooves in the white metal, some of which were runes, others of which were decorative. Decorative banding marked the windows.

“I can totally climb that,” Deirdre muttered.

Someone tugged on her sleeve. “Excuse me, miss? Hello?” It was an old man, probably in his seventies, holding a camera with a very large lens toward her. “I hate to bother you, but would you mind taking a picture of my wife and me in front of the UN building?”

The tourist couple were close enough that they’d gotten a good look at her face. But they didn’t recognize her as Stark’s cohort. They must not have been big on reading blogs or watching the news.

Deirdre took the camera. “Sure. Where’s the button?”

He quickly showed her how to operate it, and Deirdre stepped back to get both of them in the frame.

The camera had a telephoto lens. She aimed it at the top of the building, zooming in so that she could look at the skeletal upper levels, where they were preparing to moor a visiting dirigible.

With such fantastic zoom, she could see that there were OPA guards in black suits waiting to receive the airship. A lot of them. Whoever was on the dirigible must have been important.

She focused on the airship. The sanctuary logo marked the side.

Rylie Gresham was arriving for her meeting, just as Stark had said she would. The Godslayer was right there. She’d have all the answers that Deirdre wanted.

“Having trouble?” the old tourist asked kindly.

“Trying to figure out the lens, sorry,” Deirdre said. “Say cheese!”

She took a couple of pictures of the couple, who hugged and smiled and were generally adorable. She felt a painful twinge at how happy they looked together. It had been a long time since she’d had a man’s arms around her shoulders in the way that the husband held the wife. And the man who had held her like that was dead.

It was hard to make herself smile when she handed the camera back to them.

“Gods bless you,” said the old lady.

“I sure hope so,” Deirdre said, making sure the man had a good grip on his camera. “Don’t drop that, now. Hate to break such a fine piece of equipment.”

“You are so sweet,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said.

And then Deirdre leaped over the chain blocking people from approaching the building.

She bolted for the UN building.

It took a few seconds for the crowd of tourists to react. Nobody seemed to realize what was happening—why this crazy woman was hurtling across the square, arms pumping at her sides, racing with supernatural speed to reach the United Nations building.

Once they realized something was happening, the air shattered with screams.

Security closed in.

Deirdre reached into Stark’s flannel shirt, where she’d hidden her underarm holster. The gun leaped into her hand.

She popped off a couple of shots at the security guards who were nearest.

She’d always had great aim, but after all her time practicing in the range underneath the asylum, she was getting even better. She aimed to disable—thighs and feet and the arms that were holding guns—and she hit each time. Guards stopped with shouts and splashes of blood.

They couldn’t catch her. She was too fast.

She shoved her gun into her belt and leaped onto the side of the UN building.

Deirdre hadn’t just gotten new powers since she died. She leaped higher than she’d ever been able to leap before, launching herself straight onto what should have been the third floor.

She was so shocked to catch hold of the wall that high that she was momentarily frozen, staring down at the ground so much further down than she’d expected.

“Oh my gods,” she said.

Muffled pops broke the air. A bullet smashed into the wall beside her, just inches away.

It was a silver bullet.

Deirdre threw herself up the side of the building, committing all of her upper body strength to the climb.

Her body felt lighter than it ever had before, as though her bones had turned hollow. She flew straight up the side of the UN building, using the runes that mages had stamped onto the supports as handholds, scaling so quickly that the guards couldn’t track her well enough to shoot.

They gave up within a few seconds. They must have realized that shooting at a building filled with world leaders was probably not a good idea.

But it didn’t mean that they were letting her reach the top.

Cables dropped down the side of the building, and OPA agents began rappelling toward her, much the same way that they’d dropped out of the helicopter the night before.

Magic fogged around the first to approach. It was a witch, battle-trained and clutching hexes in both of his fists. He vibrated with violet energy.

He didn’t issue any warnings. Didn’t try to tell her to turn back. She’d already crossed too many lines.

The witch kept one hand on his rope and flung the other toward her. Deirdre leaped, pushing off the building with her toes, and managed to catch another window. The hex sizzled past her, distorting the air it passed through.

The agent didn’t pause before shooting another spell at her. Deirdre leaped again. This time, she grabbed his foot instead of the building.

“Hey!” he shouted, trying to kick her off.

Deirdre scaled his body and grabbed the rope. “I’m going to borrow this, okay?”

His fingers blazed with fresh magic. “Let go!”

She didn’t give him an opportunity to activate that spell. Deirdre was already scrambling up the rope, faster now that she had the help. Other witches rappelled down the building and tried to hurl spells at her, but she was a blur, almost as speedy as Stark was on the ground.

It only took moments to reach the upper floors. She leaped onto the open dirigible dock. It was a large open space with machinery on the wall to help catch and tether airships. The UN logo on the wall glistened alongside the OPA logo.

The decorations were sparse, so there weren’t many hiding spots. Nowhere she could take cover.

And the agents she had seen with the telephoto lens were waiting at the top.

She threw herself out of the way of the assault she knew to be coming, and the mundanes with all their mundane reflexes couldn’t react quickly enough. She pounced on the nearest agent, slammed his head into the ground, and his eyes blanked.

A witch lobbed a spell at her, and Deirdre lifted the agent she’d knocked out as a shield. He took the spell in the chest, instantly turning icy-cold and rigid as the dead.

She yanked the frozen agent’s gun out of his holster.

One of the witches hurled a fistful of magic at her, and she rolled underneath it. The spell passed so close that the tips of her hair froze, so cold that it burned against her neck.

She fired her stolen gun. Got her attacker in the hand.

Then she turned and fired again, hitting the next agent in the wrist before he could shoot back.

One of the remaining agents fired. Deirdre moved a fraction too slowly. It grazed her shoulder, scalding a path over her skin.

The other agent leaped, wrapping her arms around her from behind, making both of them fall to the floor. She smashed into the tile face-first. “Get off!” she said, squirming in his grip. He was strong for a mundane. She couldn’t get him off of her.

Deirdre twisted so that she could see the airship. It was so close. Its windows loomed large at the edge of the building. The dirigible hadn’t moored yet, but it looked like it was already leaving again, without ever having unloaded in the first place.

Rylie would be in there.

“Get off!” Deirdre repeated, and this time, she put the full force of her willpower behind the words.

Flames flared over her.

The agent screamed as he leaped away, slapping at his shirt. She hadn’t incinerated him as swiftly as Chadwick Hawfinch—but it looked like it must have hurt.

Deirdre didn’t hesitate to dispatch the last agent. She shot him in the foot so that he fell with a cry.

Then she pounded across the room, reached the edge of the floor, and leaped into open space.

For an instant, Deirdre was suspended in the space between the airship and the building. There was nothing holding her up. Nothing between her and a drop of two hundred stories. The tourists were dark pinpoints on concrete so far below.

Even a shifter wouldn’t survive that fall.

Deirdre slammed into the aluminum underbelly of the airship.

She scrambled to grip a round window frame that looked like a porthole. Her legs dangled underneath her. Her hands were slick with sweat from her earlier climb, so the momentum of her swinging body almost made her slip off.

But she clung to the window, adjusted her grip, held firm.

There was no time to consider what a precarious position she was in. The wind was shockingly strong now that she was dangling from the belly of a dirigible, maybe even stronger than a shifter’s muscles, and it felt like it was going to pluck her right off of the airship.

She slammed her fist into the porthole. One good blow was all it took. The latch broke, and she wedged it open, squirming inside.

Deirdre tumbled to the floor of the airship.

There were people around her instantly. They radiated with magic, distorting the ship around her so that it looked like the walls were twisted into curlicues, blurring everything beyond Deirdre’s arm’s reach.

She’d seen that aura too frequently to be able to mistake it.

The pair standing over her were seelie sidhe, members of the Summer Court. Both crackled with magic. One of them was Trevin, a member of the Summer Court who protected Rylie Gresham. Both looked like they were prepared to kill Deirdre.

“Don’t hurt her!” Rylie Gresham pushed past her guards to stand between them and Deirdre. Her hair was a mess and she only wore a slip and pantyhose. She must have still been getting dressed for the meeting at the UN building. And for the first time that Deirdre had ever seen, Rylie looked angry. “Don’t hurt her until we get a chance to talk.”

They didn’t dock with the United Nations building. The airship remained suspended a few hundred feet away, far enough that Deirdre wouldn’t have been able to leap the distance safely.

She was taken to a meeting room decorated with the sanctuary insignia. It was like sitting in a really nice hotel that just so happened to be hanging over New York City. If not for the soft hum of the engines and the gentle rocking of wind, Deirdre never would have known that they were in the air.

Trevin approached her with silver chains. “Hold still.”

Deirdre lifted her hands in a defensive gesture, though she wasn’t sure if she wanted to attempt to set fire to him or punch his seelie face. “What are you doing? You can’t tie me down.”

“Really?” Rylie asked, planting her hands on her hips. “You expect us to trust you after everything you’ve done?”

“You have my word that I’m not going to try to attack.” The seelie sidhe had taken Deirdre’s guns. Without silver bullets, she was no match for Rylie.

The seelie guards stood back against the walls, not so far that they couldn’t be on Deirdre in an instant if she moved. There were about a dozen OPA agents in their black suits, too. More than enough security to take down Deirdre. Maybe enough security to take down Stark himself.

She was being treated like a serious threat.

That was nothing new. Deirdre had always been a big question mark—someone that other shifters feared.

At least she had earned the reputation now.

But Deirdre definitely wasn’t going to try to attack against these kinds of odds.

“Can we talk alone?” Deirdre asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Rylie said. “You took something from my sanctuary. I trusted you, Deirdre.”

“I trusted you, too,” she said. “I thought that you were someone else, and now I’m thinking…” She glanced up at the OPA agents again. They were watching her closely, faces blank. “Are you sure you want to talk about this where other people can hear it?”

“What are we talking about?” Rylie asked. “I don’t think there’s anything left to discuss. You’ve made your allegiances clear, and you’ve left us with no option but to arrest you.”

“Arrest me? But you sent me to work with Stark.”

“I didn’t send you to help him kill people. Your allegiance is supposed to be to me.”

Deirdre searched Rylie’s face for any hint of guile.

Rylie had to know that Deirdre had figured her out. That finding the Ethereal Blade implicated her as the Godslayer. And that because the swords existed—because the Godslayer existed—it meant that everything else mythology said was true, including the part where Rylie would have killed the gods to make the world the way it was now.

It meant that Rylie was responsible for Deirdre losing her father.

“How could I ever give my allegiance to someone like you?” Deirdre asked. Her voice came out hoarser than she intended. It made her sound weak. “You never gave me what I asked for when I fulfilled my obligations to you. The least you can do is not arrest me.”

Rylie sank onto the chair across from her, massaging her temple with two fingertips. “Deirdre…” She sighed. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to talk to you about the election. You’ve set it up because of that last conversation we had. Didn’t you?”

“Not just because of you. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. The nature of my office, the responsibilities that I hold…” Rylie gazed out the window at the clouds, which were heavy with rain and the color of steel. “I was bitten by a werewolf when I was fifteen years old. I became Alpha when I was sixteen. I was a kid, chosen by fate. I’m not sure I ever deserved this much responsibility.”

“Then you should yield,” Deirdre said. “Don’t run for reelection. Stark’s in second place. He’ll win even if you drop out.”

Rylie gave a tiny laugh. “Do you really think I’d do that?”

“You said it yourself. You don’t deserve the responsibility.” She bit out the words, flinging them at Rylie.

“I didn’t deserve it when I was chosen. I’ve earned it now. I think the voters will agree with that, and that’s why I’m running.” Rylie folded her arms. “If you want me to drop out, then I take that to mean Stark’s not willingly participating in the election.”

Damn. The Alpha wasn’t stupid. “Yeah, Stark’s pretty pissed about it.”

“The man’s not easy to please.”

She had no idea how much that was true. “He thinks that offering to pass your privilege on to someone else is political theater. He says that shifters don’t elect Alphas and nobody would obey the winning candidate.”

“I expected that reaction, which is why I’m taking steps to legitimize the election,” Rylie said. “You met Marion when you were at the sanctuary—the mage girl.”

“The one who’s half-angel and half-witch,” Deirdre said.

“Yes, that one. Mages can cast spells that human witches can’t, and they can make their enchantments stick to anyone. That includes all kinds of gaeans. Shifters, seelie, unseelie…”

“Vampires.”

“Vampires don’t have Alphas and they’re not in the running for the election,” Rylie said.

“Don’t you think that’s kinda jacked up?”

“It’s not within my power to change the nature of gaean breeds. Marion will bind all of the Alpha candidates together. Her spell will guarantee the outcome of the election. If I win, the other potential Alphas will be forced to submit to me. If the King of the Summer Court wins, I’ll be forced to submit to him.”

This must have been the oath that Darryl had mentioned.

“And if Stark wins?” Deirdre asked.

Rylie pulled her robe tighter around herself. “He’ll have to take Marion’s oath for it to be applicable to him.”

“But if he took the oath and then won, would you let him?” she pressed.

“If that’s what the popular vote decides, then yes. I was coming to the United Nations to pick up the Secretary of the Office of Preternatural Affairs. Fritz Friederling will be taking the oath, too. Even the government will have to recognize whichever Alpha wins. It should prevent civil war after the election, since the Alphas who lose will have no choice but to obey the winner. And the oath forbids Alphas fighting before the election, too.”

“So the candidates won’t be able to send assassins after each other? Nice,” Deirdre said. “Too bad Stark won’t take the oath. And arresting his Beta isn’t going to make him want to participate, either.” She was bluffing. At this point, Stark probably didn’t care what happened to her.

Rylie’s voice took on a hard edge. “Arresting Stark’s Beta wouldn’t be an issue if you hadn’t attacked the United Nations building.”

“You didn’t answer my call and I needed to talk,” Deirdre said. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Write a letter? I have a lot more demands on my attention than waiting for you to call!”

That stung more than Deirdre expected. Rylie had let Deirdre believe that she was important to her—or at least, important to the cause. But whatever was between them, it couldn’t have been that important.

“What demands?” Deirdre asked acerbically. “Sending an army to try to slaughter Stark’s people?”

“Secretary Friederling and I have been trying to arrange meetings with the sidhe. We’ve got an appointment with the King of the Summer Court. We haven’t been able to reach the Winter Court, though.”

“That’s because they’re in the middle of a coup.”

The Alpha’s eyebrows lifted. “What makes you say that? We haven’t heard about a coup, and we have a lot of informants among all of the gaean factions.”

“Who do you think killed the army that the OPA sent to the asylum? That wasn’t Stark. It wasn’t me. It was the unseelie on a vendetta against Stark.”

“The unseelie wouldn’t kill OPA forces. We’re allies.” Rylie bit her thumbnail, falling silent as she thought for a moment. “I’m going to need more than your word on this. Good thing we’re going to the Summer Court—they’ll have a way to contact the Winter Court.”

“Aren’t the seelie and unseelie enemies?”

“You can’t bitterly loathe someone you don’t love a little bit. Trust me, the two factions talk. A lot.”

Deirdre made up her mind in an instant. If the meeting with the seelie king was a critical part of the election, then she wanted to attend it, too. Stark was going to win the role of Alpha, dammit. Even if that meant Deirdre handled all of the campaigning and negotiating without his help. “I’m coming to the Summer Court too.”

“That’s going to be hard to do when you’re in an OPA detention center,” Trevin said. The seelie guard was lounging against the wall, bouncing sparks of magic between his fingertips.

Deirdre’s hands balled into fists atop her thighs. “Cutting me out of election proceedings means cutting Stark out. That’s bad politics.”

Rylie looked exhausted. “I’m not trying to cut anyone out, but Stark doesn’t need to be involved in negotiations with the sidhe.”

“You need someone from his side to testify to your good intentions,” Deirdre pressed. “You’re not going to get Stark to play along with this election if you get hostile with him. Making deals under the table with the seelie, putting his Beta in prison—”

“Fine,” Rylie said. “You can come as a representative of Stark.”

Trevin stood up straight. “You can’t let one of those people into the Summer Court. You’re exposing the king and queen to a massive security threat.”

“The king suggested I bring a liaison for Stark’s camp anyway.” Rylie finally dropped her hand from her temple, composing herself. “But you have to understand something, Deirdre: You’re going to have to face consequences soon. Not just for what you’re doing with Stark, but what you did today to the guards at the UN.”

Deirdre just couldn’t let that rest. She couldn’t let the Alpha turn things around on her like everything was her fault. “You’re the one who was hiding the Ethereal Blade in your stupid enchanted mausoleum. Which one of us is really the bad guy here?”

Finally, Rylie seemed to understand why they might need privacy. She glanced back at the OPA agents. “Let’s take a walk.”

VII

Hiking through the Appalachian forest with shifters at Stark’s back felt right. It was so mammalian, so very natural, to move through the trees with the whisper of furred bodies sliding through leaves shadowing him. He had maintained his human form but compelled the others to shift, giving him an escort of beasts. More than an escort—an army.

For those few hours where they hiked, the world felt right. This was the world that shifters were meant to live in. A world where they followed the strongest and weren’t confined to cities, fed kibble by government agencies, registered and tagged like dogs.

They were wild animals of the forest, and this was where they belonged, unconstrained by bureaucracy and rules.

But reality had to return, and it did.

By the time the sun rose, Stark had led his people to a familiar location. There were signs of a small camp there: flattened soil, broken branches, even a wrapper for shifter-branded jerky. Stark had been there with his team only a week earlier, and the forest had yet to wipe away all traces of their presence.

He stepped up to the edge of the canyon.

The chasm where Holy Nights Cathedral had sat was empty. The grass was untouched. Trees were growing where a huge building had been only days earlier—trees that must have been growing for years, as though there had never been a cathedral there at all.

“Impossible,” Stark muttered, turning to inspect the camp again. He could see no sign of his shifters, but he could feel them among the trees, waiting and watching.

He must have gone to the wrong place.

But that was impossible, too. Stark was an excellent tracker. He had never gotten lost in his life.

The trees were identical. The curve of the canyon was identical.

So where was Holy Nights Cathedral?

Stark put the binoculars away and searched his pockets for his GPS device.

Even with the rustling of cloth and zippers, the approach of footsteps didn’t escape his notice.

He wasn’t alone in the forest with his pack.

Stark acted like he hadn’t heard anything. He riffled through the bag, found the GPS device, and left it at the bottom of the pocket. Instead, he wrapped his fingers around a small handgun and removed the trigger guard.

The footsteps were growing nearer. The stride was short, but heavy—a man attempting to navigate the steep incline of the mountains without falling. He sounded clumsy. Definitely not a shifter.

Stark’s nostrils flared as he scented the air. His senses weren’t as acute as a werewolf’s, but he picked up the faint odor of cherries. It wasn’t a smell he recognized.

The man was behind him.

Stark turned and lifted the gun in one smooth gesture, aiming it at the place he knew the newcomer’s head would be.

“Freeze,” he said.

The man stopped a few hundred feet away. He was ill equipped for hiking, draped in heavy black robes that accounted for his clumsy motions. One hand clutched a staff that shone with an internal glow, as though the wood were translucent and held fireflies captive within its core.

It was Brother Marshall, the man who had run Holy Nights Cathedral.

“Good morning,” the monk said. “Nice day, isn’t it?”

“Where is the cathedral? Is this illusion magic?”

“No, it’s nothing that complicated.” Brother Marshall looked strangely relaxed, considering that he was being held at gunpoint by a shapeshifter who had attempted to rob him a week earlier.

“Drop the staff and get down on the ground,” Stark said.

“No,” Brother Marshall replied.

Stark’s finger tensed. But then he heard more rustling among the trees, and that rustling wasn’t coming from his people.

His eyes flicked around the forest.

It took him a moment to see what was moving. They blended in too well with the earth, and with extra moss and leaves draped over them, they were virtually invisible.

Gargoyles.

Stark could see three of them. Each was at least double the size of a gorilla. Their bodies were solid rock animated by magic, which meant that they felt pain about as acutely as a stone did, and would be as impossible to kill.

He hadn’t seen them coming, dammit. He hadn’t kept his pack close enough either.

And now he was separated from his shifter allies by a ring of gargoyles.

That explained why Brother Marshall didn’t look worried.

He leaned on his staff casually, cheek pressed to the glowing runes. “Lower the gun, Stark. You came back to look for my cathedral for a reason. Let’s talk.”

It was almost painful to lower his sidearm. Stark didn’t do it as a gesture of surrender, though. He just knew that his shapeshifted form would be far more effective against the gargoyles than any number of bullets.

“What do you want?” Brother Marshall asked.

“I want your access to the Winter Court,” he said.

Brother Marshall scoffed. “You want what?”

“I know where those came from.” Stark jerked his chin toward the gargoyles. “I recognize unseelie magic when I see it. You’ve been to the Winter Court. You must have friends there because they made these for you. How did you do it? What did the queen want in exchange for some of her arcane magic? Did you give her blood or flesh or sex, or a little of each?”

Brother Marshall looked offended. “I’m a holy man.”

“You worship false idols.”

“I wish I could live in ignorance as profound as yours.”

Stark bristled. Impatience clawed at him, and it manifested in the itch of shapeshifting energy. If he let it seize him, if he allowed that power to roll through his body, he would soon have fangs and claws to show Brother Marshall exactly how ignorant he was.

But if he slaughtered the monk—tempting as it was—he wouldn’t have the information he needed.

“Those are unseelie work,” Stark said, enunciating each word carefully, “and I don’t care if you screwed every sidhe in the Middle Worlds to get them, but I need to know how you got into the Winter Court in the first place. I will get that from you.”

“I’ll save you the effort. This isn’t worth the fight,” Brother Marshall said. “Holy Nights Cathedral sat on a ley line. I pulled the building through the lines to another location. Then I shut down my access. I don’t have a way into the Middle Worlds anymore. You’re about twelve hours too late.”

A breeze stirred the monk’s robes. He didn’t just smell like cherries. He smelled like silver, too.

He had a gun in his robes.

“You don’t want to get into the Winter Court anyway,” Brother Marshall went on. “As I said, I had to shut down my access point to the ley lines. They sent out a crawler.”

“Crawler?”

“It’s something that follows the ley lines, like a spider in a web. Could be anything from the Winter Court. Could be a sidhe assassin, could be the sluagh, could be some kind of elaborate spell—I don’t want to find out what it is, and neither do you.” Brother Marshall gave Stark an appraising look. “I’m surprised you don’t already know.”

The monk lifted his staff. Stark took a quick step back.

“Relax,” Brother Marshall said. “I’m only going to show you something.”

He swirled his staff through the air, as though stirring an invisible cauldron.

Magic illuminated the forest. The gargoyles glowed like beacons, as did the staff itself.

“Your pocket,” Brother Marshall said.

Stark extracted the stone he’d taken from Chadwick Hawfinch. It was glowing, too. Its magic was identical to that of the gargoyles. Drenched in unseelie spells.

But that wasn’t the only thing on Stark that was glistening.

Light radiated from above him, though when he lifted his head, he couldn’t see where it was coming from.

“It’s on your forehead,” the monk said. “You’ve been marked.”

Stark ran his fingers over his forehead. He couldn’t feel anything. “You’re telling me that this…crawler thing can track this?”

“It can, but you’re not the crawler’s target or it would already be on you.” Brother Marshall drove the point of his staff into the ground and the light extinguished. “For now.”

Rhiannon must have used real power to unleash an assassin that could crawl the ley lines. Monsters like that came at a high price.

Why would she use a crawler if not to assassinate Stark? Who else was worthy of that kind of targeting?

The only other person who knew that Rhiannon’s blood was red.

“How do you manipulate the ley lines? The staff?” Stark asked.

Brother Marshall’s grip tightened. “If you try to take this from me, I’ll release all kinds of holy mayhem on you. My gargoyles are far from the worst of what I have.”

“What if I told you the crawler is heading toward Rylie Gresham right now?” Stark asked.

It was a gamble, assuming that the monk would care about what happened to the werewolf Alpha. He was a human, probably not even a proper witch, wielding unseelie magic.

But a grim expression darkened Brother Marshall’s features. “That’s not possible. Her bodyguards wouldn’t let a sidhe tag her like that.”

“They don’t have to tag her. They tagged my Beta, and she’s on her way to Rylie Gresham right now,” Stark said.

The monk raked a hand through his hair. “Jesus.”

“Give me the staff. I’ll hunt this crawler down before it reaches them.”

The gargoyles shifted on their clawed feet, stone groaning against stone, sending dust spraying from their joints. “No,” Brother Marshall said. “We’ll go together.”

Deirdre and Rylie weren’t alone when they walked onto the open deck of the airship, but they had slightly more privacy than they had before. They left the OPA agents in the meeting room and only took the seelie guards, Trevin and Violet.

Magic shimmered around the railings, making the heavy gray clouds beyond look like they were under water. That magic shielded them from the worst of the wind, though the air was still miserably damp.

The sidhe guards didn’t follow Rylie and Deirdre to the railing. They stood back by the doors, watching, arms folded over their chests.

“The OPA doesn’t know about the Ethereal Blade, do they?” Deirdre asked under her breath. The wards shielded them from the physical effects of the wind, but not the noise. It drowned out her words. Even the sidhe wouldn’t be able to hear them.

“Some of them do know about the Twin Blades. The people who matter know. But it’s not public information, and I don’t know who among their agents I can trust.”

“But you’re trusting me? The Omega you want to put under arrest?”

“I know where you stand. That’s the difference.” Rylie gazed over the side of the ship. The UN building was behind the dirigible, so all they could see from their perspective was misty ocean. “I’m angry, Deirdre. I’m angry about so many things. But I don’t blame you for aligning yourself with Stark. After everything you’ve endured, it’s not surprising that you’d look for a strong leader to follow, and he’s incredibly charismatic.”

“That’s not at all condescending,” Deirdre said.

“God, but you’re so young.” Rylie’s hand lifted, as though she were thinking of touching Deirdre’s face, but it fell to her side again as quickly. “When I sent you after him, this wasn’t in the plan. I didn’t want you to become his Beta.”

Deirdre rubbed her eyes. She felt suddenly exhausted. “Why did you have the Ethereal Blade?”

“Why did you release those people from the safe house?” Rylie countered.

“What does that have to do with anything? Are we playing twenty questions now?”

Rylie folded her arms, drumming her fingers on her elbow. “Why, Deirdre?”

Because Stark had told her that was what they were going to do, and she had learned to pick her battles with him. “We freed those people. That’s all. We were helping.”

“By freeing those people, who willingly entered OPA custody, others died. Three people were murdered by the shifters before we could catch them and restrain them.”

She hadn’t given a lot of thought to what would happen once they released shifters from the safe house.

“Oh,” Deirdre said.

“Yeah.” Now Rylie was getting worked up. “There are people pushing for a new Preternatural Registration Act. Do you remember what happened with that the first time?”

Deirdre had only vaguely been aware of politics around that time. She’d been a child. Maybe seven or eight years old, and human. Policing preternaturals hadn’t mattered to her.

“The OPA did insane things to our people. Preternaturals had to get permission to travel. We couldn’t keep our own children. We had to do miles of paperwork for stupid things and the smallest violation got us killed. Not arrested. Killed.”

“That’s ancient history,” Deirdre said.

“Not as ancient as you think. This was only twelve, thirteen years ago. Most of the people who legislated for that are still alive. And they want to bring it back—globally. That’s another reason why I’m meeting the secretary of the OPA today. Because you and Everton Stark released moon-sick shapeshifters onto the streets of New York City, and three mundane humans died for it. It’s another weapon in the toolbox of people who want to hurt us.”

Deirdre’s chest was aching. “I didn’t know.”

“If you think the worst consequence of Stark’s public acts of violence is a handful of deaths—or my death—then you’re wrong,” Rylie said. “Stark’s compelling. He’s a visionary. I understand why people are following him, but it’s naïve and wrong to think that he can do anything to save our people in the ways that matter.”

“Rylie—”

The Alpha talked over her. “Why did I have the Ethereal Blade? Who else do you think should have it? Do you think that the OPA should guard the Twin Blades, or some foreign government, or…who, Everton Stark?”

“That doesn’t explain how you got one of the swords.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Deirdre, but you haven’t earned the right to know about that.” Rylie lifted a hand to keep her from interrupting. “I know I’m approachable. I’m friendly. I don’t act like an authority figure.” She stepped forward, and even though the woman was slight, Deirdre couldn’t help but step back. “That doesn’t mean we’re friends. It also doesn’t mean I owe you anything.”

A lump formed in Deirdre’s throat. She swallowed hard, digging her fingernails into her palms. “Gage died for you.”

“Yes. Gage did, and he knew everything about me. You’re not Gage.” Rylie folded her arms. “Where’s the sword? Did you give it to Stark?”

“I tried.” She swallowed hard. “It was stolen by—” The deck of the airship rocked underneath her feet. Deirdre grabbed on to the railing reflexively, riding out the shudder. “What is that? Are we going somewhere?”

Rylie balanced easily, knees bent, hands outstretched. Her eyes suddenly seemed very bright. “Airships don’t move like this.”

The dirigible shuddered again, its nose pitching down below the clouds. Deirdre wasn’t ready for it. Her feet slipped toward the railing. Her head spun as the city below came into view. The streets far below were barely more than lines etched on the earth.

She almost tipped over the rail when the airship shook harder, but reassuringly solid magic pushed back against her. The wards that protected them from the harsh blast of wind also protected her from falling off of the airship.

“Who did you say took the sword?” Rylie asked.

Magic foamed off the port side of the airship, silvery and cruel.

“The unseelie,” Deirdre said.

Rylie shed her bathrobe and kicked off her white pumps. She was shapeshifting quickly, slipping into her werewolf form as her sidhe guards flanked her.

A black shape appeared in the clouds beyond the airship. The shadowy form grew quickly, increasing from a pinpoint to double the size of a human being. Deirdre could discern the outline of wings and clawed feet.

“That’s a portal cut into a ley line,” Trevin said. “There shouldn’t be a ley line here.”

Rylie looked like she wanted to respond, but she no longer could. Her mouth had already rearranged into a wolf’s muzzle.

Deirdre reached for her gun and found nothing where it should have been holstered. She’d had her weapons confiscated by the OPA. She was unarmed.

The black shape sliced through the portal, clouds billowing around it as it broke through.

It was like a hawk. A really big hawk with a woman’s head.

“Harpy!” Violet shouted.

Clinging to the railing of the airship’s deck, Deirdre watched as the giant black bird wheeled around the other side of the envelope to find a better angle for attack. Red curls whipped back from the woman’s head.

Niamh was finally flying again—not as a swan, as she was meant to be, but as something a thousand times more monstrous.

And she was angling toward Deirdre.

“I need a gun!” Deirdre shouted, trying to get the sidhe to hear her over the wind. “I can help!”

“No way!” Trevin called back.

Rylie growled, crouched down on her forelegs, tracking the motion of the harpy through the sky.

Niamh folded her wings, plummeting toward them.

She smashed into the wards.

The harpy’s body ricocheted off of the magic.

Niamh couldn’t get through the magic protecting the airship. As long as they were within those wards, they were safe from the harpy. At least, they should have been. But the dirigible was still falling. They were still under attack.

Violet hauled Deirdre toward the door leading back into the airship.

“Get inside!” the sidhe guard ordered. “Stay with the OPA agents!” She slapped the lock. The door slid open.

A man stepped through the doorway and drove a sword into Violet’s gut.

Violet’s mouth dropped open. Glistening blood spilled over her chin, splattered on her chest. The sword protruding from her spine was dull gray, like a thorn of iron, and the man holding it was a weedy redhead. His name was Kristian. He was Niamh’s artist boyfriend and a serpent shifter in the service of the Winter Court.

He kicked Violet’s body off of the sword.

Deirdre backed away from him as quickly as she could without slipping down the pitching deck.

“I didn’t believe them when they said you survived,” Kristian said, advancing on her. The iron sword sizzled with sidhe blood. “I should have listened to the rumors.”

Magic exploded around them again. Niamh had rammed into the wards a second time, and the spells sparked with a waterfall of shining energy.

She was weakening the spells.

Deirdre glanced over her shoulder at Rylie and Trevin. They had edged all the way to the nose of the airship, as far from Kristian as possible. If he’d come armed with a way to kill Rylie’s guards, it wouldn’t be surprising if he’d brought something silver for the Alpha, too.

He didn’t seem interested in Rylie, though.

“What do you think you’re going to do with an iron sword?” Deirdre asked, trying not to sound worried. “If a silver knife won’t kill me, I doubt that would, either.”

“You’re probably right,” he said.

He flashed across the deck, slamming into Deirdre. But he didn’t try to stab her.

Kristian shoved two fingers against Deirdre’s forehead.

His lips moved silently, as though speaking a word that she couldn’t hear.

And just like that, he stepped back again.

“Hope the mark sticks this time,” he said.

“What?” She swiped at the place that he had touched, trying to clean it off. But there was nothing there that she could feel. “What was that? What did you do to me?”

“That’s your death,” Kristian said.

Niamh’s body crashed into the wards protecting the deck a third time. This time, she hit hard enough to punch through the magic, plow into Kristian, and toss both of them into the envelope of the airship.

The point of the iron sword plunged into the airship, ripping a wide hole that vented gas.

“No!” Kristian roared.

Deirdre would have cried out, too, but the gases that gusted from the envelope bowled her over. It was like being punched by Stark.

She flew backwards.

Niamh had shattered the wards, so there was nothing to stop Deirdre from falling. She slipped over the railings with a cry, tumbling heels over head.

The ground was so far down.

One hand flung out, catching the railing. Deirdre dangled. Only two fingers clung to the damp metal.

The airship jerked, battered by the wind.

Deirdre’s hand ripped free.

She plummeted toward the ground.

Now would be a great time for wings.

She still wasn’t shapeshifting. She couldn’t change at all. She couldn’t even summon the fire to keep her warm as she hurtled toward the earth.

Time seemed to slow as the windows of the UN building swept past her. The airship dwindled, veiled by the clouds in which it was suspended. Its envelope vented gas in a white column.

Deirdre wasn’t the only flotsam shaken free of its deck. Rylie was falling too, and the wolf looked so ungainly with her fur and legs lashing around her.

It was an undignified end for the Alpha.

Even now, Deirdre found some small hint of smugness in the idea that Rylie was going to die.

It’s only fair.

Deirdre flipped in the air, unable to control her descent. Her head angled toward the ground. The tourists were still gathered. There were cameras capturing her fall. Just as her fall from grace into Stark’s employ had been aired on a hundred news channels, so would her death. Seemed appropriate.

Time dragged to a halt as she tumbled, only a couple dozen feet from the ground.

She was about to hit.

Deirdre’s body stopped with a jerk.

But she didn’t die. Instead, she reversed direction, moving parallel to the ground a few feet above the heads of the tourists.

It hurt like she’d slammed into pavement, but the arms curved around her were far more forgiving than that.

She twisted to see Vidya’s determined face, eyes narrowed as she flew, wind blasting into her face. The wind sang through her razor feathers. Her biceps bulged as her hands tightened around Deirdre’s waist, holding her securely as they climbed toward the clouds again.

Deirdre tried to say, “Vidya?” The name wouldn’t come out, though. She couldn’t breathe enough to speak.

For the first time, Deirdre was flying without the help of an airplane, though the wings weren’t hers. They rose and fell by inches every time Vidya flapped.

They alighted on the airship dock at the top of the UN building. Only then did Vidya drop Deirdre.

The healing fever blazed through her. She had to brace her arms on her knees, trying to catch her breath. If the OPA agents were to attack, she would have to trust that Vidya could defend her—there was nothing Deirdre could do for herself.

Nobody attacked. Trevin materialized with Rylie at his side, holding her by the ruff of fur at her neck.

If Deirdre had thought Trevin looked inhuman before, it was nothing in comparison to his appearance now. He was elemental. Raw magic that no skin could contain. He had released everything human about him and surrendered to pure magic.

Even though Rylie couldn’t speak, Deirdre could see the gratitude in her wolfish eyes. She was happy that Deirdre had survived.

Deirdre wasn’t sure she was equally happy to see the Alpha restored to safety.

Trevin peered over the side of the dock. “Sloppy. Very sloppy.”

The airship was still crashing. Deirdre couldn’t see Kristian and Niamh on its deck from where she kneeled, but she could tell that there was no saving the dirigible. It made a graceful arc through the cloudy morning, dragging so many OPA agents to death within its belly.

Vidya might have been able to save them if Deirdre asked her to.

Deirdre didn’t.

The airship crashed into the water. The waves surged, engulfing the dirigible in steely gray arms, and it vanished into the depths of the ocean.

VIII

If the government was good at anything, it was doing everything in triplicate.

The first airship had barely had enough time to sink under the surface of the ocean before the second had been deployed, and now it hovered outside the United Nations building, waiting for its important passengers to board. This dirigible was almost a twin to the first, but a few years older, decorated with generic OPA insignia, and refueling cables still dangling from its belly.

“Isn’t there an alternative mode of transportation?” Deirdre asked, moving unsteadily onto the catwalk that led to the cabin. It didn’t feel nearly as solid underneath her now that she’d been on one as it was crashing.

“Not to the place we’re going,” Trevin said. He had returned to a body that looked passably human, but Deirdre still couldn’t bring herself to look at him directly. She couldn’t bring herself to take the hand he offered, either. She edged across the catwalk on her own and didn’t feel settled even once she entered the shelter of the cabin.

The pilot wasted no time. As soon as the door shut, the engines rumbled to life, and the UN building receded through the window. It was getting late, and the spindly structures caught the setting sun and reflected them in shades of flaming orange.

“Your cabin’s this way,” Trevin said, heading to the hall. “You have time to sleep before we reach the ley line juncture for the Summer Court.”

“Where is it?”

“About thirty thousand feet over the ocean.” At Deirdre’s confused look, he explained. “It’s not easy to hop between the Middle Worlds. You have to reach the right juncture and open a door. We’ve got a door on this airship, and it will take us to the juncture. Even with the engines running on full, we’ll have a few hours before we get there. Don’t worry, though. I don’t need to sleep. I’ll be watching your room all night.”

“Really? What do you think I’m going to do? Jump off the airship?”

“Or assassinate Secretary Friederling.”

Trevin really shouldn’t have given Deirdre ideas. “I didn’t see him board.”

“Nobody did. We don’t want anyone to know how many important people are on the same vessel. That’d be like begging for more assassins to attack us.” Trevin pushed Deirdre into her cabin. “Get some sleep.”

He shut the door behind her.

The lock clicked from the outside.

The cabins on the airship were small, little more than closets, and the bed sheets were stiff with starch. The OPA logo was on the wall at the foot of the bed. They couldn’t decorate with homier art; they wanted Deirdre to fall asleep watched by a reminder of the totalitarian regime that dominated her life, as though she could ever forget about them.

It seemed highly doubtful that she would be able to sleep, but Deirdre stripped down to her underwear to climb into bed. A wooden box clattered to the floor. “Where’d you come from?” She patted down her coat and found that an inner zipper had opened, allowing her surprise cargo to escape.

Deirdre stooped to pick the box up. It had a hinged lid like a jewelry box.

There was a single glowing blue cube nestled within.

“You asshole,” Deirdre whispered, tracing her forefinger over the hard edges.

She hadn’t been missing the lethe until she saw that cube.

Stark had given her a couple of hits since they left the asylum—enough to keep her awake and running while they tried to get their act together. And he’d been thoughtful enough to make sure she wouldn’t go through withdrawal after she left him.

Deirdre sank into bed with the cube of lethe, rolling it between her fingers. She wasn’t wearing her intake bracelet. She couldn’t take it unless she wanted to break it open and snort it off of the desk or something, which would have been a perversely amusing use of government furniture.

The air in her bedroom shifted before she could make up her mind. It wasn’t the HVAC system turning on—it smelled faintly sulfurous, and the breeze that swept over her body was too hot.

Deirdre set the lethe on her bedside table, eyes narrowing as she scanned the shadows of the tiny room.

“Melchior,” she said.

He emerged from the corner by the door, all glittering scales and gorgeous menace. “Hello again, Deirdre.”

She wasn’t surprised to see him. She had known from that last look they shared that he was going to come for her—the only question had been when. She still felt a thrill of excitement to see him. An Alpha dragon. “How did you get past Trevin?”

“Ley lines,” Melchior said. “The sidhe can go anywhere they want.”

“You’re not sidhe. You’re a shifter.”

“Is there a difference?”

Stark had thought so. He had been emphatically certain of it. Deirdre didn’t have an opinion of her own yet. “What do you want?”

“Don’t look so afraid,” Melchior said. “I’m not here to drag out that exhausting game of politics we were playing at the United Nations. I came to help you, sister.”

She lifted her eyebrows at him. “Sister? Excuse me?”

“You and I walk the line between shifter and sidhe with our fiery blood, and that makes us family.”

“I have no family, and I don’t want you as a replacement for what I’m not missing.”

“So unfriendly. What poison has Ever dripped into your ear?”

“He didn’t have to say anything about you. I’ve got enough personal experience to form an educated opinion.”

His eyes raked down her body. “Yes, you do.”

Melchior’s throaty tone took her back to the night that they had met at Original Sin, when she had kissed him to save her life. If she hadn’t distracted him, he would have shot her in the gut, and Deirdre would have gotten a chance to find out that she was a phoenix much sooner.

He seemed to be conveniently forgetting the part where she tried to bite his tongue off during that kiss.

“Okay. Are you here to finish the job that Kristian and Niamh failed to do?” Deirdre asked. “Because we can crash airships all day and night, but I don’t think you’ll kill me.”

“Kristian wasn’t trying to kill you. He was marking you so that something far deadlier can kill you. I am here to remove you from Earth before that happens—and I think there are a few other things we can enjoy together while we’re at it.” He smiled. His fangs were so long that they left indentations in the curve of his bottom lip. “I know what you are. You came back to life and you burn with flame—there’s only one thing you could be, little bird. Have you been enjoying riding the night with wings of fire?”

Her hands clenched into fists on top of her knees. “No, because I haven’t done it. I’m still an Omega.”

“The existence of Omegas is a myth,” Melchior said. “You just need the right guidance to learn how to change into your form. Someone like…a brother.”

Her heart accelerated. “You know how to change me?”

“I know how I change, and I can impart that knowledge upon you.”

“What’s the cost?” Deirdre asked.

His eyes glimmered with dark mischief. “Does the price matter?”

It didn’t. She would have done anything for her animal.

“Tell me,” Deirdre said, excitement thrilling through her from fingertips to toes.

“I’ll show you.” Melchior stretched a hand toward her. His fingernails were more like blunted claws, hard and red, as though he were always on the brink of taking his dragon form.

“You people killed me,” Deirdre said.

“Niamh killed you at Rhiannon’s command. She may be my mate, but I’m not Rhiannon’s dog. I have an agenda of my own, along with other…urges. I won’t hurt you tonight.” He smiled, exposing those many sharp teeth. “Dragon’s honor.”

That meant nothing to her.

Still, Deirdre knew when she was overpowered. If he wanted her head, he wouldn’t bother taking her somewhere else to do it.

So she gave him her hand.

Warm, scaly fingers engulfed hers. He was as hot as she was. Melchior wasn’t kidding when he said that fire flowed through his veins.

Melchior pulled her against his chest. The sheer size of him was intimidating. Deirdre wasn’t a short woman, nor was she weak, but Melchior made her feel pathetically small. “It’s time for you to spread your wings, Deirdre Tombs,” he said.

And he pulled her through the ley lines.

IX

Deirdre’s first encounter with the Winter Court had been when she approached the door that Niamh had kept in the basement of No Capes. The wind that had blown out of that door had been cold enough to repel Deirdre and quash any urge she’d had to visit the Winter Court.

That wind had been nothing compared to materializing in the midst of the Winter Court in the depths of night.

She stood on top of a hill, sinking waist-deep into crystalline snow. The sultry sky was a blue so deep that it was nearly black. Naked trees thrust branches into the air, icicles dangling from their tips, crystals of frost glimmering from each twig. The ice caught what little light there was in the Winter Court and magnified it, making the trees sparkle as though covered in Christmas lights.

The sky was filled with stars that seemed so close that Deirdre should have been able to touch them. But she didn’t want to reach up. She didn’t want to be there at all.

So cold.

“Melchior?” she asked, teeth chattering, turning to look for the dragon.

He radiated light and heat behind her, a pool of golden warmth among the frosty blueness of the world. He wasn’t bothered by the snow. His scaly skin steamed.

There was a portal hanging open in the sky beyond Melchior. It was a black passage unrestrained by any doorframe—a hole that led back through the ley lines.

That would be Deirdre’s route to Earth, warmth, and relative safety.

She couldn’t get to it without passing Melchior, and she doubted he’d let her run as soon as she arrived, no matter how cold she felt.

“What do you think?” Melchior asked, the corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk.

Deirdre shivered hard as she searched for signs of civilization—a city, a road, anything where she might find heat. She saw nothing but endless rolling forest and ice. The Winter Court was nothing but uninhabited, frozen desolation. “It’s horrible.”

He engulfed her in his arms. His heat was enough to stoke hers. Where he touched, fire lifted on her flesh, dancing with flaming feathers. “Better?”

Deirdre’s eyes fell shut at his touch. “Better.”

He was so blissfully hot, thawing Deirdre’s frozen innards. She couldn’t help but react to him. It wasn’t even that she was attracted to him.

Okay, she might have been kind of attracted to him.

Really attracted to him.

But who wouldn’t have been aroused by a shirtless, muscular dragon shifter sheltering her body from the chill? Deirdre was only human. Or phoenix. Whatever.

With his warmth to protect her, she took another look around at the Winter Court. The forest terminated somewhere on the horizon, bordered by a thin line of black that could have been darker sky or a body of water. But she didn’t see any artificial light.

“Where is everyone?” she asked.

“The unseelie want you dead,” Melchior said. “I thought it best to bring you into the world far from the queen’s castle.”

“Does Rhiannon know you’re even talking to me?”

“What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. We can only have this conversation in the Middle Worlds, and you’re safe in the Winter Court as long as you’re with me. I promise you that.” His hands slithered over her shoulders. “If you transform on Earth, the assassin would find you immediately.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “I didn’t transform on the last moon. I don’t know why you think you can help me change.”

“We’re better than other shifters,” Melchior said. “We aren’t subject to the moon. I’ll show you what life can be like if you surrender to me, to the change, to the magic that flows through us.” His fingers slid down her belly, slipped along the hem of her jeans, dipped behind the button. Deirdre shut her eyes, lost in the sensation of his hot skin against hers.

He was the consort of the unseelie queen. Stark’s former brother-in-arms and current mortal enemy. If there was anyone that Deirdre shouldn’t have been attracted to, it was Melchior. But she couldn’t seem to convince her body that it shouldn’t burn along with his.

“Stop talking and show me how to change,” Deirdre said.

“You’re so impatient.”

“That’s because I’m beyond freezing. I hate the cold.”

“You don’t have to allow the cold to take you,” Melchior said. “You can dominate it. Bathe yourself in warmth.”

“And the change?” she asked.

“Are you in a hurry?” he murmured against the side of her neck. His lips were the texture of snakeskin. There was nothing soft or human about them. It felt like being seduced by something alien to the Earth, something that shouldn’t have existed. His tongue darted out to flick against her flesh, warm and dry.

“Yeah,” Deirdre said. “You promised you’d show me how to change, but all I’m hearing so far is a lot of talk.”

“All right.” His hands slid under her arms, lifting them to either side. She spread her fingers out. The cold wind licked through them like the wind through feathers that she didn’t yet have. “Bring the fire.”

“I can’t always summon that power,” Deirdre said. “It only works sometimes.”

“That’s because you haven’t embraced your anger. The sidhe are creatures of passion. That’s why we love tactile experiences like sex, and why we mate so much more readily than most shifters.” He breathed that last word down her neck, making chills ripple over her spine. “We aren’t fed by sex the way many of the unseelie are, though. We are fed by anger.”

Deirdre had plenty of that.

“Change,” Melchior whispered.

The command resonated through her marrow and reached the power hiding within. The power that she had never been able to touch before. That dormant side of her being that had always been as remote as the moon itself.

Change.

Stark had tried to use compulsion on Deirdre before, but it had never felt like this.

She could ignore Melchior as easily as she could stop breathing.

“Use your anger, fuel the fire, and change,” he urged. “Think of everything that Everton Stark has done to you. Think of the way you’ve suffered at his hands, and the way your friends have suffered.”

Deirdre thought back to the first time she had met Stark, when he bumped into her on the sidewalk and ordered her to kill.

She hadn’t succumbed, but another shifter had. Colin Burgh had immediately ripped the head off of a woman, crushed it against the wall, spilled her brains on the sidewalk. He would have killed a little girl too, if Deirdre hadn’t stopped him.

Stark had brought Andrew into the pack and then let him die. He had ordered his last Beta, Sancho, to battle witches in a fight he couldn’t win, and Sancho had died for it.

He had forced her to fight Niamh, her best friend. And maybe that was why Niamh had turned on her.

Worst of all, Stark had made her shoot Gage in the head.

The dragon was still whispering, hissing venomous words deep into her soul. “Don’t you hate him?”

She did hate him. She hated him and feared him and wanted him to die.

And Deirdre wasn’t certain that she could live without Stark anymore.

His vision. His drive.

She needed that.

“Don’t lose the anger,” Melchior said. “Hold on to it.”

Deirdre shut her eyes and focused on the burn. She wasn’t certain that it was anger. The emotion was so much more complex than that.

Whatever it was, it blossomed within her like a lotus turning to the sun. She was the heat that shimmered over the savannah. She was the thermals high in the sky on the hottest summer days. She was the sunbaked sand, the golden rays of light that burned white in the sky, the sun itself.

She was a firebird.

“Yes,” Melchior said.

His voice was the only thing grounding her to reality, surreal as it was. That one word made her open her eyes.

Her skin was on fire.

She sucked in a gasp, momentarily convinced that she was going to combust like Chadwick Hawfinch had.

“Ignore the fear. You need the anger. Rein it in, Deirdre. Make it your own.”

Deirdre was beyond control now that the flames erupted from her skin, flaring into feathers that were each like the leap of a candle’s fire. She was covered in it.

She burned, but she didn’t melt.

She wasn’t a candle. She was the fire itself.

Melchior unbuttoned the flannel shirt she had borrowed from Stark, pushing it over her shoulders. His rough skin skimmed along her ribcage, the curve of her breasts, the undersides of her arms.

He undressed her completely and stepped back, giving Deirdre room to change.

Her body twisted. Her ribs slid under the skin, restructuring and shrinking. The skin on Deirdre’s legs thickened, toughened. Her toes merged and extended.

A beak thrust from her jaw, pushing her human teeth away. The fragments of bone fell to the snow. It should have hurt—it looked painful, seeing all her molars scattered on the ground in front of her—but all she felt was a strange numbness.

All the flaming feathers tingled pleasantly, as though it were an itch she had been dying to scratch for a decade, finally fading.

When she spread her arms wide, they were no longer arms. They were broad wings. They caught the wind like a kite, and she was so light that it felt like the slightest breeze could take her feet off of the ground.

She turned to look at Melchior.

He was changing, too. Where Deirdre was something feathery, he was a great and terrible lizard, with broad wings similar to a bat’s. His thick tail glimmered jewel-bright. Heavy fangs hung over his jaw, and smoldering eyes watched her.

Melchior had become his dragon form. His head reared above the portal leading back into the ley lines, which haloed him in dark energy.

At another time, she would have gazed at him in all the awe he deserved. He was a dragon. An actual dragon. The kind of thing that she had doodled on her schoolbooks when she grew bored with reality.

But now Deirdre was glorious, too.

For the first time, she understood what all her shifter friends had talked about over the years—how their animal form was as natural to them as their human body, the pain-that-was-not that swept through her when they shifted, the acuity of the senses. Her eyes were so sharp that she could see a bead of ice glistening on a tree miles away.

It didn’t feel strange to her.

She had come home.

If only Daddy could see me now.

Melchior settled back on his haunches, muscles rippling under his beaded flesh. He was as large as a ship. A human could have ridden him, if they’d dared approach such a fearsome beast. But there was still something distinctly Melchior about the creature—the look in his eyes, the arrogance in the tilt of his head, the uplift of his wings.

He challenged her in silence.

And then he flapped his wings and took to the air.

Deirdre’s feathers whipped around her, beaten by the stirring of wind. She flickered and guttered like a campfire in a storm. Her flesh underneath the feathers wasn’t made of skin, but the smoldering of coals.

She was magic. She was fire.

She was a phoenix.

Instinctively, Deirdre knew how to angle her limbs so that she would catch the air, working with the currents to lift herself rather than exerting her strength.

Deirdre was light as the flames themselves, without substance or weight, but she still felt perilously dizzy as she took off from the ground. The trees and the portal receded underneath her. There was nothing but the chilly kiss of ice on the wind, the brush of clouds through her heated feathers.

She was flying.

Melchior swirled through the air above her, his scales glimmering as he twisted in sinuous lines. He swooped and darted over the forest.

Deirdre gave chase.

She followed the tip of his spiked tail, stretching her beak forward as if to snap at it. She bit the air only inches away from him. Gage would have loved to see that—he hadn’t hesitated to pull a werewolf’s tail, and he’d have laughed at the sight of Deirdre snapping at a dragon.

Melchior was too fast for her to catch him, though. He was also agile for a creature of his size. He danced through the wind, showing her the paths she should take through the clouds, and she trailed him in breathless pursuit.

The forested hills vanished, succumbing to black ocean. The waves were frozen in frothy arcs. It looked like winter had seized the world in the midst of a storm, immortalizing the furious churn in ice. But it was glossy and reflective as a mirror—the most serene destruction that Deirdre had ever seen.

She soared over the ocean of glass, and for the first time, she saw herself.

She didn’t look like any living bird she had seen before. She was the offspring of a hawk and a heron, a lanky predator, fast and sleek. She looked exotic. Her plumage was a shocking contrast to the cold, oppressive blue of the Winter Court.

Deirdre had only seen birds like her in history books—the etchings on the walls of the pyramids, like the god Horus.

She wasn’t an animal. She was legend in the flesh.

If she’d had the ability, she would have laughed with the joy of discovery, but all that came from her throat was music. Her voice chimed over the frozen Winter Court.

Melchior looped around her. He smoldered orange-bright, fire gathering in his chest.

He spewed a column of flame into the clouds.

Deirdre allowed the fire to spill from her outstretched wings in a smaller echo of Melchior’s power. It was exhausting to shoot off even that much fire. Exhausting, and satisfying.

Melchior’s flame reflected off of something other than the glassy ocean waves. There were dark vertical surfaces out on the water, too—crystal spires and stalagmites of frozen saltwater.

The queen’s castle.

Deirdre flamed again, momentarily illuminating the only sign of civilization in the Winter Court. It was a cruel, frightening building, with a long bridge of ice leading back to the forest. Walking on that path with human feet would have been scary. There was nothing to keep people from slipping and plummeting to their death in the frozen ocean below.

She wanted to get a better look, but it was too far away, and she was drained by the change. She could feel the phoenix powers slipping away from her.

It was hard to stay angry when she felt so much joy.

Deirdre didn’t want to stop flying. She never wanted to leave the sky. But she wasn’t stupid enough to cling to her phoenix form when it was sliding away from her, and she didn’t want to find out if she could survive a fall from that height straight onto ice.

She spiraled toward the top of the nearest hill. It wasn’t where she’d entered through the ley lines, but Deirdre didn’t think she could get back where she started without Melchior’s help.

The fatigue grew exponentially. Her whole body shook in the frozen wind.

Deirdre’s feet were already reshaping again by the time she hit the snow.

The flames fell away from her, exposing unmarked human flesh, making long black hair flutter around her shoulders.

She collapsed to human knees and just barely caught herself on human hands.

Melchior thudded into the hill behind her. Muffled pops told her that he was changing, too.

She didn’t care enough to watch.

Deirdre stared up at the black sky, tears burning her eyes.

She had flown. She had really flown.

Melchior sank to his knees beside her. “It could be like that all the time.” The snow was melting around them, turning into a liquid slurry, exposing hardened soil underneath. “We could blaze through the night together, dominating everything that falls below us.”

She barely heard him.

I flew.

He dragged her toward him, plastering Deirdre against his chest. She settled onto his lap with her knees on either side of his thighs.

It was only then that she became aware of how naked they both were.

Shifters had to be comfortable with nudity by virtue of their nature. They could move from one body into another, but they couldn’t take clothes along with them. It simply wasn’t part of the magic.

Deirdre was used to others being naked around her. But she’d never been naked like that herself. In group showers, yes. While changing around other girls in the dorms—yes. But naked because she had shifted? Naked with a man?

That was another experience entirely.

Melchior’s manhood rested heavily between his thighs, engorged with anticipation. Like every other part of the dragon, it was impressive. She’d have been lying to herself if she tried to think otherwise.

No wonder the queen had made him consort.

“That was amazing,” Deirdre said. “I don’t…” She couldn’t find her words. She swallowed hard.

“Think of it, Deirdre,” Melchior said. “The two of us together—no walls, no shackles, no limits. Only sky.”

With the last word, he kissed her. His serpentine tongue darted into her mouth. Deirdre folded against him, unwilling to resist. The fire of the phoenix still blazed through her. She was as bright and hot as the dragon. Just as powerful a shifter. No longer an Omega.

She could feel the weight of him between her legs, pushing against the most intimate parts of her body, where nobody had been since Gage.

What would Gage have thought if he could see her now? Straddling the consort of the unseelie queen in a frozen forest, burning with him, letting his hands rove over her body? Melchior acquainted himself with every inch of her thighs and weighed her breasts in his palms and rolled the nipples between forefinger and thumb.

It wasn’t the thought of Gage that stopped her.

Deirdre pulled away from Melchior, breaking their kiss. “What will you do if you win the election?”

“You want to talk politics at a time like this?” he asked, demonstrating exactly what he meant by pulling her hips flush against his, allowing her to feel his hardness.

She didn’t exactly want to talk politics, but she knew she wasn’t screwing him until they got a few things straight. “What’s the Winter Court got planned for gaeans on Earth?”

“No wonder Ever likes you,” Melchior said. “You’re as aroused by ideology as he is.” His thumb slipped against the bud of heat at her core, and Deirdre bit back a groan.

She was tempted to throw caution to the wind and enjoy the seduction the dragon offered. It would have been so much easier than thinking. Melchior’s tongue stroked confidently against hers, and she could only imagine how that would feel on more sensitive parts. But she made herself stop kissing him again.

“What will you do with the OPA?” Deirdre asked.

“I can’t believe you want me to articulate a platform before I can have sex with you.”

“Is there something wrong with a little ideology? The world needs more visionaries.”

“You want to know what Rhiannon will do with power?” Melchior lifted his fingers to his mouth and sucked on them, smiling at her taste. “She’ll blast America with winter and kill everyone. Then she will expand from America to conquer the angels and demons.”

She gaped at him. “But why? What do you get out of that?”

“Ever loves all shifters. Rhiannon hates him, so she hates shifters, too. She’ll take what he loves from him and prove once and for all that she’s the stronger of the two. Rhiannon and I are united in our loathing of Ever, you see. Our mating has far less to do with the desire to be in charge of the Winter Court and much more to do with vengeance.” Melchior shrugged. “Naturally.”

Deirdre climbed off of Melchior. Her urge to surrender to him was as effectively doused as if she’d jumped into the frozen ocean. “We’re not doing this.” Her feet left burned imprints on the ground so distinct that she could make out the shape of her toes.

“You keep telling me ‘no’ like you think that’s an option.” His eyes smoldered with internal light. “I want to know what it means to mate with someone whose fire burns like mine. You saw what we did to Original Sin. By mating, we could flatten this forest and scald the earth.”

“Mating? We really aren’t doing that.”

“Think of the life I’m offering you. In my arms, you’ll be safe from the wars to come. You would be my favorite concubine. I would take very good care of you.”

She snorted. “Concubine?”

“Consorts and kings don’t have girlfriends.”

“The unseelie are so screwed up,” Deirdre said. It wasn’t fair that this was the man who had helped her change, bringing Deirdre into the sky for the first time. Damn, but she wished she’d gotten to share that experience with someone she actually liked. “I’m going back to Earth. We’re done here.”

“You’re not returning to Earth, my little heron. I told you that Rhiannon’s sent an assassin tailored to slaughter a phoenix like you. If you go back, you’ll die permanently. And I don’t plan on letting that happen.” He advanced on her, forcing her to back into one of the trees.

“Why would I be safer here?” Deirdre asked.

“Because Rhiannon won’t let the assassin into the Winter Court. It knows no master. It will kill anyone in its path, and she’s much too smart to allow it into her realm. As long as you’re here, you’re safe.” He extended a hand toward Deirdre. “You can stay with me willingly, or you can stay in shackles.”

Staying as his concubine would mean she was safe from the assassin, solitary confinement in an OPA detention center, and Stark’s murderous moods.

But it would also mean losing the election.

She would never let Rhiannon win.

“Shove it up your cloaca,” Deirdre said. “I’m going back to Earth.”

He lunged at her.

Deirdre whirled out of the way, leaping behind the nearest tree.

Melchior smashed into the one that she’d left. His fists pulverized the bark and sank inches deep into its core.

Wood sprayed around him. Ice showered from the branches above.

He yanked his hands out of the tree. Smoldering coals remained in its belly.

Melchior rounded on Deirdre, jaw dropping. The inside of his mouth was glowing. No, actually—the glow was coming from deep within his chest, emanating up his throat, illuminating his teeth.

He was going to breathe fire in his human form, this time aimed right at her.

“Gods,” Deirdre said.

She leaped off the side of the hill.

Melchior’s flames blasted over her head in a column as thick as her body, missing her head by millimeters. She actually felt her hair curl from the proximity of the heat.

Wind battered at Deirdre as she plummeted toward the trees. They grew rapidly underneath her.

“Change!” she screamed at herself. “Change!”

But when she reached within, searching for the anger that Melchior had said would allow her to shapeshift, she didn’t feel the power of the transformation.

She was angry all right. Angry and afraid, but mostly angry.

The power just wasn’t there.

Deirdre’s flaming flesh spluttered and went dark.

Seconds later, she smashed into the trees at the bottom of the valley.

They broke her fall, but she couldn’t tell how much of the snapping was the tree branches and how much was bone. She was numbed by the cold. Beyond shock. Unable to tell if her body was shattering.

She hit the ground on her side in a snowdrift. It was cold, so very cold, like daggers of ice stabbing into her side.

Without Melchior’s protective warmth, she couldn’t seem to keep her own fire flowing. Her body temperature wasn’t enough to even melt the snow. Her fingers and toes numbed, ears stinging as she fought to get to her feet.

Deirdre twisted to gaze up at the black sky. Melchior was a glowing point of light at the top of the hill. Wings unfurled from his back, sending plumes of smoke spiraling toward the clouds.

He was shifting again.

“Oh, man, so screwed up,” Deirdre said. Her teeth were chattering. She could barely understand herself.

The healing fever swept over her, blissfully hot in comparison to the surrounding snow. It was the only thing that got her moving.

She scaled the nearest tree and swung into the branches. Deirdre’s climb was clumsy and slow, fingers immobile from the cold.

The air churned as Melchior swooped over the trees.

He was halfway to his dragon form, winged and huge. He shot fire into the forest.

The trees caught around Deirdre.

“Damn!”

She leaped to the low branches of the nearest tree, and then to another tree, and another. The forest ended in an abrupt line at the edge of a valley. Deirdre hurled herself out of the branches and landed on the snow. She didn’t break through—it was solid as concrete, and about a million times slipperier than an ice skating rink.

Deirdre slid down the hill into the valley, ice scraping along her hip, her ribs, her shoulder.

It was so cold.

Melchior strafed her. He opened his giant dragon jaws, serpentine tongue thrashing in his mouth, and fire billowed within his body again.

Could dragonfire stun a phoenix?

Deirdre did not want to find out. If she fell unconscious, she would surely wake up in chains.

She threw herself down the icy slope, skidding faster to the nadir of the valley. Melchior burned a path where she had been seated only moments earlier, melting all the ice away, exposing dead grass underneath.

The portal that he’d opened to drag her into the Middle Worlds hung open over the next hill. The swirling patch of darkness was hard to see in the gloom of the night. It must have only been a quarter of a mile distant, but it felt like it was so much further than that, completely unreachable.

She needed to get through before Melchior caught her.

A fireball smashed into a tree to her left. It exploded, showering bark everywhere. She shielded her head with her arms and kept running.

Melchior roared so loudly that they must have been able to hear him at the castle. The trees shook with the fury of it. Ice pelted her numb skin.

Deirdre reached the top of the hill. The portal was even higher than she remembered. At least fifteen feet off the ground. Maybe out of her reach, since she was so numb and weak.

Melchior dropped toward her again. His claws flashed through the black night, aiming for her throat.

She leaped for the portal. She lifted her arms high. Spread her fingers out.

Deirdre stretched.

It was too high over her head. She was never going to reach it. She couldn’t fly—she wasn’t a phoenix, she didn’t have wings, she was going to be devoured by Melchior—

And then everything was black.

She smashed into carpet a millisecond later. Her momentum sent her rolling, arms and legs flopping, hair in her face.

Deirdre shoved up onto her knees, prepared to run from Melchior again. The floor was slippery with melted ice. Snow drifted from Deirdre’s hair and dissolved on contact with her skin.

She wasn’t in the Winter Court anymore. She was back in the cabin on the airship.

The door banged open. Trevin entered, attack spells crackling in his fists, ready for a fight, eyes aglow with the force of his seelie magic.

Then he saw Deirdre naked and dripping wet on the floor and burst into laughter.

An undignified end to an undignified night.

X

“What in the world is wrong with you?”

Deirdre shivered and pulled a blanket tighter around herself. “I’m cold, that’s what’s wrong with me. Is there a coffee pot anywhere on this stupid airship?”

Rylie gaped at her in disbelief. They were sitting at a table on the deck of the dirigible as the sun rose, waiting for Marion to arrive. Trevin was carrying those silver chains and eyeballing Deirdre again. “You just ran off with a competing Alpha when we’ve got a standing arrest warrant with your name on it, and you’re asking for coffee?”

“Well, I doubt there’s going to be coffee in solitary confinement,” she said.

“You are unreal.”

“Melchior admitted that Kristian belongs to Rhiannon, though,” Deirdre said. “It wasn’t a totally useless trip.” It especially hadn’t been useless since she had gotten to shapeshift—finally—but she wasn’t going to share that with the Godslayer. Rylie didn’t deserve to know about that part of Deirdre any more than Melchior did.

“I already knew Melchior was lying. I didn’t need you to verify it.” Rylie massaged her temples. It seemed another headache was coming on.

“If you’d been really smart, you wouldn’t have come back,” Trevin said.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” Rylie said softly.

Deirdre shrugged. “And miss the election? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

The sidhe’s eyes focused past her on the clouds beyond the deck. “Looks like our visitor has arrived.”

A small, light airplane that sparkled with enchantments soared through the sky, drifting close enough to tether its nose to the dirigible’s deck. Once it was stable, Marion climbed out of the pilot’s seat and jumped aboard the airship.

The mage girl hadn’t dressed up for the visit to the Summer Court. Her jeans were stained with something that looked like barbecue sauce. She wore a fluffy ponytail holder as a bracelet.

“Beautiful morning,” she said breathlessly, pulling the scarf off of her brunette curls. “Don’t you think?”

Rylie stood to greet her with a kiss on the cheek. She was all smiles at the sight of the girl, her ire toward Deirdre forgotten. “Does your mom know that you flew here alone?”

“She knows I’m going to the Summer Court to cast a binding oath on the king of the seelie sidhe,” Marion said. “I hardly think she’d be surprised to hear that Abel let me on the ultralight alone.”

“So it was Abel who let you fly yourself.”

She grinned bashfully and didn’t respond to the question. Marion spotted Deirdre. “Hey! It’s my favorite terrorist!”

“Marion,” Rylie admonished.

“What? I said she’s my favorite.” Marion pulled out her cell phone, thumbs flashing over the screen as she started sending texts. The teenager was practically glued to her phone. It must have killed her to go without it for a few hours while piloting a ship. “Are we going through the portal or what?”

The Alpha sighed. “Yeah. We’re almost to the juncture.”

Deirdre had no idea how Rylie could tell. They had been over unremarkable ocean for hours, and the place that they were hovering looked identical to everywhere else they had passed.

She let Rylie and Marion enter the cabin first, casting a last look over the steely ocean.

It was a quiet day. Clouds drifted slowly past, borne on a wind that couldn’t penetrate the wards on the airship.

There was no sign of Melchior, Niamh, or any other unseelie assassin.

The dragon had told Deirdre that returning to Earth would mean her death at Rhiannon’s order, but the early morning had been suspiciously quiet. Maybe she was safe out on the ocean. Or maybe Rhiannon just hadn’t caught up with her yet.

“Coming?” Trevin asked, holding the door open. He hadn’t stopped smirking ever since he’d found Deirdre in her room. He most likely thought he’d caught Deirdre on the walk of shame through the ley lines. At this rate, everyone was going to think Deirdre was skanking it up with all the Alpha candidates.

She brushed past the sidhe, head held high.

The doorway to the Summer Court was kept in a locked room at the back of the airship’s gondola. It was a rather ordinary door, identical to the others on the ship aside from its golden frame. And also the fact that it stood open to expose brilliant golden light rather than another room. It was so bright on the other side that Deirdre couldn’t make out any details of the Summer Court.

Friederling was waiting for them. Unlike Deirdre, he looked like he’d rested well overnight, and he wasn’t leaning on his cane quite as hard as usual. The golden light radiating from the Middle Worlds made his blond hair look white.

The sight of the secretary made a hard lump lodge in Deirdre’s gut.

She hadn’t had time to consider what refusing Melchior might mean. But now she had a reminder shoved in her face.

Friederling had given her a deadly ultimatum, and Deirdre still had no idea what she was going to do about it.

“Good morning, Miss Garin,” Secretary Friederling said.

Marion waved. “Hi Fritz. Is everyone ready to go?”

“Whenever you’re ready,” Trevin said. “I need to keep this side of the door secure, so I’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”

“You’re not coming?” Marion asked. The girl’s eyes seemed bluer than usual, as though proximity to the magic flowing from the portal was making her power glow, too.

“We aren’t allowed to bring any guards with us. You ladies will have to trust that I can keep you safe,” Secretary Friederling said.

Rylie laughed. Deirdre laughed too, a little bit too loudly and without any real mirth. Rylie might not have been insulted that that some human man would joke about being stronger than an Alpha and a mage, but Deirdre could be insulted enough for the both of them.

The secretary climbed onto the dais that held the doorway. Rylie paced herself to walk alongside Friederling despite his exaggerated limp. He looked like he could have used a walker more than a cane. Maybe even a wheelchair.

The two of them passed through the door and vanished into the light. There was no change in the humming that emanated from the door.

Marion finally stuck her phone in her back pocket. “So how’s Everton Stark?”

“Murderous,” Deirdre said. “As usual.”

“Cool.”

“Not really.” Deirdre climbed onto the dais, but didn’t step through the door. She still hadn’t shaken the chill of the Winter Court. She wasn’t eager to see what terrors the Summer Court held.

“It’s okay,” Marion said. “Nothing is going to happen to you. This is just a door.” She rapped her knuckles against the golden frame. It echoed hollowly.

Deirdre squared her shoulders. Maybe she’d been spending too much time with Stark, but having the girl recognize Deirdre’s fear spurred her on like nothing else could.

She hated the idea that Marion would think she was afraid. Weak.

Deirdre passed through the doorway.

The air tightened, squeezing gently like a blanket wrapped around her body. Deirdre shut her eyes against the bright light.

When she opened her eyes again, she faced rolling green fields.

For an instant, she was convinced that she had died again and found herself in that nowhere-place between life and oblivion, where the sun was always on the brink of rising and it never rained. But she wasn’t alone in this place. Rylie and Friederling had arrived before her, and when Deirdre glanced over her shoulder, she saw that Marion had come too.

There was an archway behind Marion that matched the one on the airship, all glistening gold and gems. It stood on its own at the peak of the hill without any walls to hold it up.

The mage checked her cell phone. “Merde,” Marion said. “No reception.”

“We’re in the Summer Court,” Secretary Friederling said with thinly veiled irritation. “They don’t have satellites here.”

Deirdre stepped away from the others to the edge of the hill to look down upon the Summer Court for the very first time.

The rolling hills were carpeted in forest, much like the Winter Court. But while the place she’d visited the night before had been trapped in the icy depths of darkness, this place was…well, it looked like summer. The trees grew tall and twisting, with roots that thrust from moist, fertile earth that smelled of wet leaves. The dirt roads were lined with golden vines that hung with heavy grapes the color of rubies.

A postcard village sat in a clearing between the trees, its paths leading to a white-sand beach and sapphire ocean. There was a chateau on that beach, made of sprawling gold brick with green roofs. The windows reflected sunshine as though the chateau were on fire.

That was where the queen of the Summer Court would live.

A vehicle was approaching their hillside. It took Deirdre a moment of hard staring to process what she was seeing. “That’s a carriage, isn’t it? Do the Middle Worlds not have modern technology or something?”

Rylie stepped up beside Deirdre. “No, they do. It’s personal preference of the queen. She’s kind of a romantic.” The Alpha looked like she belonged in the fairytale land, blond hair blown back from her face by a warm wind that smelled faintly of fruit. “Technology doesn’t reliably function somewhere with this much magic, though. Animal propulsion is more reliable.”

The carriage looked like it belonged at Disneyland. It was a white round thing covered in golden spirals and led by a team of four horses.

As they drew nearer, Deirdre realized that the horses emanated an aura like the sidhe, inhaling all light that touched them and emitting their own gentle glow.

They weren’t horses. They were something magical.

They reached the top of the hill in seconds, then they stopped a few feet away, nickering in greeting.

Deirdre’s eyes widened as she looked them over.

The horses had horns thrusting from their foreheads. Long spiral horns as long as Deirdre’s arm.

“Kind of cool, isn’t it?” Rylie asked. “I think I went into seizures of Lisa Frank joy the first time I saw them.”

“Are those…?”

“Unicorns,” Marion said. “They don’t bite.”

Deirdre stretched her fingers out hesitantly. The unicorn at the front butted its velvety nose into her palm and exhaled a warm breath over her fingers. A leathery tongue lapped at her wrist.

She stroked its neck. The unicorn’s hair was soft, almost more like a foam. Its long beard glistened in the sunshine.

It nudged her harder, pushing its face into her hip.

“They like candy bars,” Marion explained. She produced fun-sized Snickers bars out of her pockets, and she instantly had the attention of all four unicorns.

“That can’t be healthy,” Deirdre said.

“They’re unicorns.” She unwrapped the candy bars one at a time and let the unicorns eat out of her palm.

Deirdre felt numb all over watching it.

After all the horrible things that she had lived through in the last few weeks—heck, in the last ten years—it was more of a shock to come across a place full of perfect, beautiful things like the Summer Court than it was to be exposed Stark’s asylum or the endless chill of the Winter Court.

“When I retire, I’m moving here,” Rylie said. She was probably joking, but it made anger twist anew within Deirdre.

If Rylie wanted to move to the magical unicorn paradise, she could.

Deirdre didn’t have that option.

Marion had run out of candy, but the unicorns inspected her clothes for more, nosing the small of her back and underneath her long, curly hair.

Secretary Friederling checked his watch. “The king consort is expecting us soon. If you ladies are done…?” He wasn’t impressed by unicorns. Deirdre hadn’t needed another reason to hate him, but if she wanted more, then that was a pretty good one.

The door to the carriage swung open of its own volition. Rylie climbed in first, and then the secretary followed.

Deirdre waited for Marion to finish petting the unicorns before joining them.

She hesitated only an instant before climbing into the plush body of the carriage. It didn’t look like a trap. It was a glistening cage of gold and jewels being pulled by unicorns, for the love of the gods—like something Deirdre might have imagined if someone had asked her to design her perfect vacation when she was six years old.

But that was exactly why she felt so suspicious.

The deadliest threats were the ones she didn’t see coming.

Secretary Friederling had asked that Deirdre protect him for a reason, and it wasn’t because he thought the unicorns might nuzzle him to death. There was more to the Summer Court than she could see.

Whatever dangers might have been lying in wait for Deirdre, they weren’t obvious as she settled into the comfortable seat of the carriage. It jolted into motion as the unicorns trotted back down the hill. Their hooves made a sound against the dirt path like wind chimes.

When they came down the hill and entered the trees, Deirdre got a better view of the village through the window of the carriage. The seelie lived in structures that looked like they had been grown out of the trees. They were covered in grass and soil and flowers, much like the memorial at Rylie’s sanctuary.

What Deirdre didn’t see were the seelie themselves.

It was a beautiful village all right, but it might as well have been a ghost town. The open windows with their fluttering curtains were portals into empty cottages. Fountains gushed in a town square that looked like it had never seen a single footfall. They trundled through a market that sold nothing at all, its carts and storefronts empty.

The Summer Court looked to be just as empty as its chillier counterpart.

Where were all the sidhe in the Middle Worlds?

“You said we’re meeting the king consort, right?” Deirdre asked. “Why not the queen? Does the consort have much power?” She wasn’t really wondering what the supposed “king consort” could get away with. Her mind was back in the frozen forest with Melchior—consort to a queen, offering to make her his favorite concubine.

“The king consort has a lot of power in the Summer Court,” Rylie said. “Before Genesis, Donne was a werewolf. Not a member of my pack—a different kind of werewolf.”

“There’s only one kind of werewolf,” Deirdre said.

“Two, actually,” Friederling said. “Cursed werewolves and wolf shifters. But they all got jumbled up after Genesis and we don’t bother differentiating between them. However, in the beginning, Rylie only led the cursed shifters.”

“When he was still a werewolf, Donne mated with a powerful witch,” Rylie said. “She became sidhe once the world was remade, so once she took over as queen, he became de facto king. The queen isn’t a fan of business or politics. We probably won’t even see her.”

“So we’re talking a queen-led monarchy where the queen doesn’t have anything to do with business?” Deirdre asked.

“Must be nice, don’t you think?” Secretary Friederling asked. “All the prestige, none of the hassle.”

“Donne’s better suited to leadership than his mate,” Rylie said. “If we can convince him that it’s in their best interests to participate in the oath, Leah will do whatever he recommends.”

“Titania,” Marion said.

Deirdre frowned. “Come again?”

Friederling gave a long-suffering sigh. “Leah and Donne are the informal names of the queen and king, but the queen prefers that they be called Titania and Oberon, as in Shakespeare.”

“I did say she’s a romantic, didn’t I?” Rylie asked.

A romantic or insane.

They were leaving the unsettlingly empty village behind, but the forest road through to the oceanside chateau wasn’t less creepy. The space underneath the trees was strangely dark, considering how sunny the Summer Court seemed.

Deirdre didn’t see a single living thing. No birds, no squirrels, not even gnats buzzing around the piles of rotted leaves gathered among the roots.

Yet she felt like they were being watched.

She shrank back from the window. “Since the king consort used to be a werewolf, does that mean he defers to you?” Deirdre asked.

Rylie laughed. “Wouldn’t that be convenient?”

“The seelie are allies of the pack,” Secretary Friederling said. “Politically equal if not equal in power. They don’t defer to anyone.”

“Probably for the best,” Rylie said. “If their king deferred to me, I’d have to make decisions for them too, and I’ve got enough of that going on at my end of things.”

A queen of the seelie who didn’t like to do queen things and a werewolf Alpha who didn’t want to be Alpha.

Deirdre would have laughed if it weren’t terrifying.

People who didn’t care about their status had been put in positions of great power by fate, popularity, whatever—not because they wanted that power. They were the begrudging recipients of power. Reluctant leaders.

It wasn’t a surprise that someone like Everton Stark had arrived to try to seize authority. It was more of a surprise that it had taken so long for civil war to break out.

Scarier still, Stark might have been the first, but he would hardly be the last. The election would destabilize everything if Rylie lost. Once people saw that her control was tenuous—that she could be replaced—other gaeans would surely take the opportunity to jump on the conquering bandwagon. People like Chadwick Hawfinch, who had no morals and high aspirations.

The war wouldn’t be over once Stark took the lead. It would only be the beginning.

The carriage reached the chateau a few moments later. A sidhe with shining golden skin opened the door to their carriage and stepped back.

Rylie slipped gracefully out of the carriage, taking the attendant’s hand for balance. She couldn’t have needed it. Werewolves were preternaturally surefooted. But it looked to be some kind of seelie thing, judging by the way the seelie guy bowed over her hand. Some creepy modern chivalry thing.

Marion took his hand too. Even Secretary Friederling touched the sidhe’s hand, although he declined to hold it for longer than an instant.

Deirdre climbed out on her own.

The seelie kept his hand stretched toward her, looking expectant and a little confused.

“Touch him,” Rylie said. “You have to touch him.”

“I’ve had enough with sidhe magic this week,” Deirdre said. “Thanks.”

“You won’t be able to see anything inside the castle if you don’t touch him. He has to give you partial immunity to their illusion magic.”

“Partial immunity?”

“The Middle Worlds are overwhelming for non-sidhe minds,” Friederling said. “Everything you see here is an illusion constructed to preserve your sanity.” He waved vaguely in the direction of the forest and the ocean.

“Are the village and forest really empty?” Deirdre asked.

The sidhe guard leered at her. “Would you like to find out?”

She took the strap off her holster so she could draw her gun.

“Don’t,” Rylie said sharply. “Both of you need to calm down.”

Easy for her to say. Deirdre forced herself to take her hand off of her sidearm. “I don’t want anyone messing with my head. I’m not touching anyone while I’m here. I like this illusion just fine.”

Rylie gave the attendant an apologetic look. “She doesn’t understand the culture. I’m sorry, Storm.”

“And I’m unsurprised. She’s Stark’s Beta.” Storm dropped his hand and surveyed Deirdre with bald hatred. “Did you know that a Beta can be punished for the crimes of her Alpha among the seelie?”

“You’re welcome to try,” Deirdre said. “Come at me.”

“I’d like to remind you all that we’re here on a treaty,” Friederling said, checking his watch again.

“As if I’d forget,” the sidhe said.

He stepped aside to let them enter the chateau.

Deirdre passed him with her shoulders squared, her head held high, and the uneasy conviction that Stark would have been proud of her for being such a pain in the ass.

The only sound inside the chateau was the echoing of their footsteps, which bounced back at them a dozen times, making it sound as though there were a hundred people padding softly through the grand entryway.

Cobwebs dangled from darkened chandeliers. The crystal sconces looked like they hadn’t been dusted in years, caked in so much dirt and sand blown in from the beach that they were opaque. The bookshelves were broken, and held books that looked like they had survived a house fire, spines cracked and pages curled. But Marion and Rylie gazed at them in open awe.

“It’s amazing, as always,” Rylie told Storm.

Deirdre took another look around. It didn’t look amazing. Amazingly miserable, maybe.

Friederling noticed her expression, and he smirked, as though laughing internally. “It’s nice to see the court in full bloom, isn’t it?”

“So nice,” Deirdre said, smiling thinly.

The foyer was a long room that led back into an open deck covered by a pergola. Dead ivy draped from the wooden slats, which was worn down by years of salty wind, blown in from a sapphire ocean. Against the vibrant sky, all the colors of the chateau were dull.

An old chair leaned against the stone wall dividing the patio from the ocean. At least, Deirdre thought it was supposed to be a chair. Its back was broken, the seat sagging, termite holes gnawed through the legs.

“The Sapling Throne,” Friederling said to Deirdre. He was enjoying her disconnect far too much.

Rylie giggled and sidestepped nothing, cheeks bright red. “Sorry,” she said to the nothingness that she had dodged.

Marion stepped back a moment later. She was reacting to the same thing that Deirdre couldn’t see.

It was chilling to see her companions interact with invisible people—like being surrounded by ghosts.

Even though she couldn’t see them, Deirdre felt the air stirring around her, as though there were bodies moving nearby. Judging by the speed and rhythm, it felt like they were close to her, as though orbiting her body. Taunting her when she couldn’t see them.

“My liege.” Storm dropped to one knee.

Deirdre braced herself to face a king she couldn’t see, so she was surprised when a man came striding across the patio, stepping in and out of the pergola’s shadow in turns.

He didn’t look like a man who should keep unicorns as pets. He looked more like the kind of man who would have been happy spending his weekends lying on his back underneath a car, getting covered in grease and only pausing to drink from a cold beer. His hair was shaved into a short mohawk. His shoulders were broad, face inexpressive.

But he came to sit on what Friederling had called the Sapling Throne, so he must have been the king.

He looked just as desperately miserable as the rest of the chateau.

“Thanks for seeing us today,” Rylie said.

He grunted. “Who all is this?” He even spoke with a faint East Coast accent. Like a court ruled by a cab driver from Jersey. “Secretary Friederling, I know you. And her?” He was looking at Deirdre.

“She’s Everton Stark’s Beta,” Rylie said. “Donne, meet Deirdre Tombs. Deirdre, meet—”

“Donne, yeah, I caught his name,” Deirdre interrupted. “What kind of name is Donne, though? Are we talking like, ‘I’m done with this’ kind of Donne, or John Donne, ‘God gets me all hot and bothered’ kind of Donne?”

“It’s more like, ‘Speak respectfully to the king of the seelie or you might get beheaded’ Donne,” Secretary Friederling said helpfully. He was standing in the corner by the window, twirling his cane in one hand so that the silver hawk’s head glistened in the light.

“I thought Sancho was Stark’s Beta,” Donne said.

“Sancho died,” Deirdre said. “OPA witches melted him.”

“While he was holding hostages at a benefits office in Pennsylvania, I’d like to add,” Secretary Friederling said without a hint of shame over what his agents had done to Sancho. He was twirling his hawk-headed cane in the light, catching the sun and flashing it over the stone deck.

It didn’t seem to bother Donne, either. “I always told Sancho that his mercenary crap would get him killed. But the mercenary crap was what he was good at. You don’t look like a mercenary.”

“I got the job because I have a habit of shooting people Stark doesn’t like,” Deirdre said.

“You probably got the job because you’re as stubborn as he is, I’m thinking,” Donne said. He could tell that Deirdre hadn’t taken Storm’s mild enchantment that would allow her to see the court. And he didn’t seem impressed. “Fix that, Storm.”

Deirdre backed away when the sidhe advanced on her.

She didn’t move quickly enough.

He grabbed her elbow.

When their bodies connected, a frisson settled over her, as though standing underneath the mist of a waterfall. Her vision blurred. The floor changed.

She staggered, disoriented by the change.

Colors swirled around her—bodies dancing and spinning across the patio, cloth flapping, flesh peeking out from clothing.

The seelie sidhe were indeed all around Deirdre. Hundreds of them.

She tried to step back, but there was nowhere to go. She was surrounded on all sides. She spun to find a wall of sidhe behind her, all glittering in the light like fistfuls of diamonds with leering smiles.

Even Storm had changed. He radiated, his hair flowing, eyes bright.

The chateau itself was covered in ivy and roses. The once-cracked stones were now whole. Wine flowed from fountains along the edges of the deck, dribbling down terraced planters. Naked women and men alike lounged beside those fountains. They sipped from the wine, cupping it in their hands to dipping their heads directly into the flow, laughing and flicking it at each other.

Rivers of magic and music swelled around Deirdre. It was overwhelming—almost too much beauty in one place for her to tolerate.

No wonder Rylie was blushing.

“Now we can talk,” Donne said.

The Sapling Throne was far more glorious with the illusion magic lifted. Its roots sank into the stone underneath it, seamlessly growing from the chateau around it, its back tangling with the vines on the pergola. It curved around the king’s body as though a living thing trying to embrace him.

Donne was still a mohawked man in a black t-shirt who seemed annoyed by the fact he had to show up in court, though.

The revelry was sickening. All these people having so much fun on the beach, dripping in leather, lace, and liquor—and two nights earlier, Deirdre had slept in a gym with a leaky roof and a bunch of homeless shifters.

“When was the last time you spoke to Ofelia? Do you know what’s happening in the Winter Court?” Rylie asked. Nothing had changed for her. Only Deirdre was currently stunned to silence.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Donne said.

“Would you have heard if Ofelia had been deposed?” Rylie asked.

He glanced around at the partiers, then gestured to draw Rylie nearer to him. “What makes you ask?”

Rylie gave Deirdre an expectant look.

Apparently that was her cue to speak.

“Rhiannon and Melchior,” Deirdre said, trying to focus on Donne’s relatively ordinary face and tune out the dancing and laughter. The sidhe weren’t warping reality around them as much as usual, but it was still a powerful temptation. “They attacked Stark the other day. They claim that they’re in charge of the Winter Court.”

“Go on,” Donne said.

“What else is there to say? Rhiannon says she’s queen now. Melchior thinks he’s eligible to replace Rylie as Alpha. The only way that can happen is if they’ve taken over for the last queen.”

A scowl crossed Donne’s square face. Before Deirdre could figure out what that expression was supposed to mean, he stood smoothly, bringing miles of rippling muscle vertical and running a hand over his mohawk. “That can’t be right,” he said. “I’m going to contact Ofelia through the looking glass.”

Donne entered the chateau, leaving them alone with the Sapling Throne. The chair seemed to curl in on itself without his presence, diminishing slightly in the absence of its king.

Deirdre watched him leave with her jaw dropped. He walked away, just like that, as though they hadn’t traveled between universes in order to meet him.

XI

The only person who seemed disturbed by Donne’s quick exit was Deirdre. She turned to Rylie and Marion. “Is that it?” she asked. “I drop a couple of names and he’s gone?”

“Possible revolution is worrying. Besides, we can’t negotiate yet anyway,” Rylie said. “There are rituals we have to observe first. Courtesies.”

“Like the one where Storm paws me without my consent so I can see all the naked faeries?”

“A lot like that, yes.” Marion’s whole face was bright red, but she was smiling.

A couple of seelie women peeled away from the pillows against the wall and draped themselves over Secretary Friederling. They were easily differentiated from mortal women by the shine to their hair, the glimmer in their eyes, the crystalline fragmentation of their skin—and the nudity.

Deirdre was comfortable with nudity. As a shifter, she had to be. But there was an innocence to the naked body among shapeshifters. They were nude because they had to be, not because they were angling to get down and dirty. In all her years around naked shifters, Deirdre had never seen them do anything sexual to each other.

That was not the case with the seelie.

The women plastered themselves to Friederling, stroking their shimmering fingers over his sleeves and making cooing sounds.

“The hell are you doing?” Deirdre asked.

Secretary Friederling unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. “I may look like an old politician, but even I have something the seelie want.”

“This is the ritual?” Deirdre asked. “Massages?”

“I should have warned you,” Rylie said. Marion started taking video on her cell phone. Rylie plucked it out of her hand. “You know better.”

The seelie women helped Secretary Friederling shed his shirt, fingers moving over his buttons from collar to hem, exposing miles of lean muscle. He looked like the kind of man who ate nothing but chicken breasts and kale for two meals a day and could have run from his office in the District of Columbia all the way to Los Angeles.

“Oh my,” one of the seelie women giggled, tugging the shirt off of his shoulders. The other woman opened the fly of Friederling’s slacks.

Deirdre felt her cheeks getting hot. “Um.”

Rylie put her hand over Marion’s eyes. “Are you really going to do this out here?”

He gave a low chuckle and lifted a foot so a sidhe woman could peel his shoes off. “There’s no back room in the Summer Court.”

Friederling was far from the only man exposing himself in pursuit of something sexual. Many of the seelie were now getting intimate and making love under the canopy of ivy, for all appearances unbothered by their huge audience.

It wasn’t a court. It was an orgy.

Marion tried to duck away from Rylie, but the werewolf wouldn’t let her. “I’m almost fifteen now,” Marion protested, bouncing up on her toes to see over the shorter woman’s hand. Rylie just lifted her arm higher.

“Almost.”

“Mère said it’s okay for me to deal with the seelie on their terms,” Marion said, ducking under Rylie’s hand.

The Alpha moved her fingers to keep Marion’s gaze blocked again. “I say it’s not okay, and your mother told me to take care of you, so my authority wins this one.” She spun Marion around and swatted her on the butt. “Get inside the castle.”

“Rylie!”

“You heard me.”

Marion rolled her eyes. “What am I supposed to do? The party is here.”

“Why don’t you take a walk to the stables while we negotiate?” Rylie said.

“Gods, you’re such a heavy!” But she trudged inside obediently, peeking over her shoulder a couple of times as Friederling was drawn away by the women. They were dribbling wine from a golden chalice into his mouth.

“Negotiate? Is that what you’re calling it these days?” Deirdre muttered to Rylie. The seelie woman sank to her knees between Secretary Friederling’s legs. “She’s not going to…?” Deirdre’s eyes widened and she turned around, giving her back to the secretary. “Okay. She is. Wow.”

The politician whose face was on her dartboard back in school was currently getting blown by a faerie. That wasn’t a life experience she’d ever planned on coping with.

Rylie’s whole face was red, but she was laughing, too. “This is what they do. It’s okay.”

“Isn’t there a Mrs. Secretary Friederling?”

“What goes on at his house, and what his wife thinks of politics, isn’t for me to judge.” She put her hand in front of Deirdre’s eyes like she had with Marion. “Is that better?”

Deirdre swatted her hand away. “This isn’t funny.”

“It depends on your sense of humor, I think. It’s a little bit funny.”

It wasn’t funny. Not at all.

This was perverse—a sex party on the beach masquerading as politics. No wonder the sidhe typically had nothing to do with issues on Earth. Deirdre knew that they had always taken care of their own, but if they had the resources for this kind of thing, why weren’t they helping more people? Why limit it to the seelie?

Didn’t anyone feel a sense of responsibility?

“I think it’s my pleasure to take care of you,” Storm said, offering his hand to Rylie.

Rylie took his hand. “Thank you. We appreciate it.”

He led the Alpha to one of the couches, one that was thankfully distant from Secretary Friederling, and Deirdre was momentarily frozen, slack-jawed.

She’d already dealt with seeing the secretary getting oral. She didn’t know what she’d do with herself if Rylie, maternal figure that she was, started getting her freak on with one of the seelie, too.

Another male seelie approached.

“My name is Malik,” he said.

“Don’t even think about it.” Deirdre lifted her hands in a karate position. She was only halfway joking about the implied threat. She would go all kinds of ninja phoenix on his ass if he tried to sex her up.

“It’s polite,” Rylie said as Storm helped her sit on the couch.

What had Stark told Deirdre? Don’t let them touch you, don’t let them kiss you. That had seemed like a legitimate warning, not merely his strange possessiveness toward Deirdre coming out.

“Then I’m gonna have to be rude,” she said.

“What a tight ass,” Storm said, his slender fingers light on Rylie’s ankles as he unlaced her sandals, exposing delicate feet. He stroked a line from her knee to ankle. “You’re lucky to even be allowed to visit, shifter girl. We don’t let just anyone in here.”

They didn’t.

That was the problem.

Storm started rubbing the pads of Rylie’s feet. The Alpha melted against the couch with a sigh, eyes drooping closed.

“Relax, Deirdre. We’re not going to have sex. My mate wouldn’t like it if I got physical with the seelie,” she said.

“So you’re getting a massage?”

“That’s all,” Rylie said.

Malik was still waiting, hands extended, offering whatever physical pleasure Deirdre requested. Beyond him, Friederling was reclining alongside three different women, who were doing a lot more than massaging him.

“If you touch me,” Deirdre said, “I will shoot you.”

“What’s your problem?” Malik asked.

What was her problem? What was her problem?

She turned to take in the sight of everyone on the patio. The Sapling Throne was shifting slightly, as though stirred by the wind. The ivy crawled across the wall and wrapped around the ankles of a sidhe beside the wine fountain. People laughed, they moaned, they enjoyed all kinds of carnal pleasures. Food and drink and other bodies.

Deirdre felt like she was about to explode. Like she might catch fire and burn the whole place down.

“This is screwed up on every level,” Deirdre said. “You people are in here playing politics and sex games when people out there—people on Earth—are starving. Vampires resort to horse blood because they can’t get human blood. I had to subsist on a werewolf diet for years. Children are abused in the foster system. You’re threatening to throw me in a detention center for the rest of my life. And look at you people!”

Rylie sat up. “Deirdre—”

“I don’t want to hear it!”

But the Alpha wasn’t looking at her. Rylie was looking beyond her, and the look in her eyes verged on fear.

Donne’s return was heralded by thunderclouds—literally, black clouds brewing in his wake, as though he were dragging the fury of a thunderstorm behind him.

She took that to mean he hadn’t been able to reach Ofelia through the looking glass.

“The queen?” Rylie asked, standing slowly.

“She’s missing,” Donne said curtly.

Rylie paled. She obviously hadn’t believed Deirdre until that moment—not really. But now the reality of it sank in. The implications.

“You can’t let Melchior take the oath,” the king said. “If you recognize him as the authority of the unseelie, then he will have too much leverage in the Winter Court.”

“The unseelie have to join the election or we risk war when it ends,” Friederling said. “War and riots and all kinds of things that I frankly don’t have the budget to deal with. Or the patience, for that matter.”

“If you recognize Rhiannon and Melchior as the leaders of the unseelie, then you may as well be signing the death certificates for the true king and queen,” Donne said.

“Who cares?” Deirdre asked. “You’re enemies with the Winter Court.”

“You don’t understand. You could never understand.”

“As the secretary said, everyone needs to take the oath, Your Highness,” Rylie said. Storm helped her stand. She smoothed her skirt over her thighs. “The only way this election works is if everyone participates.”

Donne’s eyes sparked with anger. “I won’t take the oath if Ofelia’s consort doesn’t. The seelie won’t participate!” His volume increased as he spoke until he was almost shouting the last word.

The words fell flat over the patio. They had stopped playing music, and all of the sidhe were now listening to the conversation. Some of them had even stopped mid-coitus to watch.

Donne turned his focus on Deirdre. “Did you do this to Ofelia? Was it you and Stark?”

She planted her hands on her hips. “Excuse me? I want this election as much as anyone else. More than anyone else.”

“I’m not doing it,” Donne said.

“Don’t be selfish.” Marion had returned. She stood at the edge of the pergola, arms folded.

Donne rounded on her and the throne room warped around his movements. Flowers seemed to bloom in his footsteps, but only when Deirdre looked at him out of the corner of her eye. When she tried to look at him directly, she only saw a man in motorcycle boots stalking across ordinary wooden floors.

“Did you call me selfish?” Donne said.

“It’s in everyone’s best interests if this election goes through,” Marion said. “That includes yours.”

Deirdre had thought that the chateau had gotten quiet before, but now it was utterly silent. She would have been able to hear a flower growing, it was so quiet.

The guards were circling around Rylie and Marion, all those shimmering seelie with their auras of magic.

“You bring this thing into my court, this insolent mage, and expect me to believe that you’re not involved in the fall of the Winter Court?” Donne asked. “You brought a Kavanagh?”

Rylie sucked in a breath, as though the seelie king had struck her.

The last name was, apparently, not something that he was supposed to know.

“I normally use the name Garin,” Marion said cheerfully, unperturbed by the revelation of Donne’s knowledge.

“But you are a Kavanagh,” he said.

“That patronymic doesn’t apply to me.”

“When you said you would bring a witch to perform an oath binding, you didn’t say it would be this one,” Donne said to Rylie. “You expect me to take this as anything but an act of war?”

“I kept Marion’s identity secret for her protection, not because it’s an act of aggression,” Rylie said. As she spoke, Friederling untangled himself from the sidhe, pulling his slacks on, picking up his shirt.

“The most dangerous witch on Earth,” Donne said.

Deirdre completely believed that. Marion gave her the willies. If she was the most dangerous witch on Earth—or in the Middle Worlds, as the case was at the moment—then it explained why Marion looked thoroughly unimpressed by the seelie king advancing on her. She wasn’t even sweating. It took a lot more than that to impress a girl with angel blood.

“Does someone want to tell me why it matters what Marion’s last name is?” Deirdre asked.

Nobody responded to her.

“You shouldn’t take my presence as a threat,” Marion said. “You should take it as assurance that this election is going to happen. It’s a guarantee that if you win, your role as Alpha will be upheld, regardless of whatever tumult might rock the Winter Court.”

“Get out,” Donne said.

“No.” Marion smiled. It was a very cute smile, and once she was a few years older, it would probably be strikingly beautiful. For now, the lingering hints of baby fat on her cheeks just made her adorable—and disarming. “Not until you’ve taken the oath.”

With that, she lifted her hands, and power swarmed her.

Deirdre had seen Marion cast magic before. She had summoned a blue rose out of nowhere. That had been impressive enough on its own.

Watching her cast a binding spell upon the seelie king went beyond impressive straight to terrifying.

Electric blue light cocooned them, seeming to flow from her eyes like tears. It radiated from her as a halo. She was cloaked in it, tangled all up in the fibers of the universe. Where seelie magic seem to be a piece of the earth, Marion was a different thing entirely, something lofty and ethereal, beyond human comprehension.

Donne reared back. “Stop her!”

The seelie moved forward, but there was nothing that they could do.

Where Marion’s magic touched him, the king’s true form was exposed. He was a muscular human man with a mohawk at the same time that he was a beast of fur and fang, an animal that had decided to walk upright and take over the court.

He was a hybrid of forest and animal, man and magic, almost too beautiful to look at.

But Marion was so much more than that. Light spilled from her every pore, diminishing the sidhe until they looked dull in comparison to her. There might have been more of them, but she was immense—as though her body contained an energy without limit.

“Marion, don’t,” Rylie said. She was touched by the magic too. Where she stood, Deirdre could see the shining golden wolf that she became once shapeshifted. She wasn’t all that different from Donne in many ways. “Everybody needs to calm down right now before we—”

“Sluagh!” Donne roared.

He wasn’t looking at Marion now. He was looking at Deirdre.

Marion’s light was bright enough to engulf her as well, and where it touched Deirdre, her skin was revealed to be patterned with feathers. She wasn’t surprised to see that. It looked normal, a piece of her, in much the same way that Melchior’s scales were part of him.

But there was also a darkness in her belly, twisting in the air an inch in front of where her navel should have been. It was an open pit that reminded her of the immense darkness that she’d glimpsed in the Winter Court.

It wasn’t part of Deirdre’s phoenix form.

“What the…?”

Deirdre’s tried to move away from the spinning ball of darkness. But it clung to her. It was attached.

“What is that?” Friederling asked. He was disheveled, hair sticking up and slacks hanging open in the front. But he clutched his cane in one hand like he was about to whip Deirdre with it.

She tried to pluck the ball of energy off of her, but there was nothing there to touch. That portal yawned wider and deeper, like a tunnel that should have bored through Deirdre.

Kristian must have attached it to her when he attacked the dirigible. That was why he hadn’t bothered trying to fight Deirdre. He had affixed something far worse to her—something that now had the seelie sidhe screaming and fleeing, abandoning their fountains of wine. The sluagh, whatever that was.

Melchior had warned her that she would die if she left the Winter Court.

The thing clawing its way through Deirdre’s aura to reach the Summer Court had a thousand limbs, a thousand faces, and a thousand screaming voices.

“Don’t let the sluagh in the castle!” Donne said. “Kill her!”

The sluagh erupted through Deirdre’s body.

She didn’t feel it coming through. It was just suddenly there, taking up space in front of her, stirring the air in the room, gusting her hair back from her face.

In many ways, the sluagh reminded her of Marion’s magic, at least in the sheer vastness of its form. But where she was filled with an awe-inspiring light, the sluagh was shadow, a black hole absorbing everything around it, inhaling magic and life and devouring it in endless gnashing mouths. There must have been thousands of them—millions—but it was perpetually shifting, from mouths to hands to spines to eyes. She couldn’t focus on it.

Worst of all was the screaming.

Gods, the screams.

The sluagh launched itself toward the Sapling Throne. Donne leaped out of the way.

It smashed into the throne and fluids gushed over the dais, freezing in cruel fractal patterns that looked sharp enough to impale.

Tentacles whipped wide, shattering the pergola’s pillars and showering wood over Deirdre.

The few remaining seelie fled. One male sidhe didn’t run quickly enough, and one of the sluagh’s skeletal hands lashed out, seizing his ankle. It jerked him off of his feet. It hauled him into its belly.

His scream joined the thousands of others.

And its body swelled.

Sidhe guards hurled magic into its wintery black core. But the sluagh devoured everything that they threw at it, and it only seemed to grow with the power.

It reached out to grab other seelie who thought they had fled far enough to escape, swallowing them with a sickening wet sound.

Deirdre’s back hit the castle’s wall. There was nowhere else to go. Nowhere to run.

Secretary Friederling dragged Rylie away from one of the lashing tentacles. He moved pretty fast when he wanted to. There was no sign of a limp when he was dodging death. “Don’t attack it with magic! You’re only making it stronger!”

His advice came too late. The sluagh snapped a nearby guard into its maw, consuming him instantly. He didn’t even have time to scream.

The sluagh kept growing.

One of the tentacles lashed over Deirdre’s head. She rolled under it, dodging the blow. But it was faster than she was. The second strike caught her ankle, shooting ice all the way up her hip. It jerked her across the floor.

“No!” she shouted.

Deirdre fired her Sig. The iron bullet snapped its tentacle in half.

The sluagh screamed in its multitude of voices, drawing the offending limb within itself.

Deirdre was now close enough to see all the skeletons inside of it. The bones were crumbling and luminous, like an entire cemetery’s worth of bodies churning within the graveyard of its maw.

She had its attention now, though. The sluagh’s hands reached for her.

It was going to rip her apart, and she’d get to find out if there was a limit to how many times a phoenix could regenerate.

Then the pergola shattered.

Massive stone bodies punched through the patio cover. They landed one at a time, pounding into the stone floors hard enough to dent them.

They had broad wings, twisted faces, and gray skin that seemed hewn from solid rock.

Gargoyles.

And not just any gargoyles. Deirdre recognized the patterning of runes over their animated flesh. She had been chased by those exact creatures when she’d been trying to steal a sword from Holy Nights Cathedral.

“Lincoln!” Rylie cried.

Brother Marshall leaped off of the back of a gargoyle, using his staff for balance. “Morning, Rylie,” he said, touching the brim of his cowboy hat in greeting.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“From the looks of it, it seems like I’m saving your life.” Brother Marshall parried one of the sluagh’s tentacles with the staff, beating it away before it could touch him or the politicians he now protected. Where staff and limb contacted, unseelie magic sparked.

The sluagh’s voices shrilled in pain. Deirdre clapped her hands over her ears as she ran, skirting the patio to try to reach Brother Marshall. He seemed to know what he was doing.

But the monster slammed into the wall, cutting her off from the others.

Her ankle was still cold from where it had grabbed her earlier. The numbness threw her off balance. She stumbled backward, falling onto her butt.

The gargoyles closed in. They thrust their stony fists into the mass of the sluagh, faces immobile as they seized its thrashing tentacles, yanking them away from Deirdre. Thousands of souls thrashed and screamed, painting the arms of the gargoyles in blood.

She scrambled to put distance between herself and the fight, kicking her heels against the ice-slick ground.

The sluagh was still growing. Stretching. It tried to wrap itself around the gargoyles, attempting to consume the animated stone the way that it had consumed the sidhe guards. But there was nothing to eat, no bodies to absorb into the darkness. The gargoyles pounded their fists against it and didn’t react when the unseelie magic clung to them like taffy.

Between the gargoyles and the sluagh stretched between them, Deirdre couldn’t see the others anymore. She couldn’t even see Marion with all her magic. All she could see was thrashing shadow, emotionless golems, and the screaming faces of the dead within the sluagh.

“Rylie!” Deirdre shouted.

She skidded around a patch of ice. She wasn’t able to stop herself and slammed into the low wall separating the patio from the ocean, giving her a view over the side to the beach down below.

There were more seelie guards fighting in the crashing foam of the surf. For a heartbeat, Deirdre thought that Kristian had followed the sluagh into the Summer Court too—but then she realized that the man fighting the sidhe was far more familiar.

He was also wielding a tree as a club. As in a tree ripped out of the ground.

Where he struck the sidhe, their blood splattered all over the sand, mingling with the lapping waves. They couldn’t even get at him with their magic. He knocked every spell away as a batter might hit foul balls.

Even at that distance, Deirdre recognized the horrible grace and deliberation of his movements.

Everton Stark had come for her.

She felt the same confusing mix of emotions that she had when he’d brought down Rylie’s private jet to save her: fear and gratitude and annoyance and something that felt like a grudging, growing affection.

She was actually happy to watch him ripping through the sidhe.

Secretary Friederling had backed Deirdre into a corner with a terrible decision. But Stark’s arrival meant she could choose secret option three. Instead of making a statement that would piss Stark off, or getting thrown into solitary confinement, Stark was going to rescue her. She could run away with him.

Deirdre needed a way to reach him on the beach.

She turned to search the patio for an exit. There was no sign of the king now—only his guards. Additional reinforcements had also arrived. They moved in from the outer edges of the patio, magic rippling in their clenched fists, making the room warp and distort around them.

Between the seelie and the sluagh, Deirdre’s senses were breaking down. Everything twisted around her, lensing as though she were surrounded by a spherical magnifying glass. Even the sounds were warping as the sidhe battled.

She heard screams and sizzling, cries and thumps, but she couldn’t tell where anything was coming from.

So it took her a minute to realize that the seelie guards had left fighting the sluagh to Brother Marshall and his gargoyles.

Now they were coming for Deirdre.

Rough hands seized her by the arms and ripped her away from Rylie.

They thought that Deirdre had brought the sluagh deliberately. They thought she’d been trying to assassinate the king.

Great.

Deirdre’s gun was in her hand. She had drawn it instinctively when the guards moved in on her. But she couldn’t tell where to aim. The more the sidhe touched her, the faster their tenuous illusion fell apart, exposing her vulnerable mind to the distorted reality of the Summer Court.

The chateau was in ruins. It was also under construction. And it was completed, covered in ivy, shimmering in the sunlight.

The ocean was calm and glassy even as it frothed with the fury of a storm.

So many different images, so much conflicting sensory information, a thousand smells and colors.

Her whole body jerked, and the room spun around her. She recognized the feeling of being pulled through the ley lines from when Melchior had transported her the night before.

The guards were going to remove her from the patio.

Something told Deirdre that if they took her away, she wasn’t going to be coming back.

“No!” she yelled, thrashing in their grips.

The chateau flipped upside down. She watched as the gargoyles, conducted by Brother Marshall and his staff, continued to shred the sluagh. She watched as Rylie ran in slow motion toward Marion and Friederling. She watched as the Sapling Throne shrank into itself, drawing into the floor, hiding from the assault.

And Deirdre glimpsed Stark climbing over the half-wall.

But now everything was receding, like she was watching it from the end of a tunnel. The ley lines contracted around her.

“Stark!” Deirdre cried. “Help me!”

The patio snapped back into focus instantly.

She smashed into the floor facedown, palms slapping against the floorboards. Sluagh blood stung her fingers. Gargoyle feet thudded around her head.

But the patio wasn’t warping anymore.

When she pushed herself up to look around, she saw why.

Stark stood knee-deep in seelie blood, drenched in fluids from the guards he’d killed. His shirt had ripped at the shoulders when he’d partially shapeshifted. Emerald handprints marked his bare arms. Bits of flesh clung to his beard.

He’d murdered the seelie guards trying to take her away.

And now he stood over her, barely even breathing hard, looking more relieved than angry. Whatever they had been fighting about back at the high-rise seemed inconsequential.

“Tombs,” he said.

Deirdre smiled weakly. “Stark.”

Another of the seelie guards lunged at them, dodging the wrestling gargoyles to attempt an attack.

Stark put himself between the guard and Deirdre. “Walk into the sluagh,” Stark said. The command resonated. He put so much willpower into it that even Deirdre’s skull ached.

The seelie stopped mid-step. He spun on his heel. And he leaped into the morass of souls that formed the sluagh. Dead in an instant.

Stark had killed him for Deirdre, just as he’d killed all those others.

Movement in the corner caught Deirdre’s eye.

Secretary Friederling twisted the hawk’s head on the top of his cane, yanking away the shaft to reveal that it was a sheath for a long stiletto. The blade was shining silver. Probably pure silver—the kind of metal that hadn’t been sold since Genesis.

Enough silver to kill Everton Stark.

But not enough to kill her.

“I’ll take him,” Deirdre said.

Stark responded by plowing into another of the sidhe, smashing the guard’s body into a wall.

The secretary moved forward. Deirdre snapped a high kick at Friederling, and he moved with surprising reflexes, ducking underneath her boot heel. When she kicked again, he blocked her leg with the flat of his stiletto.

“Remember how I offered you a way to avoid going to prison for the rest of your life?” he asked with a wry twist to his mouth.

“Remember how I hate your guts?” Deirdre replied.

Secretary Friederling moved faster than she expected. The cane came swinging out of nowhere, rapping Deirdre sharply on the side of the head. She staggered.

He didn’t try to stab her with the stiletto, but he didn’t need to. Not with that much silver. It stung her scalp. She smelled burning flesh instantly.

Damn, but he was fast. It shouldn’t have been possible. He was human. Mundane. And he usually limped like an octogenarian.

She wasn’t going to be surprised by him again.

When Secretary Friederling moved into another attack, she ducked under the blow, grabbed the cane, and jerked it out of hands. It burned on contact with her palms.

Deirdre hooked the cane low and jerked his feet out from underneath him. He fell with a grunt, landing hard on his back.

She brought the stiletto down like a golf club, aiming for his skull. Secretary Friederling blocked it with his forearm.

Her foot lashed out and connected with his temple.

His eyes blanked.

At that moment, a gargoyle pounded the sluagh flat into the stone floor. In the gap between its body and that of its neighbor, Deirdre suddenly could see Rylie and Marion, who stood back in the corner of the patio.

Both of them saw what she had done to Friederling.

“Deirdre!” Rylie looked aghast, as though too surprised by the attack to know how she should retaliate.

But not that surprised.

She had already begun to shapeshift, claws emerging from her fingertips, fangs extruding from her gums.

The shapeshift distracted Rylie.

Stark had just killed the sidhe he had been fighting, and it put him in the perfect position to sneak up on the Alpha. The crack of stone from the struggling gargoyles meant he didn’t even need to be quiet about it.

He grabbed Rylie from behind and snapped her neck.

“Stark!” Brother Marshall roared. When he moved, the gargoyles moved too. They had pounded the sluagh into a murky smear—not dead, but gone from the Summer Court, leaving behind nothing but a stain on the floor.

And now Deirdre and Stark had the full attention of the gargoyles.

Stark hadn’t hesitated to take down Rylie, and he wasn’t going to hesitate to deal with Brother Marshall, either. Deirdre could barely track the shifter with her eyes as he flashed across the room. He easily leaped between the reaching hands of the gargoyles, which were far too slow to catch him.

He struck Brother Marshall and knocked him over.

Magic flashed. The staff snapped in half.

The gargoyles stopped moving.

Stark bounced Brother Marshall’s head off the floor, and the monk stopped moving too.

“Stop,” said a quiet voice.

Marion stepped from between the immobile gargoyles, hand extended. The brilliance of the magic that lashed around her arm made her skin look colorless and her hair black. She didn’t look like a teenage girl anymore. She looked every inch an angel.

Her magic snapped around Stark, freezing the man in place.

Deirdre took two steps toward Marion. The mage girl flung her other hand out, and the same spell gripped Deirdre, rooting her to the floor.

“Stop,” Marion said again, more firmly this time.

Deirdre couldn’t disobey. She could barely even breathe.

Marion held them in place as she kneeled beside Secretary Friederling and Rylie in turn, searching for their pulses at their throats.

They must have been alive. It took more than a broken spine to kill a werewolf Alpha.

Marion sighed. “Deirdre.” She turned to Stark. She actually looked a little excited to meet him. “And you. What will I do with you?”

“Let me go so I can finish what I started,” he said through clenched teeth. Even trapped by a mage’s spell, he was a terrifying thing, coated in blood and magic with his clothes shredded to expose healed skin.

She considered them both, eyes glimmering with magic.

“Okay,” Marion said.

She lifted her hands above her head in a position of surrender. The spell holding Deirdre and Stark vanished.

Marion dropped to her knees in the puddle of sluagh blood.

“Take us away,” she said. “All of us—Fritz, Rylie, Lincoln, and me. We’re now prisoners of Everton Stark.”

XII

Everton Stark was a man of many talents. He was the only shapeshifter Deirdre had ever seen who could turn into a prehistoric monster: a bear wolf, an apex predator that rivaled even the most frightening werewolves. He was also one of the only shapeshifters who could do a partial shift, deliberately taking on claws and fangs while leaving the rest of him human.

She shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he could do strange and frightening things anymore. Even so, she was pretty shocked when he managed to reassemble Brother Marshall’s unseelie staff and use it to haul them and their captives through the ley lines.

They reappeared on Earth in a plain room with steel walls marked by runes. The bodies that had been sprawled around the chateau reappeared in the same configuration as in the Summer Court: Rylie and Secretary Friederling unconscious to one side, Marion kneeling with her hands behind her head, Brother Marshall curled up against a wall.

And then Stark and Deirdre standing above them all.

“Rylie Gresham,” Stark said softly, circling her body.

She was still limp, though her eyes were open and her cheeks were pink. The healing fever would be sweeping through her, knitting together her nervous system, hemming the broken bones, repairing the injuries.

On an Alpha, that process would be a thousand times faster than on an ordinary shifter like Deirdre. It wouldn’t take long for her to be on her feet.

But Rylie didn’t have enough time to even finish her accelerated healing.

Stark dropped to his knees beside her. He lifted her head with a hand cradling her skull, and Deirdre winced at the strange way her broken neck tilted. It hadn’t healed yet. He would be slowing the repair process by shifting those bones.

“Put her down,” Marion said.

Stark ignored the girl. But in much the same way that Rylie couldn’t heal fast enough to escape another attack from Stark, Deirdre wouldn’t be able to shoot fast enough to stop Marion from casting a spell if she wanted to. She still didn’t know why Marion had surrendered, but she didn’t want to test the limits of the mage’s patience.

“Listen to her,” Deirdre said. “Put Rylie down.”

Stark gave her a hard look. “After all this time, Tombs. We’re here now. This is our moment if we want to take it.”

Deirdre should have encouraged him, she knew.

Let him take care of Rylie Gresham.

Let him incur the wrath of Marion and all the powers of an angelborn, mighty as they were.

It would be the perfect solution to most of her problems—two Alpha deaths wrapped up together.

“Do you want to martyr her?” Deirdre asked.

She could tell that Stark heard her, and he was weighing the options. There would be better ways to bring Rylie down—ways that wouldn’t practically canonize her—but nothing as easy as ripping her head from her shoulders.

“Deirdre?” Marion asked.

The girl was asking if she should do it. If Stark was really going to kill Rylie.

“Come on, boss.” Deirdre let a little pleading into the words, and at the same time, she hunched her shoulders, lowered her eyes, made herself look as submissive as she could manage while holding her gun to the skull of a teenage girl. “It’s not the right time, is it?”

Stark slowly released Rylie, who slumped bonelessly against the ground. “Get out.”

It took Deirdre a moment to realize he was speaking to her.

There was only one door, so she stepped through it, leaving her gun trained on Marion. The mage didn’t move, even when Deirdre backed away, but she still didn’t drop the gun until Stark locked their captives inside the room.

The hall outside the cell was like any other apartment building in New York, grungy and windowless with stained carpeting. Except that it just so happened to have an enchanted vault where they were currently keeping two of the leaders of the preternatural world.

“Is this Chadwick Hawfinch’s high-rise?” Deirdre asked.

“Home sweet home, such as it is.” Stark twisted the wheel on the door to lock it, then slapped one of the runes on the doorframe. All of the runes glowed to life.

He tossed Brother Marshall’s shattered staff aside. It fell to pieces once he no longer held it.

Stark led her across the hall to another room. The number on the wall beside it was 714B, with paler wallpaper to the left indicating that it may have once been 1714B. Though the door looked ordinary, the inside was more akin to a security room than an apartment, since an entire wall was covered in monitors.

Stark flipped a few switches, and the cameras in the room across the hall came to life. Marion was gently repositioning Rylie, probably to align her spine for proper healing.

“I’ll kill Vidya,” he said. “She should have been there. She should have protected you.”

“She’s busy.” Deirdre tried not to smile and failed. Surviving the attack by the sluagh had left her dizzy with relief—or maybe that was the effect of being pulled through the ley lines by a shifter who had no business messing with them. “I thought you were angry at me.”

“I am,” he said.

“But you saved me anyway.”

“I did.”

“And you brought Brother Marshall?”

“He was the only way I could travel the ley lines into the Middle Worlds,” Stark said. “He wanted to help Rylie Gresham. They’re old friends.”

Everyone was old friends with Rylie Gresham. “You could have used his staff to get into the Winter Court.”

“You would have died if I had done that.”

She shrugged, trying to look casual. Like dying was no big deal. Maybe it wasn’t—she’d come back from it twice now, after all. “I’d have been reborn again.”

Stark advanced on Deirdre, and she backed up until she almost tripped over one of the computer chairs. “Don’t you have any idea what the sluagh is, Tombs?”

“Sorry, I guess I forgot to take a class on obscure unseelie monsters when I was getting kicked around the OPA’s foster system.”

His hand clenched into a fist like he wanted to hit her. The fact that he restrained himself was a solid sign of personal growth, Deirdre was sure. “The sluagh isn’t an individual creature. It’s an organism made of hundreds of cursed souls that the unseelie queen has enslaved. The sluagh kills by drawing new souls into its morass.”

“So what?”

“It kills by removing souls,” Stark said. “What do you think survives when a phoenix is reborn from her own ashes?”

Oh.

In other words, the sluagh would effectively be able to kill Deirdre—or do something far worse.

“I’m the only reason that you’re alive right now,” Stark said. “And how do you thank me?”

“By saying ‘thank you, big handsome boss man’ very sweetly?”

“You ran off with Melchior. You reek of him.”

She had grown up around people with preternatural smelling abilities, which meant having very few secrets. Her friends had known when she lost her virginity. It had been humiliating, the way they teased her. She felt a similar burn of humiliation now, knowing that Stark could smell Melchior’s dragon sweat all over her.

Deirdre lifted her chin stubbornly, refusing to show how much he’d embarrassed her. “I wasn’t ‘thanking’ you by running around with Melchior. I did that before you saved my life at the Summer Court. I’d do it again now, for the record, but you still can’t hold that over my head.”

“Can’t I?”

“Semantics,” she said. Even in the face of his anger, she caught herself smiling again. She was relieved that they’d captured Secretary Friederling. Relieved, because it meant that she wasn’t going to have to make a very ugly decision. “Friederling was going to arrest me for your crimes.”

Something indecipherable flickered across Stark’s face. “Don’t change the subject. We were talking about Melchior.”

“You want to talk Melchior? Okay. Let’s talk Melchior.” She gripped his shirt in both fists, fixing him with a hard look. “Melchior made me shapeshift, Stark. I became my animal. I flew.” Deirdre’s throat felt thick. She swallowed hard. “I flew,” she said again, hoarser than before.

“With Melchior,” Stark said.

“Are we speaking the same language? Yeah, with Melchior. Who cares?”

“You know who he is and what he’s done. He’s part of the reason that you died last time.”

“Yeah, I know exactly who he is to you,” Deirdre said. “I know you don’t like him. It drives you nuts that you can’t compel him.”

Stark frowned. “Where did you get that idea?”

“Uh, how about the fact you haven’t done it yet?”

“I have, once before. I can place an irresistible compulsion on him if he allows it, same way that I can with any other shifter. His willpower is too strong to take a command without accepting it.” Stark’s tone was measured—and guarded. He wasn’t going to tell Deirdre how he’d discovered that.

“It doesn’t matter either way. I don’t see why you should be throwing crap at him for killing me when you’ve been on the brink of doing the same for months. The only difference is that he and the unseelie succeeded where you have failed, which I can only imagine makes you hate him that much more.”

“I wouldn’t kill you,” Stark said. “Killing you has never been in my plan.”

“Oh? You’ve got plans for me?”

“Yes.”

His voice was low and dangerous, but there was something to it that made Deirdre’s stomach clench, too. And that feeling definitely wasn’t dread. It trod upon the uncomfortable intimacy of an Alpha and Beta who didn’t quite like each other. It also butted up against the confusing feelings she had for a man who didn’t hesitate to strike her with a closed fist.

“Melchior gave me something you couldn’t,” Deirdre said. “He gave my wings to me. So I’m not even going to argue about this. You wanted to go a different path and we split. What happened after that is none of your business.”

Stark’s hands balled into fists.

She saw his swing coming. He was a lightning-fast Alpha, more beast than man, and she actually saw it coming.

Deirdre ducked under it, grabbed his arm, and used his momentum to slam him into the wall.

He ripped away from her to attack again, but Deirdre was already out of his reach. She had darted away from him with the same easy speed that he had. That every shifter had.

Every shifter except an Omega.

As if to prove that she still wasn’t as fast as him, Stark launched across the security room so quickly that she couldn’t even track his movements.

But he wasn’t trying to punch her.

Stark struck her like the front of a storm, rage wrought in every line of his body. His lips came smashing down on hers with just as much gracelessness as when she had tried to kiss him the first time. It was a brutal thing, like he was trying to show her his dominance with the kiss.

Deirdre was too shocked to react for a moment—only a moment.

And then she was pushing back against him, fisting her hands in his hair, pushing back with as much strength as he did.

She slammed Stark into the wall beside the monitor. They must have dented the drywall—two grappling shifters. But she didn’t care. She angled her head and pulled up against him, molding her body against his, forcing him to support her weight.

He didn’t try to push her away. He tried to just push her, forcing her to step backwards in a physical sign of submission.

Deirdre dug her heels in. She bit his bottom lip and he bit back.

Everton Stark tasted like blood and violence.

Stark tore her shirt open. It popped along the seams, and cool air rushed over her, bringing goosebumps to her skin. The cold brought some semblance of sanity back to her.

She ripped away from Stark, scrubbing the back of her hand over her mouth, putting a few feet between them.

They stood on opposite sides of the room, staring at each other. She struggled to catch her breath.

She had kissed him. Or he had kissed her. This madman who had tried to make her murder innocents the first time they met, and had succeeded in driving her to murder on multiple occasions since.

The fire in her blood was from him.

Deirdre felt sick and insane and yet still so excited, like she was on the brink of something exhilarating. She was perched on the edge of a rooftop with her arms spread wide, prepared to fall into empty air.

But she was falling somewhere a lot more dangerous than a street a couple dozen stories down.

“What are we going to do with them?” Deirdre asked, pointing to the monitors.

He wiped his thumb along his bottom lip, smearing her blood. “I hadn’t anticipated having them in custody. I could kill them while January Lazar films it.”

Deirdre probably shouldn’t have been surprised by that answer. “We could do that, or we could try something insane and be civilized.”

“This isn’t a debate,” Stark said.

“No, it’s not, because Marion won’t let us do it. The girl with the crazy hair who looks like she stuck her finger in a light socket? She’s a mage, Stark. Half-angel.”

He dismissed Deirdre’s concern with a wave of his hand, as though brushing the words out of the air. “Everything can be killed.”

“Sure, but can you kill her before she kills you?” Now that Deirdre’s heart rate was slowing to normal, she was feeling a little more rational. Rational and shaky. “Marion’s got ethereal magic. She’s binding all of the Alpha candidates to an oath that will force them to obey whoever wins the election. That’s why we were in the Summer Court. We were trying to get the king to swear to the oath. We need the seelie and the unseelie to participate.”

“Rhiannon would never do that,” he said.

“Rhiannon’s not the unseelie queen.” She licked her bottom lip and tasted blood. She had no idea whose it was. “The Winter Court is in civil war. We’re going to have to save the true queen from Rhiannon if we want the Summer Court to play ball—if it isn’t already too late. They have the Ethereal Blade. For all I know, she’s already dead.”

“Why should I care about that?” Stark asked.

“Because you’re going to take the magical oath Rylie created for the election, which ensures that all losing Alphas have to obey the winner.” She balled her fists in his shirt and tugged him a step closer to her. “Because you’re going to win the election and you want the sidhe to be forced to do your bidding, especially if Rhiannon has somehow taken over for the Winter Court.”

Finally, finally, Deirdre could see that Stark was coming around to her way of thinking.

A way of thinking that didn’t involve murdering everyone who opposed them.

“I bet you anything that’s why Marion let us take them,” Deirdre said. “Because she wanted us all here together, right now. So that you can take the oath. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to capture them. I promise you that.”

“I can’t take the oath. I’ve built a different kind of platform,” Stark said, one hand sliding around her waist. “We would lose a lot of public support if we agreed to Rylie Gresham’s terms.”

“They’ll follow us, whatever we decide to do,” Deirdre said.

He cupped the back of her head, tipping her face back. “Us?”

“Alpha and Beta. You can’t get rid of me now. I’m going to be with you the whole time you’re on your way up, making sure that things change the right way.”

“Nagging me, you mean.”

“Only as much nagging as you need.”

“There are two things you haven’t considered here, Tombs,” Stark said. “The first is that if I lose the election, this oath you’re suggesting would mean I would also have to obey the winner. I don’t obey well.”

“And what’s the second thing?” Deirdre asked.

“You said that we would be Alpha and Beta together,” Stark said. “An Alpha’s mate is also an Alpha, not a Beta.”

Deirdre took a step back, shocked.

Mate.

Her mouth was dry. She licked her lips. “You don’t own me.”

“But I do, Tombs. You’re my Beta. You will be an Alpha someday. I’ve marked my territory, and you’re solidly at the center—whatever happens now.”

“What about the part where I only joined your pack because Rylie told me to do it? I’m a traitor. I was never yours in the first place.”

“You were mine from the start,” Stark said. “I was the first to see the truth of what you are, and you’re mine.”

“Finders keepers?” she asked in a taunting tone. “I don’t think that’s how it works, and if you—”

He silenced her by kissing her again.

“Alpha,” he said, the word hot on her lips.

It made her skin crawl and her hair curl.

The idea of mating with him—being trapped with Stark and his sadistic machinations for the rest of her life—was disgusting. Frightening.

And exhilarating.

Chadwick Hawfinch’s high-rise had been transformed in the short days since Deirdre had left it. Once Deirdre fixed her shirt and headed downstairs with Stark, she found that it had been fortified, boarded up, and filled with shifters of all breeds.

They were waiting to greet Stark in the basement. Deirdre sized up everyone quickly, standing behind his shoulder as a good Beta should. The men in the corner were obviously werewolves, while those nearest gave themselves away as some kind of big cat shifters by their sinuous movements. Most of the others she couldn’t identify—but they weren’t all shifters. There were other gaeans, too.

A deadly mix to be hiding in Stark’s basement, especially since Rylie and Secretary Friederling were in one of the apartments upstairs.

It was an explosion waiting to happen.

“Hey, Omega,” someone said.

Deirdre’s hackles lifted as she turned toward the speaker, prepared to fight. But the man who approached had an easy smile. Not insulting, but teasing.

“Geoff,” Deirdre said, startled. He was one of the asylum shifters. She hadn’t seen him since the unseelie attacked.

“Looks like Tombs isn’t easily entombed, if you catch my meaning,” he said with a broad grin. “I’d have expected someone to kill you by now.” He hugged Deirdre, which wasn’t an unwelcome gesture. It was actually sort of nice to see a familiar face.

“I’m tougher than I look.”

“That says a lot, since you look pretty tough,” he said, squeezing a little too tight. She wasn’t the only one relieved to run into a survivor.

Over Geoff’s shoulder, she saw Stark glowering. His scowl reminded her of the way that he had ripped Gage’s tooth from her ear and crushed it in his fist.

Stark wasn’t a man who liked to share his Beta.

Geoff stepped back, leaving Stark and Deirdre to greet more unfamiliar people.

“You delivered,” Stark said grimly, shaking hands with a man Deirdre didn’t recognize.

“I said I would.” He flashed elongated canines when he spoke. He was a vampire, lean and handsome and pale-fleshed. “Who’s this lovely lady?”

She thrust her hand toward the vampire. “Deirdre Tombs. Beta.”

They shook. His hand was room temperature.

“Lucifer. Vampire lord. From what I hear, you’re dead.”

“That makes two of us,” Deirdre said.

His laugh was surprisingly pleasant. Lucifer’s thumb caressed her wrist, as though feeling for a pulse point. “Most of your kind are afraid of my kind.”

“Most of my kind haven’t had pajama parties with your kind.” Her roommate in Montreal had been an asambosan, which was one of the vampire breeds. Jolene had been about as threatening to Deirdre as a French bulldog puppy.

“Deirdre Tombs is a phoenix shifter,” Stark said, startling her. She had expected to keep her identity secret. But he spoke loudly enough to get the attention of everyone in the room.

All those in the basement were now focused on them—on Deirdre.

“A phoenix?” Lucifer asked.

That got him to drop her hand pretty fast.

Deirdre couldn’t help it. She smiled.

For once, she was seen as a threat, and it was a valid fear. They weren’t afraid of her because she was the unknown. They were afraid of her because she could set their asses on fire if they ticked her off.

“That’s right,” Deirdre said. “I’m a phoenix.”

“That explains how you’re alive,” Lucifer said. “It doesn’t explain why you’re wasting your time with Everton. Something like you should be a queen.”

“Or an Alpha,” Stark said.

She resisted the urge to crawl into a hole and hide forever. “Stark and I have shared goals.” And a few other shared feelings that were slightly less political.

“Let me introduce you to our other allies,” Stark said, leading Deirdre away from Lucifer to meet the werewolves. “This is Gregorio of the Whitewater Pack.”

He was a tall, heavyset man with intelligent eyes. His grip was crushing when he shook her hand. Deirdre crushed right on back, squeezing with all her strength. She was rewarded by Gregorio’s widening eyes.

There was another small pack nearby, standing a few feet apart from Gregorio’s people. “Yosef of the Silver Brook Pack,” Stark said, and Deirdre shook hands with yet another intimidating shifter.

He didn’t try to crush her hand.

“I’ve never seen a phoenix before,” he said.

“You never will again,” Stark said. “Deirdre Tombs is one of a kind.” He was still speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear, making sure they all knew that she was special and powerful.

Powerful, but secondary to Stark.

In the following five minutes, Deirdre met a dozen terrifying shifters who looked to Stark as their leader, rather than Rylie Gresham. They were scarred and broken and vicious, and they were willing to follow the one man who was even more vicious than they were. Because if Stark took over, he’d return the control to them.

As Deirdre surveyed the leaders of the packs, she thought that they kind of had a point.

These people deserved power. Gregorio had a pack of two besides himself; Yosef had three others. Gianna from Virginia was a panther who had brought along a cousin of hers.

It looked right, these ordinary shifters standing with families that they had brought together. In another world, in another time, all of them would have been regarded as Alphas. They would never be able to control many other shifters the way that Rylie did, but they were still leaders.

But not in Rylie Gresham’s government. Not as far as the Office of Preternatural Affairs cared.

“It’s good to see you all here,” Stark said once they’d greeted all of the packs. “I’ve tried to contact you all recently. The responding silence concerned me. I almost believed that many of you had been killed. Imagine my surprise when I found out that you were instead waiting for me to be killed.”

“Can you blame us?” Yosef asked. “You’ve got the gods-damned unseelie out for your head. And the bounty is staggering.”

“A million dollars and a gift from the unseelie queen,” said Yosef’s Beta, a short woman with long brown hair named Amira.

“Which gaean faction is the most powerful?” Stark asked.

The leaders exchanged looks, but nobody spoke.

“Shifters,” Deirdre said.

“Sure, the Gresham shifters are the strongest faction,” Yosef said. “If you want to join up with them.”

“All shifters,” Stark said. “Rylie Gresham only gained political dominance because shifters are powerful. But we’re powerful without her. The sidhe are weaker than us. Why would anyone want gifts from the supposed queen of the unseelie?”

Yosef gave a high-pitched laugh that sounded like a yip. “They’re less numerous, but not weaker.”

He was too mouthy, and testing the boundaries of Stark’s dominance. It annoyed Deirdre enough to take action without needing to be told. She seized the werewolf by the collar. “Is that what you think?”

Her fist flamed.

He yelped and leaped out of her grasp. Her fire blew more powerfully than she’d intended—Yosef’s whole jacket caught. He flung it to the floor and stomped on it.

Deirdre kept her face calm, pretending she’d intended to set him on fire.

Her stomach churned with unease.

Stark didn’t smile, but she could see the approval in his eyes. The room was so quiet. “Shifters are the most powerful of the gaean factions. The sidhe are nothing against us. If you thought that the unseelie queen could kill me—and if you think a favor from her is better than having my approval—then you should tell me now.”

Threat lingered in the silence after his sentence.

Yosef didn’t rise to take the bait. He sealed his mouth and stood back, rubbing his neck where Deirdre had scorched him.

When nobody spoke, Stark went on.

“Some of you are sheltering survivors from the asylum. I owe you for that. You’re forgiven for turning away when I tried to contact you. The rest…” Stark’s narrowed eyes skimmed over the crowd. “Gregorio, you didn’t take any of the asylum shifters.”

“I had to think of my people first,” he said.

Stark’s gun was aimed in a heartbeat.

He squeezed the trigger.

The sour stink of silver whipped through the air. The sound of his gun was so loud in the enclosed space that Deirdre couldn’t help but flinch.

Gregorio tried to run, to his credit. His reflexes were amazing.

But not amazing enough.

He dropped with a hole in his chest the size of Deirdre’s fist.

Stark aimed at Gregorio’s Beta. “Handel?”

“Everyone here is my people,” Handel said. There was only the slightest quaver in his voice. “I think of everyone first.”

“Congratulations,” Stark said. “You’re now in charge of the Whitewater Pack.” He set his gun on the table in front of him. “By now, you’ve all heard of the election that Rylie Gresham is conducting.”

“What’s the word on that?” Yosef asked, surprisingly calm. “We’ve seen the news about the election. Everyone’s talking about it. Except you—you’ve been real quiet about the whole thing.”

Stark surveyed his allies coolly. “What do you think of the situation?” He pointed to Gianna. “Tell me your thoughts.”

Gianna looked understandably nervous, considering that she was being addressed by a man who had just shot an ally to make a point.

“It seems like a diversion to me. In my opinion.” Her words were stilted. She kept her eyes fixed to Stark’s feet as she spoke, as though afraid to show even the slightest hint of defiance. Everything in her posture screamed submission. “The government is up to something. I wouldn’t be surprised if the OPA is just trying to get us to collect in public places so we can be killed more easily.”

“That’s stupid,” Deirdre started to say, but a look from Stark stopped her.

She shut her mouth.

“We are beasts of the forest and mountain and desert,” Stark said. “We aren’t ruled by votes or electoral colleges or politicians. We’re ruled by instincts and our individual packs. That’s the way it’s meant to be. We won’t settle for less.”

The shifters in the back of the room stirred, making sounds of assent.

Deirdre clenched her jaw, forcing herself to remain silent.

“By participating in this system they’ve set up, I’d be giving complicit approval to a perverse bureaucracy.” He slammed his fists on the table. “We won’t settle for that!”

The sounds of assent were becoming cheers.

Stark was amazing to watch. He was pure, unbridled confidence, raw and magnetizing.

He lowered his voice, forcing the others to quiet down to hear him.

“If Rylie Gresham puts a puppet in her place as Alpha, I’ll kill that Alpha, too.”

The pack erupted into cheers.

Fists thrust into the air. People howled.

This was what rebellion looked like, roaring and angry and thirsty for blood. And only Deirdre remained silent.

XIII

Deirdre’s quiet dissent didn’t go unnoticed. She should have known it wouldn’t.

Stark made her leave the basement by telling her that he wanted help opening the lethe storage closet. But he jumped her the instant she stepped into the hallway, out of sight from the larger group.

He slammed her into the wall. His elbow dug into her throat. His knee pressed into her thigh.

At this point, she wasn’t surprised. Deirdre wasn’t even sure she was afraid.

“Whose side are you on, Tombs?” he asked.

Tombs. He’d gone into the Middle Worlds to save her, kissed her senseless, and kept her as Beta despite her betrayal. Yet still she was only Tombs to him.

“I’m on my side,” she said. “I’ve always been on my side.”

The door opened. Lucifer stepped into the hallway.

Stark released Deirdre.

“I thought you might like help opening the storage closet,” the vampire said. He smoothed his hands over his hair as he strolled toward them, slicking his dark locks back.

“You don’t trust me to give you a fair share?” Stark asked.

“I would never dream of mistrusting you, Everton,” Lucifer said.

“How could you? I mean, he’s such a friendly guy,” Deirdre said, rubbing her sore throat.

Stark shot a look at her. “Don’t push it, Tombs.”

“Don’t push me,” she said. “And don’t forget which one of us can incinerate people with a touch, huh? Let’s go find this storage closet.”

She strode up the hallway, leaving the men behind her.

Deirdre’s hearing seemed to be improving now that she’d shapeshifted once. At any other time, she didn’t think she would have heard Lucifer whispering to Stark. “Are you sure you can handle this bird you’ve hatched?”

“Not at all,” Stark said. He sounded kind of pleased.

The promise in his voice made chills ripple down her spine.

Chadwick’s storage closet wasn’t a closet so much as a vault, reinforced with magic and steel in much the same way that the cell upstairs was. Deirdre hung back, letting Stark inspect the runes that protected the drugs within.

Stark took a few minutes to read the runes that bordered the door, smashed his fist through two of them, and then forced the lock open easily.

“I’ll look for other traps,” Lucifer said.

The vampire vanished inside.

“How do you always know how to do that?” Deirdre asked, hanging beside Stark. “You did the same thing at the detention center when we freed Vidya, and you knew how to use Brother Marshall’s staff thing, and…how?”

“Rhiannon was a witch before Genesis,” Stark said. “She taught me a lot.”

“You can’t cast magic, can you? How much could she really teach you?”

“I know enough to deconstruct it. You don’t need to know the full language of runes to figure spells out. Witches are showy. They want to demonstrate their skill. They’ll always put the most complicated elements of the spell front and center, and complication signifies importance. It gets easy the more often you break their spells down.”

Lucifer poked his head out the door. “You guys should see this.”

“Is it a trap?” Deirdre asked.

“That would depend upon how strong your willpower is.”

She stepped inside. The storage closet was much deeper than Deirdre would have guessed from the outside—a long, lightless hall of shelves that glowed a dim shade of blue.

She’d never seen so much lethe in her life. She’d never seen even a thousandth of that much lethe before.

There had to be millions of cubes weighing down those shelves, nestled in foam egg crates. It must have been enough lethe to drug every shifter in the country.

Deirdre hadn’t realized that she was aching for a hit until she saw all those dimly glowing cubes. She hadn’t taken anything in far too long. Her whole body longed for that lethe, for the buzz of having it injected into her veins, for the euphoria that would follow.

It was a trap all right.

Stark elbowed past her to head into the rear of the room. She probably should have helped him carry the drugs out, but all she could do was stare, slack-jawed. “Where did all of this come from?”

Lucifer tossed a cube in the air and caught it. “Genesis left some weird things behind, like hospitals filled with rare prescription drugs, libraries with too many books, and military depots with more guns than should have been produced. Little centralized pockets of supplies, sort of. As though someone had prepared stockpiles.”

“I know.” Deirdre had been stuck in one of those well-stocked hospitals, like many new gaean children had been.

“There were also stockpiles of lethe in some areas. Why?” He spread his hands wide in a questioning gesture. “Nobody knows.”

“I’m sure it was to make certain a new generation of children could get as high as the ones before Genesis did,” she said. “Blessed be the dead gods, for they were so damn thoughtful.”

“You’re funny. I like you,” Lucifer said. “Let’s be friends.”

“Let’s not. You’re a friend of Stark’s.”

He nudged her playfully. His hands were so cold. “That appears to be something else we have in common, doesn’t it?”

Stark returned with a large crate of lethe cradled in his arms. He shoved it at Lucifer. “Take it and leave.”

“This isn’t half,” Lucifer said.

“You’re not getting half. I said I’d give you a quarter.”

“This isn’t a quarter, either.”

“Do you think you’re going to carry that much lethe out of here tonight? Right now?”

“Personally? No. But I do have some of my murder here, if you’ll drop the wards and allow them inside.”

“Is that what they’re called?” Deirdre asked. “A group of vampires is a murder, like crows? I’ve never heard that before.”

“I’m hoping it will catch on.” Lucifer turned to Stark. “We’ve got practices surrounding this, though. Breaking bread and whatnot. My people won’t want to take this and run, and I don’t think yours will, either. We’re allies now. Friends! We need to celebrate in the manner our culture has deemed appropriate.”

“Fine.” Stark dismissed the vampire with a wave of his hand. “Take however much you think they can take into the lobby. An entire pallet, if you want. And this.” He tossed a large glass bulb to Deirdre.

Her hands shot out on instinct and closed around the glass tubing.

It looked like a weird bong.

“Are we going to do some hookah?” she asked, turning it around to look at the light through the blue glass.

“It’s for lethe,” Lucifer said. “For doing it socially.”

Deirdre had never taken lethe with anyone but Stark. She’d assumed that everyone just did it the way they did—with needles or intake bracelets.

Once she knew what it was for, she figured out where the lethe would go, and where the heating element belonged. It wasn’t exactly a complicated mechanism. Drugs were drugs, and there were only so many ways to ingest.

“Is this the time?” Deirdre hissed to Stark as he hefted a box under one arm. “You never allowed drugs at the asylum.”

“We didn’t have vampires at the asylum,” he said. “They have a different culture surrounding the spoils of war.”

“Their breed can’t have a culture. They didn’t exist ten years ago.”

“You’d be amazed,” Stark said.

“No, I wouldn’t. Because vampires don’t have any kind of social structure, unlike the sidhe and the shifters. It hasn’t happened, and I’d know if it had, because I used to live with a vampire.”

“We will do this,” Stark said. “And you will participate, and you will pretend to enjoy yourself, because this is the kind of thing we need to do to keep the vampires on our side. It won’t be enough to be Alpha of the shifters alone. We’ll need all the gaeans on our side when I take control.”

“The election and the oath would take care of that,” Deirdre said.

He just handed her another glass bulb and headed to the lobby, where more vampires were entering to mingle with the shifters. Between the boarded windows and gloomy lighting, the high-rise was rapidly starting to resemble the asylum—not exactly Deirdre’s idea of a cozy place to live.

Lucifer snagged one of the pipes out of her hand and took it to a coffee table between a pair of leather couches.

Deirdre hung back as they began breaking open cubes of lethe.

She was hungering for a dose. Or six.

And she wasn’t the only one.

She’d never seen so many vampires in one place before. Deirdre had always perceived them as solitary creatures. Jolene hadn’t hung out with other vampires.

But Lucifer had almost ten vampires with him. Those were just the ones in the building, too.

They were organizing.

“You won’t make me light this alone, will you?” Lucifer asked Deirdre, shooting a smile at her.

She glanced at Stark. He gestured to the couch. “Celebrate the alliance.” That was an order, and not a happy one. He seemed about as happy to be there as she was.

Deirdre sat across from Lucifer. Geoff joined them. So did Ember, one of the shifters they’d liberated from the safe house. It didn’t escape her attention that the men sat beside her, not the vampire. It was a quiet show of solidarity.

“Cheers,” Ember said.

He took the lighter from Lucifer, flicked it to life, held the flame under the bulb of the pipe.

It heated. Smoke filled the air.

Deirdre inhaled as Stark left the room.

It was hard to relax into a social setting when so many people had fangs and bloodless flesh. Someone found the receiver for Chadwick Hawfinch’s audio system and played music, while Gianna started dancing in the corner, but it still didn’t feel like a party to Deirdre.

She was too aware of the people waiting for her upstairs. Rylie and Marion and the secretary of the Office of gods-damned Preternatural Affairs.

They were celebrating their alliance while holding on to some of the most powerful politicians in the preternatural world.

The other shifters seemed immune to Deirdre’s tense mood. They joined Gianna in dancing. They talked with the vampires, relaxing into their company, increasingly friendly as more lethe was passed throughout the room.

But the vampires didn’t exactly seem happy, either. They were more self-contained than the shifters. Wary.

The odor of burning lethe was acidic.

Deirdre was transported back to the Summer Court and their party drenched in heady seelie magic, as warm as pomegranates rotting in sunlight and dry grass swaying in the breeze and the sweat-kissed skin of young men.

The seelie’s perverse hedonism had still been less perverse than what the vampires and shifters did. They screwed each other in the shadows of the lobby, but there was no joy to it. The vampires weren’t inhaling the lethe’s gases because it felt good, and their eyes didn’t glaze from orgiastic bliss. When they took another hit, it was done with fear, as though struggling to push away the horrors of reality rather than embracing the sweet rapture of life.

The vampires were starving. Low on resources. In need of blood.

Lucifer had brought some of the horse blood up to get dispensed by the Behexed, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

Deirdre couldn’t hang out in the haze of smoke. She couldn’t watch people destroying themselves in pursuit of escapism, and she couldn’t escape from the knowledge of the people they had left upstairs.

The gases were getting to her. The walls were distorting as they always did. Faint colors rimmed her vision.

She needed to leave.

“Have you seen Stark?” she asked Ember, who cradled a pipe between his forefinger and thumb.

Smoke plumed from his nostrils when he exhaled. “He went to the basement, last I saw.” Ember gave a small chuckle, eyes sliding shut. “I get it now. I get everything.”

“What are you talking about?” Geoff had slumped against the other werewolf’s shoulder.

“The lethe. It feels so much better with it than without it.” He offered the pipe to Deirdre. It was huge in her vision, swollen, thrashing like a viper just barely contained in his grip.

She shook her head, stood, backed away.

Lucifer watched her, crimson eyes tracking her motion across the lobby. Gianna was still dancing. Her arms swayed, trees in the wind, hips rolling and cheeks flushed.

The elevator doors slid shut on Deirdre, blocking out the music. The smoke was trapped inside with her.

She dropped to the basement.

At first, Deirdre thought the sound of pounding was in her head—just the amplified sound of her beating heart and the rush of blood through her veins. But when the hallway slipped past her and she reached the stables in the basement, she saw that someone had opened all the stalls to let the horses out.

The pounding was hooves.

A ramp at the end of the stalls led to a loading bay door on the ground level. A truck had been backed up to that door.

Two men helped the sickly horses into the truck bed. One was a stranger in a polo shirt and ball cap, guiding the horses by the bridle. The other was Everton Stark, who supervised from a distance. His mere presence was enough to herd the horses toward the trailer.

Deirdre had come downstairs intending to confront him, but the sight of Stark herding the horses was confusing enough that all words vanished from her mind.

It only took a few moments to get the rest of the horses into the trailer. They must have been working the entire time that Deirdre had been upstairs with the vampires. Stark talked quietly with the man in the polo shirt for a few minutes as Deirdre watched in stunned silence, trying to decide if the lethe could have given her the most vivid hallucination of her life.

The stranger closed the trailer. Money exchanged hands.

He drove away.

Stark pulled the loading bay door shut, blocking out the scent of the damp night air. The stench of blood and horse droppings lingered.

When he was done, he turned to see Deirdre standing by the elevator.

“You’re supposed to be upstairs,” he said.

“Geoff and Ember are entertaining Lucifer.” She glanced into the nearest stall. All that remained was a smear on the floor that could have been any bodily fluid. “What did you—where did they go?”

Stark folded his arms, frowning at her. “I sold them.”

“You gave him money,” Deirdre said. “I saw you give him money.” She rubbed her temples. “Am I hallucinating?”

“Yes, you probably are.”

“So, what, you’ve sent them to a glue factory? Ignominious end for horses that were tortured their entire lives?”

“How much lethe have you taken, Tombs?” Stark asked.

“Not nearly enough to be okay with this,” Deirdre said. “We need to talk, Stark. Not about the horses. You just went and told all our allies that we’re not participating in the election.”

“We aren’t,” he said.

“But we need to. I thought you understood how this was necessary to ultimately defeat Rhiannon.”

“That’s what you seem to think, yes,” Stark said. “I have plans. I don’t need your help, and I don’t need Rylie Gresham’s election.”

“If you don’t agree to this, Friederling is going to have me arrested.”

“How will he arrest you if he’s trapped in a cell upstairs?”

“There’s an outstanding warrant with my name on it. It doesn’t have to be Friederling doing the arresting. Next time I cross paths with any OPA agent, they’ll toss me in jail.”

“That’s the life we’re living together, Tombs,” Stark said. “You don’t get to be the double agent anymore. You can’t stand by my side and slip favors to Rylie Gresham under the table. If you’re really loyal to me, you’re just going to have to deal with being a fugitive from justice. And yes—that will be for the rest of your life. However many lives that may be.”

“I don’t know why I’m surprised you won’t act like a decent human being,” Deirdre said. “You sold the blood factory horses for dog food or whatever. All you care about is your stupid vendetta against your wife.”

The corner of his mouth lifted in something that might have been a smile. “I want you to return to Lucifer. Don’t leave his side. We might be allied with the vampires, but I don’t trust them.” He took a pamphlet from his pocket and handed it to her.

“What is this?” she asked, trying to focus her eyes on the pamphlet.

“Go upstairs and entertain Lucifer,” Stark said.

He went downstairs to the sub-basement, leaving her alone with the empty stalls.

It was a pamphlet for a rescue that handled animals abused by factory farms. There were happy sheep with scarred faces on the front and pictures of tiny pig cages on the inside.

“What in the world?” Deirdre muttered.

She flipped the pamphlet over. There was a picture of the man with the polo shirt and baseball cap on the back.

Stark must have given the horses to the rescue along with…what, a donation?

It didn’t make her feel better to realize how unpredictable he could be. It made her feel like the remaining time in Rylie and Secretary Friederling’s lives could be counted by hours rather than years—however long it took for Stark’s mercurial mercies to swing toward the murderous again.

The high from the lethe must have been stronger than Deirdre realized, because she soon found herself unlocking the cell door without any memory of how she had gotten upstairs.

Those four powerful captives were waiting for her. They stood against the back wall of the room, speaking in low voices. But when Deirdre entered, all eyes fell on her.

Rylie broke away from the others. She was moving well for a woman whose neck had been broken just hours earlier. There was nothing quite like Alpha healing. “I take it from your expression that you don’t have good news.”

“Stark isn’t going to participate in the election, and he’s probably going to kill you all,” Deirdre said.

Rylie nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“I assume Marion let you guys get abducted because she has a plan. I need to hear it now. Before you say you don’t trust me, just remember I’m the closest thing to a friend you have in this situation. You’re not going to talk Stark into helping you.”

“We do actually have a plan.” Rylie hesitated, as though debating internally, then plowed forward. “Basically, we need to figure out what’s happened to the unseelie queen and rescue her.”

Deirdre stared. “That’s your plan?”

“Please try to withhold your awe,” Friederling said. He was playing with his cell phone. Deirdre wondered what he could have been doing—Stark’s many wards should have prevented him from communicating with the outside world. “We didn’t become such important people without incredible powers of strategy, after all.”

“That’s not a plan.”

“I also still plan to arrest you,” Friederling said. “Does that meet your standards of having a plan?”

Rylie spoke loudly, as if trying to drown him out. “If we don’t find the true queen of the unseelie, Donne won’t take the oath. We won’t have an election. Worse, we’ll have all-out war between the sidhe factions. It will spill onto Earth. A lot of people will die.”

“Rhiannon and Melchior have the Ethereal Blade,” Deirdre said. “This true queen is probably already dead.”

“Then there will be lots of blood and screaming and people running and general deadly mayhem and I won’t get to have a weekend to myself for months,” Secretary Friederling said. “There’s already talk of riots among the preternatural population. Do you want riots? I don’t want riots. The overtime cost alone would be absurd.”

“That’s what you care about? Overtime and weekends?”

“I really enjoy my weekends,” Friederling said.

Deirdre was tempted to see how much he’d enjoy his weekends with a bullet in his stomach.

Stark really was rubbing off on her.

“We will save the unseelie queen and get the Ethereal Blade back. That’s our plan,” Rylie said in a measured tone.

How could she sound so calm? They were being held captive by an insane terrorist. Stark was going to kill them, and at this rate, Deirdre wasn’t going to help them escape. She’d thought she might let them go—at least Marion, who was just a kid—but her urge to be altruistic was rapidly being replaced by the hot snap of rage.

After all Deirdre had done for them, and after everything Rylie had done to her, they were still treating her like a nobody. An Omega.

Deirdre’s eyes stung with angry, unshed tears. “And what are you going to do once you get the Ethereal Blade back? Are you going to use that power to bring the factions in line, or will you just go and kill more gods?”

Rylie laughed. It was a weak, humorless laugh, more from surprise than actual mirth. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t bother denying it,” she said savagely. “I know that you’re the Godslayer and that it’s your fault everyone died, including my father. Everything that’s happened is your fault.”

“I’m not the Godslayer,” Rylie said.

“Then why did you have the Ethereal Blade? Don’t give me that crap about how I don’t deserve to know again. I deserve to know, dammit!” She slammed her fist into the opposite palm.

“Because…” She glanced back at Marion, then returned her gaze to her feet. “She gave it to me. The Godslayer. She gave me the Ethereal Blade for safekeeping. Like I told you before, there isn’t anyone else who could be trusted with it, so I’ve been keeping it for her until she needs it again.”

“I used that line on cops a couple of times,” Deirdre said. “‘It’s not mine. I’m holding it for a friend.’”

Rylie shot a pitying look at her. “The world is so much bigger than you realize.”

“Oh yeah? So that’s it. No apologies. Just cold denial.” Deirdre didn’t have to stand there and listen to that. Not anymore. She backed toward the door. “Fine. Forget the election. Stark’s going to kill you on camera, and I’m going to enjoy watching it.” She wasn’t sure that she actually meant that, but it felt good to say.

“Stark’s inconsequential at this point,” Friederling said.

“I wouldn’t call the guy holding you captive inconsequential.”

“Actually, we’ve already escaped,” Brother Marshall said. “We only stuck around to see if you wanted to come with us, but I’m guessing by your outburst that you don’t.”

“What?”

“We’ve been gone for over an hour. I left an exit if you want it.” He gestured to the wall. Deirdre didn’t see anything. “Walk through that, and you’ll come where we are.”

“I don’t understand,” Deirdre said.

Marion reached out to touch Deirdre’s arm—and her fingers passed through the skin, as though she was made of nothing but smoke. A chill tingled down Deirdre’s spine.

Deirdre swiped at Rylie, but her hand passed through the Alpha too. She was intangible. A ghost.

They were only projecting images of themselves into the cell.

“Think of who you were trying to hold captive,” Marion said. “A mage, the Secretary of the Office of Preternatural Affairs, a werewolf Alpha, and a monk with mastery of unseelie artifacts. Do you think that there is anything on this Earth that can hold the likes of us?”

Deirdre was feeling faint. “Honestly, I kind of did.”

Friederling barked a laugh before vanishing.

Just like that—gone.

“Walk through the wall, and you’ll follow us,” Brother Marshall said. “I don’t care if you don’t.”

And he disappeared, too.

Deirdre’s heart began to pound. It wasn’t excitement from the lethe, nor was it anger at watching the people she’d thought to be her prisoners slipping from her fingertips.

What was Stark going to think when he checked the security footage and saw everyone disappearing after Deirdre visited them?

“Oh, hell no,” Deirdre whispered.

Marion and Rylie vanished, and the room was empty.

XIV

Deirdre didn’t take the portal that Brother Marshall left for her.

She had only a few short minutes before Stark realized that she hadn’t gone back to Lucifer, and even fewer minutes before he realized that their prisoners were missing. He’d want answers from her once that happened. He wouldn’t be reasonable about it.

How deep did this bond Stark felt between them run? Was it deep enough that he would listen to her explanation, or would he skip right to killing her?

The only thing that Deirdre knew for certain was that Stark would kill her if she ran away.

She returned to the security room across the hallway. With the push of a button, she could view the party in the lobby on the monitors. The vampires were everywhere, lounging on the couches and floor among the shifters.

Stark wasn’t in sight.

Deirdre flipped through the different cameras. The basement was empty without the horses, its blood stains black on the grayscale image. The cameras to the sub-basement had been disconnected, so there was nothing but static on those. And then she moved to the rooftop cameras.

Still no Stark.

He might have already been on his way upstairs to find her.

“Gods,” Deirdre said. What was he going to do when he found her?

She was about to click back to the lobby cameras when she saw movement on the roof of the high-rise. A massive bird soared past the corner of the monitor. Deirdre stared intently at the image, watching for it to return.

A few seconds later, the bird flitted past again.

It was much too large to be a bird. But the image was too blurry to tell if those wings had feathers or razors.

Deirdre raced upstairs.

The wind was cold and miserable. Deirdre hugged her jacket and turned into the breeze to look for the winged creature she had seen on the monitors. There was a storm brewing over the ocean. It was a distant wall of clouds. Most likely artificial, created by witches who would get a thorough spanking from the Office of Preternatural Affairs once caught.

But this particular wind died as quickly as it had risen. It didn’t look like that hard blast had come from the storm.

A screech echoed over the city.

She looked up in time to see a dark shape rushing past the waning moon.

“Niamh,” Deirdre whispered. She imagined in the haze of her lethe high that the name would be carried on the wind and reach the former swanmay’s ears.

Something heavy thudded to the roof beside her.

She leaped back with a cry, reaching for her gun.

But the body that had hit the roof was crumpled, broken, motionless. It wasn’t about to try to attack her.

Deirdre looked up at the moon again. The harpy was still flying high overhead, as though taunting Deirdre with her presence.

She edged toward the body that had landed beside her. It was a tangle of limbs that she didn’t recognize until she drew near enough to see the long charcoal ponytail and the Marines insignia tattooed on her shoulder.

“Vidya!”

Deirdre dropped to her knees beside the valkyrie. She checked for a heartbeat and found a strong pulse.

But Vidya didn’t stir at the contact.

How good was valkyrie healing? Was it at shifter level, or more like the frail vampires who could die if someone poked them with a twig in the wrong spot?

Niamh shrilled again in the night sky.

“All right, you bitch,” Deirdre muttered, extracting the Ruger LCP .380 from her shoulder holster. “You want my attention? You’ve got it.”

The range on the Ruger wasn’t great. It was a tiny peashooter, the kind of handgun that most gun enthusiasts laughed at, so it couldn’t send bullets real far. It also had a hell of a kick. Aiming with the thing was a challenge, and even more so if she didn’t hit her target on the first try.

The silver bullets were each worth thousands, and Deirdre was pissed.

She wasn’t going to miss her target.

“I’ll be back,” she said, smoothing her hand over Vidya’s forehead. The valkyrie was so cold.

Deirdre leaped off the high-rise to reach the nearest building, body moving easily through practiced motions that had only become easier since her second death and rebirth. It was as though her bones had hollowed, making her leaps effortless, her ascent rapid.

One rooftop at a time, she closed the distance to Niamh. The harpy surely could have escaped in the time that it took Deirdre to catch up, but she remained nearby, just out of reach but never out of sight.

Deirdre climbed to the top of a skyscraper and ascended its spire antenna. She kept an arm hooked around it. The friction of her leather jacket kept her hanging.

Extending her other arm to its full length, she tracked Niamh’s shadowy form through the sky, sighting her down the short length of the handgun.

Niamh circled lower, close enough for the beat of her wings to stir Deirdre’s hair.

“Come on,” Deirdre whispered.

At that range, even in the depths of night, Deirdre could see the gloss of her black feathers, and the smooth silvery flesh that transitioned easily into those feathers. Tangled in her red curls were those white feathers that belonged on the graceful body of a swan.

She was a monster. An abomination. Someone who had just tried to kill Vidya.

Niamh had sold her soul, and her best friend, for the ability to fly again.

Deirdre hoped that it was worth it.

Her finger squeezed the trigger, and she knew by the scream that punctuated the blast that her bullet had struck true.

Niamh pitched to the left, her wing damaged.

Deirdre jammed the gun into its holster and dropped off of the spire to land on the roof, boots slamming into the top of the building. The harpy struggled for altitude, flapping wildly.

She was falling. But as she fell, she was still coasting on the air, putting distance between herself and Deirdre—enough distance that she might be able to land beyond the vampires’ territory, where Deirdre wouldn’t be able to find her.

The wind battered Niamh’s fragile body like a kite.

Deirdre could still catch her.

If she had wings.

She’d shifted once while in the Winter Court, so why couldn’t she do it again? Melchior had shown her the way.

She needed anger as fuel.

Deirdre spread her arms wide, letting the fury burn through her.

Anger was easy. She’d never been so angry as she was now, not for so many years. The ability to be truly angry had been beaten out of her by the system that had broken her down. It had forced her to direct all her energy into survival without thinking of what that survival might mean.

Now Niamh had tried to kill Vidya.

Deirdre was furious.

The harpy pitched past the skyscraper, feathers tearing free of her wings as she plummeted.

As soon as Niamh vanished below the edge of the building, Deirdre jumped.

I’m angry. Let me change. I’m so angry.

Deirdre’s skin burned. Her whole body was on fire, churning on the inside, as though her every molecule vibrated with the force of a wildfire. She remembered what it had felt like to fly, carried on the sheer force of Melchior’s power.

It should have been easy to capture that feeling again.

But she wasn’t changing.

“Damn!” Deirdre gasped. The word was yanked from her mouth, breath dragged into the air, lungs emptying and refusing to refill.

In a blink, a dozen floors of the skyscraper shot past her, asphalt approaching rapidly.

Both Deirdre and Niamh were free falling. For a heartbeat, their gazes met in midair. Deirdre’s flames turned her to a comet against the night sky. Niamh’s blood streamed from the bullet wound as a crimson tail.

Deirdre slammed into Niamh’s back.

The black feathers caught fire. Glossy as they were, they were terribly dry, almost dusty—as flammable as tissue paper.

Niamh screamed. Her wings folded.

And Deirdre didn’t change.

They hit the pavement a moment later.

It felt like Deirdre was only unconscious for the time it took her heart to beat.

She awoke to find herself back at Chadwick Hawfinch’s high-rise. Her aching eyes focused on the wall. It was blurred, but she could pick out the shape of runes. She was in the cell where they had been trying to contain Rylie and company.

When she tried to sit up, her body was too weak to respond. Her eyes rolled down to the pinching on her arm. There was a needle buried in her vein. The clear plastic tube glowed brilliant blue.

“Evening, Beta.”

Stark was standing in the corner, arms folded over his chest, disapproval in every line of his body.

Deirdre flicked at the catheter weakly. “The hell is this, Stark?”

Stark slunk along the perimeter of the room. She tried to track his movements but couldn’t lift her head. “What do you think it is?”

She followed the catheter’s tubing up the pole to the bag hanging from its hook. It sagged with the weight of enough lethe to keep a murder of vampires stoned for a week. It was also enough to keep her numb as her body reassembled itself. The healing fever washed through her body, but the pops and snaps of bones healing barely registered.

“I think you’re dosing me with lethe. Which is…weird. Not uncommon, but weird, all things considered.” Her tongue was uncoordinated. The words slurred.

“That’s because I’m preparing to kill you.”

Even with the warm buzz of drugged euphoria, her heart skipped a beat. “You’re what now?”

“It would be difficult to kill you, but not impossible. I’m keeping you weak enough to find a way if I decide that’s necessary.”

She tugged at the catheter again. “How much have you given me?”

“Not much. Not yet.” He delivered a swift kick to Niamh’s feathery side. “The next words out of your mouth had better be about how this harpy released the prisoners.”

“They broke out on their own.”

“Am I supposed to believe that? You freed them and then fled.”

“Because Niamh dropped Vidya’s body on the roof!” This time, when she tried to sit up, she succeeded. Stark looked surprised. “Did you find Vidya? Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Stark said. “Vidya’s almost as difficult to kill as you are.”

She sagged against the IV pole. “When can I see her?”

“At this rate, you may never get to see her.”

Deirdre didn’t have the patience for it anymore. She snapped. “Look, we can run in circles about whether or not I’m loyal to you for days—nay, for months—or we can accept the fact that we aren’t powerful enough to hold on to an Alpha werewolf and two damn wizards.” He opened his mouth, but she kept speaking. “It doesn’t make us weak. Nobody could hold those people. We’re never going to be co-Alphas if you can’t fucking trust me once in a while.”

Stark didn’t move for a moment, and she thought she’d said the wrong thing—bringing up the whole “Alpha mate” suggestion he’d made, like she was trying to leverage their relationship against him, dragging up all the hurt about Rhiannon all over again.

Then he turned off the lethe drip.

“I didn’t run to get away from you,” Deirdre said. “I was chasing Niamh. But could you blame me if I had fled? You must have scraped me off the street with a spatula, and your first reaction was to lock me into a cell and pump me full of lethe.”

“I have a temper.” Stark’s tone was so mild, Deirdre had to laugh.

He kneeled over the harpy and whipped his hand across her face.

Her eyes shocked open at the pain.

It only took Niamh an instant to realize where she was and what had happened. She tried to scramble away from Stark, wings beating helplessly against the floor, talons scrabbling. She was clumsy in her bird form, huge and ungainly.

He pinned her down with a hand on the side of her head. It reminded Deirdre of the way that a bigger dog would hold down a little dog.

“My Beta tells me you’re the one who tried to kill Vidya and dump the body on my roof,” Stark said.

Warmth flushed over Deirdre. His Beta.

Niamh struggled against him in vain. “I didn’t try to kill Vidya. She followed me into the Winter Court, and I’m the only reason Kristian didn’t manage to kill her.”

Stark clenched a fist in her chest feathers and yanked, pulling the harpy skin away from her body, like peeling the plastic off of a new cell phone.

Her scream made Deirdre’s eardrums shiver.

He exposed a plaid skirt, Black Death t-shirt, and fishnet stockings under the feathers. Most shifters couldn’t shift with their clothing intact, but she wasn’t shapeshifting naturally. The skin was enchanted, a gift from the unseelie—a curse—and she was wearing it over everything else like a cloak.

But it looked like Stark was stripping off her actual flesh, the way that her spine arched.

She was in so much pain.

Deirdre only managed two steps away from the wall before staggering. The healing fever was too much for her.

“Stop it,” she said. “Don’t torture her.”

Stark ignored Deirdre’s plea. “Why would you have tried to rescue Vidya when your allegiance clearly rests with my wife? Tell me the truth. Tell me what happened out there tonight.”

Niamh tried to say something, but she was barely coherent. The consonants, the vowels—they all slurred together.

Deirdre tangled her fingers in the shreds of swan skin, lifting them from the floor. Now that the skin wasn’t attached to Niamh, it flowed through Deirdre’s fingers like a liquid.

Stark flipped Niamh over, smashing her face into the floor. The heel of his palm ground against her cheekbone. “Talk clearly,” he said, still so chillingly calm. “I can’t understand you.”

Niamh’s wide, glistening eyes fixed on Deirdre. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Dee. I’m sorry.”

The apology rankled. “You can’t be that sorry, or else you never would have stabbed me in the first place.”

“I had to.” With her cheek pressed into the floor, her lips were almost pursed, the lower eye halfway closed. “I was compelled by Rhiannon.”

“The hell you were,” Deirdre said.

“But I was! You have to believe me. Please.” Niamh must not have had access to all her usual makeup in the Winter Court, because whatever mascara she wore was cheap, clumping to her eyelashes and streaking black on her cheeks as she sobbed.

“You had to know Kristian was from the Winter Court.”

Niamh’s shoulders shook violently. Her body was so frail. “Yeah, but Stark knew that I had unseelie contacts. I asked him about the door in the basement. He gave me permission. You gave me permission, Stark!”

“Your alliance was meant to be with me.” His knuckles were white, betraying his temper despite his frigid tone. “And your deal wasn’t supposed to be made with Rhiannon.”

“I said it was the unseelie queen.”

His calm frayed. “She’s not the queen!”

“She compelled me,” Niamh whispered.

“And the skin?” Stark asked.

Her mouth sealed shut, crystalline tears sliding to the floor. She kept her gaze fixed on Deirdre.

Niamh must have known Rhiannon was a usurper to the true queen, but she hadn’t cared because of what she could give her.

Deirdre would have done anything for the ability to shapeshift. She had joined Stark’s rebellion because she wanted the ability to shift. What would she have done if the Winter Court had gotten to her first? How many terrible things would Deirdre have done if Rhiannon had offered the ability to change in exchange for Niamh’s life?

She wouldn’t have needed to be compelled.

Niamh probably hadn’t either.

“Were you compelled when you attacked me on the dirigible?” Deirdre asked.

“I wasn’t attacking,” Niamh said. “I followed Kristian there to try to keep him from marking you. I couldn’t reach you in time. And then there were the wards—they kept me from communicating with you. But the unseelie know I’m not with them anymore, they want me dead, and I saved Vidya because…” Her throat worked as she swallowed. “I hoped that you’d help me if I helped her.”

Deirdre was still cradling the slippery feathers in her hands. It seemed like such a pathetic thing to have instigated such incredible betrayal.

“I made a mistake,” Niamh went on in a hoarse whisper. “I should never have hurt you. I should have gotten away when Kristian told me what was going to happen at the asylum. I haven’t been able to sleep, or eat, or—gods, I hate myself. But I have information. I can tell you things. For instance, I know that they’ve released the sluagh.”

“I know. We’ve already seen it,” Stark said.

Her eyes grew huge. “Rhiannon is planning to have Melchior kill the true queen so that she can take charge.”

“I know that, too. You don’t have any valuable information. I don’t see why I should give you protection.”

“The unseelie plan to provoke riots,” Niamh said. “They want to get Melchior’s name on the ballot so that he and Rhiannon will be recognized as leaders of the unseelie. Even if they don’t win the Alpha position, they’ll win control of the Winter Court. Sidhe magic is weird. It would give them so much power just to be recognized.”

“I don’t care about sidhe politics,” Stark said.

“Then I can tell you where Melchior’s keeping the queen as he prepares to kill her,” Niamh said.

Stark’s eyes met Deirdre’s over Niamh’s head.

That was something Stark wanted as much as Niamh wanted to be able to shift: Melchior’s location. His life.

“Tell me,” Stark said.

Niamh swallowed hard. “The queen is the most powerful sidhe that’s ever lived. Way more powerful than anyone in the Summer Court. It’s going to take time to kill her. Melchior is there preparing for it now.”

He leaned his weight against her, biceps bulging. “Tell me.”

“Promise you’ll protect me.” Niamh wasn’t looking at Stark. She only had eyes for Deirdre.

Stark’s voice deepened, growing stronger with compulsion. “Tell me where Melchior is keeping the queen.”

Niamh had no choice but to respond, and she knew it. She sobbed, muscles straining as she tried to resist his compulsion.

But she couldn’t.

“Original Sin.”

Stark smashed his hand into her head.

Her skull cracked.

“No!” Deirdre dragged him off of Niamh. She had no idea how she did it. She wasn’t anywhere near as strong as Stark was—or at least, she shouldn’t have been. But she somehow dragged Stark off of the harpy.

He whirled on Deirdre, slamming her into the wall. “What are you doing? This is the woman who killed you!”

“You compelled me to kill when we first met. Was that my fault?”

“There are no innocents in this world, Tombs. She deserves to die.”

“No more than we do,” Deirdre said.

“Yes,” he said. “We deserve to die. But you did, and you came back, and nobody has managed to bury me yet. Survival of the fittest. Niamh isn’t fit and I don’t protect anyone.”

Anyone except Deirdre.

“You’re a goddamn hypocrite,” she hissed.

Darkness flashed over Stark’s eyes. “I’m a man of principle.”

“I thought you were,” Deirdre said. “I thought that we had the same vision for all of America’s gaeans. I don’t know about that.”

He braced his hands against the wall on either side of her head. “You don’t care about sidhe politics any more than I do. You only want to save the queen to make your idiotic election work.”

“Of course this is about the election! The masses want to vote for you. I’ve seen it.” Deirdre put a hand over his heart, which beat slowly and steadily. He was calm. “If we can save the queen, we can have it both ways. Secretary Friederling wants me to make a statement declaring your compliance with the election. I could do that even if you don’t take the oath.”

Stark’s heart beat a little faster.

Niamh stirred on the floor behind him. Her curls spilled over her shoulder and the white feathers caught the light. “I know so much about them. Kristian, Rhiannon, Melchior… I’ve dealt with them all. If we work together, we can kill them, protect Deirdre, and save the election.”

Deirdre’s stomach twisted at being included in the to-do list.

It didn’t look like Stark appreciated that, either.

By recognizing that Deirdre was his weakness, Niamh had pushed him too far. She had finally pushed a button that never should have been pushed.

Stark crushed Deirdre’s shoulders in his hands. “I want you to listen to me, Tombs, and when you listen, I want you to know how serious I am.” His voice lowered with compulsion. “The next time you defy a direct order from me, you will stop breathing. Your heart will not beat. You will die.”

Deirdre gaped at him.

She wouldn’t actually die by his command, but Stark thought she would. He still believed that she was susceptible to his compulsion.

And he’d just told her to obey him or die.

She was too stunned to speak.

“This is the last time we discuss this,” Stark said. “You will stop asking me to participate in the election. And you will not make any kind of public statement on my behalf. If you do either of these things, you will die. Understand?”

“Screw you, Everton Stark.” Deirdre couldn’t manage to put enough vitriol into those words.

Stark turned from her, convinced that the shackles of compulsion held his Beta tightly. He dragged Niamh to her feet. “And now you are going to tell me everything you know about the unseelie sidhe.”

So she did.

XV

Niamh spoke under compulsion while surrounded by vampires and shifters subordinate to Stark. They didn’t have to tie her down. Stark had told her she couldn’t move, so she couldn’t. She didn’t even move when Lucifer inserted a needle into her jugular. Blood began flowing into a wine glass, sluggish and purple-black in the dim light emanating from lethe pipes.

“They’ve been keeping her at Original Sin,” she said again. It must have been the fourth or fifth time she’d said that. Niamh kept looping back to it, as though her brain was a hard drive that kept skipping back to the broken sectors and crashing. Stark’s compulsion had been too strong for the fragile harpy.

Deirdre watched from the corner, arms folded tightly over her chest. She didn’t intervene. She just watched.

Niamh had been one of dozens of best friends that Deirdre had made during her time in the system. She wasn’t special, really. Deirdre hadn’t had family, hadn’t had stability, hadn’t discriminated between friends. She’d hung out with anyone who would take her. Anyone who wouldn’t call her an Omega.

Niamh didn’t really matter. She wasn’t all that special.

But she’d helped hairspray the swimsuit to Deirdre’s butt cheeks so she wouldn’t flash anything when walking across a stage built out of folding tables. She’d taught Deirdre how to do makeup. Figured out the right foundation for her cocoa skin tone.

And then, many years later, she had driven a knife into Deirdre’s back—maybe because Rhiannon had forced her to, or maybe because she just wanted that harpy skin.

Niamh didn’t really matter.

Her blood dripped into the wine glass.

“Rhiannon gave the harpy skin to me.” Niamh’s hair was greasy and tangled. Her cheeks grew pallid from blood loss. “She made it for me personally. It’s unseelie magic, and it would only work for me if I did what she wanted.” Mascara streaked her cheeks. “She said it won’t work if I betray her.”

“Melchior,” Stark said. “Tell me more about Melchior.”

“They think that dragonfire might be able to kill the queen. They’re going to magically augment Melchior and he’ll try to burn her. I don’t know how. All I know is…” She swallowed hard. A tear slid down her cheek. “They’ve been keeping her at Original Sin.”

Lucifer twisted the catheter, shutting it so that the blood would temporarily stop flowing. He held the wine glass under his nose to inhale the scent of Niamh’s fluids.

His eyes were locked on Deirdre’s as he drank slowly, throat working, hair fallen over his forehead.

Deirdre left the room.

It was raining outside. The smell of damp asphalt and hushed whisper of tires skimming through puddles made Deirdre shiver, even though it wasn’t all that cold.

Geoff followed her out, lighting a joint. “Doesn’t feel right,” he said, pausing to inhale. “Niamh was practically Stark’s right hand before he made you Beta. He used to have her keep watch over the asylum.”

“She betrayed us,” Deirdre said.

“Compulsion,” Geoff said.

He was preaching to the choir, but she couldn’t say that. Stark had told her to keep her opinions to herself. He had compelled her to keep her opinions to herself, at least for the night, so that she wouldn’t make him look bad in front of the vampires.

If Deirdre said that she agreed with Geoff, Stark would expect her to die. And he’d know that he couldn’t compel her if she didn’t.

She wasn’t sure if she was angrier with Niamh or Stark.

Either way, she couldn’t trust anyone. Not her former best friend, her would-be Alpha mate, or the actual Alpha whose office was up for grabs. Nobody.

Gods, but Deirdre missed Gage.

“Look at this.” Ember Bane emerged from the lobby in a cloud of acidic lethe smoke with a tablet clutched in his hands. He lifted it so that both Geoff and Deirdre could see.

He was streaming a news report. Deirdre only glimpsed January Lazar’s familiar face before it cut to a different familiar face—one with a square jaw and the hint of a glittering scale pattern marking the side of his muscled neck.

Melchior’s smile heart-shatteringly perfect. He was a deadly man, rendered so much deadlier by the way that he made Deirdre’s heart race.

“Why aren’t I on the ballot for Alpha? I am the shifter mate to the queen of the unseelie. I have the Alpha power of control over other shifters. But the Office of Preternatural Affairs has refused to allow me to take the oath.” He had the same magnetic charm that Stark did when he was being filmed. It felt like he was speaking directly to Deirdre.

The camera cut away to an image of the Summer Court. The image was blurred and distorted, since the magic in the Middle Worlds was so strong. It must have taken powerful wards to permit a camera to work there at all.

But they had gotten a clear shot of the seelie sidhe ladies with Secretary Friederling. The news had blurred the picture, but it was obvious that the politician was having sex with them.

“Holy crap,” Geoff said. “Nice.”

Ember looked horrified. “Are you kidding? The secretary of the OPA is taking sexual favors from the sidhe!”

Deirdre’s hands lifted to her mouth. “Oh gods.” What was it going to show next? Rylie getting a foot rub? Deirdre hanging out with the Summer Court?

It would make it look like everyone was conspiring against the unseelie.

The election would be ruined.

Yet Deirdre wasn’t shown. The image cut back to Melchior’s wounded visage. “The unseelie should be candidates for the Alpha position, but Rylie Gresham won’t let us participate. The OPA is in the pocket of the seelie. This election for Alpha is a show and nothing more.”

“Is he right?” Ember was speaking to Deirdre directly, giving her that look she knew all too well. The one that people got when their hopes were crushed into a fine powder.

“This is part of his ploy to cause riots,” Deirdre said. “They’re just trying to destabilize the election.”

Ember turned off the tablet. “How do you know? Stark hasn’t taken the oath, he’s not involved in the talks. We don’t know anything! Maybe Melchior is right.”

The heavy silence of night snapped.

Glass shattered blocks away. Something heavy thudded.

Fire glowed around the corner.

“The riots,” Ember said.

Deirdre tried to mentally map where those sounds had originated from. She might have been paranoid, but she thought it might be the elementary school where the Gaean Citizens for Democracy had set up the local polling station.

The lobby opened. Stark stormed out, dragging Niamh behind him. Blood was smeared down the side of her neck and all the way across her shoulder.

He held the remnants of the harpy skin in his other fist.

“She’s told us where to find a ley line juncture that will take us directly into the Winter Court,” Stark said. “We’re leaving, Beta.”

“Melchior just made an announcement. He’s telling everyone the election is fake,” Deirdre said.

“It is fake.” Vampires poured out onto the sidewalk behind him—vampires and Alphas and all their other random allies.

Deirdre couldn’t disobey him. She couldn’t even argue with him while those people were watching. She clenched her hands into fists, squeezing so hard that her fingernails cut into her palms.

Geoff gestured vaguely at the burning city. “But the queen,” he said. “Who’s going to save the unseelie queen?”

Another thump.

This time, glass shattered all along the street, bursting from every window between the bodega and the condemned laundromat five doors down.

An instant later, people came racing around the corner. They were shouting indistinctly. Throwing things. Breaking more windows, jumping on cars, howling their rage into the night.

They were definitely coming from the direction of the polling station now.

“Damn it,” Deirdre swore.

She broke into a run. It was hard to tell how many of the people emerging on the street were vampires and how many were shifters. In the darkness, their preternatural grace all looked the same to her.

There were mortals among them, though. Mundane humans.

Soon to be collateral damage.

“Fraud!” someone shouted behind Deirdre.

A bottle pinwheeled past her head, its wick etching spirals of smoke into the air. The Molotov cocktail smashed through the broken window to her left. The bodega caught instantly. All the paper charms hanging on the inside wall lit up first, even faster than Niamh’s feathers had upon contacting Deirdre’s flame.

The shouting down the street grew.

She twisted to see one of the vampire-occupied tenements emptying out. All those people who lived in public housing, just dumping out onto the streets, racing away and screaming.

They couldn’t have all seen Melchior’s announcement—could they?

Thump.

The top three floors of the tenement erupted. Columnar fists of white-hot flame punched out of the windows, gushing black smoke and sizzling with hints of green.

Magic.

To be specific, sidhe magic.

When the fire hit the surrounding buildings, the walls didn’t catch fire. They warped. Brick and metal bowed, glimmering with gem colors.

“Is this an attack against us?” Ember asked. He was breathing hard, struggling to keep up with Deirdre as she ran toward the tenement.

“I don’t think so,” Deirdre said. It was only coincidence that Stark was currently holed up in the gaean neighborhood.

Sidhe magic was still spreading down the building floor by floor, lighting up the windows. Even under the hum of magic and shattering of glass, Deirdre could hear screaming.

But Stark’s allies were just standing around almost a block away, gaping uselessly at the explosions.

“What are you waiting for?” Deirdre shouted, thrusting a finger toward the building. “Get in there! Get people out!”

They didn’t move.

Their motionlessness filled her with enough anger that she should have spontaneously combusted. She clenched her fists. Tension radiated through her spine.

“Why?” Geoff asked. He’d stopped a few feet behind Ember Bane, joint smoldering between his forefinger and thumb. “This isn’t what we do.”

“Are you kidding? This entire war isn’t about becoming Alpha for fun. It’s because Rylie Gresham is the wrong leader, and so is Melchior. It’s because Stark knows what’s best for everyone. It’s because we’re trying to save lives. So get in there and save people!”

“You heard her,” Ember muttered. He took the joint from Geoff and flicked it to the pavement.

They jogged toward the burning tenement.

Stark tossed Niamh to Deirdre’s feet. “Why are you ordering my people to risk their lives for this?”

“Think of the people in that tenement like horses,” she said, softly enough that nobody would be able to hear her but Stark.

His mouth twitched. “I want the shifters to recover as many people from that building as possible.” Stark didn’t have to raise his voice for everyone to hear him. He was using the power of compulsion to insert the words directly into the minds of his pack.

That got them moving.

He turned to the vampires. “Spread out. Stop the riots. But stay out of the buildings—you’re too flammable.”

Deirdre opened her mouth to thank Stark, but he was already hurtling into the burning tenement. He was first through the doorway, plunging into the smoke and magic with no fear that it could hurt him.

If anyone could avoid injury through sheer stubbornness, it would be Everton Stark.

But it wasn’t going to be enough. Stark had a lot of followers, sure, but the packs that had come to the high-rise were numbered in the single digits. The vampires could only do so much. And Rhiannon surely would have left other unpleasant presents around the city to help sentiments turn in her favor.

They needed reinforcements.

The nearest bank of pay phones was at a bus station a block up. Deirdre needed to run opposite the flow of foot traffic to get there, pushed and battered by fleeing bodies. Nobody seemed to be looking where they were going.

Two of the phones were broken. Their severed, frayed cords dangled toward the sidewalk. The third functioned.

Deirdre punched a phone number into the pay phone. Rylie answered on the first ring.

“I know,” the Alpha said immediately. “I saw Melchior’s statement.”

“What are we going to do?” Deirdre hissed into the receiver, glancing over her shoulder. She had a small audience across the street. Judging by the deathly pale skin and awed looks, they were an audience of the vampiric persuasion—people who would surely report her location to Lucifer.

“I’m not sure. We can discuss it,” Rylie said. “Look up.”

Deirdre did.

And then she nearly dropped the phone’s receiver.

The airship was hovering overhead, circled by black helicopters with the OPA insignia.

She fumbled to put the phone back to her ear. “How did you find me?”

“You wouldn’t like the answer,” Rylie said, which meant it involved OPA surveillance. “Can you reach me?”

Deirdre’s gaze skimmed up the side of the nearest building. In her mind, she plotted the route: the way she would jump from window to window, the wall crawl up the bricks, the leap of faith she’d need to take to reach that fire escape.

“Gimme two minutes,” Deirdre said.

Then she hung up and began to climb.

The marks of Kristian’s attack remained on Rylie’s airship. Deirdre dug her fingers into the scores on the deck left by his sword in order to haul her body over the edge. The envelope had been patched as well, but it was easy to see where the holes had been once Deirdre was on board.

Accordingly, the security on the dirigible had been more than tripled since Deirdre’s previous flight. Secretary Friederling stood among the numerous OPA agents, talking on his phone. These agents weren’t merely armed mundanes, though. There were several battle witches among them. They were the best-trained and deadliest of the OPA’s employees. Deirdre had seen them melt shifters into puddles before.

Rylie waited for Deirdre in the doorway, dress whipped around her legs by the blasting of the wet wind.

“The OPA needs to stop this.” Deirdre pointed at the magical fires, which were eerily beautiful from above.

“We’re already on it.” Rylie nodded toward the OPA secretary. “Fritz is rolling out damage control.”

“Rhiannon will be causing mayhem all over the country,” Deirdre said. “Melchior hops ley lines like I skip cracks on sidewalks to save my dead mama’s back. He could do this all over the world if he wanted. What the hell are we going to do?”

“Having Melchior take the oath would be the fastest way to stop the riots,” Rylie said.

“And have the seelie go to war against the rest of us!”

“They’re a single faction, and Melchior’s whipped all the other factions into a frenzy. A lot more people could die from rioting.”

“But what if you let Melchior run and he wins? He and Rhiannon would be bad for gaeans. Really bad. Eternal winter kind of bad.”

“Riots are bad for gaeans too. They’re also terrible for collateral damage among the mundane population I’m meant to protect.” Secretary Friederling turned off his phone and sauntered over. It was frustrating how calm he seemed about this, like he didn’t really care who won the election.

“What is wrong with you?” Deirdre snapped. “Don’t you want to make sure that the Alpha is someone who will actually take care of his people?”

“I’ve been attempting to keep mundane humans from getting devoured by preternaturals for years, long before someone pressed the reset button using Genesis. I’ve seen what gaeans are like without an Alpha. It doesn’t matter who’s in control. My job will never be easier, no matter who’s acting as figurehead for you people.”

“You’ve got a lot in common with Stark.”

“There’s a big difference between us,” Friederling said.

“Oh? And what do you think that is?”

“A net worth of approximately a billion dollars and the good will of the President of the United States.” He checked his watch. “Our trajectory should put us over Original Sin in ten minutes.”

Deirdre’s eyes widened. “Why are you going there?”

“That’s where the unseelie queen is being held. Why do you look so surprised? Do you think our intelligence is so primitive that we can’t find the most powerful sidhe on American soil? The energy levels radiating from there are unmistakable.” Stink lines of arrogance practically radiated off of him. “And it’s your lucky day, Ms. Tombs, because I’ve decided to send you into Original Sin to rescue the unseelie queen rather than arrest you.”

“You’ve what? You think I’m going to save her? You’re the one with an army and drones and crap like that,” Deirdre said.

“Yes, but none of my people or Friederling’s can engage the unseelie sidhe,” Rylie said. “With Marion’s oath, we can’t take violent action against competitors before the election.”

“Rhiannon and Melchior aren’t your competitors. They aren’t the queen and Alpha mate of the Winter Court!”

“They will be if they kill Ofelia. They might have already killed her. If we busted into Original Sin…” She sighed. “It could ruin everything we’re working for, Deirdre.”

“I’m with Stark,” Deirdre said. “I’m a competitor, too.”

“He’s been public about his refusal to take the oath. Until that changes, you can take action.”

“You bitch,” she said softly.

Rylie didn’t try to argue, but the fact that she absorbed the anger so calmly only made Deirdre angrier.

“It’s so fucking convenient,” Deirdre spat. “How you keep finding ways to stay safe where you are, while I’m out there risking my life, and the lives of my friends, to further your agenda. How many people have died for your causes while you’ve sat back and watched the bodies fall? How many people have trusted you, loved you, and then died for you?”

“Are you done?” she asked.

“No,” Deirdre said. But she didn’t actually have anything else to say. It was hard to fight with someone who didn’t fight back. “You’re so screwed up, you blowhard Alpha bureaucrat.”

Rylie moved to the railing, motions stiff, as though someone had cranked up the tightness on her muscles. The OPA agents parted to allow her to pass. “I have never asked anyone to do something for me that I wouldn’t do myself.”

“Then do this yourself,” Deirdre said. “Prove to me you aren’t a giant waste of oxygen.”

Friederling snorted with laughter. “Prove herself? To you? Who do you think you are?”

“I’m the person you think is going to get the unseelie queen instead of killing every last one of you,” Deirdre said.

“We can find an alternative to rescue Ofelia if you refuse. But consider what’s in your best interests. This delays your tenure in prison, after all.” The secretary yawned. He actually yawned. “Up to you.”

Rylie didn’t look much more impressed. She studied her fingernails. No, not fingernails—she had grown silver claws. She looked at them like she was checking to see if her manicure had dried yet, not like she was threatening Deirdre.

But the implication was clear. She wouldn’t be flashing claw unless she wanted it to be known that she could.

Deirdre took a step back and almost bumped into an agent.

There was nowhere for her to go.

She was outnumbered. Outgunned.

And Rylie didn’t look happy.

“Are you threatening to hurt me?” Deirdre asked.

“I don’t typically resort to threats of physical violence,” Rylie said. “I don’t have to threaten because none of my challengers have been able to beat me yet. Please remember that when you talk to me. People don’t give me respect to be nice. I’ve earned it, and I deserve it.”

“I haven’t seen any proof of that,” Deirdre said.

“Would you feel better if I hit you? Should I slap you a few times, break your back, shred your throat?”

“Inflicting pain wouldn’t make you powerful.”

“But it seems like that’s what you respect, Deirdre.” The claws slid back into her hands with a faint wet noise.

Even Stark didn’t show that level of self-control over his selective shifting.

Deirdre was cornered again. Save Ofelia, and save the election, or face vengeance at the end of Rylie’s claws—or even worse.

Her eyes stung. “I’ll get the queen,” Deirdre said. “Not for you. For the election. For the people.”

“Bogey at seven o’clock!” someone shouted.

Two OPA agents grabbed Secretary Friederling and half-carried him to the doorway of the dirigible, getting him off the exposed deck. Deirdre turned into the buffeting smoke to search for what the other agents had seen.

A body appeared in the sky, sweeping toward them with preternatural grace. It wasn’t another airborne vehicle. It was a woman, lean and muscular, with wings like razorblades.

Vidya.

She penetrated the wards effortlessly and struck the deck before the agents could even aim.

“Don’t shoot.” Rylie’s voice carried over the deck, and in its wake, Deirdre heard the rub of cloth on metal. The OPA guards were lowering their weapons. Obedient to the Alpha. Friederling might not have had much regard for Rylie’s station, but his people did.

Deirdre turned. Vidya was waiting with arms folded and eyebrow lifted, looking annoyed.

“I can’t protect you if you run off like that,” Vidya said.

She laughed weakly. “You’re alive.” She took a step toward the valkyrie, but hesitated. Deirdre wanted to hug Vidya. But they’d never hugged before, and she had no idea if it was okay to touch her like that. They didn’t have that kind of friendship. “You’re the one who showed up half-dead on the rooftops. I don’t need to be protected.”

“Stark and I disagree.”

“Did he send you?”

“No,” Vidya said. “He hasn’t noticed that you’re gone yet. For all I know, he’s still pulling people out of that burning building. You’re coming back with me.”

Deirdre wished that she could, but even Vidya’s wings wouldn’t be able to protect them if all the OPA battle witches unleashed their magic. “I can’t. I have to go into Original Sin. I have to save the unseelie queen.”

“The queen who has now defeated me twice?”

“No, the actual queen,” Deirdre said. “Saving Ofelia will screw over Rhiannon.”

Vidya studied the surrounding agents, wings whistling softly as metal sang against metal, ruffled by the wind. There was ash on some of her feathers and blood on others. “I don’t think Stark would want you to get involved.”

“Why do you work for him?” Deirdre asked. “Is it because you feel loyal to him after your time in the Marines together, or because you agree with his vision for the future?”

“Both,” Vidya said.

“Trust me when I say that saving Ofelia Hawke is the best way to put Stark in power. At this point, it might be the only way to do it. We have to save her.”

“Okay.”

Deirdre frowned. “Really? I expected more of a fight than that.”

“Yes. What can I do to help?” Vidya asked.

She hadn’t thought that far yet. “Get Geoff and Ember,” Deirdre said, throwing out the first two names that occurred to her. They weren’t men she trusted, but she trusted they wouldn’t try to kill her. “And then get ready to kill a lot of unseelie.”

Vidya’s eyes went distant, as though registering a command. “Get Geoff and Ember. Kill the unseelie.”

“Yep,” Deirdre said.

The valkyrie’s wings snapped wide. Men shouted, leaping out of her reach.

Then she caught the wind and let it carry her over the railing, plummeting back to the earth.

Rylie leaned over the railing, watching her path as she carved a way through the smoke. “We’re close to Original Sin. We can’t openly provide support, but if there’s anything we can do—”

“I don’t need anything from you.” Deirdre climbed onto the railing, rubber soles of her boots gripping the metal. The roof of a tall building was only a hundred feet down.

She jumped.

XVI

From the outside, Original Sin looked like nothing more than the warehouse it used to be. The surrounding sidewalks and roads hadn’t been repaired since the Genesis void whipped through the city—almost nothing in that neighborhood had been.

But the club was drenched in unseelie magic, and Deirdre couldn’t get within blocks of it without experiencing distorted vision. A humming grew within her skull, like a distant song she couldn’t quite hear.

The sidhe were nearby, and they were casting some powerful spells.

Deirdre checked the magazine on her gun. It was fully loaded with iron bullets. Rylie hadn’t given them to her directly, but someone had conveniently abandoned a crate of ammo nearby, and it obviously hadn’t been left behind by rioters. “You ready for this?”

“I’m ready.” Vidya peeled off her shirt, exposing the faint scars on her back. Her wings unfurled, slicing through the straps of her bandeau bra. The valkyrie had only been moments behind Deirdre, arriving at Original Sin with the requested reinforcements at lightning speed.

Deirdre looked over her shoulder. “And you guys?”

Geoff and Ember were digging through the unmarked ammunition crate. Ember had picked out an AK-47 and was stuffing extra magazines into his cargo pants. Geoff had gone for something elegant, a little more traditional—a sword. Deirdre was skeptical that he could do anything with it, but the iron blade looked nasty enough, so she wasn’t going to criticize. It seemed appropriate to use a weapon like Kristian’s while attacking the unseelie anyway.

“Can’t wait to get killing!” Geoff whipped the sword through the air.

“Remember, we have to get the queen out,” Deirdre said. “She needs to survive or the entire election is going to fall apart. What happens to everyone else in there…”

She couldn’t directly condone the deaths of the other unseelie. They were fellow gaeans, and if she had her way, she would be making the world a better place for them to live in as well. But they were currently aligned with Melchior and Rhiannon, which made them enemies. Deirdre wouldn’t weep for their deaths.

“Who’d have thought that this is where I’d end up when I checked in to the safe house that moon?” Ember asked, reverently running his fingers over the AK-47. “I thought my fighting days were over after the fissure to Hell closed all those years ago.”

“I’m glad to have you,” Deirdre said.

He smiled. “I’m glad to help.”

Deirdre peered around the corner at Original Sin. She glimpsed movement within the windows—only a glimpse, a flash of ghostly white.

Unseelie guards were patrolling the inside perimeter of the club. They were watching every entrance.

“We need a diversion,” Deirdre muttered.

She glanced up at the sky again. The dirigible was fleeing the scene as quickly as an airship could, which wasn’t fast at all. There’d be no help from them.

Her mouth twisted as she studied her small army. A valkyrie and two werewolves, neither of them with Alpha potential, but both with a combat history.

There had to be a way to do this without ending up dead.

“I’m going to go around the back,” Deirdre said. “See if I can pull the guards away from the front of the building. Once they’re gone, I want Vidya to get you two inside. I’ll meet you as soon as possible.”

“That a good idea?” Geoff asked. “I know you’re fast and all, but the unseelie are pure magic.”

Deirdre gave a half-hearted smile. “So am I.”

“See you inside,” Vidya said.

Yanking her hood over her head to protect her hair from the rain, Deirdre broke into a jog.

She didn’t make it far.

A dark shape darted across the street. Deirdre didn’t have time to react before it slammed into her, carrying her back into the alley and smashing her body into the wall.

She reached for her gun—too slow.

The hand that seized her wrist was muscled, with coarse hair almost down to his knuckles.

It wasn’t one of the unseelie who had pinned her down.

“Stark,” she gasped, sucking in a painful breath. He was leaning the full force of his weight against her. Vidya stood behind his shoulder, and she didn’t move to save Deirdre. “How did you find me? What are you doing here?”

“I’m killing Melchior,” Stark said. “What do you think I’m doing?”

Deirdre thought he was just stalking the woman he wanted to keep around as his Alpha mate and favorite punching bag. “I’ve got a handle on it.”

“That’s not what Vidya thinks,” Stark said.

Deirdre shot a look at the valkyrie. She was still waiting deeper in the alley with Ember and Geoff, and she didn’t look remotely contrite.

“Tell me that you saved everyone from the burning buildings,” Deirdre said.

“I might have if the sluagh hadn’t arrived.”

“What?”

He put his hand over her mouth to silence her, glancing around the corner to check Original Sin.

Deirdre slapped his hand away. “The gargoyles killed the sluagh.”

“No, it’s much harder to kill than that,” Stark said. “And it’s consumed at least a dozen vampires by now. It’s bigger. If I had stayed…” His lips sealed, refusing to finish the sentence. But Deirdre understood what he was saying.

If Stark had stayed, the sluagh would have killed him.

“It’s still there? Among the riots?” Forget the queen, forget the election. There were so many innocent gaeans being attacked by an unseelie assassin that consumed souls. “We have to go back.”

She tried to step away, but he shoved her against the wall again. “It won’t stay there long. The sluagh has no interest in those people. It’s looking for you. We’re here now, and I have to get Melchior while we know where he is, while he’s in this dimension—while he’s accessible.”

“No, Stark,” Deirdre said. “We can’t be sure the sluagh will leave the tenements alone, and they’re there because of me. This is so much more important than that.”

“What do you think you’ll be able to do to the sluagh?”

“Lure it away? I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”

“What about penetrating Original Sin and forcing the unseelie who sent the sluagh against you to recall it?” Stark asked.

She opened her mouth to argue, but then stopped. He had a point.

“That would work,” Deirdre said.

He peered around the wall, still holding her tightly. “We’ll have to move quickly. The unseelie are patrolling the perimeter.”

Her mouth twisted in irritation. She’d already come to that determination, and she had a plan; she didn’t need Stark taking charge like some big Alpha douchebag. “We’re going to have to do an assault from multiple angles.”

“No,” Stark said. “We need to draw them to us so we can annihilate them.”

“That’ll get us annihilated.”

“Not with my compulsion.”

“Your compulsion isn’t that good,” Deirdre said.

His eyes sparked with angry mirth. “Have faith.” The words sparked with a hint of compulsion. He was trying to force a pep talk on her.

How sweet. You asshole.

Stark turned his attention on the others. “We’ll enter through the front and draw them to us. And then we’ll kill them all.”

“How likely am I to get Force-choked if I tell you that’s a really crazy plan?” Geoff asked. “A plan that can only be described very generously as a plan at all?”

Deirdre tensed, expecting Geoff to get killed. That was exactly the kind of back talk that had gotten her face broken more than once.

But Stark didn’t punch him. “I don’t mind dissenting opinions as long as I have your total obedience.”

“Too late for anything else,” Ember said, shouldering the AK-47. “But I agree. You’re crazy.”

“Noted. Stick close. We operate as a unit. We don’t separate if we can avoid it. Don’t trust anything you see within those walls—unseelie magic is strong. But if you do end up alone…shoot everything that moves. Shifters will survive iron bullets.”

Geoff nodded. “Got it, boss.”

“Yeah, boss,” Deirdre said.

She took two steps away, but Stark stopped her. “I will be the one hunting Melchior.” He jabbed Deirdre in the chest with a finger. “If we get separated, and if you find him first, be very careful.”

“I’ll try not to kill him too quickly. Save a few pieces for you if I can,” Deirdre said.

His eyes narrowed. “That’s not what I’m warning you about.”

Stark was telling her not to kiss him again.

As if he owned her.

This coming from a man who thought that he had compelled her to be obedient or dead.

“Happy hunting,” she said, moving to leave the alley.

Stark caught her. He dragged her back to him. And he kissed her with painful ferocity, smashing their mouths together, bowing her back under the force of it.

Panic surged through her—panic that Geoff and Ember would see, that they would know, and they’d tell people—along with a confusing mixture of annoyance and arousal that Deirdre didn’t like, not one bit.

“Don’t die,” Stark growled against her mouth.

“Is that another compulsion?” Deirdre asked. “This one to override the ‘drop dead if you disobey me, bitch’ compulsion?”

“I’m telling you that I want to see you again, alive,” he said. “And I’ll be angry if you don’t keep yourself that way.”

She thought about telling him where he should shove his half-assed sentiments. But there was a pretty good chance that one or both of them was going to get killed by the unseelie, and she was the only one who might come back from that.

What would life be like without Stark?

It would probably be better. A lot better.

That didn’t mean she’d like it.

Life with Stark was life in Technicolor, constant adrenaline and emotion. It was the first time she’d breathed in years. The first time she’d seen light at the end of the tunnel where the preternatural system had buried her, no matter how distant that light may have seemed, or how much violence waited between her and escape.

At least it was there.

She hated him, but she didn’t want him dead.

Deirdre heaved a sigh. “I expect you to come out of this alive too.”

Stark gestured, and everyone followed him into the icy depths of Original Sin.

“Go inside and kill everyone” was a horrible plan. But Everton Stark wasn’t a man who needed to get more complicated than that.

They crossed the edge of the unseelie wards on the sidewalk outside the club, and the protection magic erupted.

In an instant, the club went from a few feet away to a few thousand miles away. It appeared so distant that Deirdre couldn’t have reached it if she flew for days. She knew that it must have been an illusion—that the club couldn’t be as far away as it looked.

Yet the more she railed against the magic, the tighter it held her.

Time slowed, blurring her motions. Her arms pumped at her sides as though she were trying to fight her way through the ocean.

Stark pushed through the magic without looking back. He aimed for that distant front door, unperturbed by the distortion.

The unseelie guards appeared in front of him.

They were beautiful statues, skin glimmering in jewel tones. Magic lashed along their arms and haloed their heads. It was physically painful to look at them, like staring into the sun.

Stark looked. He did a lot more than look.

He plunged his clawed hands into the gut of the man on the left and said, “Die.”

Shock rolled through the unseelie’s body. His eyes blanked, his head fell back, and just like that—he was dead. Sapphire blood gushed from the place that Stark’s fingers were embedded in his gut.

The magical distortion faded.

For an instant, Deirdre could see the street as it truly was. They were right in front of the doors to Original Sin. The city glowed with the fires started by Rhiannon and rioters.

Then the illusion began to rebuild, coalescing around the second unseelie guard.

He grew in size, looming over them.

“Shoot!” Stark shouted.

Deirdre fired on the second unseelie. She couldn’t tell if she hit. He leaped across the pavement to tackle her, and Deirdre barely dodged him. His fingers barely brushed her arm.

Ice immobilized her from shoulder to elbow and the cold penetrated to the bone. It hurt deep inside, as though blasting directly into the phoenix fire waiting within her.

The unseelie knew about her. They knew what she was, and her weaknesses.

Melchior had prepared for her.

Deirdre pushed the pain away, tracking her gun along the unseelie’s body as he leaped for Geoff.

She popped off one clean shot.

Skull fragmented. Blood the color of juicy emeralds splattered to the pavement. He fell against Geoff, and the werewolf gutted him with the iron blade.

The illusion shattered as though Deirdre had driven her boot heel into the surface of a frozen lake. The doors to Original Sin snapped into place, just outside of arm’s reach.

Vidya wrenched the entrance open with both hands, biceps and shoulder muscles flexing.

Magic popped around them. Deirdre felt it in her eardrums, in her skull.

She plunged into Original Sin after Vidya and Stark.

It was freezing inside of the club. Beyond freezing. The dance floor was slicked with a thick layer of ice, and all the tables and couches had been replaced by silver trees glistening with frost leaves, much like the forest that she’d seen in the Winter Court. There should have only been a few feet between the dance floor and the walls, but the forest looked endless.

There were no walls. Original Sin opened into a vast night filled with stars.

More illusion.

Stalagmites of ice thrust from the ground between the trees, forming crystalline pillars twice Deirdre’s height, distorting and magnifying everything on the other side.

Through one of those stalagmites, Deirdre saw motion.

“Over there!” Her breath came out of her in plumes of mist that froze her lips, chilled her nose, bit at her cheeks.

Three more unseelie swept toward them through the club’s darkness, cloaked in ice, pristine and beautiful. “Don’t let him speak,” said a woman with opal-dark flesh.

Stark opened his mouth to issue another command.

Two of the unseelie slammed into him before he could say anything, and where their hands contacted his flesh, ice sprouted. It was a thick crust that collared him from nose to chest. It should have kept him from speaking.

Focusing that magic on Stark left them vulnerable to Vidya, and she didn’t need words to kill.

Razor feathers flashed through the air. She whipped her wings across the sidhe woman to eviscerate her from navel to breasts.

Shiny black skin tore open. Whatever she had inside was not like a human’s, bloody-red meat touched with orange fat, but like she was pure magic—muscle of liquid silver that erupted on contact.

When she hit the ground, she was already dead. And so was the sidhe beside her. Vidya was a force of nature more powerful than unseelie ice and far less merciful than any of her opponents.

The third launched away from Stark before Vidya could kill him. He spotted Deirdre and went for her instead.

She rolled behind one of the silver trees. Ice blasted past her head. Where the magic passed, the forest distorted, dripping and elongating like a painting left in the rain.

Ember took cover behind another of the ice pillars and opened fire, laying down a spray of bullets that peppered the trees.

Deirdre’s back bumped against the silver tree. She brushed against it with her knuckles—just the barest brush.

Ice turned to heat. Her knuckles burned.

She jerked away with a gasp.

The trees didn’t just look silver in color.

They were silver.

Deirdre and her companions had come armed with iron, and the sidhe had prepared for a shifter assault in their own way. They had created a forest of metal that was fatal to shapeshifters.

“Oh my gods,” Deirdre breathed.

She turned to search for Geoff, who was driving across the icy dance floor in pursuit of another sidhe. He’d already forgotten Stark’s instructions to stay close.

And he was going right for one of those trees.

“Don’t touch the forest!” Deirdre shouted. “Everything is silver!”

He didn’t seem to hear her. He was roaring, attacking, fighting with the sidhe. The unseelie magic tangled him in spider webs of light, clinging to his flesh.

Stark was still struggling with his icy collar, and the others didn’t seem to have noticed that Geoff had run off.

Only Deirdre could save him.

Shivering and sluggish, Deirdre leaped over the railing and landed on the icy dance floor.

Her boots got traction well enough. But once she stepped away from the relative shelter of the silver trees, she felt the wind. It was the same cruel, biting storm that seemed to perpetually blast through the Winter Court, sucking away her breath and freezing her to the marrow.

The sidhe Geoff was fighting tossed him into a tree. He wasn’t wearing a jacket. His arms hit the branches, and he screamed at silver burn.

His shouts were drowned out by Deirdre’s gunfire.

She hit the sidhe twice. Once above the left eye, and once just below the nose, shattering teeth. The plumes of blood froze into spikes, plugging the wounds even as the sidhe collapsed.

The corpse shattered on impact.

Deirdre rushed to Geoff, but her balance failed. She struck the dance floor on hands and knees and scrabbled toward the werewolf.

“The trees are silver!” Geoff groaned. Contacting pure silver had carved inch-deep furrows into his flesh.

“I tried to warn you.” Deirdre holstered her gun, yanked her jacket off, and packed it around his wounds.

Geoff’s hand clamped down on her wrist. “The sword. I saw it.”

“Yeah, your sword. I’ll hang on to it.” He had dropped the iron weapon a few inches away, so Deirdre picked it up. Who knew? Maybe she could make use of it.

“No,” he hissed. “The sword.”

“What?”

But he was incoherent from pain, no longer focusing on her.

Deirdre muttered a few choice swear words under her breath, turning to look for the others.

There was nothing behind her but silver trees.

The icy, open dance floor resembling a lake was gone, along with the body of the sidhe that Deirdre had shot. The forest had closed around her. Silver branches speared the sky, tipped with ice leaves that reflected Deirdre in mocking glitter.

It was unseelie illusion magic. That was all. The dance floor was still somewhere nearby.

And so was Stark.

Yet she’d never be able to find him if she couldn’t see reality.

She returned her attention to Geoff. He was still breathing, but it was shallow. The sweat was freezing on his skin. His face was screwed up in pain. “Okay,” Deirdre said, rubbing her upper arms to try to warm them. “This is bad.”

It didn’t change the goal. She needed to find the queen. If she located Ofelia Hawke, then the queen would be able to unravel all this magic and save Geoff, too.

Deirdre tucked her jacket around him as tightly as she could manage. “I’ll be back.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.”

She turned at the sound of a man’s voice.

The bar on the far end of the club had appeared out of the unseelie illusion. Deirdre could see a bare concrete wall and a hallway that led to the bathrooms.

Niamh’s artist boyfriend stepped out of that hallway.

“Took you long enough to get here,” Kristian said. “The riot started hours ago. It feels like I’ve been waiting forever.”

A bone-white blade glistened in his hand, and Deirdre suddenly understood what Geoff had been trying to tell her. He had seen the sword.

The OPA hadn’t detected the energy levels for the unseelie queen in Original Sin.

They had detected the Ethereal Blade.

Niamh had terrible taste in men. She and Deirdre had fought over a lot of the same guys when they were teens, largely because Deirdre had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for men who didn’t care she was an Omega, and Niamh had always preferred to lick the bottom of the barrel.

But a snake shifter with the unseelie court—a snake shifter who now sauntered toward Deirdre holding the Ethereal Blade—was a stunningly bad choice, even for Niamh.

The heeled boots and hooded jacket emphasized his lean figure, but his sunglasses were silly in the darkness of Original Sin. He probably would have made Deirdre’s deprived loins go lusting a few years earlier. Now he left her cold. Literally.

Kristian circled a silver tree. “I know Niamh escaped to beg forgiveness from you. Did you give it? Or did you kill her?”

Deirdre wasn’t actually sure what happened to Niamh. It was hard to worry about the swanmay-slash-harpy after everything she’d done. “I didn’t hurt Niamh, but the vampires might have.”

That knocked a little of the confidence out of him. “Vampires?”

Kristian took a step toward her and Deirdre took a step back. She wasn’t going to take any chances getting within the range of the Ethereal Blade. It was terrifying to see him holding it so casually, as though he wasn’t wielding a weapon of indescribable power and death.

“Is the real queen even here?” Deirdre asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Kristian said. “You’re not going to leave this forest.”

She took another step back. She glanced behind her to make sure she wasn’t going to step on Geoff’s prone body—but he wasn’t there anymore. He had vanished, like everything else in Original Sin.

Kristian took a quick step toward her, and Deirdre jerked, clumsy. Her feet slipped on the ice. She twisted to avoid catching herself on one of the silver trees, and instead flattened out on the ground.

So cold. She wasn’t certain that the cold was any better than the silver.

“I can’t believe you have that thing,” Deirdre said, pushing her heels into the ground to scoot away from him.

“Rhiannon loaned it to me after I successfully marked you on the airship. I proved I’m good with a sword, and now I get the deadliest sword on Earth,” he said. “I have an artist’s hands. I’m as good with a sword as I am with the stylus on my Wacom. I’ll paint pictures with your blood, Deirdre.”

“Blah, blah, blah.” Her hand fell on Geoff’s iron blade. It hadn’t vanished. The iron must have rendered it immune to the illusory magic. “Skip the villain monologue and get to the killing.”

He faltered at her confidence. “I have the Ethereal Blade,” he said, as if uncertain that she’d seen it. He lifted it between them.

“Yeah, I know,” Deirdre said. She tugged the iron sword to her side and stood, wavering on unsteady legs, hair stiff with frost. “I’m not worried.”

“You saw what it can do. You saw the valkyrie with it.”

“You’re not a valkyrie.”

“But Rhiannon entrusted me with it,” Kristian said. “That says something.”

“Sure. It says that Rhiannon doesn’t have a valkyrie and you’re expendable. Otherwise why wouldn’t she wield it herself?”

Self-doubt flickered through his eyes, quickly replaced by blind bravado. “She’s a gods-damned queen. She has better things to do.”

“Yeah, like not being suicidal,” Deirdre said. “Does this mean you’ve already killed Ofelia Hawke with that?”

“Yes,” Kristian said.

She barked a laugh. “You are so full of crap. You’re lying. I can tell you’re lying.”

“You don’t have acute werewolf senses,” he said with a sneer.

“No, but my bullcrap meter is attuned to douchebags like you,” Deirdre said. “You haven’t managed to kill her yet. She’s still alive somewhere. Right? Then I want to finish this so I can find her.” She spread her arms wide, leaving the iron blade dangling from her forefinger and thumb, inviting him to attack. They were in a silver forest after all—and Kristian was a shifter, not truly sidhe. “I won’t shoot or stab you, Mr. Artist’s Hands. You’re going to die without wasting a single bullet.”

“Nuh-uh,” Kristian said. He’d run out of villain taunts. He had no better retorts to fling at her.

She laughed again.

His insecurity turned to rage.

When he lunged for her, his movements reminded her so much of the way that Jacek had attacked her back at the asylum. They were both snakes, after all. And Deirdre thought that Jacek had been bad enough.

But Kristian wasn’t kidding when he said he had an artist’s hands.

He sliced through the air with confidence, moving the point of the blade so quickly that Deirdre could see nothing but a blur.

She threw herself under the swing. It whipped over her head.

For a dizzying moment of horror, Deirdre imagined that she wouldn’t duck quite low enough. The Ethereal Blade would skim her scalp. Her brain would explode into flowers and she would die in a conflagration of perfumed vines, slowly and painfully among the ice.

It didn’t strike. She rolled again, getting behind Kristian, and he tracked her quickly.

He brought the Ethereal Blade down. Deirdre lifted Geoff’s weapon to meet it.

The blessed sword cut cleanly through iron.

“Oh man,” she said.

She tossed the hilt into Kristian’s face. He knocked it away, too.

Deirdre had no choice but to dodge repeatedly on instinct, trusting her senses to keep her out of the way of his blade. He was so fast. He came from unexpected angles, swiping the cutting edge so near Deirdre that she felt the wind of its passing.

She leaped behind a tree. The Ethereal Blade cut right through its silver trunk.

It toppled, branches falling toward Deirdre.

She jumped out of the way, and the frosted tips of the tree crashed into the ground, cracking the sheet of ice. Sapphire water gushed from the holes. It looked like unseelie blood.

Kristian cackled as he cut through another tree just as effortlessly.

Deirdre didn’t dodge fast enough that time. She shrank into a ball and protected her head.

Its branches fell around her like a cage of silver. A fragile twig scraped down her shoulder, unprotected now that she had given her jacket to Geoff. Pain erupted down her arm.

“Damn!” she cried.

Deirdre kicked both her feet out, snapping branches with her boot heels, and then scrambling out from under the tree in time for Kristian to chop it into pieces behind her.

She couldn’t fight him while he had the Ethereal Blade. It was too deadly. Deirdre needed time to draw her gun. Needed to put distance between them.

But even if she was fast under ordinary circumstances, there was nothing ordinary about Original Sin’s frosty silver forest. She was sluggish. Kristian was immune to the cold, probably protected by the same unseelie magic that cloaked everything in illusion, and he was fast for a serpent.

Deirdre felt like she was running away from him through a dream, moving only inches no matter how much energy she put into it.

She drew her Sig Sauer. She turned to shoot.

Kristian was right behind her.

The Ethereal Blade cut upwards and moved through the barrel of her handgun as easily as it had the iron sword. It fell to pieces in her hands.

Deirdre couldn’t dodge away from him fast enough to avoid the next cut.

So she didn’t dodge away.

She threw herself into Kristian, grabbing his arms, shoving his back into a silver tree. Frost showered around them from the impact. He cried out from the burn of silver, and only when she saw the blisters on his hand did Deirdre jump away.

Kristian lifted his wounded hand to look at it, and he laughed. “You think that a little silver is going to kill me? Pathetic!” He shook his hand out. It was already healing. “The closer a shifter is to sidhe, the less silver hurts them.”

“That’s great to know,” Deirdre said. “Probably explains a lot about me. But no, it’s not the silver killing you.”

Her wording made him falter.

He looked down.

There was a tiny nick in his jacket. The smallest slice where the fabric had parted. A blade fractionally duller wouldn’t have managed to cut it—but the Ethereal Blade was beyond sharp, imbued with the power of angels, and it had cut through several layers of cloth to nick Kristian’s flesh. Deirdre had moved his arms just enough to turn the weapon on its wielder.

And now a blossom grew from the hole in his jacket.

“Oh gods,” Kristian said.

Enraged, he flew at her, swinging the sword without any of the careful artistry that he’d shown before. It was a graceless, panicked gesture. Death throes.

Deirdre leaped backward, staying out of his range. But he was so much harder to predict now. Looming death made him a better fighter, because he had nothing left to fear.

She twisted around a tree, dropped to the ice, rolled under another of Kristian’s swings.

The single blossom had turned to a vine of blossoms covered in white blooms. Apple blossoms, it looked like.

They poured from his jacket. Spilled over the ice.

His foot landed on the blossoms and skidded. The Ethereal Blade fell from his hand, spinning across the ground. Its blade bit into the trunk of a tree with a metallic clang.

Kristian smashed a hand against the wound, shaking his head emphatically. “Not like this, not now—”

The rest of that thought was cut off with a hard cough.

Long grass thrust over his tongue, spilled down his lip, scattered across the floor.

His eyes squeezed toward the top of his head as green vines thrust out of his tear ducts. They curved in horns down his cheeks. Twisted over his ears. Wrapped around his throat.

And then he stopped moving.

Deirdre remained still on the ice for a breathless heartbeat, watching him for signs of life. He was a shifter—shifters could heal a lot. Maybe if he changed into his serpent form, he could escape the Ethereal Blade’s bite.

But he was far beyond that.

The sword could kill anything, and Kristian wasn’t much of a challenge.

Her eyes tracked along the vines across the ice to the sword’s resting place at the base of the tree. It gleamed dully in the darkness of Original Sin. Now that it wasn’t in motion, it almost looked innocuous, especially against the glimmering deadliness of ice.

Rylie was going to want that back.

Deirdre didn’t want to touch it.

On the other hand, she was still lost in a forest of silver without any clue where the rest of her party was, or even if the true unseelie queen was nearby.

Deirdre’s hand closed around the hilt of the Ethereal Blade.

She was surprised by how warm it was, and how easily it dislodged from the tree.

It didn’t feel like holding a sword. Not like Geoff’s iron sword, anyway. It felt like it was living, breathing, subtly expanding and contracting within her grip. When Deirdre had retrieved it from the werewolf sanctuary, it hadn’t felt like it was going to jump out of her hand at any moment. It had just been a sword. Now it was like lifting a sentient creature.

The Ethereal Blade was responding to all the times it had been used to fight. It was waking up.

“That’s not creepy at all,” Deirdre muttered. She held it out at her side carefully as she stood. Too bad she’d lost the scabbard—she would have loved to put that sharp edge away.

Holding it filled her with fear, now that she’d seen what it could do to someone wielding it who wasn’t careful enough. Now that she knew what power it held.

One slip, one tiny cut, and she’d be exploding into blossoms. The kind of injury that even a shifter couldn’t heal, and the kind of injury that she wasn’t confident that a phoenix could return from.

The forest shifted around Deirdre, silver trees rustling with a sigh. Ice showered from their branches.

She stood on the edge of the icy dance floor again.

Taking the Ethereal Blade seemed to clear her mind. When she looked up, instead of stars, she saw the catwalks overlooking the club. She also saw the stairs to the manager’s office.

That was where Stark had gone to negotiate with Jaycee Hardwick when they had first met at Original Sin.

Deirdre turned to look for the rest of her party. They were still gone, as far as she could tell. She was alone with the ice and the silver trees and the Ethereal Blade. And the stairs to the manager’s office were waiting for her, empty and expectant, as though inviting her to investigate.

“Here goes nothing,” Deirdre said.

And she went upstairs.

XVII

The manager’s office was empty of life. It also wasn’t really much of a manager’s office. It looked more like a booth to handle sound and lights, although Deirdre had no idea what the multitude of switches, levers, and sliders on the huge control panel were meant to do.

She stepped inside, shut the door, and went to the control panel. Few things were marked, but custom labels with runes had been added in several places. As in magical runes, drawn in marker. A label bolted to the upper right corner of the control panel caught her eye: “Hardwick Industries.”

Deirdre slipped into the chair in front of the panel, setting the Ethereal Blade carefully on an empty table beside it.

Through the window, she had a great perspective on Original Sin. When it was hopping, she should have been able to see the stage where a DJ might sit, as well as the dancers below. She would have been able to control the lighted floor and the sound system, too.

But right now all she could see was a silver forest and a lot of magical mist.

“Okay,” Deirdre said, rubbing her hands together. Runes had been added to the control panel. That must have meant that she could control the magic with it rather than the sound system.

Her companions were out there somewhere, possibly along with an unseelie queen. She just needed to find them.

Deirdre flipped a switch.

The forest outside the window disappeared, revealing the normal club.

The change was so immediate as to be shocking. It wasn’t accompanied by any of the usual swirling and distortion that she got out of unseelie magic. It was like changing a channel on the TV.

She flipped another switch, and the icy stalagmites returned. Her heart leaped when she realized that Vidya was fighting down there, surrounded by four different unseelie.

Deirdre leaped to the door and flung it open.

Icy wind blasted her in the face. It sucked the breath out of her lungs.

And there was nothing outside except endless silver forest.

“What the…?”

She stepped back in to look out the window. She could see Vidya fighting through the glass. But when she went to the door, she only saw forest.

Deirdre frowned and shut the door, returning to give a harder stare to the control panel.

“Magic and technology,” she muttered, running her hands over the sliders without manipulating them. A phoenix might have been closer to sidhe than shifter, but she still had no idea what to do with the magic.

She’d just need to experiment.

Deirdre pressed a couple of random buttons, and Vidya disappeared, along with the stalagmites.

Magic flashed on the other side of the window. She glimpsed a crystalline ice castle, a frozen ocean, a starry expanse.

And then she pressed a button that made a man appear on the dance floor in front of the booth.

Melchior.

Where he stood, the ice had melted under his shoes, exposing concrete. His shoulders steamed.

A massive monolith rested behind him, which Deirdre hadn’t seen elsewhere in the club until that moment. It was opaque, like granite, but carved into a shape like a diamond. The sight of it filled her with strange, preternatural dread.

Deirdre understood instinctively that she’d found what she was looking for.

Somehow, the unseelie queen was trapped inside that monolith.

The dragon shifter beckoned to Deirdre. His mouth moved, and even though she couldn’t hear him, she could tell what he was saying.

“Come and get me.”

Deirdre went to the door again. When she opened it, she found the same view outside the door as she had seen outside the window: a long stretch of ice so shiny that it was almost a mirror, a few silver trees, the monolith, and one dragon.

She didn’t step down the stairs yet. “Is that where you put her?” Her voice carried over the magicked landscape.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Melchior said.

“Sure, and I’m the Alpha in charge of all shifters.”

His eyebrows arched. “You could be, if you wanted.”

A shiver traced down her spine that had nothing to do with the wind.

Deirdre reached into the sound booth to curl her fingers around the hilt of the Ethereal Blade again. She tucked it against her side, careful not to let Melchior see.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen Kristian around?” Melchior asked. “Rhiannon sent him to greet you.”

Deirdre feigned ignorance, plastering an innocent expression on her face. “What a shame. I must have missed him.”

She slipped down the stairs on unsteady legs, keeping herself angled so that Melchior wouldn’t be able to see that she was holding the Ethereal Blade. He would know that she had some kind of weapon—he wasn’t stupid—but she hoped he’d think it was a gun.

As she grew closer to the monolith, it started throbbing harder. Her eyes tracked around the runes. She wished that she had Stark’s eye for magic. It meant nothing to her. None of it.

But what had he said about magic? You didn’t need to know anything about it to figure out which part of the spell was critical, which piece couldn’t be replaced, which cog the machine needed in order to run. Witches would always show off their best work. They’d be showy about it.

Deirdre could use the Ethereal Blade to break the spell down.

When she drew nearer to the monolith, Melchior moved forward, forcing her to sidestep in order to keep out of his reach.

His eyes burned through her, hungry and wanting. “Stark is still fighting in this forest, caught in the labyrinth of my queen’s magic. But you aren’t. You found me.”

He wasn’t even trying to figure out what she was hiding behind her back. His eyes were fixed to his favorite body parts, the ones that he’d been eager to get those scaly hands all over in the Winter Court.

Now that Deirdre was closer, she could see that the monolith wasn’t truly opaque. There was the shadow of a woman frozen inside of it, encased like a ruby trapped in amber.

The queen.

The monolith was also scored with sword marks. Each scratch was an inch deep and had flowers frozen to it.

Kristian had tried to cut his way through the stone to reach the queen using the Ethereal Blade, but even the blessed sword hadn’t been able to cut through that monolith. Ofelia was truly a powerful sidhe. Powerful enough to rival the angels. And she must have chosen to trap herself in stone rather than allow Melchior to kill her.

“I found the queen,” Deirdre said. “I’m here for her, not for you. But you haven’t been able to get inside. Right?”

“I don’t need to get inside now that you’re here.” His lips curved into a ruthless smile. “You’re still marked for the sluagh, and it’s a single-minded creature. It will hunt you until you’re absorbed, my little heron. And now it will follow you into Original Sin to the unseelie queen.” He spread his arms wide. It was a gesture of victory, like celebrating a touchdown. “I had worried I wouldn’t find a way to kill Ofelia, but you’ve fixed that.”

Deirdre’s heart contracted.

He must have been bluffing. The sluagh wouldn’t be able to kill the unseelie queen—it was an unseelie beast. She would be immune to it. Right?

She didn’t want to consider what it might have meant if he wasn’t bluffing.

Melchior continued. “I could still save you by taking you into the Winter Court with me. You really are perfect—powerful, ruthless, deadly. Life as my concubine would be very…pleasant.”

His tone dropped on the last word, going deep, throbbing, like hands stroking the inside of Deirdre’s body.

She shivered. It was a pleasant shiver, totally unlike the one she got from proximity to the monolith.

Deirdre forced a confident grin. “I don’t see why I have to be the pet. What about this idea? You can be my concubine. I’ve always wanted a dragon.”

He slithered around the nearest tree, the muscles of his abdomen flexing in sinuous lines. “What would you do if I took you up on that offer, my little heron?”

“Aren’t you loyal to Rhiannon?”

“Dragons are moody,” Melchior said. “I’m loyal to my whims.”

Deirdre shivered again, one long shudder after another. The heat of their bodies interacted, pushing their temperature higher and higher. Like they were going to set fire to the iron forest just by looking at each other.

The monolith responded to their heat, too. The surrounding runes glowed more brightly. The air hummed with power.

“I’m the only one who’s seen you in your animal form,” he said. “I’m the only one who knows you as a shifter. Truly knows you. My whims pull me to you. I might be willing to follow those whims away from Rhiannon under the right circumstances.”

Gods, but Melchior was an awfully pretty man, all hard lines and muscle and scales.

Sure, he was with the unseelie. Sure, he’d dedicated most of his life to being a sadist, inflicting pain on Stark. And sure, he didn’t have any sign of Stark’s only redeeming quality: his principles.

Melchior’s only interest was pure self-satisfaction. And maybe Deirdre’s satisfaction, too.

He could make her shapeshift. He could probably make her do a lot of other amazing things, too.

Deirdre would have been lying if she said she didn’t want Melchior. Her eyes tracked down his exposed flesh to the line of darker scales that vanished into his waistband. On any other man, that would have been soft hair. What Niamh had always called a “happy trail.”

“If you agreed to take a compulsion from Stark, I’d take you,” Deirdre said. “I mean, our vision for the happy future of gaeans includes everyone. Even shifters like you.”

“Dragons?”

“Bastards who have betrayed their kind in the pursuit of power.”

“You cut me deep,” Melchior said.

She hadn’t cut him deep yet, but she would.

The Ethereal Blade was chilly in her hand. It was impatient. It wanted to be wielded, not hidden.

“If you’ll dedicate yourself to our cause, and if you’ll take a command from Stark to make sure we can trust you, then I’ll let you live,” she said. “You don’t even need to be my concubine. I was joking about that part.”

“I wasn’t,” Melchior said.

Those two words were enough to make her lower belly clench and her knees go weak.

Yeah, he was really hot.

She kept the sword behind her back as Melchior closed the distance between them. He moved like he was nothing but spine and muscle, serpentine, masculine but graceful.

They stood only a few inches away from the outer ring of runes now. The sheer power of it tingled over Deirdre’s skin.

“Consent to compulsion from Stark?” Melchior mused, stroking the backs of his knuckles over Deirdre’s cheek. His breath was hot on her face. The contact of skin on skin smoldered.

“That’s all you gotta do,” she said.

“He would use that compulsion to force me to free Ofelia, wouldn’t he?”

“That’s the cost of your life. Yes. I need her alive in order to make the election happen.”

“Did he tell you what happened the last time that I accepted his compulsion?” Melchior asked.

“He didn’t want to talk about it.” She was leaning into him despite herself, pressing her hips and belly to his, seeking more contact from the only creature she’d ever met who burned as hot as she did.

His head dipped toward hers. “I’m not surprised. Why would Stark want you to know that he commanded me to abduct his daughters?”

Shock washed over her, even more unpleasant than all the radiating magic and the cold. “He made you abduct his kids?”

“I am a terrible man who has done terrible things, but the worst thing was dragging two screaming girls away from their mother at the command of the father who hates them. I would rather die than let that bastard compel me again,” he whispered, his lips slithering against hers. The dry leather of his tongue flicked against her chin.

Her heart was pounding through her whole body, from crown to fingertips and toes.

Why would Stark have done that? Did it change anything?

Not with Melchior.

I would rather die than let that bastard compel me again.

“So be it,” Deirdre whispered back.

She turned her head a fraction of an inch so that they kissed. He tasted like cinnamon and curry. His tongue was inhumanly agile, and Deirdre could only imagine what kind of things he could do with that.

Some of the tension drained from Melchior at the kiss. Fire blazed between them, the heat of a phoenix warring with the heat of a dragon.

She let the Ethereal Blade fall to her side, angling the tip up at his ribs.

Melchior didn’t even notice.

His hand slipped to the back of her head, tangling in her hair. Even though she’d almost bitten his tongue out before, he wasn’t guarded—if anything, it only made him more aggressive, biting at her lips, hard enough that she felt the sharp edge of his fangs. He was on the brink of cutting her.

A groan rolled through Deirdre’s chest. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and brought the short blade of the falchion close to his skin.

She’d only have one shot. She needed to make it count.

A roar shook the silver forest.

Melchior leaped back, out of her reach, mouth opening wide in a hiss. His burning eyes focusing on the origin of the growl.

Stark stood among the trees. He had seen them kissing. He was already halfway to his bear wolf form.

And he did not look happy.

Deirdre heaved a sigh. “Oh, for the love of—”

Melchior launched at Stark with a dragon’s shriek.

He was suddenly holding the triple-barreled golden revolver, even though he certainly hadn’t been wearing enough clothes to hide it. The gun didn’t look as ridiculously oversized in his hands as it had for Deirdre; it fit him comfortably, like an extension of his massive, muscular hands.

Arms lifting smoothly, he aimed the gun at Stark as the half-man, half-beast launched into the air.

Melchior’s finger squeezed the trigger.

“No!” Deirdre shouted.

A fireball blasted from all three cannons at once.

For a heart-stopping moment, she thought that the fireball was going to strike Stark in the face. Powerful or not, Stark wasn’t powerful enough to survive that strong a blast, that much fire, that deadly an attack.

But he jerked aside at the last moment.

He presented his flank instead of his skull. The concussive blast struck the center mass of his body. It consumed him in flames, devouring his fur, melting his flesh.

And he acted like he didn’t even feel it.

Stark sank his forepaws into Melchior’s chest. Claws sank into scaly pectorals. Hot blood spurted from the wounds, blazing hot, glowing in the darkness of the unseelie silver forest.

The force of Stark’s momentum carried both shifters into the trees.

Away from Deirdre.

If he had waited just five more seconds to growl, she would have killed Melchior already.

“Damn it,” she swore.

She didn’t chase them. She wasn’t going to get between a fighting dragon and bear wolf, not when she was finally alone with the monolith and its nauseatingly powerful magic.

Let them kill each other.

Deirdre stepped up to the edge of the circle to study the runes more closely. Some of them could have corresponded with the runes that she’d seen in the sound booth, but she wouldn’t know unless she went back to look. She didn’t know the runes well enough to remember them.

To break the spell, she just needed to stab the right part with the Ethereal Blade. Right?

“Right,” she said out loud.

Roars shook the silver forest. She couldn’t tell what noises belonged to dragon and which belonged to bear wolf, but judging by the fire among the silver trees, the fight wasn’t going in Stark’s favor. Once Melchior finished him off, he would come back for her.

She didn’t have time to figure out the spell—she had no idea what she was looking at anyway.

Deirdre thrust it into the ring of runes.

The Ethereal Blade ripped out of her hand. It whipped around, flipping a one-eighty, and shot past her.

Deirdre jerked an inch to the left. The blade cartwheeled past her.

The Ethereal Blade vanished among the silver trees, rejected by the powerful magic protecting the obelisk.

No wonder Kristian hadn’t been able to cut his way through it.

Melchior’s serpentine form rose from among the trees, climbing into the sky. Deirdre had no idea what he was really doing—he couldn’t be flying within Original Sin, not unless it had suddenly become a thousand times more spacious on the inside, but it looked like he was flying.

He roared, shooting a pillar of flame from his mouth into the air.

Stark must have been down.

And Deirdre was out of time.

The monolith was covered in ice. Deirdre was a creature of fire. She should have been able to burn it away—if she could just summon her flame powers.

She stepped over the circle of power. The magic didn’t recognize her as a threat, so it didn’t fling her into the trees the way that it had with the sword. It even allowed her to press her frigid hands against the ice encasing it.

The stone was so cold that her skin adhered to it. The phoenix inside recoiled.

Melchior landed to the ground behind her, shaking all of Original Sin. His heat radiated at her back.

“Come on,” she whispered. “Do something right for once. Please.”

Why couldn’t she turn into a phoenix? Why couldn’t she shift without Melchior’s help? Why couldn’t she control her anger?

If she changed, she could save the queen, save the election, save the gaeans.

Melchior roared again. Deirdre braced herself to be consumed by dragonfire, digging her fingers into the ice, squeezing her eyes shut.

It didn’t happen.

She peered over her shoulder.

Melchior’s back was to her. He was attacking something coming from the opposite direction that she couldn’t see—the club over there was too dark, and the vibration of magic seemed to distort the trees.

No, it wasn’t darkness.

There was too much movement within that darkness. Even at that distance, Deirdre could make out the thrashing of skeletal hands as shadow consumed the silver forest. Melchior’s roar drowned out everything else, but she knew there would be screaming within the shadow.

For a moment, she was eight years old again, hiding underneath the blackberry bushes in her hometown. The Genesis void was closing in on her. Darkness and death consumed the world.

But this wasn’t the end of the world. This was a soul-consuming sentient monster that wanted to destroy Deirdre.

“Tombs!”

She turned to see Everton Stark holding the triple-barreled dragon revolver in both hands.

There was no time to be relieved by the realization he had survived.

He was aiming that gun right at her.

Deirdre didn’t think Stark would shoot her. If he wanted her dead so quickly, there were a thousand other times he could have tried to kill her, even commanding her heart to simply stop.

But this was the man who had ordered a dragon to kidnap his own children. What did Deirdre truly know about Stark?

Only that her reflexes weren’t quite as good as his.

She leaped away the instant that she realized that he was aiming the dragon revolver at her, and that was a full instant after he had already squeezed the trigger.

A fireball erupted from the gun. It seemed to move slowly through the winter-bitten air, but Deirdre was slower. Her boots couldn’t seem to propel her across the ice. Her heart seemed to be frozen between beats.

The fireball blazed over her left shoulder. She smelled burning hair.

It impacted the monolith.

The rock cracked from ground to its tip with the sound of a femur snapped in half. And then it fractured completely.

The force of the explosion sent Deirdre flying.

Her body hurtled past Melchior. She smashed into a silver tree behind his thrashing tail, hard enough to shake ice out of its branches. She hit the ground in a ball, throwing her arms over her head for protection as shattered rock pelted her and ice pinged to the ground.

A tentacle thrashed over her head. The sluagh seized upon the tree she had struck, ripping it from the ice.

Fluid spattered around her. Deirdre rolled away.

Melchior stomped toward her, melting ice under his massive heels, concrete cracking under his weight.

The stench of sulfur bore down upon her. His tongue thrashed between his fangs.

Deirdre was trapped between a sluagh and dragon.

She couldn’t think, couldn’t escape, couldn’t even shout to Stark one last time.

“Stop.”

The voice was calm and echoing, even more powerful than Stark’s voice. Deirdre heard it through her whole body. It bored right through her skull and pounded into her brain.

Stop.

All of Original Sin grew still.

Deirdre peered from under her arm. Through Melchior’s legs, she glimpsed a woman standing among the rubble of the monolith, which had been destroyed by the dragon revolver. She was brown-skinned, a little lighter in tone than Deirdre, with her dark hair woven into thick braids that fell around her shoulders. She was naked. Her skin was like jewels. Caramel diamonds.

Stark hadn’t been aiming for Deirdre. He had identified the weak point in the spell containing the unseelie queen and taken action to destroy it. Deirdre had merely been standing in the way.

And he’d freed Ofelia Hawke.

Her head fell back, arms spread wide, and it seemed like she embraced the club. Like she folded the entire building and all of its millions of layers of magic into her arms, despite the fact it was impossibly huge and she was no bigger than the average woman.

The silver trees, sky, and ice vanished.

Deirdre was inside of a darkened club. Everything was concrete. There was a bar against the wall, along with a few couches and tables. Ordinary furnishings. An incredibly ordinary building.

A building too small for the bulk of a dragon’s body and a sluagh engorged with vampire souls.

Something hard pressed against Deirdre’s shin. She was suddenly lying beside Geoff, who was blue with cold even though Original Sin was suddenly a very pleasant seventy degrees.

Vidya and Ember were on the upper catwalk, frozen in mid-fight, fists lifted and wings flared.

Stark stood against the wall.

And the Ethereal Blade was only inches from Deirdre’s fingers.

The unseelie queen drew all of the magic into herself piece by piece until she radiated with the power of it. She looked so impossibly huge. She never should have fit within the country, much less a single club.

Melchior growled. Deirdre could make out actual consonant sounds in the rumbling of his dragon voice. He was saying, “Ofelia.”

“Come to me,” she said.

The sluagh drew into itself, dwindling down to the size of a human being. It squealed as it shrank. It twisted with agony.

The queen repeated herself. “Come to me.”

Deirdre jerked her knees to her chest, getting her legs out of the way. The sluagh shot past her. It stained the concrete floor with its acidic blood as it raced to Ofelia’s open arms.

“No!” Deirdre cried.

Melchior had said that the sluagh could kill its masters. That was why Rhiannon didn’t let it into the Winter Court anymore.

It would murder Ofelia.

But there was nothing that Deirdre could do to stop it. Ofelia had summoned the unseelie creature to her, and now it collided with its queen.

Deirdre didn’t see what happened after that. Melchior was rounding on her, and if she thought that he’d been frightening before, it was nothing compared to how he looked now. Flames glowed on his scales. His heat built, filling Original Sin until it felt like an oven.

He rounded on her, serpentine neck lowering his head, mouth opening wide.

His jaw snapped.

Deirdre rolled out of the way just in time. A fang grazed the toe of her boot, leaving a deep furrow.

She scrambled across the floor. Grabbed the Ethereal Blade.

Melchior dropped on her, and Deirdre drove the Ethereal Blade upward, aiming it between two of the hand-sized scales on Melchior’s breast.

It plunged deep into his leathery skin. The sword heated instantly.

He flung his head back, mouth opening in what should have been a roar. But instead of a scream escaping him, there only came flowers. Whole fistfuls of blossoms dribbled over his jaws.

But he didn’t die.

He thrashed, he bled blossoms, but he didn’t die.

Melchior’s movements wrenched the Ethereal Blade out of Deirdre’s hands. He launched into the air, wings pumping, struggling to gain altitude as blood and vines poured from his belly and mouth, frothing with flame.

The sword that could kill anything wasn’t taking the dragon down.

He smashed into the catwalk. Metal shrieked and snapped. Vidya dragged Ember to safety as the dragon exploded through the roof of Original Sin, ripping a hole open that let in fresh night air and rain. He dripped flowers and fire in his wake.

Melchior vanished with the Ethereal Blade, and the club was silent.

XVIII

Nothing moved in Original Sin.

For a moment, Deirdre and Stark could only stare at each other from across the dance floor. The triple-barreled revolver smoked in his grip. His clothes were torn by multiple changes into his animal form and back again. There was a huge gash on his chest from right shoulder to left hip, so deep that it exposed a glistening inch of rib. It wasn’t healing.

He was breathing hard, fists clenched, radiating fury.

Melchior was lost to him again.

The shattered remnants of the monolith smoldered between them. Most of the runes had exploded, vanishing from the floor. Half of the roof had fallen on the crystal’s fragments. The dust was settling like snow, tinting the rubble in colorless gray.

“What the hell?” Deirdre asked. Her voice was hoarse. She must have been screaming at some point during the fight without realizing it.

“I could ask the same of you.” He emptied the bullets from the revolver. “I saw what you did.”

She didn’t have the energy to defend her kiss with Melchior. She didn’t even care. “Shove it into your tailpipe, Stark.” Deirdre turned Geoff over, checking for a pulse. His heart was still beating. “Vidya?”

“We’re fine.” The valkyrie had landed on the rubble from the roof with Ember.

“Take Geoff and get out,” Stark said in a low, dangerous voice. Deirdre moved to pick him up. “Not you, Tombs.”

She stepped back to allow Vidya access to Geoff’s unconscious form. The valkyrie was strong enough to carry him in her arms and still support Ember as she led them out of the club.

Deirdre had never felt quite so afraid of being alone with Stark as she did in that moment. Not even when she had first joined his pack, before he had feelings for her.

There was murder in that man’s eyes.

She twitched when he stepped up to the monolith’s fragments. He wasn’t attacking her, though. He began hauling pieces of roof away.

“Help me,” he said.

Deirdre was exhausted and cold, but she did. She tossed as much of the debris aside as she could. Inch by inch, they exposed the remaining runes that had contained the true queen of the unseelie, which were stained with the blood of the sluagh.

And then they found her, crushed underneath part of the roof.

“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no…”

Ofelia Hawke was a beautiful woman, even in death. Her long fingernails were painted with tiny, delicate vines, and her pinky nail had been pierced. A gold charm in the shape of a heart dangled from the tip. Her sculpted eyebrows were narrow, high, and arched. Her lips were dark red without any sign of lipstick.

But she was dead. Her heart didn’t beat and she didn’t glimmer with unseelie magic.

Deirdre pushed the debris away with new strength, then rolled the queen halfway over to look at her back, expecting to find blood. There was none. “How? There’s no wound. She looks fine.”

Stark peeled back one of her eyelids. The pupil was white. “The sluagh got her.”

“Gods, no.” Deirdre sat back, cradling her head in her hands. “This is bad. This is so bad.” Gods only knew where Melchior had limped off to die with the Ethereal Blade. The true queen was dead. The seelie would take that as an act of war. Rylie would blame Deirdre, and there would be no election.

The only thing that hadn’t gone wrong that night was that Deirdre had survived, but she wasn’t sure how long she would stay that way when Stark was looking at her like that.

“What is this?” Stark asked, shifting a piece of the crystal that had entombed Ofelia aside. He revealed a puddle of sluagh blood. There were fresh runes scrawled in the acidic fluids, along with two English words. Seven horrible letters scrawled with messy urgency: Kill her.

Ofelia had painted them with her fingertips before dying, her soul sucked into the mass of the sluagh.

“Did she try to cast a spell before the sluagh took her?” Deirdre asked. She reached out to touch the runes.

Her hand vanished in midair.

Deirdre jerked back with a gasp. Her hand reappeared, fingertips blue with cold. She stuck them in her mouth to warm them.

“A portal.” Stark gathered a handful of dust and tossed it into the air over Ofelia’s runes. Some of it floated to the ground. Much more of it vanished, etching out a large oval in the zero space. “She created a portal to the Winter Court so that we could go through it and kill Rhiannon.” The fevered murder in his eyes had gone distant as he imagined his wife’s death.

Deirdre caught his arm. “You can’t go in there.”

“You can’t stop me,” Stark said, his voice silken and deadly.

“There is so much we have to fix here. I’m going to be arrested. There’s going to be war.” She gripped him tightly, digging her fingernails into his bicep. “And I have so many questions for you.”

“You’ll handle everything here fine,” Stark said.

He tried to enter the portal. Deirdre held him back.

“Melchior told me what you did to your daughters. What you did to him.”

His eyes narrowed. “Is that a question?”

“How could you?”

“You don’t know me at all. I don’t need to explain myself.” Stark rested his hand on hers, squeezing her back. “Listen to me. I’m in love with you, Tombs. You make me weak in a thousand deadly ways. But even that will not stop me from getting the vengeance I deserve. Nothing on this Earth will stop me.”

Deirdre’s jaw dropped. “You’re what?”

She was so shocked that she forgot to hold on to him.

He lifted the triple-barreled revolver, as if to say goodbye. And then he leaped into the portal that the unseelie queen had created in the blood of the sluagh.

Everton Stark vanished.

An orange-tinted sun rose on the smoldering buildings of Chelsea. Deirdre watched it from a rooftop opposite the building that used to be Original Sin, accompanied by Vidya, Geoff, and Ember, who sat in haunted silence.

None of them felt right in Stark’s absence. He was akin to the star that had guided the Magi to the firstborn son of God—a vision in the desert, the path to destiny.

Now he was gone.

Deirdre had risked her life to save that election. She had risked everything, and she had failed. The riots would continue. The seelie would go to war. And Stark hadn’t even cared enough to stick around. She wasn’t surprised, not exactly, but she was…exhausted. That was probably the best word for it.

His last words lingered with her. You make me weak in a thousand deadly ways.

“I’m sick of it,” she said. The sound of her voice startled her. She hadn’t meant to speak. It had slipped out.

Vidya was sitting beside her, the length of her body warm against Deirdre’s. “What?”

“I can’t do one damn thing right,” Deirdre said. “Every time I try to fix something, it goes wrong. I wanted to help people. I wanted to save lives. But there’s nothing but death wherever I go, and this election isn’t going to happen.”

“It’ll happen,” Geoff said. “We couldn’t stop it if we tried.”

“But it’s meaningless without Stark.”

Ember rubbed his chin, shaded by thick brown stubble. “Is it? Do we even need him?”

“He’s the one with the compulsion,” Deirdre said.

“I wasn’t compelled to leave the safe house the other night. He freed me, but I joined with the pack because I believe in what he stands for, and we don’t need him to keep chasing that dream.” The way that Ember was looking at Deirdre made her uncomfortable—like she was in charge, like she was a leader.

Like she didn’t ruin everything she touched.

“I’ll help,” Vidya said.

“Help with what?” Deirdre asked.

“Anything you need.”

Such an offer from a valkyrie was powerful. Deirdre would have been crazy to refuse.

Too bad she had no idea what she needed.

She wrapped her arms around her knees, gazing at the shimmering orange sun as it lifted between the buildings across the way, bathing the rubble in sickly light.

“You can’t give me what I need,” Deirdre said softly.

She needed control of her animal. Safety from her enemies. And most importantly, an honest, legitimate election.

There wasn’t much that Deirdre could do about the election. Even if Stark had remained on Earth rather than chasing his wife into the Middle Worlds, he had told her that he’d prefer that Deirdre die rather than participate. She couldn’t betray him without revealing that she wasn’t vulnerable to his compulsion. It was the only weapon she still had against him.

But what did it matter now if he didn’t want to participate in the election?

Stark was gone. He wouldn’t know if she survived defying his order until he returned—if he ever returned.

And with Stark in the Middle Worlds, there would be others who could follow Deirdre into battle. She was Stark’s Beta. As far as the vampires and allied packs knew, her command was as good as Stark’s.

Her mind whirled with half-formed ideas. Attacks on government installations, protests, support for the Gaean Citizens for Democracy. Ridiculous things that wouldn’t work, no matter how many people she had on her side.

Deirdre didn’t need all of those people to help her.

There was still one thing she could do that might save the election.

“Nobody knows that he’s gone,” she said softly.

“What’s that?” Geoff asked.

Instead of responding, Deirdre stood. “Go back to the high-rise. Tell everyone to get ready for me.”

“Where are you going?” Ember asked.

She turned into the sun. She might not have had wings, but bathed in its light, she felt like she was on fire. “I’m going to make a statement.”

Deirdre didn’t have to break into the United Nations to get Rylie’s attention again.

All she had to do was go public.

There were new cameras at the safe house three blocks down, on the north end of Chelsea. The entry booth was unstaffed, but someone would be watching those cameras day and night.

Deirdre walked up to the fence outside of the safe house. She waved her arms over her head.

Minutes later, black SUVs with OPA license plates arrived to pick her up.

It was strange entering the United Nations building with an official escort, especially when the light of recognition filled guards’ eyes. It hadn’t been long since she had entered the building illegally, scaling its side to enter the dock at the top. Many of the people present that morning had been there on the day that she attacked, too.

They took her up a glass elevator. The sky outside was steely gray with smoke that billowed past the windows. New York City continued to burn into the morning. The OPA had yet to gain control of the riots.

Secretary Friederling was on the forty-second floor, surrounded by assistants and stylists who were helping him prepare for a televised speech. “Leave us,” he said the instant he noticed Deirdre, and the man doing his makeup walked away.

“Getting ready to explain away your seelie sex party?” Deirdre asked, drumming her fingers on her folded arms.

“I don’t need to. What happened at Original Sin? Did you save her?”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. “She’s dead. The Ethereal Blade is gone. I failed.”

The secretary sighed and pulled out his phone. “Gods damn it all. We need to get the seelie guards off Rylie immediately. Donne and Leah will know soon, and we need to revoke their security clearance before they try to retaliate.”

“So what are you going to do?” Deirdre asked. “What statement are you making?”

“Apparently, I’m announcing that the deal surrounding the oath has failed. There won’t be an election.” He surveyed her coolly. “I’m surprised you’ve surrendered yourself to arrest so readily. I didn’t expect you to be cooperative. Looking forward to a very long vacation in solitary confinement?”

“No.” She swallowed hard. “Let me on camera. The seelie are still polling low, and I think I killed the unseelie Alpha last night. The only real, legitimate competitors are Stark and Rylie.”

He lowered his phone slowly. “What are you saying?”

“I want to take you up on your offer, if it’s still good. I want to make that statement that says Stark is participating in the election.”

To his credit, he barely registered surprise. “That might quell the riots. But only until Stark refutes your statement.”

Deirdre felt numb. “He won’t make trouble.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” she asked. “The only question is, is the deal still good? Will you let me make this statement and walk free?”

“You’re not stupid, Ms. Tombs. What a pleasant surprise.” Secretary Friederling gestured to summon his makeup artist again. “Prepare her for the cameras.”

It must have taken almost an hour to get her makeup and clothes done. They swapped out her destroyed, bloody shirt for a clean black t-shirt. It also took a long time for speechwriters to prepare something for her to say.

Then she was standing in front of a green screen. And people were filming her.

Deirdre grimaced into the brilliant, shining lights, and wondered if Stark’s stomach got all knotted and queasy when he was preparing to make a statement, too. If he did, he hid the feeling well. She hoped that she was hiding it well, too. After all the time she’d spent pretending to be on Stark’s side in the asylum, she should have been able to fake any emotion, no matter how disingenuous.

She could barely see the camera that was filming her. She couldn’t see any of the crew waiting behind the camera. But she could see the teleprompter, and the blue words that were poised halfway up the screen, waiting for her to begin speaking.

“Ready when you are,” the cameraman said.

Deirdre looked at those first few words.

I am Deirdre Tombs, Beta to Everton Stark, who has…

The rest of the statement was waiting to scroll up.

If she said those words out loud, then Stark would truly never forgive her. He already hated her for making him weak. For making him fall in love with her.

She might as well find an empty grave and crawl into it.

But she thought of the pathetic little polling station at the abandoned elementary school, and Darryl’s hopeful eyes, and Mallory’s vain words of hope. They were taking a truly pathetic and underfunded shot at democracy for gaeans.

Pathetic, underfunded, and…well, kind of inspirational.

Those were the kinds of people the country needed. Not visionaries like Stark, who saw a body count as the solution to every problem. Not Deirdre, who failed at everything she did. Not Melchior and Rhiannon, who only wanted power for the sake of power.

Democracy. True democracy.

“Ms. Tombs?” The prompt came from Secretary Friederling. Even though she couldn’t see him, she knew his voice.

She cleared her throat, blinked into the light, and began to speak.

“I am Deirdre Tombs, Beta to Everton Stark, who has made it clear he plans to seize the role of Alpha from Rylie Gresham.” She only stumbled over the scrolling words a little bit. They were faster than she expected. When she paused, the teleprompter did too, and it didn’t continue until she resumed speaking. “He’s come to realize that violence…”

Violence isn’t truly the answer to the problems our country faces.

That was what it said on the teleprompter.

Deirdre didn’t need to see the rest of the words to know that she wasn’t going to be able to say them. The statement on the teleprompter was wrong on so many levels.

“Everton Stark is running for Alpha,” she finally said. “He’s joined the election and taken the oath. Not because he’s violating his principles, but because he knows what matters. This country, and this world, belongs to the gaeans. It belongs to the people, not to the politicians who throw decadent parties and pretend it’s diplomacy. The sidhe want you to riot. They want you to destabilize this election because they know they can’t win fairly. All they want is your blood, but Stark wants to free you.

“That’s why you should elect Everton Stark when you go to your local polling station. A vote for him means placing control where it should be. With you.”

The teleprompter had frozen when she went off-script. The staff exchanged uneasy looks behind the camera.

She plucked the microphone off her lapel, got off the bench, and walked away.

The back of her neck prickled as she left the set. Nobody stopped her. She’d given Secretary Friederling what he wanted.

And now there was a target on her back. Stark was going to kill her.

Deirdre could feel it coming.

War of the Alphas Book 4

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