“I’m not trying to lead them. I’m showing them their options.” It was a lie, but a white one, and my heart was in the right place. I would lead them. One way or another. I raised my eyes from Rowena and addressed the crowd. “Does your Grand Mistress encourage you to explore your heritage? Does she help you hone your skills? Does she tell you anything about what’s going on? Or does she keep things all hush-hush with her secret council?” I paused heavily to emphasize what I was about to say next. “Do you know that iron hurts the Fae? That there are civilian troops—your average everyday humans in Dublin—who are actively hunting the Unseelie, doing our job, protecting the people who are still alive, shooting them with bullets of iron? Dani and I ran into a battalion of fifty last night. They were firing at the Hunters, driving them out of our city, while you slept behind the walls of this abbey. While you hid in safety, abandoning them to their fate. Is that who you are? Is that who you want to be?”
There was a moment of stunned silence, then a deafening cacophony of voices. Dani laid on the horn again. It took a full minute to silence them this time.
Kat stepped forward. “How are humans hunting them? They can’t see them.”
“Most of the Fae no longer hide behind glamour, Kat. You’d know that if she ever let you leave. They feel invincible, and why wouldn’t they? There are no sidhe-seers getting in their way, stopping them. But we can change that.”
“If we start hunting them, won’t the Fae just start concealing themselves with glamour again?”
I nodded. “Sure, it’ll get more dangerous. And we’ll need every special sidhe-seer talent we’ve got.”
“Then the humans will no longer be able to fight them,” she worried. “They won’t be able to reinforce us.” Fear underscored her words, and I understood it. How could a mere few hundred sidhe-seers with only two weapons hope to defeat an army of Unseelie?
I wanted to know what Rowena knew, so I watched her carefully when I told Kat, “Humans have found a way to open their eyes and see the Fae as we do.”
The crowd gasped. When Rowena’s expression didn’t change at all, I knew it was just one more weapon, like the sword and the spear, that she’d withheld from the women. “You knew!” I exploded. “You knew all along! And in the past two months, you never once considered using it to help defend our planet!”
“‘Tis old lore, and forbidden,” Rowena hissed. “You’ve no idea of the consequences!”
“I know what the consequences are if we don’t do it! We’ll lose our planet, piece by piece! Two billion are already gone, Rowena. How many more will you let die? How many lives do you consider expendable? It was our duty to protect the Sinsar Dubh! We didn’t. Now it’s our duty to fix this mess!”
“You knew there was a way to make the average human safer and you didn’t tell us?” Kat stared at Rowena. “All those families around the countryside that we’ve promised to protect and have lost, we could have taught to protect themselves?” Her eyes filled with tears. “For the love of Mary, Rowena, I lost my Sean and Jamie! I could have made them able to see the Unseelie? They could have defended themselves?”
“What she’s not telling you,” Rowena spat, “is that in order to see them, they must eat the living, immortal flesh of the dark Fae.”
Sidhe-seers gasped; some made choking noises. I understood that perfectly. Even when I’d been battling a growing addiction to it, it had still been revolting.
“What she’s not telling you,” Rowena continued, “is that eating it has unspeakable consequences! It’s addictive, and once a human begins they can’t stop. It changes the person. What would you expect cannibalizing the flesh of our dark enemy to do? It corrupts their very soul! Och, and is that the sentence you would have inflicted upon your innocent brothers, Katrina? Would you have seen them damned rather than dead?” Her voice rose, strong with fury. “What she’s not telling you, and should be if we’re discussing dark secrets being withheld, is that it was she who taught these humans to eat it, and she—”
“Who has eaten it herself,” I announced, before she could. “And you can kick the addiction. I did.” Score one for Rowena. As I suspected, she’d read my journal. I tried to rapidly mentally review it, to anticipate where else she might try to pull the rug out from under me. I’d poured my heart and soul into those pages. “Rowena says it changes you. I’m not so sure about that. Judge for yourself whether I’m ‘damned,’” I told them. “Judge for yourself whether the humans in Dublin who are fighting our war for us are truly any different for having done what was necessary to survive. Or continue blindly taking Rowena’s word for things. If I’m so damned, why am I the only sidhe-seer out there on the front lines doing something?”
“Hey.” Dani was suddenly on the hood of the bus, beside me. “What am I? Chopped liver?”
“Surf and turf,” I assured her. “Top-shelf whiskey.”
She grinned.
“Because she wants the Book herself,” Rowena accused, “that’s why she’s out there. So she can take power for herself.”
“Oh, balls,” I scoffed. “If that were true, I would have allied myself with the Unseelie long ago. The LM would never have had to turn me Pri-ya.”
“How do we know you’re not still?” Rowena demanded.
“I can walk,” I said dryly. “Pri-ya,” I told the women, “is a terrible thing to be. But not only did I recover from it, I’ve acquired some kind of immunity to sexual glamour. V’lane no longer has any death-by-sex Fae impact on me now.”
That got their attention.
“Look, you can face what’s out there and get stronger for it, or you can stay behind these walls and take orders until our planet is beyond saving. You want to talk about damned? Our entire race is, if we don’t do something about it!”
The women exploded again and turned to one another, talking frantically. I’d definitely stirred them up. I’d given them more information in a few short minutes than their Grand Mistress had in years. I’d made them feel more empowered than she’d ever let them feel.
Rowena gave me an icy look and turned to study her protégées.