Fae knowledge and hundreds of thousands of years of existing had given him a distinct advantage. He knew where to look for the things he wanted and how to use them when he found them.
He’d discovered two of the Silvers at an auction house in London, risked Cruce’s terrible curse, and found his way into Unseelie, where he’d made a pact with the mercenary Hunters to help him regain what was rightfully his and had been wrongfully taken from him: his essential Fae nature.
He trained with a warlock in London, from whom he stole precious copies of pages torn from the Sinsar Dubh, which he’d then traded to Barrons in exchange for a crash course in the Druid arts at which Darroc had excelled, gifted as he was with Fae intellect and understanding of the cosmos.
“Why didn’t Barrons just take the pages from you?”
“We pursued a common agenda for a time. He doesn’t kill anyone he thinks might prove useful in the future.”
Mercenary to the core. Sounded like the man I knew. “What is he?”
“Consider instead what he is not. He is not the one that hunted me down for what I did to you. Doesn’t that tell you enough, MacKayla? You are a tool to him. His tool works again. He is satisfied.”
“How did pages get torn from the Sinsar Dubh?” I changed the subject swiftly. If I ignored the knife he’d just driven through my heart, maybe it would go away.
He shrugged. He had no idea. They’d served their purpose. Now he needed the real thing. He’d continued collecting power wherever it could be found. The Hunters taught him to eat lesser Unseelie, to protect his fragile mortal existence.
“Why would they help you?”
“I promised them freedom. And I gave it to them.” He was an Unseelie hero, he told me, and soon the Seelie would recognize him as such, too. Yes, he had disobeyed his queen. So had many others, who’d never been punished so harshly. Had the crime he’d committed merited a death sentence? There were other Seelie who felt as he did, who wanted a return to the Old Ways. His only crime had been trying to bring about what many of them secretly longed for. He should have been rewarded for standing up for his brethren. Even humans resisted doling out such a horrific punishment, and their blink-of-an-eye lives were so comically short they were worthless. He’d lost eternity, for a single broken rule. He wanted it back. Was that so wrong?
I made a hand gesture when he paused.
“I have not seen that one before,” he said.
“Miniature record player, playing ‘My Heart Bleeds for You.’ I should care about this why? You made me Pri-ya.” I narrowed my eyes, studying him. Had he been the fourth? Had this monster touched me?
“You made you Pri-ya. I gave you other options. You refused them.”
“Do you really think the Unseelie will continue to obey you now that they’re no longer imprisoned?”
“I freed them. I am their king now.”
“So, what’s keeping one of them from killing you and going after the Book, himself?”
“They’re too drunk on freedom to see beyond the moment. They feast. They fuck. They don’t think.”
“You never know. One of them might snap out of it. Rulers get toppled all the time. Look at what you were trying to do to your queen.”
“I have Cruce’s amulet. They fear it.”
“How long do you expect that to last? You’re not even Fae.”
“I will be again, as soon as I get the Book.”
“Assuming one of them doesn’t kill you first.”
He waved a dismissive hand. “The Unseelie do not wish to rule. After an eternity in hell they wish only to be free to indulge their hungers.” His face went hard and cold as marble. “But I will not explain my race to a mere human.”
At that moment, I could clearly see the icy, imperious Fae he’d once been and would be again, given half a chance. He claimed to have been changed by his experience with mortality. If, indeed he had—and there was plenty of doubt in my mind on that score—I could too easily see him changing back, in a heartbeat. “You’re pretty ‘mere’ yourself right now, bud. Cannibalizing your own race. I’ve heard the Seelie court has a special, horrific punishment for that.”
“Then you’d better hope they don’t find out about you, Mac -Kayla,” he said coolly.
We stared at each other a long moment, then he tossed his long hair and flashed me a smile meant to charm. In another time and place, had I not known who and what he was, it probably would have worked. He was a beautiful, cultured, powerful man, and the jagged scar on his face made him all the more intriguing. I imagined Alina must have found him utterly fascinating when they’d first met. There wasn’t anything remotely like him in Ashford, Georgia.