The princes ascend the stairs, identical but for a few inches’ height difference. I realize I’m looking directly at them without weeping blood. I glance at Kat to see if it’s just me or if she, too, can regard them directly. She can. And is—with fascination.
“They’ve fed enough to gain control of themselves,” I say softly. When they first arrived in Dublin they were like rabid animals from long confinement and starvation, and flat-out terrifying. “They’re studying us, learning from us.” I get it: pacify the sheep before the slaughter. A panicked kill makes for a soured stew. These two, the worst of the Unseelie, are now the ultimate bad boys. Women will flock to them, lemmings on a suicide march over a cliff.
These are my rapists, the ones that turned me inside out, ripped my mind from my body and shredded it. They are also, unfortunately, hot as hell.
I want them dead.
Yes, yes, yes, KILL, the Book surges to life again.
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December; and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
The rhythm takes over. I roll the many internal rhymes and dazzling alliteration over my tongue silently while I assess the princes, building the syllables, brick by brick, into a mental wall.
My rapists are dressed like Barrons. Sleek. Masculine. Sexy. It pisses me off.
“Son of a bitch,” Kat says softly. Kat doesn’t curse. “Do you know how my girls will react to them? Cruce is bad enough.”
“Son of a bitch,” I agree.
Behind the balustrade, four long cherry tables make a square.
The Unseelie Princes take one side.
Barrons, Kat, and I take the opposite.
It’s all I can do to not lunge across the space separating us and attack them. Two things stay my hand: Barrons wants them alive, and I’m afraid I’ll black out again. Kat is vulnerably human.
After a few moments, Ryodan drops into a chair beside us, sandwiching Kat and me between a gentle hum of power. He pushes a hand through thick, dark hair, cut close at the sides, and assesses me with that clear, analytical gaze of his. I meet it impassively. His chiseled features are untouched by lines, and I’d guess him frozen in time, however he stopped aging, at about thirty, plus however many thousands of years he’s actually lived.
Like all of Barrons’s men, he’s powerfully muscled and sports multiple scars, the most prominent running from his jaw down his neck and over his chest. He appreciates the finer things in life and pursues them without scruple. I want to know the history these men will never tell me. Although an animal exists beneath each of their skins, Ryodan hides his the best. He’s the businessman of the Nine of whatever-they-are, managing financial concerns, maintaining their vast empire.
Barrons is the taciturn, primal leader of their small immortal army, the one to whom they all answer. He usually lets Ryodan do his talking. Probably because Barrons knows he would lose patience the moment one of his orders isn’t instantly obeyed and butcher everyone in sight. Ryodan excels at chess, crushes his opposition in five or fewer moves. Barrons eats the board, with blood for ketchup.
“Got a lot of Unseelie outside the bookstore, Mac,” Ryodan says.
“Got a lot inside Chester’s,” I rejoin coolly.
“He understands our needs,” one of the Unseelie Princes says.
“They don’t trail me everywhere I go,” Ryodan says.
“Then again you understand them, too, from personal experience,” the prince reminds me silkily.
I ignore it. “Guess you don’t smell as sweet,” I tell Ryodan.
“Or as rotten,” he returns.
“I’ve been testing wards on them.” Barrons puts the issue to swift rest.
Ryodan laughs but lets it go.
The six of us sit eyeing one another in silence. There is no air in the room, only hostility and rage. I breathe shallowly of it and slide my hand to the comforting hilt of my spear. And snatch it away, assaulted by horrific images again.
“You will remove the ward that prohibits our sifting, or you will take away her spear.” The taller of the princes speaks to Barrons, but his gaze is moving, hot, sexual, devouring, over my body.
Barrons goes so motionless next to me that for a moment I’m not sure he didn’t just vanish in that stealthy way of his. I inhale shallowly, wondering if this meeting is going to end before it even begins.
Then Barrons says softly, carefully, “Ms. Lane.” I feel the tension in his body, mirroring the same tightly coiled rage in mine.
“I’m not giving you my spear,” I say just as softly. “It can deal with it.” Time was, they could weave the illusion that they’d taken it from me, but I got wise to their trick and it doesn’t work on me anymore.