Abruptly, I got graphic sex images in my brain! I’m hot and uncomfortable in my jeans. Bugger it all! R’jan is a prince, a death-by-sex Fae. He’s the one I sensed muting himself so as not to draw attention to his little entourage, but now that the crap’s hitting the fan, he’s going to use any weapon at his disposal. I guess he figures to mess me up to get to Ryodan.

But R’jan is staring at Ryodan like he expects it to be working on him. Huh? I thought they were hetero and their killer eroticism only worked on the opposite sex. I realize that was a stupid assumption. It’s just that I never saw the Unseelie princes around men and V’lane always kept it muted around humans. There’s no reason, whatever the mechanism, that it wouldn’t work on both genders.

“On your knees, human.” R’jan tosses his golden mane imperiously. “You will crawl before your king.”

Ryodan laughs. “Is that all you’ve got.”

I hang back, listening, not about to get closer. It’s all I can do to not start stripping. Aw, bugger, I am! My coat’s on the ground and I’m pulling up my shirt! I make a sound of protest but it doesn’t come out like that at all.

“Turn it off,” Ryodan says without even looking at me. “You’re distressing Dani. No one distresses Dani but me.”

“I said ‘kneel,’ ” R’jan says, like he can’t believe Ryodan is still standing there.

“And I said ‘fuck you.’ Turn it off or die.”

R’jan cuts it off so suddenly I’m shivering, cold and miserable, like I was just sunning by a pool then got an iceberg dropped on me.

“Why are you here,” Ryodan says.

R’jan says tightly, “What the fuck are you?”

Darn good question. I wonder it myself.

“If you answer me wrong one more time, your death.” He kicks Velvet’s lifeless body.

R’jan grimaces. Unlike Unseelie, Seelie expressions make sense to me. They’re similar to ours, I guess because they’ve spent so much time preying on us. “Something is killing our people.”

“I didn’t know you counted the Unseelie as yours.”

“It has visited … places other than Dublin. It has killed Seelie, too.”

“It’s been in Faery.”

“Twice. How dare an abomination enter our realm? Never has an Unseelie been suffered in Faery!”

The temperature drops and I tense, searching for a shimmer in the air. It was already colder near the church than in the rest of Dublin, but now the pages of the hymnals scattered around the street glisten with a thin sheen of ice. I see Ryodan looking around, too. Snow starts to fall. I realize R’jan’s temper is doing it at the same time Ryodan does. I brush snow off my bare shoulders, then I jerk, embarrassed. I was so riveted by stuff happening that I didn’t realize I’m only wearing my bra. I scoop up my clothes and yank my shirt over my head. I hate Fae.

To R’jan, I say, “Cruce lived in Faery for hundreds of thousands of years and you guys never figured it out. There’s an Unseelie in Faery for you, sitting right next to your queen. Wait!” I snicker. “I forgot. She wasn’t your queen either. She was human. Dudes, stupid much?”

“I will speak with you,” R’jan says to Ryodan, “when you make the runt be silent.”

I puff myself up, waiting for Ryodan’s defense.

“Be quiet, kid.”

I deflate.

“You’re certain it’s Unseelie,” Ryodan says to R’jan.

“I said it was,” I say indignantly.

“Unequivocally.”

“Like, I even used that exact word!”

“What is this ‘abomination?’ ” Ryodan says.

“We do not know. We have never needed to know about our foul brethren.”

“Yet you’re worried enough about it that you’re here. In a dark Dublin street. The new king of the Seelie himself.”

It seems to mollify R’jan to hear himself called the new king of the Seelie. He looks away and doesn’t say anything for a second. Then he shivers. “It brings final death to our kind.”

“Like the spear and the sword,” I say.

“I told you to shut her up.”

“Answer her.”

“She cannot understand what it is to be Fae.”

Ryodan doesn’t say a word. He takes one step forward and R’jan immediately takes one step back all smooth, like they’re doing a choreographed dance.

“One day, human—”

“You might want to rethink what you’re calling me.”

“—I will crush you beneath my heel and—”

“Until that fictitious day, you will answer me when I speak.” He steps over Velvet’s body, closing the distance between them.

R’jan steps back.

“How does ‘final death’ differ from what the sword does,” Ryodan says.

“Your puny brains were not fashioned to grasp the greatness of being D’Anu.”

Ryodan crosses his arms, waiting. Dude’s got some serious presence. I want to be like him when I grow up. “You’ll have no brain at all in three seconds. Two.”

R’jan says tightly, “The spear and sword end immortal life. They sever the connection that binds our matter together and scatter it to the wind.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Even if we die, that of which we are fashioned is still out there, blowing. We feel all our kindred through all time, impressions in the fabric of the universe. We are individual yet a skein, vast and glorious. You cannot know what it is to belong to such an enormous, divine entity. This … this … thing … whatever it is, is pruning our tree. It does more than merely unbind our matter. It scatters nothing to the wind. Nothing. It is as if those it takes have never been. Its victims are … erased. You cannot begin to perceive how painful that is for us. Death, even by the sword and spear, leaves us connected. This abomination is amputating our race, limb by limb!”