This begins and ends with Daigh.

My supposed father. The King of the Unseelie. Blake’s kidnapper and torturer. The murderer of my parents and Corbin. Every word out of his mouth so far had been a lie. He was right here in the same building as me, stripped of his magic and completely under my power.

And I had a motherfucking score to settle.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea—” Clara began, but as her eyes met mine, the words died on her lips. She nodded.

“I’m going with you,” Blake piped up.

Arthur opened his mouth to say something, but Flynn glared at him and he shut his mouth.

“We’re coming, too.” Aline squeezed Smithers’ hand.

Whatever. I didn’t care. I needed to get out of this room. I needed them all to stop attacking each other and talking about Corbin as if there was some possibility he was still alive. Rage had forced out the numbness, and I needed to do something with it before its fire consumed me from within. As much as I wanted to throttle every witch and human and fox in the room, this rage wasn’t for them. I needed to give it to the person who deserved it.

Ryan glanced from me to Blake to Aline, and then back to me again. He looked like he was going to protest, but then thought better of it. He shrugged. “Fine. Follow me.”

Ryan led us down another drab hall, through a thick glass and steel door into a temperature-controlled vaulted gallery filled with majestic paintings. Bright colors leered out of the walls, assailing my eyes with woodland scenes and bold abstracts that suggested the world was richer and more beautiful than I knew it to be. I balled my hands into fists, resisting the urge to tear down an image of a young girl carrying a heart-shaped balloon and smash it over Ryan’s head.

Down another short hall, the walls lined with stacks of large, flat boxes I guessed contained more artwork, we came to a large metal door. Ryan rapped on the door with his knuckles, resulting in a dull thud of solid steel. “I had this safe installed a few years ago to store my art collection when I rotated the displays. It’s the most secure place in the house. It’s also ventilated to prevent condensation damaging the paint.”

“The perfect prison,” Blake said in his usual easy tone. I glanced up at him. He had his mask on again – the still expression and cocky smirk that always enchanted me. But his eyes… the darkness.

Ryan tapped a code into the keypad, and the door swung inward. I leaned in to squint at the darkness.

A shadow launched itself at the door, knocking Ryan across the hall. Daigh’s fingers raked at Ryan’s throat, raising red scratches. Red fur poked through Ryan’s skin, and he yelped as he struggled against Daigh’s attack and his uncontrollable shift.

Blake lunged forward but I got there first. “Get back,” I growled, grabbing Daigh’s head and funneling all my pent up pain and grief into my palms.

Daigh’s skin crackled under my touch. Flashes of memory that felt familiar but that didn’t belong to me burned through my mind – blood running under a dark sky, dancing with entrails strung around my body like streamers, gorging myself on drink and food and misery, rage, pain, jealousy… and love. Love so fierce and twisted it became an ugly hate. Love that wasted the body and poisoned the mind.

Love for Aline. Love for… me.

I drew all that love to the surface and threw it back at Daigh. I poured his own twisted dreams back at him. Joy filled me as he sank to the floor, his body convulsing as he lived every dark moment of his life all at once.

This is what you deserve. You destroyed my life. You killed everyone I love.

I drove the memories hard and fast into him until they became a blur of fire and hate. Daigh crumpled into a ball, clutching his head in his hands. Inhuman wails issued from his lips, becoming one with the screams inside my head. A faint smell of roasting meat tainted the air.

“Maeve, stop!” Hands pulled me back. I cried out as my mind was torn from Daigh. The memories evaporated, replaced by Blake – his statuesque face frozen in concern.

“Why did you stop me?” I growled. “He tortured you, remember? He should suffer for what he’s done to us.”

“Oh, I enjoyed that very much, Princess. Cut his fingers off one by one and make him eat them if that’s what makes you happy. It would make me happy.”

“Let’s go, then.”

Blake’s fingers gripped my shoulders. “Only if you won’t regret it. Your sister may be wiser than you give her credit for. I don’t want you to do anything you regret.”

I glanced down at Daigh. He’d curled up into the fetal position, his knees hugging his chest as he rocked his head in his hands. Red spiderwebs crisscrossed the skin on his face and ran down his arms. A wave of revulsion coursed through me.

I did that to him.

I cursed. Blake was right. As quickly as it came, the rage eased. A different memory flashed in front of my eyes – me as an eight-year-old crying in my room because a bully at school had stuck the fire hose through my locker and destroyed all my science books. Louise Crawford gathered me in my arms and listened to all my revenge plans and recited from Scripture about how Jesus turned the other cheek.

That was what Kelly wanted me to do, to be like Jesus. And she was right. I felt it in my bones. I had to do the right thing even though the right thing was hard and I was hurting and I wanted Daigh to suffer.

Goddammit, why couldn’t I have been adopted by a Jewish family? From what I remember of the Bible, they’re nuts for revenge.

I stepped back from Daigh and collapsed into Blake’s arms. “What did you do to him, Princess?” Blake whistled through his teeth as we watched Daigh writhe on the floor.

“Nothing he didn’t deserve,” I replied, my body trembling.

A noise behind us startled me from my thoughts. I whirled around. At the far end of the hallway, Robert Smithers was on the ground, too, his head in his hands. He murmured nonsense. Aline cupped his shoulders, tears streaming down her face as she tried to coax him back to reality.

“I don’t know if it’s in his head or if he really feels Daigh’s pain, but there’s still a connection between them,” she cried, her eyes pleading me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt Rob.” I burrowed my head deeper into Blake’s shoulder. His sleek black hair fell over my face like a waterfall.

“Let’s get him back inside,” Ryan said. Blake reluctantly slid out from my grip, and he and Ryan lifted Daigh’s arms and dragged him into the safe. I followed them, leaning my back against the cold wall and sucking in deep breaths.

What have I done?

I hated this man (and he was just a man now) with every fiber of my being. But when I saw the red welts across his sweat-soaked face from my magic, a sick feeling twisted in my gut. I wanted to inflict pain – as much pain as he’d given me. He was our prisoner and I wanted to torture him and take pleasure in his screams.

It was like when I’d watched Uncle Bob’s house burn, his terrified expression as he realized what I truly was and that he was at my mercy. I wanted him to hurt for the hurt he’d done to Kelly. Was this the person I really was, twisted by a desire for revenge?

Was I any better than Uncle Bob? Was I any better than Daigh?

As if reading my thoughts, Daigh raised his head and stared up at me with crystalline eyes filled with pain. “I had always dreamed you would inherit my cruelty, daughter.”

His words turned my stomach, but I needed him to talk, to give us something that might tell us what was coming and how we might stop this forever. I stood over him, arms folded, legs wide in the stance Arthur had taught me emanated power. “That’s right. And now you’re under my power, and I need you to talk. If you lie to me, Blake and I will just drag the truth from your nightmares, and you won’t enjoy that. I want to know why you gave up your powers.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Daigh sneered. He held the haughty expression for only a moment before his face collapsed in a painful spasm. A knife twisted in my gut.

“Obviously not,” I folded my arms. “Or we wouldn’t be asking.”

“You wanted to reach Maeve,” Aline said from the doorway. “And me.”

I glanced up at her. Beside her, Smithers knelt on the ground, a trembling hand pressed to his temples as he stared at Daigh. Something about being in the same room as Daigh was hurting him. I glanced at Aline, but she shook her head. She had no idea what was going on, either.

“Robert, Robert, Rob, Rob, Rob…” he murmured, walking his shaking fingers across the floor toward Daigh. “You are not you anymore. You are darkness and death, spirit and sorrow.”

Daigh slapped Smithers’ hand away and grinned up at me. “You were hiding in your castle, dearest daughter. I needed to reach you, but the only way to get through the wards was to engage the use of a demon friend. He cleverly pointed out that if I was no longer a fae, the wards could no longer keep me out. I had to lose my fae powers, so I traded them.”

“What did you trade them for?”

Daigh grinned. “That’s my business. All you need to know is that once I understood how much those stupid humans meant to you, I decided to made this sacrifice so that we could be a family.”

In a weird, twisted way, I could see how he’d come to this conclusion. It was the kind of logic that made sense to an Unseelie.

I snorted. “You used the dream you gave me to make me believe this was all part of my story, that I was destined to lose my coven. But it didn’t happen like that, did it? You played this completely wrong, and you lost your powers for nothing. We’re never going to be a family. Biologically, that man on the floor over there is my father. My mother stands in the doorway, and she’ll never want you again now. You’re not one of us, and I’m not your daughter. End of discussion.”

Daigh sneered. “What did that blood test say?”

“We haven’t got the results yet. But they’ll confirm my conclusion, because that’s how genetics works. And even if you were my father, even if you hadn’t occupied Smithers’ brain by force, then I would still never join you. Family is about more than blood, and you took mine from me. I might not kill you for that, but I won’t forgive you for it, either.”

Smithers dragged his body across the floor and wrapped his arms around Daigh. “Something’s wrong with Robert. Rob will fix him up.”

“Get off me, you gibbering fool.” Daigh tried to push Smithers off him, but he was too weak. He sat glumly, enduring the other man’s embrace. “You’ll be keeping me in this metal prison, then?”

“What’s our alternative? You can’t be trusted.”

“That’s fair. But don’t you think I could help you? What are you going to do about Liah? About the Slaugh?”

I let the corners of my mouth draw up into a sly smile, as if we had it all planned out, as if we knew exactly what we were doing. As if we weren’t pinning all our hopes on a swelling supply of belief magic we had no idea how to control.

“None of your business,” I said, as I backed out of the room.

“Wait,” Daigh lunged for the door. “Maeve, I want—”

I slammed the door in his face.