His iridescent eyes blazed. “I could not be in two places at once! I was forced to choose. The queen would not have survived the night. It was imperative she survive.”

“You son of a bitch. You knew they were coming for me.”

“I did not!”

“Liar!”

“By the time I learned what they’d planned, it was too late, MacKayla! Despite my powers, I failed to foresee how dangerous Darroc had become. None of us foresaw it. We believed the walls would weaken further on Samhain, we even believed more of the Unseelie would escape, but we did not believe Darroc could succeed in bringing the walls down completely. Not only did he accomplish the unthinkable, he managed to block all Fae magic as thoroughly as he demolished your human grids. For a time that night, not one of us could sift. Not one of us could change form. Not one of us could draw upon the birthright of our magic. I was forced to carry my queen to a new hiding place on human”—he sneered the word—“feet.”

“While I lay on my human ass and your fairy”—I sneered the word—”brethren fucked my brains out and nearly killed me.”

“But failed, MacKayla. But failed. Remember that. You are queenly in your own right.”

“So the end justifies the means? Is that what you think?”

“Do they not?”

“I suffered,” I gritted. “Horrible, unspeakable things.”

“Yet you stand here now. Toe to toe with a Seelie Prince. Impressive for a human. Perhaps you are becoming what you need to be.”

“What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger? That’s what you think I should take away from this?”

“Yes! And be glad for it.”

“Let me tell you something.” I fisted my hand in the collar of his shirt. “What I will be glad for is the day the last one of you is dead.”

He went oddly, completely still.

I shook him. He didn’t budge.

I blinked, then got it. He was frozen. I’d Nulled him. Nulling is a rare sidhe-seer talent and, according to Rowena, I’m the last Null alive. I can freeze a Fae with the mere touch of my hands. I can turn it on or off at will, the same way Fae Princes can control their lethal eroticism. I hadn’t even been thinking about Nulling, but apparently my hostility toward his race in general had come across as intent to Null. Since he was already frozen, I punched him a few times, indulging my rage at all things Fae.

Then I focused on my sidhe-seer center and forced it to relax.

A muscle worked in his perfect jaw. Oh, yes, he’d been brushing up on his human gestures. “Punching me was not necessary.”

Oops. I’d forgotten they were only frozen when I Nulled them, not oblivious. Oh, well. “But it sure felt good.”

“Well done, MacKayla,” he said tightly.

“For freezing you? I’ve done it before.”

“Not that.” He looked down at my hand.

I looked down at it, too. Then past it, to my feet.

I was over the ward line. I’d stepped right through it without even realizing it. Not only that, I was holding a Seelie Prince by the collar and I wasn’t remotely aroused. No matter the form V’lane had donned in the past, I’d never stood so close to him without having to battle the irresistible impulse to have sex with him, right then and there, even when he’d been toned down as far as—according to him—he could go.

I leaned into him, pressed myself against his perfect Fae body. He molded to me instantly, slid his arms around me, dropped his face to my hair. He was hard, ready.

I felt nothing.

I drew back and looked up. There was that minute contraction and widening of his eyes again. Astonishment. Why? What had astonished him when he’d first seen me? That I had recovered from being Pri-ya? Or something more—a thing virtually inconceivable to him?

I stretched on my toes, pulled his head down, and kissed him. His response was instant and held every bit of one hundred and forty thousand years of sexual expertise—but not one ounce of that elusive, deadly death-by-sex Fae quality.

I pushed back and stared at him. I could feel intense sexual arousal rolling off him, but no more so than I would coming off any man. There went that muscle in his jaw again. Was it possible he wasn’t muting himself? I’d heard that if you took certain poisons but didn’t die, you acquired immunity. Had I drunk enough Poison de Fae? “Unmute yourself,” I demanded.

“I. Am. Not. Muted.”

Did he ever sound pissed! “You’re lying.” Could it really be true? Had everything I’d gone through made me immune to Fae sexual compulsion?

“No, MacKayla.”

“I don’t believe you.” I would not be lulled into stupidity again, into believing something that wasn’t true, so it could be used against me.

“I would not have believed it, either. No human has ever come back from being made Pri-ya, and, although I am pleased that you have recovered from what was done to you, I am not pleased that I must now compete for you with no glamour, without the glory of my birthright. They were Unseelie, MacKayla, the foulest of the foul, the darkest of my race, the abominations. I am Seelie, and we are vastly different. I had hoped that one day, when you trusted me, you would let me share with you the ecstasy of being with one like me. With no pain, MacKayla, and no price. Now that can never be. You have no idea how exquisite the experience might have been and now never will.”

“Bullshit,” I said. Games within games. That was all my life was anymore. Was he lying just so he could ambush me when I least expected it?