My motives had been pure, as altruistic as I believed possible. I hadn’t been thinking about myself at all. I’d made the decision with a strangely detached calm, a serene “Fine, take me, just let her live.” I refuse to believe doing something out of pure love makes us weaker.

Then how had such good intentions landed me here?

I consider the question from every angle, finally able to draw a single conclusion: They hadn’t.

There was something else, some other nuance that tipped the scales in favor of the Sinsar Dubh.

I peel myself like an onion, seeking the pearly core, determined to isolate precisely what had been in my mind at the moment I’d made the decision to open the Book. I shuck vanity, pride, ego, lay my heart bare and study it.

At the moment I’d opened the Book—as if it was something that could even be opened or closed or anything that implied corporeality—I’d been thinking that I believed in good magic, that even if the Book’s power stemmed from an evil source, I could use it for the right reasons, without price.

Wait. Not exactly.

There was something deeper, beneath that thought.

Oh, God, I’d still been afraid.

I’d been saying I believed in the good magic but in my heart lurked the insidious fear that I would lose control again like I had the day I killed the Gray Woman. Only things would go much worse this time.

Hope builds a stairway to Heaven. Fear opens an abyss to Hell. We stand in front of those two possible apertures at all times; choose which one to go through.

Was it possible the only thing that had given the Book control over me in that moment—was me?

I’m stupefied by my next thought: What if the war between us has always been nothing more than a battle of will? And it knows it. I’m the only one that doesn’t. That would give it one hell of an advantage over me; all the advantage it needed. The corporeal Sinsar Dubh had trafficked in guile and sleight of hand. My internal one would be no different. Since the moment I learned of the Book, I’d heard nothing but tales of how all-powerful it was, how its will was impossible to resist, and damn it all, I’d believed it. Despite Barrons trying to make me see that the legend of a thing was often far greater than the thing.

Picture this: Two people are in a room. One’s a sociopath, one’s not. Who has the advantage?

The sociopath. Because it knows it’s a sociopath. The empath doesn’t. The empath thinks they’re playing by the same rules. They aren’t. They aren’t even playing the same game.

There are no rules with a sociopath. There’s only—

DESIRE, LUST, GREED, AND THE PATH WE CHOOSE TO SUPREMACY.

The words explode in the vacuum around me, stunning me.

I crane my awareness, as if I might turn this way and that, peering into darkness I can’t see with eyes I don’t have.

I just heard the Sinsar Dubh!

Because I’m finally starting to see through its games? Because this motherfucking empath knows it’s standing in a room with a psychopath? Ah, suddenly we’re playing the same game.

Now we both have no rules. I cast aside all my preconceptions, everything I thought and believed about the Sinsar Dubh, and begin at ground zero. What is the Book really? How much control over me does it really have?

I realize, much to my surprise, that it’s oddly fascinating being nothing but a consciousness. It’s strangely…freeing. Not that I’d choose to stay in this state, but it’s much easier to focus my thoughts. I feel no pain. Nothing hurts or itches or is getting stiff from sitting in one position too long. I’m not worried about how my hair or nails look because I don’t have any. I’m not hungry. I don’t need to go to the bath—

Oh, God, but it does now!

The mouth I don’t have wants to laugh. I wonder how that’s going for it, as it tries to acclimate to the demands of my body with no instruction manual. It suffers limits it never used to have. Like the Unseelie, newly released from their prison, it must be ruled by endless, stupefying hunger—only unlike them, it now has a body it has no experience in caring for, and will make mistakes.

Good. I hope it’s struggling.

Not too much, I amend hastily, because I’d really like my body back in one piece. I hope it flounders just enough to fuck it up royally.

My copy of the Sinsar Dubh has never been corporeal except for a few murderous hours, and now it needs to pee, and eat, and wash (I hope), and do all those other taxing, distracting things humans have to do on a daily basis.

It occurs to me that these early hours, or days or whatever is passing, are when it’s going to be at its weakest, while it adjusts. I hope Barrons figures that out.

A coldly analytical sentience studied me my whole life, probing for weaknesses.

Two can play that game.

SOMETHING’S HAPPENING TO ME! WHAT IS IT?

The Book’s panicked thought echoes like thunder off mountains, thrilling me. I expand my awareness, reaching out, pressing at the indefinable limit of walls I feel somewhere around me. Why are we bleeding into each other? Is it playing a game with me? Trying to trick me, lull me into some other mistake? Are there any more mistakes I can even make? Or is it weakening for real?

I’m not alone. It’s in here, too. In me. We’re both in me. A barrier separates us but a barrier can be breached.

I will hunt it.

I will find it. Study it. Identify its cracks and flaws and weaknesses that can be exploited. I dredge up the information I learned in my abnormal psych course—surprisingly easy in here with no distractions—and reflect upon the characteristics of borderline personalities. This isn’t a battle of magic, it’s a battle of “frame”—that construct of reality we adopt as our own, what we believe about ourselves and our relation to the world. I have to change the Book’s frame the way it changed mine, chipping away at it, recasting it so it loses control. But first I have to get to it.