As far as I know, nothing can pick up on the Nine’s presence. I once asked Kat what she felt when she was around them and she’d said, Not a bloody thing. Complete and utter silence. They don’t exist at all. I’d thought at the time, what a gift that must be to a woman who never escaped the vast, combustible, and often terrible emotions of the world. Talk about a “ground zero.” Hers was a gift I’d never wished to have. I pick up way too much of the world’s terribleness without enhanced empathy.

A wintry Fae female draped in an ermine-trimmed snowy cloak, and a throng of obsequious courtiers, sliced imperiously through the cluster at the bottom of the staircase and moved to join the male. I committed every detail of them both to memory. Marked them as mine.

Savagery blazed from her ancient eyes, in a face so bloodless it was tinged blue. A sneer bared sharp white teeth and the flicker of a pale, restless tongue. Long lashes were dusted with glittering crystals. Her hair was so colorless, frosted with tiny, translucent diamonds, it reflected whatever shade she stood near. Her nails had been sharpened to cruel points, ten incessantly tapping ice picks.

“She’s becoming a princess,” I murmured to Ryodan. As she wasn’t yet fully transformed, she lacked the deadly burn of the Sidhbha-jai, the killing sexuality endemic to royalty of the Light Court.

“Already got that,” Ryodan growled.

“The only reason we did not transform into royalty before, the only reason sniveling humans assumed our rightful places was—”

“Time on our world diminished you,” I cut her off. “Making us more powerful.”

“But no more,” she spat, delicate nostrils flaring. “The courts are once again strong and I am Winter-born.” When she stomped her foot, a thin layer of ice gushed forth, coating the floor between us. When she stabbed me with a gaze of storm and frost, my breath painted tiny ice crystals on the air. “Give me the sword, human, and I will not make you suffer.” Her eyes narrowed to slits of fiery ice and she purred, “Much. At first.”

Objective two: she wanted the sword, Mac was alive. But where? Every Fae in the club was glancing beyond my shoulder, staring hungrily at my weapon.

The Nine moved stealthily nearer, melting through the sea of Fae in that nearly invisible way of theirs, seeming to morph from one Fae to the next and, although inhuman heads were swiveling, alien eyes scanning, they remained just beyond Fae vision, causing a stir with no concrete point of focus. “Where’s your queen?”

“She is not our queen and will never be. The pretender is worse than dead,” she said, with a hard rime smile.

“In other words,” I said, smiling icily back, “you have no bloody idea where she is. And it’s chafing your fairy ass, isn’t it, honey?”

Ryodan made a sound of choked amusement beside me.

Amusement vanished and she spun in a whirl of ermine-trimmed cloak, snarling, “Take the sword from her. Shave the bastard to pieces no larger than a newt and bring her to me. Mostly intact.”

As she stalked away, she left a thick layer of ice in her wake and all I could think was, That’s going to be a bitch to fight on, envisioning us slipping and sliding around, trying to kill each other.

We were too closely surrounded for me to kick up into the slipstream but I didn’t need to. Ryodan grabbed my arm and yanked me up into his.

Straight up.

Bloody hell, I have never once managed to achieve a perfectly vertical ascent. Yet another challenge to work on. As we went, I kicked off my heels, in anticipation of battle.

A vast black tunnel stained with crimson blossomed around me. Then we were slamming down hard on the opposite side of the dance floor.

Winter-born spun, snarling from the far side of the club. “I said bring her to me!” she screamed. “What is wrong with you imbeciles? Must I do everything myself?” She reared back and flung two long, slender, icy white hands at us, releasing dozens of glittering, deadly ice picks.

“Slipstream. Now,” Ryodan snarled.

“I don’t think so,” I snarled back.

He shoved me up so hard and fast, I went tumbling head over heels down his black and blood tunnel, where I wasted precious seconds trying to figure out how to shift out of his mode of travel and into my own. I finally regained my balance and kicked into my long starry passageway then shifted abruptly down into freeze-frame, stripping off my left glove and yanking my sword from my back with my right as I went.

I thrust my sword into the first Fae I saw, with a long-overdue roar of satisfaction.

One down, a thousand to go, I thought fiercely.

I plunged into the carnage. The bastards thought to kill Mac, thought to take our world, had been torturing and killing our people for two long years unchecked.

In the periphery of my vision I could see The Nine slashing their way toward Winter-born, leaving slaughtered Fae in their wake. She was precisely who we needed to kill, to buy time before another princess would be born, and I knew what Ryodan was thinking: kill her before she became lethal to me. The Sidhbha-jai is my kryptonite. If turned on me at full force, it shorts me out, renders me helpless. We’d had no idea new royalty were being born. Not a bloody clue. We’d been cut off for too long.

I spun, I stabbed, I whirled, I battled. I came back to life in Elyreum, being what I needed to be, doing what I was born to do.

Fae after Fae fell beneath my blade. Then Ryodan was behind me and we moved into flawless formation, fighting back to back.

“I told you to get the fuck out of here,” he growled over his shoulder.

“Tell the sun to leave the sky,” I growled back.

“It does when night moves in. I’m night.”

“Scientifically untrue. The sun remains, you just don’t see it.”

“We’ve accomplished our objectives. Retreat.”

“Not the boss of me.”

“Bloody hell, don’t I know that. Something’s wrong. The bitch is losing Fae left and right and doesn’t care. She’s waiting for something. I’m pulling the plug. Now.”

But it was too late. I’d argued too long.

The debilitating, soul-searing burn of the Sidhbha-jai slammed into me and charred my insides to useless ash. “J-Jayne,” I stuttered. “He m-must be h-here s-s-somewhere. F-Find him. K-Kill him!” That bastard! He wasn’t in hiding with his family. He’d been working for the Winter Court, likely offered amnesty, if he brought them my sword!

“I will. Get out!” Ryodan roared.

But I couldn’t. Nothing was working right. I thudded down into slow-mo and crashed to my knees. Then Ryodan had me and was flinging me over his shoulder.

“Don’t touch my left hand!” I screamed, rearing up on his back like a cobra, desperate to keep the ungloved, lethal appendage away from him.

A prince sifted in directly behind us, blasting me with staggering sexuality and, as he reached for me (I ached to go to him, burned to be his slave, hungered to worship my master!) I managed to retain a grip on a single shred of my mind, smiled sweetly at him with utter adoration and offered him my left hand, silently begging him to seize me from Ryodan’s shoulder and take me to Paradise.

Dark, unholy promise burned in his gaze. Blood pooled in mine as I proffered my deadly hand. Take me, take me, I willed.

He accepted my submission as his royal due and reached.

As our fingertips met, an explosion of high voltage stabbed up into my head, shot down into my body, and as it flared to lethal life, the Fae prince exploded into a thousand fragments of pale white flesh and paler, sharp bone.

Bits of him rained down on the club and, as the killing grip of the Sidhbha-jai released my mind, I caught a glimpse of Winter-born’s pale, incredulous face in the crowd.

Then Fae began to scream and trample each other in their haste to escape.

I kicked up, launching myself like a rocket from Ryodan’s shoulder, vaulting high into the air, desperate to get away from him because the voltage was still arcing and crackling inside me.

Off-balance, I missed the slipstream entirely, slammed into the floor, rolled and sprang to my feet.

Whatever I’d set free inside me wasn’t done yet, not nearly exhausted, it was still building, building, and I had no idea how to control it.

“Dani, get back here!” Ryodan roared.

I had to do something with it before he grabbed me again. Before I sent it shooting into him. I was not killing Ryodan. I’d done it twice before and hated it both times.

I spun on Winter-born and flung my hand at her, at the precise instant she thrust two pale, slender, icy hands at me.

Bolts of lightning exploded from my fingertips, one after the next, shattering her ice-summoned weapons, blasting a path through them, as I sent my power gunning for her—

Holy hell, she sifted out! I’d missed!

Furious, I slammed more bolts into the walls, into the floor. If I couldn’t kill her at least I could obliterate their horrific club from the face of our earth. I dumped energy from my body in powerful surges of lightning, then, abruptly, I was—

Sailing in space, crystal clear and cool, surrounded by an infinity of stars on a nebula-painted canvas of black velvet sky.

It was vast but I was enormous. It was ancient but I was, too. It was timeless but I was without end.