I was in Cancún, Mexico, sitting in a disappearing-edge swimming pool, on a bar stool that was actually under the water, watching palm trees sway in a sultry breeze against the unmistakable aqua splendor of the Caribbean Sea; drinking coconut, lime, and tequila from a scooped-out pineapple, with the salt spray of breaking surf and sun kissing my skin.
Translation: I’d died and gone to heaven.
Dublin, the rain, my problems, my depression: All of it had vanished in the blink of a Fae Prince’s sift.
My bikini today, courtesy of V’lane, was leopard print, three embarrassingly tiny triangles. A gold belly chain, inset with amber, draped my hips. I didn’t care how nearly naked I was. The day was blindingly bright and beautiful. The sun was warm and healing on my shoulders. The double shots of Cuervo Gold in my drink weren’t hurting, either. I was glowing golden inside and out.
“So? Who is he? You said you’d tell me about the Lord Master,” I prompted.
His hands were on me then, rubbing suntan oil into my skin that smelled of the coconut and almond, and for a short time I forgot that I even had a tongue that could ask questions.
Even when he’s fully muted, there’s magic in a death-by-sex Fae’s hands. They make you feel like you’re being touched by the only man who could ever know you, understand you, give you what you need. Illusion, deception, and lie, perhaps, but it still feels real. The mind may know the difference. But the body doesn’t. The body is a traitor.
I leaned into V’lane’s touch, moving under his strong, sure strokes, purring inwardly while he petted me. His iridescent eyes burned a shimmering shade of amber, like the gems on my belly chain, grew sleepy, heated, promising me sex that would blow my mind away.
“I have a suite, MacKayla,” he said softly. “Come.” He took my hand.
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” I murmured, and pulled away. I shook my head, trying to clear it.
“I despise girls. I like women. They are infinitely more . . . interesting. Girls break. Women can surprise you.”
Girls break. I had no doubt he’d broken more than a few in his time. I’d not forgotten the book in Rowena’s study that credited this very Fae with being the founder of the Wild Hunt. The thought jarred me back to reality. “Who is he?” I asked again, scooting to the farthest edge of my bar stool. “Stop touching me. Honor your promise.”
He sighed. “What is it you humans say? All work and no play—”
“—might just keep me alive,” I finished dryly.
“I will keep you alive.”
“Barrons says the same thing. I’d prefer to be able to do it myself.”
“You are a mere human, a woman at that.”
I felt my jaw jut. “Like you said. Women can surprise you. Answer my question. Who is he?” I motioned the bartender for a fresh pineapple—hold the tequila—and waited.
“One of us.”
“Huh?” I blinked. “The Lord Master is Fae?”
V’lane nodded.
Although I’d gotten a Fae read off the Lord Master the two times we’d met, I’d also gotten a human read, similar to what I sensed in Mallucé and Derek O’Bannion. I’d thought the Fae part was because the Lord Master ate Fae, not because he was Fae. “But I don’t sense full Fae from him. What’s the deal?”
“He is no longer. He who calls himself the Lord Master was formerly a Seelie known as Darroc, a trusted member of the queen’s High Council.”
I blinked. He was Seelie? Then what was he doing leading the Unseelie? “What happened?”
“He betrayed our queen. She discovered he was working secretly with the Royal Hunters to overthrow her, and return to the old ways, and old days in which no Fae bowed to an insult of a Compact, or had any use for humans other than passing diversion.” Alien, ancient eyes studied me a moment. “Darroc’s special diversion was playing with human women for a long, cruel time, before destroying them.”
An image of Alina’s body as it had looked lying on the morgue table rose up in my mind. “Have I told you how much I hate him?” I hissed. For a moment I couldn’t say any more, couldn’t even think past him hurting my sister and leaving her to die. I breathed deep and slow, then said, “So, what, you threw him out of Faery and dumped him on us?”
“When the queen uncovered his treason, she stripped him of his power and immortality, and banished him to your realm, condemning him to suffer the brevity and humiliation of a mortal life, and die—the cruelest sentence for a Fae, crueler even than ceasing to exist by immortal weapon, or . . . simply vanishing the way some of us do. To die was insult to injury. Mortal indignity is the greatest indignity of all.”
He was so arrogant. “Was he a prince?” A death-by-sex Fae like V’lane? Was that how he’d seduced my sister?
“No. But he was old among our kind. Powerful.”
“How can you know that, if you’ve drunk from the cauldron?” I pointed out an obvious bit of illogic. A side effect of extreme longevity, V’lane had told me, was eventual madness. They dealt with it by drinking from the Seelie Hallow, the cauldron. The sacred drink wiped their memories clean, and let them start over with a brand-new Fae life, and no memory of who they’d once been.
“The cauldron is not without flaws, MacKayla. Memory is . . . how did one of your artists say it?—persistent. It was fashioned to ease the onus of eternity, not leave us blank. When we drink from it, we emerge speaking the first language we knew. Darroc’s is mine: the ancient one, from the dawn of our race. In such a way, we know things about each other, despite the divestiture of memories. Some attempt to plant information about themselves for their next incarnation to find. The Fae Court is an unpleasant place to be, stripped of ability to discern friend from foe. We prolong drinking as long as possible. Tatters from earlier times sometimes remain. Some must drink twice, three times, to be cleansed.”
“How can I find Darroc?” I asked. Now that I knew his name, I would never call him anything but that, or a mocking “LM” again.
“You cannot. He is hiding where even we have been unable to track him. He slips in and out of Unseelie through portals unknown to us. We are hunting him, the other Seelie princes and I.”
“How can a mere human elude you and move in and out of Fae realms?” I goaded. I was angry. They’d made this mess. They’d dumped Darroc into our realm because they’d been having problems, and it was my world that was suffering, my sister who’d been killed because of it. The least they could do was clean up after themselves, and fast.
“My queen did not strip his knowledge from him, an oversight she now regrets. She believed he would die quickly. It is why we did not suspect him of being the one behind the trouble in your realm. Once human, Darroc had no immunity against the many illnesses that plague your kind, and those who live as gods tend to underestimate the brutality of the herd when they walk among it.”
“He’s not the only one who underestimated something,” I said frostily. Herd, my petunia. With so much inhuman power at their fingertips, they certainly were humanly fallible, and we humans were the ones paying for it.
V’lane ignored the jibe. “We believed if he did not contract a mortal illness, he would anger a human with his arrogance, and become one of your violent crime statistics. Contrary to our expectations, since Darroc has been mortal, he has acquired immense power. He knew where to look, and how to get it, and he has always had allies among the Royal Hunters. He promises them freedom from the Unseelie prison where they are stabled; a promise no other Fae would make. Hunters cannot be trusted.”
“And other Fae can?” I said dryly.
“Hunters go beyond all bounds.” Here V’lane momentarily flickered, as if struggling not to revert to another form. “They have taught Darroc to eat the flesh of Fae to steal Fae power!” He paused, and for a fleeting moment, the temperature plunged so sharply that I couldn’t draw a breath and the ocean, as far as I could see it, iced. Abruptly, all was normal again. “He will die very slowly when we find him. The queen may make him suffer immortally for it. We do not savage our own.”
I looked away hurriedly and stared out at the sea, owning the same sin, feeling it flashing in incriminating neon letters on my forehead: FAE EATER. Darroc had taught Mallucé, Mallucé had taught me, and I’d taught Jayne. I had no desire to suffer immortally, or otherwise. “What can I do to help?”
“Leave it to us to find Darroc,” V’lane said. “You must do as the queen has charged you and find the Book. The walls between our realms are dangerously thin. If Darroc succeeds in bringing them down, the Unseelie will escape their prison. Without the Sinsar Dubh, we are as powerless to reimprison our dark brethren as you. Once loose, they will consume your world and destroy your race.”
He paused before adding grimly, “And, quite possibly, mine.”