It was simple. In a contest of wills, I was the guaranteed victor.
I felt almost giddy with excitement. My deductions had the ring of truth to them. All arrows pointed north. I knew what had to be done. Today, I could put the Book down once and for all. Not inter it to slumber with one eye open, like the first prophecy had said, but defeat the monster. Destroy it.
After I’d gotten a spell of unmaking for Barrons. Ironic: I’d given all my spells over to a Book to get rid of them, and now I needed one back from it.
Once I had it, I would roust the traitor, kill him or her, restore the concubine to being the Seelie Queen (because I sure didn’t want her, and she didn’t remember anything, anyway), where she would grow strong enough to lead again. I would walk away, leaving the Fae to their own petty devices.
I would return to Dublin and become just-Mac.
That couldn’t happen soon enough for me.
“I think I know what to do, Jericho.”
“What would you want if you were the Book and it was the king?” Barrons asked later.
“I thought you didn’t believe I was the king.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. The Book seems to.”
“K’Vruck does, too,” I reminded him. Then there was the dreamy-eyed guy. When I’d asked him if I was the Unseelie King, he’d said, No more than I. Was he one of my parts?
“Have an identity crisis later. Focus.”
“I think it wants to be accepted, absolved—prodigal son and all. It wants me to welcome it back into me, say I was wrong, and become one again.”
“That’s what I think, too.”
“I’m a little worried about the part where it says once the monster within is defeated, so shall be the monster without. What monster within?”
“I don’t know.”
“You always know.”
“Not this time. It’s your monster. Nobody can know another person’s monster, not well enough to cage it. Only you can do that yourself.”
“Speculate,” I demanded.
He smiled faintly. He finds it amusing when I throw his own words back at him. “If you are the Unseelie King—and note the word ‘if’ there, I remain unconvinced—one might speculate that you have a weakness for evil. Once you acquire the Sinsar Dubh, it’s conceivable that you would feel tempted to do what it wants. Instead of trying to lock it away, you might choose to relinquish human form and restore yourself to your former glory—take all the spells you dumped into it back and become the Unseelie King again.”
Never. But I’ve learned never to say never. “What if I am?”
“I’ll be there, talking you out of it. But I don’t think you’re the king.”
What other possible explanation was there? Occam’s razor, my daddy’s criteria for conviction, and my own logic concurred. But with Barrons there to shout me back and my determination to live a normal human life, I could do it. I knew I could. What I wanted was here, in the human world. Not in an icy prison with a pale silvery woman, caught up in eternal court politics.
“I’m more concerned about what your inner monster might be if you’re not the king. Any ideas?”
I shook my head. Irrelevant. He might be having a hard time accepting what I was, but he didn’t know everything I knew, and there wasn’t time to explain. Every day, every hour, that the Sinsar Dubh was free, roaming the streets of Dublin, more people would die. I had no illusions about why it kept going to Chester’s. It wanted to take my parents from me. Wanted to strip away everything I cared about, leaving only it and me. As if it could force me to care about it. Force me to welcome its darkness back into my body and be one again. I now believed Ryodan had been right all along: It had been trying to get me to “flip.” The Book thought if it took enough from me, made me angry and hurt enough, I wouldn’t care about the world, only about power. Then it would conveniently appear and say, Here I am, take me, use my power, do whatever you want.
I inhaled sharply. That was exactly the frame of mind I’d been in when I’d thought Barrons was dead. Hunting the Book, ready to pick it up and merge with it and unmake the world. Believing I would be able to control it.
But I was on guard now. I’d experienced that grief once. Besides, I had Darroc’s shortcut in my hand. I had the key to controlling it. I wasn’t going to flip. Barrons was alive. My parents were well. I wouldn’t even be tempted.
I was suddenly impatient to get it over with. Before anything could go wrong.
“I need to be certain you can use the amulet.”
“How?”
“Deceive me,” he said flatly. “And convince me of it.”
I fisted my hand around the amulet and closed my eyes. Long ago, in Mallucé’s grotto, it had not been willing to work for me. It had wanted something, had waited for what I’d thought was a tithe, as if I needed to spill blood for it or something.
I knew now it was much simpler than that. It had flared with blue-black brilliance for the same reason the stones did, because it recognized me.
The problem was I hadn’t recognized myself.
I did now.
I am your king. You belong to me. You will obey me in all things.
I gasped with pleasure as it blazed in my fist, brighter than it had ever burned for Darroc.
I looked around the bedroom. I remembered the basement where I had been Pri-ya. I would never forget any of the details.
I re-created it now for us, down to the last detail: pictures of Alina and me, crimson silk sheets, a shower in the corner, a Christmas tree twinkling, fur-lined handcuffs on the bed. For a time, it had been the happiest, simplest place I’d ever known.
“Not exactly incentive to get me out of here.”
“We have to save the world,” I reminded.
He reached for me. “The world can wait. I can’t.”