She squinted at the Unseelie prince standing a dozen paces away. He’d transformed himself with glamour and was now the Seelie prince V’lane. She suspected he’d donned a familiar form to conceal the mutilation of his wings, unwilling to let others see him in a weakened condition. His current incarnation was that of an exquisitely beautiful, deadly, erotic Fae of the royal line, capable of reducing a woman to a state of mindless, sexual need.
She focused her sidhe-seer gifts and peeled back the glamour revealing his darker form. V’lane was tall, but Cruce was a giant, well over seven feet tall, more densely muscled, his face less classic, the lines sharper, more savage, chiseled by an angry, defiant god. Kaleidoscopic tattoos slithered beneath his dusky skin. In both forms he wore a flowing iridescent robe that shimmered in the brilliant sun, more blinding than the reflective sand. His face was drawn with pain, his eyes half closed. He was far more taxed by the Sinsar Dubh’s assault than he wanted her to know. In either incarnation, weak or strong, he was still a Death-by-Sex Fae. Yet she wasn’t feeling that will-destroying desire she’d felt too many times in the past. Nor was she sensing the twisted, psychopathic presence of the Sinsar Dubh. She let his true form recede from her sidhe-seer vision and refocused on the golden illusion.
“Give me the cuff, sidhe-seer,” Cruce snarled, “or the next world I take you to will not be so hospitable. You will die there.”
She rested the hand on the hilt of her sword. “As will you.”
“You will never get that close to me.”
“Try me.” Jada accessed the slipstream and reappeared directly in front of him, the tip of her blade beneath his chin.
He vanished.
“Cruce,” she said, and he reappeared a half a dozen feet away, scowling. He backed up and they stood measuring each other across three meters of powdery sand. She assessed the situation quickly: here before her stood the most ancient of the Unseelie princes, who possessed enormous knowledge and power and had proven himself a brilliant strategist, patient, cunning, controlled. The Sinsar Dubh was their primary enemy. They were each other’s secondary enemy.
The enemy of her primary enemy was her friend. “I’d call this an impasse. Are you ready to negotiate?”
“I do not negotiate with humans.”
“A human just hacked off your wings and sealed you in a cocoon from which you would never have escaped; a human that’s far more powerful than you, and clearly doesn’t like you. When she learns you’ve been freed, do you think she’ll just forget about you?”
“Royals regenerate and that was no human. Your precious MacKayla is gone. What remains will never be human again.”
Mac wasn’t gone. Barrons had felt her. That was enough for Jada. “So long as I wear the cuff, we’re going to be closer than either of us like, and I have the weapon that can terminate your immortal existence.”
“I am a weapon that can terminate your mortal existence.”
“Like I said, impasse. Bottom line: we can kill each other or work together against our common enemy. Negotiate. What do you want? I have my list ready.”
“I want my cuff back.”
“Not on the table.”
Snarling, Cruce lunged but swiftly checked himself.
“I’ve got the advantage. Accept that and quit wasting my time. Mac is a problem for both of us. If you have knowledge from the Book, you may know something we can use to get her back.”
“There is no getting her back from that. That was not MacKayla. Nor was it the Book, at least not the one I touched. That was…”
“What?” Jada demanded.
“A sense of superiority that exceeds even mine, and I would not have believed that possible. It felt contempt for me. To the Book, I was as foul an aberration as a…a human. It is depravity, viciousness, sadism, and hunger for absolute dominance. Fae but unlike any I have ever encountered. It changed.”
“And we’re going to change it back,” Jada said evenly. “If it takes you again, and I suspect it will, we won’t free you next time. We’ll leave you like that. You need us. If I were you, I’d make us need you for something.” She paused a moment then probed, “This cuff protects the wearer from many things, Unseelie and otherwise. That includes you, doesn’t it?” She’d been able to meet his gaze as both V’lane and Cruce without her eyes bleeding, and seriously doubted he was willingly muting himself.
The sudden flash of ire in his iridescent gaze was all the answer she needed. She smiled faintly. “You couldn’t make it work against the other princes, without also protecting the wearer against yourself.”
“I may not be able to harm you but I can sift you to a fire world, sidhe-seer.”
“Where you’ll die, too. I’m fast enough to take you out as I go. I want the knowledge you took from the Sinsar Dubh. I want you to tell me everything.”
“I want MacKayla dead. She can be killed in her current form.”
“That’s not on the table either.”
“Then we have nothing to negotiate.” He sifted out.
“Cruce,” she murmured, and he was instantly back, face taut with rage.
Abruptly, she was in arctic wasteland, with a bone-chilling wind knifing through her. Her leather jacket froze solid and crackled when she slid up into the slipstream. Vibrating, moving in that higher dimension, she was no longer quite so cold.