When we brought buckets of paint downstairs, we never got around to carrying the unused gallons back up, and now somebody’s gone and dumped black paint all over the floor and splashed it on the walls outside her cell, obliterating the wards.

I toe it with a sandal. It’s wet, fresh.

I frown. Something’s not making sense. With the torches out—sure, the Shades could get down here. With the wards obliterated, they could even enter the cell—if there weren’t fifty lights blazing in there with her, but there are. So what’s the point? Why make a half-assed murder attempt that has no chance of working?

“Aw, crap,” I say, as it dawns on me. Because it’s not Shades someone’s expecting. It’s something bigger and badder, something not afraid of the light.

No way. No way we got that serious a traitor in our walls!

I mull the evidence. Brain says, way, Dani. Wise up.

Don’t want to leave her alone, but I can’t guard her without a weapon! Still not sensing Fae. I need forty-five seconds, tops. Gotta risk it.

Freeze-frame!

Moving like I do is cool; ‘s ‘bout as close to being invisible as you can get. People say they feel a rush of wind blasting by that practically blows off their hair. I’m still testing the limits. I like running outside best, ‘cause there’s less to crash into. Bruises are me.

Point I’m making is, people can’t even see me. So a person touching me when I’m freeze-framing? Totally out of the question.

I can sort of see what’s going on around me, hear a little, too, but it’s mostly a blur of movement and noise.

The noise that tips me off, moments before I get freaked out of my skin, is male voices. Angry. Violent. No men are allowed in the abbey.

Ever. No exceptions. The night Mac brought V’lane here, we all ‘bout died.

But here they are. Men headed toward me. Lots of them. Gunshots! Fecking A! What kinda idiot brings guns to this kinda war? What would guns kill? Oh, jeez, duh—us. Why? Right ahead, coming faster than expected—

AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

I call on every ounce of speed and agility I got, because something major weird is happening and something’s sort of in my space with me, and I’m having a shit of a time avoiding it, and all the sudden I’m plucked from the air by my elbows and jammed into a stationary position on the floor, so hard my teeth rattle.

Plucked.

Me.

Snatched straight out of superwhiz speed. Forced to stop.

I can’t deal.

I squeak.

“Dani,” a man says.

I gape. Mac never told me what he looked like. I can’t believe Mac never told me what he looked like. I can’t stop staring. “Barrons?” I breathe. It has to be him. It can’t be anybody else. This is what she lived with every day? How did she stand it? How did she ever say “no” to him about anything? How does he know who I am? Did Mac tell him about me? I hope she told him how awesome I am! I’m so embarrassed I could die. I squeaked in front of him. Mice squeak. He takes up too much space. He yanked me from midair.

I scramble back, half-freeze-frame speed. I get the feeling he lets me. It chafes, bad.

I look past him and nearly squeak again.

Eight men fan in V formation behind him, packing weapons from head to toe, draped in ammo, toting what look like Uzis. Big men. Couple of ‘em seem more animal than human. One of ‘em looks like Death himself, with white hair, pale skin, and hot dark eyes that assess restlessly, incessantly. They fix on me. I cringe. They all move sleek and strange. Ooze arrogance like Fae, but they’re not Fae. Sidhe-seers are plastered up against the walls, trying not to draw attention to themselves. Nobody dead that I can see. I think the gunshots I heard were warnings, sprayed into the air. Hope so. The energy rolling off these dudes is fierce. Whatever Barrons has got—I can’t put my finger on it, but on a raw-power graph it’s off the fecking charts—they’ve got, too. Watching this crew stalk down the hall of the abbey makes even me feel like peeling out of the way.

One of the men has Ro banded by a forearm, knife at her throat.

I should whiz in and save her. She’s our Grand Mistress. She’s our highest priority. Thing is, I’m not sure I can make it past Barrons.

“Get out of my abbey!” she’s shouting.

“Where’s Mac?” Barrons says, soft, making my gaze dart back to him. Soft from him is a surgical knife poised above your jugular. “Has the bitch hurt her?”

If looks could kill! Someday somebody’s gonna look at somebody about me like that. I’m not about to tell him I’m pretty sure Ro was gonna let her die. “No. She’s okay.” I clarify a little. “Well, I mean, as okay as she was when she got here.”

He gives me a look and says, “Where?” again.

A cold, hard fact just got driven home for me with the doused torches and painted-over wards. I can’t keep Mac safe by myself. Even I have to sleep sometimes. With the exception of All Hallows’ Eve, Barrons has kept her safe.

Still … there’s no way anything human plucked me out of the air like that. What is he? I don’t know how much Mac trusts him. “Promise me you won’t harm Ro,” I say. “We need her.”

Something savage moves deep in his eyes. “I’ll decide that when I see Mac.”

I feel savage all the sudden, too. “Well, where the feck were you when she needed you?” I snarl. “I was there.”

Without another word, I freeze-frame out.

Only two things I trust in these walls: me, and my sword. If my instincts are spot on—as they always are—Barrons isn’t the only thing headed Mac’s way right now.

I’m gonna beat ‘em all there.

I let that old, cold sidhe-seer place in my head swallow me. I become power, strength, speed, free!

The door to Ro’s office splinters.

The sword is mine.

Then I’m in Mac’s cell, standing over her. She rolls over like she senses the heat of my body. Clings to my leg. Rubs against me. Makes noises. I pretend nothing’s weird. She can’t help herself right now. I don’t look straight at her. I haven’t since I got her out. I don’t know a lot about sex, but I do know what’s happening to her is no way to learn it. I been doing a little research. It’s got me worried. There’s not a single case of a person turned Pri-ya coming back from it. Not one. They’re mindless animals that do whatever they’re told until they die. And those were the cases of people turned by Seelie. Never been anyone turned by Unseelie, and Mac got the whammy from three of the most powerful! But Mac’s got wicked balls. She’ll claw her way back somehow. She has to. We need her.

A Fae sifts in!

Wantneedsexdie blasts me. Hesitation ain’t me! I jab my sword into its gut. It looks down. Thing is stunned, disbelieving. We stare at each other. Unbearable perfection. My cheeks get wet like last time I looked at a prince, and I don’t have to wipe them to know it’s blood. If just looking at it makes my eyes bleed, how did Mac survive three of them touching her? Doing things to her? Even mortally wounded, it’s forcing me to my knees. I want to let it do anything it wants to me. I want to obey it. I want to call it Master. Ro says they’re the equivalent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, so who’s my sword stuck in? Death, Pestilence, Famine, or War? Dude, what a kill! I’d pat myself on the back if it wasn’t taking everything I got to keep from pulling my sword out of it and turning it on myself. It’s fecking with me. Trying to take me with it. Its iridescent eyes blaze in what I’m pretty sure is its dying attempt to incinerate me. Then we’re both falling to our knees: it ‘cause it’s dead, and me—I’m so fecking embarrassed—’cause I think I just had my first ever orgasm killing an Unseelie Prince. That’s wrong. I hate it. I hate that it made me feel that now. It wasn’t supposed to be that way.