“Hell-o?” She nudged him. “What are you looking at?”

“We need to cross here.” He wasn’t sure how fast she could move, but he’d noticed that mortals were slower. She wasn’t a true mortal, and her sire was one of the fastest sorts of faeries. Thinking of her getting crushed by the metal racing past them was disconcerting.

She matters.

He gripped her arm just above her elbow and started walking, forcing her to scurry to keep pace with his longer stride.

She yanked her arm free. “What are you doing?”

“Helping you cross the street.” He narrowed his eyes at her tone. Boldness was only amusing so long. When it interfered with his objectives, it ceased being entertaining. “The vehicles speed, and you are still somewhat mortal. I’m not sure how fast mortals—”

“I am a Hound.” She raced down the block.

From a distance, he could see her belligerent posture. It was foolhardy, but not unexpected. He should’ve kept a better grip on her.

She’s unrestrained. It’s— He froze. Thoughts, action, everything around him seemed to stop as he watched Bananach come up behind Ani and slide an arm around the Hound’s shoulder.

NO.

Before the objection was a completed thought, Devlin stood in front of them. “Step away, Sister.” “For what coin?” She curled her hand around Ani’s shoulder so that her talon-tipped fingers furrowed skin, not piercing but deep enough that the Hound would bruise.

He had chosen to be ruled by logic, and logic said there was an answer here that would get Ani safely out of War’s reach, but it wasn’t logic that rode in his words. “She’s mine. I have taken her into my keeping.”

“She’s alive.” Bananach rubbed her face against Ani’s hair in a feline gesture that seemed peculiar for the raven- faery. “This is good. I find that I need her not-dead. She has a mission now. Don’t you, puppy?”

Ani caught his gaze. She didn’t look afraid, despite her situation, and Devlin wondered fleetingly if she was impaired. He’d seen that in some of the mortal-faery mixes, a lack of instinctual fear. Has she no sense of self-preservation?

She widened her eyes, as if she was willing thoughts to him.

Devlin stared at her, trying to make sense of whatever she was trying to convey.

She pursed her lips and almost imperceptibly tilted her head. Her gaze shot pointedly to the left.

Sitting on the curb beside him was her steed, looking like a car now. Her intention seemed to be to use the beast as a weapon. The results of such an attack weren’t likely to be severe, but it would upset Bananach—which would lead to her striking Ani.

Which would result in my injuring my sister.

Devlin moved forward, putting himself between the steed and his sister. He didn’t always like his sister- mothers, but he was sworn to keep them safe to the best of his ability.

Even from me.

Moving as close to his sister as he could get, he made himself a barrier to Bananach’s injury.

Ani glared at him.

“You made mistakes. Sisters know.” Bananach craned her neck forward so her cheek rubbed Ani’s face. “I won’t tell our secrets.”

Devlin weighed and measured the words. He couldn’t tell Bananach anything false. I wish Rae was here. Being possessed so as to allow his lips to form a lie would be incalculably useful just then.

“You won’t tell secrets either; will you, little pup?” Bananach spun Ani so they were face-to-face. “You’ll go to your court. He can help. Is that why you came, Brother? To help?”

Bananach looked over Ani’s shoulder at Devlin.

He held her gaze and said, “Yes. I’ve come to help.”

With most faeries, Bananach would press; she would insist on clarity of word—but it was not so with him. She believed him. Bananach kissed Ani’s forehead. “Trust him, little one. He is wise.”

Some part of Devlin’s long-suppressed emotions cringed at those words. For everything she’d done, she was still his creator. Betraying her today—as he’d betrayed Sorcha fourteen years ago—wounded him.

For you, Ani.

The faery in question backed away from Bananach. She shot a glance at Devlin. Then she walked toward her steed. A tremble in her hand as she reached out to the door handle revealed her fear—or perhaps her anger.

Silently, he turned his back on his sister and followed Ani.

He slipped into the passenger seat and barely had the door closed before Ani peeled out. He could see his sister in the rearview mirror: she stood staring after them.

Ani cranked the stereo; angry guitars and shrieking voices came blasting out of the speakers.

He put a hand on hers.

She jerked away.

“Are you helping Bananach?” Ani didn’t take her gaze from the road. She was speeding between cars and occasionally getting close enough that Devlin braced for the sound of scraping metal. “She said—”

“If I told her I wanted to remove you from her reach, do you think she’d have let us leave?”

She looked over at him. “Why should I trust you?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t.” He had just betrayed his second sister for Ani, but he couldn’t say he wouldn’t kill Ani. If the options were Ani’s life or the good of Faerie, he’d act in Faerie’s best interest. “I did not come seeking your death or injury, Ani.”

Her hands tightened on the wheel. “But?”

He looked over at her, wishing that she’d stayed safely hidden, wishing she’d never attracted Sorcha’s attention before or Bananach’s now. He couldn’t tell her those things, not at the moment, not when she was already so furious and frightened. He couldn’t not tell her anything either, so he said, “But you have something she wants, something she believes will allow her to defeat Sorcha, to become more powerful than War should ever be, and I cannot let her have it.”

“Why?”

He sighed. “Do you want to help her?”

“No, but—”

Devlin interrupted, “And I prefer not to have to kill you. If you help her, I will have to.”

After that, neither of them spoke, not as she blared the music to obscene volumes, not as she drove carelessly enough that he was quite sure of her parentage, and not as she gunned the engine as they departed Huntsdale.

Please let me find a solution that isn’t her death.

Rae didn’t truly sleep, but she could reach a meditative silence that felt very energizing. She felt as if she floated in a gray nothingness where the world couldn’t reach her.

“You!”

Rae focused her attention on the cave, pulling herself back to the state in which she typically existed, staring at the rock walls she had called “home” these past years. In the shadowed alcove, the queen of Faerie stood waiting. Her left hand held a broken mirror. All around her feet shards of reflective glass were scattered like the bones of the dead on an abandoned battlefield.

“None of these work as the one you made did.” Sorcha dropped the mirror to the floor, where the glass pieces joined the others already there. “You were in my mind.”

How did she find me?

Rae winced. She feigned comfort as if she merely rested on an oblong rock on the floor of the cave. It was an illusion, but it was the sort that made her feel anchored in the waking world. She looked directly at Sorcha and said, “I was.”

“I didn’t give you leave to live in Faerie. You never came to ask my permission,” Sorcha said. The words lilted at the end, a question that wasn’t meant to be. Her eyes were unfocused, her gaze not centered on Rae but on something beyond. She wasn’t as lovely here as she was in the dream world. Here, her imperiousness was off-putting; her rigidity was disconcerting. The flamelike vitality of her dream-self had been muted, like Rae was seeing her through a thick glass.