She’s not throwing off the whirlwind of insanity and insatiability with which the princes first razed our world when freed from their prison, nor does she seem bent on the vicious, obsessive hunt of the Crimson Hag determined to complete her gut-gown. She appears composed, even dispassionate. I consider that perhaps like human women, she’s not as governed by hormones, or whatever passes as Fae motivation, as the males. Perhaps the genders of any species share certain traits. As far as I know, it’s the female Fae that bears what few young they manage, and may be biologically more pragmatic, to ensure their offspring’s survival. I hope so because I don’t want to kill her. Not now, not here with so many humans in the vicinity. As much as I want her dead, I have to find another way.

Then arrange a safer place to hunt her.

I take a deep, slow breath and release it. “We could cut to the chase,” I say to her beautiful back. Iridescent, sparkling tattoos shimmer on each side of her spine, furling and unfurling as if caressed by a sultry Fae breeze only she can feel. They vaguely resemble wings.

Silver embellishments glitter along her backbone as if she’s adorned her spine with metal piercings, with more of them on each side of her neck. Though immune to Fae thrall, watching Lor do what he’s doing to her is getting me hot and bothered in a purely human way. No wonder the blondes keep lining up at his bed. He’s a massive, lethal lion of muscle, sex, and power. He growls as he grinds up into her, and the sound is so rough and ready, so freaking hot and sexy, that my heart begins to hammer in the back of my throat and my mouth goes dry. I swallow hard and wet my lips before I continue, “What do you want?”

She glances over her shoulder with that telltale inhuman head swivel, assesses and disregards me.

She should take a deeper look.

“Mac, get her the fuck off me,” Lor snarls. Then he groans again, in spite of himself.

“You will not speak,” the princess commands Lor, and just like that he loses control of his vocal cords. Nice talent. I wouldn’t mind having it myself.

“I said, What do you want?” I repeat coldly.

“Nor will you speak,” she hisses over her shoulder at me.

My vocal cords don’t feel any different. I test them by clearing my throat. It works.

Her head swivels again and she rakes an imperious, frosty glance from my boots to my hair. Her hips never stop moving. “What are you?”

“The one not killing you,” I say, working hard to ignore the graphic sex happening right in front of me. “For the moment. What. Do. You. Want.” I push my hair back, not surprised to realize it’s damp, I’m actually sweating from watching them have sex. I’m overdue for some of my own.

“You are not human.”

“I am, too,” I say flatly. I may not be sure of much, but I was born. I was carried in a womb. And infected there.

“My power works on everything but Fae of the royal castes.”

“You didn’t come here to have sex,” I evade. “You could do that anywhere. You came specifically to this club and chose specifically him. Why?” It’s a ballsy move, stalking so openly into Chester’s, alone, targeting one of the Nine and turning him Pri-ya in the owner’s office. Why haven’t we seen any of the princesses before? Cruce claimed all the Seelie were dead. He’d also claimed no Unseelie Princesses were made. Was anything he told me true? Where has she been? Is she newly arrived, jockeying for position by abducting one of the most powerful males in the city?

She wets blue lips and tilts her head to the side. Her eyes darken to inky pools that are suddenly neon cobalt. Beyond long, thick lashes, vertical slitted pupils dilate and shrink, dilate again as if she’s taking my measure with vision humans don’t possess. For a moment I think I glimpse stars in those pupils. She’s different from the princes. There’s a … vastness to her that exceeds theirs.

He made us last. We are his best. Enhanced.

Without thinking, I seek confirmation of that from the only place I could possibly get it.

Yes, open me, read me, it agrees instantly.

I sigh, resuming my chant, imagining Poe would enjoy that although his narrator was unable to silence the bird, his poem silences my book.

But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door …

The princess’s eyes narrow, as if she hears my inner dialogue but can make no sense of it.

“Cruce said he was the king’s last,” I say. “And best.”

“There are things Cruce does not know. Where is our brother?”

“Dead,” I lie.

“Did you kill him?”

“Yes,” I say.

There go the pupils again, dilating, narrowing. “It seems you would offer aid. I am unconvinced you possess anything that may interest us.”

“Perhaps we share common desires.” Where did this cold place inside me come from? Is it because I sat with my rapists tonight and made pacts? Or because I know how much I have to lose if I don’t stay cold? “I have a great deal to offer. If the price is right. It’s you who may not have enough to barter with.”

She gathers a fall of blood-black hair from her face, twists it into a long tail then knots it at her nape before disengaging and sliding gracefully from the desk.

I can’t help but stare at what she left behind. What hot-blooded woman wouldn’t? Lor is chained naked to a desk, legs spread, affording me a gloriously intimate view. He’s magnificent. A tall, massively muscled Viking with thick blond hair and not one spec of it on his body. Though his abdomen and thighs are crisscrossed with scars, the rest of his skin is sleek and velvety as the head of his—Stop staring!

I drag my gaze away, force it to the princess.

“I do not barter with humans. I command. But you have … Hmmm, you have something … What is it you have?”

I say nothing. Reveal nothing. I’ve learned from the best. I meet and hold her gaze, expressionless.

Time spins out. Finally she says, “The Unseelie Princes, fools that they are, think to rule this world.” She spits on the floor. “We came to enslave this male and use it as our weapon because the dark princes are immune to our ways. Word reached us it can kill things that are difficult to kill, even our brothers. Fae magic is matriarchal. The light princesses are dead. This world is ours.”

I realize if she came for Lor to eliminate her competition, rather than Dani or me, she must not know about the spear and sword. “This world belongs to us,” I say. “If you try to take it from us, it will be war.”

“A war you will lose.”

“Try me.”

Nude, she begins to pad a slow, predatory circle around me. I turn with her and she laughs.

“No, you most certainly do not wish one such as we unseen behind your back.”

“Nor do you wish me unseen behind yours,” I purr.

She laughs again and it’s a caress to my ears. She’s amped up her death-by-sex Fae heat. I feel it expanding around her, yet it doesn’t touch me.

When I don’t respond, her eyes widen, her mouth shapes a perfect, lush O of surprise. The sexual energy she’s channeling pulses hotter. On the desk, Lor bucks and strains against the chains.

I wonder if I could somehow accept the energy she’s so generously (foolishly?) throwing off, while rejecting the sexual component. As I consider it, she pads to a stop in front of me. We’re the same height. She leans in as if to kiss me.

“Oh, what are you, you delicious thing,” she says, and wets her lips. “Not like them, not like us yet like us. You smell of …” She trails off and stops in front of me, sniffing deeply, leaning into my neck. I don’t move. I feel her snuffling at my throat. “Oh, yes, I like that smell very much but there is … something … it is most …”

She’s definitely unaware I have the spear. I wonder if she even knows such weapons exist. She seems oddly out of the loop.