I whirl on him.

We glare at each other, but his words give me pause. Am I being an ostrich? Do I deny myself the opportunity to avenge my sister, because I’m stuck in a rut I refuse to get out of? Will I let my sister’s real murderer get away, because I can’t open my mind to see beyond my preconceptions? Barrons warned me from the beginning to not so blithely assume Darroc was definitely her killer.

A muscle works in my jaw. Each time I remember something about Barrons, I hate Darroc more for taking him from me. But I remind myself why I’m here and why I haven’t already killed him.

To accomplish my goal, there are certain answers I need.

I eye him speculatively. There are others I just want.

And once I get the Book in my hands and change things, I’ll never have another chance to ask. He’ll be gone. I’ll have killed him. Here and now is my one shot.

“She said she was going to try to come home but she was afraid you wouldn’t let her leave the country,” I say stiffly. “She said I had to find the Sinsar Dubh. Then she sounded terrified and said you were coming.”

“Me? By name? She told you ‘Darroc’ was coming?”

“She didn’t have to. What she said earlier made it clear.”

“And what was that? What so thoroughly incriminated me?”

I still have her message memorized. I dream it sometimes, word for word. “She said, I thought he was helping me, but—God, I can’t believe I was so stupid! I thought I was in love with him and he’s one of them, Mac! He’s one of them! Who else could that have been? You keep telling me she loved you. Was there someone else she was involved with that she thought she—”

“No! There was only me. She would never have sought another. I gave her everything.”

“Then you understand why I believe you killed her.”

“I do not, and did not. There are holes larger than Hunters in your puny human logic!”

“Who else could it have been? Who else did she fear?”

He turns and paces to one of the windows, where he stands gazing out at the dazzling winter day. Ice-crusted trees sparkle like they’ve been diamond-dipped. Drifts of powdery snow shimmer in the sunlight. The scene seems lit from within, like the concubine herself.

But there is only darkness inside me. I feel it growing.

“You are certain that the day you had this conversation with her was the day she died?”

It wasn’t a conversation, but I don’t tell him that. “Although the Garda didn’t find her body for two days, they estimated her time of death at about four hours after she called me. The coroner in Ashford said it was possible she died as much as eight to ten hours after she made the call. She said it was difficult to estimate exact time of death due to the way her body had been savaged.” I refuse to say “chewed on.”

Still staring out the window, his back to me, he says, “One morning after I left, she followed me to the house on LaRuhe.”

I catch my breath. These are words I’ve been waiting to hear since the day I identified my sister’s body. To learn what she did the last day she was alive. Where she went. How it came to such a bitter end.

“Did you know?” I demand.

“I eat Unseelie.”

He knew. Of course he knew. It amps up all the senses, hearing, sight, taste, touch. It’s what makes it so addictive—and the super-sized strength is icing on the cake. You feel alive, incredibly alive. Everything is more vivid.

“We’d been in bed all night, fucking—”

“T-the-fuck-M-I,” I snarl.

“You think I don’t know what that means. Alina used to say it. Too much information. It disturbs you to hear of the passion your sister and I shared.”

“It sickens me.”

When he turns, his gaze is cool. “I made her happy.”

“You didn’t keep her safe. Even if you didn’t kill her, she died on your watch.”

He flinches almost imperceptibly.

I think, Nice, real nice, got that fake emotion down real well.

“I thought she was ready. I believed what she felt for me would win in one of your idiotic human battles of morality. I was wrong.”

“So she followed you. Did she confront you?”

He shakes his head. “She saw me through the windows at LaRuhe—”

“They’re painted black.”

“They weren’t yet. I did that later. She watched me meet with my Unseelie guard and overheard our conversation about freeing more of the Dark Court. She heard them call me Lord Master. After my guard left and I was alone, I waited to see what she would do, if she would come in, if she would give us a chance. She didn’t. She fled, and I followed, at a distance. She spent hours walking around Temple Bar, crying in the rain. I waited, gave her space, time to clarify her thoughts. Humans do not think as quickly as Fae. They struggle with simple concepts. It is astounding your species ever managed to—”

“Spare me your condescending judgments and I’ll spare you mine,” I cut him off, in no mood to listen to him condemn my race. His race already did that. Billions dead. All because of their petty power struggles.

He inclines his head imperiously. “I went to her apartment later that day. I found her in the bedroom, climbing out the window, onto the fire escape.”

“See? She was afraid of you.”

“She was terrified. It made me angry. I had given her no reason to fear me. I dragged her back in. We fought. I told her she was human, stupid and small. She called me a monster. She said I tricked her. That it was all a lie. It was not. Or, rather, it was at first but then it wasn’t. I would have made her my queen. I told her that. And that I still would. But she wouldn’t listen. She wouldn’t even look at me. Finally I left. But I did not kill her, MacKayla. Like you, I do not know who did.”

“Who trashed her apartment?”

“I told you we fought. Our anger was as intense as our lust.”

“Did you take her journal?”

“I went back for it after I learned she was dead. It was not there. I took photo albums. It was then, when I found her calendar book, that I discovered her ‘friend’ Mac was really her sister. She lied to me. I was not the only one who was duplicitous. I have lived among your kind long enough to know this means she knew from the beginning something about me was not what it seemed. And wanted me anyway. I believe that if she had not been murdered, in time she would have come to me, chosen me of her own free will.”

Yes, I think, she would have come to you. With a weapon in her hand, just like I will.

“I needed to know if you shared her unique talents. Had you not arrived in Dublin when you did, I would have had you brought to me.”

I absorb that and am furious. It’s very important to me to pinpoint the exact moment my life started going wrong. Especially now.

It goes back further than I’d realized.

The moment Alina left for Dublin and began heading toward the day she would encounter him, there’d been no hope of my life turning out any other way. Events had been set in motion that trapped me. I would have embarked upon exactly the same path, through a different door. If I’d not disobeyed my parents and flown to Ireland to investigate Alina’s murder, would he have sent the Hunters after me? The princes? Maybe dispatched the Shades to devour my town and drive me out?

One way or another, I would have ended up here, with him, in the middle of this mess.

“Because of your sister, I resisted harming you.”

More than anything he has ever said, those words stun me. I stand half dazed as they echo through my brain, knocking loose conflicting thoughts, nudging them to where they no longer oppose. Without warning, my convictions shift and settle into a new position. I’m startled by where they end up, but they moved with such logic and simplicity that I can’t deny the veracity.

Darroc did care about Alina.

I believe him.