—if I do, I’ll lose hope, and hope’s all I’ve got. I learned something important tonight. I thought I was hunting the Book, and that would be the end of it. But now I know we’ve got to re-create what once was. We’ve got to find the five foretold by the Haven’s prophecy. The Sinsar Dubh alone isn’t enough. We need the stones and the book and the five.

That was the end of the page. There was nothing on the other side.

I stared at it until it blurred out of focus. When did grief end? Did it ever? Or did you just get numb from hurting yourself on it so many times?

Would I grow emotional scar tissue? I hoped so. At the same time I hoped not. How could I betray my love for my sister by not suffering every time I thought about her? If I stopped hurting, would that mean I’d stopped loving her a little?

How had Alina known about the Haven? I’d only recently learned of its existence and what it was: the High Council of sidhe-seers. Rowena claimed she’d never met my sister, yet Alina had written in her journal about the governing body of the very organization Rowena ran, and she’d somehow learned of a prophecy foretold by them.

What were the five? What was the Haven’s prophecy?

I clutched my head and massaged my scalp. Evil books and mysterious players and plots within plots, and now prophecies, too? Before I’d needed five things: four stones and a Book. Now I needed ten? That wasn’t merely absurd, it was unfair.

I stuffed the page in the front pocket of my jeans, stood up, freshened my face, took a deep breath, and went out to relieve Dani of her clerk duties. If my eyes were too bright when I stepped behind the counter, either she didn’t notice, or she understood a thing or two about grief, and left me alone.

“Some of the girls want to meet with you, Mac. That’s why I came today. They asked me to ask you because they figured you wouldn’t even let them in the door, and they’re freaked out that you know a prince.” Her feline eyes narrowed. “What’s he like?” Her young voice was hushed with a dangerous blend of fascination and awakening hormones.

V’lane was the sidhe-seer equivalent of Lucifer; and even if his motives in Mankind’s current predicament mirrored ours, he was to be feared, shunned, and, a deep part of me insisted, destroyed. Seelie and Unseelie alike, the Fae were our enemies. They always had been, and always would be. Why, oh why, do we find the most dangerous, forbidden men the most irresistible?

“Fae princes kill sidhe-seers, Dani.”