“No Nulling. I promise.” Barrons had yet another edge over the rest of us. Why didn’t that surprise me? Was that how he’d managed to conceal the Unseelie mirror from me? With deeper, darker magic than sidhe-seers knew? I couldn’t get too bent out of shape over it, however, because it meant I really was safe in the bookstore. How complex I was becoming: grateful for power wherever it could be found, provided it worked for me. “Are we clear on what I’m going to do, and what you’re not going to do?”

“As clear as your transparent desires, sidhe-seer.”

Rolling my eyes, I skirted the car and took his hand.

At home in Ashford, I have a great group of friends.

I don’t have a single one in Dublin.

The one place I thought I might make friends was at the abbey, among my own kind. Now, thanks to Rowena, that opportunity was closed to me. She’d been messing up my life since the first night I’d arrived in Ireland, when I’d nearly betrayed myself in a pub to the first Fae I’d ever seen and, instead of taking me in and teaching me what I was, she’d told me to go die somewhere else.

Then she’d stood passively by while V’lane had nearly raped me in a museum.

Then she’d sent her sidhe-seers to spy on me (like I wasn’t one, too!) and finally, she’d added insult to injury—sending them to attack me and take my weapon, forcing me to harm one of my own. Not once had Rowena welcomed me. Not once had she shown me anything but disdain and distrust—for no good reason!

These women were never going to forgive me for killing one of them. I knew that, and I wasn’t here to ask them to. It’s not the hand you’re dealt that matters. It’s how you play the cards.

I was here to set the record straight.

Rowena had made a statement this afternoon. By sending her sidhe-seers after me in force, with orders to subdue me and steal my weapon, she’d said: You are not one of us and the only way you can become one of us is complete subjugation to my will. Give me your weapon, obey me in all things, and I’ll consider letting you into the fold.

I was here to make my own statement back: Screw you, old woman. To drive my point home I’d brought as my protector a Fae Prince capable of destroying them all (not that I would ever let him). If she was a wise woman, she wouldn’t mess with me again, and she’d call off her attack dogs. I already had enough people and monsters messing with me.

Darn it all, I’d wanted friends and I’d wanted them among my own kind!