“It was a week and a half! Days matter now, even hours.”

Had it really been a week and a half? Time flew when you were dying. “Did you give them orders to kill me if it was the only way they could get my spear?”

“Och, it was not I who spilled sidhe-seer blood today!”

“Oh, yes, it was. You sent them after me. You sent six of your women to attack me. I would never have killed any of them, and they know it. They saw it happen. Moira collided with my spear. It was a terrible accident. But it was just that—an accident.”

She slipped her glasses from her nose, and let them rest on her chest, suspended by a chain of delicate seed pearls behind her neck. Without taking her gaze from my face, Rowena addressed her enclave. “She’s calling murder an accident, she is. Betraying us to our enemies and guiding them past our wards. This woman is our enemy, too.”

“I have known where your kind hide for millennia,” V’lane purred. “Your wards are laughable. They could not prevent a nightmare of me from getting in. You stink of old age and death, human. Shall I weave you dreams of it, haunt you with them?”

Rowena stared past him. “I do not hear it speaking.” To me, she said, “Give me the spear and I will permit the two of you to live. You will remain here with us. It will leave and never return.”

Snow dusted my cheeks. Soft gasps filled the corridor. Some of the sidhe-seers held out their hands, palms upward, to catch the whirling, icy flakes. I guessed none of them had seen a Fae prince before.

V’lane’s voice was even colder than the unnatural snow caused by his displeasure. “Do you think to kill me with the sword you have hidden in your robes, old woman?”

I groaned inwardly. Great. Now he had both weapons. Should I Null him and try to take them back?

Rowena reached for the blade. I could have told her not to bother. V’lane raised the sword she sought in a flash of silver, and rested the razor-sharp tip in the wrinkled hollow of her throat.

The Grand Mistress of the sidhe-seers went very, very still.

“I know your kind, old woman. And you know mine. I could make you kneel before me. Would you like that? Would you like your lovely little sidhe-seers to watch you writhe naked in ecstasy before me? Shall I make them all writhe?”

“Stop it, V’lane,” I said sharply.

“She did not save you from me,” he said, reminding me of the time he’d nearly raped me in the museum. “She stood by and watched you suffer. I merely mean to—how do you say it?—return the favor. I will punish her for you. Perhaps then you will forgive me a little.”