“Never. You know that. But this”—she waggled the knife—“will finish Seanna off much faster than this”—she lifted the pillow. “She’s sound asleep. Drugged by the fae. If you want to show her mercy, allow me to do this the easy way.”

“Let her finish, Liv,” Patrick said. He appeared in the doorway, Grace holding his arm pinned behind his back.

“I can’t—” I began.

“Fine, then. Grace? Release me, and I’ll stop Liv so she can’t stop Pamela, and we can get this over with, no one at fault but Pamela Larsen. Well, and me, but I’m fine with that.”

“Are you all right with condemning Seanna to an afterlife as a melltithiwyd?” I said.

“What?”

“She’s marked.”

Patrick exhaled a curse. “All right. Maybe she doesn’t deserve—”

“They didn’t just mark her,” I said. “They took a down payment on her debt. Borrowed her soul, her humanity, her conscience—whatever you want to call it. That’s the only way they could guarantee she would do everything they needed. The fact that it meant Gabriel grew up with a soulless monster for a mother? Irrelevant. Or perhaps, as someone once told me, that’s how you forge a good blade.”

Patrick squeezed his eyes shut. “Does Gabriel know this?”

“No, and he’s not going to. He…” I trailed off as Grace looked over her shoulder.

Gabriel stood behind her.

“I tried,” Pepper said from the hall. “He tricked me.”

“So Seanna is marked,” he said. “The sluagh marked her and took her conscience, and this is the end result.” He waved at the bed. “A room full of people debating whether she deserves to die.”

“She doesn’t,” I said. “That gives the sluagh what they want.” I looked at Pamela. “You’ve been set up. Both you and Seanna. The sluagh gave her that envelope with Greg Kirkman’s name in it. Seanna had no idea what was even in it. Then they scripted her encounter with you, preying on your hatred of Gabriel and your drive to protect your family. Combine the two and you’d help the sluagh take out a pawn who’s outlived her usefulness while providing a card to use against me—the sluagh can now accuse both my parents of new murders, with evidence. I was never in any danger from Seanna. Nor was Dad. You’ve been duped, Mom.”

She hesitated, looking from Seanna to Gabriel.