Moloch strips off the patch that covers his missing eye. The exposed eye socket, the puckered scar—he might as well own them. He might as well stop trying to be loved by the Seelie fae. Yes. He’s done with trying to get back into the good graces of his treacherous kin. With the magic that is controlled by the Guardian, Moloch could take the entire fae realm for his own and turn the bright Seelie place to ash. Make them all look just like him. Make them all stink of rot. Make them all feel the pain of loss, rejection, and loneliness.

When he has this magic he’s been searching for, he’ll get rid of the king and any others who refuse to worship—yes, worship!—his scarred Unseelie face.

CHAPTER 24

Isaac

1942

Nausea roiled through Isaac and he tried to steady himself. His head swam, and the hum that followed him everywhere rose and fell, rose and fell, until it finally began to subside. He pulled the scroll from inside his shirt and grabbed the watch from underneath the bed. He was still recovering from his near miss, from almost not having the watch in hand when it finished chiming. If the woman hadn’t been there to help him, why . . . He took a sharp breath.

He couldn’t make that mistake again. He was certain that he’d doomed her, that she might have escaped those men and their swords, escaped with the girl through that magical door if it hadn’t been for him. If it hadn’t been for her helping him reach the watch in time. He clenched his fists, angry with himself and miserable for the woman. He didn’t know what had happened to her, but it didn’t look good.

Then he sat back, leaned back against the bed frame, settled himself, and thought.

He needed to understand what his parents were trying to tell him by sending him to that time and place, to where he’d just been.

He’d been in ancient Greece, he was pretty certain. He’d seen a woman mathematician there use magic and create a door where there was none. He’d witnessed her sending a girl into a magical place, handling a possibly magical object, and being threatened. Somehow his parents had planted the scroll and left the eternity knot for him to find.

Was his only purpose there to find the scroll and bring it back? And what had he missed when he traveled to the circle of standing stones and watched those monsters carry people off into the night sky?

First things first, he thought, and Isaac leaned forward onto his knees and unrolled the scroll.