Page 2

“You realize he is more likely to allow the entity to consume you so that he can control it, than he is to free you from it, yes?” Abigail met her gaze again.

Her eyes were a pure, perfect, and astonishing green.

Like green-green. Like the shade of fresh grass, and new leaves on trees, and moss, and everything that green was, all rolled into one kaleidoscope of shades.

It made her almost embarrassed about how not-green her own eyes were. “Yeah. I know. But everyone is trying to use me. Serrik, Nos, Ibin, everybody. I know he”—she glanced over at Valroy—“wants to destroy Earth, but…”

“You chose the devil you do not know because you had exhausted all options with the devil you do.” Abigail’s smile became sad but sympathetic as she walked across the clearing toward Valroy. “I do know that feeling, trust me.”

“And I love it when I am spoken of as though I am not currently present.” Valroy rolled his eyes, but opened his arms to his wife as she approached. Abigail slipped up to Valroy’s side, and he leaned down to kiss her. “This one is mine, love. I took her fairly.”

The love between them was obvious and strong. Ava couldn’t imagine a life where her husband, whom she loved, was also her sworn enemy. Talk about “it’s complicated.”

“I know. And I have no claim to her, nor any right to interfere in these affairs of yours.” Abigail rested her cheek on her husband’s chest, atop the shape of the labyrinth that was tattooed there. “I simply wished to come meet her myself before the inevitable transformation is complete.”

“The inevitable transformation?” Ava furrowed her brow. “I thought—I left the Web, so I can’t—what do you mean, inevitable transformation?”

Valroy looked down at Abigail, deeply annoyed. “You are meddling again, wife.”

“How so?” Abigail smiled at him, a picture of innocence. “Have you not told her? Oh dear. Forgive me, that was unintended.”

Yeah. Bullshit.

And Valroy clearly believed the same. He sighed and shook his head. “Wife. May I entreat you to leave us be? Kindly?”

Abigail laughed. “Oh, husband.” She turned his head toward her and went up on her tiptoes to kiss him. “I cannot let you have all the fun. You know that. But yes.” She slipped from his embrace. “I shall leave you both to it. We will speak soon, Ava.”

Wait.

That voice. That phrase.

She’d heard it before. She hadn’t recognized it at first. The tree in the room. Ava had been falling asleep that first night, and she’d heard a woman’s voice speak to her. She thought she’d been imagining it, and in all the insanity, she’d forgotten all about? —

“Wait!” Ava called out, but it was too late. Abigail had stepped into a tree and was gone. “Shit.”

“The Seelie play the same games as we, little Ava.” Valroy picked some dirt out from under one of his long fingernails. “They simply wear a mask of a gentler nature. Do not let it fool you.”

“Right.” Ava shut her eyes, took a breath, and let it out slowly. “So. Inevitable transformation? What the absolute fiddly-fuck was that about?”

“Your language is quite something.” Valroy seemed more amused than offended.

“You will be quite entertaining at court. You will adore learning our ways—seeing what we truly are. There, you shall have a far fairer chance to determine whether or not we should all be rendered to dust by our exiled friend once your transformation is complete.” He rolled his eyes.

Interesting that neither Serrik nor Valroy referred to each other as brothers. “But I left the Web, I can’t—” She broke off. Things were starting to fall into place. “I’m still becoming its vessel. The Web. It’s still…even though I’m here. How? Why?”

His smile was almost proud. Almost. “You do not know what the Web truly is, do you?” He laughed in joy. “That bastard has told you nothing of what you are truly becoming. Or what you already are. Oh, this is too much fun!”

“What do you mean?” Ava took a step toward him. Her blood felt like it was running cold. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“A great deal, it seems.” Valroy let out a wistful smile. “But we will have to start at the beginning. What do you believe has happened to you? What were you told?”

Shaking her head, she recalled the words spoken to her by the Eyes. The lock changes the key. And the key changes the lock. “I know that using the first shard started this process. But I thought—it was the other shards that would complete it.”

Valroy laughed again, showing off his sharp fangs.

“Clever, exile. A shame he is my enemy; we could have caused such rage and ruin together. That is entirely true, Ava. If you used all three shards, you would become the vessel for the Web.” He was grinning from ear to ear as if it really were the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

As if the fact that he’d just told her that everything she knew was a total and complete lie were just the absolute best thing he’d ever heard.

Valroy was kind of a dick, she decided.

“Oh, that look.” He sighed, wistfully. “The expression of a human the moment they realize they are perfectly, and quite unilaterally, doomed. I will never tire of it.”

Yeah. A complete and total dick.

“You pulled a cork from the bottom of a boat, little Ava.” He smiled. “You are taking on water. Slower now, perhaps, than if you put more holes in it. But you will sink. And the fact that you do not even know what you are becoming? It is…utterly glorious.”

“The Web is an entity that is the fabric between worlds. It’s made of possibilities.

It’s also a prison that he built on top of that thing.

It’s also some weird kind of…sentient cosmic horror.

Are you telling me all that’s a lie?” Ava clutched Book tighter, knowing her hands would start shaking if she didn’t.

“Absolutely not. Every word of that is the truth.” Valroy cackled. “Oh, this is wonderful.” He shook his head with another wistful sigh. “It is simply not the whole truth.”

“And how do I know you’re telling the truth to me now?” She fought the urge to cry. She really couldn’t catch a break. “About any of this?”

“You needn’t believe me. You will slowly change into the vessel of the Web, whether you like it or not.

You will see the changes happening. Look in a mirror come the dawn, and you will have more ink upon your arm than you did this morn.

As for the rest? You will learn the truth in time.

” He shrugged. “But I did not bring you here entirely on false promises. The transformation will be slower here. Easier to control—and to guide. And thus, we come to my offer to you.”

The look she gave him was probably the same kind of expression she used when the barista told her sorry, we don’t have large, we have venti, at five-thirty in the morning. “Seriously?”

Valroy’s laughter this time seemed genuine. “Oh, I adore you already, Ava Cole. You are going to be an absolute minefield for my courtiers. I will delight in watching you excoriate them.”

“How do you know what mines are?”

“Ask me about the Second World War someday.” He waved a hand dismissively.

“Neither here nor there. The point is this. You are slowly, but surely and inevitably, becoming a creature that shall house inside your tiny mortal body, an entity with power that you cannot currently comprehend. Power that could easily be wielded to destroy my people.”

“Or mine.”

“Precisely.” Valroy approached her, and to his credit, was clearly trying to do so in as unthreatening a manner as possible. “While the latter will be the topic of much debate between us, the former is something I quite distinctly wish to avoid, and I am willing to invest to do so.”

“Translation—just ignore the man behind the curtain. Let’s conveniently skip over the topic of how I want to genocide your entire race, because I really want to make sure you don’t want to genocide my entire race.

” She narrowed her eyes up at him. Shit, he was tall.

The wings didn’t help his sense of looming.

Damn him and Serrik and their propensity for looming. “You can see why that feels lopsided.”

“Hm. Yes. Well. One is locked within the abstract core of my primal being, destined and designed as the void at the center of a galaxy which must consume all matter, and the other is something you can directly control, as it is not within yours.” He smiled as if it were the most obvious statement in the world.

“Which would you prefer I attempt to solve in this moment, as you are suddenly the expert in such things?”

Smartass.

Valroy was a smartass and a dick .

She opted not to call the Unseelie King either of those things to his face. Yet.

“All right. What’s this proposal? I’m sure it’s a contract of some stupid kind or another.”

“No. No contract, no deal, no arrangement.” His other wing’s claw, the one not holding the shard, simply waved that off like it was no big deal. They really were expressive.

“What?” Now that, she weirdly didn’t trust.

“It is quite simple.” He started walking away from her again.

“If I wish for you to come to see value in our people, entrapment is hardly the way to do it, is it? No, Ava Cole. You will join the Din’Glai if you wish to.

You will sit amongst my people at my banquets if you choose to.

And you will stay here, in Tir n’Aill, safe amongst the Unseelie as my personal guest if it pleases you .

And I shall guide you on how to control that which shall otherwise slowly consume you— but only if you desire it. ”

“No strings attached?” She grunted. “No pun intended.”

He huffed a single laugh. “No strings attached. Otherwise, I am happy to return you to the Web. And you can take this all up with the exile.”

With a groan, she glanced back at Bitty.

Who just looked up at her with huge, terrified eyes, and shrugged.

Looking down at her arm, and at the barest beginnings of a tattoo that she knew would be larger in the morning, she let out a breath. She knew he wasn’t lying about something that would be so easily disproven in about twelve hours. Serrik hadn’t told her the whole truth.

Which meant the score was right now Valroy one, Serrik zero. Or…Serrik negative some number, depending on how she wanted to count them.

Fuck.

Fuckity-fucksticks.

“I came this far.” She sighed and started walking after Valroy with Bitty nervously hovering at her heels. “All right. Let’s see this…Deen-Glay.”

Valroy laughed again. “Oh, yes. This is going to be quite entertaining, indeed…”

Ava knew he was right.

She just wished it wasn’t all going to be at her expense.

Or at the loss of her humanity.

Or her life.