She moves closer. Someone placed the human’s picture ID on top of the flowers so he would be found and identified, bestowing the blessing of closure so those who cared might not wonder endlessly if their husband or father might one day walk in the door again.

If not for the blossoms, she would think it an act of vengeance, not compassion.

A killer followed by a merciful passerby?

She closes her eyes, analyzes, assesses, processes all she saw and factors in what she has come to understand about humans and monsters in her years of war. Working methodically, logically, she re-creates the events that transpired in this street.

She eliminates the possibility of two separate actors. This was the work of one.

Someone killed a Fae and butchered a human by accident in the process.

Someone killed her Fae.

If she felt, which she doesn’t, her emotions would run the gamut from stunned to furious.

Neither disrupts her serene features.

Someone else adjusted her ledgers.

She wants to know who.

She steps closer to the pile of Unseelie flesh, notes the suckered fingers, the gray skin.

The individual spear wounds in each small piece by which the dismembered-yet-still-alive Unseelie was granted death.

From the shape of the wounds, she knows the killer.

Her name is also on her list.

She covets the weapon. Once she has acquired it, she will be unstoppable.

She lifts her head. A Fae is moving toward her, rapidly. Powerful. Unseelie. She has been hunting this one but not to kill.

“You wish the Unseelie Princes dead,” she says to the night. She knows the night is always listening. “I will do it for you. But you must do something for me.”

She finds it necessary to repeat herself three times before the princess with ice-white skin and cobalt hair appears in the damp street before her.

“What makes you think I won’t kill you where you stand?” Imperial ice drips from the princess’s words.

“Perhaps you could. Perhaps you couldn’t. Perhaps you could use an ally in this city whose strengths chink your weaknesses. Perhaps we both could. Not that either of us have many weaknesses. Still, there are those few. You and your brother princes are immune to one another, powerless to spell or destroy one another. I deem that a significant weakness.”

Starry eyes narrow as the princess takes her measure.

Jada says, “There is the devil that can’t get the job done and won’t eat you, and the devil that can get the job done but might. We are both the latter. I agree not to eat you.”

The princess’s eyes narrow and she appears to be reconsidering her initial assessment. “Perhaps we can aid one another. If the price is acceptable.”

“You will locate a certain Unseelie for me.” She tells her the one she seeks.

“Even I do not approach that one,” the princess hisses.

“Then I will not kill your brothers.”

“It is impossible!”

“I said ‘locate,’ not kill. That is the price. It is non-negotiable.”

“How do you think to kill the princes? You are human.”

“I know where to obtain a weapon that kills Fae.”

“There is no such thing.”

“There is.”

“All Fae?”

“Yes.”

“And you can get this weapon?”

“Yes.”

The princess is silent a time, then finally says, “Perhaps you have useful knowledge. I will not kill you tonight. You will show me this weapon and demonstrate its power.”

“You will locate the one I seek first. Then you will take me there.”

“Locate. That is all.”

“Both. Or nothing.”

“That would be two services rendered. The weapon becomes mine.”

“Two princes for two services,” she says flatly.

Ancient, cold eyes regard her. She is acutely aware of the precariousness of the moment. But one that fails to venture never gains.

Finally the princess says, “In times of war allies are useful.”

“I will offer my services for your future needs. The weapon will be part of those services.”

“I will consider it.” The princess vanishes.

14

“Tools, said I, you do not know Silence like a cancer grows”

KAT

My gift, if you can call it that, is an empathetic heart. I began crying the moment I was born and wept until I was five years, three months, and seventeen days old—the afternoon Rowena came to my parents’ house and began teaching me to shield myself from the constant barrage of others’ emotions.