I’d endured my second sojourn there in a hellish haze, Pri-ya, locked in a cell in the dungeon.

The third time I’d called on the Grand Mistress, I arrived armed to the teeth and inspired Dani to steal the sword and spear from Rowena, once again alienating my sister sidhe-seers.

Honestly, my only decent memory of the place was the night we’d interred the Sinsar Dubh, and even that had gone wrong. We’d merely swapped a bodiless Book for an Unseelie prince capable of nearly flawless illusion, adept at calculated, long-term sleight of hand. I didn’t think for a minute Cruce was as “inert” as the Book had once been. Nor did I believe the Unseelie king had taken adequate measures to keep him imprisoned. Now that I was wearing his cuff, I doubted it even more. Jada had taken the cuff off Cruce’s arm. Had she damaged the bars to do it? Was that why the doors were now closed? Had she managed to get the grid to work? Was he still in his prison or merely sealed in the cavernous room? What risks had she taken in her quest to accumulate weapons? Had she weakened the cage enough that Cruce’s escape was only a matter of time?

My fingers curled at the thought, closing on nothing. I hated not having my spear, especially now that I was visible again. I consoled myself with the thought that I’d hated Dani not having her sword nearly as much. After all, she was sitting right on top of his cage. If he escaped, she’d do what she did best—kill. That’d make two Unseelie princes for her tally. The Mega would crow about the spectacular feat from the rooftops. Jada would probably never mention it. But then Jada had no doubt eclipsed Dani’s kill count years ago.

As we drove through the open gates, parked near the fountain, and got out of the Hummer, I stood a moment, blinking. The grounds so closely resembled the gardens outside the White Mansion, with the moonlight silvering lush fantastical flowers, illuminating inky megaliths, shimmering dark roses and vines that didn’t exist beyond Fae realms, that I had to focus on the gray stone walls of the abbey to convince myself I hadn’t somehow slipped inside the Silvers.

On my last visit here Josie had haughtily informed me that Jada was able to stop Cruce’s changes. Good thing, or the abbey might have been as lost as Sleeping Beauty’s castle, swallowed by a Fae forest of vines and thorns. I took hasty note of the megaliths—still uncapped. They’d not yet been turned into a dolmen, a Fae gate to another realm. I really wanted those stones destroyed or at least toppled.

Dancer let out a low whistle as he exited the Hummer. “Didn’t look like this last time I was here,” he said.

None of us bothered replying. I moved to a bush covered with enormous velvety flowers that smelled of night-blooming jasmine, plucked a blossom the size of a grapefruit and played its petals through my fingers. It felt every bit as real as the illusion of my sister. I buried my nose in it. The scent was rich, intoxicating, amplified by the Unseelie in my blood. Did Cruce’s reach extend all the way to Dublin? Was it he who’d fabricated the illusion of Alina, not the Book? Just what the hell was my Book doing?

Ryodan said, “Mac, confirm Cruce is still contained.”

“She can’t. She ate Unseelie again,” Barrons told him.

“Why?” Dancer looked baffled.

“It gives you superpowers,” Ryodan said. “Makes you harder to kill. Stronger. Faster. Guess Dani never shared that fact with you. Wonder why.”

“Obviously she didn’t think I needed it.”

“Or doesn’t care if you survive.”

“Time will tell, old dude.”

“When you’re ash. And I’m still here.”

“Alone. Because Dani and I will have died, battling a supervillain together, and moved on to the next adventure. Together.”

Ryodan said flatly, “Never going to happen,” and stalked off toward the abbey.

I shot Barrons an uneasy look. He didn’t look any more pleased than I felt. Ryodan’s comment had sounded like an insinuation he meant to keep Dani alive at any cost. And he’d already proved he was willing to do what it took.

“And that’s the thing that’s never going to happen,” I muttered at Ryodan’s retreating back. Dani had already become a bit of a beast as far I was concerned. No way she was turning into a bigger one.

I narrowed my eyes, looking past Ryodan, absorbing the abbey as a whole, beyond the overgrown topiaries, the dazzling, trellised gardens, to the structure of the building itself.

It was here that the battle with the Hoar Frost King had been fought and the icy Unseelie vanquished. Unfortunately, not before it had deposited a cancer in our world. I’d missed that fight. Been in the Silvers with Barrons hunting a summoning spell for the Unseelie king. But I’d heard all about Dani and Ryodan saving the day down by the far end of…Oh!

I blinked but it was still there. Near the ancient chapel that abutted Rowena’s old quarters, where the IFP they’d used to destroy the HFK had been tethered, the night was darker than black.

The absolute absence of light mapped a perfect circle nearly the size of a small car. I pointed it out to the others. “Did either of you know about this?”

Barrons shook his head.

Dancer sighed. “I was hoping we’d killed the Hoar Frost King before it managed to make one of its cosmic deposits, but it fed while we were untethering the IFP. It looks like the flatted fifth we were feeding it was a bloody rich source.”

As if we’d needed any reminders why we were here or how dire our situation, hovering near the south chapel, a mere fifteen yards from the wall of the abbey, was the largest black hole I’d seen yet.

“And if it expands enough to reach the wall?” I demanded. I knew the answer. I wanted someone to tell me I was wrong.

“If it behaves like the one we saw beneath Chester’s,” Barrons said, “the entire abbey and everything in it will disappear.”

“Best case scenario,” Dancer disagreed. “I’ve been studying these things, tossing in small objects. Each one I’ve seen was suspended aboveground. I believe they all are, since the HFK took the frequency it wanted from the air and left its deposit in the same place. Which makes sense because once the sound waves contacted another object, they would no longer have emitted undiluted frequency. Each item I tossed in was instantly absorbed and the anomaly grew slightly. Worth noting, its growth was not proportionate to the mass of the item absorbed.”