Barrons’s gaze whipped to mine and his eyes glittered with crimson sparks.

You did not just hear that, I said with narrowed gaze.

Your emotion was so palpable, I suspect even Ryodan heard you. You will transfer the queen’s power to another Fae and leave this world if all appears to be lost. You will not die here. Or there. Or anywhere.

We’ll discuss this later.

His nostrils flared and he ducked his head, looking up at me from beneath his brows, like a bull preparing to charge, in that familiar constant jackass way that told me I was in for a long, heated battle later. I arched a brow at him. Fine with me. We always had long heated makeups afterward, too.

Ryodan and Barrons exchanged a look, then Barrons said to Christian, “You may take him home.”

Ryodan snapped, “That’s not what I just said.”

“I don’t care. I said he could,” Barrons said softly. “And you and I will do battle over this one. If there was ever a time for a man to be with his clan, it’s now.” To Christian, he said, “Get the hell out of here.”

Christian vanished.

MAC

When people have absolutely no control over the things that really matter to them, they tend to do one of three things: devolve into animals and prey on others, indulging their base instincts (wolves); huddle in herds for comfort and safety from the chaos (sheep); or invoke a rigid daily routine, effecting control over those few things they can while endeavoring to change what seems an inevitable fate (sheepdogs).

Over the next few weeks our world split neatly into those camps. There were more killings of armed guards and mass suicides at the black holes, making still more work for those of us that fell into the sheepdog category. Violent crimes escalated: rapes, murders, thefts, vandalism. People ripped out recently planted trees and drove utility vehicles through flower beds in public commons in a kind of “Well, if I’m going, by God, I’m taking the world with me” attitude that was beyond my ability to comprehend. I share my mother’s mentality about some things—I’d have planted new flowers right up to the moment of extinction. Barrons says that’s because some people can’t stop creating, even lacking both audience and canvas. They create because they must, not for the world but themselves.

Fortunately, the sheep were up to the challenge of tackling a new, more orderly world and went through the Silvers by the hundreds of thousands to one of seven suitable worlds. They came from all over the globe, drawn by word there was a way off planet. Christian had been sifting to various surrounding countries, alerting people to what was happening in Dublin and telling them to get there as quickly as they could, then sifting out farther and bringing people back with him. The last time I’d seen him, he was stumbling, nearly incoherent, from repeatedly sifting with passengers in tow. The Nine, meanwhile, divided their time between excavating the black holes to keep them from touching the earth, and forming troops of colonies with governing bodies and supplies, and escorting them through.

The “sheep,” as I call them, are the backbone of society, and as some of them stepped up to the portals, they shook off their stupor and got downright excited, alive and alert, and I realized sheep could morph into sheepdogs, under the right circumstances.

As I watched them entering the Silvers via portals Ryodan and Barrons established with stacked mirrors, I felt enormous hope for our race. This world was dying. But seven more were being born. The sky was the limit for the future of our children out there among the stars.

The joy I felt at the possibilities for mankind, however, was brutally overshadowed by the fact that if (and it was looking more like “when”) the Earth died, so many of us would, too. Not just those in my inner circle, but billions that simply wouldn’t make it here in time. We had the weight of the world on our shoulders, literally.

On a personal level, it was a complete and total clusterfuck. If, by some miracle, I were able to sing the Song of Making and heal the world, it would unmake everything made by imperfect song: all the Unseelie, Alina, and possibly Christian, Barrons, the Nine, and Dageus would die.

If I failed to sing it and the world ended, destroying the seat of the Fae race’s power, all Fae, Seelie and Unseelie, Barrons, and the rest of the Nine would definitely die, as well as potentially Christian and the other hybrids among us. I would also die. But Alina would live. At least my parents would get to keep one daughter. So long as I didn’t sing it, Alina would enjoy a natural life span. She wasn’t Fae, she was a human resurrected by imperfect song.

You might think I’d spent all my time exhaustively searching my inner files. I did. For exactly two days.

Then Barrons and Ryodan pointed out the unarguable fact that if the queen had possessed the song, she would have used it and not doomed their race by binding their power to the Earth. If she’d possessed any useful clues, she would have pursued them. There was nothing in my files that could save our world and I was of greater use meeting with Dancer, sharing every note of otherworldly music I’d ever heard inside my head, trying to finish the second half of the song. We worked day and night on it.

To no avail.

According to Dancer, what we were trying to do was impossible, and he didn’t use that word lightly. We had no parameters. No idea if the second half was shorter, as long, or longer than the first. No clue if entirely new motifs developed in it. Art, he said, which song is, is a purely subjective thing, not a mathematical formula. It’s up to the artist, and no one else’s vision can ever be identical.