I need nothing. I am desire. Lust. Greed.

“How are things with Lor?” I toy with her as I move near. She begins to hand me water jugs, one after the next. I sweep a dusting of ice from a long flat stone, place it there, then three more in quick succession beside it. I open one and while her back is turned pretend to take a drink. “Oh, that’s good. Here, have some.” I offer her the jug and watch as she takes a long, deep swallow.

“Ew, that’s weird,” she says, wiping her mouth. “It tasted sweet.”

“Probably some of the jugs Jada put sweetener in,” I lie. “She told me sugar-water fuels her freeze-frame better than plain. So what’s up with Lor?” I prod. I want to see her happy, excited about the life she’s never going to have when I take it from her.

She laughs. “Oh, God, Mac, I never would have guessed that man was so…complicated. He’s smart. Like super freaky smart. Who’d have thought? He’s trying to help me create a filing system for my memory.”

“Do you care about him?”

She takes another drink, grimaces, and hands me the jug back. “I haven’t had time to think about it,” she demurs. “We’re all too busy just trying to survive.”

But she does. It’s there in the soft glow in her eyes. She’s thinking that she has someone she can count on, someone strong who makes her feel good and alive, as if life holds endless opportunity for adventure and—what a stupid fucking delusion humans erect and cling to—romance. She’s happy. She put on makeup this morning, took care with her hair. She’s hoping to see him today.

She will never see him again.

I am the last thing she’ll see, the face of her god as I punish her for the unforgivable sin of failing to protect her kingdom.

But this time I’ll take it slow. Savor every succulent nuance of killing, destroying, breaking, defiling. Lust blazes white-hot in my body, between my legs, and I nearly stagger from the intensity of it. Destroying makes me want to fuck. But this woman lacks the parts I desire.

I stare at her through the dim light, assessing, fixing my gaze on her neck. It looks tender and full of blood. Perhaps blood will strengthen me. “Come,” I suggest softly, “let’s secure these below, then we’ll take a few jugs to the sidhe-seers.”

I collect two of them and she follows me like a fucking idiotic puppy who thinks the world is a good, safe place to explore, full of happy people with hands outstretched in kindness, bearing gifts of food and toys to the demolished entry to the underground city. As I mount the rubble at the top of the stairs, I freeze.

Cruce’s body is gone. How could Cruce’s body be gone? I’m momentarily blank, unable to divine a possibility that encompasses this anomaly. No one else has been here. I would have heard someone creep up the stairs and drag him back down. I would have picked up some small sound if he’d somehow managed to escape the runes (IMPOSSIBLE!) and slipped off.

I can’t explain this. Something has transpired for which I am unable to account. That means I have an enemy. A clever, clever one. Someone tampers with my work. WHO IS INTERFERING WITH MY PLANS AND HOW? I consider attempting to employ the same temporal spell MacKayla used, see if it would work on me to shuttle me back a few minutes in time, where I might warn my other self as I top the stairs to watch for an enemy and identify it, but it’s possible duplicate versions of myself could split my power, and if one version of me was destroyed in the temporal conflict, so too would be whatever power it possessed. I remember too well what happened when I amputated myself from the corporeal version of the Book. I’d had to leave parts of myself behind. Important parts. They’d served as a distraction, kept all eyes on the Book, not Isla, but I’d never stopped ruing the loss. Some of my more powerful spells had been sacrificed that day. LIMITS. LIMITS EVERYWHERE! Fury floods my veins. My body trembles with it, weak thing that it is. Not only don’t I have the spear, now one of my cocoons is missing. My meticulously crafted swift surgical strike is being undermined at every turn!

Incensed, I whirl on Jo, all subtlety and plans for leisure gone, and grab her by the shoulders. I need an outlet. Now.

“What’s wrong, Mac?” she gasps, startled, staring at me wide-eyed. Doe eyes. Dumb, trusting eyes.

I grip her tightly with one hand, digging my fingers into her back, my thumb into the soft flesh beneath her collarbone, and slam her in the face with a fist, using every ounce of my Unseelie-flesh-enhanced strength.

With the first blow, Jo’s nose explodes, her right jaw fractures, and her eyes roll back into her head.

She staggers for footing. “My God, Mac, what—”

With the second blow, I unhinge both jaws completely and she doesn’t speak again. Choking on blood, strangled screams gurgle from her throat.

I punch her again and again and again, shattering the bones of her eye sockets, her brow, blinding her, splintering her skull, incensed that I have an enemy I know nothing about.

A clever, clever enemy who has stolen something that is mine. Two things now have been unfairly thieved from me!

Terrified, broken mewling sounds leak from the broken, bloodied hole of Jo’s face. She was too wounded by my first blow to mount a defense. I release my hold on her and she melts to the ground, trying with the vestiges of her dying will to curl into a protective ball, but there’s no protection from me.

I am ceaseless, relentless, hungry as a tsunami.

My will is stronger, my aim unencumbered, my desires greater.