Master of adaptation and evolution, I slide more surely in my skin with each breath, enjoying the complex albeit imperfect elegance of what I possess. I inhale long and slow, swelling first my abdomen then lungs with air. Breathing brings an assault of unfathomable stenches, but I will acclimate.

Everything MacKayla Lane experienced is filed in my meticulous mental vault, but during my incarceration in her body I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t smell.

I was—as she is now—trapped in a dark silent prison, my only connection to the world an attachment I forged to her central nervous system, through supremacy of will and relentless trial and failure. My existence was a smattering of complex electrical charges, intricate patterns without substance. Although I spied on her life as much as possible, I was able to seize use of her body, hands, and eyes only once, for brief duration. All else was diluted, secondhand perception absorbed from within except on that overcast rainy day I killed the Gray Woman and Mick O’Leary.

The power. The glory. That was the day I knew I would win. Those clumsy, debilitating hours I rode a body for the first time.

I require time to perfect control.

I. Require.

I draw myself up inside, gathering the enormity, the ancientness, the hunger and storm of my existence, and expand into the imperfect biological vessel I’ve claimed, saturating, possessing, every atom. I fill my blood, my bones, my skin.

I turn the full force of my regard upon Jada, blink once, and reveal myself. My eyes, reflected in the stainless steel door of a commercial freezer unit behind her, fill with obsidian until no white remains. Around me the very air cools; I have such presence.

She changes color. Fear impacts the nerves that connect brain to heart, constricting circulation. The blood vanishes from her face, leaving freckles upon snow. Her eyes widen, her pupils dilate and freeze. The scent of her body alters to one I find…intriguing.

I experience all of this with my own senses. It’s incomparable. My mere existence embedded within this stolen skin reprograms the anatomy of those around me.

Power.

I was made for it.

I would prefer to shred her flesh from bone but several things prevent me. I smile with my new face.

“I would run if I were you,” I tell her softly.

She does, lightning fast. No hesitation, no debilitating deliberation. There one moment, gone the next. Among humans, she is superior.

I covet her speed and dexterity. MacKayla Lane would call it “freeze-framing.” If I could eat Jada and absorb her talent, I would ignore those things that stay my hand.

There is something else I can eat. Clever MacKayla. Flawed MacKayla. Those that fall pave the way for my ascendance. When one begins at the bottom, ascendance is a given.

I depart the warehouse and enter the gloomy day.

I enter.

I am. The Sweeper will appear shortly. Not even I have the power to destroy that one.

I’d contemplated pretending to be MacKayla, living among them, infiltrating their circle while pursuing my goals, but deemed the risk of discovery too high. Concealing my brilliance, feigning to be so much less—impossible. Besides, I am a newly forged sword and will surely benefit from time with hammer and fire.

Time, my enemy, my ally. I have precious little of the commodity to implement my plan. Expediency is directly proportionate to success. When opponents war, the strongest and swiftest wins. I am already the former and intend to be the latter.

Until they hunt me, time is my ally. I possess the weapon to accomplish all my goals. I prize the spear, I loathe it. It might damage me. Its weight beneath my arm both reassures and repulses.

Singing softly beneath my breath—one of MacKayla’s favorites, “Sh-boom, sh-boom, life could be a dream sweetheart”—I move down an alley, around a corner, proceeding to my first objective. My map of Dublin, once an amalgam of neural currents, now has visual latitude and longitude. While MacKayla wandered aimless, I did not. I was paying attention.

What a sorry experiment she was. I desired so much more.

Unwavering laser-focus on one’s goals is power. Humans rarely achieve it, infesting their garden with the cultivated parasites of empathy, compassion, mercy, nurturing the grubs of guilt and penance, heaping emotional fertilizer on every acre of arable, marchable, conquerable land until nothing remains but the sky-high, sickly weeds of their stunted vision. A blind gardener reaps no crop, escapes no predator.

We are desire, lust, greed, and the path we choose to supremacy.

Humans romanticize this truth. Fact: they desire sex. Fact: they desire limiting that vessel from having sex with others. Fact: they create a ritual called marriage and an illusion called love to validate their greed and bid for supremacy over the object of their lust.

WE ARE DESIRE, LUST, GREED, AND THE PATH WE CHOOSE TO SUPREMACY. Take notes. Cretins. Idiots. Call it what it is. Then go forth and fucking conquer.

There are currently two Unseelie princes and one princess living. They will die. I permit none between my throne and me.

My body is human, not prince. Pity. A Fae form would eradicate irksome limitations. But there were no princes available the night I seized the opportunity for escape. I lack wings to soar into the sky, slash Death’s throat with my spear and douse the fire below with his blood.

But my first victim knows MacKayla and will come to her unaware she is me.

I giggle. “Surprise,” I murmur, envisioning the moment.

I spy the first of my children, offspring of the spells I am as I exit the Dark Zone. They are more my seed than they ever were the penitent king’s. Oxymoron that. A true king knows no penitence, bows to nothing and no one.