“Too much falsely inflates. Too little underprepares. The finest surgeon has butterfly fingers. Airy. Delicate.”

Like his fingers on my hair. The touch was mesmerizing. “Am I the Unseelie King?” I whispered.

Laughter as soft as moth wings filled my ears and muddied my mind, stirring silt from the dregs of my soul. “No more than I.” He was back behind the bar. “The cantankerous one comes,” he said, with a nod toward the stairs.

I looked to see Barrons descending. When I looked back, the dreamy-eyed guy was no more visible than his reflection.

“I was coming,” I said irritably. Fingers handcuffed around my wrist, Barrons dragged me toward the stairs.

“What part of ‘directly’ didn’t you understand?”

“Same part of ‘play well with others’ you never understand, O cantankerous one,” I muttered.

He laughed, surprising me. I never know what’s going to make him laugh. At the oddest moments, he seems to find humor in his own bad temper.

“I’d be a lot less cantankerous if you admitted you wanted to fuck me and we got down to it.”

Lust ripped through me. Barrons said “fuck” and I was ready. “That’s all it would take to put you in a good humor?”

“It’d go a long way.”

“Are we having a conversation, Barrons? Where you actually express feelings?”

“If you want to call a hard dick feelings, Ms. Lane.”

A sudden commotion at the entrance to the club, two levels above us, caught his attention. He was taller than me and could see over the crowd. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” His face hardened as he stared up at the balconied foyer.

“What? Who?” I said, bouncing on my tiptoes to try to see. “Is it V’lane?”

“Why would it be—” He glared down at me. “I stripped his name from your tongue. There hasn’t been an opportunity for you to get it back again.”

“I told one of his court to go get him. Don’t look at me like that. I want to know what’s going on.”

“What’s going on, Ms. Lane, is that you found the Seelie Queen in the Unseelie prison. What’s going on—given the condition she’s in—is that V’lane’s obviously been lying about her whereabouts for months now, and that can mean only one thing.”

“That it was impossible for me to permit the court to know that the queen was missing, and has been missing for many human years,” V’lane said tightly behind us, his voice hushed. “They would have fallen apart. Without her reining them in, a dozen different factions would have assaulted your world. There has long been unrest in Faery. But this is hardly the place to discuss such matters.”

Barrons and I turned as one.

“Velvet told me you required my presence, MacKayla,” V’lane continued, “but he said your news was of the Book, not of our liege.” He searched my face with a coolness I hadn’t seen since I’d first met him. I supposed my method of summoning him had offended. Fae are so prickly. “Have you truly found her? Is she alive? In every spare moment, I have searched for her. It has prevented me from attending you as I wished.”

“Velvet is a Fae name?”

“His true name is unpronounceable in your tongue. Is she here?”

I nodded.

“I must see her. How does she fare?”

Barrons’ hand shot out and closed around V’lane’s throat. “You lying fuck.”

V’lane grabbed Barron’s arm with one hand, his throat with the other.

I stared, fascinated. I was so discombobulated by recent developments that I hadn’t even realized Barrons and V’lane were standing face-to-face on a crowded dance floor for what was probably the first time in all eternity—close enough to kill each other. Well, close enough for Barrons to kill V’lane. Barrons was staring at the Fae prince as if he’d finally caught a fire ant that had been torturing him for centuries while he’d lay spread-eagled on the desert, coated in honey. V’lane was glaring at Barrons as if he couldn’t believe he’d be so stupid.

“We have larger concerns than your personal grievances,” V’lane said with icy disdain. “If you cannot remove your head from your ass and see that, you deserve what will happen to your world.”

“Maybe I don’t care what happens to the world.”

V’lane’s head swiveled my way, cool appraisal in his gaze. “I have permitted you to retain your spear, MacKayla. You will not let him harm me. Kill him—”