I slumped down on my bed.

Everywhere I turned, I’d see ghosts.

Would Dani’s ghost haunt me in the streets? Would I make that happen? Would I go that far? Premeditated murder of a girl who was little more than a child?

You choose what you can live with, he’d said. And what you can’t live without.

It had never occurred to me that the outcome of my time in Dublin might be a future of living in a bookstore without Barrons ever again, walking the streets filled with my—

“Oh, feck it, she was my sister,” I growled, punching my pillow. I didn’t give a damn if we weren’t born to each other: Alina had been my best friend, my heart-sister, and that made us sisters any way I looked at it.

“Where was I?” I muttered. Ah, yes, streets filled with my sister’s ghost, compounded by the ghost of the teenager I’d come to think of as my little sister, who’d been involved with killing my sister. Would I walk the streets with those phantoms every day?

What an awful, empty life that would be!

“Alina, what should I do?” God, I missed her. I missed her like it was yesterday. I heaved myself up from bed, grabbed my backpack, dropped cross-legged on the floor, pulled out one of her photo albums, and opened the sunny yellow cover.

There she was with Mom and Dad at her college graduation.

There we were, at the lake with a group of friends, drinking beer and playing volleyball like we were going to live forever. Young, so damned young. Had I ever really been that young?

Tears slipped down my cheeks as I turned the pages.

There she was on the green at Trinity College, with new friends.

Out in the pubs, dancing and waving to the camera.

There was Darroc, watching her, his gaze possessive, hot.

There she was looking up at him, completely unguarded. I caught my breath. Goose bumps rose on my arms and neck.

She had loved him.

I could see it. I knew my sister. She’d been crazy about him. He’d made her feel what Barrons made me feel. Bigger than I could possibly be, larger than life, on fire with possibilities, ecstatic to be breathing, impatient for the next moment together. She’d been happy in those last months, so alive and happy.

And if she’d lived?

I closed my eyes.

I knew my sister.

Darroc had been right. She would have gone to him. She would have found a way to accept it. To love him anyway. We were so fatally flawed.

But what if … what if her love might have changed him? Who could say it wouldn’t have? What if she’d gotten pregnant and there was suddenly a baby Alina, helpless and pink and cooing? Might love have softened his edges, his need for revenge? It had worked greater miracles. Maybe I shouldn’t think of her as flawed but as a wrench in the works in a good way, who might have changed the outcome for the better. Who could say?

I turned the page and mycheeks flamed.

I shouldn’t look. I couldn’t help it. They were in bed. I couldn’t see Alina. She had the camera. Darroc was naked. From the angle, I knew Alina was on top of him. From the look on his face, I knew he was coming when she took it. And I could see it in his eyes.

He’d loved her, too.

I dropped the album and sat staring into space.

Life was so complicated. Was she bad because she’d loved him? Was he evil because he’d wanted to reclaim what had been taken from him? Hadn’t the same motives driven the Unseelie King and his concubine? Didn’t the same motives drive humans every day?

Why hadn’t the queen just let the king have the woman he loved? Why couldn’t the king be happy with one lifetime? What might have happened to the Unseelie if they’d never been imprisoned? Might they have turned out like the Seelie court?

And what about my sister and me? Would we really doom the world? Nurture or nature: What were we?

Everywhere I looked, I could see only shades of gray. Black and white were nothing more than lofty ideals in our minds, the standards by which we tried to judge things and map out our place in the world in relevance to them. Good and evil, in their purest form, were as intangible and forever beyond our ability to hold in our hand as any Fae illusion. We could only aim at them, aspire to them, and hope not to get so lost in the shadows that we could no longer see the light.

Alina had been aiming for the right thing to do. So was I. She hadn’t made it. Would I fail? Sometimes it was hard to know what the right thing to do was.

Feeling like the worst kind of voyeur, I reached for the photo album, pulled it back on my lap, and began to turn the page.

That’s when I felt it. The pocket was too thick. There was something behind the photo of Darroc staring up at Alina like she was his world, coming inside her.

I slid the photo out with trembling hands. What would I find secreted away here? A note from my sister? Something that would give me more insight into her life before she’d died?

A love letter from him? From her?

I withdrew a piece of old parchment, unfolded it, and gently smoothed it open. There was writing on both sides. I turned it over. One side was covered from upper margin to lower. The other side had only a few lines on it.

I recognized the paper and script on the full side instantly. I’d seen Mad Morry’s writings before, although I didn’t read Old Irish Gaelic.

I turned it over, holding my breath. Yes, he’d translated it!

IF THE BEAST OF THREE FACES IS NOT CONTAINED BY THE TIME THE FIRST DARK PRINCE DIES THE FIRST PROPHECY SHALL FAIL FOR THE BEAST SHALL HAVE GORGED ON POWER AND CHANGED. ONLY BY ITS OWN DESIGN WILL IT FALL. HE WHO IS NOT WHAT HE WAS SHALL TAKE UP THE TALISMAN AND WHEN THE MONSTER WITHIN IS DEFEATED SO SHALL BE THE MONSTER WITHOUT.