Nearly a million years ago, the Seelie King asked the original Seelie Queen—since her death, many queens have risen, only to be ousted by another who achieved greater power and support—to turn his concubine Fae, to make her immortal so he could keep her forever. When the queen refused, the king built his concubine the White Mansion inside the Silvers. He secreted his beloved away from the vindictive queen, where she could live without aging until he was able to perfect the Song of Making and turn her Fae himself.

If only the queen had granted his one simple request! But the leader of the True Race was controlling, jealous, and small.

Unfortunately, the king’s efforts to duplicate the Song of Making—the mystical stuff of creation, a power and right that the queen of their matriarchal race selfishly hoarded—created the Unseelie, imperfect half-lives that he couldn’t bear to kill. They lived. They were his sons and daughters.

He created a new realm, the Court of Shadows, where his children could play while he continued his work, his labor of love.

But the day came when he was betrayed by one of his own children and found out by the Seelie Queen.

They clashed in a battle to end all battles. Seelie struck down their darker brethren, who sought only the right to exist.

The dominoes fell, one after another: the death of the Seelie Queen at the hands of the king; the suicide of the concubine; the act of “atonement” in which the Seelie King created the deadly Sinsar Dubh.

He rechristened himself the Unseelie King—never again would he be associated with the petty viciousness of the Seelie; henceforth he would be Unseelie, literally meaning not of the Seelie. He no longer called his home the Court of Shadows, in which he hid to perform his labor of love. It became simply Unseelie court.

By then, however, the court was a prison for his children, a macabre place of shadows and ice. The cruel Seelie Queen’s last act had been to use the Song of Making—not for creation, not to make his beloved immortal!—but to destroy, trap, and torture for all eternity any who had dared disobey her.

And the dominoes fell …

The book containing the Unseelie King’s knowledge, all his darkness and evil, somehow ended up in my world, being protected by humans. It was set loose in a manner that I have yet to determine, but of this I am certain: Alina’s murder, my screwed-up life, and Barrons’ death—all are the result of a chain of Fae events that began a million years ago over a single mortal.

My world, we humans, we’re just pawns on an immortal chessboard.

We got in the way.

Jack Lane, attorney extraordinaire, would put the Unseelie King, not Darroc, on trial and make a persuasive case against the concubine for guilt by association.

Because the unthinkable occurred and the original queen died before she had the chance to pass on the Song of Making to one of the princesses as her successor, the Fae race began to decline. Many princesses rose to the Seelie throne, but few lasted long before another wrested away her power. Queens were killed, others merely deposed and banished. Infighting grew and coups became more frequent. The Fae race became limited. All that was already was all that could ever be.

No new things could be made. Old powers were lost, and, over the eons, ancient magic was forgotten, until one day the current queen was no longer capable of reinforcing the weakening walls between realms and retaining control of the deadly Unseelie.

Darroc exploited this weakness and brought the walls between our worlds crashing down. Now Fae and human vie for control of a planet that is too small, too fragile, for both races.

All because of a single mortal—the domino that started all the others falling.

I follow the woman who I suspect is that mortal—in a not-quite-really-there kind of way—down the inky corridor.

If she is the concubine, I can summon no anger toward her, try though I might.

On their immortal chessboard, she was a pawn, too.

She is lit from within. Her skin shimmers with a translucent glow that illuminates the walls of the tunnel. The hall grows darker, blacker, stranger with each step we take. In contrast, she is holy, divine: an angel gliding into hell.

She is warmth, shelter, and forgiveness. She is mother, lover, daughter, truth. She is all.

Her pace quickens and she races down the tunnel, passing soundlessly over obsidian floors, laughing with joy.

I know that sound. I love that sound. It means her lover is near.

He is coming. She feels his approach.

He is so powerful!

It is what first drew her to him. She’d never encountered anyone like him.

She was awed that he chose her.

She is awed every day that he continues choosing her.

The stuff of him explodes through from the Court of Shadows, telling her he comes, filling her home (prison) where she lives a fabulous life (a sentence not of her choosing) surrounded by everything she wants (illusions, she misses her world, so far away and all of them long dead) and waits for him with hope (ever-growing despair).

He will carry her to his bed and do things to her until his black wings open wide, so wide, eclipsing the world, and when he is inside her, nothing else will matter but the moment, their dark, intense lust, the endless passion they share.

No matter what else he is—he is hers.

What is between them is without blame.

Love knows no right or wrong.

Love is. Only is.

She (I) rushes down the dark, warm, inviting hall, hurrying to his (my) bed. We need our lover. It has been too long.

In her chamber, I behold the duality of which I am carved.

Half the concubine’s boudoir is dazzlingly white, brilliantly illuminated. The other half is a dense, seductive, welcoming blackness. It is split evenly down the middle.

Light and the absence of light.

I savor both. Neither disturbs me. I suffer no conflict over things upon which a simpler mind would be forced to bestow labels such as Good and Evil or embrace madness.

Against one frosted crystalline wall of the white half of the room is a huge round bed on a pedestal, draped in silks and snowy ermine throws. Alabaster petals are scattered everywhere, perfuming the air. The floor is carpeted with plush white furs. White logs, from which silvery-white flames pop and crackle, blaze in an enormous alabaster hearth. Tiny diamonds float lazily on the air, sparkling.

The woman hurries for the bed. Her clothing melts away and she (I) is naked.

But no! This is not his pleasure, not this time! His needs are different, deeper, more demanding tonight.

She spins and we gaze, lips parted, at the black half of the room.