ABC Amber Text Converter

ABC Amber ePub Converter Trial version, http://www.processtext.com/abcepub.html“Did you take her journal?”“I went back for it after I learned she was dead. It was not there. I took photo albums. It was then,when I found her calendar book, that I discovered her ‘friend’ Mac was really her sister. She lied to me.I was not the only one who was duplicitous. I have lived among your kind long enough to know thismeans she knew from the beginning something about me was not what it seemed. And wanted meanyway. I believe that if she had not been murdered, in time she would have come to me, chosen me ofher own free will.”Yes, I think, she would have come to you. With a weapon in her hand, just like I will.“I needed to know if you shared her unique talents. Had you not arrived in Dublin when you did, Iwould have had you brought to me.”I absorb that and am furious. It’s very important to me to pinpoint the exact moment my life startedgoing wrong. Especially now.It goes back further than I’d realized.The moment Alina left for Dublin and began heading toward the day she would encounter him, there’dbeen no hope of my life turning out any other way. Events had been set in motion that trapped me. Iwould have embarked upon exactly the same path, through a different door. If I’d not disobeyed myparents and flown to Ireland to investigate Alina’s murder, would he have sent the Hunters after me? Theprinces? Maybe dispatched the Shades to devour my town and drive me out?One way or another, I would have ended up here, with him, in the middle of this mess.“Because of your sister, I resisted harming you.”More than anything he has ever said, those words stun me. I stand half dazed as they echo through mybrain, knocking loose conflicting thoughts, nudging them to where they no longer oppose. Withoutwarning, my convictions shift and settle into a new position. I’m startled by where they end up, but theymoved with such logic and simplicity that I can’t deny the veracity.Darroc did care about Alina.I believe him.There was something I’d never been able to explain to my own satisfaction: I’d wondered why Darrochadn’t been more aggressive, more brutal with me from the very first. It had made no sense to me. He’dseemed almost lackadaisical in his efforts to abduct me and had kept offering me the chance to comewillingly. What kind of world-destroying villain did that? It was certainly not what I’d expected from mysister’s murderer. Mallucé had been far deadlier, far more ruthless. Of the two, I’d been much moreterrified of the wannabe vamp when I’d first arrived.Occam’s razor: The simplest explanation that accommodates all variables is most likely the truth.Darroc had resisted harming me because of Alina. He’d restrained himself because he’d cared about mysister.Just how much—and how much I could use it against him—remained to be seen.“My deference undermined my efforts, and the Hunters began to question my conviction.”“So you had me raped and turned Pri-ya,” I say bitterly. How quickly he’d gone from deference tomurder, because that’s what turning me Pri-ya had been tantamount to. Until Barrons had pulled meback, no one had ever recovered from being made a mindless Fae sex slave. They died from it.“I needed to solidify my position. Then I lost you before I even had the chance to begin using you.”“Who was the fourth, Darroc? Why don’t you just tell me?” He’d stood there watching as theUnseelie Princes destroyed me. He’d seen me naked on the ground, helpless, weeping. I calm myself byimagining the many ways I might kill him when the time comes.“I have told you before, MacKayla, there was no fourth. The last prince of the Court of Shadows thatthe king created was the first dark prince to die. Cruce was killed in the ancient battle between the kingand queen. Some claim it was the queen herself who killed him.”“Cruce was the fourth Unseelie Prince?” I exclaim.He nods. Then he frowns and adds, “If a fourth being was at the church, neither I nor my princes werecapable of seeing it.”He seems as disturbed by that thought as I am.Page 51