"Hamilton’s books are must-reads."— The Denver Post Powerful new magic is awakened as faerie princess Merry Gentry tries to conceive an heir—and in doing so, save her own life—in this sexy and suspenseful novel. The time has come for Meredith Gentry to put aside her Los Angeles detective work and fulfill her ultimate obligation to the world of Faerie—where her efforts to conceive an heir to the throne of the Unseelie Court are crucial to restoring magic, and life itself, to the fae kingdom. And though her quest may be rife with pleasures, the shadows of intrigue continue to suffuse the royal court . . . and sabotage may lurk at any turn. While the Unseelie Mound reawakens in the dead gardens, powerful curses are at work. Merry's uncle, the King of Light and Illusion, schemes to accuse her immortal guardsmen of heinous crimes. And Merry's own command of magic has turned wildly and dangerously unpredictable. As plots and counterplots are hatched, and strategies and subterfuges are played out, the destiny of an entire world turns upon the fortunes of Merry Gentry; object of obsession, target of treachery, pawn of uncertain fate. Praise for Laurell K. Hamilton A Kiss of Shadows “I’ve never read a writer with a more fertile imagination.” –Diana Gabaldon A Caress of Twilight “Sensual, without a doubt . . . This book moves like a whirlwind.” –St. Louis Post-Dispatch Seduced by Moonlight “This [faerie] society is one of the most detailed, imaginative and lovingly drawn in all fantastic fiction, and the Meredith Gentry series has become something special.” –San Jose Mercury News A Stroke of Midnight “Nonstop action . . . This book will leave you breathless.” –St. Louis Post-Dispatch Laurell K. Hamilton is the New York Times bestselling author of the Meredith Gentry novels: A Kiss of Shadows, A Caress of Twilight, Seduced by Moonlight, A Stroke of Midnight, as well as twelve acclaimed Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, novels. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Visit the author’s website at www.laurellkhamilton.org. Chapter 1 I dreamt of warm flesh and cookies. The sex I understood, but the cookies . . . Why cookies? Why not cake, or meat? But that’s what my subconscious chose as I dreamt. We were eating in the tiny kitchen of my Los Angeles apartment—an apartment I didn’t live in anymore, outside of dreams. The we were me, Princess Meredith—the only faerie royal ever born on American soil—and my royal guards, over a dozen of them. They moved me around with skin the color of darkest night, whitest snow, the pale of newborn leaves, the brown of leaves that have gone down to die on the forest floor, a rainbow of men moving nude around the kitchen. The real apartment kitchen would have barely held three of us, but in the dream everyone walked through that narrow space between sink and stove and cabinets as if there were all the room in the world. We were having cookies because we’d just had sex and it was hungry work, or something like that. The men moved around me graceful and perfectly nude. Several of the men were ones I’d never seen nude. They moved with skin the color of summer sunshine, the transparent white of crystals, colors I had no name for, for the colors did not exist outside of faerie. It should have been a good dream, but it wasn’t. I knew something was wrong, that feeling of unease that you get in dreams when you know that the happy sights are just a disguise, an illusion to hide the ugliness to come. The plate of cookies was so innocent, so ordinary, but it bothered me. I tried to pay attention to the men, touching their bodies, holding them, but each of them in turn would pick up a cookie and take a bite, as if I weren’t there. Galen with his pale, pale green skin and greener eyes bit into a cookie, and something squirted out the side. Something thick and dark. The dark liquid dripped down the edge of his kissable mouth and fell onto the white countertop. That single drop splattered and spread and was red, so red, so fresh. The cookies were bleeding. I slapped it from Galen’s hand. I picked up the tray to keep the men from eating any more. The tray was full of blood. It dripped down the edges, poured over my hands. I dropped the tray, which shattered, and the men bent as if they would eat from the floor and the broken glass. I pushed them back, screaming, “No!” Doyle looked up at me with his black eyes and said, “But it is all we have had to eat for so long.” The dream changed, as dreams will. I stood in an open field with a ring of distant trees encircling it. Beyond the trees, hills rode up into the paleness of a moonlit winter’s night. Snow lay like a smooth blanket across the ground. I was standing ankle-deep in snow. I was wearing a loose sweeping gown as white as the snow. My arms were bare to the cold night. I should have been freezing, but I wasn’t. Dream, just a dream. Then I noticed something in the center of the clearing. It was an animal, a small white animal, and I tho