Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 132138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 661(@200wpm)___ 529(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 661(@200wpm)___ 529(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
“Why don’t you go back to the camp?” I hate the thought that he’s out here all alone. “Roan has devices to warm you.”
Duffy simply turns away. “No. I think I’ll sit here a while and watch the stars. Like I said. I don’t feel the cold no more.”
I nod and walk off. I’m not afraid of the cold, but the heat is another matter. I worry the heat of our true bond will burn me, singeing away all that is Bronwyn Finn and leaving only a consort in my place.
Chapter Thirty
Torin, the Absolute Asswipe
I look from one hag to the other. “What do you mean she got away?”
It was a simple fucking plan. Go to the district where the hags themselves promised me Bronwyn resided. Go to the district and kill every woman who could possibly be Bronwyn. Simple. Easy. All fucked up.
“The Unseelie princes were there.” Glannis doesn’t look up from her perch. She stares down at the bones she just threw. She rattled them in an open skull, chanting and spitting and offering up blood. Now she studies them. It looks like a nasty mess that some forest creature crapped out, but Glannis apparently sees something in it.
“Why the hell are they here? They’ve stayed out of things. Why do they give a shit?” The last thing I need is trouble with the Unseelie until I’m ready to deal with them. The Unseelie king has his own trouble. He has idiot sons, the dumbass versions of the Seelie princes. I heard something went desperately wrong with the princes. They were injured in a fire, and that means his line of succession is in question. The Unseelie don’t believe in weak monarchs. Fergus is trying to deal with his own kingdom. He doesn’t have time to fight with the Seelie. And I like it that way.
Una cocks a hand on her ridiculously gaunt hip. “Glannis thinks they might be bound to the princess.”
I throw my head back and laugh. The defective princes snuck onto the plane to retrieve Bronwyn? “So why didn’t you kill them?”
Glannis finally looks up, her rheumy eyes serious. “I tried. I failed. And they are not defective. Not in the least. The warrior king has already come into his power. He’s a Death Lord.”
A shiver snakes up my spine. I always wondered about that damn divination the hags gave me before my ascension. They told me I would win the day. I would be the king. Only one person could harm me in the end. I leaned over and prepared to hear the name Beckett Finn.
Bronwyn was a surprise. But if Bronwyn somehow bonded with a fucking Death Lord, I might be in trouble. Perhaps that damn prophecy was about my niece’s husband and not my niece.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” Surely the hags can do something about it now that they know what the real problem is.
“I tried, Your Majesty. It would have worked but some filthy gnome got in my way,” she admits. “I couldn’t hex him again. The first one took too much energy, and now he’ll be ready for it, so all I got to do was kill a damn gnome. But I’ve come up with something else. His necromancy only works on creatures, Fae and animals and other somewhat sentient beings. So I intend to attack him with something he can’t take control of. I just need to find him. I believe he’s in the forests. He’s going to move toward Aoibhneas. It’s how he got in.”
Yes. I don’t understand that, either. “How the fuck did he get in? I have guards on the entryway.”
The two hags share a long look before Una answers. “There are always small rips and tears. A smart Fae would be able to get through.”
“I don’t want anyone to be able to get through.”
Una takes a long breath. “Your Majesty, it is impossible to tell where these weak spots are unless you happen across one. And that village wouldn’t have told us. It keeps its secrets.”
Yes. Aoibhneas is the perfect fuck storm. High in the mountains with both natural and magical defenses. And the Fae who live there are rebels by nature. I keep them contained with heavy guards on the roads and a long history of leaving them be, but I will come for them eventually and they know it. Aoibhneas is the logical place to launch a rebellion. But it’s small and so isolated.
What if the Unseelie decide to invade?
“You have to kill the necromancer.”
Glannis throws her hands up. “That is my plan. Now I just need to find them. I stole back to the village and found what I believe is her hair and his blood. The intellectual half was there. I don’t have anything from him, but if those two do anything magical, I can find them.”