I didn’t blame the woman. Gianna had died a terrible death.
He swore quietly and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Donovan is dead.”
“I didn’t see his face,” I whispered. “But that was definitely his voice.”
“You think the fae resurrected him?” His face was a mask of confusion. I’d seen the battle, seen Donovan go down. I assumed he was dead, too.
The fae could do a lot of things, but I’d never heard of one being able to resurrect the dead. It wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility, but I’d never met anyone who could do it.
“Are you sure he was dead? Fae can heal even the most grievous wounds.”
“I didn’t take a pulse,” he growled as he took me by the elbow. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“You don’t want to help Ethan?”
“It’s not that simple anymore. We can’t let Donovan know we’re onto him. Let’s get back to the car, and I’ll make a call.”
We hauled ass back to the vehicle we’d parked half a mile away. As soon as we were in, Caelan turned the heat up to full blast and called 911. As soon as it was done, he broke his phone in half and tossed it out the window.
“Clever but expensive,” I drawled.
“The Keep has a stash of them for occasions just like this.”
“For when other Lords get kidnapped and tied to a chair for interrogation?”
“You’d be surprised how often people want to tie us to chairs.” His eyes sparkled.
“Perv,” I said fondly.
A minute later, sirens appeared in the distance, screaming past us in a cacophony of sound. “They’ll either kill him or haul ass out of there.”
“Not the best odds,” I mused. “Are you going to tell Ethan you know?”
“The Lords have a meeting next week. If Ethan divulges that Donovan is still alive, I’ll think about it.” From the look on his face, he’d have to really think about it.
“I still don’t understand why he didn’t lose his position over everything.” He was at the forefront of the Lord and fae incursion of my land and had been gunning for me ever since I’d gotten tangled up with Caelan. My stringing him up with vines and beating him a little bit because he called me a slut had not helped matters.
No regrets.
Caelan reached over and took my hand. “I voted against him multiple times. Because Titania had influenced the others, there was no proof she hadn’t done the same to him. When directly asked, Ethan did not admit one way or the other whether he’d acted of his own volition.”
His voice deepened several octaves, the animal inside him close to the surface.
“Because you would know he was lying.”
Caelan nodded. “He’s always been a slippery bastard. The other Lords had to vote to keep him in because of the lack of concrete evidence against him. There’s no law against being an asshole.”
True. If there were, I knew a lot of people who’d be in the clinker. “What are the odds he makes it out of this one?”
His lips twisted. “High, unfortunately. You said they’re still interrogating him?”
I nodded. “They want to know what happened to Gianna.”
Caelan snorted. “Donovan is still playing both sides.”
“And he knows exactly what happened to her.” Donovan had been working with Rhona, the Chimera involved with Finn, in an effort to destabilize Caelan’s region, and used Gianna, a swanshifter, to help. But for reasons unknown, Rhona murdered Gianna and stepped into her place. In an effort to get rid of me, she and Donovan had planted Gianna’s body on my property, probably to “uncover” at a later date, so I could go down for the murder.
They didn’t count on Cernunnos popping into the wedding and refusing to bless the union, thus ruining Rhona’s plans before they’d even begun, or expect my father to step in and tell me about Gianna’s death. I might have discovered it on my own during my upkeep of the land, but I’d been so busy I’d gotten a little lazy about caring for my property the way I should have been. Once Cernunnos showed me what they’d done, I’d disposed of Gianna’s body permanently.
