“Coming?” came her disembodied voice.
He clenched the leather grip of his bone dagger as he stepped into the forest. The owl screeched as she flew toward a slender oaken door. On it, a swirling pattern of interlocking rings forming a knot bristling with thorns had been burned into the wood. Father’s sigil. The door creaked and opened onto Father’s study. Wood shelves brimming with scrolls of parchment lined the wall. A fire crackling with green flames cast a green glow onto the smooth marble slab of his father’s desk. The desk sat on the gnarled roots of an ancient oak from his family estate.
Home. He thought he’d never see it again. Even this brief glimpse brought with it a pang of longing. Father glanced up, his brows furrowed. Ray lingered at the threshold. Would he invite him inside? He dared not push his luck. Father set down the scroll he had been scowling at and stepped around his desk. Light from the fire limed golden bracers on his arms in emerald light. A golden circlet of branches with a ruby inset in the center circlet flickered and glared at him like an all-seeing eye from his brow.
“Raethorn,” he said with the slightest incline of his head.
Rather than inviting Ray into his study, he stepped through the portal and joined Ray in the human realm. The oaken doors slammed shut behind him. Just like Father to give him a taste of the familiar and then twist the knife this way.
“Glad to know you still care enough to leave spies to watch over me,” Ray said by way of greeting. Better to get this over with quickly.
“You have not changed at all in your time in exile, I see.” Father’s lip curled upward.
“What can I say? I’m my father’s son.”
“And that is the very reason I left Tabitha to watch over you.”
Tabitha? A very human name. Unless. He looked at the owl perched on the nearby branch. She was preening her feathers. He could see it now, a changeling child used as a spy in the human realm. That was cruel, even for Father. Children stolen from the human realm and raised in Faery often took on fae-like qualities, but they were never fully human. Her owl form must be father’s doing. He’d never been the nurturing type. Not since Mother died. And considering the way they’d parted all those years ago, he doubted he’d sent his spy out of fatherly concern.
“Were you hoping to catch me doing something you could execute me for, rather than just exile?” Ray asked.
“You’re fortunate you are of my blood, or the council would have done much worse to you for what you did,” his father said in a biting tone.
“You’re right; I should be grateful the great and powerful regent turned his back upon me and let me take the fall for a human’s treachery.”
“Enough.” Father’s voice cracked with thunder, and the earth trembled under Ray’s feet. Father must truly be angry then.
They glared at one another.
“I didn’t call you here to squabble. I must give you a warning. If another girl dies, I cannot protect you again. I’ve taken all the precautions I can, but the counsel is restless.”
“You seem rather certain it will happen again. Is there something you’re not telling me?” This couldn’t be the council’s doing. What use would they have for attacking the regent’s exiled son? It made no sense.
“Nothing I can say out in the open.” His gaze flicked furtively around them as if the forest had eyes. Which if this were faery, it would have. But this was the human realm; nothing happened here. Well, that was until women started being murdered.
“And so? They’ve clearly been able to cover their tracks. How do you know they won’t cover up a third?”
Father shook his head. “It’s more than that. These women were chosen for a purpose. They had fae blood.”
“How do you know that?” Ray asked.
“I have my ways.” Father’s expression was stony. There was no use trying to extract answers when he didn’t want to give them.
But who would be killing women with fae blood? And to what end?
“Surely your spies can watch the gateways, track their movements. You’re the regent, after all. You have the power to stop them,” Ray said.
Father looked around them, dark eyes scanning the misty forest. “This isn’t fae doing. Whoever it is, they are living in the human realm. Perhaps a human themselves.”
“Impossible,” Ray scoffed.
“Is it? A human killed our king, after all.”
Ray flinched at the subtle jab. Father was right. If Ray hadn’t trustedher, then he wouldn’t be in this mess. He’d underestimated humans before. And he swore to himself, he wouldn’t do so again.
“Find out by the next new moon.”
A cold chill went down Ray’s spine. A little over two weeks. That’s all the time he had to find the killer?
