The tips of my fingers tingled, then numbness slid up my arms. I flexed my hands but couldn’t feel them. “My father was from here? How could he be with my mother in my world?”
She shrugged, equally at a loss. “I don’t know. But I suspect whoever he was, he was able to open a portal and escape into your world.”
How was he able to do that? The Unseelie Mafia king! Maybe he knew who my father was.
“Do you know Keir Rankin?”
Brynn froze, her hand holding the brush in mid-air. “How do you know him?”
My pulse raced. “He’s the Unseelie Mafia King in my world.”
Brynn’s expression hardened into pure ice. “Here, he was High Chancellor—Cormac’s right hand. He orchestrated my parents’ death and the fall of my house.”
Shitshitshitshit
Keir Rankin was a dangerous man—a monster. The kind of man who would force a four-year-old to watch her parents be murdered.
That didn’t match the Keir I’d met. Dangerous, yes. Powerful, definitely. But deliberately cruel to a child? I struggled to reconcile Brynn’s story with the man who’d helped Enzo rescue me so many times.
Did Enzo know? Or worse… did Enzo know exactly who he really was dealing with?
My throat went dry. What if Keir and Ari were working together?
“Brynn,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “Can the House of Cormac control plants—make them move or… change?”
Brynn’s brows furrowed as she continued to brush my hair. “Their magic is illusion-based, but…possibly. Why?”
My pulse thundered.Possibly.
Marsha’s magic had torn into Enzo before. Everyone believed she was the one twisting the vines around him now, squeezing the life out of him inch by inch.
But… what if we were wrong?
Keir had been there in the bayou, fighting Ari—or at least pretending to. What if it had all been an act?
Maybe he had been feeding Ari the magic to control those vines—the same vines that were even now coiled around Enzo, slowly torturing and killing him.
My throat closed, a sob crawling its way up.
NoNoNoNo
This couldn’t be true.
I had to get back to my world. Before Keir murdered Enzo, my brother…all of them.
