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Her mother.

It wasn’t possible.

“How old is she?” Sorin asked quietly.

“What?”

“Scarlett. How old is she?”

“She’s nineteen. Why?”

Sorin closed his eyes. Eliné had left nearly twenty years ago, in the middle of the night without a word to anyone. A lost Fae child in the mortal lands who possessed both fire and water magic. Coincidences weren’t a thing when magic was involved.

“What was her mother’s name?”

“Eliné,” Cassius answered. “Eliné Monrhoe.”

Scarlett had refused to tell him, not that he’d pushed very hard, thinking it didn’t matter. Eliné’s husband had been killed in the war. She had no one to conceive a child with.

Or so he had thought.

“What did you just figure out?” Cassius asked slowly.

“I cannot explain now. We need to get her home.”

“Sorin,” Cassius said, standing and sweeping Scarlett up with him. Her arms looped around his neck, and she moaned softly, “If she’s truly Fae, she needs to sleep this off outside the manor. She’s not safe there.”

“What do you mean she is not safe there? She said she has been living there for the last year,” Sorin argued.

“There are…” Cassius hesitated. “This information goes nowhere but here.”

“You have my word.”

“There are wards around the manor. If anything not mortal enters the grounds, Lord Tyndell knows,” Cassius said quietly.

“How? How do you know this? How is it possible?” Sorin demanded. He’d never felt them. Never once had he felt the presence of wards. But then again, there shouldn’t be magic here. His own magic didn’t work. How would he sense wards? He forced down the faint nausea roiling in his gut. The thought of her living in a home that knew what she was but didn’t do anything about it? Why wouldn’t they tell her?

Better question: Why hadn’t they killed her? Fae were not allowed to enter, let alone live in the human lands. If they were discovered, they were immediately hunted down and killed on site if caught.

“Because I put them there,” Cassius answered.

Sorin felt his eyes widen in surprise. “You?”

“Yes, me,” Cassius snapped. “We do not have time for this discussion and certainly not here.”

“Lord Tyndell knows?” Sorin asked, his voice a whisper.

“If she is not human, yes, he knows…and he knows that you are not mortal as well,”Cassius confirmed. “Can you stay with her while I find us some horses? I’ll figure out where to take her, and once there, she can take her tonic.”

“We can take her to my apartment,” Sorin answered. “Give her to me.”

Cassius gently handed Scarlett over to Sorin. She nestled in, her hand settling against his chest. “Stay hidden and try to keep her quiet. She will likely wake screaming.”

Before Sorin could question that last part, Cassius took off running.

Go somewhere secluded? Where was he supposed to go on a beach?

“This way, you Fae ass,” came a voice of silk and honey.