Page 34

Lach

As was often the case, the choice to tie Willow up wasn’t personal. It was purely transactional. I had questions. The witch had answers.

I’d long ago learned that it was better to have the upper hand during a negotiation when the stakes were life or death.

Roark had left to pick up Ciara and Cate in the car rather than send a driver, a strategic decision to not draw too much attention from anyone who might be watching us from the outside. And there was no reason to worry either of them…yet. Not until Willow explained more about the spell she’d confessed to placing on Cate. Their day would be ruined soon enough. Someone might as well have some fun until then, because I wasn’t.

Unless you counted being locked into a staring contest with an infuriated witch among your favorite pastimes.

For many reasons, I did not.

Willow had already wasted twenty minutes while she tried to free herself, called me every curse word she knew—it turned out that her vocabulary was quite extensive—and learned that if she attempted an incantation, I could add another fun accessory called a gag.

When she finally sagged in defeat, I picked up the Scotch I’d poured for her and lowered the handkerchief.

“Have a drink.” I brought the cup to her lips.

She turned her head away from the rim. “So you can poison me?”

“You know why ,” I told her quietly, keeping the glass in place. “If I wanted you dead, Miss Broussard, you would be dead. This is an insurance policy to keep you from doing something reckless when I release you. The effects will only last a few hours.”

“If I do, you’ll take off these stupid gloves and untie me?” Her hands clenched open and shut as if she were bothered more by the presence of the former than the bindings.

Ropes were nothing to a witch, but gloves? Even when worn by choice, as many vampires and members of her kind still did, it was said to be like having an itch that could never quite be scratched. They weren’t enough to fully stifle her magic, which was why she was tied up. “I will.”

“I don’t know why I would trust you,” she muttered.

“I like to think it’s because you don’t have a choice.” I moved the cup to her mouth once more. “Now drink.”

She took a grudging sip, gagging a bit as she swallowed. The burn of the Scotch made the bitter mix of yarrow and hedgethorne easier to swallow—and hid the veritum I’d added to ensure she told me the truth. She coughed. “Geez, do you have anything stronger?”

“A bullet,” I said with a smile. “But I’d rather it didn’t come to that.”

Her nostrils flared. “I brought you information. I helped you. I should have known better than to believe Romy.”

Curiosity got the better of me. “Romy?”

“She vouched for you.” Willow shook her head, disgust evident on her face.

That was surprising. “I can’t allow you to repeat your theories to other people. We can’t afford for the bona fides spell to fall.”

“ You can’t afford for it to fall,” she corrected me. “How does it feel to hide behind someone else’s magic to save your own skin?”

“Careful,” I warned her. “I haven’t untied you yet. And this is about more than protecting me. There are threats outside New Orleans.”

“I know that.” She tilted her head, a strand of platinum falling across her face. She puffed at it, trying to get it out of her eyes.

I reached over and pushed it away. “You know nothing.”

“Is that so?” She raised one brow. “Try me.”

But I didn’t care about more of her theories. I wanted to know about her actions. Particularly the one she’d confessed to before losing consciousness on my office floor. “Why did you have a spell on Cate? What kind of spell was it?”

“Untie me,” she said through gritted teeth, wiggling her hands like she could force herself free.

“I’d rather wait a few more minutes.” I was clocking the passing time on my Rolex.

She groaned and slumped against her restraints. “It was a protection spell.”

That wasn’t the answer I’d been expecting.

“Why were you protecting her?”

Willow glared up at me. “You know why .”

My own words turned back on me, the implication just as clear but for entirely different reasons. “Did…Cate tell you?”

“She told me the ring was stuck and she needed help breaking the spell to get it off.” Willow shrugged. “But I’m bright and I read, so I figured shit out.”

“Kudos,” I said flatly. Clearly, Cate hadn’t updated her since last night. “She took off the ring. She isn’t fae.” Somewhere deep inside, that accusatory voice I always heard whispered again. The one that had warned me that it was what I wanted. That it had all been foolish desperation. So smug that it had been right and I had been wrong.

But Willow snorted, allowing her head to hang for a moment as she chuckled to herself. “What do you think I was protecting her from? She wasn’t ready. That’s why the ring wouldn’t come off. That part of its spell was basic magic. All she had to do was decide she wanted to know the truth.”

For a moment, I could only stare. “You…lied to her.”

“I redirected her,” she said carefully. Her muscles twitched a little, a sign that the herbs were doing their job. When Cate found out, any trust she had built with the witch would be destroyed.

My phone rang, but I ignored it.

“You going to get that?” Willow asked, shooting an irritated look at my pocket. “Roark went to check on Cate, didn’t he?”

She raised a reasonable point. I whipped it out, wondering if she had a touch of the second sight when I saw it was him calling.

“They left the shop a while ago,” he told me. “Ciara isn’t answering her phone or the signet.” Bitterness edged the words as if he often found he couldn’t reach her through the ring meant to keep them constantly connected. What was the point of giving it to her if she never wore it?

“I’ll call Cate.” Hanging up, I dialed her, trying to shake off the concern gripping my heart.

The call went straight to voicemail.

I shot Roark a text to try tracking them. Both the women could handle themselves, but…

“She didn’t answer?”

“She’s busy.” I shook my head. “Why did you really suggest the séance? And send her to talk to an alchemist? What else have you been investigating?”

“She had some shit to work out with her family, and I needed her distracted to bind a stronger occlusion spell to her.”

“Stronger?” I repeated.

“Than the one on the ring.” She rolled her eyes. “Try to keep up.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. Now she was waiting longer to get untied. “I thought that was basic magic.”

“Binding it to her desire was basic, but the occlusion spell on it was quite complex. It would have had to be to hide her for long. Probably only one of many spells meant to obscure her from being discovered by your kind. I mean, she was right under your nose.” She smirked at me.

“Then she’s not just a changeling?” I steadied myself against the desk.

Willow frowned. “I thought you knew that.”

A new and different weight settled over me. I had wished. I had hoped. Part of me had dreamed. But I had never allowed myself to truly believe it. That would have been dangerous—for so many reasons.

“Is she…” Still, I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

“After the first time she came into the teashop, I communed with my sisters in Ireland. The witches who saved her from the Hallow Court,” Willow murmured.

I frowned. “Communed? How?”

“Via séance,” she said bitterly. “They’re dead . Oberon hunted them down like dogs for helping her and some siren escape.”

I winced. “I am truly sorry to hear that.”

“Make it up to me by untying me.” She wiggled against her restraints. “I’m not your enemy.”

I wasn’t convinced that was a good idea. She struck me as feisty, but a deal was a deal. The yarrow and hedgethorne would be well into her system by now, but for good measure, I lifted my jacket and flashed her my holster.

“Is that supposed to scare me?” she asked, sounding anything but.

“Just a reminder.” I made quick work of her restraints.

Willow ripped off the gloves, and my hand slipped back toward my gun.

But she simply began rubbing the rope marks on her wrists. She looked at me. “Did you really think Oberon would just let her go without consequences?”

I’d hoped he would, but I shook my head again.

“The witches who helped her knew the sacrifice they were making,” she continued, a note of pride in her voice. “Because they saw what she was despite the ring’s glamour.”

“Fae?”

“No. She’s far more important than just that.” Willow shook her head, turning toward the door. “We need to find her before someone else does. It’s our only hope.”

I held out a hand to stop her. “Roark is on that.”

But she moved past me. “You wouldn’t sit here if you understood what I meant.”

“What is she?” I demanded, my temper lashing out in waves of shadow.

Willow backed away from me, but the expression on her face turned to one of reverence as she answered, “An icon.”

“A what?” The shadows settled, deciding, like I had, that she had a few screws loose.

“My family’s grimoire speaks of an age to come when all creatures will be tested in the face of great chaos.” She paused as if waiting for me to laugh at her, but I didn’t feel amused.

Chaos .

The word held me to the spot.

Willow studied me for a minute before she sighed. “Many years ago, a witch from our oldest bloodline mated with a fae and produced a child. The union was forbidden.”

Somehow, that didn’t surprise me. Even now, fae and witches rarely mixed, and offspring? That was completely out of the question. A coven would see to that by any means necessary. I wondered if she would have deigned to help Cate if she had walked into her shop without her glamour. “Your people have always been a tad backward about that kind of thing.”

“They have,” she agreed. “The lovers were sought out and killed.”

Thankfully, that was less common nowadays, even if the old biases ran deep. “And the child?”

“Disappeared,” she whispered. Her hands twisted like she was fitting together a puzzle. “And not long after that, the bloodline was wiped out entirely. The child is all that remains of one of the original three sisters. Even now, with magic returned to our veins, we are incomplete. Our power remains fractured, only a shell of what it could be.”

I was starting to understand. “And you think it’s Cate.”

“I hope it is.” An undercurrent of desperation bleated in her voice. “The prophecy in the grimoire stated that during the time of chaos, icons would rise. Creatures with different powers running through their veins. More powerful than the rest of us because they could draw off multiple magics.”

Something clicked into place. I stared at her. “But if that’s true, then every baby born from a familiar and a vampire would be—”

Her smile told me I was right. She pressed a single finger to it. “Why do you think the witches agreed to be subjugated? It wasn’t a matter of protection; it was a matter of survival . It is our most carefully guarded secret. If anyone knew that I had told you…”

Even now, as she spoke of mixing bloodlines and forging new magics among our various species, the old prejudices held her captive.

I bowed my head. “It will die with me.”

Something that was likely to happen soon if she was right about the other shit.

“Damn right it will.” Willow crossed her arms. “You suspected Cate was fae, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”

But Stacia— Calista —had disappeared, too, and she wasn’t a witch. Calista, who hadn’t even returned while the world was falling apart. Who hadn’t shown up when her throne had fallen. I could think of few things worth sacrificing that much for—but a child might be one. Had she died to save Cate? Hidden her away, waiting for the right person to find her? For me to find her? “How long ago did this child disappear?”

“About a hundred years. If it’s Cate, if she was kept in the Otherworld—”

“After her parents’ deaths,” I finished. It made a sick sort of sense. The child would have aged slowly until she was finally taken to Earth. She might have been young enough to have no memory of our world. She might have believed she was human .

It was possible. My mate remembered little from her childhood.

I shook my head. “The ring wasn’t just for some random spell. It was a signet— the signet of the heir to the Terra Court. You’re wrong. She isn’t your missing princess. She’s mine.”

“Maybe,” she said, to my surprise, her arms tightening around her stomach. “But somebody unbound my spell. Whatever she is, she is exposed. So, I have to ask: Do you know where your princess is?”