Page 88 of Hell Fae Warden

Vita shook in response, not in fear, but in what appeared to be a motion of insistence.

“I don’t remember you being this violent before,” I muttered at it, rubbing my chest. The damn pages had nearly embedded my talisman into my…

Hold on.

I glanced down at the talisman hanging down toward my breasts.A glittering star.I looked back at the book.Just like that.

“Are you saying I can use this to find my father?” I asked the book.

I’d been so wary of using Melek’s gifts that I hadn’t considered what the talisman could actually do for me. However, he’d called it a conduit. And he’d provided a few spells, too.

What if this amplifies my blood connection with my father?I thought.Would that help me track him down?

My fingers slipped around the necklace as an icy shiver ran up my spine.

This was dangerous.

Risky.

Would probably end in blood.

But that’s my life now, isn’t it?

Drawing in a shaky breath, I clung to the necklace when the page revealed something new.

This time it was a transcript of a spell.

Was the book trying to trick me again? I wasn’t sure what it gained by taking me to the source in the first place, or if it wanted to do it again. But this might let me find some answers and get a little payback against my father for everything he’d done.

That reward alone was far too good to pass up.

My heart sent blood roaring in my ears as I mouthed the words,“Invenire. Inveniunt. Aperi ianuam.”

My hair flung back as a massive portal opened, dousing the flames along the walls to produce smoke.

No, not smoke.Shadows.

A flickering oval revealed another world behind it, one littered with gravestones dimly lit by the moonlight above. It almost reminded me of the Midnight Fae world—or what I’d expect it to look like outside the dungeon, anyway. But this world had dark shadows moving in the distance, ones that didn’t look very Midnight Fae-like at all.

Uh, this can’t be good…

“My father is here?” I whispered at the book, afraid to speak too loudly and be heard by anything lurking on the other side. “In a graveyard?”

The book didn’t reply, the same page laid out before me as though it expected me to read it again.

Or walk through the portal,I realized, a shiver skating down my spine.Yeah, no,thatwas not going to happen.Even if it didn’t resemble a freaky haunted cemetery, I’d learned my lesson the last time.No. Leaving.

Not until I had a real escape route in place, anyway.

And a plan forafterI escaped.

Which was likely never going—

A familiar voice drifted across the sea of black headstones, the words nearly too quiet to be heard, until they carried into the room on a subtle gust of icy wind. “Do you feel that?”

I frowned. “Az?”

The portal whirled, suddenly showing me Az and Melek as they stood in the middle of a gravesite.