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“Agreed. I’ll contact the other alphas as soon as we’re done. And Corban?”

“He’s in an iron cage, too, completely under her power. I was told they were lovers, but now he’s her prisoner. There’s no way he could’ve sent that message to you on his own.”

“But it was his writing. The motherfucker tried to sell me out to save himself.”

“Yeah. Or she ordered him to send the message.” She rubbed a thumb over the quartz’s chunky crystals. “He’s sick, Ric. Iron poisoning. It’s bad—he’s almost gone.”

“Saves you the trouble of offing him.”

She huffed a laugh with zero humor. “There is that.”

“Where are you now?”

“Safe in a cavern about three miles from the court. The court itself is in a castle carved out of a dead volcano.” She gave him the castle’s precise coordinates, knowing he’d file the information for future use.

“You can’t see it in the human world. It’s completely hidden behind look-away spells and warded to keep out intruders.

The only way in is through portals that the ice fae have to open. ”

“So how did you get inside?”

She glanced at Fane, curled into a ball and shivering helplessly.

Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to tell Adric that the SOB had played her.

Her brother didn’t need another reason to question her judgment—and besides, Fane was Evie’s father, and she liked Evie.

Jace’s mate might be mostly human, but she was good people.

“Evie’s father helped me.” It was the truth—just not the whole truth.

“He knew who you were?”

“Yeah. Turns out he’s a wayfarer. He was at Jace and Evie’s mating.”

Adric didn’t like that. “And none of us scented him?”

“He says the king gave him a charm that disguises his scent.”

“Huh.” She could almost hear her alpha brother filing that away for future investigation. “You need to come home, Jani.”

“What about Luc? I can’t leave without him.”

“He’s a big boy.”

Marjani gave the quartz a look of disbelief. Sometimes her brother could be so damn cold.

“I am not leaving him to that night fae bitch. She puts fada in those cages so she can feed on their fear and anger. You should see Corban. He’s—broken, just this side of feral. I only saw him as his wolf.”

Silence. Then a careful question. “And you? You’re…all right?”

Her jaw clenched. She knew he meant well, but it hurt, to have her own brother doubting her control. “What d’you think?”

“You sound good,” he said immediately. “I’m sorry.”

She unclenched her jaw. After all, Adric had a right to doubt her. She had almost lost it last winter. And she was still having trouble with control. “Okay. Okay.”

“But I still want you home,” he added, and made her angry all over again, especially when he added, “I could make it an order.”

“Try it,” she snarled.

Another taut silence. Then Adric expelled a breath. “Damn it, I’m your alpha. When I give you an order, you obey it.”

“I’m your second for a reason,” she shot back. “You trust me to tell you when you have your head up your ass.”

A low growl—and then she heard him swallow. “I can’t lose you, Jani.”

Her heart constricted. Because she felt the same way—if she lost her only brother, she really would go feral.

She softened her tone. “We can’t leave Luc here to die in a fucking cage. You know if the shoe were on the other foot, he’d do anything he could to rescue me—or you, for that matter.”

“Then I’ll send someone else. Please, Jani. I’d come myself, but I can’t.”

“Why not?” Not that she wanted him to come, but she knew her brother. It must be killing him to stay home while she and Luc hunted Corban.

“We have a situation here.”

She got that odd tingle in her gut; her Gift at work. “The night fae are looking for me, aren’t they?”

He took a long time answering. “Not you in particular—at least, not as far as I know. But a few days after you left, the prince demanded a meeting.”

“Hell.” She stared at the steam rising from the pool. “What happened?”

“He hinted that he knows who killed his son. But you know the fae. We danced around the question, each of us trying to gauge how much the other knows. But he’s going to come back, and when he does, I’d better be here.”

“And if he asks straight out who killed his son?”

“I’ll tell him to go to Hades. He has no right to ask anything of me. His son died because he was in my territory, fucking with my lieutenant and his mate.”

“We can’t afford to make an enemy of him.”

Adric gave a mirthless laugh. “Too late.”

“You know what?” she said slowly. “Iceland might be the safest place for me right now. The last place anyone would expect to find me is deep in ice fae territory.”

A pissed-off snarl. “I can protect my own damn sister. He’s not going to find out who killed Tyrus. I want you home.”

“Ric.” She pinched the bridge of her nose.

This was why she’d slipped out of Baltimore without telling him.

“You have to trust me. Anyone else will only get caught. The only reason I got inside the ice fae castle was because Fane helped me.” Well, that and the fact that Sindre and/or Blaer had apparently wanted her inside anyway.

At the sound of his name, Fane groaned, a deep, animal sound.

“What was that?” Adric demanded.

“Fane.” She frowned down at the sick man as he flung himself on his back, a shudder jerking his long limbs. She touched his shoulder and he jolted upright, staring at her with glassy eyes.

“He’s hurt? What the fuck, Jani?”

“Look, I gotta go. I’ll report as soon as I know anything.”

She cut the connection and zipped her quartz back into a side pocket of her cargo pants before laying a hand against Fane’s forehead. It was burning hot.

She cursed under her breath as she guided him to lie back down. “You’re not going to die on me, got it?”

Stripping off her shirt, she wet it in the pool and used it to bathe his forehead. His breath sighed out.

“That’s it.” She dabbed his face and neck, wishing she could do more. But she hadn’t been blessed with even a speck of a healer’s Gift. “Feels better, doesn’t it? Now rest. You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

She hoped.