Page 108 of The Gilded Fae (Royal Fae of Rose Briar Woods 2)

ALEX

“What’s going on?” Frederick demands when he reaches me, trying to catch his breath. Candace hurries behind him, moving slower in her gown.

“My carriage is gone,” I say, frantically looking for it amongst the others. But it’s not here. “We need to go after them.”

Frederick glances around. “Where’s Sabine—”

“You there,” a man yells from further down Charles’s drive, shadowed in the dark night. “Help me!”

He looks like a coachman, though he’s not one of ours.

“What is it?” Frederick asks.

“I’ve found an unconscious man,” he says. “I almost ran him over as I was moving the carriage.”

We take off at a run, and I stop cold when I recognize the man on the ground.

Frederick swears, kneeling next to the man’s head to check his vitals. “He’s alive.”

Cedric begins to stir, blinking several times as he tries to make out the people surrounding him.

“What happened?” Candace breathes, finally catching up to us. “Alex, isn’t that your coachman?”

Cedric sits up with Frederick’s assistance, pressing his hand to the back of his head. “Someone struck me.”

He lowers his hand to look at it, finding it smeared with blood.

“Hurry,” Candace says to the man who found him. “We must get him inside.”

“Make sure they take care of him,” Frederick says to Candace, and then he turns to me. “Where’s Sabine?”

“He took her,” I say, nearly doubling over as I try to think.

“Who took her?”

I look up, unable to contain my anger. “Your father.”

“What?” Frederick says, sounding genuinely stunned. “Alex, that’s ridiculous. Why would—”

I straighten in an instant, grabbing him by his jacket’s collar. “Where is he, Frederick?”

My friend pulls my hands away. “I already told you. He’s waiting for me in our carriage.”

“Let’s go see.” I hurry toward the Cavinder’s coach and yank the door open. As I expect, there’s no one inside.

Frederick frowns, looking around. “Where did he go?”

“He kidnapped Sabine! Where did he take her?”

“Why would my father kidnap her?” he demands, looking at me like I’ve gone mad.

We should have told him. Instead of trying to spare Frederick pain, we should have been honest.

“He’s been working with her mother. Now that Sabine is about to be queened, he wants to partner with her—but she refused.”

“Partner with her for what?”

“He’s selling humans into Faerie.” I turn from him. “We don’t have time for this. Where would he take her?”