Page 1 of Royal Ransom

Royal Ransom

Chapter One

Taliyah

I’d dealt with many different crimes while working as a detective in Portland.

I’d been assigned to robbery-homicide, so I was used to a certain amount of horror that came with the job. The challenge was always finding the perpetrator and bringing them in alive. I’d handled hostage situations before, but ransom... well, I’d never been on the receiving end ofthatscenario before.

Until now.

I stared at the piece of bone in my hand, turning it over and over as though I expected the words etched into the ivory to have changed in the last five minutes. It had arrived at the station sometime before dawn and was addressed specifically to me. That alone hadn’t raised any eyebrows. I was the Chief of Police of Haven Hollow, and that came with a certain level of local recognition. There were sometimes personal letters addressed to my workplace by well-meaning citizens, as well as the occasional prank involving animal waste stuffed into a bag, much to the recipient’s disgust.

If only.

When I’d taken the envelope to my office and tipped the contents onto the desk, the polished bones had tumbled out. It took me a nauseatingly long time to determine which parts of the body they’d come from before I even noticed the writing etched into the surface. It was a human pinkie, skeletonized and amputated just below the second knuckle.

Fox’s pinkie, according to the note that accompanied the bone. I couldn’t say for certain what language it was in; I just knew it wasn’t human. Maverick had theorized that the gift oftongues would manifest for me at some point. And it was just my luck that it had, just in time for me to read a threat etched into the severed finger of my ex.

Peachy.

We have Reynard. Surrender to the Queen at the mushroom circle, and his death will be swift. Fail to appear, and you will lose more than your prince. Send us your answer on the north wind by tomorrow evening.

W.

Biting the inside of my cheek to suppress nausea, I let the bone tumble through my fingers. Although the bone had been hidden behind my paperweight most of the day, I hadn’t had the courage to take this to the Council yet. I didn’t want confirmation that it was genuine. If this really was Fox’s finger, it meant he was being tortured. Torture was something I couldn’t handle. Even though I hated his guts, I refused to stand by and watch my pompous ex-husband Jonathan get tortured. I didn’t hate Fox.

There were some lines you didn’t cross, and torture was one of them. There was death with dignity, and then there was whatever Janara was putting Fox through.

But back to the note... the W had to stand for Wren. I’d only met the faerie sorceress once, but it had been a memorable first impression. She’d been trapped in a faerie circle for over a year, looking like a bedraggled little girl. The battle afterward had proved she was anything but. She was a real piece of work, and I believed she was capable of evil magic. The bone might even be booby-trapped, now that I thought about it. I just wasn’t sure who to turn to now that my main contact for such things, Maverick, was MIA, and I had no clue where to start looking for him.

Maverick had been in the house when a Blood Witch attacked me and my kids, sending a deadly red mist through thecracks in the wards to suffocate us in our sleep. He’d managed to pull a bit of rare magic to not only save our lives but also help his sister defeat her convoluted mess. When I woke up, he was gone, and none of us had seen him in the week since. He wasn’t answering calls. I could tell he was alive, at least. Wanda had assured me that I would have felt it if he’d died. It was a small comfort, especially considering what lay on my desk: Fox’s finger, allegedly. Or worse, it could be Maverick’s. Apparently, I would only know he was alive—but not whether he was hurt.

My hands clenched into fists on my desk to still the trembling in my fingers. Blinking furiously, I fought the urge to cry. I wasn’t going to fall apart over Fox fucking Aspen. I’d done what he asked, even after he’d dropped a few dozen half-frozen supernaturals right in my lap. Despite his disappearance, I continued to do my best that week. Before most of Haven Hollow was even awake, I commandeered most of Lorcan’s rental properties to house the homeless from Misty Hollow. I managed the impossible and kept the secret under wraps, despite the fact that Fox had flaunted his power near Main Street, easily in view of our human residents. I’d done my part, damn it! Fox didn’t get to ask more of me than I’d already given!

Except... he wasn’t asking.

Janara was issuing an ultimatum, throwing down a gauntlet, and demonstrating just how ruthless she planned to be in her campaign to keep the throne. Ruthless enough to send body parts through the postal service just to get her message across.

I needed to get off my ass and take this to the Council. If this signaled what I feared, all hell was about to break loose. The rest of my community deserved to know that my problems were about to bury us deep in alligators once more. Well, deep in yetis, maybe. We’d definitely be deep insomething, and it would all be my fault. Again.

I wasn’t expecting the gentle knock on my office door andstartled, hissing a curse. I managed to shove the finger bones beneath a stack of paperwork just in time. Roland, one of my deputies, poked his head in. He was a mild-looking man with thinning hair but a bright, cheerful smile—well, when he wasn’t drugged out of his mind on incubus pheromones. He’d looked sort of blank and bemused then. It had taken a lot of magic to get him to agree to a game of strip poker at my ex’s bachelor party. I was grateful he didn’t seem to remember that night with the same intensity I did. It was embarrassing enough for me without burdening him with the memory, too.

But that was in the past and that was exactly where I was trying to shove that particular memory.

I arranged myself in what I hoped was an innocent posture and did my best not to eyeball the stack of paperwork on my desk. If Roland circled around on the pretext of helping me out, he’d get an eyeful of a ceremonially carved pinkie bone. Chief or not, there’d be some explaining to do if he saw it. Astrid had opened the possibility of bringing some of my men in on the stranger aspects of the town, but that time hadn’t come yet. I wasn’t sure I’d have selected Roland anyway, considering the attempted incubus seduction incident in his past. There were some things you just didn’t want to explain to your coworkers.

“Yes?” I asked, trying not to sound as frightened and irritable as I felt.

Roland paused, scrutinizing my expression. I wasn’t sure what I looked like. He hadn’t asked if I was sick, so I couldn’t look as nauseous as I felt. Still, he seemed to sense something was wrong because a frown creased his face, scrunched lines filling the spaces between his brows as he stared me down.

“Are you alright, Chief? You look a little pale.”

“The boys have been sick,” I offered by way of explanation.

As usual, that worked like a charm. Most of the deputies were dads or uncles. They knew how sickness-prone smallhumans could be. The vague answer left much room for interpretation. The boys had been sick, which could explain my emergency absence. The boys had been sick, so I was coming down with something. The boys had been sick, and I’d deprived myself of sleep worrying about them. All had a grain of truth; but not the whole story.

Thankfully, Roland didn’t press me for a better answer. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder instead, gesturing toward the front of the station. The Haven Hollow Police Department was just a little hole in the wall, barely large enough to accommodate my office and the handful of other officers who worked under my command.

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