Page 13 of Royal Ransom

Roland’s eyes took a moment to focus. As the implications of my words sunk in, his expression was one of horror and distance. He struggled to reject it, but I knew he’d start asking questions eventually. He was too curious not to dig deeper into this.

“Are you telling me the truth, Chief… Taliyah, are you telling me the fucking truth?”

I nodded. “I am.”

“That… that thing… he was there to kill you?”

I nodded. “Or to take Darla hostage. That was their end goal if they couldn’t get in a lucky shot. They want to force me to negotiate for their prisoners.” I paused. “Is Darla okay, by the way? I know you insisted she go in an ambulance.”

I hadn’t been able to do anything but watch in mute frustration as the medics carted her away. I wasn’t used to being out of the loop during a crisis.

“She’s going to be fine. Bruises and a nasty knot on her head, but she’ll live. The doctors think she’s in shock, because she wasn’t making much sense. She kept talking about her ring—about losing her wedding ring or something.”

Unless she’d eloped and failed to inform the rest of us, Darla wasn’t wearing a ‘handcuff,’ as she called it, outside of work hours. She’d donned my brother’s oversized class ring to channel the spirit she’d embedded in the stone. She’d been wearing it when she left to take the boys to Poppy’s. I hadn’t seen it on her finger when they bundled her into the ambulance.

And that meant one thing.

Oh. Oh, God.

Wren had Darla’s ring. She had Cain. She’d taken my brother to the heart of fucking winter.

Wren had taken a hostage after all.

Chapter Nine

Taliyah

Cain was gone.

The knowledge hit me like a punch to the solar plexus, stealing my breath. The only physical connection I had to my brother was gone, stolen away by Janara’s vicious little pixie while we had our backs turned. She’d ransom my dead brother to bait me into her trap, just in case Fox’s draw wasn’t enough incentive to bring me in.

Worst of all, it would probably work. Losing him the first time had left me mired in depression for years. If I were being honest with myself, I still wasn’t over it and I sort of had him back—in a way, anyway. Losing Cain had been one of the most difficult times in my life, including the never-ending divorce proceedings I’d had to deal with. I couldn’t let Cain go, not like this. He couldn’t stay with me forever, but the goodbye was supposed to happen on my terms, nothers.

I felt as if I was falling through space with a wrought iron weight lodged in my stomach. I grabbed onto the back of the nearest chair to ground myself. It was instantly coated in frost.

“Tally?”

Maverick’s voice was quiet, his tone measured as if he were trying to talk someone off a ledge. I must have looked pretty damn bad if I’d robbed him of the ability to be snide.

“Give me a minute,” I said. My voice came out strangled, barely sounding like myself. For an instant, I heard the howling winter wind echoing in my words. “I just need...”

Time.

A resource in short supply now that Janara had Cain. I’d probably receive her updated terms by the end of the day: immediate and total surrender or my brother, Fox, and everyone else she’d captured would die horribly. Or be lockedpermanently under a layer of unmelting ice, in Cain’s case. Forever was a long time to be in solitary confinement.

“Tally, we’ll get him back, I promise. Just come back to the bar. We’ll figure this out.”

A rush of gratitude swept over me, my heart swelling in my chest. I didn’t believe the words for a second, but I was glad he knew me well enough to know I needed the comforting lie. Beneath the curmudgeon lay the heart of a hero. Not that he’d ever label himself that. Like a reluctant moth to an impossibly bright flame, I felt my heart move infinitesimally closer to my prickly warlock husband.

I didn’t care what he’d done when he’d disappeared. I didn’t care that he’d made a bad call. When it came down to the wire, I trusted him at my back. There weren’t many people I could say that about. Mav was my rock. I wasn’t abandoning him just because he was possessed. Whatever happened, we’d work through it together.

“She took him,” I said, my voice quavering. “She took him from my house, Mav. Even our best wards weren’t enough. What if Wren had broken in after school hours? She could have taken Sean and Charlie. Or Chloe. Oh God, what if they’d gotten Chloe?”

My steadfast babysitter was a changeling in the original sense of the word. She’d been kidnapped by faeries when she was young. By the time she returned, her birth parents were gone. Being taken back to Faerie again would be her worst nightmare. The simple folk remedies she used to keep them at bay would be useless if Wren dragged her to the heart of Winter.

“Can you please explain what in hell is going on?” Roland asked.

To be honest, I’d completely forgotten he was there. I looked up at him and shook my head. “I can’t explain this,” I said softly. Mav looked over at Roland and nodded. “I’ll explain everythinglater, when I can.” Then he looked back at me. “I’m so sorry, Tally,” he said, his voice gentle and warm, like a soothing blanket. He wanted to say more, I could tell, but he held back for the moment. I was grateful for that. I wasn’t ready to spill every fear that had flitted through my head.

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