Page 47 of Enticing Monsters

Fuck.

We need to do better.

Ineed to do better. For Sera. For the fae. For all of the innocent lives that have been taken.

The door to the council room is thrown open. The clacking of high heels precedes the tall, brunette woman stalking towards the raised podium.

“Charise?” Duncan’s eyebrows furrow as the queen’s second-born claims an empty seat at the table with the other lords and ladies.

V’s seat.

Charise is hot. I can give her that, but her personality leaves a lot to be desired. She seems to believe she’s better than everyone here, especially thehumans—aka, me and my family—her mother hired. It also doesn’t help matters that she stares at my sister like she’s the scum of the earth.

“What are you doing here?” Amun, an Unseelie fae, asks with a quirked brow.

Charise folds her hands primly on top of the table. “If my brother doesn’t bother to show up for these meetings, I figured I should.” She sniffs haughtily. “Someone with royal blood needs to keep an eye on the proceedings.”

Brooke gives Charise a narrowed-eyed glare. “We may not necessarily agree with everything V does, buthe’snext in line for the throne. Not you. You understand that, right?”

Charise doesn’t even blink at Brooke’s words. She simply waves her hand in the air with a flippant, “Yes, yes. Now, can we proceed? I have places to be.”

My mother exchanges an uncomfortable glance with my father—both of them hate involving themselves in fae politics—before asking, “Is there anything else you require of us?”

Duncan scrubs a hand through his trimmed white beard. “No, I don’t believe?—”

He freezes abruptly, and his eyes take on a glazed-over, hazy quality. His mouth parts.

“Are you so incompetent that you can’t even finish your sentence?” Charise rolls her eyes exaggeratedly as she slides her gaze towards the older man. “I don’t think?—”

But then Charise goes still as well.

“What the fuck?” Maddox murmurs, already unsheathing one of his daggers.

I move to grab the bow that I slung over my shoulder before I came here and then notch an arrow.

All of the lords and ladies have gone eerily still.

And then, as one, they begin to scream.

The huge, lumberjack-looking fae grabs at his ears as horrible, desperate sobs shake his body. Brooke starts to convulse uncontrollably, blood seeping from her eyes and ears. Charise, the queen’s fucking daughter, starts crying erratically as her body shakes.

“What the fuck is happening?” I demand as I search the room for a threat.

Panic seizes my lungs, and I find myself unable to take in air.

“We’re under attack!” Mother races towards the nearest fae. Amun, I believe his name is.

He has gone still and is staring blankly up at the ceiling. However, his chest continues to rise and fall steadily, and air puffs from his parted lips.

“Amun!” She snaps her fingers in front of his face, but he doesn’t even acknowledge her.

He seems to be…trapped.

In his own mind.

What the fuck?

“I’ve seen this before,” Maddox whispers, then he exhales raggedly. “Remember in Pittsburgh? When we had to hunt down that fae who was trapping fae in nightmares?”

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