Page 57 of Forsaken Fate

“But,” Doyle said, “she might be good at coming up with a believable back story. And I don’t think Diana knew any of the truth about her. She suspected. She called me. Diana did. I think I told you that. You and Diana were on the same page about her. Suspicious, I mean.”

“Doyle,” I said, trying to keep my temper even, “who the fuck is Brynna Wade?” Doyle flinched and put a hand to his lips to quiet me.

“She’s nobody,” he said. “If it weren’t for the tail, we wouldn’t have been able to connect those dots either. A couple of days ago, though, Brynna took a day trip. We followed her to a rest stop not far from here. The other side of the woods closer to the lake.”

“Where? What was she doing there?”

Doyle pulled something up on his phone and handed it to me. I took it but couldn’t look at it yet. I wanted to hear the rest of it first.

“Just the middle of the woods. She met someone in a clearing,” Doyle said. “This is where it gets interesting.”

I looked down at the phone. There was Brynna, wearing her t-shirt and leather bomber jacket as she got out of her car and walked into the woods. I scrolled. There were a series of shots taken with a high-powered lens. Grainy, but I could clearly make everything out. She met an older woman wearing mage robes. I didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t from Diana’s coven and therefore had no right to be on my father’s lands. I kept scrolling. A video popped up. My heart racing, I played it.

I couldn’t make out what Brynna or the mage were saying. But Brynna handed her something. A token? Money? Then the wind picked up. An aura of light swirled around Brynna. Beside her, a portal opened up and she stepped through it.

“Fae magic,” I whispered. “What the hell is she doing playing with that?

The mage stood there for a moment after Brynna disappeared. Then she raised her arms, brought down the lightning and vanished. Doyle’s assistant kept recording. A minute went by. Two. Then the portal opened back up and Brynna stepped through it. She was looking down, her hand covering her mouth. The video ended. I scrolled. The next picture zoomed in on Brynna’s face. Her eyes were red rimmed, her face lined with emotion. I knew from the clothes she wore in the picture, later that day she came to me. She had still been crying as she waited outside my hotel room door.

I flipped to the next picture. An ID card. The kind I hadn’t seen in years. Cold eyes stared back at me from the black and white photo. Handsome bastard with thick dark hair and squared jaw. He gave the camera a James Dean-esque fuck-you face, holding the ID card up with one middle finger extended. I recognized the ID card. They were issued to shifters labeled subversive during the war. This man was bound tightly with chains. But it wasn’t just any metal. The chains shimmered gold in the photo. Dragonsteel. He was a shifter. The next photo showed him being shoved into a truck along with other shifters bound in Dragonsteel. I knew those trucks. I’d seen hundreds of men and women carted off in them by the fae. Sent to prisons if they were lucky. Sent through portals just like the one in the video if they were unlucky. And none of them were ever seen or heard from again.

“Lucien Wade,” Doyle said. He had come around and stood peering over my shoulder. “He was at the top of the fae’s most wanted list in New York during the height of the war. He’s listed as having been imprisoned and marked for death.”

“What’s he to Brynna?” I said. My throat had gone dry.

Doyle put a hand on my back. “She’s probably his mate, Theo. Since the war ended, there are mages…halflings. The ones with at least a little bit of fae blood in them. They’ve been selling tickets to loved ones of people imprisoned on the other side. The fae dimension. A two-way pass if you’re willing to risk your fucking soul. But it only works for people with a blood connection to the inmates. Fated mates, that kind of thing. We think Lucien is who Brynna was trying to visit. How the hell she managed to survive visiting him on the other side, I don’t know. She’s using some dark ass magic, that’s for sure. She’s dangerous, man. Toxic if you ask me.”

My head reeled. None of it made any sense. What did any of this have to do with Grayson? I was a fool, probably. But none of this tracked. It didn’t feel like the Brynna I was coming to know. “But she doesn’t have a scar,” I said. “Her neck is unmarked.”

“It could be a spell,” Doyle said. “If she’s buying access to the fae dimension, who knows what else she’s dabbled in.”

Doyle had known me long enough to sense some of what I was thinking. Maybe it was the set of my shoulders. Maybe he read something in my eyes as I scrolled through the pictures again. Brynna in pain. Brynna’s lies. Brynna’s mate?

“I’m sorry, Theo,” Doyle said. “If she got to you too, I mean. You didn’t give her any money or anything did you?”

“Did I what?” I said. “No. We just ...”

“I get it,” Doyle cut me off. “Look, you don’t owe me any explanations. She’s good at what she does. I kinda gotta give her credit for that. And it’s not like Grayson didn’t have it coming a little bit. He’s been riding Diana’s coattails and being an overall douche his whole life. Honestly, I don’t even think he’s that crazy about her. She looks good in the pictures. He brags an awful lot about how good she is when she spreads her legs. He likes to show her off and she lets him.”

I shook my head. “They aren’t fucking. He’s lying.”

“Huh. Can’t say that surprises me. No harm no foul,” Doyle said. “Though he probably doesn’t deserve you saving his ass. I kinda want to be a fly on the wall when you tell him his future mate really is just the gold-digging whore Diana thought she was. I just wish I’d finished what Diana started before she tried to lure you in, too.”

Something behind me. Some tiny noise made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I turned. God. I sensed her before I saw her.

The door was open now and Brynna stood there in that knockout green dress against her pale skin. Her eyes flashed fire as her mouth dropped. I don’t know how long she’d been there but long enough to hear at least the last bit.

Doyle turned a beat after I did and was the first one to say anything. “Shit!”

CHAPTER 21

Brynna

Gold-digging whore.

I’d heard it before from worse and better than Doyle Burnett and why wouldn’t Theo believe it? It just wasn’t gold I was after.

I should have left it like that. Diana’s grimoires were finally in my suitcase and all I had to do was leave. Grayson would never find me. Brynna Carrington didn’t exist. The only thing that kept me here now was the belief – however niggling it was – that I had overlooked something. That there was something even bigger staring me in the face.

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