Page 59 of Fate Unchained

Brooke grinned. “Good. Wouldn’t mind a bit of that myself.”

Lilah’s face turned red. “I left to go to Eroica on business. We met there. We’re working on a … project … together.”

“One so urgent I had to rush away from my non-deadline?”

Lilah’s face was still scarlet. “They still aren’t publishing any of your articles?”

“Nope. Or that asshole Dervin takes my pieces, rewrites them slightly, and gets the credit.” Brooke collapsed into a chair. “They flat out quashed my piece on the king and his mistress. Not even Dervin wanted to steal it. My editor said it would stir the king up, and he’d send one of his cronies around to conduct a safety inspection of our presses again.” She raised her brows. “I guess he does that when the paper publishes a piece he doesn’t like. The last time the inspection shut the place down for three weeks.”

Lilah settled across from Brooke. “Actually, your research on the king’s mistress is what I wanted to ask you about. What—”

“Lilah, we don’t need her involved.” He jerked his chin toward the door. “Thanks for coming, but you can leave.”

Brooke raised her eyebrows. “You know, telling a journalist to leave because they shouldn’t be involved is like waving a red flag in front of us.” She grinned. “Now I’m definitely staying.”

He growled, and Lilah glared at him. “We can use her help.”

He shook his head. “No. We’ll figure this out on our own.”

Lilah narrowed her eyes. “She’s spent the past six months researching Morana.”

He faced off against Hans and Zann, both Alphas, all the time without even flicking an ear, yet Lilah scowling at him, made him uncomfortable. Maybe he should start calling her sarzila, too. “Fine. Keep it short.”

Lilah turned back to Brooke and leaned forward, “Will you share what you learned about Morana? Who were her parents?”

Brooke blew out a breath. “Yeah, great question, and one it took me a long time to figure out. One thing my editor didn’t like in my article was when I mentioned how old Morana was. He said the king would get his knickers in a twist about that. But even for a demi-immortal, she’s been around a long time. Which made it difficult to find where she came from.”

Kyril hadn’t thought about it until now, but Brooke was right. Demi-immortals, like peltwalkers and magicwielders, could live many centuries, but based on the bits of information they’d gotten about Morana, she’d lived much longer than most. “How long?” he asked.

Brooke draped one arm over the back of her chair. “So long I couldn’t uncover a thing about her origins until I found an old genealogy book here in Lilah’s library.”

Lilah’s mouth dropped open. “Which one? I’ve read them all, and I don’t remember seeing anything about her.”

Brooke bounded to her feet. This human reminded him of his pack brother Ayren after he drank tea. Whenever Ayren touched the stuff, he stayed up for four nights straight and wouldn’t stop talking.

Brooke walked a few stacks down, then turned down the aisle. Kyril and Lilah followed a few steps behind her. Bending down, she heaved a large book from the bottom shelf. “Oof. This is a fattie.”

Kyril plucked it from her with one hand and brought it back to their table. Brooke opened it and thumbed through the thin pages. “I don’t think the family who donated this book to the library realized the person who owned it did a bit of writing in the margins.”

Lilah puffed up. “What! They wrote in one of my books? How did I not notice this?”

Brooke quirked a brow. “Trust me, it made this book a lot more fun to read. Look.” She pointed to a bit of ink scrawled next to an entry for the family of Forthkirk and read aloud, “‘The heir of the family was born with red hair. Interesting. Not a lick of red hair on either the mother or the father’s side. However, the Earl of Piddlington, who has often been seen in the wee hours of the morning tiptoeing from the Forthkirk estate when Baron Forthkirk is away on business, has red hair.’”

Lilah turned back to the inside of the front cover. A bookplate identified the previous owner as Sylwia Von Nattersley. She shrugged. “I’m not familiar with this name.”

Brooke grinned. “Well, I would have loved to be her friend. She made all sorts of funny comments on what she thought was really going on with many marriages and alliances. Including,” Brooke flipped the pages, “the family of Dezwana.” She glanced up at him and Lilah. “That’s Morana’s family name. You know, she was a professor at Herskala Academy ages ago. Not an easy position to get if you aren’t one of the ten top families in the Magicarchy. And she was a nobody. So, I was curious.”

“What did you find?” Lilah put her hand on Kyril’s arm, and his entire body went warm. He shifted so he stood partially behind her and let his front rest against her back. His blood heated. He was awfully familiar with being behind her like this. Only with her naked.

Buttercup floated around him, and his cock twitched. How different would it be to take her in his human form?

Damn it, he needed to focus.

“Even after I found the information on Morana, this book was so funny I kept reading.” She tapped it. “And I also found this.” Brooke turned the pages rapidly until she got to the families starting with H, then slowed until she reached Herskala. The family tree truncated at Arasmus Herskala. It was strange to see Herskala’s first name, somehow it made him seem more like a real person instead of an almost mythological sorcerer.

Brooke pointed at writing scrawled along the margin. There was so much, it overflowed into the top and bottom of the page. “Look at all these people Herskala slept with to try to have a little rug rat of his own. Our Miss Sylwia wrote them all down. Including,” she circled a name with the tip of her finger, “a Ms. Dezwana of the northern clans. I mean, a woman of the northern clans would be a peltwalker. He must have been really desperate for an heir since we know he treated non-sorcerers like slugs. Maybe worse than slugs.”

Kyril barely heard her. He kept staring at the name Dezwana. “Are you saying Morana may be Herskala’s child?”

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