BITE BRINGER.
“Yes, now open the gate!”
I knew he warred with the idea, thinking correctly that it was a lie. But he did as I asked, allowing me to call out to Seraphine. “ENTER.”
She skidded to a stop, splattering more mud along her skirts and cloak. The Beast reached the gate and lifted it off its hinges, swinging it open with ease. With admirable caution, she stepped through, keeping her distance.
“BELOW,” I explained.
“Can you show me the way?”
“YES.”
The Beast trudged forward, the snow hitting his knees where it came up to Seraphine’s hips. She followed behind his wake, her teeth chattering loudly.
When we reached the entrance to the Underrealm, I made the Beast speak once more. “STAY.”
The Beast descended the stairs and in the transformation, she gasped. When I turned, her hands were over her mouth, realization, panic, and tears in her eyes. “Arthur?”
I held my hand out to her at the last step. “Come, Seraphine. I will take you to my wife.”
CHAPTER 43
Reshina
The air changedthe moment Arthur walked into the library because he didn’t walk. He eased. I looked up at the sound of the door opening as I finished my latest annotation. We’d been sharing a mystery book, told from the point of view of the feline that had witnessed a murder. Most of our annotations had been plays on words of the feline nature and I was just finishing up my note about how at six-hundred pages, I thought this could be a shorter tail, when I looked up to see the tight lines of his face.
I rose from my chair immediately. “What is it?”
His lips parted to speak, yet nothing came.
I rushed to him, my skirts of a dark emerald trailing behind me. I touched his cheek, brushing my thumb across the fine growth of hairs he hadn’t bothered to shave this morning due to keeping him between my legs. “You’re frightening me,” I rasped in a half laugh. “Tell me what is wrong.”
Taking my hands into his, he closed his eyes, squeezing them shut as he kissed over my knuckles and my ring. “Someone is here.”
“What do you meanhere?”
“I mean just outside this door. She has come a long way to find you.”
Morella, I thought, my heart jumping through my chest.My daughter has come to find me.
I didn’t understand his hesitancy and tenderness in that moment, but I didn’t take the time to try either. I left his side, rushing to the doors and opening them wide. There, in the long corridor we’d recently redecorated in shades of dark crimson, was Seraphine DuPont.
She was pacing outside of the door, half drenched in mud, her long golden hair braided down her back, falling out in pieces that draped around her face. Those bright violet eyes darted to me, and she stilled as if stunned.
My pulse raced as I swallowed my biggest fears. “Korven?” I whispered, thinking she’d come to tell me some horrible truth about my son.
She stood straight before me, lifting her trembling chin and giving me a short shake of her head. “It’s Morella,” she trembled. “Your daughter’s life is in danger. Youmustcome and save her.”
CHAPTER 44
Arthur
My wife listened in silence.Any other would have thought she was taking the news well as Seraphine related what she’d told me on the way to the library. But I knew her. The slump in her wings. The stiffness in her neck. When Reshina refused to abide by the rules set in place before her, that was when she was most fragile. Not fragile like a rose, but fragile like the lighted fuse of an explosion.
When Seraphine explained the sickness, I knew right away what it was. It was not just the role of a Goddess of the Veil to look after her people, but also to heal them and give her essence from the Veil for them to thrive.
Morella was with child, we’d learned, and appeared to fare with the same sickness Reshina had suffered when she was pregnant with her. They’d been searching for Reshina for weeks without end, getting word out, desperate to uncover what had happened to the Goddess of the Ravenfae. And it wasn’t until Piff had overheard something about it in the marketplace that he’d sent that letter to Korven—the one Reshina had never meant to send telling where she’d been.
