Page 48 of The Fae Queen's Captive

“Where’s my sister?”

He spread his hands, still looking down at the parchment. “I need you for one more job.”

“That wasn’t the deal.”

“Regardless, you will serve me.”

“Have your dog do it.” I nodded to the shadows behind the throne. I couldn’t see the captain of his guard, but with my heightened senses, I tasted the bitter tang of his treachery, so I knew Perseus was lurking there.

He stepped into the light, daring to look straight at my sunglasses. He was tall and muscular, with a chiseled jaw, a mop of blonde hair, and pale blue eyes.

Scum-sucking liars shouldn’t get to be that handsome, but I didn’t make the rules.

The king said, “He can’t. I need you to kill the Dark Druid.”

I looked back and forth between them to see if he was serious. “It can’t be done. Not even by me.”

His tone grew icy. “Not only will you do it, but you’ll do it before he drops the veil between the realms. Or I’ll turn Euryale over to my men for target practice.”

Shit.Shit.

Hunting the most fearsome creatures was my trade, but even I balked at the Dark Druid. He was a half-mad recluse who’d dabbled in dark magic, and now they said he waswrong,dangerously unhinged. As long as he got his sacrificial offering to drop the veil between the realms for Samhain every year, he remained within his cave, which everyone seemed to think was a fair trade. An act of aggression against him could be seen as an affront to the faerie Stag Queen since he served her, not to mention the risk of angering the Dark Druid if I couldn’t kill him quickly enough.

“Why? He isn’t a threat.”

“He’s a threat to the sacrifices,” Perseus said with a grin.

As though he cared about defenseless mortals.

I scoffed. “From what I hear, they aren’t complaining.” For many years, they’d been sacrificed and never returned. But more recently some sacrifices had reappeared, claiming they’d had a religious experience. Now people competed for the honor, swearing he was a sex god.

People like the Dark Druid didn’t change, though. It would only be a matter of time before they started disappearing again, but I wasn’t in a position to make that my problem. Why was the king suddenly making it his?

He shifted, clearly hiding something. I could taste his slimy secrecy and reluctance. “I need time to resolve a…situation. I have an unpaid debt to King Darius. If the veil is dropped now, the Shadow Market will open, and his cronies will be able to cross into this realm. When you remove the Dark Druid and bring me his ring of power, I’ll have a year to fulfill my debt.”

Making an enemy of King Darius was almost as dumb as attempting to kill the Dark Druid, but swapping one enemy for another hardly seemed like a good solution.

“The fae queen isn’t going to be bothered you’ve killed her beast and prevented the Shadow Market?”

He shifted again.

I sighed, feeling older than time. “You won’t have killed her beast. I will.”

“I’ll appease her. She may even be grateful to be rid of him and reward you. With the ring, I can protect you.”

He was desperate, and I was expendable if it meant he had a chance of holding off King Darius. If I was expendable, my sister certainly was too. I had no choice but to participate in his ridiculous plan if I ever wanted to see her alive again.

“How do you propose I even get close to him? He doesn’t leave his cave, and no one enters.”

The smile on Perseus’s face sent chills skittering down my spine like rodents. “With the sacrifice.”