Page 123 of What The Hex (The Family Spells)
With a sigh, I followed after Spectre and curled up between him and Caine.
As for me? I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. No, I was too stressed out for that.
And rightfully so. The last time Argent had told me he was just popping through the Veil for a visit, things had gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Thirteen years ago …
I had not worked so gods-damned hard to free Graceley Spells from her ex’s influence to end up trapped here.
I paced the room from end to end, aware of the spells embedded in the walls, windows, and doors. My mother—the reigning Seelie Queen—had always been careful, but this was pure excess, a mess of tricky wards designed to keep me in a luxe cage.
I had half a mind to pick up the large four-poster bed on my left and chuck it against the wall.
For years, my mother had used me as a political tool, a chess piece to move around a board of power-hungry, violence-obsessed fae. I was her bastard son, born from a union she’d rather not mention, a true love affair that she considered a weakness.
Because, to the fae, love was a crack in the armor, something to be exploited, something to be feared. Without love, the only person one had to protect was themselves. And wasn’t that easier? Without love, there was nobody that could be used against you. You were against the world, and that was simple.
To be fair, I’d allowed myself to become a very useful tool. Indispensable. I did what the queen asked without question, and I was left to my own devices. Once upon a time, that had meant having lovers, having a family.
But, like everything else in my life, that had been snatched away from me by the cruelty of our world. It was beautiful, but like a rose with thorns, it was sharp. It made one bleed—especially the heart.
With a sigh, I sunk down on the edge of the bed and put my face in my hands.
Why had I come back here? At the time, it’d seemed necessary. There was no communication between earth and Faerie without traveling across the Veil. I’d come here to let the queen know that I wouldn’t be returning, that she needn’t send her servants after me, that I would not open my door to brownies or banshees or pixies to accept her orders.
After my lovers had died, I’d remained alive, stubbornly, impossibly, a long-lived faerie searching for the reincarnations of the souls he’d come to love.
And, miraculously, I’d found one.
Not a fae this time, but a witch.
Graceley Spells.
On an errand in the demon world of Hael, I’d seen her. As soon as our eyes met, I’d known. She was the reincarnation of my past love, my soulmate, a fate that I wouldn’t avoid even if I could.
There had been complications, of course. The first and foremost of which had been the Grand Prince.
Monster.
I curled my lip up and pushed the memories of Grace’s tears aside, her cries in the night when she’d reached for him, her desperation. We were past that. We were in a good place. And now?
Now I was trapped.
The queen wasn’t willing to give up such a valuable tool. Without me around, who would do her dirty work for her?
I was a moron.
If I’d simply started killing her servants as they arrived on my doorstep, she’d have gotten the message quite quickly.
I swung my hair over my shoulder and proceeded to braid it. There was power in a sidhe’s hair. Not only that, but it was fashionable to wear it long. The court would accept nothing less. With a scowl, I tied off the braid and tossed it back, my mind churning as I considered my options for escaping the palace.
Eventually, the queen would want something from me, some task or another that was too lowly for the sons of her official consort, and then she would call on me. I’d be able to leave this room, this palace … this world.
Unless, of course, she did something more sinister. A binding spell? A magic mark?
Worse yet was the fact that Niamh had legendary patience. It was always a possibility that she might keep me trapped here for years. A decade or more. What did time matter to such long-lived creatures?
Of all the possibilities that I considered, I never expected to see the door swing open so easily. I never could’ve fathomed the idea that Grace Spells, the witch woman who contained the soul of my long-dead lover, would be standing there with an amber-eyed wolf at her side.
“The Seelie Court doesn’t have much experience with witches, now does it?” Grace asked, flippant as always, her red-lipped mouth a glorious spot of color on her pale face. She tipped her hat at me as I rose to my feet, eyes wide.
