"The fault is mine," I said quietly. "It was my brother that took her.” My blood brother. The wicked soul that he was. Cruel. Senseless. And soon to be very, very dead. I sucked in a breath before continuing. “Tyr is using Cress to get to me, to us,” I corrected, “and because of my inability to predict his behavior, she's now paying the price.” Nellie’s eyelashes flickered as she stared at me in cold shock. “We will figure out how to find her,” I assured the human girl. “Of that, you can be sure. I will find Cress and I will bring her back.” I turned to Groffet and swelled with breath as I spoke to him directly. “And I have come to request your assistance with this matter.”
"It's not your fault," Roan snapped before Groffet could reply.
Blinking, I glanced in his direction only to find him glaring at me with a burning rage. Of course he would not want to blame me. Roan, for all his faults and arrogance, would not blame me for what was so clearly the result of my failures. Cress’s abduction, however, was my fault. Tyr was my brother. Everything he did was to get to me, or to get around me, or to torture me somehow. Why? I didn’t know. All I knew was that it had been this way since I was young. Perhaps it was simply how Midnight Fae were, and I was the peculiar one for not falling in line. I never should have let him see how much Cress meant to me.
When I returned my gaze to the human, Nellie was watching me, her eyes glistening in the low light of the library as silent tears streamed down her face. "What's he going to do to her?" she asked shakily.
I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. There were so many cruel things Tyr was capable of. Things I, myself, had experienced, but for some reason when I tried to think of them—it only made me sick. I didn’t want to tell this girl the horrors I’d known at the hand of my brother, and the possible torment Cress could be going through even as we spoke.
Roan saved me. "He enjoys mental games,” he said. “But Cress is strong. She knows we would never leave her with him. We're going to get her back before anything can happen to her, so don't worry about it."
"Something bad has already happened," Nellie replied. "Cress is gone!” Fat tears began to slide from the girl’s eyes as she inhaled trembling breaths, looking like one strong push would break her into a million pieces. I couldn’t say I blamed her. I didn’t. The mere sight of her, so distressed and horrified over her friend’s disappearance made the sick feeling in my gut even more painful. I closed my eyes and relished in that pain. I deserved it.
When I opened my eyes again, anger and despair warred on the human’s face. Her words, however, had pushed Roan too far. The icy chill of the room faded as Roan’s rage grew hotter.
“We will get her back,” he insisted. “She will be fine. Cress will return and when she does, she will become my bride. I will ensure that nothing and no one ever thinks to take her from my side again.”
“Our side,” Sorrell muttered a beat later. No one agreed, but neither did any of us deny the statement. The fact remained that Cress had become our center in a short amount of time. She was wild and reckless. A breath of fresh air that we so desperately craved and needed after having been locked in our Courts for too long. Perhaps … a thought occurred to me. Perhaps the hatred between humans and Faekind had finally reached its peak. Gods knew we were tired of the war. It could not go on forever.
But before we could focus on that, we needed to get her back. Cress was our utmost priority.
“Bride?” Nellie stared at Roan in shock, her mouth agape. “You’re going to marry her?” She didn’t even comment on Sorrell’s quiet statement. Perhaps she hadn’t heard.
Roan nodded once. “Yes. Cress is Fae whether or not she was raised by your people, she is ours now, and ours she will remain.”
The Fae male, Ash, rushed forward and took Nellie's hands in his before he turned her to face him. "The Princes will figure it out. I'm sure they are just as upset as you are. Trust them to get your friend back,” he said quickly, his gaze flicking up to us as if to sense whether or not his words were accepted. When his eyes landed on mine, I nodded once to assure him.
Nellie looked up into his face, her tears falling harder, and then, with a surprising amount of strength, she crushed herself against the male’s front and openly sobbed. Without a second thought, Ash scooped her up so she was cradled in his arms, her own tangled around his neck as she buried her face in his chest and cried. After a beat, he lifted his gaze from her head to the rest of us. “May I please take her back to her chambers?” he asked gently. “I promise to stay with her and ensure she rests, if it’s permitted.”
Groffet was the one that answered. “I think that’s a sane idea,” he said with a huff. “Take the girl back and watch over her, Ash.” The male nodded and hurried from the room, bowing slightly to the rest of us as he passed by. “Now then.” Groffet lifted his head and narrowed his eyes at the three of us. “Come, let us propose a strategy to retrieve the Changeling.”
The three of us—Sorrell, Roan, and I—followed him as we moved towards the library’s main open area. Roan immediately plopped down next to the fire. Sorrell wandered over to the open window, and I took my place in one of the three nook seats set within the walls surrounding the space. With the wall at my back and the open space in front of me, I felt marginally enclosed, as if I were sitting within the wall, itself, watching the scene before me even as I channeled my inner thoughts to calm and focus.
“The Changeling was taken,” Groffet said the words, but they were not a question.
Regardless, Roan answered. “Yes.”
Groffet nodded and hobbled over to a table stacked high with tomes and volumes. He grunted and muttered beneath his breath as he searched, pulling book after book and checking their contents. If he found one satisfying, he set it on the ground and if it wasn’t, he tossed it.
“Let’s see,” he began. “You could try and track her? Scry for her?"
"Already tried that." Sorrell's tone was biting as though he was insulted that Groffet would suggest something so simple.
"And what about the Midnight Heir?” Groffet asked, one bushy brow rising as he glared back at the Prince of Frost. “Did you attempt to track him?” Silence. Groffet huffed out a breath before selecting a particularly hefty looking volume and moving over to the three of us. “If he's the one that took her maybe tracking him will lead you to her?"
"Tyr has protections around him at all times to prevent that from happening,” I said. “It always drove our mother insane…” That is, before she actually had gone insane.
Groffet harrumphed at that statement, slamming the book he carried on the ground in the center of the space and flipping it open. He paged through the contents. More muttering emanated from the small, old man, but none of it was sensical. Finally, he grunted and stopped flipping the pages. His head turned from side to side and after a moment, he lifted it.
"What about a dream spell?” I didn’t have to look at the others to know that they had perked up some. Groffet noticed our captured attentions and nodded. “Yes, I think that might be good.”