Free Midnight Enchantment by Anya Bast

Ronan and I don’t know the truth. In any case, she wasn’t there for us to run to, and, even if she had been, she probably would have turned us away. Too many bad memories. She hated our father.”
    “Sweet Danu. You were just children. Where did you go?”
    “The Shadow King had a stronghold near what is modern day Belfast. He welcomed us like long lost sons returning home.”
    “I’m sure he valued you for your uniqueness.”
    He stood and poked a stick into the fire to force a log to collapse into the flames. “Yes, and the Phaendir wanted to kill us. They castrated our father for siring us, to make sure he would never father another monster.”
    She grunted. “That’s awful, but he did throw you to the wolves by turning you out.”
    “He was never a warm man, but that was an act of kindness. He gave us a chance at life. If we’d stayed, we probably would have had our throats cut in our sleep.”
    “Yes, the Phaendir are ever so merciful.” Her voice was laden with sarcasm.
    “Yes, Phaendir mercy.” He looked up at her, eyes glittering and hard. “That’s exactly why the fae need their freedom.”
    She shifted uncomfortably, looking away.
    “How old are you?”
    Great.
Here would come some lecture about how young she was and how he had so much more life experience than she did. Sighing, she answered, “You must know I’m only in my twenties.”
    He walked to her and knelt beside her, taking her hands in his. “You are so young, Elizabeth. You can do anything, see anything, be anything. Do the right thing and I’ll let you walk out of here. You can enjoy the rest of your life, free, and in the world. You can travel to India. You can rent an apartment in New York City, or you can fade into the rain forests of Brazil. The possibilities are limitless.”
    Yet all she wanted in the world was for her mother to survive. And here she was, likely to die a virgin.
    Pulling her hands from his, she looked away from him, out the window.
    “Don’t make me do this, Elizabeth. Don’t make me watch you fade away with that charmed iron on your skin.”
    She held his gaze steadily. “I’m not
making
you do anything you don’t want to do, Niall. Stop acting like the wounded party here. I’m the one who is about to die.” She cocked her head to the side. “I wonder if the Wild Hunt will come for you when I finally go?”
    His jaw locked. He stood and turned away from her. “The Wild Hunt won’t come for me because I’m under direct orders from the Shadow Queen to do whatever it takes to get the pieces from you.” He half turned toward her. “But I’ll regret it, Elizabeth. No matter how selfish a woman I think you are, I’ll still regret your death. I’ll regret what has to come next, too.”
    She sighed in exhaustion. “What comes next, Niall?”
    “You know all about me, yet you don’t know the nature of my magick? There’s a reason I was sent to do this job.” His voice held notes of tired resolution and steely resolve. “When I told you I intend to get the information out of you, I meant it. You won’t let it go the easy way, so it will have to be the hard way.”
    He walked out of the room and left her shivering.

S IX

    LIAM wandered the halls of the Black Tower, every molecule of his body on alert. There was only one person in all of Piefferburg that might recognize his face—Charlotte Bennett, the human woman who had taken the third piece of the
bosca fadbh
from the Stone of Destiny in Ireland.
    He’d fought her there; the bitch had even stabbed him and left him for dead. His wound had barely healed. It hurt like hell all the time, especially when he exerted himself, but he wasn’t going to let anything stop him from completing this mission.
    There was no way Charlotte wouldn’t recognize him if their paths crossed. That night it had been dark and everything had been chaos, but he was a distinctive man with his enormous build and his fire red hair. According to his information,