Into the Fire (The Unseelie Court Book 4) by Gwen Rivers (free ebooks romance novels .TXT) 📗

she waves a hand. All the lights in the room dim. Above my head, the ceiling is transformed into the face of a dead man. His cheeks are ruddy and he is smiling.

Goosebumps rise up on my arms. Familiar faces.

“You were found by hikers in the Black Forest.” Agent Hanson circles around the table. “Just six-years-old. The one who stayed behind to wait for you was found dead. No apparent cause of death for a healthy thirty-two-year-old man. Left behind a wife and two young sons.”

At her words, the image shifts to the man and his family. The woman is dark-haired but the boys have the same sandy blond hair and ruddy cheeks as their father.

Hanson leans over me. “Care to tell me what happened to him?”

I force myself to stare at him. He looks like a model on a photo booth wall, not the man who’d tried to exchange a chocolate bar for sexual favors with a child.

“You said it yourself, he died.”

She leans in closer. “It’s the how I’m curious about. Do you regret this man’s death?”

Do I regret offing a pervert? No. “What do you think? I’m psychologically scarred by that encounter.”

Her full lips turn up. “I think you lack remorse. I think you are devoid of compassion. I think you’re glad he’s dead. I think you’re some sort of vigilante and you and your boyfriend have been at this for a very long time.”

The image flicks over to a blonde woman in a white dress with red flowers. She’s standing barefoot on a beach. “Do you know who that is?”

When I shake my head the image enlarges. “Look closely. Something about her must seem familiar.”

My lips part. “Is that…?”

“Your mother. The woman who gave birth to you.”

I have had two mothers. One is Underhill, the deathless realm whose life force is tethered to the land beyond the Veil. She was the mother to Nicneven, the Queen of the Unseelie Court. When I died, Aiden merged her soul with that of an infant girl so I could be reborn as Nic Rutherford, current prisoner of the FBI.

“Her name was Sophie. Sophie Ann Nesbit. Do you know how she died?”

I stare up at her, barely breathing.

“She was killed by a creature like you. One who could kill by no means we can detect. She left behind an infant son and a husband.”

Aiden had told me my birth mother had passed away. I’d never once thought to ask about the how. And she’d been killed by magical means?

Underhill. It had to be.

But Underhill couldn’t reach through the Veil. So, who could have done it?

“Does it bother you to know that an innocent woman died because she brought you into this world? You might as well have killed her yourself.”

The image shifts again, this time to a little boy. So thin I can count every rib through his grubby t-shirt. “Do you know who this is? His name is Garret Stevenson. You should know him. You killed his mother. And after she died, he went to live with an uncle. The man had a gambling addiction and he left Garret alone and locked in his room. He died trying to climb out of a fifth-story window.”

My lips part. The mother with Munchhausen’s-by-proxy. I had patted myself on the back for having helped that boy, kept him from a slow, painful death at the hands of the woman who was supposed to care for him.

What was it Addy always said? When your time is up, it’s up.

The images turn into a video. Flashes of the crime scenes. No blood, I didn’t draw blood. But the bodies, the sightless eyes that transitioned to their loved ones.

A web of death and misery. And I was the spider who’d woven it.

“Ma’am? Her heart rate is erratic.” A tech says to Hanson.

The woman’s hawk-like gaze is on me. “The child’s?”

A pause. “Stable.”

Hanson stares down at me, her gaze pitiless. “Then we proceed.”

Aiden stares down at the small glass in his hand. Freedom from the wolf. Safety for Nic.

Death for the fey.

He holds Freya’s gaze, then slowly turns the cup upside down, pouring the liquid across the fluffy carpet.

Her nostrils flare in outrage. “You fool. Do you have any idea what I had to go through to procure that for you?”

“Put. Me. Back.” Midgard, Underhill, he doesn’t much care where she deposits him as long as it’s away from these soulless creatures that call themselves gods.

She rises and moves to stand before him. Unlike Nic, she’s the same height as he is and holds his gaze with her own steady one. “It’s not so simple. There is no way back, not for you.”

“You got me here.” He frowns in thought. Heimdall, the watcher, isn’t a fan of Aiden or anyone in his family. And his is the only hand that can operate Bifrost.

“Who put the Bifrost in my bathwater?”

Freya’s lips curve up seductively. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. So, I’ll show you, instead.”

A figure moves forward, a familiar purple-skinned figure.

“Harmony?” he blinks, stunned.

Freya moves to the seer’s side. “She has been my faithful servant for centuries.”

The fey woman stares at him in the most unnerving way, as though she wishes to apologize. And is that longing he sees in her gaze?

He shakes his head, unable to believe the seer had turned on them. “You swore your loyalty to Nic.”

Harmony’s dark hair and purple skin stands out like a splash of paint against Freya’s colorless decor. “Actually, that doesn’t sound like something I would do, since I can’t lie.”

“You swore not to betray her.”

She shakes her head, her tone insistent. “And I haven’t. I said I would be part of her court, but that was all.”

He stares between the two women, wondering at their connection. Harmony Goldfeather is a rare beauty and normally, Freya’s vanity would cause her to subjugate someone who might outshine her own attractiveness. There is more to this relationship than meets the eye.

“So why trap me?”

“Haven’t you been