“Your child is the price of your mother’s freedom…” he said, anguish in his face.
She felt the earth tilt beneath her feet. “My mother lives?”
“Harnessed, inside the fairy realm.” His gaze went to the tree. “Imprisoned to ensure I’ll fulfill my task.” When he looked at her again, there were tears in his eyes. “We would never have left your baby there, but we needed it.”
Radha stepped toward them and raised her fingers to his temples. Her head tilted as she studied his expression. “He tells the truth.”
“Well, there is no child. There will never be,” Aoife said harshly.
Her father’s head bent. “This is all my doing. My fault. I fell in love with a witch. She bore you, and she has suffered because of what I am.”
Aoife frowned. She didn’t want to feel sympathy. Didn’t want to feel anything but anger toward the man who’d caused all this pain, but she understood love. “The Powers are to blame,” she said flatly.
His head rose. His eyebrows lowered.
“They set her in your path. Your one true mate. They knew the consequences, but now, we have to do what you told me to do…father.”
Tears tracked down his cheeks. “We have to trust?” he said, his voice cracking.
She gave him a slow nod, feeling surer of what she was saying, because these weren’t her words, she was channeling them. “Yes. There’s a plan. One we can’t see.”
“Not yet,” Bryn said, walking behind her and slipping her arm around Aoife’s waist.
Aoife lay her head on Bryn’s shoulder. “We could go on as I had already planned. I’d never bear a child.”
Bryn rested her cheek against Aoife’s hair. “But you can’t. Not with your mother trapped.”
“But how can I use a child as bait?”
“You have the power of the coven. The Elements combined.”
Ethan cleared his throat, drawing her gaze. “You have twenty demons willing to do battle.”
Her father reached out tentatively and touched her arm. “You have a fairy, who understands that realm. I would fight for you.”
His direct gaze and the firmness of his jaw said he was willing to die. He’d do whatever it took to keep them safe.
“We have a
Wolf Moon in just a few hours…” Bryn murmured.
Ethan sighed. “You’re seven months, Bryn.”
She tossed her glossy dark hair. “My child can take it. He’ll be born a warrior.”
“He?” Ethan’s voice rose. “You’ve been teasing me for months. He, she. Is it a son?”
Bryn’s body shook with laughter. “He, darling. Now, get over yourself. I’m dancing naked in the moonlight.”
There was laughter all around, the demons’ chuckles deepening at Ethan’s surly glare. He was jealous of his wife’s pregnant body and had banned her these last couple of months from dancing naked.
Bryn raised her head away from Aoife’s. “Sigurd are you prepared to marry our sister.”
Aoife’s glance darted to Sigurd whose gaze rested on her. “Yes.”
She drew a slow breath and straightened. “Tonight…”
“Tonight, sweetheart.”