Until recently.
Thorne had worked on abolishing the unsanctioned breeding law. Rush had a two-year-old daughter that ran around the Order campus. Times were certainly changing.
“Why me?” Caraway asked. “Clearly I’m not the most experienced in this group.”
“But you have the best connection to the person who has the information.”
“Who?”
“Anise.”
Caraway’s heart stuttered. His mouth dried. They’d found her? “You want me to interrogate her?”
“No,” Leaf replied. “None of that. But we want you to infiltrate her journey. Go where she is going and conduct your own investigation.”
“I’m not following.”
“She’s been invited to see the Ice-Witch.”
As though the hag was standing next to him, Caraway’s bones froze. The Ice-Witch was a powerful sorceress who, not only made the most heinous magical bargains with fae, but did so without scruples or discrimination. Every Guardian knew you didn’t bargain with the witch unless you were prepared to offer your soul and submit to eons of torture. If you came out of her ice cave with anything less, then you were having a good day.
But did Anise know this?
“The witch is a powerful adversary,” Caraway said. “Any of the cadre would do a better job.”
“It’s Anise,” Thorne replied with a soulful gaze. “It was me who pulled her from that cage, Caraway. But it was you she called for. If she’s heading to the Ice-Witch, then... she’s going to need a friend.”
Caraway swallowed the lump in his throat and he stared hard at the ground, trying not to let the burn behind his eyelids overflow into tears. Anise had asked for him, even after he’d failed to realize she was in trouble. He’d left Crescent Hollow before she’d been taken because Anise and he had argued. She was fed up with the red-coated royal Seelie guards causing havoc every time they came to town. She was fed up with the town’s Lord and Alpha, Thaddeus, ruling the village so cruelly. And she was frustrated that no one took her seriously as a lesser fae. As usual, Caraway had stayed out of the unrest. Guardians were forbidden to get involved with general fae politics. If it didn’t involve mana, then it wasn’t their problem.
Guardians were a dying breed and the war against warped magic and keeping the integrity of the Well alive was growing every day. They simply didn’t have enough resources to be the police of everything. A line had to be drawn, and fae politics was on the other side.
“How did you find her?” Caraway asked, throat dry.
“You know how Laurel and I got sent to the Ring by causing a disturbance at the Birdcage?” Thorne asked. “We ran into Anise there.”
Caraway nodded. The Birdcage was an elixir den in Cornucopia. Fae from all over Elphyne went there to unwind with dance, drink, or to screw, and to satisfy their deviant urges. Being in Cornucopia, the establishment got away without adhering to any laws that restricted revelry in the Seelie or Unseelie Kingdoms. Usually, this freedom leaned toward the hedonistic side, but Caraway had seen darker rooms and cages with strange sadistic goings-on.
That was where Anise had been working?
“We need you to drill the Ice-Witch for information,” Leaf continued. “All our prisoner gave us was her name. But it’s the most we’ve received after days of interrogation.” Leaf plucked a feather from his shoulder and flicked it to the ground. Then he met Caraway’s eyes. “You’re authorized to use force if necessary, but if you discover the witch is the source of the perversion of magic the humans have been using, then don’t do anything. Bring the information back and we will assess. At the very least, get a location for us.”
Granting wishes to make someone taller or more beautiful was one thing, but lately, mana-warped monsters had been emerging all over Elphyne. If the witch was responsible for those, then she would be dealt with by the Order. If she was also the one feeding the humans secrets on how to use mana, then she would rue the day she betrayed her own kind.
Something else occurred to Caraway. “What would Anise want with the Ice Witch?”
“What does anyone want?” Leaf replied.
Anise’s cute tail swished into Caraway’s mind and his heart stopped. It was the one thing she’d always been self-conscious about, and he’d bet his sword that she was going to bargain away her soul so she could look like a normal fae.
The two of them had become friends over a mutual bond—they’d both been branded as outcasts. He, for his Guardian status and his family’s disdain for violence. She, because she couldn’t make the full shift into a wolf. She couldn’t shift at all. It had never bothered Caraway, but he knew she stewed about it.
This was not good. He couldn’t let her make this mistake. Anise was perfect, just the way she was born. Becoming a shifter was not worth the damnation of her eternal soul. That was priceless.
“I’ll go,” Caraway said. “Just tell me where and when.”
Chapter 3
Anise woke to the sound of knocking at her door. A peek from beneath the bed showed sun rays had escaped the confines of the curtains to lighten the room. She rubbed her eyes. She should already be awake and on her way by now. Damn it.
Sleeping under the bed felt safer, but it was also darker and she’d missed her dawn wake-up call.
Knock-knock-knock.
Frowning, Anise found her dagger and shimmied out from beneath the bed. Cracking her back, then neck, she eyed the door with suspicion. She’d been living here for over a year but hadn’t told anyone. There was no reason she’d have a visitor. She gripped her dagger hard and darted a glance to the window, suddenly cursing the lack of opening for an escape. She supposed she could break the glass.
“Anise?” came the muffled deep voice. “It’s me.”
Anise stared at the door.
It’s me.
Oh, how she’d dreamed of hearing those two little words over and over whilst captured and tortured in that cage. How she’d hoped and longed for them, held onto them as though they were a lifeline.
A lifeline that never came.
The tension in her body shifted until it crumpled her face. She opened the door and scowled despite her heart galloping and her stomach fluttering. Damn it.
Caraway loomed in the hallway, his big bulk taking up most of the room. His head and curved horns almost brushed the ceiling. Segmented pauldrons on the Guardian uniform hit the walls on either side—he was that broad. Bone stud buttons ran down the front of his flat torso. Blue piping accentuated the shape of his body—bulging where his biceps stretched the leather jacket almost indecently. A broadsword was holstered over his back.
And the most dangerous part of all—his big, brown, long-lashed doe eyes staring right into her, reaching inside and tugging on her atoms, sending them into a frenzy.
His presence stole Anise’s breath away. Nothing had changed in the way her body reacted to him. Only her mind.
She looked closer and took in his face, surprised to note his usual jolly, flushed coloring was gone. Messy shaggy hair fell over his curved horns. Scruff over his square jaw. Dark, bruised circles beneath those long lashes.
His usual nonchalant vibe had been replaced with hard lines. A pinched look to his face, a flattened press of his lips, and tendons in his temples pulsed from a clenched jaw.