Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
“So how did this happen?” Kierse asked.
Graves shrugged. “I saw the name in your memories, and I went looking for your father’s monster-hunting clan. I knew that some of them still lived in Scotland and figured if we were in town I could take you after we finished our business.”
Kierse melted. She pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you.”
“Never thought I’d see Adair McKenna’s daughter running with a warlock,” Bram said with a disbelieving shake. “But then again, never expected him to marry a Fae, either.”
“I have so many questions about them,” Kierse admitted. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Why don’t we start with how you’re still alive?” Bram shot her a questioning look. “Last I heard, Adair and Shannon passed and all the Fae were gone.”
“That’s…right,” she said reluctantly. “They were killed by the Fae Killer. I assume you’ve heard of him?”
“Aye,” he agreed. “Between that and the Fae Council disapproving of their marriage, we were trying to keep you lot safe.”
Kierse’s hand went to the necklace between her breasts and remembered once again that it was missing. She’d worn a wren necklace her entire life. She had believed it was the only thing her parents had left her. It survived years on the streets and all of her thieving but not this binding with Lorcan. She missed it every day.
Her hand dropped into her lap. “So you were part of his hunting clan then?”
Bram swallowed hard. “I was more than that. My parents died when I was young, and the McKennas brought me into their house. I was his best friend, practically his brother. We grew up together and entered the monster-hunting business. I was his right hand. Felt like I broke in two the day I heard that he’d died.”
Kierse’s own heart shattered at the news. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t have to apologize to me. It was your parents, kiddo,” he said and they all lapsed into silence.
The collective heartbreak was almost too much. It felt like she’d gained a family member and all the what-ifs about regaining her memory hit her fresh. For so long the spell that Jason—may she put a second knife through his back, the bastard—used to keep her magic contained had also disrupted her knowledge of the Fae so she didn’t remember her parents. She’d thought her mom died in childbirth and her father abandoned her as a kid. When the spell came down, those echoes pressed in on her. She’d needed Graves’s help to access them. Twenty years of bottled memories came like sludge to the surface of her mind, and she’d discovered their ultimate fate.
Now she wondered what it would have been like to have grown up here in Edinburgh with Bram as her father’s best friend. With two parents. With friends and family. It almost hurt too much to consider.
Another half hour and they were out of the city at some old cemetery in the middle of the night. Kierse dangled her feet from the headstone as she watched the boys digging a grave.
Graves digging a grave.
“This might be a little too on the nose for you,” she teased.
He grunted in acknowledgment as he put his back into the shovel. “Not my first time.”
She tilted her head to the side to admire the way he strained. He’d discarded his suit coat and rolled his sleeves up, and she could see his forearm with the long stretch of his holly vine tattoo. The lines of the tattoo still mesmerized her. The thorns dug into his skin as if pain was a penance for his actions. As if he deserved his moniker as the Holly King.
He certainly believed that he did. Kierse wasn’t so sure.
George groaned next to him. “When I said that I wanted adventure, I didn’t think grave digging was on the list.”
Walter huffed. “I didn’t even say I wanted adventure.”
George chuckled and elbowed him. “You could do with a little sense of fun at least.”
“I’ll take my computer and the warm library back home any day.”
Graves dug his shovel into the earth again. “Clearly neither of you have experienced the subtle art of grave robbing.”
Kierse snorted. “Even I don’t appreciate that art.”
“We don’t want to know what you’ve dug up in your time, boss,” George said with a glint in his eyes.
Walter grumbled something under his breath that sounded distinctly like disgusting.
“That’s all I have in me,” Bram said as he climbed out of the grave and rested on his shovel with a huff. He was a middle-aged monster hunter, and while still in shape for his age, he was definitely suffering for the late-night activities.
“This brings me right back to your dad,” Bram said.
“Not you, too!” She chuckled.
“Aye. Done it a few times with him. Monster hunters usually have short life spans. We’ve lost a lot of good people.”