Dark Alpha's Embrace by Donna Grant Page B

else. It was another mortal I dealt with.”
    Bran leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “Is there any chance she’s half-Fae?”
    “You know as well as I that half-Fae are beautiful. This woman was … plain. I’d have known if she had Fae in her.”
    “Then where is she?” Bran asked. “Where would she go? She has no reason to vanish.”
    Searlas lifted one shoulder in a shrug.
    “We need to find her. Now.”
    Bran listened to his instincts that were shouting for him to locate the librarian posthaste. He didn’t know why, but she was important.
    The question was, did the Reapers know that as well?
    *   *   *
    Erith felt Cael’s eyes on her as she took her seat before Seamus. Warmth spread over her where his gaze touched. She refused to look his way, refused to acknowledge that she felt anything.
    After Seamus’s confession about finding the Netherworld, she’d needed time alone. She left Cael in the tower and walked among her flowers—or so she told him.
    That doorway Seamus found was created by her. It should’ve never been discovered by anyone. Erith went to Ireland to see the doorway for herself, and to her shock, something had changed.
    It was now visible. Her magic wasn’t losing potency, so what would alter it? She didn’t have time to find the answer. Erith created another doorway to the Netherworld on her realm, then returned to Ireland and demolished the one Seamus used.
    She didn’t like the idea of the doorway to the Netherworld attached to her realm, but she no longer had a choice. No one else could escape from the prison.
    Erith added a shield around the doorway so that anyone who might attempt an escape would be trapped and she would be alerted. It was a quick fix until she could understand what happened to turn her doorway visible to any Fae.
    “You look troubled,” Seamus told her.
    She folded her hands neatly in her lap. “Your words trouble me. The Netherworld is a prison. Fae are sent there. No one wants to go.”
    “But everyone wants to leave,” Seamus stated with a small smile. “No matter how secure, every prison can be broken out of. You just have to find the way.”
    Unwittingly, Erith glanced at Cael to see his focus on Seamus. “And you found the way.”
    Seamus twisted his lips. “I’ve always loved solving puzzles. The more difficult it is, the more I dig in.”
    “That’s how you saw finding a way into the Netherworld?”
    “Aye. That’s how I look at everything people ask me to locate for them. It’s a puzzle. I excel at them.”
    “So I see.” She took a breath. “How did you find Bran?”
    “I didn’t. He found me. I was in that place for only a few minutes, and I was turning to leave when someone shouted my name. I barely heard him over the roar of the wind. When he reached me, the wind and heat had burned off much of his skin and all of his hair.”
    She didn’t flinch at the description. Erith knew exactly what the Netherworld could do to a person. “Was there anyone else with him?”
    “No. I asked how he knew where the doorway was, and he told me he’d been looking for it.”
    “So he saw it?” At Seamus’s nod, Erith felt as if she’d been ripped open by magic. This couldn’t be happening. In all her thousands of years, her magic had never failed her. Never.
    Why had it now? All of this was her doing. She led Cael and Eoghan to believe she killed Bran. She hadn’t wanted to explain at the time why she put him in the Netherworld. Neither of the men would’ve cared that Bran would suffer untold tortures there. All they’d wanted was his death.
    But Erith wanted to punish Bran in the most heinous way possible. All would’ve remained as it was had the doorway not been visible to the Fae. If it had remained hidden as it was supposed to have been, Seamus would’ve never found it, and he would’ve never helped Bran escape.
    “My words have troubled you even more,” Seamus said.
    Erith jerked her gaze to him. “Do you