Several yards behind him, Sherus and Nuriya reappeared, visibly affected by the sight before them. Nuriya had been fast enough to teleport herself and her husband out of the hot zone. Taeral was clean, too. Thank the stars for those jinn genes, huh?
“You knew him, right?” I asked Taeral.
“He was perfectly normal, I swear. We weren’t friends or anything, but I would’ve noticed something off about him,” Taeral replied.
“Thing is… he was acting like the young one we saw in the woods a few nights ago,” Dmitri said. “Talking to himself, sweating, his palms lighting up. It’s not normal.”
Taeral shook his head. “Nope. It isn’t. A fire fae needs a fire source to ignite anything. His hands, though… I couldn’t take my eyes off them…”
“He just blew up,” Raphael said, now sitting and visibly recovering. His burns were healing rapidly, thanks to my vampire blood. He frowned at Taeral. “You and your folks were supposed to look into the other guy, though. The one from the woods. What happened there?”
“I might know,” Amelia cut in, her eyes wide as she checked her phone, cross-referencing it with a copy of the wedding guest list. Her pale blue dress was torn up to her mid-thigh, revealing pale but firm flesh. Raphael couldn’t stop staring. Lucky for him, no one noticed but me—and I was willing to look anywhere but behind me, where the true tragedy unraveled.
“What do you mean?” Taeral asked.
“Well, you were supposed to check with your delegation members and see if you had anyone missing,” Amelia replied. “Nuriya asked me to help with that.”
“Oh. Okay. Why you, though?” Taeral asked, a muscle nervously ticking in his jaw.
“Because she’s very good at her job,” Nuriya interjected. “And she’s the one who put our census system in place, if you remember. If anyone can help us find a missing fae, it’s Amelia.”
Amelia offered a faint, albeit sad, smile in return. “Thank you. I think I found him,” she said, then showed us a list of names on her phone, right next to the wedding guest roster. “Jaffe Fenn. One of the youngest to join the royal guard of the Fire Star. He’s been missing for three days, now.”
“Whoa,” Dmitri exclaimed. “Jaffe Fenn. That’s… Any relation to Myris?”
Amelia nodded. “His younger brother.”
“How could you lose the kid like that?” I asked, slightly irritated as I looked at Nuriya.
“You must understand, our delegation is always of forty fae or more,” she replied. “Sherus and I are king and queen. It’s not our responsibility to keep track of our people. And, to be honest, with all the traveling we’ve done lately, it’s not like we kept exit and entry records. Jaffe simply slipped through the cracks.”
This didn’t feel right at all. It wasn’t Sherus or Nuriya’s fault, of course, but it didn’t look good for them. Jaffe and Myris Fenn had both exhibited similar behavior. Myris, in fact, had just exploded and killed well over a dozen people, from what I could tell. There was blood everywhere.
I had to give Draven and Serena credit, though. They ran a tight ship here. Soldiers were already spread across the room, supporting the witches. The Daughters helped heal the wounded, while the witches and the remaining Druids proceeded to register every single detail of the blast site. This was an active crime scene, and it was being treated as such.
“So, let me see if I got this straight,” Herakles said, using his ripped tunic sleeve to wipe off some of the blood on his cheek. “Jaffe Fenn was seen acting weird in the woods, unable to control his fire powers while talking to himself. Then, a few days later, in the middle of a wedding party, his older brother, Myris, displayed equally puzzling behavior before he literally blew up and scorched this place.”
“Uh-huh,” Raphael replied dryly.
“Could this be a problem that runs in the Fenn family, maybe?” Herakles sighed. “Any other siblings or parents or distant relatives who might suffer a similar fate?”
Amelia checked her phone, then shook her head. “Nope. They don’t have anyone else. It was just Jaffe and Myris.”
“Is anyone else going to say it, or should I?” I blurted, struggling to contain my own rage and fear. This explosion had happened in-house. In our midst. At our most vulnerable, and in the middle of a celebration. “Was this an intended attack? Was it supposed to happen tonight, like this?”
Sofia sighed. “I don’t think we’ll get an answer anytime soon. An investigation should take place, first. A thorough one.”
“You have our full support,” Nuriya replied.
“Could this have anything to do with the Hermessi?” I added.
Dmitri shrugged. “Aida, Jovi, and I talked about it. We don’t think so. Maybe. But, like my sister said the other day, if a Hermessi wants to possess a fae, they’ll just do it. No chance of even trying to resist.”
“Besides, what would their motive be?” Derek asked. “They’re entities. Natural elements. The only times they did possess fae it was to help us defeat Ta’Zan. We haven’t heard from them since the Blackout.”
Lumi groaned, her gaze fixed on Myris’s boot. “Kale and I will study the remains. We’ll see if we can get anything else out of this mess, something to help with the investigation.”
“Someone should talk to anyone who was close to Myris and Fenn, too,” Kailani suggested.
“I’ll do that,” Taeral replied, his arms crossed and his jaw sharp and locked. There was a lot of anger bubbling beneath the surface, and I couldn’t blame him. Myris had not only killed himself, he’d taken plenty of other fae with him. Innocent people.
Serena’s cry cut through the hall like a hot knife, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.
“What the…” I mumbled, then saw her, her eyes wide as she looked up at Draven.
The lower half of her dress was drenched. “The baby…” Serena said. “It’s… Oh God, the baby’s coming…”
To say that we were shocked would’ve been the understatement of the century. This wasn’t our first round of bad timing, either. Vita had gone into labor just as Ta’Zan and his army were descending upon us, back on Strava. Why not have Serena give birth shortly after a devastating explosion?
Hazel and Tejus were quick to motion for immediate assistance from nearby staff. Two soldiers rushed over with a stretcher. Draven held Serena’s hand, as she was laid on the stretcher and gently carried out of the banquet hall.
“Good grief,” Sofia murmured, watching as they vanished into the hallway. Phoenix ran after them, leaving Viola behind with her sister to continue helping the many wounded guests. “We Novaks sure know how to pick our moments of coming into the world… I hope she’ll be okay.”
Derek chuckled softly, then put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Serena? That’s the toughest cookie on our side of the family. Hazel will keep us posted, for sure,” he said. His gaze darkened as he stared at the blast site for a split second. “In the meantime, we need to get to the bottom of this. It if was deliberate, someone needs to pay. If it was an accident, some kind of fire fae condition, or a curse or whatever type of magic, we have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
A familiar creature circled the explosion radius a couple of times. I’d seen her at other social gatherings, but always in passing—always flickers of her profile as she vanished into a crowd. This was the first time I was seeing her for more than a second.
“Eva? What are you doing?” Sofia asked her.
