There were fae bodies glowing amber in all of them, except the one that had, until recently, held my father. My mom waited next to it, rubbing her palms together and nervously glancing around, not knowing what to do with herself. Her face was ashen, her lips pale. She hadn’t slept in a long time, and it was taking its toll on her.

“Mom!” I said as I reached her. She’d been so distracted with her own thoughts that she didn’t even see us until we all stood in front of her. “Mom! Are you okay?” I asked.

She nodded faintly, looking right through me. “I don’t know what happened,” she mumbled. “I came down a couple of hours ago, and… he was gone.”

Raphael grunted. “What about the witches? Did no one here see anything?”

Mom shook her head. “I asked. I interrogated everyone. They didn’t even notice he was gone until I cried out after him.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I snapped, glancing around the sanctuary. Two witches came forward, looking as pale and as distraught as my mother. They couldn’t even look us in the eye. It made my blood boil. “What the hell happened?!”

“We… We don’t know,” one of the witches said.

I gave Varga a quick look, and his eyes glimmered gold as he read their auras. “They’re sincere. They really don’t know.”

“We didn’t see anything!” the other witch replied. “One minute, we’d just left His Majesty in his crystal, resting, his vitals stable. The next, Queen Nuriya came in and saw that he was gone.”

“Whatever took him, it was fast,” the first witch added. “We’ve done all the spells we could think of to find him, but there’s no trace… nothing.”

“What about tracking magic?” Lumi asked.

The witches’ shoulders dropped, almost simultaneously. “The spark wouldn’t go off. The personal items burned, but they never took us anywhere.”

“What does this mean?” I replied, gritting my teeth.

My entire world was coming down around me. This hit too close to home, and I didn’t know how to handle myself. My mom was devastated, numbed enough to seem calm, but I could see that she was barely hanging by a thread.

The Widow Maker appeared, startling her and the two witches.

“It’s okay,” I said. “He’s a—”

“Friend,” he cut me off. “I’m a friend.”

“Boy, I don’t think you understand the concept,” Amelia muttered.

The Widow Maker could be anything he wanted, as long as he could help. In my mind, he was the only one who could know more about what had happened here. About where my father had gone.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Your father?” he replied as he looked at the crystal casing. Running his fingers along the side, he moved around it several times, saying nothing for the better part of a minute. My mom and the witches watched him carefully.

“We checked the casing. It’s still sealed with our magic,” the first witch said.

“Your spells alone aren’t enough to protect a fae from a Hermessi that wants them badly enough,” the Widow Maker replied.

What he was suggesting was so horrifying, I felt the need to clutch my chest. It was as if he’d just punched me in the stomach, removing my ability to breathe. Eira’s hand gripped my upper arm, her fingers digging into my flesh—a move meant to comfort me, somehow. It wasn’t working. As much as I wanted it to, it wasn’t working.

“You mean to tell me a Hermessi took my father?” I managed.

The Widow Maker nodded. “Sherus’s spirit isn’t here, and I don’t see a single trace of his life-chain. It leads me to assume he’s still alive.”

“Okay, what about the Reaper who’s supposed to be in charge of him?” Eva asked, remembering what we’d learned on the way here about the Reapers in our fae sanctuaries.

“He isn’t here,” the Widow Maker said. “Which is actually strange.”

“How so?” I replied, trying to contain the blaze that threatened to consume me from the inside out.

The Widow Maker looked at me, and I could almost feel his mental wheels turning. “I’m not sure. But a fae missing along with his Reaper is suspicious, especially since this whole place reeks of Hermessi tampering.”

“What kind of tampering?” I asked, increasingly exasperated.

“The kind that Brendel would do,” Lumi said, getting to the terrifying conclusion first. I hadn’t even dared to consider the possibility, but now that she’d voiced it so clearly, I couldn’t avoid it anymore.

“Brendel took my father.”

Needless to say, that came with new and nasty implications. We’d taken Eirexis, bringing ourselves closer to completing Thieron. In return, Brendel had abducted my father. This had to fit what she’d said about looking into me. She must’ve had this as a backup option to maybe get me to back off. Brendel was using my father as leverage, and I was now faced with a double and deeply personal challenge.

Finding Zetos and saving my father before Brendel took me and my crew out for good. Both sides of this conflict were thoroughly motivated. However, as the seconds passed and I adjusted to this new reality, I came to understand that I had something that Brendel lacked—a badass crew on my side, Death’s favor, and an indestructible desire not to let that flaming bitch win.

What’s next? Something cool!

Dear Shaddict,

Thank you for reading A Piece of Scythe!

See the details for the next Shade book, ASOV 75: A Blade of Thieron, right after the following announcement (in case you missed it in the previous book!):

On April 29th, 2019, I will be releasing my first ever contemporary romance novel, called A Love that Endures!

It’ll be a new and exciting experience, with plenty of emotions, and characters I think you’ll fall in love with.

Below I have shared with you a special SNEAK PEEK of the first three chapters, so keep turning the pages!:

A Love that Endures

Chapter 1: David

Embankment, London

From the shadows of a stone underpass, a man stepped out into a yellowing pool of old-fashioned lamplight, a round wooden clock clutched in both hands. Before him stretched a dark swathe of cardboard, dim torchlight, and hunched figures—a small colony of makeshift homes perched by the river. It was where the invisibles of Waterloo lived. The residents of the city that the brisk traders, excited tourists, and gallery-goers didn’t want to see.

David’s clothes were as worn-down as those of the rest of the homeless, his hair and thick beard just as unkempt, his name unknown to most. Few Londoners ever stopped to look at him. But if they had, they might have paused for a moment—taken aback by his unusually upright posture. By the stark handsomeness of his face, an angular, arrogant jawline and Roman nose, and his youth, at odds with the rest of his shabby appearance. By the long, elegant fingers, better suited to the keys of a piano than riffling through waste bins.

Eventually, though, the observer would have turned away. The most marked similarity between David and the rest of his kind was all too obvious: the same haunted and defeated look that shadowed his face.