Epilogue
Unknown
“My Prince.”
“What is it.”
The male steps further into the study, bowing low to the Prince seated behind a behemoth oak desk.
“Detective Pritcher has arrived, Your Highness.” The vassal announces.
The Prince sets down his fountain pen, dragging a file over the paperwork.
He knew better than to allow such sensitive documents to be left visible to a male like the good detective.
“Bring him.” He orders.
The weaker male bows lower, backing out of the study.
He gestures another male inside.
Tall, draped in a cliché leather duster, his crimson locks slicked back, the male glides into the study and dips into a mocking bow.
“Your Highness.” Detective Pritcher croons.
“Pritcher.” The Prince mutters. “You have what I asked for?”
Pritcher lifts his head, lips stretched in a cunning smile. “Have I ever disappointed you?”
The Prince says nothing. For the detective had no loyalty to any man or woman. All that bastard knew was money and drugs and whores.
If he hadn’t been such a valuable blood hound, the Houses would have silenced him long ago.
Pritcher’s crooked smile wanes. He hated it when he failed to provoke the young royal.
“Sit.” The Prince orders with a flick of his wrist.
Pritcher straightens, only to slouch into a chair before the Prince’s desk.
He sets a briefcase on the floor at his side. Magic radiated from it.
Pritcher’s briefcase was legend to all PI’s. Cursed on every inch and locked to any but the detective himself, many had died attempting to retrieve the secrets locked within it.
Pritcher would never give them away for free.
It was a good thing the Prince was very, very rich.
“Well?” The Prince snaps.
“So impatient.” Pritcher sighs.
But he reaches for the case.
“The job was more eventful than I thought it would be. The bare details you know, but I went further as you requested.” He begins.
“You found nothing more about Angel’s Fare?” The Prince demands. “What about the Foster Parents?”
“There was nothing else to find. So I dug deeper – I moved onto the mother.” Pritcher’s grin is sharp and full of cunning. “And boy was I surprised. A rare thing these days.”
“I am starting to think you do not want your payment.” The Prince intones, radiating cool arrogance.
But all he wanted to do was rip the bastards head from his shoulders and take the information from his cold dead hands.
Pritcher sensed it, and quickly continued.
“The mother was Elite. Gentry, to be exact. She came from the proud Liliver family, of House Flora and Silver.” The detective begins, pulling a thick file from his briefcase. “A prolific family, they have positions within King Armanio’s inner court, hold land both on earth and in Faerie, at one point a Liliver married into the Royal family, and at current they are worth the equivalent of the human Royal Family of Brittain. They have held the wardship of England and its islands for the better half of six centuries.”
He hands the thick file to the Prince, but the Prince sets it aside and rests his chin upon his fist, gesturing for the detective to continue.
“As I understand it, the mother struggled with a particularly nasty power. She inherited the ability to see the greatest sins of each and every person she touched – my sources tell me by the time she was seventeen she had turned to drugs and alcohol to try and cope with the ability. To no avail. Her parents disowned and disinherited her when she was barely twenty years old.”
“England.” The Prince mutters. “How did she end up in America?”
“Some of her Elite acquaintances. Despite no longer having a title, she went on to party and live off of others. I followed her from England, to Greece, to France, to Russia, to Canada, then Mexico, and finally, America. Manhattan, New York, to be exact.”
The Prince gestures him on.
“From there, she maintained her social lifestyle for five years before she dropped off the face of the earth for a total of three months. She briefly resurfaced back in England,” The detective leans forward, flips open the abandoned folder, and taps a legal document. “To create this.”
Frowning, the Prince skims the paper.
“A binding will and testament.” He realises, picking up on the traces of magic seeping from the ink and parchment.
Eyes slipping down, he takes in the three signatures scribbled at the bottom.
“Mrs. Lady Marionette Liliver, Mr. Lord Arguthur Liliver, and Miss Annette Liliver.” He reads.
“The document stipulates that Mr and Mrs Liliver acknowledge they have no claim to any and all matters regarding Annette – whether they be financial, medical, or personal. It goes on to outline much of what a restraining order would, forbidding them from coming within five hundred miles of Annette. The Liliver’s have three other healthy children, so I imagine signing it was no great pain on their part.”
“It is magically binding?” The Prince questions.
Pritcher dips his head. “Indeed. My source confirmed it.”
The Prince hums, fingering the document. “A lot of trouble to go through…..” He muses.
Pritcher’s smile is sharp as a blade. “She fled back to America, where I lost her trail. Tricky little thing, she was smarter than I thought.”
“Meaning?”
“She changed her name, obviously, but she was a ghost for two months before she did so. By the time Miss Anne Cora popped up with a job as a waitress in a run-down fifties diner, still addicted to drugs, she was also hitting the six-month mark in her pregnancy.”
“How’d she get the identity?”
The detective sneers. “No fucking idea.”
The Prince scowls.
Pritcher waves a hand. “No matter. She went on to lose job after job, struggle to care for the twin girls she birthed, and then two months after their eighth birthday, overdosed on a lethal batch of some new party drug. She was swept under the rug along with the hundreds of other Fae that died from it at the time – and the girls went into the system. The rest you already know from my preliminary research.”
The Prince says nothing for a stretch of time.
He makes Pritcher sit there in crushing silence as he stares down at the expensive, carefully spelled legal document.
“The Liliver’s could not adopt the girls. The contract forbid it….”
“Forbade them and their close relations. No direct blood-relation of Mr and Mrs Liliver could come near Anne or her children.”
“Is this all? You have nothing else?” The Prince curls a lip, his eyes flashing. “I am not impressed, Pritcher. This is not what I paid you for.”
“I know better than to bring so little to you.” Pritcher waves away the Prince’s anger. “I myself wasn’t satisfied. Too many plot holes, too many whys. So, I went after the father of her children.”
“And who is he?”
“I have a list,” Pritcher leans forward and flips through the folder, presenting it to him. “A very specific, very telling list, of possibilities.”
The Prince knew many of the males personally. Some were powerful, leading men of the Fae courts. Others were males whom served the powers of his world.
But to think Annette Liliver was brushing shoulders with these men, when she had been disowned and disgraced…..
“Your proof?” The Prince questions.
“Before she dropped off the radar, she attended a very exclusive party. The kind which is invite only.”
The Prince glared at Pritcher’s smug face. “Get on with it.”
“She was extended a private invitation, and was seen dancing with most of the males on that list. She disappeared with many of them for as little as five minutes to an hour.”
“So it could really be any of them.” The Prince snarls, unimpressed.
“No, I don’t think so.” Pritcher flips to another page.
It was an ancestry tree.
“I looked into the ancestry of every male on that list. Only two have green dragons close enough to be recessive into a daughter.” Pritcher croons.
He points to two names on the list, both of the same blood. Cousins.
The Prince eyes the wily detective, jaw firm.
“Are you sure?”
“I managed to find a witness who glimpsed her invitation. It was a personal invite from him—” He points to a single name. “And, furthermore, the party was hosted by House Fire and Gold.”
The Prince stares at the name.
Glares at it.
Because he knew, with every fibre of his being, that this changed everything.
“This does not leave this room.” The Prince warns, his eyes like living flame.
“Of course not.” Pritcher croons. “You paid me well enough for silence.”
The Prince did not believe the bastards sneering, mocking smile.
But he also could not risk annihilating such a valuable asset without cause.
So he settled for threats.
Eyes flickering, turning reptilian, he watches Pritcher freeze, the males eye’s turning feline as he cowers back.
“I would hate to dispose of you, Pritcher. You have been invaluable.” The Prince leans forward. “But betray me, and I will rend you from the very memory of this earth.”
Pritcher’s nod is fast, and without his usual larakin energy.
“My Prince.” The vassal exclaims, bursting into the office.
The Prince’s enraged snarl rattles the walls.
“I- I—I apologise.” The vassal gulps, cowering. “But Princess Imelda has sent word. She says ‘It is time’.” He whimpers.
The Prince’s back snaps straight.
The Shift had begun.