Duncan nodded.

"At least ye saved the Merrow Kingdom. The banshee, however..."

Duncan gritted his teeth. "Cara." Why does everyone call her a banshee? She's a person. Named Cara.

That I love...

The words hit him in his gut. Because he knew they were true the moment he thought them. He was in love with her. Without question.

Not that he hadn't loved her before, but now that he'd made love to her? When they'd connected in a way that he'd never expected? Anything he was holding back burst forward, ramming him in the eye.

How shitty was fate that he'd finally realized he loved her, and now she was gone?

He'd never even gotten the chance to tell her.

O'Leary jarred him from his epiphany. "Aye, Cara. Still no sign of her?"

Duncan shook his head.

O'Leary sighed. "Well, she's likely to turn up, laddy. Someone would be havin' a scream if she were gone." He shuffled papers on his desk, and ran his wand over them, making them float in the air and slip into a file cabinet. Then he glanced back at Duncan. "You be lookin' like you need some rest, boy."

Duncan nodded. "Been an exhausting couple of days."

"Go take some time, and we'll get you back on that Fairy Godmother case I pulled you off. Make sure that's going well."

Ava's case... Duncan hadn't thought about it since Cara vanished. Stars, he hoped Ava was behaving herself.

"Go. We'll take care of that Fairy Godmother tomorrow."

Duncan nodded and waved his wand, transporting himself back to his little home, where he could get some rest.

Maybe.

Tuesday evening "We cannot allow Fairy Godmothers to behave like this," Anteros said to O'Leary.

Duncan rubbed his head. He might actually kill Ava the next time he saw her. A few hours sleep had not prepared him for this mess. What had she been up to while he'd been gone?

Wait, he had a pretty good idea.

Ava'd been all googly eyed at her charge, Jason, since she'd gotten him. And now she'd sought help from Anteros? Anteros, with his thick build and dark hair was the antithesis of his brother Cupid, the god of love. Anteros, the god of unreturned love, was-most of the time-a friend to the Fairy Godmothers. If only to keep his meddling brother out of the picture.

But why would Ava go see him over this? That, Anteros would not explain, only that she'd confided in him a story that went against every Fairy Realm law.

What in the world did she think this would accomplish? Duncan rubbed his eyes, hoping some beam of understanding would hit him.

O'Leary must have had the same concerns. "And why would she come to you, Anteros?" O'Leary put his hands on his hips as he glared at the god.

Anteros waved his hand in the air. "Ava thinks her file is wrong."

"Wait, what?" Duncan asked. The file-what all Fairy Godmothers got when they were given a new assignment-was magical, and tied to the charge. They were always right. "The file is connected to her charge. It changes because of his actions-"

Anteros raised his eyebrow. "Your fairy has been trying to change it."

"Ava's not that powerful!" Duncan snapped, and all the details of her case coming back in a flash. "Son of a Krakon, she's had help on almost all of her charges over her tenure. By your brother."

Anteros didn't even flinch at Duncan's words.

"Why would she think her file's wrong now? It's not like she can change it-the magic's too strong," Duncan snapped.

"There is one way..." O'Leary said.

And Duncan might as well been hit over the head with a cast-iron skillet. Because it hit him that hard what they meant.

Ava has been sleeping with her charge.

Duncan shook his head. "I may kill her." And then something clicked in his head. "Wait, if she's been intimate with her charge, why hasn't the file changed?" The file was self-adjusting. It changed according to the choices the charge made. If the charge was more attracted to a different person in the listings, the list adjusted itself.

Duncan glanced at Anteros.

Anteros shrugged. "I know nothing."

From the look on his face, Duncan was pretty sure that Anteros knew something.

"Regardless, she's broken the laws. She has to be arrested, pending trial," O'Leary said. "Fornication with a charge is against the rules."

"Unless they're in love," Duncan said.

Both men glanced at him, but neither looked happy about his particular observation.

"It matters not, if they are not meant to be together. Which obviously, they aren't," O'Leary said, gesturing to the file that Anteros had brought with him.

"Ava loves him, I can guarantee you that," Anteros added as he tapped his finger against his lip. "But I doubt the human feels the same way, or the file would change." He stroked the bundle of colorful folders on the desk.

"If she loves him, shouldn't she be allowed to be with him?" Duncan snapped. "Not be forced to watch from afar for all of his life?"

Anteros glared at Duncan. "For some, that is our lot in life. To watch from afar."

Duncan's gut kicked. Because he knew Anteros meant himself, but the words were a bit too close to home for him as well.

Though Duncan lost his love-literally.

It was almost the same thing.

Chapter Nineteen.

"And to think, Christy thought we should date," Ava snapped at Duncan. She jerked out of his hold as he walked her into her home in the Fairy Realm. He'd had to arrest her at the healer's ward where a fellow Fairy Godmother had been recuperating.

It wasn't his first choice to arrest her. After all, she was part of his sister-in-law Christy's trio. Christy would be giving him an earful when she found out about this.

"Knock it off, Ava," Duncan snapped. "I'm not the one sleeping with my charge."

"What do you expect me to do?" the red-haired fairy asked him, her hands on her hips.

"Not sleep with him," Duncan replied.

She stepped into his space. "I was doing my job! You saw me. I did all those things I was supposed to do to bring Jason to his designated HEA. Not my fault that Cupid screwed me-"

"That's on you," Duncan said. He'd learned that Cupid had not only manipulated a lot of Ava's previous charges so she wouldn't have any blemishes on her record, he also had been literally screwing Ava.

Ava growled.

Duncan raised his eyebrow. "Listen, you're the one who went to Anteros about your file."

"There's something wrong with it, Duncan!"

"They're not wrong," he said. "Ever." The files were not corruptible, at least not that he'd ever seen. And he'd even been a Fairy Godfather for a while.

"This one is," Ava said.

Duncan snorted. He didn't believe her. It wouldn't be the first time a Fairy Godmother fell for a charge and tried to claim the file was wrong to get out of their lawbreaking.

"Not likely," he told her.

"I saw it! Andres, from the Council, saw it! The magic has been manipulated by Cupid. Me, Andres, and Anteros spent an hour trying to break the magic spell, but we couldn't. It was too powerful."

Duncan spat a curse. Hadn't Anteros just argued the opposite? That there was nothing wrong with the file? Damn him! What game was he playing at? "That damn god didn't say a word about your file being messed up."

"He didn't? He's supposed to be trying to break the spell! That jerk's no better than Cupid," Ava said as she punched the wall.

"I don't know what he's trying to accomplish, but you're still going to have to go before The Council and plead your case." Duncan didn't like this. Something was afoot. Cupid and Anteros had an agenda-what it was, he didn't know, but it was looking more and more like the two brothers were having quite a bit of fun manipulating fairies.

And the head of the gods and goddesses, Jupiter, was not a big fan of that sort of thing.

"I have no defense," Ava said, her shoulders slumping. "I... My choices were mine. No potion made me break the rules. I just..."

Duncan put his hand on Ava's shoulder. "We'll figure this out. Let me see what I can come up with."

"I don't think there's any way out of this tangled web."

"This is a pretty good knot you've got going on." He patted her shoulder. "But I'll do my best to defend you."

Tears ran down Ava's cheeks, and she brushed them away. "Thank you."

"It's going to be okay. If Anteros knows the file is screwed up, we might be able to get some leniency."

She snorted.

"Say a couple prayers. We're going to need them."

Ava nodded as Duncan walked out the door. He needed time to think.

Time to get away for a while. Time to find Cara.

The desert was cold as Duncan flew around in the dark. Shadows created by mountains of sand that promised hints of answers only wound up being a strange twist of light. He'd flown back to where they'd been together, and stood in the sand, staring at it, looking for some sign of her.

There was nothing.

Nothing left except more shadows.

Or were those on his heart? He couldn't be sure. They all felt the same to him. He took a few steps in the sand and jerked when he hit something hard.

Looking down over the desert, he caught sight of a glint in the sand.

Duncan dropped to his knees and unearthed the shiny object.

It was the tea cup Cara had been drinking from. How it had survived, he didn't know, nor did he care.

He held it to himself, wishing he had the power to go back in time-to fix this. There should have been more he could have done. After all, he was a FID. It was his job to help fairies in distress. He should have been stronger, more agile, something.

He should have been able to save Cara.

He looked at the twinkling stars in the sky, a net of thousands of pinpricks of light, all staring at him, mocking him, as they glittered.

Cara would have loved this. She would have wanted to see the beauty. She always wanted to see the stars. See the world from beyond photos.

Why hadn't he taken her places? Shown her things? He glared at the stars, his mind racing, angry at them for being, well, what they were.

It was stupid.

It made no sense.

But Duncan didn't care, he was angry. He wanted to find Cara.

Show her the stars.

And for a second, he envied Ava. At least Ava knew where her love was. Whether she got to see him again was another thing entirely, but at least she knew where he was, and could see him if she chose- Wait.

That's it...

Duncan took off into the sky, heading back to the Fairy Realm. He had some research to do for Ava's case.