“Okay.” She passed me a napkin. “I’m guessing since my lips feel like I just made out with a porcupine that the charm worked.” At my look, she ducked her head and dusted the remains of the spell into her mug where it sizzled and dissolved. “Spellwork isn’t my forte. I’m still learning, but I have an excellent teacher.”

After wrapping my finger in the thin paper, I settled in while she pulled out a secondary charm and smashed it with the heel of her palm. My ears popped as a privacy spell activated. That one had definitely worked. The restaurant muted around us until the sound of our breathing was all that remained.

“The tethers linking the mortal realm to the fae realm have been severed. I figured it was safe to assume, considering you’re with the Earthen Conclave, that you were briefed when the new security protocols were put into place.” She waited for my nod. “We’re on our own now. That means fae in this world, whether residents or visitors, are subject to conclave law. As I’m sure you’re aware, some of the older fae aren’t thrilled with the prospect of becoming permanent citizens of Earth. They’re bucking the system, and those rebellions are being stamped out as soon as we catch a whiff of them.”

“I was flown to Lebanon for debriefing the day after it happened.” Kansas that is. I had never been to Faerie myself—my family was Earthborn going back three generations—but even I grasped the magnitude of the situation. We were alone now. Trapped in a world unaware of the existence of fae, but growing so technologically advanced that soon even magic would fail to cloak us from human eyes. If we were discovered, and if mortals reacted to learning there were predators in their midst the way they reacted to most unsettling discoveries, war would break out. Our people would battle—not only the mortals but one another—for control of this world since our native land was lost to us. “I had no idea the tethers were a physical thing that could be cut like string. What sort of fae could be that powerful?”

“Who knows?” Thierry picked at her thumbnail with the single-minded focus of a brain surgeon performing a craniotomy. “Either way it’s done now.”

I accepted she wasn’t going to elaborate and pressed her in another direction. “What does this have to do with Charybdis?”

Her eyebrows lifted, though her gaze remained downcast. “There were other, localized incidents that weren’t covered outside of the magistrates’ chambers.”

Leaning forward, I braced my forearms on the tabletop. “Such as?”

“A few months back a portal opened here in Wink, at the marshal’s office actually.” Her eyes flicked up at me. “We contained it as fast as we could, but we didn’t move to close it quickly enough. Something got through.”