SPOILERS FOR ROOTS OF BLOOD AHEAD
After Jay saves Forest from the Butcher — the Nymph Keeper he had originally been working for in order to get the nymph blood he needed to help his sister — he takes her to his home city of Fethens. Forest expected this to be just another stop in a life of horrors. She tries to escape to the mountains, where she finds the rumoured mountain nymphs and hopes for refuge, but as a forest nymph, she cannot survive underground. After Silic brings her back to the city of Fethens, he introduces Forest to his found family of nymphs, and she begins to feel more at home.
For his part in Forest’s traumas, Jay is exiled from the city by Crown Prince Terryn. As he travels east with his sister’s latest romantic interest, they are ambushed on the road by mercenaries from Galia. Slowly, Jay pieces together their presence and a note of instructions found on one of the attackers, and realizes that his sister has done the unthinkable: she has traded places with the Nymph Keeper of Galia — the very one that Jay used to work for — and he’s on his way to Fethens under the guise of diplomacy to get Forest back for his experiments.
As Jay rushes back to the city, Forest and Silic come up with a plan to take care of the Butcher once and for all. Jay returns to Fethens and is almost arrested. He fights off Terryn’s guards and gets to Forest just in time to find her grappling for her life against the Butcher after her failed attempt to poison him with Hellfire. At Forest’s desperate request, Jay ends the Butcher’s life and plants evidence to cover up Forest’s involvement in the murder.
While Jay escapes the city to go after his sister and save her from her own failed ruses, Forest meets with Crown Prince Terryn, expecting to be accused of her part in the Bucher’s death. Instead, Terryn offers her a position as court herbalist, to help research healing methods in the hopes that they will one day erase the need for nymph blood in medicine entirely.
END OF ROOTS OF BLOOD: BOOK I OF THE NYMPH KEEPERS
