Sighing, I give her a tiny smile. “Guilty as charged. Because of what I can and can’t say, my healing from the entire thing is more stunted than I let on. Slicing his fucking head off helpeda lot, and so did telling my story in the trial—even though some parts were not made public. However, my internal guilt still pokes at me, especially when the evidence of his deviance has a light shone on it.”
“That’s happened recently?” She arches a brow before grabbing the ‘funky’ cupcakes and taking a small bite of her own. “And the dudes who stalk you didn’t figure out the truth?”
“Yes, sort of, and I don’t think so?” I frown as I nibble on my own treat, wondering why Kat thinks this is so wacky-making. It doesn’t seem to affect me, and right now, I wish it were. “They looked mad, and whispered a lot, but didn’t directly address it with me.”
The pink-haired Fae giggles, and then blinks as she makes a face. “Damn it. The kid was right about these berries. I like it, but I wouldn’t want anyone to hear those sounds. So what the fuck were you doing that Magnus’ pervertedness came up, but didn’t get talked about? Cuz that seems… unlikely to happen with your dudes as much as it would with mine.”
“When the Society sent me to State U to take over his job and clean up his mess, they also made me live in his old quarters—let’s just say, the Dean’s House wasn’t exactly cleaned out after his death or before I arrived. Once I’d gathered my merry men, they noticed that my asshat ex was hoarding a lot of dangerous items in the house, and that led to assuming some of them also might be… icky. We started going through things room by roomto get rid of the possible bad stuff so no one ‘tripped’ over it, and they found questionable things as we did.”
“Gross questionable, or evil questionable?” she asks as she chews another bite of cupcake. “Because I could see both based on what you’ve told us and what the media said.”
I snort, shaking my head as I shrug. “You’d be right. And by the way, I’m not vanilla in the slightest, but the things they found were well over my limits, and I don’t think they actually discussed all of it with me.” My expression is rueful as I admit, “Since I figured out who and what he was, I’ve felt a lot like those women you hear about on podcasts that had no idea their husbands were serial killers with frozen dicks in their garage freezers, you know?”
That makes Rogue giggle again, and she has to wait until she catches her breath to speak. “Morgana, just because we’re smart, capable chicks doesn’t mean we can’t be fooled by people who have been hiding their true selves for centuries. It doesn’t matter if it’s a womanora man or even a freaking spectral being from the Astral realm, anyone can be fooled.”
I tilt my head, catching the tone behind her words. “Someone fooled you, then?”
Her lip curls in a sneer, and she nods. “She sure as fuck did. Mina Dolios befriended me, wormed her way into my life when I was a confused idiot trying to survive my less than stellar parents and unrequited love for my stepbrother and his friends. I thought I was healing and doing great—hell, I was leading the derby team, dating hot people, and generally living the best life I could. But as soon as she found online fame and recognition, she took the mask off.”
Oh,thatkind of betrayal is something I know very well—my long ago exes, the twins, did something similar that led to our break-up.
“I bet she stopped being supportive of your issues first, expecting you to be over them since so much time had passed. Then, everything became about her and why the world was ‘against her’ every time she had a problem. Finally, you realized that every single conversation or interaction was about her fame, her fans, her success, and how you could learn to be as good as her if you’d just change everything about yourself?”
Shooting dual finger guns at me, the Fae smiles. “Bingo! Eventually, she decided I wasn’t worth the effort when her fanbase grew to a level that got her invited to the shitty rival team, and we had our ‘break-up’ moment. I think that’s what brought Reb and the guys back into my life a little more, and then she had her new crazy-ass teammates ambush me… That’s when the guys sort of kidnapped me to their place and everything… came out.”
“Huh,” I reply as I muse for a second. “You know, Lucas being poisoned drew all the others into my space, and they set up camp afterward. Those string-knotting bitches really have a pattern, don’t they? It’s like the minute there’s an opening and the right pieces are on the board, they go for the Queen’s Gambit immediately.”
Rogue wrinkles her nose as she checks in on the suspiciously quiet bird she’s in charge of. I suspect it’s because she doesn’t want to look at me, but I can’t prove it. “Honestly, the gambit part was probably letting dickheads steal Reck and bring Reb in. It might have been connected to your dragon, or just someone in the bigger spiderweb of assmunches, but that was what put me on that path for sure.”
I blink, considering that for a moment. “Then my path would have started long before Magnus as well, I guess. Maybe as young as you, but that’s so many years ago. I mean, I was what humans would consider a pre-teen in the seventeen hundreds, Rogue. I wasn't much older than you when the guillotines were used, you know?”
She blinks and tilts her head at me. “Did youseeit? Were youthere? Cause, not gonna lie, Morgana… that’s so fucking badass.”
I shrug, not liking to remember the awful things I’ve witnessed over my long life if possible. “I saw a decent amount of that time, yes. My parents were living in Paris on an exchange program with the Sorbonne during that period. The streets were… terrible, though perhaps not as much as they were during some of the later wars in Europe.”
“Damn, that’s cool. The kid is going togeek outabout it, you know.” She frowns, tilting her head as she looks around. “Has she been missing too long? Should we worry?”
Shaking my head, I glance at the door. “I don’t think those demons would let her move around this floor if they didn’t have it guarded pretty fucking well. She’s probably having a good old panic about the whole ‘fancy ass dicks and more’ we’ve been discussing still. If you were raised by crappy humans and didn’t know a damn thing about any other world, then got thrown into all ofthis, you’d be losing it, too.”
The Fae snorts. “I’m a Guardian, Morgana. Of course I get that. Reb and I don’t have an active charge yet, but we get called in to help sometimes with newbies if they're having trouble or need help. Lost ones who emerge late in life—even if it’s just by human standards—are the most volatile supes on the planet.I can’t tell you how many we’ve had to shove into Blackwater when no one can get them under control. It’s sad and annoying as fuck, but it’s the only option with some of them.”
“This is why realms like Hell and Faerie don’t enjoy working with the Society,” I say with a scowl. “I mean, Jackson—he’s my lawyer—is one of their active agents, and by the look of his ‘team’, I just know there’s more to that structure than they make public to people who aren’t inducted, like me.”
Rogue holds her finger up, her eyes dancing. “I can help with that! I know a fuckton about that structure, even if I know little about this realm. They definitely teach us the damn hierarchy from the moment they pluck future Guardians to train, to the moment they find their charges.”
I wrinkle my nose as I grab the scotch and take a drink. “We should wait on that until Kat is back. The dipshits here don’t know fuck about that, either, and she definitelyneedsto know. I mean, my frenemy at the bookstore is going to work out how to get her books about this kind of stuff and the smexy ones for her to ease herself into knots and double dicks and such,butI don’t know how much of it will be true. Just like here, our overlords enjoy hiding things from the population at large.”
“Good point.” She eyes me for a minute and grins. “So how ridiculous do you think our all-male revue is behaving while they’re stuck together? Archie and little D are okay at playing nice, but Angelo might not restrain his BDE. What about yours?”
Chuckling, I shake my head. “Kaspar is likely to be a twatwaffle, as is Iggy. They’re the two I’m still working it out with. Don’t tell them I said it, but theyaredoing better; I’m just not ready to forgive so easily yet. However, Slade, and Lucas are quite goodat adapting and working in a group. Liam is a toss-up because of the whole ‘visiting royal’ thing, you know?”
“Man, you donotseem like a woman who wants a crown, Morgana.”
My eyes narrow as Desi pops out of my hair to hiss at her in indignation. “You’d be right, but all three of us will be lucky to avoid that bullshit. Kat’s got an assmunch dragon to deal with, and you're mated to the heirs of a big crime family, woman. You know we’re all floating along in the same annoyingly gilded boat, right?”
Her face screws up into a pout, and she stomps a foot on the ground as she snatches my scotch. “You know, our little friend better get back with my wine soon or we’re going after her. If I have to hear bullshit truth like that, I need to be ahellof a lot drunker. Got it?”
Laughing softly, I lean back against my chair as her bird yells at us again because of her petulant tantrum. “Yeah, me too. I mean, can youimagineme having to kow-tow to some misogynistic, backwards-ass royal in Faerie? I’ll get myself imprisoned for treason within, like, minutes of meeting Li’s parents. Since Magnus, I just don’t care about filters and that kind of thing when I’m not working. Fuck, sometimes not even then, you know?”
