Was this it? Had they finally learned something that tied me to my aunt’s death?
Had they come to arrest me?
I did a double-take at the face of the mage in front.
He was tall. He had to be a few inches over six feet.
He stared back at me with stunning, pale-green eyes that were difficult to look away from, that sharply contrasted his midnight-black hair. A long scar bisected one side of his face, the only imperfection overlaying features that still managed to be ruggedly beautiful. A full, perfect mouth stood out above a square jaw dusted with dark stubble.
It wasn’t just that he was attractive, though.
He was familiar, somehow.
I realized he was looking me over with a less tense but equally curious scrutiny. His eyes locked back on mine, right as he came to a stop, a few feet from our table.
“Hello.” He gave a slight bow. “Ms. Leda La Fey?” He inclined his head. “Or is it Shadow?”
“Shadow,” I said automatically.
I grew aware that everyone in the hall stared at us now.
They probably wondered if I was about to be arrested, too.
My friends had gone silent along with everyone else. I could feel their eyes shifting between me and the tall mage with his Praecuri entourage. Jolie and Darragh, who’d had their backs to the front doors, turned all the way around in their chairs, and stared up at the uniformed Praecuri with blank, confused looks on their faces.
I glanced at Draken, who sat next to me. He was staring at the scarred, green-eyed mage with undisguised shock in his eyes. I saw him look between me and the handsome praecurus with wide, disbelieving eyes, as if comparing the two of us.
That’s when it hit me, what was so familiar about him.
He looked like me.
Well, not likeme,exactly, but I could see enough to know why Draken stared.
Green eyes. Black hair. That jawline. The shape of his mouth.
I even knew that particular face.
Or really, I knew a face that looked a lot like it, minus the shocking scar, and with darker eyes. That didn’t even include the fact that I could see similarities between his face and my own, and even more obviously, between his face and my dead mother’s.
I glanced at his feet, and the suspicion strengthened. A blue and black wolf stood there, its head just about reaching the top of the mage’s knee-high boots. The La Fey familial was a wolf. A wolf nearly identical to that one shadowed Ankha’s heels before she died. I guessed if I’d been able to see magic as a child, my mother’s primal would have looked roughly the same.
Whoever this man was, I was related to him in some way.
He looked so much like my mother’s cousin. Was I misremembering the color of the eyes I’d seen in Ankha’s memories?
“R-Racyth––” I began in a halting stammer.
A hard smile touched those sculpted lips. “Not quite, cousin,” he said politely, inclining his head. “Regretfully, my father is dead. I am his second son. Valor.”
I felt my face warm. “Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“There is no need to apologize. I am flattered you see him in me.”
Silence fell between us. I heard coughs, shuffles, murmurs across parts of the high-ceilinged hall. If I had to guess, just about everyone in there had heard us, and now knew this handsome mage was related to me.
Valor La Fey looked only at me.
I wondered if I should be doing something, given he was family.
