“This should explain everything.” Arthur pulled a thin book off the shelf behind Corbin’s desk and tossed it at Blake. I glanced at the title as Blake opened it with jammy fingers.The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.“Now, what are we going to do about Dora?”
“One of you guys needs to talk to her,” I said. “She thinks of you like her own sons. The only way she’s going to accept me is ifyou convince her that I’m the daughter she never had, and that’s going to take some serious smooth talking. While you’re at it, try to get her to understand that it isn’t the eighteen hundreds and Jane is free to do whatever she likes with her body.”
“I could compel her,” Blake mumbled through a mouthful of cake crumbs. “Problem solved.”
“Sounds great—Hey, give that back, you little scamp.” Jane wrestled a book back from Connor’s grasp.
“Not going to happen,” I said. “Magic caused this issue with Dora, but magic isn’t going to solve it. And maybe it’s okay in the fae realm to run around messing inside people’s heads, but if you want to be a member of this coven, you will never,everforce someone to think or do something against their will. You got that through your skull?”
“It’s lodged in there, Princess.” Blake tapped the side of his head. “You need to relax more. Maybe if I ran my tongue over your nipple, it would calm your nerves?—”
“My nerves are just fine, thank you.” I flopped down on the sofa and folded my arms across my chest, hoping Blake couldn’t see my nipples standing hard and pert through the thin fabric of my dress.Don’t think about how much your body craves Blake. Get this conversation back on track.I glared at Arthur. “So you’ll talk to Dora?”
“I’ll try. But not today. I have a feeling if we don’t get through these books before Corbin gets back, Dora will be the least of our problems.”
“I agree.” I sat down on the sofa next to Blake and grabbed a random book off his stack.
“As fun as all this Harry Potter wand waving and chanting medieval Latin is fascinating, I think I’ll leave the research to the actual wizards. I’m going to find that other woman Sheryl mentioned.” Jane jiggled Connor on her hip as she headed for the door. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be down in the kitchenmaking some calls. You’d better hope like hell there are still some Eccles cakes left, fairy boy, or there’ll be trouble.”
The library descended into silence, the only sounds were the shuffling of leaves and Blake’s chewing. I flipped aimlessly through the book in my hands. It seemed to be some sort of treatise on the magical properties of various crystals. I could barely focus on the words. I knew we needed to do the research, but I hated sitting on my butt (or arse, as the guys said) doing nothing. Historians looked for the answers in books. Scientists conducted experiments.
Which reminded me. All the scientific equipment I’d purchased to monitor the gateway was still sitting up in my room. In all the chaos, we’d forgotten to set it up. If we knew more about the gateway and how it worked, that might help us find a way to block it permanently.
Or destroy it forever.
The thought had been swimming around in my head ever since Blake led us through the ritual and I heard Daigh’s voice laughing in my head. If we destroyed the gateway…all the gateways…then the world would be permanently protected from the fae.
I raced out of the library and clambered up the stairs, disturbing thoughts swimming around in my head. I hadn’t told any of the others yet because there hadn’t been a chance and because even though I currently had no evidence, I was certain that destroying the gateway meant destroying the entire fae realm. And I didn’t know how I felt about that.
On the one hand, I had to place importance on the mathematically greater good. A few fae lives to save the lives of millions of humans seemed like a no-brainer.
We weren’t just talking about stealing a few babies here. Corbin had explained the fae’s ultimate goal the night I’d first learned of their existence.
The Slaugh.
The dark fae host riding across the earth, raising the dead and leaving the world bathed in the blood of the living. Corbin said the Slaugh caused the Black Death. If the fae brought another plague or worse, we had to do everything we could to stop them… even if it meant destroying them.
But on the other hand…the whole idea of wiping out an entire race just because their king had a persecution complex made my stomach churn. Didn’t that make me just as bad as Daigh? If Blake stood up to the king and escaped, did that mean that others might do the same thing, also?
Could I condemn them all to death?
And there was a third thing. I tried to push it to the corner of my mind because it was an emotional issue and had nothing to do with the wider moral and scientific implications. But it kept nagging at me.
That’s my biological dad in there. If it came down to it, could I kill my father? What did I know about him, really? Had he used my mother, as he said, or had he once loved her? Had she seen something good in him?
A cold ache settled in my chest.If only I could ask her. But she’s gone, and it’s all because of the fae. They’ve already taken so many good people – the Crawfords, Rowan’s parents, Flynn’s father, Arthur’s mother. I can’t let them take any more.
I reached the top of the stairs. Instead of taking me up to my bedroom, my feet dragged me in the other direction. I glanced up, and my eyes fell on my mother’s portrait.
I’d been deliberately avoiding it ever since I’d heard the voice that wasn’t mine inside my head. I rubbed the back of my neck, where the hairs stood on end at the memory of those words whispering against my consciousness.
It was probably the wind.It makes all kinds of noises as it funnels through the open courtyard and covered walkway.There’s no reason to avoid looking at a painting. Don’t give in to your base fears when a rational explanation is sufficient to explain the phenomena.
Just to prove to myself that I believed my explanation, I took another step toward the painting, focusing on my mother’s face. Her wide, smiling eyes drew me in.My eyes.
Those eyes hid so many secrets, so many stories that I’d never be able to hear. All my life she’d been a mystery summed up in two words –birth mother– with not even a photograph or letter or figment of memory to cling to.
And now, here she was in vibrant technicolour. All I wanted was to dive into that painting and sit with her and see what she saw that made her smile like that. Her lips were closed, curled up at the edges, her features placid, her skin radiant.
