“Don’t be. Just help us figure out how to stop the fae a second time.”
And tell me who my father is.
I didn’t say it. I wasn’t ready to hear the answer, not from her. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like what she said.
“What’s happened with the fae now?” Aline leaned forward.
“They have moved into the underworld and taken a sacrifice of 22 unbaptised humans and 22 high-ranking fae,” Corbin said. A collective shudder passed through the group at the memory of those lives burned away.
“How many days until the full moon?” Aline asked.
“Eight days.”
Aline tipped her head to the side. To me, it didn’t look as though she was considering the problem nearly hard enough. “Daigh must know I tricked him all those years ago, because you are alive, and he found you. I do not think we can fool him again.”
“Then what can we do?”
“Even if we destroy Daigh and strip his power, we’re still screwed,” Blake said. “The Slaugh will still ride, and Liah will simply rise up to become queen in his place. And if you ask me, we should be more afraid of meeting her in battle than Daigh.”
“Who’s Liah?” Aline frowned. “And while we’re on the subject, what happened to you, Blake Beckett? I heard in the painting that you came from the fae realm, but you were born a human and fae?—”
“—can’t be inside the castle walls. I know.” Blake smirked. “I’m just amazing,” Blake explained what happened to his parents and how Daigh adopted him and he’d escaped the fae realm to join us. At the mention of his parents' grisly death and the tortures he’d endured under Daigh’s control, Aline winced. I wondered if she was thinking what might’ve happened to me if Daigh had known I was still alive.
“Thank you, Blake, and you’re right. Destroying Daigh won’t stop the Slaugh riding. We’d literally have to overthrow the demons of hell in order to call this off now. There’s only one other solution that I can see.”
“We retire to a desert island and rejoice in the fact we now have a lifetime supply of free Irish whiskey?” Flynn asked hopefully.
Aline shook her head. “We have to get the fae to change their mind and call off the deal they’ve made. Which means I have to speak with Daigh.”
CHAPTER FIVE
FIVE: MAEVE
She wants towhat?
“No.” I shook my head, my pink fringe flapping against my temples. “No way.”
“It’s our only choice. Even if we had every witch in the world lending their power to us, we could not reach into the underworld. But Daigh can call off the deal – he could stop the Slaugh, if I gave him a compelling reason.”
“He’s never going to do that.”
“Agreed,” Blake folded his arms. “Daigh’s been building up to the Slaugh his entire life. He won’t give it up for anything, especially not the woman who stopped him last time.”
“He will if we give him what he really wants – his family restored.”
I snorted. “Daigh doesn’t care about us. He hates you, and I’m not even really his daughter. He has to know that.”
“You didn’t see what I saw that night,” she insisted. “When he thought I had killed you, his face…I’ve never seen anything more terrifying. He loved me, and he loved you, and for all his talk of reclaiming the earth for the fae, he wants us to be together.When he thought I’d destroyed that, it broke him completely. That was what really robbed him of his power – a broken heart.”
“You said you didn’t even know which face was Daigh and which was Robert?”
“I did, didn’t I?” Aline flipped her hair over her shoulder. “But I’mpositivethis was Daigh in anguish over losing you.”
“Why, though? I’m not Daigh’s daughter. He may have been inside Robert’s head when I was conceived, but that doesn’t mean he contributed any genetic material. That’s not how biologyworks.”
Aline shook her head. “It’s more complicated than that. There’s a type of fae magic?—”
“The binding.” Blake picked up the last scone from the plate and took an enormous bite “Compelling a human during sex causes some kind of magical bond. It’s forbidden for a reason, and I’m guessing you know something about it we don’t.”
