Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 171176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
“She is still really, really confused,” Hannon supplied.
“I am also really, really confused,” Vemar said. “What’s the point that she and I are clearly missing, Kind Lady?”
“The point is,” Calia said, “those royals will never be worthy, and therefore never able to use this lantern. In order to make this lantern glow, you have to be of fairy blood.”
“Before you say it, Hannon,” the queen said, “we can all tell that she is still very, very confused.”
I laughed incredulously, pressing two fingers to the center of my forehead. If this kingdom didn’t accuse me of one thing, it was another. It shouldn’t surprise me at this point. I still hadn’t worked out what the mind-fucking was all about.
I folded my hands in my lap. “Both my parents were shifters,” I said patiently. I would not be randomly stabbing anyone with scissors this time. “I didn’t know my father, but he worked in a shifter-run court. Both of my mother’s parents were shifters. My mom would’ve said if they weren’t. No one she knew had ever visited the fairy kingdom. She hoped I might get to see it one day. There is simply no way, not even a slight chance, I have fairy blood.”
“Let me see that lantern, Calia,” the queen said. Calia handed it off. “How do I get it to work again?”
Calia showed her. Just as when Weston had tried it, nothing happened. The king was next, then Hannon. None of them could get it to light.
“You may recall from Aurelia’s journals that her father was from the Flamma kingdom,” Weston said. He briefly recounted my mom’s history.
The queen looked at the king, then over at the gardener from that morning. “Ring any bells, Nyfain? Arleth?”
“I’ve already got it on my list of things to look into it,” Hadriel said. “I heard that on the road. I’m burning with curiosity.”
“And so her story becomes more complicated . . .” Nyfain said.
The others in the room tried the lantern, even Weston, who had tried it before. Through my haze of relaxation, I watched their fingers move over the surface in the right ways and in the right order. Nothing happened. As I watched, my apprehension grew, slowly burning away the influence of my product as my stomach started to tighten.
“No.” I chuckled in disbelief and shook my head, my mind spinning. “This is ridiculous.”
“Incredulity, fear, discomfort,” Hannon said. “She definitely didn’t know that.”
I really liked Hannon, but he was starting to annoy me.
Sorry, he mouthed, and I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.
“Did Granny know about that lantern, do you think?” Weston asked softly.
“Pain,” Hannon said.
“I don’t have fairy blood,” I said with certainty, unwilling—or maybe unable—to believe there might be one more thing about me that I hadn’t known, one more life-altering revelation hidden from me. “I don’t. That’s ridiculous. My mom didn’t even have magic.”
“She didn’t have an animal,” Hadriel murmured. “You said she had an effect on people, right? That they might have hated her in one moment but wanted to take her out in the next. Didn’t you say that? She might’ve had a different magic.”
I shook my head harder as pain broke through the lingering haze of my product. My mom had always had an effect on people—I’d noticed that, yes. They would be staring at her in hate-filled animosity one moment, then have moony stars in their eyes the next. Having magic, even a different, non-shifter magic, would’ve saved her life. It would’ve changed the whole trajectory of her future. And mine.
Then again, if she’d had magic like that, wouldn’t she have used it to keep those men from breaking her body and setting fire to our home?
“But who would she have gotten it from?” I said logically, flames dancing in my memory. “My grandparents were wolves.”
“A recessive gene, maybe?” Vemar tried. “A skeleton in the closet? Are they alive to ask?”
“No, they died when I was little.” The tears building threatened to break free. “I can’t have fairy blood. And if by some chance I did, which would be mind-blowing even without their magic, Granny couldn’t have known about that lantern.”
“Why is that?” Calia asked, setting it on the table. Her tone had softened noticeably, her expression full of compassion.
My emotions wobbled a little harder.
“Because if she knew about that lantern, then it would mean she’d kept another colossal secret from me, and I don’t think I could handle that.” It seemed I hadn’t really known Granny at all. I’d created the illusion of a mother figure, and she’d happily let me believe it was reality. “I’m tired of being hurt. I’m tired of finding out things—” I wiped a tear away angrily. “I want to go now. I’m done with all this. I’m guilty, I’ll be hanged at dawn, whatever. I don’t want to do this anymore.”