Everyone else began pouring their own, some of them taking eager sips after tasting the blood lacing the warm liquid.
Aflora only gingerly tasted hers before focusing on my father once more.
He relaxed into his chair, eyeing her with a mixture of admiration and wariness. “So I assume you’ve chosen the side ofreformation, then?” he guessed. It wasn’t a question for me, or he would have spoken in a harsher tone. This one was for Aflora, and I was genuinely curious to hear how she would reply.
“No.” She leaned forward, clasping her hands on the table beside her untouched pastry plate. “I’ve not chosen reformation or retribution. Because you’re both wrong.”
A few of the Quandary Bloods glanced at each other. My father merely lifted an eyebrow. “I see.” He studied her for a moment. “Then tell me what you believe is right. Detail your plan.”
She shook her head. “No,” she repeated. “First, I need you to understand why retribution isn’t the correct path.” Her gaze flickered to Kolstov apologetically, causing my brow to furrow.
Then I felt the energy shifting in the room as she brought up a memory spell to showcase what she’d observed in the village earlier.
I wasn’t even aware she knew this charm, but before I could ask how she’d learned it, the memory began to play before my eyes like a vivid picture.
I could not only see everything, but I could also feel the warmth of the crowd, hear their laughs and cheers, and sense the urgency coming from the dark source, just as Aflora had earlier.
Emelyn was already dead.
Then Dakota appeared, dragging an unwilling Ella onto the stage.
Constantine read out her conviction.
Ella screamed.
And Aflora focused on Trayton.
Which was where she froze the memory, her voice entering all our minds as she said,Do you see it? The compulsion wrapping around him like a thick rope, strangling the male beneath?She increased the clarity, ensuring we all could see and feel the malevolent energy.
Then she slowly pulled the memory from our minds, returning us all to the room on a shiver of cold air.
She picked up her coffee to take a sip, her stance perfectly composed, but I felt her aching for Trayton as well as for Kolstov.
A hum of static opened between them as he spoke to her, and her to him.
Then he reached beneath the table to press his palm to her thigh, squeezing it gently.
She set down the ceramic mug, the sound echoing in the stillness of the room. “Well,” she prompted, meeting my father’s impassive gaze. “Did you see it?”
“Yes.”
“You’re aware of what it means?”
“Yes,” he repeated.
She nodded. “For the others, in case you couldn’t sense the compulsion charm around him, Tray is a prisoner in his own body. The spell isn’t visible to others. He acts and appears completely normal to them. But the dark source showed me the truth. And it showed me that truth because it aches for those who are being manipulated by this magic, which tells me Tray is not the only one compromised by this spell.”
A fair deduction.
And a reasonable explanation.
“Constantine is clearly the orchestrator of this magic,” she continued. “So he needs to be removed.”
My eyes narrowed slightly at her word choice—a word that reverberated through her mind, telling me she’d chosen it with purpose. But she didn’t allow me to follow it to completion, her strategy already moving ahead to the next phase of her decision.
“Once he’s removed, we will need to try those who have been involved in the extermination of Midnight Fae and test them for this spell.” She clasped her hands once more on the table, leaning forward ever so slightly. “Those found to be complicit bychoice will be dealt with accordingly. Others will be freed from their confinement.”
I took a sip of my coffee, considering her words along with the others. Not once did she mention death. Justremoved, which was a very carefully selected word.
