“No. She’s lurking close. I feel her oily presence.”
“I can’t keep ignoring her. The longer I do, the more time she has to plan something else.”
Dad frowned at the magic in my hands. “Too much Chimera,” he lectured. “Focus only on your fae half.”
Easier said than done. “My magic mixed a while ago. I can’t separate it on a whim.”
Dad rolled his eyes. “You can do whatever you want. Once you get used to tapping into different parts of yourself, this will all seem so much easier.”
“Says you.”
Dad snorted. “Mom and I have decided enough is enough.”
The magic I held fizzled and died. “Excuse me?”
Dad smirked. “If we are to unite our people, we can no longer be neutral.”
His words were a drastic turnaround from the last year or so when he and Mom flat out refused to get involved in anything involving the gods. “What changed your mind?”
Dad gently smacked my hands once more. “Try again.”
I rolled my eyes and started to gather magic once more.
“You had zero compunctions about killing our people if they stood with Danu.”
I dropped the sputtering magic once more. “Danu is wrong.”
“We’re ancient, daughter. Right and wrong are never concrete in our eyes. But we’ve realized as rulers, we have the right to dictate the state of things. All we can do is try to be fair and just. The world doesn’t belong to one people. It belongs to all of us.”
“Glad my murderous intentions opened your eyes,” I said dryly.
“No. Your words didn’t change our minds. Your intent did. If they hadn’t left, you would have taken them all out. I felt the intent behind your words.”
Dad paused and watched the small ball of power grow between my palms. “Killing them would have devastated you, and I know you still would have made the choice.”
Rowan listened intently from the sidelines, his gaze resting on me. Our bond warmed. He, of all people, knew how much I struggled to make the right choices and how so many times, those choices had awful endings—even if they were the right ones.
“I rarely see you hesitate in taking anyone out. What made you and Mom wait so long?”
Dad inhaled a slow breath and sighed. “There are not as many of us as there used to be. Infighting and skirmishes with other supernaturals have dwindled our numbers. We always tried to err on the side of preservation. Perhaps we should have been more focused on the future.”
“Danu still gathers our people to her side. Apparently sharing is caring wasn’t taught in school during her formative years.”
Dad chuckled. “Fae aren’t so great at sharing. We like to hold onto things, no matter if doing so hurts us in the end.”
He took my hands and shaped them, sending a small pulse of power through my fingers. “Like this.”
Pure fae power sifted through my fingers, no trace of the Chimera to be seen. “Whoa.”
“Don’t drop it,” he warned. “Look inside and see what’s different.”
I closed my eyes and dipped into my vast reservoir of power, far deeper than it was a few months ago. The Chimera magic swam with the fae power, but a small siphon of it rose from that well, up through my body and into my palms. “Huh.”
“Drop it and try again without my guidance.”
I did as he asked, my mind half focused on other things. I’d been mulling a proposal for a while and didn’t see the harm in bringing the idea up now. “What if we made some of the fae Lords or something similar?”
Dad frowned. “You want to give the fae official territory like your Rowan has?”
