My head is still throbbing from the fae drugs they stuck me with, my limbs useless, and Brian’s confusing words are making everything worse. I don’t even know how to respond to him anymore—what questions to ask, what to deny, what to demand.
Whether I should even care.
So instead, I close my mouth. Lean back against the cabinet. And wait for him to shine a light on the dark secrets that have haunted my existence since the moment Verrick and my mother danced at a royal ball and rolled around in a moonlit Faerie field.
Chapter Five
WESTLYN
“She was missing for months,” Brian says. “I was a wreck, but deep down, I knew what’d happened. Your mother was a powerful witch, but she never quite fit in among the magical circles around us. She’d been dabbling in fae magic for a long time, experimenting with new spells, dangerous rituals. She was utterly obsessed with connecting with the fair folk—no one could talk her out of it. She’d been venturing out alone more often, staying out until all hours, heading off on retreats upstate to find the most isolated spots in the woods for her casting. But she always checked in with me within a day or two, never more than that.” He exhales, his head shaking. “Four nights passed. Then five, and I knew it’d finally happened. She’d gone to Faerie, like she always wanted, and I had little choice but to just… wait. To hope she’d actually come back home.”
My mother had said as much in her diaries, but hearing it now, from the perspective of someone who cared about her… Goddess. I can’t even imagine what that must’ve been like. The worry. The fear.
It’s probably a lot like what the guys are feeling right now.
I take a deep breath, trying to keep my own worries at bay.
They have each other,I remind myself.Whatever happens, they’re not alone in this.
“Three and a half months after I’d last seen her,” Brian continues, “Madison waltzed into my apartment for dinner one night, acting as if she’d only been gone a few days. She truly believed it, West. She had no concept of the days she’d lost. When I told her how much time had passed, she was absolutely beside herself. She knew she’d been tricked—in more ways than one.”
“What do you mean?”
“It wasn’t long after that when she realized she was pregnant.”
He tells me the story as my mother relayed it to him, rehashing a lot of what I’d already read in the diaries, smoothing out some of the rough edges.
It can’t be easy for him, reliving all of this. But to his credit, he doesn’t hold back.
“You were conceived from your mother’s endless love,” Brian says, “but you were also conceived from your father’s endless deceit. From the moment she returned to me and awoke from her Faerie-induced stupor, your mother understood what kind of fae Verrick was, even if she still had a hard time resisting his charms. She didn’t know exactly how Verrick’s threats against you would manifest—only that they would. She was utterly terrified. All she wanted to do was keep you safe.”
“So she asked you for help,” I surmise.
“She didn’t have to ask, West. Maddie was my world. I loved her. A deep, profound love that went beyond all else. There was and continues to be nothing I wouldn’t do for her,orfor her child.”
Ignoring the surge of affection shining in his eyes, I say, “So you married her and agreed to pretend to be her baby daddy?”
“That was just part of it, but yes. It wouldn’t fool Verrick, of course, but we thought it might buy us a bit of time in the human realm. We had no idea whether he’d gotten to anyone else in our world, no idea who might be working for him. We needed time to figure things out. To devise a plan that would keep you safe from him.”
“I see. So you agreed to marry a woman who didn’t love you back and raise her daughter as your own all to protect her from a fae king, only to turn around and pawn her off to a demon prince instead?”
The anger is back, churning up all that bitterness again.
Damn it. I need to move. To work off some of this excess rage before I start dreaming of clawing my own eyes out. Or his.
“Westlyn, no. No, it wasn’t—”
I shake my head, cutting him off. Right now, it’s taking all of my concentration just to try to feel something in my arms and legs. For a brief instant, there’s a slight tingling in my foot, a twitch, but… that’s all I’ve got. I can’t even curl my fingers into my palms.
I lean back against the vestment cabinet, biting back a string of curses. Whatever they dosed me with is no fucking joke.
When I get my strength back, I’m going to murder every last one of you assholes with my bare hands…
“Are you all right?” my father asks.
“Peachy.”
“West, you look a little unsteady. Maybe you should—”
