Page 147 of Fallen Court

I shook my head. On the ride over, I’d decided I wanted to keep my head clear. I needed to process what had happened.

She gave up and dropped both menus on the table. “How long have you known?”

“Known?” I blinked. “About twenty minutes.”

She frowned. “You’re telling me that you didn’t know you were a fae until I unwrapped that thing?”

“No.” I swallowed, suddenly questioning if wine might be a good idea. “But Lach…”

“Lach what?” She planted her hands on the linen tablecloth, leaning forward. “You can tell me anything.”

There was unmistakable pain in her eyes, but she didn’t allow it into her voice. Didn’t allow it to become accusation or recrimination. Ciara might be upset that I’d hid some things from her, but she would listen with an open mind. She would listen like a friend and respect that I’d kept a secret.

And so the whole story spilled out of me, pausing only when we accepted bottles of white and red from a waiter who’d had the unfortunate luck to turn up to the restaurant early. Ciara poured while I shared, gulping down three glasses before I’d started my first. I needed to get it all out of me. I needed to tell her everything, if only to make sense of it myself before I faced Lach. How my bargain with her brother had hinged on the ring. How Oberon had wanted it for himself and revealed its origin. Her face remained impassive even as I told her about his plans to resurrect the Terra Court, but she poured another glass, finishing off the bottle.

I braced myself as I continued on to what I’d learned since I returned to New Orleans—about her mother and father and the secret they had kept from everyone, the secret Lach had known for decades and never shared with her.

Ciara stared at me when I finished, the empty wineglass clutched in her hands. “You’re telling me that my brother thinks you’re Stacia’s daughter? Or Calista’s, I mean? Gods, this is confusing. Can we just call her Stacia? That’s how I knew her.”

I nodded, taking a long sip from my glass. “I’ve been trying to prove him wrong ever since he told me.”

“I can’t believe he didn’t tell me.” Her hand closed around the butter knife laid before her, and she squeezed it so tightly that her knuckles turned white. I might have to take it away from her. Before I could intervene, she dropped it back on the table. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

I didn’t buy Lach’s claims that we needed to withhold this from Ciara because she couldn’t keep a secret. “I think he didn’t want to cause you pain.”

“Pain?” Her eyebrow arched. “Why would this cause me pain?”

“Because your parents lied to you,” I said slowly. Was this a trick question?

“Of course they lied to me. I was a brat back then,” she admitted, reaching to open the bottle of white. “But knowing the truth doesn’t change anything. Well, not for me.”

It changed a lot for me. I was fae, and I didn’t know how to feel about that.

“You look like you’re about to throw up.” She abandoned the bottle and picked up the drinks menu, flipping it over. “Maybe we need something harder than chardonnay.”

“All my life, I wanted to know who my parents were.” My voice was quiet. “I wanted to believe that there was a reason I lost them. That someday it would all make sense. But…”

“We all want that.” She reached over and squeezed my hand.

But there was something that even now made no sense.

“Why couldn’t you tell I was under a glamour?” I asked her. “How could you have glamoured me all those times and not have realized?”

She shook her head, studying my face again. “I don’t think the effigy was a simple glamour. Most of us can see through a glamour if we really look, especially if we want to see past it. I should have been able to see through it.” Just like she could see past the human glamours the others wore on the streets of New Orleans. Just like I had seen past the glamours in the Garden District on Halloween. “I still don’t understand why it just fell apart when I unbound the threads.”

Neither did I. “Lach assumed that there was a glamour tied to my ring.” I told her about the day we met and how I’d started to remove it in his office. “But when it finally came off the other night, nothing.”

“Unless someone rebound the threads of the spell and tied it to that thing.” She shivered. “You have no idea where it came from?”

I bit my lower lip, unsure how to answer, but the hesitation was enough. “I saw them in a shop in the Quartier Enchanté. The witch who runs it, Willow, called them effigies. She said people would use them to cast protection spells on loved ones or curses on their enemies.”

Ciara’s eyebrows jumped a full inch, her forehead wrinkling. “Do you think she’s the one who made it?”

“Maybe. But she was trying to help me understand where the ring came from. We did a séance on Samhain. I…” Trusted her. At least, I had. Now, I wasn’t sure.

“Why would she want the spell to stick if she was trying to help you take off the ring?” Ciara asked, voicing one of the questions bouncing around in my own head.

I forced myself to say it. “Maybe she isn’t my friend.”