Page 52 of Fae Farewells

“I can explain,” Nate said quickly, jumping to his feet.

I held my hand up. “You left without warning.”

“I wrote you a letter.”

“It is not 1765 anymore. You could have called, told me what was going on. I don’t know. Maybe waited for reinforcements?”

“I didn’t want to wait. We’ve already waited long enough.”

“I get it.” I shook my head. “But if you would have, then you wouldn’t have been by yourself. Papi and Dad wouldn’t have been worried about you. You could have been there when we found Rig.”

He wrapped his hands around the bars of his cell. “To watch you kill him?”

“Nate!” Amelia scolded.

“You don’t get to throw that in my face,” I raged. “You lied to me, told me Raguel was bad. I fought him, then stopped. He asked me to kill him to free him. Ask him your-fucking-self if you don’t believe me.”

My father dipped his head, his voice steely and quiet. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No. You shouldn’t have.”

“How are—”

“The vampires? Lovely,” I spat. “Kadence double crossed you, and dosed hundreds of vampires with Alric’s drug. After I killed her, Novak and I took over. Then Blaire figured out that Dominic was also a lying piece of shit. And while we’ve been cleaning up Alric’s mess across the whole godsdamn world, people I care about are stuck in Baton Rouge, fighting roided up vampires to clean up my oversight.”

He whistled out a breath. “That’s quite a lot to unpack, Sloane.”

I laughed bitterly. “That’s not even a fourth of the shit we’ve been dealing with.”

“The mages—” he began, but I stopped him again, holding my hand up.

“One council member is dead, and before you ask, I didn’t kill him.”

“Who?” Amelia murmured, and I knew the name she was hoping I didn’t say.

“Gary Brown. He was pro-Alric and ready to overthrow you before Palmer and I broke into the sealed fire door. Brent Rickard killed him after I pried his thoughts open to show the rest of the council he knew where you were.”

He shook his head, not following. “What? Gary?”

“Oh, yeah,” I drawled. “He was pulling the comply or I’ll kill you shit. He blocked the exits, turned off the elevator system, and dismantled the wards. But don’t worry. Franklin moved all the paper files before anyone else got in... I mean, other than the four that were sent to wipe Alric’s records. And Palmer and I put up new wards.”

My father scrubbed his hand over his face, and Amelia stared at me with wide, shocked eyes.

“York is safe,” I continued. “The Underworld is back to being as delightful as ever. The missing shifters have been found and returned or killed. And now we’re here to fix the rest of the damage this massively petty disagreement has caused before I meet the problem head-on.”

“I’d hardly call this much trouble a disagreement,” Amelia said softly.

I turned my attention to her. “Your brother wanted what you had. He was jealous and conniving. All of this shit is his fault, because he couldn’t take no for an answer. He wouldn’t let you have what he thought was his. Sound about right?”

“In a nutshell,” she replied a little less delicately.

“Yeah. It’s petty. He’s trying to ruin the supernatural world so that he can prove his dominance or whatever cacophony of bullshit he’s worked up in his convoluted mind. He’s eradicating entire species’ in his temper tantrum. I’d hardly call that a disagreement either. But that’s what started it all. And now, I’m here to fix it. My sole purpose is to end an argument that should have been squashed centuries ago.”

“Not for lack of trying…” Nate trailed off when I glared at him.

“Maybe,” I agreed. “Or maybe someone should have grown some fucking ovaries and killed this bastard before it got so out of hand.”

“He’s my brother,” Amelia snapped.