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Davido slid off the chair and stood upright. As he’d seen Rosamunde transform into Aralynn, a vibration ran through the room and Davido emerged as Kaden. He even wore a tuxedo that fit his large frame.

More invectives followed coupled with a kind of pacing across Rosamunde’s fairly small parlor that did not give him enough space. He shoved his hands through his hair which dislodged the silver clasp.

An elf-lord.

Davido, his birth father, was an elf-lord, or as near to it as he could be. Stone wasn’t sure of the difference. Maybe it was about capacity.

He moved to stand in front of Rosamunde again, his anger surging. She needed to know he didn’t approve of her part in this at all.

But she rose to her feet as well, pressed her lips together for a moment then narrowed her eyes. She shoved a finger into his chest. “I swear to the Goddess that if you blame me for this, I’ll belt you one, Stone. I swear it! This was your father’s secret. Not mine! And I really didn’t know about Kaden or the whole elf-lord thing. That’s all new to me as well.”

Her cheeks were bright red and for a moment her anger sidetracked him. He kind of liked this side of the very controlled Queen of Ferrenden Peace.

But the other reality, all the elf-lord shit, grabbed him by the nuts again. He whirled on Davido or Kaden or whoever the hell he was. He even saw some resemblance though not much.

Kaden continued. “Yes, you take after Inez. I loved your mother so much and you were all that I had left of her. It’s so rare for any of our kind to perish that I couldn’t believe she’d died giving birth to you.”

Stone watched tears form in Kaden’s eyes. “I didn’t want to give you up and if Vojalie’s vision hadn’t been so grave, I wouldn’t have. But Vojalie talked me through it. She even helped me choose the family.”

Stone glanced at Vojalie. He wanted to hate her for separating him from his birth father, but he knew the woman’s power and he knew her heart. “So this vision was bad?”

“I wept for days, it was so bad. I’d never met Davido before and though I knew of him, I’d had no idea until this vision that he was an elf-lord.”

Stone shifted his gaze back to Kaden abruptly. “Why are you still alive? I thought they killed off the last of the elf-lords thousands of years ago.”

Kaden’s expression grew solemn. “I assassinated the very last one myself.”

“What does that mean?”

“That I’m not a true elf-lord. I never gave myself fully to the power as the others did, though I managed to sustain the ruse. Becoming an elf-lord, in other words embracing the power fully, is always a decision and I chose against it.”

Vojalie moved close to Kaden and took his hand. It was so hard to think that this ugly troll was probably one of the handsomest elves Stone had ever seen. Kaden swallowed hard and Vojalie covered their joined hands with her free one.

Vojalie met Stone’s gaze once more. “Davido led the resistance movement against the elf-lords, even though as Kaden he was part of their number. He was basically a spy and helped isolate each of the elf-lords one at a time until there were only two left.”

“I had to kill the last one,” Kaden said. “By then, he knew what I’d done. After that, I disappeared for a long time, hundreds of years until the elf-lords fell into historical renderings and eventually mythology.

“Even then, I only transformed into Kaden when I knew I was alone and safe.”

Stone felt as though he’d just been beaten into the ground. He returned to sit on the sofa. He was oddly numb. Rosamunde sat down next to him, more on the edge of the cushion, though she angled her body toward him. She settled her hand on his shoulder and nothing had felt so comforting in a long time. He felt her faeness flowing into him, a warmth and love that stunned him.

He covered her hand, much in the same way Vojalie had covered Kaden’s.

He glanced once more in Kaden’s direction, who now sat on the ottoman as he had before in his troll form. “Does the Sidhe Council know about you?”

Kaden nodded. “Vojalie insisted that I come clean. It took five years of the council’s deliberation, of interview after interview, of reading the historical documents before I was allowed to live.”

“It was that bad?” Rosamunde asked.

Vojalie had never appeared more serious. “I almost lost him. I’d found the right man for me then the Council almost took him away. It was the hardest time in my life.”

“Do you mind if I transform back?” Kaden asked.

Stone shook his head. “I guess you don’t want to be seen in your elf-lord form.”

“No. I don’t.”

In the same way he’d watched Rosamunde become Aralynn, Kaden blurred through the movement, his power changing his clothes as well, until he was once more an ancient, charismatic troll. Vojalie drew a ladder-back chair close to Davido and sat down next to him.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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