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“I do not know.”
“Seriously? How do you not know?”
“Because it’s not decided yet.”
Decided.It feels like the inside of my head is an echo chamber and that one word repeats over and over, bouncing around the crevices of my brain.
“You mean me. I haven’t decided yet.”
“Yes.”
“How—” No, that’s not the right question. Thoughts crash one into another. A throbbing pain grows in my head and pressure builds behind my eyes and in my sinuses. “Why?”
Dugald doesn’t answer immediately. He moves closer and touches my arm. A gentle touch, light as a feather, but I’m acutely aware of the warmth in his fingers. It feels as if my skin drinks it in but it’s not enough to combat the chill spreading through my soul.
“Because, Quinn, you are you.”
My throat is dry. I work my mouth, trying to find enough moisture to speak, but when at last I do, I don’t know what to say. I close my mouth, shut my dry, burning eyes, and squeeze them tight. I shake my head in frustration, then open my eyes. Dugald watches, silent.
“I don’t understand.”
“I…” He trails off and a new look crosses his face, one I haven’t seen before from him. Remorse. “I am sorry.”
I chuckle without amusement.
“Yeah. Great. Sorry.” I rub my temples, trying to ease the pressure in my head, but it doesn’t make any difference. “That doesn’t help.”
Anger is a boiling cauldron in my chest. None of this is fair or right. How am I supposed to make a decision when I don’t know anything?
“How long has Moira been talking to you?” he asks with a casualness that is so obviously false I could see it a million miles away.
“How about you tell me how you know her?” I know before he opens his mouth that he’s not going to answer. It’s on his face as clear as day. He opens his mouth, but I cut him off with one raised finger. “No. Answer me. No lies, no dodges. Tell me.”
His jaw tenses but he lets out a soft sigh.
“She is an Unseelie.”
A punch in the gut would hurt less. I reject the idea immediately, shaking my head negative, blinking as tremors rumble through me. I clench my hands, raise my fists, drop them, then throw them back into the air and a strangled sound escapes my throat.
“No.”
Dugald watches my reaction in silence. I know what an Unseelie is. The Dark Fae, or the more bad of the bad. Cause dealing with any Fae is bad, which I can testify to with absolute certainty. Moira was my friend. Is my friend. I thought she was, anyway. I thought she was a haven. A beacon of sanity in the craziness that has become my world.
“Quinn, you must finish training.”
“Are you kidding me?” I yell. “Seriously? You drop bombs all over my entire life and then want me to what? Keep on keeping on like nothing is wrong?”
“You see a better way?”
“Yes,” I snap.
“And that is?”
“I’m going to cut you and all your kind out of my life. I’m going to care for my dad, handle my mom. I’m going to finish school.” Something passes over his face, a shadow that reaches his lips, which part then he snaps them shut, not saying the thought I know he had. “What?”
He shakes his head and the raven caws.
“Nothing in your life is what it seems,” he says. “If you cannot see that, then maybe the Druid is right and I’ve been wrong this entire time.”
