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Her shoulders sagged further. Of course it was. Her papa wasn’t a traitor. Even as she had the thought, her Empath magic sparked in her gut, reacting to something. Holly leaned farther forward and reached into the cabinet. As soon as her fingers crossed the entrance, it felt like she’d stuck her hand in thick mud. Magic. Heavy magic. She recognized the distinct feeling of her papa’s magic. She frowned, a sinking feeling inside her stomach. What was he trying so hard to hide?
She called her own magic up to better evaluate what kind of spell or rune she was working with here. The second her magic touched her papa’s, she recoiled. She knew this magic. Not just because it was her papa’s. Sheknewknew it. This close and this concentrated, Holly recognized it. This was the magic that she and Desmond had felt tying Luca to the hoard.
Her papa had been the wizard that had cast the spell that tied Luca, her mate, to the hoard.
The sound of rushing water filled her head as she tried to process this information. Her vision swam, and she had to place her hands on the ground in front of her to avoid toppling over. Her mates were right. Her papa was the traitor. All along, he had been working against the Realm. When Claire had been here this summer… she had been right in her papa’s grasp. And during the final battle, her papa had been here. “Defending the coven,” as her Uncle Frederick had said, but really plotting how to release the escaped prisoners. It had always been him. Her mates were right.
She took a shuddering breath, trying to clear her mind. Who would believe them, though? A recognition of the magic wasn’t enough proof. They needed something concrete if they were going to confront her papa and prove to everyone he was the traitor. Which meant Holly needed to break the spell in front of her to figure out what else her papa was hiding before anyone in the house woke up. She could break down about how wrong she had been later.
Lifting her hands, she pulled her earth magic to the surface. She could do this. She sent her magic into the spell her papa had cast. It was complex and multilayered, but Holly picked it apart, piece by piece. Her Empath magic asked to join the fray, and Holly only hesitated a second before letting it join her earth magic. Rather than having to force the magic together, the two magics intertwined seamlessly on their own and went back to attacking the last remnants of her papa’s spell.
With an audible pop, the last of the spell broke, and Holly froze, looking toward the doors as she listened to the sounds of the house to see if the noise was heard by anyone else. No sounds came from outside the door, and her Empath magic confirmed her parents were still sleeping. She turned back to the small hidden room and the breath left her lungs for a different reason.
Two stacks of paperwork were at the front of the small room, but in the back… The missing ingredients from Luca’s hoard. Her heart sank. Her papa was who they had been looking for—the right-hand man. This was proof.
When her thoughts raced, Holly forced herself to focus on the documents. She pulled the first stack of paperwork toward her and rifled through them quickly. Her papa’s neat handwriting decorated almost every page. The documents read like a ledger of sorts, but Holly knew her papa better. He kept these documents as insurance. Almost every one was a letter from one key player to her papa.
She checked the dates on the paperwork and shuffled so the oldest date was at the top. It was a letter to her papa from Vanya instructing him to bind “Maxios’s gift” to the hoard. She swallowed back bile as she realized they’d meant Luca. Flashes of Luca chained to the hoard when they found him flashed through her mind. The letter was dated over twenty years ago. Her dragon had been bound since then.
In order to stave off the ever-increasing nausea, Holly shuffled to the next letter. She scanned the contents quickly as she recognized her papa’s penmanship. He was making recommendations to Vanya and Roland on how to sow discontent among the Councilmembers and the Realm. The next document was a list of places with pen marks through them. At the bottom, her papa had written, “Places checked for Winona’s brat.” She swallowed hard. Claire. He’d meant Claire.
The next document wasn’t addressed to anyone. It was a list of resources in her papa’s handwriting including the missing ingredients but also a host of other things and names. At the bottom, his words were inked into the page harshly, as if his anger had been bleeding through his pen strokes. “Vanya and Roland = not true believers.”
Holly frowned at that. What did he mean Vanya and Roland weren’t true believers? True believers in what? They were the heads of the traitors. She turned the paper over, but there was nothing else on it. She shuffled through the paperwork for other mentions of this believer stuff. Her name written on one of the pages stopped her movements. With shaky hands, she pulled out the paper from the stack, unsure if she wanted to know what it said.
The paper was a letter to Vanya with a list of names under Holly’s as “potential matches” her papa had found. He had written she was a “valuable asset,” but could be used to further our attempts with a “good match.”
Holly didn’t want to read any more. Surely this was enough. She rolled up the paperwork, leaving a few not as incriminating documents and stuffing the rest in her satchel. She hesitated as she looked at the ingredients. She didn’t want to leave them here, but she also didn’t want to tip her papa off that they had been taken. Although, if he opened the cabinet he would know, as the spell was gone. She needed to tell her mates and Uncle Frederick what she had found. Desmond too, before they tipped her papa off that they knew about his role. They still needed to find the missing prisoners, and Holly had a feeling her papa knew where they were as well.
She ended up taking most of the documents and scooping the Ligamen and the Fortis into her bag. If they didn’t have all the ingredients, then they couldn’t develop the ultimate weapon again. She left the Fae Metallicum, not sure how to transport it safely. Rising to her feet, she bit her lip as she looked at the cabinet. She couldn’t reset the spell, but her papa’s magic still lingered around the cabinet. Maybe she could weave it together enough that it seemed like the spell was still intact? Only one way to find out.
She pulled on her papa’s magic, weaving it with a bit of her magic until it covered the cabinet again and the other documents and ingredients disappeared from sight. She did a quick sweep of the office, making sure no trace of her intrusion was around. Her Empath magic rose up and swept along the room, and the room felt lighter, as if the magic had taken away the traces of emotion Holly had left behind. She unlocked the study door and shut it softly behind her. On quiet feet, she exited the house, straining her ears to make sure that her exit went unnoticed.
Outside, Holly let out a breath for what felt like the first time since her discovery. What a turn the night had taken. She had walked into the house determined to confront her papa about his behavior and instead found he was the traitor.
She pressed a hand to her stomach as the sickening realization settled into her body like a thick sludge. Now that she was out of the office, her thoughts raced.
He had been behind it, and Holly had been so naive about his intentions she didn’t have a clue. She could have stopped so many deaths—her mates’ families, Claire’s parents—so many deaths if she had only opened her eyes and seen. And worse, her mates had known. And she had argued with them that it couldn’t be him. She had defended him! Anger and disbelief and embarrassment churned in her gut. What were her mates going to say when she told them they were right? Would they hate Holly for not seeing it clearly? They already thought she didn’t want them.
It was like the events of the day came crashing down on Holly all at once and a sob hitched in her throat. She had to get away. Away from it all. Turning, she ran into the night, as if she could outrun the thoughts and guilt chasing her.
CHAPTER24
Footsteps thudded into the black night as Holly raced away, not really thinking of a location. Her foot rolled on an indent, and she went scrambling to the ground, pain shooting up both wrists as she caught her fall. The pain was a welcome distraction from the agony in her mind, though. Holly curled up in a ball on the ground, uncaring she was out in the open and anyone could sneak up on her.
How could she have missed this?
That thought spun around and around in her mind. How could she have missed this? How could she have missed her papa being a traitor? Missed him collecting ingredients and giving recommendations to Vanya and Roland about how to “win” the war? How could she have been so oblivious? She was so stupid. She had even defended him to Kallan and the others, and she had been wrong—so wrong. Speaking of her mates, she had hurt them by not believing them and then hurt them again when she hadn’t defended them. She didn’t deserve them. They deserved so much better than her—the oblivious, stupid daughter of the man who had helped orchestrate the deaths of their family.
It felt like her hurt and anger and pain swirled inside of her faster and faster with each thought. Holly let out a strangled scream as it burst. She knew she was hyperventilating, but she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Black spots danced in her vision as she gasped for air that she didn’t deserve.
A hard thud jolted her out of her panic. A flash of golden eyes peered at her from the sky before they disappeared in a cloud of smoke. The acrid smell of smoke in her nostrils and taste in her mouth helped clear her mind, but arms coming around her threw her back into her panic, and she struggled to get away from the person at her back.
“Shh… Holly… Luca.” The voice was raspy in her ear as the arms stayed strong and the unfamiliar familiarity of it cleared the rest of the panic from her mind.
She craned her head back, and green eyes the color of Luca’s scales met hers. The man had black hair with a slight curl that fell over his eyes. His naked chest pressed against her as she struggled to process that it was him. “Luca?” she asked in a trembling voice.
He nodded, and the breath was sucked out of her body. He had shifted! “How…?”
