Chapter 11 #2
“Anya?” Mom? Simon peered up at his mother. “Can I get a cookie?”
She smiled warmly down at him, her hand brushing over his dark mop of hair.
“Of course. Only one, édesem.” My sweet. The pet name hit right in my heart; my father used to call me the same thing. “Just be quiet. Don’t wake him.” The boy smiled, tearing off down the hallway.
Wake him?
“I am so happy you are both okay.” I looked at her. “Warwick is going to be ecstatic.”
“On the inside.” She chuckled, brushing her dark hair back, the ends skimming Zander’s hand. “As my brother never shows emotion any other way.”
“Yeah.” A laugh bubbled up, my head lowering, remembering all the ways that man showed me emotion. Wild, raw, and fierce emotion.
“How did you guys escape?” I inquired.
Killian headed for a table against the wall, filled with whiskey, Pálinka, and glasses.
“Sloane got to us in time.” He picked up a bottle, pouring liquid into several glasses.
“He sensed something was about to happen. We were in the tunnels when the explosion hit.” Killian picked up the glasses, handing one to Eliza but skipping Zander as if he knew he’d didn’t want one.
He distributed the others to Sloane and me before taking a sip of his.
“This was the one place I knew of where I trusted we’d all be safe. ”
Two things danced around in my thoughts: not only did the Lord of the Fae serve us himself, but Eliza had no fear or resentment toward him in any way. She didn’t at all act like a person being held against her will for ransom. All of them seemed comfortable and at ease with each other.
Interesting.
“Why did you kidnap me?” I sipped at the whiskey, the rich taste nipping a little at my pounding head. I really hated chloroform.
“Kidnap?” Killian leaned against the mantel. “We borrowed you, Ms. Kovacs.” He winked at me.
I snorted. “Fine, why did you borrow me?”
Killian opened his mouth to speak, but a grunt had both our gazes darting toward the doorway to a man shuffling into the room.
“Oh, I hope Simon didn’t wake you up.” Eliza twisted around, reaching out to him.
“No, I was already up hunting for cookies myself.” The old man chuckled, patting her hand. His clear blue eyes darted up, realizing an unknown person was in the room.
“Tad,” I whispered. Taken back, I gaped at him, not expecting his presence. It was nothing compared to his response to me.
A mix of disbelief, terror, confusion, and shock stumbled the man back into the wall, his wide eyes set on me. The entire room reacted rushed to him, but I stayed pinned in place, dread circling through my lungs, sinking into my stomach like a stone.
“It can’t be.” He shook his head, Zander and Salone on either side of him, trying to steady him on his feet.
“Are you all right?” Eliza took his hand, worry etched on her face. The only other person not helping him was Killian, whose heavy gaze danced between us curiously.
Tad didn’t answer her, his focus entirely on me. He used her arm to move closer to me. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “This cannot be.” He shook his head.
I wanted to ask what couldn’t be, but my mouth would not open, would not utter the question. Deep down, I already knew.
Zander and Eliza helped him waddle closer to me, their expression full of bewilderment.
“Do I have an aura now?” I tipped my chin up, my voice coming out weaker than I hoped, scared of what he’d say.
It was like he didn’t even hear me, his hand shaking as it reached out for my face. “How did I not see it? It’s so clear now.”
“What?” I swallowed.
“You’re Eabha’s child.” His fingers took my chin, searching my face. “I can see her in you. How did she hide you from me all this time?” His head shook with turmoil. “You’ve been right in front of me this whole time. How was her magic able to block me from finding you?”
The memory of what the nectar showed me came back, reminding me of when Tad came upon my mother and my aunt on the battlefield. The words she was murmuring before the magic hit, sailing Tad back.
They were not friends.
But enemies.
Was he my enemy?
Leaning out of his reach, I shifted my jaw. “Why did you try to kill my mother?”
His lids narrowed on me, clearly curious how I would know such a detail.
Boldly, I stared back, letting him read it on me. On my face.
“You have no idea what your mother really was.”
A knowing twist of my lips jerked his hand back.
“You do,” he breathed, as if he could read my thoughts. “She’s alive.”
My lips pursed, not answering either way.
“How is that possible?” He muttered. “How is she still alive? How was she powerful enough to hide you from me?” He mumbled something under his breath.
“Ah . . . it wasn’t just her, was it? It was the magic from the Otherworld which had hit the same moment she cast that spell.
” He still watched me in reverence. “Whatever invocation she had on you broke. I can see you so clearly now.” He blinked at me, feeling he was peering deeper into my soul than just skin deep. “You are . . .”
“Ordinary.” I gritted my teeth.
“Oh, my dear, I wouldn’t call you that.” He shook his head. “You wanted to know about your aura?”
“Yes?” It was crazy that now I wished he didn’t see one, the opposite of what I wanted when I first met him.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” His hands ghosted the space around me.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the most iridescent gray I have ever seen. I have only seen one being in the world who came close to this, and it was only a fragment of her aura and certainly not as bright.”
“Who?” I rasped.
Tad regarded me with a fright I had never seen on his face before.
“Queen Aneira.”
The silence in the room might as well have been the loudest screams in the world. The impact punctured my ears and captured the air in my lungs like a thief.
No one moved or spoke. Most in this room had known her, lived under her reign, been branded by her cruel authority. I had only heard stories, glimpses through my father and the history books.
“What are you talking about?” Fear and shame rocketed up my defense. “You are wrong, old man.”
“I am never wrong.” Tad swallowed, gawping at me like I was some fearsome science experiment.
Searching the room, everyone stared at me with the same expression, making me feel even more like a feral animal. “That doesn’t mean anything.” The words fell flat on my tongue, tasting of ashes. “Right?” The pitch of my voice escalated.
“I remember now,” Tad whispered. “So vividly. It had been hidden from my mind until now. I remember her giving birth to you on the battlefield.” His mouth opened more as if each memory was coming back to him like a book, and he was flipping the page, learning more.
“What happened before I was knocked back.” He reached around, touching his spine as if something in his memory revealed itself.
“What do you mean, Druid?” Killian was rigid. His tone was smooth like glass and could cut as deep.
Tad dropped his hand, his scrutiny snapping up to me. “I might never be wrong, but I’m finding I do not know everything. I do not see the future with this one. She is like a ghost who lives in the gray area.”
His words burned with truth down my throat.
Tad strolled closer to the fire, holding himself up by the mantel.
“It makes sense. The moment you were born, you were infused with Otherworld magic. With Aneira’s entire family line.
Fire and Wind. Her family line was the one to create the wall around the Otherworld when fae had to go into hiding thousands of years ago.
Protecting and keeping fae safe from persecution.
Their bloodline fused that barrier, and when she was killed, the wall dropped fully.
Babies are like sponges, soaking up everything around them, but an adult’s body would defend itself and die against the surge of magic.
Proof of what we unfortunately saw happen across the world. ”
“But human babies died that night,” Killian countered. “Some fae children did as well.”
“That’s because she is not either.” Tad turned his head, powerful blue eyes drilling into me. “Her mother was a witch.”
“A witch?” Eliza sputtered. “But aren’t witches human?”
“Yes.” Tad sighed, turning to face the room.
“However, the O’Laighin clan was unique.
” He reached out, Eliza taking his hand and helping him sit.
He huffed, and his face pinched with pain.
He took a heavy breath, his regard back on me.
“Your family has lineage back to the days of old. Working for kings and queens when we ruled Earth’s realm. ”
“Wouldn’t that make them Druids then?” If I remembered correctly, the fae gods and goddesses elevated a group of witches, giving them real magic and longer life. They called them Druids, while witches stayed without true magic.
“Glad you know some history.” Tad dipped his head, shifting on the chair, seeming never to be comfortable. “That is true. Your family line at one time were Druids.”
“What?” I balked. “But—?”
Tad held up his hand, and I slammed my mouth shut, letting him finish.
“Not all Druids were happy with their new role among the fae. Some were treated kindly and became very powerful. Too powerful for some. Other Druids were not treated so well and were forced to help advance ambitious leaders and were treated like slaves.”
“After centuries, some clans did not want to be slaves anymore, beholden to the Fae kings and queens. They refused and were punished for it. In death, they would walk the earth forever—tortured in purgatory—not alive, but not dead.”
“O’Laighin was one clan forced into servitude.
Over time, Balfour O’Laighin assembled a group of Druids who felt the same, an underground rebellion, plotting to overthrow their cruel masters.
That group grew more radicalized and turned to black magic.
To hate. Everything we Druids are against.” Tad touched his forehead, grief hinting in his shaking hands.
“One night, they put their plan into action. O’Laighin slaughtered his fae lord and the entire fae household, including servants and the king’s children. ”
“What?” I breathed.
“They ran, but were caught by another high king. Someone who was the enemy of the family they murdered. So instead of having them killed, because the king benefited greatly from the death of his foe, the king instead stripped them of their title. This was a great humiliation among my kind, to become low-bred witches again and have a curse placed on them, forcing them to work for his family line until the end of theirs. A curse which had you fear death far more than servitude.”
“Necromancer is not a race . . . it is a curse.” My mother’s voice came into my head again.
“A curse?” Killian asked. “What kind of curse?”
I bit down on my lip, realization hitting me. “In the death of their monarch, they become necromancers.”
“Necromancers?” the entire room repeated in shocked unison.
Neither Tad nor I looked away from each other, understanding far more than anyone else.
“That man, O’Laighin . . .” Tad stared right at me. “He was your grand-father.”
Gasps fizzed in the room, bouncing off me as the information sunk in slowly. Everything I saw in the vision of my mother in the war, Tad coming in, all made sense now. And it was why my mother and her clan had to fight in the war for Queen Aneira and became necromancers when she died that night.
“The curse was supposed to continue on in the O’Laighin family line until they died out.” Tad gripped the armchair. “But you carry no such curse. I don’t understand, but you are different. And oddly absent of magic now.”
My heart sunk.
“So what does it make her? Druid? Witch? Human? Fae?” Killian asked. “I can’t sense any of those.”
“Me either.” Tad eyed me curiously. “You don’t seem to be any of them.”
“Then what am I?”
“Nothing I have ever come across before.” Tad shook his head. “But this is even different from when I first met you . . . what did you do, my dear?” He leaned forward, his voice barely above a whisper. “You had magic before. Why don’t you now?”
The story clogged up my throat, not making it past my tongue. I used up the magic saving my uncle and bringing seven necromancers back to life.
The treasure everyone had been searching over a decade for was an empty shell now. Nothing.
Just like me.
“Is it gone for good?” My throat squeezed, my nails digging into my palms. If anyone could see, it would be a druid. “My magic is gone, isn’t it?”
Tad slanted his head, really digging into me, frustration marking his expression.
“Like I said, I can’t see anything inside you, girl.
” He shook his head. “Only gray. It’s like this strange reflective shield.
As if you are still shielding yourself, even though your aura is right there for me to see. It’s so peculiar.”
Folding my arms, I let my hair curtain around me, my emotions almost suffocating me.
The room was silent for a long time before Tad spoke softly.
“Do you know the original meaning of your family’s name?”
I raised my head to Tad in curiosity. “No.”
“It means The Grey.”