Chapter 33
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Afew hours later, we were all buzzed on espresso martinis thanks to the new vodka mom had slipped into the bottle in my pantry, and I had three brand new employees, or court members, or whatever they were, who were taking great pride in bossing me around.
I finally covered my ears and declared, “If you don’t stop, I’m going to make you all wear black and white uniforms and start calling you Beetlejuice.”
“Lame,” Simone slurred. She lifted her glass and gave it the hairy eyeball. “What the hell is in those things?”
“You’re the one who made them,” Mom said mildly, hiding her smile behind her glass.
“True.” Simone blinked. “Huh. I’m great at being a bartender!”
Moira patted Simone’s knee. “You are. The spiked vodka helps too.”
Another knock on the door made us all freeze. There were only a few people who could get to the porch. Moira and I locked eyes. A second later, we were both scrambling for the door.
Tess stood on the porch with a blanket and a wide-eyed expression.
I didn’t reach for her right away. “Tess?”
Moira wrung her hands beside me. “Are you…you?” she asked.
Tess nodded. “Lugh said he will see you very, very soon.” Her lower lip wobbled.
Moira and I reached for her at the same time, enveloping her in a tight hug before ushering her into the house and pressing a martini into her cold hands.
She gravitated toward my mother first, who wrapped a blanket around her and tucked her under her arm. Mom stroked Tess’s hair and murmured nonsensical words.
Silence fell for a couple of minutes until Tess blinked a few times. “Why do the shifters smell different?”
Moira frowned. “You can smell them? Like I can?”
Tess sipped her martini and shrugged. “They smell a little like Evie. Before that, they smelled a little like Caelan. But I can’t smell him at all anymore.” Her eyes widened. “Did something happen?”
Dad chuckled. “Someone should give her the condensed version.”
Garrett did just that, and as I listened to the man, I noticed something about him I never had before. He seemed less tense, more relaxed than normal.
Had working for Caelan been so tough? How had I missed so many things? I wanted to deny it, but the things he’d said to me.
I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, but I couldn’t discount the things from before. Maybe this was for the best. Maybe it took something as awful as this to shake me from my complacency.
But seeing Garrett smiling at Tess, when I’d rarely seen a genuine smile cross his face, knocked something loose inside me.
Even after our rocky start, he’d come to me when he could have gone anywhere.
And Simone had too. Granted, the fae were powerful, and I knew there was some self-preservation in their decision, but they’d come to me first.
And that had to mean something.
When Garrett finally stopped talking, Tess was sitting straight up gawking at him. Her pale gaze found mine. “Moira joined too?”
I nodded.
“What about me?”
I reached over and ruffled her hair. “We can talk when you’ve rested. You’ve spent quite a while under a powerful glamour, and I want to make sure you know you’re back in the real world and all of this really happened.”
At the disappointment in her eyes, I shook my head. “I’m not saying no, Tess. Not at all. I’m saying, let’s take a beat. Lugh is supposed to be gone, but I won’t believe it until I see it myself. I’ll go out tomorrow and find his usual haunts to make sure.”
“I’ll help,” Dad said.
“Me too,” Mom added.
“Once we know he’s gone, then we’ll talk. I’m worried he might try to get to you again.”
Tess nodded. “Okay, but he’s not after me, Evie. He wants you.”
The booming of the wards stopped me from interrogating Tess about that.
“Caelan’s here,” I said quietly.
“He felt the oath break,” Simone murmured. She sighed and started to rise, but Mom put her hand on the shifter’s arm.
“No. You’re Evie’s now. She will take care of this.”
Simone’s eyes tightened at the edges. “Be careful. Caelan in a rage is…”
She shook her head. “Just be careful.”
“Same for you,” Mom said to Garrett when he started to rise.
But Garrett shook his head and stood anyway. “My role is different from Simone’s. I will always stand beside her when danger comes to call.”
Dad’s eyes glimmered with approval. He inclined his head. “I’ll follow you out.”
Dad and Garrett came outside with me and waited on the porch while I walked down the steps and to the edge of the wards.
A golden glow bounced off the wards, highlighting Caelan in a soft glow. Any other time, it might have been beautiful, but Caelan was in a full-blown rage. He paced back and forth, his gaze burning into me as I walked closer.
“You think you can take them from me?” he snarled. Claws slid from his fingers, the razor sharpness heightened by the soft glow of the light.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him I already had. “If something is wrong, you need to figure out a way to tell me. Your behavior has been off for a while now, but especially now.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me!” he roared, the sound sending birds flying from the trees.
Oh my gods. Fee and Poe. My heartbeat picked up. I needed to get them away from the Keep.
Caelan’s nostrils flared. “Are you afraid of me, Evie?” The smile that crossed his face held a savage edge.
I knew at that moment if he could reach me, he would kill me.
“I never used to be.”
Rachel stepped out from the brush, her chestnut hair swinging around her shoulders. She said nothing, only went to Caelan’s side and looped an arm around his waist.
“Release them,” he growled. “Now.”
“They don’t want to be released.”
“THEY ARE MINE!” Sharp canines slid from his incisors.
“No longer,” I said quietly. “They came to me and asked to be a part of my court.”
Rachel snorted. “A court? You’re a wannabe princess playing with forces you don’t understand.”
I smiled. Her proprietary hold on Caelan’s waist cut deep, but the Lord allowed it. I held my tongue about it, and instead, spoke to Rachel. “I wish you the best of luck. Becoming a Lady of a territory is no easy thing.”
“I don’t need your luck,” Rachel hissed. “I was born to do this.”
A strange flash of light rolled over her iris. Not the color of a Lord, but something sickly. The color of illness, a green I never saw in the natural world. I tilted my head and focused harder, but it had disappeared.
“Give them back,” Caelan said, quieter this time, an almost plaintive whisper.
I stilled at the hopelessness in his voice. Rachel’s claws slid from her fingers and dug into Caelan’s side. Blood, visible even in the low light, seeped through the shirt’s fabric.
“Caelan?” I took a step closer to the wards. “Whatever this is, fight it.” He would have never allowed someone to hurt him like that.
What in the hell was going on?
The Lord’s eyes widened, and he took a step back, but Rachel’s grip tightened, and like a light switch, his expression went cold and aloof once more.
I hoped Garrett had witnessed this.
“Simone and Garrett are blood sworn to the fae now. To me. They no longer answer to you.”
Rachel bared her teeth. “They won’t be with you long. You’ll never be strong enough to hold them.”
“You know nothing about me.” I allowed a sheen of crimson to roll across my eyes, and for the first time since everything happened, Rachel looked unsure.
“I will kill you,” Caelan hissed. He lunged for me, claws extended, face screwed in a grimace of concentration.
I held my ground, secure in my enhanced wards. Caelan bounced harmlessly off the boundary, landing in a graceful crouch. “You won’t always stay behind these wards. One day soon, you and I will have it out.”
I stared at the man I’d loved and wondered when the moment was I’d resolved not to fight for us any longer.
I’d help him, if only because of what we had, but I don’t think I could ever forgive the poison falling from his lips, the barbs pointed right to my deepest insecurities.
How could one ever recover from something like that?
“You are not my enemy. I’m not sure where it all went so wrong, but this is not you. One day you’re going to wake up and wonder what happened. I want you to remember this moment. You are no longer welcome in my home or on my lands.”
Footsteps from behind and my father was at my side a moment later. “Much the same as her shop, Lord, returning will net you a death sentence.”
Cernunnos’ attention turned to Rachel. “I’m of the opinion my daughter should kill you where you stand, but she’s a new queen and raised outside of my lands. Her heart is more tender than mine.”
Rachel sneered. “And who the hell are you, old man?”
Garrett wheezed with laughter from behind us.
My father, dressed in his familiar outfit of joggers and a t-shirt, smiled faintly. Magic swelled in the surrounding air until he was at least a foot taller than me, horns extending another two to three feet above his head.
Rachel blanched, her mouth falling open.
“My father,” I said. “Cernunnos, King of the Fae. My mother is inside. Cliona, Queen of the Banshees, in case you were curious.”
The shifter went white, her eyes wide in her pale face. She tugged on Caelan’s arm and murmured something in his ear.
“I’ll follow you in a moment,” he said.
Rachel didn’t hesitate. She turned on her heel and hurried away. When she was outside of earshot, Caelan stepped closer to the wards.
Dad frowned. “Step closer, Lord.”
Caelan’s upper lip curled.
My father merely watched him with an expression I couldn’t identify. “I can make you. I’m asking to be polite and for the space you hold in my daughter’s heart.”
To his credit, Caelan stepped closer. Dad reached through the wards with one hand and touched the Lord’s forehead. A mix of gold and green light speared through Caelan’s skin.
His eyes closed, pain rolling over Caelan’s features as Dad did…something to him. Every second it took, Dad’s expression grew even more grim.
“I’m going to have to open the wards,” he said. “He will not harm you.”
I nodded, not having a clue what was going on, but trusting him regardless. He must have found something.
Dad dropped the wards for a split second, just long enough to yank Caelan through. Rachel, apparently watching from the trees like a female peeping Tom, screeched and came barreling back through the woods, as if she knew what Dad had done and threw herself toward the hole.
She bounced off the wards so hard, she flew back several yards. Dad disappeared in a flash of light, Caelan in his arms, but not before saying in an urgent voice, “Get to the house.”
I didn’t wait to see what Rachel would do. The wards would hold no matter what she did. I took off running toward the house, Garrett waiting for me on the porch.
His face was grim, a shining ring of gold around his iris.
“Something’s wrong with Caelan,” I breathed, though he already knew.
With an iron grip on my elbow and a final look behind us, Garrett ushered us inside.