47
Finn
Before I can go after my mate, before I can start making any kind of sense of what I want to do with my life and what my future looks like, there’s one very important conversation I need to have.
One chain I need to break, long overdue.
My father returns from his trip to Traverdale in the late afternoon. I know just where to find him, and despite the knot in my gut, this isn’t something that can wait.
“Ah,” he says, barely sparing me a glance as I walk into his office. “You’re still here. I assume this means you’re ready to speak rationally?”
“I am.”
He finishes whatever it is he’s writing on the document in front of him, then sets it aside and gives me his full attention.
“Good. Then let’s discuss this mate of yours and how we might leverage her relationship with the queen to—”
“I have no intention of letting you use my mate and her connections for your advantage. You will have no say in our relationship moving forward, or in anything that concerns me, for that matter.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s my life,” I tell him. “It’s not yours to decide what I do with, and if that means I get kicked out of the Nighfall family or disinherited or whatever other punishment you see fit for me, so be it.”
My father’s face turns a truly unpleasant shade of red.
He stands, trading his aloof nonchalance for the hands-braced-on-the-desk, looming, more obviously aggressive stance he only takes when one of his children has well and truly pissed him off.
“Any son of mine knows his duty to our family.”
“Then perhaps I’m not a son of yours any longer.”
This time, he goes so far as to get right in my face. Circling around the side of his desk and crossing the room, he takes all that macho bluster and closes in on me.
Amusing, the way he thinks it will make a damn difference.
Truly, if he thinks there’s anything he could say, anything he could do, any threat he could level to change my mind about putting my mate first and foremost in my life, he doesn’t know me at all.
And perhaps that’s just the truth of the matter.
He doesn’t know me.
He’s never cared to, and he probably never will.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me,” I tell him. “If your condition for remaining a part of this family is placing my mate on the altar of your ambition, then I want no part of it.”
My father opens his mouth to say something else—perhaps to disown me with as much finality as I’ve apparently just disowned him—when the creaking of his study door opening catches both our attention.
My mother stands in the doorway.
Steely eyed and with a sharp scowl on her face, she takes in the scene before her for a few long, silent seconds.
“After our son’s recent visit to Gales Harbor, I thought I owed you a visit, Geralf, and I see I was right.” She looks him up and down contemptuously. “Care to explain what’s happening here?”
“It’s none of your concern,” my father says, though all the bravado has gone out of his voice.
“Anything to do with my children will always concern me, especially when my idiot of an ex-husband is doing his best to ruin their happiness.”
Entirely put in his place, my father backs down.
Though I wish I could have been the one who sends him shuffling back to his desk, head down, it’s nearly as satisfying to see my mother be the one to remind him what an ass he is.
“Finn,” she says calmly. “I think your conversation with your father is over. He and I need the room so we can talk.”
There are very few things in any of the thirteen realms that can make my father back down from a fight.
My mother is one of those few.
With a brusque nod and a dark look which promises we are not wholly done with this conversation, he dismisses me.
But the joke is on him, because we are, in fact, done.
Unless he wants to take it all back, apologize, and commit to spend the rest of his life correcting his ways and attempting to be less of an overbearing bastard, we have nothing else to talk about.
And since I can’t imagine any of those things will ever come to pass, I leave without another word.
What it means for me, I don’t know.
Where I’ll go, what I’ll do, it’s all a mystery.
But I feel a thousand pounds lighter as I leave his office, and lighter still when my mother gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze on my way out the door.
I’m sure the two of us will have more to discuss when she’s finished here, and despite my certainty, I’m also sure I haven’t heard the last from my father.
Whatever’s happening here between the two of them, though, I want no part of it. I silently excuse myself and make a quick stop by my room to grab a few of my things before I go.
It’s a bittersweet feeling, knowing I may have permanently lost my place to claim myself as a son of Lord Nighfall—at least a son who hasn’t been disowned—but I can’t make myself regret it as I pack up and leave.
Making my way through the labyrinth of the court, I find myself at its center in short order.
The atrium is quiet at this time of night. Most of the courtiers have either ensconced themselves in the great hall for dinner and ale and more wheeling and dealing as the night grows later. Others have gone home to their own lives and families.
It’s my favorite time of day to wander the court.
When it’s quiet enough to think.
When I have a few hours where I feel no need to see or be seen, to perform for anyone or be on in the way I always tend to be when I’m in a crowd.
Tonight, though, I wish I wasn’t here alone.
I wish I had my mate by my side, and despite her assurance she would return to me when she was able, the magick in my chest still feels unsettled.
A soft tug, but a persistent one, a whisper calling me out of the court.
Perhaps it’s just my own longing, just the way I’m missing her like I’m always missing her when she’s not near.
But when that pull gets stronger, when the whisper turns into a call, I decide to follow it.
Just a quick trip to the human realm couldn’t hurt, could it?
A few minutes, perhaps, to see if she’s alright or if there’s anything I can do to help in whatever business she has with her coven.
Nevermind that I’ve never been to the human realm and don’t have the faintest idea where to find her when I get there.
I’m sure the bond will take care of that.
Full to the brim with those reckless thoughts, I open a portal as soon as I’ve cleared the mountain gates.
It takes me straight to my destination.
I lay my hand on the Veil, watch the colors shift and change, then step into the emerald light.