“Yes, Rowan?”
She studied me with those ice blue eyes—eyes that were an exact copy of her father’s. “What happened with dad?”
I stopped pouring. Slowly, I set the coffee pot back on the counter. “What… what do you mean?”
She put the letter down on the table and stared at it. She shrugged. “I mean what happened between you and dad.”
“That was a long time ago,” I started.
She swallowed hard and stared at me. “Will you please tell me?”
I was quiet for a second.
I looked at her thoughtfully from the kitchen island. Jet-black hair, ice-blue eyes—you didn’t have to look at her for long to tell she was Sinjin’s daughter. That air of effortless, unstoppable confidence she carried with her at all times, her strangely refined sense of personal style, her near obsessive fondness for sports cars... Rowan had so much of her father in her. They’d spent more than a decade living completely separate lives, yet his influence was so clear. She couldn’t possibly belong to anyone else.
I felt a sharp stab of guilt, like I’d been speared through the stomach.
I’d kept them apart, and there were moments—brief—where I questioned my decision. Times when I stayed up for hours late at night as I wondered if what I had done and continued to do was right. But I always came to the same conclusion—I was merely protecting my daughter. Because there were some things that went beyond forgiving.
“Mum?”
Maybe it was time. Maybe Rowan was old enough. She was fifteen now, nearly sixteen.
I pulled out a chair and sat down with her. I wanted to hold her hands, but that felt like… that felt like it might be too much. I wanted this conversation to be casual, not weighty and deep. I wanted to explain things and make her understand why I’d chosen what I had and then I wanted to move on. I wanted us to move on and continue to have a wonderful life together, without Sinjin.
“I know you need to understand,” I said. “It’s not fair to keep you in the dark. I know that. It’s just... it’s a hard thing to talk about.”
“What happened?”
Here we go.
“When you were a baby, you,” I started. “You were taken.”
“Like... social services taken or kidnapped taken?”
“Kidnapped taken.”
Her eyes narrowed and then widened with surprise. “By whom?”
“Something called the Fir Darrig.”
“The what?”
I nodded, knowing she wouldn’t understand. “The Fir Darrig was a creature from the land of faery. Part of the Unseelie Court, the dark fae.” I swallowed.
“Okay,” Rowan started.
“And your father… your father and I went after you. To the land of Faery. And we were able to get you back, but not without… not without making a deal.”
“A deal?”
I nodded. “It was something I didn’t find out about until much later, Rowan,” I said and felt my breath going heavy as I remembered the specifics. “But the Unseelie took your father prisoner and when they did, he made a deal with the Fir Darrig.”
“What was the deal?”
I didn’t want to tell her. There was an enormous, petulant part of me that was afraid she would hear the story and side with her dad. That she’d decide I’d made a rash and petty decision, and in deciding as much, she’d open all his letters, leave and go find him and never speak to me again.
And there was something awful in that fear, too. This trembling terror of what Sinjin might say, that he might be able to convince her he was in the right. That he might be able to convince me, and I’d have to reconcile ten years of being completely, unforgivably wrong.
“Mum? What’s the matter?”
I cleared my throat. Tears threatened my eyes. “Your father…” I said slowly, trying to keep the memories from infiltrating my mind. They were just… too painful. “He made a… a trade with the Fir Darrig to get you back.”
She caught on at once. “A trade? For whom?”
I scoffed. Not because it was a foolish question, but because the truth seemed so painfully obvious. Realization dawned in her eyes.
“Jolie’s life. In exchange for yours.”
Rowan was quiet for a moment. Then she looked up at me and her big eyes shone with unshed tears. “Does Emma know?”
“No.”
“Are you ever going to tell her?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know,” I said and shook my head as I took a deep breath. I’d already asked myself this question a million times. And I still didn’t have a good answer. “Eventually, maybe, but not now. She has other things to worry about.”
“Other things to worry about besides the deal that dad made with the Unseelie that killed her mom?” asked Rowan.
“Yes. Emma doesn’t need this on her plate right now, not while she’s in the middle of school and she already has an absentee father. I don’t… I don’t want to add more stress on her. It wouldn’t be right.”
“Her plate’s not going to get any bigger,” Rowan said, shaking her head. “You have to tell her.”
“I will… in time.”
Rowan shut her mouth. She leaned forward, both hands on the table, as she shook her head and bit her lower lip. She was about to start crying—I could see it in the way she was trying to hold herself back.
“You can’t not tell Emma, mum,” she said when she finally looked up at me and her ice-blue eyes were wet with tears.
“Do you think I haven’t thought about this?” I asked as I took a deep breath. “That I haven’t thought about this every single day since Jolie died? Do you think there are ten minutes that go by without me thinking about how much this has messed up Emma’s life already? And yours?”
When I finished, I was panting. Rowan was staring at me.
“I’m sorry,” she said and lost the battle with her tears. “I… I can’t believe dad is the reason aunt Jolie is gone!”
It was the same thing I’d told myself so many times.
“No, I’m sorry, Rowan.” I hurried to her and wrapped her in my arms as she held me and cried against my shoulder. I had wanted to spare her this. I’d wanted to protect her, to keep her away from the miserable realities of life. I wanted to keep her here in this house which was so far away from everything, everyone. I just wanted to… keep her safe.
“I asked.”
“I’m sorry you did and I’m also sorry I didn’t tell you sooner… it wasn’t… right. I just… I never knew how to bring it up or what to say.”
She lifted her head and smiled at me. “You did everything right, mum,” she said between the tears. “For Emma and for me.”
“I did what I thought was right.”
“Will you tell me the rest of the story?” she asked.
I took a deep breath, but nodded. It was time she understood everything. “The night Jolie disappeared,” I started. “I was out in the woods beside Kinloch. I was training and I heard them.”
“Dad and Aunt Jolie?”
“Dad and… someone else.”
“... What were they talking about?”
“Nothing at first. I just heard…” Jolie screaming, I thought. “I heard Jolie. She made a... a noise like she was surprised, then she got quiet. Sinjin said something about someone breaking their word and…” I took a deep breath. “I saw them. But it wasn’t Jolie standing with Sinjin. Jolie wasn’t… there anymore.”
“Who was there?”
“I don’t know,” I said as I shook my head, the memories returning with such force, it felt like it had all happened only yesterday. “Sinjin had his back to me and this... this robed creature stood in front of him, in front of a... vortex... thing.”
“A portal?”
“Maybe.”
“What happened then?”
“The creature laughed.”
“What kind of creature was it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It was dark at the time and difficult to make
out features. Whatever it was, it was much smaller than your dad and I just remember it was wearing a robe. It said, ‘Pleasure doing business with you’ to Sinjin. And then… it just vanished.”
Rowan got this look on her face. Cold, haunted, utterly still.
“What did you do?”
“I had to see what had happened, where the creature had gone… where Jolie had gone. I just was so… confused. ” I took a breath. “So I ran up to Sinjin. And I demanded to know what had happened but… he couldn’t answer. He looked as shocked as I was.”
Don’t think about him, don’t think about him, don’t think about him.
His image sprang to mind regardless. Dark hair, glacier eyes. Cool, calm, collected. Handsome. So incredibly handsome.
I mouthed, “stop it” behind my hands. Saying it out loud helped, sometimes.
“What happened then?” Rowan asked.
“When I looked over the edge of the cliff, there was nothing. No sign of Jolie and no sign of the creature.”
“And the portal thingy?”
“Gone,” I answered with a shrug. “I figured the creature must have whisked her away into the portal with him.”
“Then Aunt Jolie isn’t dead?” Rowan asked.
I sighed. I’d asked myself this question so many times. “I don’t know. I imagine she is.”
“What did dad do? What did he say?”
“He couldn’t say anything because it was obvious what had happened. He’d traded Jolie’s life for yours when the Fir Darrig had taken you when you were a baby. It just took the creature ten years to return and finish the trade.”
“Then was the creature that took aunt Jolie the Fir Darrig?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“Is that what Dad told you?”
“He didn’t tell me anything because as soon as I put the pieces together, I just… left. I had to get away from him. I had to be alone so I could think, so I could understand what had just happened.”
“I understand,” Rowan said as she nodded and dropped her head a little bit.
“Sinjin came after me, of course. And he said it was all an accident, that it wasn’t what I thought it was, but I just…”
Tears started bleeding from my eyes. I couldn’t stop them. I swiped at them angrily, hoping to catch them before Rowan could see them, but it didn’t work. She reached across the table to hold my hand.
“What did dad mean?”
I shrugged. “Sinjin said the trade had been you for someone of your bloodline. He said he’d offered himself, and that the Fir Darrig had accepted and yet…”
Breathe.
“You didn’t believe him?”
“No!” I said, a little too harshly. “I didn’t and I still don’t believe him. I just think he couldn’t face me and tell me the truth—that he’d traded Jolie for you.”
“Then what happened?”
“I couldn’t look at him after that,” I said as I dried my tears on the arm of my sweatshirt. “I couldn’t be with him, I couldn’t touch him, I... I couldn’t allow him to stay in your life, or in Emma’s life. Or in mine.”
Rowan squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry, Mum.”
We were quiet for a minute.
Rowan made a thoughtful noise, low in her throat.
“I always wondered if Emma’s dad and my dad got along like our moms did.” She shrugged, but there was something heavy in her gaze that hadn’t been there before. “I guess neither my dad nor Uncle Rand belongs in our lives, right?”
Part of me wanted to say, “that’s right” and be done with it. Another part of me wanted to leap to Rand’s defense. It was a ridiculous urge. No one had disappointed me more in the wake of Jolie’s death than Rand Balfour. But maybe the man he used to be deserved some mercy.
“Rand was a different man before Jolie died,” I said. “Emma probably doesn’t remember that. She would’ve been too young, but he wasn’t always a bad father, or a bad man. Losing someone you love changes a person. And some people just end up changed for the worse.”
Rowan leaned back in her chair. Barely moving her head, she glanced over her shoulder. The frog toes in the pot gurgled on the stove.
“I think the frog toes are done.” A strand of black hair broke out of her braid. She swept it back, eyes on the pot. “Can I take them to Mathilda?”
I blinked, a little startled she wasn’t still probing. Maybe she’d heard enough.
“Sure,” I said. “Come right back to the house, though. It’ll be dark soon.”
“I know, Mum.” Rowan offered me a small smile before she left.
Her pigtail braids bounced behind her shoulders as she walked. I followed her path until she disappeared into the tree line. She was a smart girl, intuitive, and strong-willed. I knew she could handle anything the world threw at her, so why did I suddenly feel like I’d given her too much information?
When I was her age, I would’ve killed to know the whole truth about my parents. It would’ve saved me years of confusion. I’d never been one to treat my loved ones with kid gloves, but things change when you have a daughter.
All you want to do is protect her.
I never wanted her to feel the kind of pain I’d felt. And so much of that pain had come from the lies my adopted father, Luce, had told me, but Luce had never loved me. Maybe, if he had, he would’ve sheltered me from the world’s dark corners for as long as possible. Or maybe, he would’ve told me the whole truth.
I longed for the telepathic connection to Jolie I once had. I missed communicating with her in our thoughts. Mostly, I just missed her.
Wish I had that ability with Rowan, I thought.
At that moment, I would’ve given just about anything to know what my daughter was thinking.
FIVE
DUINE
There was an arrogance to Pagan.
Why else would he have situated his hideout here, on the north Atlantic coast of Cornwall, at a place called Tintagel? The name instantly evoked the memory of King Arthur, whose castle of the same name still stood in ruins on a clifftop promontory, projecting into the ocean.
Pagan was consciously connecting himself with England’s legendary king, about whom so many stories had been told that the man himself (if he had ever even existed) was hidden behind the grandeur of the myth. What right had a revolutionary upstart like Pagan to associate himself with Arthur? And why the hell hadn’t I thought of it first?
Well, Pagan was going to pay for his arrogance tonight. If the information extracted from my helpful assassin (now, regrettably deceased) was correct, then Pagan’s army—though he had barely enough men to warrant the word—was camped in the bay between the promontory and the mainland, near Merlin’s cave (there was another name he had appropriated for his own self-aggrandizement).
Pagan’s camp would be protected by wards, and there was no point in pretending Pagan was not a skilled mage, but I had men enough with me to overwhelm that magic. I would lose soldiers tonight, but my army was large enough that I could stomach losses that Pagan could not. Besides, what did a few lives matter? As long as I got my hands on Pagan. By the end of tonight, the Order of the Templar would have lost its figurehead, and without him, the whole cursed organization would fall.
And that was an event I could not wait to witness.
As evening fell, we began our approach. I wished we could cast a spell of concealment, but someone as shrewd as Pagan was bound to have sensitive spells set up to detect magic. Better that we do this the old-fashioned way, by stealth—although it is hard for so many armed men to be stealthy. From my point of view, the advantage of Tintagel was that, as long as Pagan had enough men, he could easily defend the fortress on the landward side. The disadvantage was that that left the seaward side open, and it was much harder to approach unnoticed by sea. Not to mention the fact that I wanted to avoid an ocean battle. No, we needed to strike with extreme force and crush all resistance before they had a chance to react. And we would have to do so by storming
the landward side.
A thin, ribbon of adrenalin-fueled excitement ran through me as I waited for the last light of day to vanish. Though I was a warrior by nature, as High Mage of the King’s Alliance it sometimes suited me to step back and let others take on the dangerous work. But not this time. Tonight I wanted to be in for the kill.
The sun set.
I drew back my hands, murmuring words beneath my breath as I drew out a ball of fire from within my chest. It flickered yellow, orange and red as it spun between my fingers, growing and gaining in power until it was spinning with energy. With a cry, I let the ball fly, sending it on its way, arcing across the coastline, like a comet bringing death with it. The ball of fire dipped over the cliff edge, plunging down to the Templar camp. It was too much to hope that it would kill any of them—they were bound to be sheltered—but it would cause panic and that would play into our hands now.
At my signal, the army of the King’s Alliance rushed for the cliffs. A double row of soldiers, including all the mages I could muster, stood along the cliff edge, firing a defensive barrage down into the rocky bay below, providing cover for the infantry men abseiling down the cliffs.
The Order of the Templar had been around for a while, even before the fall of the Underworld, but they had been a nothing organization of withered old men who ‘kept an eye on things’. They believed in the purity of magic, whatever the hell that meant.
When the Underworld fell and other groups began to rise to fill the power vacuum, then suddenly the words of those withered old men became relevant, as they spoke out against the ‘corruption of magic’. They expressed horror at how magic was being used as the tool of the oppressor and a way to win power. Needless to say, once I had seized command of the King’s Alliance and outlawed witches and warlocks, rebranding them as Mages who were all subservient to me, the Order had some criticism. In hindsight, some of them had probably regretted voicing that criticism, but they didn’t live to regret it for long.
It was then that Pagan appeared, as if from nowhere. Had he been one of the Order’s young acolytes? He was a talented one if he had been. Perhaps he was a magic user from one of the other groups or factions I had annihilated, one who had latched onto what was left of the Order of the Templar as a useful propaganda tool. It did not matter. His words echoed those of the old men who preceded him; railing against the corruption of magic. But unlike them, he spoke with a firebrand passion, igniting a zealous fervor in all who heard him. He might be saying the same things as the old men, but he spoke with a voice like thunder, which made him a rallying point for every magic user who opposed me, everyone who thought magic should be used to serve not to rule.
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