“Noooooooooo!”
Denial turns into an anguished sob as the news shatters my heart like an arrow through glass, the jagged shards embedding into the soft parts of me. Unimaginable pain explodes in my chest. It spreads to my limbs, sinks into my bones, invades my very cells.
Gods, it hurts! Lightning courses through my veins, my broken heart sparking bolt after bolt of fiery currents, burning me alive from the inside out. The pain is killing me. I’m going to die. Oh, dear gods, I want to die…
My legs give out, and I double over, falling to my hands and knees in the center of the crowded throne room. Somewhere a banshee is wailing at the top of her lungs, her high-pitched shriek full of untold misery and heartache. But then I glimpse my reflection in the polished Ember floor, and I’m shocked to discover that it’s not a banshee screaming.
It’s me.
Something is happening. My eyes are sparking with an ethereal purple glow as bloody tears streak down my face and stain the lilac bodice of the new birthday gown my mother insisted I wear. My mother. The queen who is so consumed by her legacy that she kept me locked away in the safety of the palace while not caring that her son was off fighting in the war.
Rising slowly, I lock gazes with the One True Queen, and something in my eyes must alarm her because she takes a step back and watches me warily.
“You should have let me fight alongside my brother. It is your fault he is dead, and for that, I will never forgive you!”
“Oh, Taryn, I’m so sorry,” Bryn says with genuine sympathy shining in her green-gold eyes. “I can’t imagine how devastating that must have been.”
As though sensing my need to push past the memory of losing Devlyn, Finn prods the story forward. “So that’s when you left Faerie.”
“No.” Shame and guilt churn like acid in my gut, knowing what comes next. “That’s when I burned the throne room down. With everyone in it.”
TWENTY-SIXFINNIAN
It’s so quiet I can hear the blood pumping inside my veins. Even Tiernan reads the room loud and clear for once and stays silent. Her confession is one I didn’t see coming. None of us did, with the exception of Dmitri who I’m assuming already knew the story.
When she told me that Devlyn was her other half, I didn’t think she was being literal. I ached for her when I thought she’d lost her best friend, but knowing he was her twin brother magnifies that loss by a thousand.
Fiona, who knows more about fae magic than any of us, having been raised by a powerful conjurer, is the first to break the silence.
“Mystics within the specialty lines are incredibly rare, and their power remains dormant for centuries, the fae themselves not even knowing what they are until that power surfaces when they’re older and in their prime. But I read that in extreme cases, trauma could trigger the magic early. Is that what happened to you?”
Taryn nods stiffly. “I blacked out and woke up days later in my bedroom with the acrid stench of smoke in my nose and a thrum of magic like I’d never felt pulsing just beneath my skin. I could only remember bits of what happened in the throne room, but it was enough to know what I’d done.”
Taryn sits completely still, looking like she’s facing down a firing squad. Back erect, chest rising and falling with short breaths, and gaze straight ahead, chin slightly raised, waiting for us to condemn her.
She’s expecting disdain and judgment, disgust and indignation. She’ll get none of it.
Because she can’t see what I see. What I know even my family sees, despite only knowing her for mere hours. And that’s someone who is inherently good. The kind of person who is fundamentally compassionate and empathetic, loyal and brave. The kind of person who wanted to fight in the Purity war alongside her brother and the other warriors to protect her people instead of standing by doing nothing.
The kind of person who would cast a spell to spare another from the horrors of drowning, knowing she couldn’t do the same for herself.
Caiden weighs in, his voice as gentle as I’ve ever heard it. “The grief brought on by the news of your brother’s death caused your Mystic powers to manifest before you were ready to handle them, and you lost control. It was an accident, Taryn.”
“Lack of intent doesn’t change the fact that I killed dozens of innocent fae that day. I was no better than my mother. In fact, I was much worse. I no longer deserved to live among them, much less rule. So I left, taking nothing with me, save my Armas.”
“I understand,” Caiden says. “Have you tried practicing with your powers?”
I nod. “All the time at first. I’d do it in remote locations with no one around, but every time I open the door, it overpowers me. Eventually, I just locked it down and promised to never tap into it again. I only broke that promise once before today.”
“I’m guessing it didn’t go any better than the first time?” Tiernan asks.
Taryn glances briefly at Dmitri, and something passes between them I can’t read. Turning back to the rest of the room, she answers simply. “No, it didn’t.”
Caiden rubs his chin thoughtfully with the side of his finger, then looks at me. “Okay, Finn, get us up to speed on things. Start at the beginning and take us up through how you ended up trapped in our father’s secret burial site.”
Tiernan jumps in. “Seriously, what the hell is up with that? That had to be Mom or Seamus. Hey, wolf boys,” he says to the twins. “Did your dad secretly bury our dad? Because, as king, I can lock him in the castle dungeon for that shit.”
Fiona rolls her eyes. “We don’t have a castle or a dungeon.”
Connor gives Tiernan a droll look. “We don’t know anything about it, man.”
Conall’s mouth lifts in a grin. “But if we did, we wouldn’t tell you, anyway.”
Tier narrows his eyes and points at his friends standing by the bar. “You’re all going in the dungeon.”
Both men hold up their middle fingers in unison, completing the bro banter just as Caiden regains control of the room. “Enough, guys. Why our father’s ashes were buried and by whom is the least of our concerns right now, Tier. We need to know what Edevane’s next move is, so we can make ours. Finn?”
Leaning forward, I brace my elbows on my legs and clasp my hands together, remembering the day I spoke to Edevane while he was imprisoned beneath the Temple of Rhiannon.
“I guess it all starts the day Dmitri and I went to the ToR. The day Edevane escaped and stole the Tri-Stone, which wasn’t a gift from Rhiannon like our grandmother claimed. It was the spearhead from Lugh’s legendary Spear of Assal.”
Everyone listens as I tell them what Edevane revealed to me about Moira stealing the spear from Cormac during their affair before breaking it and hiding the halves so the Light King couldn’t use it to usurp Aine’s power and destroy Faerie. I finally come clean about the strange pull Taryn’s Armas had on me while we were searching for her, then gave a brief rundown on how Dmitri and I rescued her from the facility inside Superstition Mountain, which I’d told my brothers about when I saw them the other day.
“But then things get really wild.”
Conall pauses the bottle of water halfway to his mouth. “Sorry, were things not already really wild?”
Connor reaches up and smacks his brother on the back of the head. “Stop interrupting.”
