by Smith, Fleur
“I tried to protect myself, but my magic was not strong enough to fight them all. Since my naming, I had trained, both as a diplomat and as a protector, but my knowledge never prepared me for dealing with so fierce an attack or with so many assailants at once. It was when I feared all hope was lost that someone fought the Unseelies away from me. When I found I was safe, I looked up and saw the darkest eyes I had ever seen on a human. He held his hand out to me, and his gentle kindness left me dumbstruck. I had no way of knowing at the time that he was part of the Rain, and because of my bruised and bloodied state, he remained ignorant to my fae nature. By the time I learned how he had the skill and ability to fight off the Unseelies, it was too late for me. I was already in love. It was not something I had planned for, or even dared hope to experience for myself. Of everyone in the world, the two of you should understand that you cannot help who you fall in love with, even if the implications are unforeseeable.”
“Stop!” Clay shouted. His eyes flashed with black as anger rolled through his body. He released my hand, and his fingers curled into a tight fist.
I staggered backward in shock at his sudden outburst. The remarkable calm he’d shown was clearly a dam that had broken in him with devastating consequences. I’d never seen him so overtaken by rage. Not even when I’d uttered words designed to hurt him as he left me in the hotel following Dad’s death.
“I don't want to hear your lies! I just want to know why the hell a fae is standing here, masquerading as the mother who left me when I was little!” His gaze dropped to fall on the axe on the floor. In an instant, it was in his hand as he advanced on Fiona brandishing it as a weapon. His voice held an edge that warned me that he wasn’t thinking clearly. “I know all about doppelgangers. Sometimes they don’t know where their doubles are kept, but sometimes they do. I’ll ask you one time, and one time only. Where is my mother?”
Fiona backed away toward the door with her hands raised in surrender. “I know it’s hard for you to understand, but I am your mother.”
I put my hand on Clay’s shoulder to stop him from doing something he’d regret. When he shrugged it off, I moved into place between Fiona and him.
“Clay, she smells of magnolias, crab apples, and Kwanzan cherry.”
“So?” He met my gaze with steely eyes filled with madness and confusion.
“Magnolias,” I murmured as a reminder of everything we’d been through—of the place that had once given him peace purely because the scent reminded him of his mother.
My words, or something he saw when he looked at me, must have calmed him a little. He loosened his hold on the axe, and I used his weakened grip to my advantage, prying the weapons from his hands.
“There are so many mistakes I have made in my life,” Fiona said. “But allowing the distance between myself and my precious fledglings is the one I regret the most.”
“Shut up!” Clay said as he squeezed his eyes shut again. “You don’t get to talk to me.”
“You must believe me,” Fiona almost sobbed.
“My mother is not fae.” He spat the word out as if it was poisonous before spinning on his heels and walking away with his hands clutched into his hair.
“Please, Clay,” she said. “Please, listen to me.”
He spun back instantly. “If you really are my mom, then I have one question for you? Just one. Why?” His voice hitched and his gaze was wild. “Why did you leave us? Why did you abandon your kids?”
“I . . . I didn’t leave.”
“Liar!” His throat sounded shredded, ripped into as many frayed and tiny pieces as his shattered sanity.
“I had no other choice. Once Troy found out what I was, he stole you away from me. I tried to find you, but he had hidden you all too well. I think that even if I had somehow taken you back, he would have hunted you three to the ends of the Earth. He loved you all so much.
“By the time I was finally able to locate you, it was too late. You had already been poisoned against our kind.”
Clay’s hands clenched into fists, tugging the hair on either side of his head, and his nostrils flared with anger as he shook his head violently from side to side. “Bullshit!” he cried. His voice was growing hoarse.
“Maybe you should leave,” I said quietly to Fiona as I reached for Clay to let him know I was there for him. “I think we need some time to process this.”
Nodding sadly, she started to leave before stopping with an expression that broke my heart. “I want to tell you the whole story, but I will wait until you are willing to hear it. I have wanted to contact you for so long,” she said, glancing at Clay. “I will wait for as long as you need, but please try not to take too much time, if not for me than for Mackenzie. Every minute could be her last.”
“Your daughter,” I confirmed for Clay’s sake. I wanted him to know there was something else—someone else—at stake, hoping it might be enough to break through his confusion and give him something to focus on.
Fiona wrung her hands together. “I am very concerned for her welfare. I know how much Louise suffered at their hands—”
“No, you did that! Your kind did that!” Clay’s angry shouts cut off her words. Tremors overtook his whole body as his fury raced through his veins and ravaged his emotions.
Fiona’s features fell deeper into sorrow in the shadow of Clay’s rage. She sobbed and met my eye. “I understand I have made a mess of the situation; however, I beg of you to please help Mackenzie. Please?” she pleaded.
Even though I hated to think of anyone suffering at the hands of the Rain, it wasn’t enough to stop me from wanting to shout at Fiona to shut up and get out of the house.
Clay buckled to the floor and a strangled choking sound issued from him. I hated Fiona for dumping the news on us without warning. She could have found a hundred other ways to tell him. Any one of those might have saved Clay from the anguish he was feeling over the revelation. She could have even taken the opportunity to warn me that it could be a possibility when she first arrived so that I was prepared to help Clay through it rather than feeling like I was standing idly by without a clue how to help him.
How do you process that your mother is one of the things you hate the most?
Fiona’s features crumbled at the silence she faced in response to her quiet pleading. It wasn’t possible to fake the desperation that emanated from her. My resolve to put Clay first and ignore her requests for help faltered. Even though Clay was hurting, and even though he was bound to be confused about the situation, I believed Fiona. Her concern for her daughter was real, and justifiable given what I knew of the Rain. I was resistant to leave Clay alone, even for a moment, but eventually I pulled myself away to open the door for her.
“I’ll talk to Clay,” I whispered as she left. “You have to understand that you can’t just come in here like this and drop that sort of bombshell without warning. How could you possibly expect him to be immediately okay after finding out that apparently his mother is back, and that she’s fae, something that he was raised to hate? It’s too much for anyone to expect one person to accept.”
The moment he—and I—had discovered my true nature rushed through my mind again. Just like this situation, he’d burned with anger but had eventually calmed. I hoped he would have a similar reaction to Fiona’s news once there had been time for him to absorb it all. I was certain he needed time to process it in his own way.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I have imagined this moment so many times over the last twenty-two years, but I could never really guess how it would go. I had hoped for better than this, but—” She stared longingly at her long-lost youngest son. “I should have expected this outcome, given what they have been taught about us.”
Clay muttered something from his kneeling position on the floor, but it was too low for me to understand. Fiona dropped her head down as tears spilled from her eyes in response to Clay’s anguish. I could see by the stress on her face that she was telling the truth.
It wasn’t m
y place to ask for the story though—Clay needed to decide when, and if, he was ready for that. My resolve to ignore Fiona’s need weakened further until it was a crumpled mess on the floor.
“Give him some time. He just needs to process this,” I whispered to her as I closed the door.
At the sound of the door clicking closed, Clay lifted himself to his feet and paced as he continued his low muttering. Crossing the room quickly, I drew Clay into my arms. Despite his initial resistance to my touch, he quickly melted against me and rested his forehead against mine. We stood like that for ages, breathing in the same air, as his blindingly tempestuous anger slowly cooled to a restless breeze. Eventually, the tremors that had overtaken his body slowed and his breathing returned to normal.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.
He shook his head before ducking down to capture my lips. What began as a chaste kiss blazed hotter as his anger shifted to desperation. An urgency overtook him, and his tongue stroked once against my lower lip.
His mouth became more demanding and relentless as he poured his excess emotions into me. Closing my eyes, I allowed myself to forget what had happened and simply enjoy his touch. I could tell that he needed to get lost in us more than he wanted to talk through his feelings. At least, for the moment.
Almost instantly, his hands were caressing my back, and he held my body against his. Threading his fingers into my hair, he drew me closer to him before lifting my legs around his waist and carrying me toward our bed. He gently guided me down to the middle of the mattress before hovering over me with his body pressed against mine.
Barely breaking the contact of our lips, he quickly stripped off our clothes and nestled himself between my legs. His motions were urgent and insistent as he used our union to satisfy his need for solace from the stress and doubts no doubt running through his head. Every action was primal and desperate, and a chorus of feral sounds escaped from his lips in time with his movements.
Despite the cold air, sweat dripped from his brow as his hips repeatedly thrust in time with mine. His lips only lifted from my mouth to caress other stretches of my skin, and I held him tightly against me to wordlessly confirm I was there for him, whatever he needed and whatever he wanted to do.
After he had collapsed against me in exhaustion, I gently stroked his hair and allowed him the silence and time to process the information that he'd unwillingly discovered. At the same time, I tried to sift through my past with the fae because I had to be sure that there was no event—however insignificant it might have seemed at the time—that could have warned me of Fiona’s revelation. I also wanted to see if there was anything I’d disregarded as unimportant that might now have a new meaning.
CLAY’S HEAD rested against my shoulder, and his breathing was steady. If I didn’t know him as well as I did, I would have assumed he was sleeping. Lying beside him, it was difficult to remember the loneliness I’d experienced during our separation and the circumstances that had driven me to the desperate places in my mind. Aiden had fulfilled my physical need for affection, but he’d never been able to connect to the part of me deep inside that constantly yearned for my true love. I had been lonelier living with the bustling fae court than I’d ever been living with Clay in our deserted paradise.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked quietly.
I rolled my head to the side and met his dark chocolate eyes. “I’m just trying to remember anything that I learned from the fae that might help us in this situation.”
“Situation?” he murmured. “That’s an interesting way of putting it.”
“Sorry, I couldn’t think of a better word.”
“You believe her, don’t you?” he asked. Despite our reunion only a relatively short time ago, we could already read each other so well.
“I do. At least, I don’t think she has any reason to lie to us.” I rolled onto my side and stroked his arm lightly.
“Besides getting help from us,” he grumbled.
“If that was her goal, there were easier ways for her to go about it. If anything, she’s made it harder for you to trust her.”
“Fae lie. They cheat, and they hurt people.”
“From my experience, the Seelies aren’t like that. They’re pranksters, for sure. They’ll hide your keys when you’re not looking or make your food spoil, but they won’t maliciously hurt someone just for a laugh.”
He rolled onto his back and squeezed his eyes shut. “But if she’s telling the truth, what does it mean?”
I understood what he was asking; what did it mean for him? How would his life change if his mother really was fae? I couldn’t answer those questions though, so I leaned forward against his chest and answered the best as I could. “It means that maybe you should talk to her and find out more.”
“Maybe.”
CHAPTER NINE
DESPITE MY INSISTENCE that Clay seek out the answers he needed from Fiona, he was reluctant to admit that he actually wanted them. We lay in silence for another few moments before the cold and hunger drove me to get back up to add more wood to the fire and start something for dinner.
“What a day, huh?” I murmured as I moved around the tiny counter we called our kitchen.
“That’s an understatement,” Clay said, his voice almost flat and emotionless, as he too climbed out of bed. He joined me in our makeshift kitchen and helped me by cutting the last of the venison we had into strips.
We worked silently side by side, each of us lost to our own thoughts. I was certain that the revelation of Clay’s parentage had shoved the danger of the possible return of the shadow out of his mind. I wanted to raise my worries about the creature with him so we could discuss what we were going to do about it, but I couldn’t be sure how it would go.
In his distressed state, he could relish the opportunity to be distracted from his internal worries. However, it was just as likely that the reminder could shatter the control he’d managed to regain in the time since Fiona’s departure.
Instead of worrying about the danger and adding to Clay’s stress, I tried to focus on the task in front of me. Everything else could wait until Clay was ready to talk. Once I had everything prepared, I set the frying pan onto the holder on top of the fire and set a pot of vegetables beside it.
“You really think I should talk to her?” Clay asked quietly as he added the meat to the hot pan before washing his hands and sitting at my side near the fire.
“It’s your choice,” I said. “If it’s worth anything to you, I really do believe her.”
“Why?”
“There are just too many things that make more sense if it’s true.”
“You honestly believe that I could be part . . . fae?” The word stuck on his tongue before spilling out in a disgusted tone.
I recognized I had to tread carefully; he needed to arrive at the conclusions on his own. “I don’t think she has a reason to lie.”
“I just don’t believe it,” he said. “I can’t. I mean the very idea of Dad being with a fae is ridiculous. He wouldn't be that irresponsible. That stupid! He’s always warned me how dangerous they can be.”
A chuckle rose to my lips, but I did everything I could to stifle it. I could envisage exactly how Clay would react at that moment if I laughed at his absurd logic. Unable to completely resist the urge to tease him though, I added, “Like you knew how dangerous phoenixes are?”
“That’s different,” he said with a roll of his eyes and a huffed breath.
“How?”
He scrubbed his face with his hands and issued a soft growl. “It just is.”
Linking my fingers with his, I drew our joined hands into my lap. “If it’s true, it doesn’t change who you are.”
“No, just what I am,” he muttered. “It makes me a freak.”
He must have felt my hand flinch in response to his statement because his eyes snapped to mine and he whispered a quick apology. I couldn’t deny that his use of that particular word hurt, but I also unde
rstood his anger. And his confusion.
I squeezed his hand before moving my fingers to caress his cheek and drawing his face around to meet his gaze. “You know it doesn’t change how I feel about you.”
He squeezed his eyes closed and pain was etched on his features. I wasn’t sure whether my words had hurt him somehow or if the fact that I’d felt the need to express them had caused his reaction.
Sensing that we weren’t going to get anywhere with our debate about whether or not Fiona was his mother, I decided to change tack. “Regardless of the truth in her words, I do believe she genuinely needs our help.”
“Why?”
“Because I trust Aiden enough to know he wouldn’t lie to me about that.” I hoped that Clay wouldn’t react badly to the statement, but I didn’t know how else to say it. “And before you came back in, Fiona told me that the Rain had kidnapped her daughter. Mackenzie’s a young fae, and she’s at the mercy of some very ruthless people. I can’t even imagine how scared she must be.” Scared, and who knew what else.
He hung his head as he considered my words. He probably knew as well as I did—or perhaps even better than I could ever truly imagine—how terrifying the Rain could be. I’d been on the receiving end of their hunts when they’d wanted me dead, but the possibility of capture and torture at their hand was unthinkable. A warm flush ran over my skin as I imagined what might have happened to me under different circumstances.
What might still happen, if I’m caught.
His fingers tightened in response to the warmth. “They won’t ever hurt you,” he said, clearly reading my stress and understanding the reason behind it. “I won’t let them.”