CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

 

TO MY SURPRISE, Clay’s father was the first to speak. “Caelan, what are you doing here? This has nothing to do with you.”

The man—the shadow person who wasn’t actually a shadow person—who Troy had identified as Caelan, laughed again. The sound sent chills racing down my spine and made me think of Zarita and our confrontation in the forest.

“Are you trying to be amusing, Troy? You stole my daughter, caged her, and held her captive, and yet you think it has nothing to do with me.” He smiled at Mackenzie. “Everything will be perfect now, sweetie. Daddy’s here.”

His daughter?

“No!” Fiona cried, jumping forward toward Caelan. “You leave her out of this!”

“Oh, Fiona, darling, how could I have forgotten your part in this?”

“She’s part of the Seelie court, Caelan,” Fiona cried. “She was assigned as a healer; a force for good. She will never join the Unseelies.”

My mind twisted as I struggled to keep up with the influx of information. Fiona and Caelan? They were Mackenzie’s parents? Could he be the Unseelie in Fiona’s stories?

“Is that not my choice, mother?” Mackenzie asked, shifting away from Ethan and distancing herself from our little group. She didn’t rush to Caelan’s side though, Instead, she wavered somewhere in the middle, uncertain of her next action.

I saw Clay trying desperately to keep Troy at bay and knew that the farther our little group separated, the harder it would be for us to escape smoothly. As if they saw it too, Aiden and the three other fae he led moved to Clay’s side and raised their weapons as well. Troy looked at them all, disgust clear in his eyes and in the twist of his lips.

“You have no right to choose my life for me, Mother,” Mackenzie said, shifting closer to Caelan. “You have no right to decide with whom I spend my time!”

Caelan’s mouth twisted up into a sadistic smile. “Like mother, like daughter, is that not right, Fifi?”

“Do not call me that,” Fiona rebuked. “You lost the right to use those terms years ago!”

Caelan sighed with impatience. “Are we really going to do this here, dear? In front of all these lovely people?” He began to circle the room, edging closer to Mackenzie.

I wanted to protect her. I’d seen what he was capable of. Visions of Zarita’s death flashed through my mind, and my palms heated. I would make him pay for what he’d done, but I had to wait. Mackenzie didn’t need to see that, and I didn’t need to prove myself a threat to Ethan or Louise.

“Are you really going to tell them all the story of woe about leaving your true love behind for a human, just to run back to my arms after screwing him over? How about the fun fact of leaving your fledglings in the arms of a man whose life revolves around the eradication of us fae? Or begging me to help you get them back, so that we could have a family together before stealing my child away before I even had a chance to know her?”

“You are sadistic,” Fiona said. “I could never love you.”

“You loved me once, just as I loved you,” Caelan said.

“You do not have the capacity to love,” Fiona spat.

“That is untrue!” Spittle flew from him as he clenched his fists and shouted. With one deep breath, he calmed himself. His next words were spoken with a quiet menace that chilled my blood. “I loved my daughter. All I wanted was for her to be just like me. You stole that chance away from me. Well, you tried to, until she found me. Did you know that? Did you concern yourself enough to query her on why she was leaving your court? She came to my court in search of me, as she wanted to know her daddy. Oh, but once you found out that she was going anywhere alone, you had to put a stop to that, did you not?”

Fiona stood her ground, raising her chin defiantly at him. “I could not let you near her. I couldn’t allow you to corrupt her sweetness.”

Caelan disappeared before my eyes. I was left with no doubt that he was the shadow who had been tracking me—even if he wasn’t actually a shadow.

Clay’s gaze followed a line of movement I couldn’t see, but which ended where Caelan reappeared behind Louise and Ethan. Clay shouted out a warning when he guessed Caelan’s path, but it was too late. Caelan’s movement caught the pair off-guard. He knocked Ethan off his feet before grabbing Louise and holding a sharp knife against her throat. Louise struggled in his hold, but he whispered something in her ear and her expression fell slack. She was complacent in his hold—almost spell-bound.

It was as if he had some sort of control over her. But that was impossible. Wasn’t it?

“Father, do not do this,” Mackenzie pleaded. “This is not right.”

Caelan chuckled darkly. “Not right? I have lived at the mercy of Fiona’s whims for years! I have rushed back to her side every single time she has asked me to. No matter how much I gave her, it has never been enough. I want her to know the true meaning of suffering—I want her to know real loss.” He pressed the tip of the knife harder against Louise’s neck. She made no move to escape. “I have tried to show her for years just how easily I can take her fledglings from her. In fact, this one here has been one of my biggest allies in making Fiona pay, but now that she knows what she is, she is no longer of value.”

“What are you talking about?” Clay asked.

“He is referring to the fact that he sent Louise after Lynnie,” Aiden said.

“I don’t understand,” I admitted. “I thought Louise came after me because she believed I’d taken Clay from her. And you,” I shifted my full attention to Caelan, “you hunted me and killed people I cared about.”

He simply smiled at me in a way that made me sick to my stomach.

“It is something we have suspected for a while,” Fiona said. “But we have been unable to get confirmation. Understand that when you were at our court, I had no knowledge of the link you could offer to my family. It was not until you left and Aiden requested the resources to help find your love, did I even begin to comprehend your importance to my family. When Aiden explained that Clay had saved your life, I found new hope that he had grown into the young gentleman I always hoped he would be, despite the hatred he had been raised with.”

It seemed like Troy was about to say something, but Clay made it clear with the gun in his hand that he wanted Fiona to finish her story. I could see it was taking all of his willpower to keep the gun leveled at his father and not turn it onto the one who had his sister trapped with a blade. Everyone else stood around helplessly, not knowing how to disarm Caelan without risking Louise’s life. Zarita’s death still loomed heavily in my mind, and I had no doubt Caelan would kill Louise the instant he was finished with her.

“As soon as I knew you could be a link back to my fledglings, I tried harder to find Clay. If he could see past your nature and understand that you were not dangerous despite his strong Rain heritage and the upbringing he had . . . I guess I had hoped that maybe one day he would be able to see past all of the prejudices instilled in him. Of course, at that stage I was only partly right. Two of my best guards almost lost their lives when they found him in Salem.”

“Any potential reunion between the two of you could have paved the way for Clay to learn the truth,” Aiden explained.

My heart pounded, and my breathing sped.

“And that would have reunited mother and son,” Caelan growled. “This would have given her exactly what she wanted! So of course, I had to stop it.”

“Stop!” I shouted as tears pricked my eyes. I glanced at Fiona and Aiden as the betrayal in their words became clear. “You were using me? All of you?”

Aiden and Fiona clamored to argue with me, and Caelan laughed in response.

“How did you even find me?” I asked Caelan.

“It’s not hard tracking someone when they’ve got something touched by your magic on them.”

His words confused me, and I tried to think of anything I had that he could have possibly touched. I owned nothing, certainly nothing I’d owned for as long as he’d been following me.

There was only one item I’d had through everything, and it hadn’t even belonged to me originally.

“I don’t understand what any of that has to do with Lou,” Clay said, echoing the thought I’d had earlier.

“Somehow Caelan has been able to forge a link with Louise,” Fiona said. “I don’t know how or why, but I believe he might be the reason she has doggedly pursued Evelyn for so long”

“But why would you send Louise after me?” I asked him. My eyes were trained on Louise’s glassy eyes and expressionless face. “Why would you come after me at all? I don’t even know you.”

Caelan shook his head. “Exactly how conceited do you have to be to believe this has anything to do with you?”

“It was Clay,” Fiona said softly, her understanding of the situation immediately evident. “You wanted Clay to suffer.”

An evil grin stretched across Caelan’s face. “All I wanted was for him to feel the sting of the same fate you forced on me, Fifi. You made me to live for years without my true love—without you. He would have suffered even more if Louise here had been just a little better at her job. I did everything to make it easier for her. I laid traps for the phoenix and ensured she was on the wanted list for multiple murders. It should have been easy for Louise to go in for the kill or for the phoenix to kill her. Either would have given me the satisfaction of knowing that I had taken your child away from you the way you took mine from me.”

Faces of the people who’d died after helping me flashed into my mind.

“You killed Luke too, didn’t you?” I asked in a deathly quiet voice. Zarita, Luke, Nancy—just a few of the people who’d lost their lives due to a loose association with me. For so many years, I’d carried their deaths as a noose around my neck, desperate for some discovery that could prove I wasn’t the one responsible for ending their lives. Even though I hoped it would ease my conscience, learning that their deaths hadn't had anything to do with what I was—that the guilt I’d lived with for so long was largely misplaced—was wholly unsatisfying. It didn’t change the fact that they’d all died because they helped me.

He shrugged. “I’ve killed plenty of humans; do you really think I bothered to ask any of them to give me their names?”

My skin tingled as an involuntary rush of heat flashed over my body. The last of the water in my clothes evaporated in a hiss of steam as I moved close to Caelan.

“Evie, don’t,” Clay warned soothingly. He shifted closer to me and reached for me with his free hand. His gaze swung rapidly between his father, Caelan, and me, but the gun in his hand remained trained on his dad.

“At least I was right about one thing,” Caelan said. “Destroying the phoenix would have destroyed you. Your love for her, it weakens you. It will be such fun to watch you fall to pieces once she is dead.”

Clay swung the gun around on Caelan and placed his finger over the trigger, ready to pull. “Threaten her life again, I dare you.”

Troy glared at Caelan. “Leave my children out of this.”

“You had less objections when you had me bind her magic.”

“What . . . what are you talking about?” Louise asked, shaking loose of whatever spell Caelan had over her.

“Daddy did some bad, bad things when you were young, did he not?” Caelan spoke to Louise as if she were a small child. Meeting Troy’s gaze, he whispered in Louise’s ear again as she struggled against his physical hold. Once more, her eyes glazed over, and she stopped her fight.

“I did what I had to,” Troy said determinedly.

“Including having me wrap up all of her perfect fae elements and leave her effectively human.” Caelan said the last word as though it was something to be ashamed of.

His words made me see that I did have something on me that I’d worn for years, something that Caelan’s magic might well have touched given the new information. Clay’s pendant. I lifted my fingers to my neck, and Caelan noticed the move, winking at me in response.

“That is when you captured her, was it not?” Fiona asked, and for a moment, I thought she’d witnessed our silent exchange. “You bound her to you when you bound her magic. You have been present within her mind all of these years?”

“Does it not burn you up that I have spent so much time guiding her through life?” He adjusted his hold and twisted the knife closer to Louise’s throat. “However, she is useless now that you have this knowledge. The two of you stole my daughter from me,” he said, leaving one hand wrapped around Louise’s throat and pointing the knife between Fiona and Troy. “Perhaps I should show you how it feels.”

Both Troy and Fiona rushed forward, cries of “No!” escaping them simultaneously.

“Take the phoenix,” Troy said. “Do whatever you want to it, but don’t hurt Lou.”

Clay leaped at his father and pressed the gun barrel against his forehead. “No one is going to do anything to anyone.”

I saw a glint of light reflect off the gun as Troy grabbed for it again, this time yanking it out of Clay’s hands. In the next breath, he lifted it, aiming it at Caelan. Clay grabbed for the gun even as Troy pulled the trigger. The shot whistled by Caelan’s left ear, missing him by mere inches.

Clay reached to wrestle the gun away from his father again, but Troy fought back. As they both struggled to get control, I saw Caelan lift the knife back to Louise’s throat. The danger in his motion was clear—it was no longer merely a threat, he was out for blood. Regardless of the history Louise and I shared, I couldn’t let Caelan kill her like he had Zarita.

“No!” I shouted as I jumped forward to wrestle her free of his hold. The moment I moved, I heard the crack of a gunshot.

A burning feeling rushed through me, only instead of racing over my skin like it usually did, it ripped through my core. The sensation rushed from just below my left shoulder through my body and into my chest. Ignoring the pain, I grabbed for the knife in Caelan’s hand as another gunshot went off behind me. Caelan briefly met my eyes. The pupils in his murky gray irises grew wider for one moment before he succumbed to the gaping bullet wound in his forehead and slumped to the ground.

The world seemed to move in slow motion. Louise stumbled forward, unharmed. She collapsed to her knees with a scream flying from her right when Ethan swooped in from her other side and grabbed her.

Unable to stop my momentum, my fingers continued to reach for the spot where the knife had resided seconds earlier, but closed around empty air. The action tilted me off balance and I fell to the ground, landing on all fours.

When my hands hit the ground, the burning sensation in my chest tore through me and my arms gave way beneath me. The ache I’d been ignoring increased in intensity; the excruciating pain ripped my body in half and stole my breath. Forcing myself to roll over onto my back, I met Clay’s horrified gaze.

I tried to take a breath, but my chest was already full, and all I could manage was a pained wheeze. My heart burned, but an icy chill coursed through my veins. Raising my hand, I pressed it against the spot on my chest where the agony was most concentrated. When I pulled it away, it was sticky and covered in blood. It took another failed breath for my mind to process exactly what was happening.

I was dying.

An instant later, someone lifted my body off the ground. My eyes grew foggy and my mind was slow as it struggled to take in everything that was happening around me. After a moment, I understood it was Clay kneeling beside the spot where I’d fallen and tugging me against his chest.

“No!” Clay’s voice was right in front of me but sounded like it was coming from the bottom of the ocean and inside my head at the same time. His face swam in and out of my vision as I tried to focus.

The overwhelming darkness that the pain caused permeated through my mind like smoke, twisting around all of my senses and warping them. The sensation robbed me of my vision for precious seconds at a time. Each wheezing inhale I attempted to take constricted my lungs, leaving them confined within a tiny corner of my chest. Each rattling exhale ended in a bout of painful coughs. Thick, copper-tasting liquid filled my mouth and spilled out onto my cheeks, sending streaks of warmth over my cooling skin.

“Stay with me,” Clay sobbed as he dropped me back to the ground and began to work to staunch the bleeding. “I can’t lose you.”

Knowing it was no use, I tried to catch his hand with my own to still his movements. If I was about to spend my last minutes on earth, I didn’t want them filled with his desperate ministrations. Instead, I wanted to enjoy them in his arms.

Everything grew dark. My strength left me, but I clutched at his fingers, holding them in my fist.

“Don’t you give up, Evie,” Clay demanded as he leaned over me, pawing at the opening in my chest. “Don’t you dare give up on me!”

Splotches of salt water fell from his eyes, collecting on my cheeks before running down my face as secondhand tears.

I lifted my arm to find him. If I couldn’t see him, I could at least enjoy the sensation of his skin against mine one last time. His lips on mine once more. When he understood what I wanted, he leaned into my touch and used his own sticky and wet hand to guide my fingers to his cheek.

The little energy left in my body drained, and I couldn’t even hold my arm up to him any longer. As if by some miracle, my vision cleared for one tiny, perfect moment, and I saw him in all of his glory. It was easy to see past the red stains that ran over his face and along his arms and witness the pure love he held for me, the depth of the sorrow he would feel when my life left me.

How could I have doubted his love, even for a second?

We were back in the classroom again, and he was grinning at me as he promised to be my welcoming committee. We were in Salem, reunited, with his body pinning mine against the wall as our kisses grew heated. We were in Charlotte, and he was telling me about everything he’d learned about my history and telling me that there was a chance for a happy ending for me.

Not this time. But maybe for the next generation. For my daughter.

“I’m sorry,” I tried to say, but what came out was unrecognizable as words even in my own ears. I used the last of my strength to grip his shoulders. “Keep her safe.”

I hoped that he would understand what I was asking and would be willing to sacrifice his life the way my own father had. If he did, my daughter would be in great hands. The best. She would have a life as good as my own, maybe even better. Her father had studied the lore to understand his love. His knowledge would benefit them both.

“No,” he growled. “You’re not going anywhere, Evie!” He pulled me against his chest again. “Evie!” he sobbed.

“Put me down,” I begged with all of the energy I could muster, the last that was in my body. “I don’t want to hurt you. I love you.”

Before he could let me go, I rested against his arm.

From somewhere deep inside me, a spark ignited and built until it flashed over my skin in a rush.

As the heat coursed through me, I let go of the pain.

The sunbird took hold of my body for what I knew would be the last time.

 

THE END