“This changes nothing.” Fionna rose to her full height, rotating toward me, rolling back her shoulders, undoing the spell around my throat. “It’s probably not even true. More claims to try and disarm me.”

“Changes nothing?” My voice broke free of its jail. It changed everything for me.

“You still are here to take down my faction. And no matter who you are, I will not let anyone stop me from my quest.”

“From killing and enslaving fae? Don’t you see what you are doing is wrong? This is not how to help your people.”

“You think mind-numbing meetings, where nothing gets accomplished and no side is satisfied, is the way to go?” Fionna took a step to me. “You have to know nothing gets solved that way.”

“Neither does violence.” I balled my hands into fists.

“Sometimes it’s the only way. You think Luuk will stop? He will keep coming till he destroys you. It’s kill or be killed.”

“And on your order you almost killed me. The attack on the fae in Switzerland? I was there. I barely survived.”

Fionna’s eyes widened. “You were supposed to be in America.”

“It’s okay if the fae are faceless. But in your desire for revenge you almost killed your sister, my friends, people I love and care about.”

“I won’t apologize for killing fae who have gladly murdered us for centuries.”

I rubbed my sore head. Would I feel the same if I’d grown up differently? Everyone believed their point of view was the right one. But which actually was? My list of things I didn’t know how to figure out grew longer. There was only one thing I could and desperately had to solve immediately.

“Where is Lorcan?” I countered her step, trying to inch my height up to hers. “Is he all right?”

“I broke the spell on him.”

“That’s not an answer,” I growled.

She shrugged.

“You need to free him.”

“I don’t need to do anything. I am in charge here.” Fionna’s brown eyes narrowed as she thrust her hands to her hips. “But I will take you to him on one condition.”

“What is that?”

“You and your fae pets will not hurt, attack, or try to escape.”

“I can only promise we will not attack if you do not provoke first.” I leveled my gaze on her. “If you do, all bets are off.”

Fionna appeared to consider my counterproposal before she nodded. “Agreed.” She swiveled around, walking out of the damaged cage. “Follow me.”

“He comes with me.” I pointed at West.

Fionna looked at both of us and nodded. “Free him, but the same rules apply.”

Hate spilled from Mayhem’s face, but he stepped up, unlocking West from his chains.

West winked at Mayhem. “I can tell you like me. It’s okay; it will be our little secret.” He bumped Mayhem’s shoulder, heading for me. His hand touched my back protectively the moment he reached me.

As I stepped over the crumbled metal door, hostility radiated off every pair of eyes. Beneath the rage of Kenya, Franklin, and Major I felt almost burned.

I followed at Fionna’s heels, eager to be led to Lorcan. We headed down the hallway they condemned as off limits to me when I first arrived and went to the last room. She unlocked the door, swinging it open.

My hand went to my mouth. It was dimly lit and empty except for the rack in the middle of the room with wires coming off it. A shirtless man lay cuffed by his ankles, wrists, and neck.

“Lorcan!” I bolted to him.

His lids cracked open at my voice, a ghost of a smile on his face. “Li’l bird.”

Vibrant purple, blue, yellow, and green bruising covered his body. A landscape of burn marks and cuts covered his torso like a gruesome version of connect the dots. My hands cupped his face, grief burrowing into my heart. I understood his body would be okay, as he healed quickly, but what about his heart, his pride?

I stared down into his eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Come on, this was like foreplay for me.” He tried to smile, which split his healing lip, allowing blood to ooze out. I pressed my mouth briefly to his to comfort him, tasting the sharp tang of blood on my tongue. It was quick but passionate.

“Fuck. That was hot,” Lorcan rumbled, his eyes sparking as his tongue swiped over my lips again. Blood was some kind of aphrodisiac. I recalled a time I saw Ember lick deer blood off Eli’s mouth and got so thoroughly grossed out I thought I’d vomit. I didn’t have an urge to eat raw carcass or drink blood from Bambi, but Lorcan’s…tasting it…yeah, I liked it. Add that to the list of things I was discovering about myself.

I kissed him again, then whipped around to face Fionna. My sister? My head still couldn’t wrap around it, but the more I looked at her, the more I saw the obvious family resemblance. It was a bit freaky.

“Release him. Now.”

“You’re not the Queen here.” Fionna frowned, not hiding her aversion at seeing us together, and stepped farther into the room, motioning around. “This is my kingdom. I’m the one who gives orders.”

Lorcan’s head turned to the crowd at the door, his lids narrowing. It was a blink and he jerked, his mouth opening. “Holy shit.” His head pitched between Fionna and me. “What the…?” Lorcan was faster at picking up the clear connection.

“Meet the DLR leader, Fionna…my sister.”

Lorcan’s mouth gaped. “Sister?”

“They have family reunions just like we do.” West shoulder checked a few gawkers to get into the room. “Hey, brother.”

“West? Jesus, I thought I made you up.” Lorcan blinked, his eyes moving around the room, confused. “What the hell is going on? I’m dreaming, right? I’ve actually passed out and this is some twisted hallucination going on in my head?”

“I wish, brother,” West scoffed, slapping his hand down on Lorcan’s leg. At the contact, Lorcan groaned, shutting his lids and waggling his head back and forth.

“What are you doing here?”

“All for later, Lorc.” West’s mouth flattened.

“He’s here on the King’s request.” Fionna tipped her head toward West.

“What?” I jerked to West. “What is she talking about?”

“Against my will, Ken.” Regret tapered his eyes. “I never wanted anything to do with this.”

“With what exactly?”

“For another time.” Fionna swished her hand, moving farther into the room. “We’ll get to all that later.”

“How about now.” I gritted my teeth.

“Later.” Fionna clenched her own together, combatting my stubbornness.

There were so many secrets and accusations swirling in this room, and I wanted to demand to know what was going on. But I eased back, sensing the answers would fracture my already frazzled brain, which was crumbling like old chalk. I had to focus on what was in front of me. What I could change. First and foremost. Lorcan.

“Fionna, let him go. I promised you and I keep my word.” I pinched Lorcan’s arm, giving him a look. “We will not attack or harm anyone here.”

Lorcan peered at me like he wanted to shove my promise up someone’s ass, but gritted his teeth, nodding.

“They better stick to your pact.” She strolled to the other side of Lorcan. “Or I will have no choice but to retaliate. This time I won’t be so lenient. My magic can strike faster than they could reach one of us. I won’t be afraid to kill.”

“You’re right.” Lorcan flicked his chin at West. “Their family reunions sound a lot like ours.”

West snorted, patting Lorcan’s leg again.

At Fionna’s beckoning, a man switched off a machine and unlocked Lorcan from the chains. Black marks circled his wrists, ankles, and neck like paint. My fingers went to his bruised neck when he sat up and touched the burnt flesh.

“You electrocuted him?” I screeched, anger billowing inside like a storm. “Are you kidding me? You. Did. Not.” I didn’t even realize I was moving to Fionna until Lorcan grabbed my arm, pulling me back into him. Fionna bristled, her shoulders rising, ready to counter my attack.

“Calm down, li’l bird.” He gripped my face, trying to turn me to look at him. It took a couple of tries before I broke my glare off her and turned to him. Oddly, a dash of humor showed in his eyes, like he enjoyed my fierce protectiveness. “I’m fine. Really. West and I used to do worse to each other growing up.”

West laughed. “Remember the time when we first got to Earth, and I hooked you up to a car battery with jumper cables? Simply to see what would happen. Damn... you lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“And if you remember, I got you back.” A smug grin engulfed Lorcan’s mouth.

“Right.” West’s humor faded, a snarl inching up his lips.

Okay, I was curious, but now wasn’t time to stroll down memory lane. I squeezed Lorcan’s fingers, which still cupped my face, and stepped away from him, toward Fionna.

“What now?” I asked. “Where do we go from here?”

She inhaled deeply, glancing around the room, before landing on me. “I think you and I should have a conversation. In private.”

 

 

Settled in the war room across the table, both of us crossed arms and stared with hostile glares at each other. The tension mounted, neither of us speaking right away. This day was chalking up to be one of the strangest for me, which was saying a lot.

“You look like her.” Fionna broke the silence, stiffly waving at my face. “Our mother. Same nose.”

I touched my face.

“Kennedy…” She shook her mane of hair, the same shade as mine underneath the dye. “Gonna have to get used to that.”

“Right.” I frowned. “It wasn’t my original name, was it?” It was a strange notion to think of myself other than Kennedy.

“No, it was Evelina…Evie…which means light.”

My nose scrunched up, rejecting the name. No, I was Kennedy. But it was kind of ironic I’d become the Queen of Light.

Robust silence congested the room again, neither of us seemed to know what to say or do. Just because we might be sisters didn’t make us automatically like or trust each other.

“I don’t know how to feel about this.” I huffed, waving my hand around. “I have no memory of you or my parents. All I knew of my birth parents were their names, Keela and Raghnall. I only found out a year or so ago I even had a sibling and I was a Druid.” I clasped my hands together on the table. “How old were you when they were killed? How did you survive?”

“I was seven when you were born,” she replied formally, like she was being interviewed for a job. “I was so enamored of you at first. Like my little doll…until I realized you weren’t going away.” A hint of humor zipped over her face, disappearing faster than it came. “It was the peak of the extermination of our people. Every day our parents stayed alive was like Russian roulette. Mom and Dad knew it wouldn’t be long. They sent me away to live with this human witch, Olwyn. She kept me hidden, raised me. Daily I waited, knowing the news would come. Then one day it did. Olwyn heard they were killed. Aneira sent a special squad to ‘take care’ of them. I figured you were there since you were barely a few months old.”

“Why didn’t they run? Go into hiding?”

“They could never run from Aneira, not for long. Their magic was too strong…she would have found them.”

“So they gave up both of us. To keep us safe.” Emotion threatened to choke me. I cleared my throat.

“It was better to keep us separated. I was already exceptionally powerful for a Druid child and fully aware of my power. You were just a baby. They must have thought it better to tuck you away, unaware of what you really were. Together, we would have drawn attention.”

“Why?”

“Um. Well. Besides being extremely powerful, especially together…” She rubbed her nose, sitting back in her chair. “We’re not normal Druids.”

“What do you mean?” I countered her movement, leaning in.

She peered at the ceiling, adding to the knots in my stomach. Again a notion simmered in my gut, knowing before she even said the words.

“Our family line possesses inherited ‘extra’ gifts. Strong ones not necessarily looked upon with respect by other Druids.”

I let my lids shut briefly, the simmering pot boiling up. “Dark magic,” I whispered.

“Ah, you’re intuitive,” she retorted. “Another strong family trait, along with the healing gift.” She shifted in her seat. “Healing to the point we can raise people from the dead.”

“What? Th-that’s forbidden. Wrong!”

“Black magic is forbidden in most Druid circles, but our parents were so high up the ladder, most assumed it was gossip. It was far from rumor; they were deep in it.”

My parents worked in black magic? I felt a piece of my heart twist, darkening my idealistic imaginings of them. “So it’s something our whole family inherited? Not something we could help?”

“Oh, you are so gullible, little sister.” Fionna clicked her tongue, the pet name held no sentiment. I was also struggling with feeling the leader of DLR was my flesh and blood, even though my gut knew it. “We inherited it; they did not. Magic seeps into you, your skin, your bloodstream, like nutrients straight to the baby you’re carrying. They knew perfectly well what they were doing.”

That was exactly what Kenya told me, but I hadn’t wanted to believe a mother would do it on purpose.

“I was still young and absorbing everything around me like a sponge; it comes easily to me, but you are a true natural obscurer.”

“You’re saying our parents deliberately passed on their dark magic to us?”

“Yes.”

Tears pricked my lids. I had put my parents on a pedestal, these beautiful, kind, loving Druids. Being murdered by Aneira, I turned them into martyrs. Now it was hard to let them stumble off, full of faults and blemishes.

“They were good people, Kennedy. Loving parents. But probably not as virtuous as you thought them to be. They weren’t perfect, but they were doing their best in a horrible time. Day-to-day life was merely about survival. You have never had to live through the constant fear that any day could be the day we were caught and killed. You have no idea what it was like for them. For me.”

Fionna sat up in her seat, the resentment and horror of those years pinching her face and clouding her eyes with tears. It was the first glimpse of emotion I saw from her. She quickly schooled her expression back to stone. “At five, I became aware of the secret meetings they held. There were just a dozen members at first, but the more Aneira’s reign came down on us, the larger the number grew, and they started to strike back at the fae.”

“You mean control them,” I added. “Use them as puppets.”

“That and they started bombing fae hangouts. Mom was the leader. She was obsessed with practicing black magic, showing me how to use it. Dad and she fought about it all the time. I remember them getting into the biggest fight after he found Mom trying to teach me the spell to control the fae. He said she was endangering us, that she was going too far. He didn’t know until it was too late what she was doing with you.”

“Me?”

“She was pregnant with you while she taught me black magic, knowing it would absorb into you. She was also always at the frontline when they bombed or attacked fae.” Fionna ran a hand down her ponytail. “I can see now how fanatical Mom was, crazed almost, like the dark magic had taken her over. But she had a vision and saw something she didn’t want to tell Father. She would mumble things about how it needed to be done, it was the only way we would survive. She didn’t do it because she was a bad mother; she did it to keep us protected. To fight for ourselves. I think she saw they weren’t going to be around for us.” Fionna gestured between us.

It was strange to hear about two people I only held in my mind as my biological parents, and now know they had flaws and personalities. They were coming to life. Being made real.

“I can kind of understand the desperation they must have felt when all their friends were being murdered around them.” Fionna gripped the chair arms, anger flashing over her features.

“But when I read the history, some scrolls said Aneira started the war on Druids because of the black magic.” I ran my fingers through my tangled ends, blood and dirt still coating me. “So did Aneira start the propaganda because of the rumors, or did they pick up the black magic because Aneira started the gossip against the Druids?”

Fionna’s mouth pulled down at the edges.

“You are doing the same. Don’t you see that?” I dropped my hands on the table, motioning around the war room.

“I learned from Mother you do what you need to survive.” She stiffly lifted her chin in defiance. It was something I did all the time, and the resemblance between us went beyond looks. I felt a small flicker of warmth toward her. The first stirring of a connection between us.

“And I learned from my father, the man who raised me, that you fight back with intellect, love, and cleverness. Not with more hate.”

“That’s why your kingdom is failing.”

“Never miscalculate the underdog.” I lifted my brows, a plan forming in my head.

“What does that mean?” She quirked her eyebrows in return.

A smile grew over my face.

“What do you have in mind?”

I clasped my hands together on the table. “Enemies of an enemy make great allies.”