Page 54 of Demure
“I was born with barely any. Less than our mother, the way it should be, as she is the one our power came from.”
Sierra leaned back, resting her head against the cool stone. It was hard to wrap her head around all this magic stuff, and she could sense there was something Aislan wasn’t telling her. “Why is Aodhan so powerful?”
Aislan shrugged. “No one is sure. But my father has sent him to many places over the years to find out the reason.”
“And has he?”
“We don’t know, he has stopped being forthcoming with his findings.”
Sierra thought of the Aodhan she knew. For the past month she had known him, he had been quiet and reserved, and she had needed to force information out of him several times. It was hard to imagine him as ever being forthcoming. “Why?”
Aislan pursed his lips, obviously coming to the part he was keeping from Sierra. “You’ll have to ask him when we find him. After all, he became this way a few months ago. After he met you.”
Now Sierra was really confused. Her Tinder date with Aodhan had been at the end of September…and it was now just the beginning of November. They hadn’t known each other for months, as Aislan was insinuating. While she debated letting that stay quiet, she knew that in their situation, withholding information would do neither of them any good.
“You must be mistaken.” Sierra’s voice came out a bit hoarse. “I only met Aodhan a little over a month ago.”
Aislan nodded in agreement. “I know. But Aodhan hasknown of you since last year, when he visited a seer.” Sierra cocked her head to the side in confusion. “A seer is someone who is paid to look into a Fae’s future using their magic, sometimes called a fortune teller in your world. Aodhan went to the seer to see if he would eventually find the cause of the loss of magic in Sidhe.”
“And what did the seer see?”
“You. She showed him you.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Sierra and Aislan sat in silence, although Sierra’s mind was screaming at her for various reasons she could barely keep straight. On the one hand, her stomach was about to eat through itself, as she hadn’t had any food since the day before. On the other hand, a seer, a kind of fortune teller, had seen her in Aodhan’s future, which was a massive development in this twisted situation.
A few years previously, Sierra had left her family’s religion because she had seen it for what it was: deceptive. And now, here she was, sitting in another realm most humans didn’t know existed, speaking about people who saw the future for money. Mentally, she couldn’t wrap her head around how any of this was possible. She even pinched her wrist discreetly to make sure this wasn’t some messed-up dream. But she was, in fact, awake, and more confused than she had ever been before.
“What do you mean, she saw me?” Sierra asked, her voice cleaving through the heavy silence, now that darkness had completely fallen.
“He didn’t give me details,” Aislan’s voice replied from the darkness. “All I know is he asked if he would solve what has been lowering the magic in this realm, and the answer was you.”
“Hmm. Are you sure?”
“I don’t know all the details of the vision, I’m simply repeating what Aodhan told me. Shortly after his visit to the seer, he went to Dublin, which is apparently where he knew you would be.”
But Sierra hadn’t been in Dublin at that time. She had only arrived for the fall semester in August. “But I wasn’t there yet.”
“I know. I talked with Aodhan frequently. He was waiting for you. He would’ve waited for you no matter how long it took, I’m sure.”
The cogs in Sierra’s mind started to turn, piecing together the last few days with this new information. She drew in a shaky breath. “What…what was he supposed to do when he found me?”
The tension stretched between them, and it felt like an eon passed before Aislan replied, “He was supposed to bring you back here.”
“So your father knew about the vision then?”
“Yes.”
“And Aodhan planned to bring me back here when he left for Dublin?”
“Yes.”
It was starting to come together now, why she was here. “But he didn’t?”
Aislan let out a long breath. “He stopped answering our calls in September, near the end.”
Around the time they had actually met. “Why?”
