Page 41 of Fae Unleashed
Was it the adrenaline hitting my system? Was it a sudden surge of confidence? Beryl had interrupted our fight, taken Faust out of our grasp, and stalled everything we’d done. I should have been trembling in my boots. I had no right to act this way.
But I was tired of her shit. Did she really think she could get away with telling me that Rhoan would never love me? I’d seen the way he looked at me. She couldn’t take him away from me. Her poisonous words wouldn’t change my feelings.
If I had to live with her curse forever, then I would. As long as it meant that I could be whoever I wanted to be, the stain on my arcana would be worth it.
“Cerridwen,” Tal hissed across the clearing.
I snapped back to the present and noticed the blood red tint that’d overtaken the park. The leaves looked as though they’d been fed blood. The color seeped into everything around me. I should have shivered at the sight of my tainted arcana bleeding into the world around me, but a rush of power hit me instead.
“Go back to the hole you crawled out of,” I told Beryl. “If your feral pet comes for us again, I’ll make sure to kill him faster next time.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Tal wrinkle his nose. He didn’t like who I was becoming, but the man couldn’t judge. He’d defected from the Seelie to save his own hide. Who was he to tell me that I was doing this wrong?
I cursed under my breath, turned, and strode away from the park. No one got to tell me how to do this anymore. I was done bowing and scraping to appease those I was trying to help.
17
CERRI
Rhoan caught up to me on his motorcycle steed. When he pulled up alongside me as I stomped down the sidewalk, I paused if only to give the metal steed a friendly pat. The engine purred delightfully. Rhoan sat back on his seat and gave me a worried look, which I pointedly ignored.
Exhaustion crept in from all sides. It was more than just the tired ache of using too much arcana in a fight. The weight of my blood seemed heavy. I had to come to terms with my fae parents once and for all. I knew that I was running from it.
We could have rushed Beryl’s court by now. I hadn’t commanded it because I wasn’t ready to face the truth of the matter. The idea of defeating her was nothing more than that:an idea. I didn’t want to have to actually do it.
“Would you like a ride home?” Rhoan asked. He gestured to the pack on his back. “I picked up a drink for the both of us. If you’d like, we can stop at the store and pick up something for dinner, too.”
He knew how to speak to my heart’s desire. I should have shamed him for buying more alcohol, but I was in the mood for a drink, too. I climbed onto the back of Rhoan’s motorcycle and wrapped my arms around his middle so I could press my cheek to his back.
He drove slowly since I didn’t have a helmet. Even if something happened and we crashed, we could have used the in-between to escape. I wasn’t worried, especially after all the fights we’d been in lately.
We picked up food from the store like a normal couple looking to have a night in. Except, when we got home, Tal had caught up. I glared at the fae man and tried to tell him to leave with the force of my gaze alone. Of course, it didn’t work.
Tal pulled out a chair at the table and started to explain how we would greet Lord Foxglove in the morning. I grimaced and turned back to the pot on the stove. The red sauce bubbled happily. Sausage, oregano, and parmesan churned within the liquid, but all I could think of was the red on the leaves at the park.
Would Lord Foxglove give me the same look that Ostara had? Would he take one glance and see the Unseelie blight? This time, I wasn’t going to cater to Tal’s warnings. I would storm in there as myself and no one else.
I dumped narrow lasagna noodles into the sauce to boil and turned to get the ricotta from the fridge. It was a simple meal, everything that was normally in a lasagna except dumped into a messy pasta and topped with ricotta and basil.
The men happily ate, which warmed my chilled core. This was all I wanted. We sipped wine as I listened to the sounds of eating. It would have bothered anyone else, but I loved knowing how much they enjoyed what I’d made for them.
Would it be the same when I made a new Seelie Court? Would they love that, too?
Probably not, considering what I’d become.
* * *
When I tuggeda pair of faux leather leggings over my thick thighs—there was no way I’d gained weight from the pasta last night—and stepped out, Tal took one look at me and scowled. He shook his head and told me there was no way that I was allowed out like this.
Maybe it was the green silk top with the deep v-neck that nearly reached down to my belly button that he didn’t like. I smiled despite myself because the statement reminded me of my father. Would my fae dad have said the same thing?
Unable to hold back my curiosity, I asked Tal.
He paused, considered, and nodded. “You were everything to him. He would have done anything to protect you from people like Foxglove.”
“Oh?” I picked a red glass pendant that hung just above my cleavage.
A fae…with cleavage? Unheard of.
