Beauty (A Faery Story 3)

“I don’t believe it,” Cian said. He finally moved, pacing the floor. He ran a hand through his hair. “I felt it. She was dead. I wouldn’t have left my sister. I couldn’t. I couldn’t have left her.”

“I don’t understand any of this.” His father looked almost as guilty as the Seelies.

“We’ve thought about this a lot. We’ve talked about it, asked some Fae who know about bonding, some vampires who understand consorts. They think Bronwyn is an incredibly strong broadcaster. I know that any bondmate could balance us, but you know that there’s a difference between the bond and that perfect mate. Her mind reached out, even as a child, and she found us. We held to the bond. If Bron is a broadcaster, then Shim is a receptor.”

Beck’s face was a careful blank. “Let’s accept the fact that Bron is alive somehow.”

“She’s alive,” Shim insisted.

“How did you save her?” Dante asked.

Shim shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s all muddled. I remember feeling her die and grabbing on to Lach.”

Lach didn’t like to think about that night. It was a nightmare in his head, a collection of fear and pain. “It was the first time our powers manifested.”

“The night of the fire,” his father whispered, looking at his face.

“Yes. We all almost died that night.” He stared at his father. “We lost her for a long time. That was when we started to fade. We couldn’t be sure she was alive. And yet the bond was there. It was like bonding over that distance broke the connection for a while.”

Shim sighed. “And then one day, I was sleeping and I felt her at the edge of my consciousness. Every night the connection got stronger, and now I can feel her during the day when I concentrate.”

“That’s why you seem to be fading. That’s why you lie around. You’re seeing her.” His father sat back and seemed to have aged twenty years. “Do you think she knows what happened to my Gilly?”

This was a piece of information they had withheld. They had thought about it, but with their father not believing them, it seemed cruel to tell him.

“Gillian’s alive.”

The room erupted in chaos. The news that the Unseelie princess was alive and potentially in danger somewhere on the Seelie plane lit a fire under the nobles’ asses. His father sat, taking it all in. There was already talk of a raid, a quiet retrieval mission, even of hiring a hag to contact her. This was another reason they had kept quiet. Until they were ready to rescue their bondmate, they couldn’t risk detection, and they worried their father would be reckless, thus costing both women their lives. Amidst all the discussion, the Finn twins walked away, quietly speaking among themselves.

He looked at Shim who nodded, understanding what they needed to do.

They stood up, moving toward the Seelies. It was time to talk to their brothers-in-law.

Even before they’d made it to the Finns, Cian Finn had turned, walking their way with an angry look on his face.

“Why the hell haven’t you said something before now?” Cian got right in Lach’s space.

Lach had no intentions of letting the Green Man intimidate him. “Should I have walked around informing everyone that Bronwyn Finn is alive? Do you think that wouldn’t have gotten back to Torin?”

Beck seemed calmer, but there was a cold look in his eyes. “You could have told us. We both have relatives on the Vampire plane. We’ve probably been in the same city at the same time, and yet you kept this a secret.”

“We told our father. Not her name because we understood the danger to her, but we explained the situation, and he refused to believe. If you hadn’t seen what Lach could do tonight, you wouldn’t have believed it, either.”

“You bloody well could have tried,” Cian spat.

“Tell me something, Prince Lachlan,” Beck began with lazy menace. “Does my sister know she’s a princess of the Unseelie Fae?”

There it was, that churning in the pit of Lach’s belly. “The connection is difficult to explain.”

“Yes, you seem to have that trouble a lot,” Cian said.

Shim was getting angry, his hands twitching. When Shim got angry, fireballs tended to descend from out of nowhere.

“Shim, calm down. Torching our brothers-in-law won’t make the situation better.”

His ever-more-reasonable brother smiled grimly. “It will make me feel better.”

“I’d love to see you try it,” Cian ground back.