The Revelation of Light and Dark (Chronicles of the Stone Veil 1)

“Yes, Mom,” I drawl like a petulant child.

She grins in return, but it fades quickly. “I’m glad you’re not having a mental crisis, but I do hate there’s something that’s caused you to be upset, and I can’t help you fix it.”

“I’ll be fine,” I reassure her. “I’m a bit out of sorts, but nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure.”

“And you know,” she murmurs, her eyes locked onto mine, “that you could share anything with me, and I’d never judge you for it. I’d be your biggest supporter, no matter what.”

God, how I wish that were true. But I tell her what she needs to hear. “I know that.”

Rainey watches me take another bite of peanut-butter apple, and I know she’s trying to see beneath my veneer of secrecy. Much the way I look beneath daemon’s veils, I suppose.

When she’s satisfied I’m not going to cry again, and that I’ve told her all I can at this point, she pushes out of the chair. “Okay… I’m heading to bed. You do the same after you eat.”

“I will,” I promise, my voice soft and affectionate.

“I love you, Finnie,” she murmurs. It’s a nickname only she uses, and one she rarely pulls out.

“Love you too,” I assure her. “Now, get to bed.”

I finish my apple then decide I should eat just one more. After, I grab a bottle of water out of the fridge and head into my bedroom. It’s nearing midnight, and I’m not the tiniest bit sleepy.

If anything, I’m wired with the information I’ve been given, and because Carrick has refused to help me make heads or tails of my gift, I decide to do some research of my own.

I quickly change into pajamas, brush my teeth, and scrub my face of the remaining makeup that wasn’t washed away by my tears. I nab my laptop from my desk, crawl under the covers, and prop myself against my headboard.

Then I start to search.

Starting with Google, I put in the new terminology I learned tonight. I have no clue how to spell daemon, so I spell it in a variety of ways. I learn daemons can be noble spirits, evil demons, or even a computer program that runs unobtrusively in the background.

Nothing I find relates daemons to the fae.

When I search for fae, I come up with over sixty-three million results. I dive down rabbit hole after rabbit hole reading about their myths, quickly realizing the narrative changes according to what culture I’m studying.

Never in any of my searches, though, does it talk about an angelic rebellion where God purged the traitors, and they become what are known as fae.

Furthermore, I can find nothing about a meteor crashing to earth in the time frame Carrick said it did. I even go back a few thousand years more, but not one single mention anywhere. I do lengthy searches on the Egyptian pyramids and by the time the clock approaches almost three AM, I still haven’t found one single article or mention of anything similar to the story Carrick told me.

Had he made it all up?

Was he a fraud?

But if so, why? And why me?

He clearly knows I can see strange creatures lurking inside human bodies. He described exactly how Marcus looked, which means he can see, too.

So is he like me?

Meaning, does he have the same gift I do, or is he batshit crazy like I might be?

I snort, setting my laptop aside on the mattress, then rub at my tired, gritty eyes. The one thing I know for sure is Carrick Byrne is nothing like me. I’m ordinary and uninspiring, whereas he’s enigmatic, powerful, and surreal. We have nothing in common except perhaps the ability to see strange things.

My head lolls on the headboard, and I look to my laptop. I really should start searching for history books on Amazon. Maybe some will even be available in Kindle Unlimited. I have a strange feeling most of my search would yield a bunch of romance novels because, in my Google foray, I found the fae are an extremely popular trope in romance.

I don’t quite understand that because whether the creatures I’ve seen over my lifetime were hideous or jarringly beautiful, they were all incredibly terrifying. I have no clue what could be romantic about that.

The yawn comes unbidden, and I decide I need to get a few hours of sleep before I have to get up for work. I close my laptop, roll enough to set it on my bedside table, and flip off the lamp. Settling down under my covers, I close my eyes.

I wonder if my dad is watching all of this unfold right now. I’ve never been a religious person, but I’ve always liked to believe he was in Heaven or at least somewhere good, because he was a good man. By not being religious, I don’t subscribe to the notion that dying by suicide is a sin.