Slowly, Aoife lifted her head from Bryn’s soft shoulder and turned to glance behind her.
Radha’s brown eyes were wide.
Her heart pounding, Aoife swallowed and straigh
tened in her chair. She’d known this moment would one day arrive. She’d grown into adulthood dreading the consequences. Tonight’s journey had been her attempt to negotiate with her past.
Bryn touched her cheek. “Tell us, sweetie.”
Aoife felt the blood drain from her face as she stared straight ahead, her eyes filling and blurring the figures standing all around her. Which made dragging the secret into the open easier. “My father…is fae. I’m a half-fairy.”
Chapter Three
‡
Sigurd stood stunned. He’d heard of such creatures but had never actually met a fairy. His body froze, because he didn’t know what this meant. “Show us,” he ground out.
Aoife raised a hand and turned it, and then gestured as though she was pushing back an invisible hood.
Sparkles blurred her outline. When they dimmed, he heard the collective intakes of breath as everyone gazed at the witch he’d been so determined to claim.
She was still Aoife. The same sweet-faced, pearl-skinned young woman she had been. But her ears were pointed at the tips, her face appeared a little slimmer, and her blue-green eyes looked as though small pavé diamonds twinkled from her irises. She was lovely.
Bryn gasped and reached out her fingers to turn Aoife’s face from side-to-side. “You’re so pretty,” she said, smiling. But then her smile faded. “But this complicates things, doesn’t it?”
Aoife’s lower lip trembled as she nodded.
Darcy sat forward, her red hair swinging against her cheek. A frown darkened her green eyes. “I thought you said your father was dead.”
Aoife cleared her throat and blinked away the tears welling in her eyes. “I told you that my father wasn’t in this realm.”
“Which you knew would make us think he was dead.”
Aoife nodded and dipped her head.
Miren gave her sister witch another frown. “I thought fairies stole their children to live in their realm.”
“They do. However, I was born a female to a witch, which made me a witch—and we are banned inside the fairy realm. I was safe.”
Bryn drew a deep breath, and her gaze shot to Ethan. “But that doesn’t mean your children will be safe.”
Aoife shut her eyes.
Sigurd felt a little light-headed, understanding at last why Aoife had remained chaste. “If you were to mate and have a male child…”
Her eyes opened, and fresh waves of tears welled. “That baby would be taken.” She leaned toward him. “It’s why I had to go there. To talk to them. To reason…with my father.”
Sigurd pulled back a chair and settled into it. “There’s no ban on demons?”
Her mouth tightened. “They’d be…cleansed. All trace of their demon blood erased. They’d live as fae. Their magic isn’t as strong as a witch’s, so they can’t cleanse one. They can’t make someone like me entirely fae.”
Silence fell around them.
Sigurd shook his head. “Then you can never mate. Or at least, never take a human’s or a demon’s seed.”
Her head dipped, her hair fell forward in a curtain. “Yes.”
That single word was so filled with angst, he felt the pain in his own gut. “Your father denied your request…?”