Claribel raised her left hand and positioned her thumb ring in the lone ray of light from the hanging bulb. Obsidian and moonstone flecks sparkled on its unique orb of titanium metal. “Lawren gave me this at our betrothal ceremony.”
The anger was gone and it seemed the old Claribel was back. Her face softened, her voice was light and girlish. “It was the happiest day of my life.” She put her hand back in her lap and faced Skye. “We were both committed to Queen Morgana. She granted us important positions of espionage for the Unseelie Court. Lawren and I pledged to eliminate power all enemies in the Seelie Court.” Her eyes hardened, the fury again blazing. “Everything was perfect until Rowena Watters came into our lives.”
Skye really didn’t want to hear this, she knew where it was heading. She closed her eyes to avoid Claribel’s flushed face and fisted hands.
“She stole my Lawren.”
A sudden clap and loud vibration by her feet made Skye open her eyes.
“Listen to me when I’m talking to you.” Claribel had slammed a hand by Skye’s legs and her face was only inches away. “Your mother must have cast some kind of love spell on Lawren to make him forsake me. Oh, sure, he’d had flings with humans before, what fairy doesn’t? But this time he got caught in a powerful witch’s snare.”
Skye felt the need to defend her mom. “They must have been truly in love to risk everything.”
A bolt of energy exploded on her right kneecap and Skye curled up in a ball on the cold concrete.
Claribel’s voice was shrill and her pudgy body shook with anger. “Rowena brainwashed him. And he didn’t just turn his back on me after centuries together. Lawren forsake his allegiance to the Unseelie Court and turned traitor.”
Skye digested the words and translated their true meaning. Claribel’s husband and her mother had fallen in love and Lawren changed because of that forbidden love – he had wanted to switch to the side of lightness and goodness. Good for Mom. And good for – her real father.
“When I found out about you, it was the cruelest insult of all. When I confronted him about his betrayal to me, to our kind, Lawren didn’t deny it. He actually said” – she spit out the words with contempt – “that he loved you, wanted to be a true father to you.”
She was their child, Rowena and Lawren’s daughter. This was how she became half-fae. She actually had a father who loved and wanted her. No wonder the man she had thought of as her real father wanted nothing to do with her. Her mind traveled back to age five when she had come down the stairs for her dance recital. He had gaped at her costume, focusing in on the angel wings. The revulsion that flashed in his eyes was the moment she realized, even as a kid, that he didn’t love her.
He knew Skye wasn’t his, he even knew the true father wasn’t human.
Skye struggled to a standing position, placing her weight on the uninjured leg. “Where is he? I want to meet my father.”
“He’s dead you idiotic half breed.”
Dead. She would never meet him.
“The Unseelie Court hunted him down and killed him. Nobody escapes us.” Claribel arose and narrowed a meaningful gaze on Skye. “Nobody.”
Chapter 18
Trapped
Nobody. A half breed. Nothing special.
Claribel’s words pummeled like blows at Skye’s deepest insecurities and fears. She had never measured up or fit in anywhere. Not at home, not at school, and not in this new world she had fallen into.
Outside the basement window, Dark Fae murmurs rose in a tide of excitement. Claribel was going to kill her and she was powerless to stop it. She didn’t have Callie’s or her mom’s witchcraft abilities to fight back.
Only a couple of hours remained until midnight and Samhain’s arrival. Soon after the moon’s next rising she would be dead and with her death the balance of power in the fae world would shift. The Unseelie Faes’ strength would increase and the Seelie Fae would eventually serve the darkness or face extinction.
The iron medallion warmed where it lay at the center of her chest. She raised her right hand and lightly rubbed the solid disc. If she couldn’t help the Seelie fairies, Kheelan would never be free. Even worse, he would end up serving the Dark Fae—helpless to cruel taskmasters more heartless than Finvorra.
If they let him live.
She could not—would not let that happen. Callie’s words whispered in her mind, you are more powerful than you know. Everything you need is within.
“I’ve waited for this night a long time,” Claribel said. “You, even more than Rowena, ruined my life. Lawren wouldn’t have turned his back on me for just your tawdry witch of a mother. He did it for you.”
Skye set to work, focused on putting up a protective energy shield against the vibrations of anger shooting from Claribel. Too bad she had lost the hematite crystal when she had flung off her coat.
“I hope Callie knew what she was talking about,” Skye muttered.
She tuned out Claribel’s raging and found that calm center inside herself to chant and raise energy for her intention. Silently, she formed the words in her mind.
Kindly spirits draw unto me
Earth, air, fire and sea