“Well, your mother’s dead,” Neldor snapped, clearing his throat when several people growled. “I’m not a light fairy, but I was fighting on their side, so I felt it.”
Oh right, as if that made any sense to me.
“Fairies can feel when their queen passes,” Katrina filled in for me. “No matter where they are, they will know it happens and know they have to return to Faerie to pay their respects and secure the rule of the new queen.”
Me. Which was me, in this case, if the old queen had died.
Fuck.
I nodded I heard her, but didn’t say anything.
Which seemed to grate on Neldor’s nerves from his tone. “She sacrificed herself to fight the magic and dull the effects.”
I bit back a sigh as I pinched the bridge of my nose. The light fairy gave her life to change the devastation of the evil queen’s curse. I was truly living in a Disney movie.
But with more men for the princess and tons more sex.
Un-fucking-real.
“Instead of using her blood and soul in her magic to turn all of Faerie and all fairies to stone in darkness, Queen Meira made it so we were frozen in time, in darkness. In that dark magic, you clearly have been pushing back. That was part of what she did. You could unlock the magic as her blood, the blood she sacrificed to save us from that fate.”
Everyone was quiet several minutes, nothing but the sounds of eating could be heard in my large kitchen.
“So, your mother tried to kill all fairies, and the whole world knowing it would completely fuck over all the fair folk stuck here, and my mother gave her life to stop her, and you thought you’d just come in and take charge, handle all the cleanup and how things will go now, after I saved your ass from being locked in there forever. Does that about sum this up and your fucking crazy?”
Mel wasn’t the only one who snorted.
Neldor adjusted his neck, narrowing his eyes at me. “Listen, I understand that—”
“No, you listen,” I blasted, standing and slamming my hand on the table hard enough that cups and containers fell over. “You have no idea what’s been going on while you were frozen in your mother’s madness. We’re about to go to war with a few different councils to survive. There were several times I almost didn’t make it to come rescue your ass, and you keep acting like this was a quick trip to the gas station.
“What I did fucking hurt me. I don’t know what I did. So, the fact you’ve repeatedly ignored that tells me all I need to know about you, and I won’t ever mate you. I don’t care if the fucking gods themselves signed a marriage certificate for us in their blood. I. Did. Not. The only thing I will give you is a room in this house and the chance to get caught up, because we are in deep shit, Neldor, and alone.”
“Stop,” Dean White ordered him when he opened his mouth. “You’re scared. Why? I healed your arm.”
“Not fully,” I admitted, rubbing it. “I mean, it feels better, but that still after-injury weirdness, but I feel… I feel like when I fixed the sun in Faerie and you said I did that stuff to my magical rivers and things? I feel like that. My muscles keep twitching on my left side because all the power rushed out there, and my joints hurt. I also feel a bit of vertigo.”
“You’re not normally such a good patient,” Julian worried as he came over to me.
“I am when I know it’s real and not just being whiney,” I defended. “It was probably stupid to use the fairy rune to run twice after, but I heard another heartbeat, and then his power ramped in a way that terrified me.”
Neldor cleared his throat. “That was a side effect of coming out of the spell. It felt distant to me, and I called for my magic and suddenly all of it was there. I understand better now why you ran, and I thank you for coming back and checking on me. Not having grown up with any guidance or explanations on our people, that would have terrified anyone.”
Well, it still wasn’t a thank you, but at least it was the first non-dickish thing he’d really said.
Kinda.
As Julian checked me over I realized there was something I needed to know. “Do you know if Geiger’s mate is still alive?”
Neldor frowned, but then glanced between Geiger and I. He focused on me and the gaze was curious, assessing, almost confused. “I believe so. He wasn’t far from me and alive not twenty minutes before the magic went off. He had also switched sides and was trying to help get other dark fairies to stand down, as I was.”
“Oh thank the gods,” Geiger choked out, moving his hand over his face.
I glanced at Zack and Ray. “But your mates were light fairies. He probably wouldn’t know.”
“We’ve been in Faerie,” Zack said with a smile. “I thought we would know if they were gone, even if not in the same world, but we were there now, and the bond is still there for both of us. They’re alive. We’ll find them once you get stronger. You’ll get them all, kid, I know it.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, Princess.”
I held up my hand. “Please, no, just—no. I cannot deal with—just
