Becka fumed. She reached out and grabbed the letter from his hands and tore into it, revealing Maura’s ornate script. As he claimed, Maura had sent Lagan to counsel her. This letter gave him leave to pester her, not that Maura had said it in those words.
She ripped it into pieces, scraps falling to the ground like a winter snow. “Edicts like this are exactly what I hate about being back here.”
“I suspected that although the Duchess and Duke are thrilled at this unexpected turn of events, you have no reason to share their ebullience. I expect this sudden, traumatic change has left you adrift?”
Becka disliked Lagan but admired his moxie. If she refused to speak with him, would Maura somehow force her hand? She kicked at one of the flakes of letter remnants at her feet. What was the minimum level of compliance she could get away with?
“I’m not adrift, but you’re right, it’s an unwelcome shocker.”
He nodded thoughtfully, as if they weren’t surrounded by listening guards. “Did you have any inkling of being different before you returned home for the funeral? Any thought that you were special in some way?”
“Nope. I get back here to mourn my sister like everyone else, and then this gift is dumped on me by the testers. If I stayed home, I bet I never would have known otherwise. I’m hardly ever around other fae in the city. And now I’m stuck here, who knows for how long?”
“Perhaps,” he replied. “Or perhaps not. Untrained powers are notoriously risky. You never know what could go wrong, and it might have happened at the worst time. For now, I would encourage you to accept your anger over not being in charge. Your bitterness over feeling ambushed by the testing process. You are not obligated to be happy.”
Becka cocked her head to the side. “I figured you’d be all rah rahing me to be thrilled over the new gift?”
“The discovery of any new gift is wondrous, to be sure, and in time I am sure you will come to appreciate it.”
She shook her head. “For a moment there I thought you had pretty amazing insight. No. I’d give it away if I could.”
Lagan paused, as if taking her measure. “I believe you. I’m going to say something you won’t have heard from your family. This new gift? It is a burden. You didn’t ask for it. It signifies a loss of your old way of life. Your identity. Your control over who you are.”
His words struck a chord with her. “You’re serious?”
“I am completely serious. You don’t have to like this. You’re allowed to not want this gift. Hate it if you want.”
Those words, spoken by another fae, gave her a subtle sense of relief. Perhaps she’d misjudged Lagan’s usefulness? He certainly seemed to understand how she felt better than her family did. “How will hating it help me? I mean, it feels good, but acknowledging my anger isn’t going to help me learn to live with the changes.”
“You might be surprised, Lady Becka. Aim for acceptance of the change first. Liking it will come later.”
She barked out a weak laugh. “We’ll see about that.”
“I will speak with the Duchess, on your behalf, to encourage her and your family to give you time to adjust to this change.”
“Good luck?”
He smiled. “No luck needed. I’m an unusually lucky man. Good evening, Lady Becka,” he inclined his head. “Until our next conversation.”
“Fare well, Lord Lagan,” she replied, surprised to hear the customary farewell from her lips.
As he walked off, she turned to Quinn who hadn’t left her side. “Perhaps I misjudged him?”
Quinn smiled. “You just like that he gave you permission to be angry about your lot in life.”
“Perhaps so, but I still like the sentiment. Screw my gift.”
Her gift. Her Null powers. Her path to being fae guilded, eight years too late.
What reality was she living in now, anyway? Becka’s head was spinning.
Chapter 24
“That was an odd conversation,” Quinn said.
Becka nodded. “I swear I’ve shifted dimensions.” She continued down the hall, passing multiple arched entrances as she aimed to enter the Great Hall near the family table. Becka had no desire to wind her way through the seated masses.
Quinn laughed. “At least you are in a familiar one.” He checked a pocket in his jacket. “Just a moment.” He pulled out his phone, frowning. “I have heard back from Chief Elowen on Tesse’s symbols.”
His reminder of their investigation into Tesse’s death was just the distraction Becka needed at that moment.
“So what‘s the latest news from your boss?”
“Give me a moment,” he replied, reading through the message. “There is a historian named Selby from House Yggdrasil who identified the symbols as shadow-dweller glyphs.”
Becka barked out a short laugh, but then did a double-take of his manner. “Wait, you’re serious?”
“Quite. You have heard of them?”
“Growing up, I read any and all fae lore I could find in our house library, which wasn’t much. I learned the ancient myths and stories were all based on an oral tradition, passed down in each lineage, and eventually scribed independently by each house. But all I could find out about shadow-dwellers was from the primordial fae texts, which are over fifteen hundred years old.
“Needless to say, there’s been some integrity loss in the parchment over the years, despite copies being taken of copies. Once I was sent to the cities, I started visiting vast human libraries and searching for any fae history the humans kept.
“What little I found felt almost purposely vague at times. So of course, I kept searching for more. Neither human nor fae-touched source had information on the shadow-dweller history, beyond rhyming children’s tales or second-hand references from other house records. I concluded they were nothing more than a lost fae-touched lineage. If they aren’t a long-forgotten tribe of boogeymen stories told to scare children into behaving, what are they?”
“Well, this morning there were no gifted nulls either. Sometimes things are unknown
