“Don’t ever say that again,” he says softly. “I love you.” He turns me around to face him, mindless of the sparks. “I love you,” he says again. “You are the only woman I have ever truly loved, and I will for the rest of eternity. But you need to know, Aefre, this changes everything.”
Aefre? Why did he call me that now? It sounds strange coming from his lips and I feel like I am somehow back in the Other World. I start to panic, wondering if we have been switched again and I am in her body again with her Sebastian, but I see the look in his eyes. The look of quiet calm and complete confidence. The look of victory. In his mind, he has taken me from our sire and by calling me by my first name, my original name, by the name that Constantine calls me, he has stepped out of his shadow and into the light.
Or should that be fight?
Chapter 13
The Dark Fae Kingdom, March 2014 - Liv
“I have some questions,” I say to Drake as he escorts me downstairs to his office.
“You always have questions,” he grumbles to me.
“How can one learn if they don’t ask questions?” I ask.
“Very well,” he sighs. “Ask your questions.”
“Well, firstly, how come my Fae Powers don’t work here?” I ask.
He pushes open the office door and ushers me inside. “What do you mean your Fae Powers don’t work here?”
“Exactly that. They work on Earth and in the Underworld, but not here. I tried before, to do that puffy thing, and it failed,” I say.
“Puffy thing?” he asks, confused.
“Where you puff yourself out, you know, puffporting, or whatever you call it,” I explain.
He lets out a loud guffaw at my choice of word and I stand there while he laughs it up at me. “Oh, Aeval. You never fail to surprise me with your words,” he says. “We just call it transporting. And you should be able to do it. All royals can.”
“Oh,” I say. Epic fail then on my behalf. “So why do you think I can’t?”
He shrugs. “Maybe you are trying too hard?”
“No, that’s not it. It works outside of here,” I say, chewing my lip.
“When?” he asks.
I think back to the few times I have used Faerie magick. I had been angry every time, well beyond angry. Thoroughly pissed off more like. “It came to me while I was fighting,” I say.
“Fighting?” He looks concerned as only a father would, but I brush it off. “Hm,” he then says and rubs his chin with his hand.
In the next second, I am flat on my back, having been hit with a bolt of lightning.
“What are you doing?” I ask him, annoyed that not only did he throw magick at me, but that he got me with it.
“Trying to get you angry,” he says with an innocent smile, before he lobs another bolt at me.
I am ready this time and I duck behind his desk and try to throw one back, but it doesn’t work. I shake my hand out with a muttered curse and dodge the next bolt he throws at me.
“Stop it,” I say to him, as I peek out from behind my cover. “It’s not working.”
“Then you obviously aren’t angry enough.” He blasts at me with a two-handed spell that crashes into the desk, blowing it apart and scattering the debris everywhere.
“Aaaahhhh!” I yell as I scramble for cover, but there is no cover. I am cornered. Like a trapped rat. Well, now I am pissed, and what do trapped rats do? They fight. So, I guess I am going to have to pull this off somehow. I hold out my hand and with everything I’ve got, throw some magick his way, which he bats away easily.
“Well, at least you aren’t defunct,” he says. “It’s there, but you are a Princess. A Dark Fae one at that. You are acting like a pansy-ass Light Fae,” he sc
offs.