Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Kierse laughed at his incredulity. “You helped my parents.”
“Did I?” He raised an eyebrow.
She sat up in the bed and kicked her feet over the side. “They came to you, asking for your help to hide me. I was young. It was before I was on the streets.”
He frowned. “Many people did. Before all the monsters were out, there was always someone trying to hide their existence. The constant string of people begging for a solution that within a few decades worked itself out.”
“But not for the wisps,” Kierse said.
“No,” he agreed slowly. “No, they were hunted and killed.”
“They were coming for me and my parents. My mom…” She choked on the word. “My mom was alive. She didn’t die in childbirth. It must have been a trick of the spell. She said that the Fae Killer was after them.”
At that, Graves entire face shuttered. “She used those words?”
“Yes? Do you know who that is?”
Lines of frustration crinkled his forehead. “I was searching for them. My people kept coming up empty-handed, and as I got closer, the last wisps were killed and they disappeared. I had suspicions, but I never got close enough.”
“You think they killed my parents?”
“Yes,” he said flatly.
“But because of you, I survived.” It was still hard to even believe that was the case. “You sent them to a rogue Druid, Cillian Ryan.”
Graves’s frown only deepened. “Did you get names? Your parents’ names?”
“Shannon and Adair.”
“Fuck,” he said, coming to his feet and stepping away from her. He fisted his hair before quickly dropping his hand. He was still facing away from her when he said, “They died. You died.”
“I clearly did not.”
“Yes, but…I had Edgar follow up. I wanted to see if your parents made it to the Druid and if you’d been hidden. And he came back and said you were dead. All of you.”
Kierse tilted her head. “Do you think he lied?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted harshly. She could see him wondering if that was false, what else might have been a lie. The working of his empire unwinding before his eyes. “I’ll have to ask him.”
“Which is why you never went looking for me,” she said. “Why you would put the entire interaction out of your mind.”
“Yes,” he said slowly.
“And why you didn’t connect me with what happened,” Kierse said, putting the pieces together.
“No, your stories were so different. Your mother died in childbirth. You’d been left to the streets. It never clicked that you could have survived. That my contact would betray me…or had been betrayed.” His eyes found hers as he sank back into the chair. “I knew you were a wisp when I found out about your absorption abilities. I thought that you’d been hidden by your lack of magic.”
“My lack of magic?” Kierse asked.
“Wisps are powerful, Wren.” His eyes bored into her. He seemed eager to have this conversation. As if he’d been holding this back behind his teeth, waiting to tell Kierse when she was ready. “There are levels of magic. The first is the level that all magical users possess—our ability to ward, enhanced senses like being able to see the glow of magic or scent it, and recharge. That is how I could train you in magic before we knew you were Fae. You have your Fae abilities, which are more on the monster side than magic—enhanced beauty, sight, scent, smell, your pointed ears, typically an aversion to iron.” She nodded in agreement. “Then there are your wisp abilities. For all of your prowess in theft, your ability to absorb magic, and your slow motion, you weren’t displaying anything consistent with what I knew of their kind.”
“Like pixie light or persuasion?”
“Precisely.”
“Oisín filled me in on what my powers should be, but I could only ever get half of them to work. Which makes sense,” she added, “because I am only half wisp.”
“Truly, I thought you were more human than Fae. You didn’t have the ears or the enhanced senses. You only had a few abilities. When wisps have children with humans, the magic goes all sideways. Sometimes they only get one ability, sometimes none. Sometimes they have all the abilities, but they’re so slight they don’t even seem to manifest. Your magic didn’t conform to my expectations, and thus my expectation was that you weren’t a full-blooded wisp.”
“And now we know that my father was human.”
“I’m amazed you can do as much as you can, to be honest.”
She’d never considered that being half human could mean problems for her magic. But she also hadn’t ever had enough information about her parents to make that judgment.
His eyes went distant. “When I broke the spell on you, it was the sword that saw the truth of the spell around you. That is its purpose, after all, a truth teller. It told me to break it and reveal what was underneath. I did not once believe you to be the same child that sat in my library. She was long dead in my mind.”