Page 51 of Fae Farewells

“I haven’t been able to completely connect with my demon form. She’s there, but I can’t call her forward. I thought maybe it was because we’d grown closer after the bond with Stone and the pith tokens. Now, though? I’m not so sure.”

“You think it’s because someone is in your head?”

“Even my wolf has been quieter than usual,” I told him.

Freya furrowed her brows, running her thumb over the tips of her nails. “Whoever is in your head is trying to leave you defenseless.”

“That’s what I’ve recently started to wonder,” I confessed.

“We should lock them away from her magic,” she said to Vaughn.

“What if that stops her from being able to access it, too?”

She stood to pace. “We’d need to kick the presence out for a few minutes. Tilly could help us. With three of us layering locks on top of her mental security—”

“My mental security is compromised, at best,” I interjected.

They both looked at me, concerned, as their minds spun in two different directions.

“At worst, it’s already been destroyed. I’d have to have another vampire try to breach my…” I trailed off. “Where is my father?”

Vaughn shook his head, as if he already knew what I was planning. I was sure he did, but his smirk was for something else entirely.

“Down that corridor.” He pointed to the left. “At the very end. We’ll come with you, in case you decide to tamper with your mind.”

“You already know—”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t hope for you to change your mind before you ask us to fuck with it.”

He opened the cell door, Freya leading while he followed me out. His fingers laced through mine as we headed toward my father... And Amelia.

I wasn’t ready to meet her.

But this was it.

I couldn’t put off the inevitable any longer.

Even if I didn’t want to be around her, she was still my parents’ mate. I wouldn’t make this harder for them than it already had been. They didn’t deserve that. It wasn’t their fault she’d left. It was her decision, but I couldn’t fault her for making it when I probably would have done the same thing.

I did do the same thing… Sort of.

Risking myself to save the people I cared about was just another character flaw that I possessed.

Maybe I got it from her?

“Don’t be nervous,” Vaughn whispered, squeezing my hand.

“I don’t know what to call this feeling, but nervous wasn’t the word I was thinking about.”

“She’s excited to see you,” Freya added.

“That makes one of us.”

She glanced at me, her brows pinched together. But I stared ahead, refusing to get sucked into someone else’s emotions. Freya could miss her mother. That didn’t mean I had to.

The closer we got to my father, the more clearly his voice rang out. He was telling Amelia tales of the past, like he’d spent the last month catching her up to speed on everything that happened while she was gone.

I took a deep breath as they came into view.