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She cringed, turned to look out the window into the dark backyard.
“Please,” he said through gritted teeth, shedding his pride, desperate, so desperate for a final answer to the burning question that—
Something popped around him. Like a bubble surrounding him had burst, or that strange opening of your ears when adjusting to pressure. A wave of sensations flooded him, and his senses sharpened, attuned to his surroundings with so much detail, so much input, that his brain short-circuited for a moment.
Hazel gasped, swiveled around, and her eyes widened when she looked at him. “Yes,” she blurted out, almost as if she thought she had to say it fast to say it at all. “You’re not his son.”
She exhaled on another gasp, her face lost all color, and she sank down on the chair again, her hands covering her mouth. “Dear gods above and beyond…”
Basil was still reeling from whatever the hell had just happened to him, but—he could think about it in a minute. Right now, he forced himself to take a deep breath and said, “Thank you. I mean, I think I always knew, but to hear you—”
Hazel met his gaze and shook her head, her dark eyes glistening with unshed tears. “And I’m not your mother.”
Chapter 3
Stunned silence.
Basil’s heart could have stopped beating, and he wouldn’t have noticed. He was that numb.
“The what with the who and the how?” Lily asked, her voice squeaky high.
His mom sobbed.
No, not his mom. The thought echoed around his brain, so clinical, so rational, seemingly unattached to any emotion. Not my mother.
When he recovered the ability to speak, he could only utter a single word. “How?”
Hazel inhaled on a shudder, sniffed, blew her nose on the tissue Lily handed her. “You’re a changeling. A fae changeling. Exchanged after birth.” She closed her eyes and whispered, “Oh, gods, I can finally say it.”
“You couldn’t before?”
She shook her head. “A spell. She put a silence spell on me. It remained in place all these years, and I could never tell a soul…”
Basil’s ears pounded. He rubbed his temples, trying to alleviate the pressure building in his skull. A skulking, yet-unnamable sensation crept along his bones, made his heart race and his skin crawl. “She?”
“The fae who exchanged you. She never told me her name.”
“Okay, whoa,” Lily said, holding up her hands. “Let’s take a step back here and start from the top. Mom, please tell us—wait, you are my mom, right?”
Hazel swallowed, smiled. “Yes, baby.”
The tightness in Lily’s shoulders eased, she leaned back in her chair, and waved one hand. “From the top, please.”
A deep breath, then Hazel said, “Well, the beginning isn’t much different from what you’ve both been told about how you were born.”
Like most children, they wanted to hear the story at one point, and because it was so adventurous, they wanted to keep hearing it again and again for several years. The suspenseful tale featured a broken-down car on the side of a country road late at night, and a miraculously accident-free twin birth in the back of said car.
Unlike most other deliveries in the witch community, Hazel didn’t have the support of her fellow witches, didn’t even have doctors or nurses there in the event of an emergency. It had always seemed incredibly lucky that Hazel was able to deliver healthy twins out on the road with only the help of her husband.
Evidently it had, in fact, been more than “luck.”
“And at which point does the thrilling tale of our birth deviate from what actually happened?” He couldn’t help the reproach seeping into his tone. He rationally knew if Hazel had been spelled into silence, that she literally had no choice, hadn’t been able to tell him. And yet…betrayal was a niggling, uncomfortable feeling festering in his bones.
Hazel touched her neck, avoided his gaze. “After the car broke down and the labor pains got worse, a female fae appeared. She carried a bundle in her arms, proclaimed she didn’t mean us harm. I was in so much pain, I couldn’t have used my magic against her if I wanted to. I was worried about the delivery—a twin birth, without help… Back then we didn’t have cell phones, couldn’t call for an ambulance, and we didn’t know if anyone would come down this stretch of road. We hadn’t seen another car in an hour.
“The fae offered help with the delivery. Scared as I was, I accepted. With her assistance, I delivered two healthy baby girls. Robert was overjoyed. But what he didn’t know, what I feared, was that with faeries, help always comes at a price. When a fae does you a favor, and you accept it, be prepared for it to cost you. And as soon as I took my baby girls in my arms, the fae claimed her favor.
“She picked up the bundle which she’d left on the front passenger seat while she helped me with the delivery. It turned out to be another baby, a newborn male fae. She had smuggled him out of Faerie in order to save his life. Or at least it’s what she told me. And what better place to hide him outside of Faerie than in the middle of a witch family? She said it would provide him with the best protection—from whatever enemies he might have. She never told us that much, only that both parents were dead and the child was in danger. Her favor was as simple as it was heartbreaking. She asked me to take in the newborn male fae and raise him as my own son, in exchange for one of the twin girls I had carried next to my heart for nine months.”
