Page 42 of Dark Fae's Destiny

“Tired.” My answer is honest, as I know there’s no hiding my bone-deep fatigue from Quinn. We’re bonded for life in so many ways now that Ariana has brought us together again. Those bonds strengthen me now, as Quinn pours his loving fire inside me, bolstering me.

Even as he sends a soothing wash of his coolest darkness through me, calming me.

“The fatigue of triumph is the best there is.” Quinn massages my shoulders, and his words make me smile. Nodding at the living area, Quinn ushers me over to the velvet settees before the fireplace. He pours me a brandy and we sip; it’s nice, calm in the late midnight hour, after the never-ending chaos of the past few days.

“So, you’ve moved me out of the palace.” Jutting my chin at my stuff cluttering Quinn’s foyer and dining hall, I lift an eyebrow at him.

“It seemed best, yes.” Quinn nods, more than aware that I’m sort of a nomad right now. “I would have offered for you to stay here with me at the Hotel, indefinitely. But of course, you would have declined. So I moved you in, for as long as you might like.”

“I suppose I can’t refuse.” A smile quirks my lips now, though something inside me soars at Quinn’s sweet gesture and forethought.

“I assume our Livingtree is gone?” Quinn’s next words are softer, however, and I feel how he hates to ask. Valorhome was as much his tree as it was mine, once upon a time. He still cares for it, though he hasn’t spent any significant time there in ages.

“Decimated by the fighting. And whatever the Gold Eyes’ magic did to it,” I say now, a deep heaviness in my heart for our tree. “A casualty of war, I suppose. I’ve sent Alleno there to claim any of my things that can be spared. And find a good cutting from the tree, or a sapling, if he can. We’ll see.”

“Some things don’t survive war.” Quinn’s tone is sober as we both watch the fire and sip. I know he’s talking about my father now, killed by the Gold Eyes right in front of me.

It still hurts, even though I knew what a bastard my father was. By all counts, he deserved death for everything he’d done to me and others over the years, not to mention for his alliance with the Gold Eyes.

Still, I couldn’t do it when the time came. Staphylogenes killed my father for me, and something about that last and final betrayal by the creature will always pain me. My father was a bastard, but once, he was a man I cared about.

Someone I hoped could be saved before the end—too late.

“It is good he is gone, Lucca.” Quinn sets a hand to my knee, squeezing it. His dark eyes search mine. “Archivolio Bellari only would have continued making your life hell, and all of us, had he lived.”

“Yes, but to have the Gold Eyes kill him…” I take a sip rather than voice whatever I might have said next.

“I know. It hurts.” Quinn rises from his wingback chair, moving over to sit beside me on the couch. He heaves a deep breath, watching the fire as he cradles his glass in his hands. “The Gold Eyes will ever be our enemy until he is vanquished. And to have a mortal enemy kill someone we love, no matter how much of a fiend they had become… it’s hard.”

“It is,” I say, though to have Quinn’s recognition of what I’m feeling eases my heart now, untying it from its knots. At last, I heave a deep sigh as something unwinds inside me. I feel it as my aura loosens, knowing my story with the Summer Fae is finally at an end.

A good end, all in all.

“We won, for the Summer Fae,” I say now, voicing it, which is something I haven’t had a moment to do in the past three days. “They’re free from my father’s tyranny and your father’s before that. They’ll be free of any king or queen’s whims now, setting up a council as they are doing. Our rebellion did that for them. Now they will open their borders and come into a modern age, at last. One that includes the Dark Summer Fae who are their kin and forges a new understanding with the Vampires that share our city.”

“A magnificent outcome.” Quinn smiles as his dark eyes beam with pleasure at how all this turned out.

“They want you on the High Council, you know, along with me, Alleno, Bello, Junius, and Ariana’s parents.” I give Quinn a pointed look as I regard him. “You’re still Fae—Summer Fae, Quinn. Your people recognize that, even though you’re now a Dark Summer Fae.”

“My time leading the Summer Fae has passed, you know that,” Quinn says now as he gives a sad smile. “My old lineage helped us win over Junius and his army when we came to save you, nothing more. I haven’t been a part of their lives for hundreds of years. No. My Vampires need me now, and my Dark Fae. Though I will always have a special place in my heart for the Summer Fae. Like you.”

I nod now, knowing Quinn speaks from his heart. I look around then, not sensing Ariana nearby. “Where is our faeadonna?”

“Upstairs. Conked out and sleeping like the dead.” Quinn chuckles now as his dark eyes shine. “Our Sleeping Beauty has been through nearly as much as you these past few days. She’s been meeting with our Dark Fae allies from Britain, Novakitsk, and Venice, besides many who were previously hidden amongst the Summer Fae. It seems a Dark Fae movement is happening to re-integrate those who used to live here, back into the city. I am pleased, and it seems to be going well.”

“Any word from the Vampire Council?” I ask, hating to speak of them but knowing we need to address it.

“Radio silence.” Quinn shakes his head, though his visage is troubled. “I could see how they might not want to attack us immediately after our big win, taking back Florence, Pisa, and Monaco. That they’re waiting so long now to even send a messenger to me, after their initial pronouncement of open war on this United Haven, makes me uneasy, however. They’re planning something… we’re past the window they might need to regroup. And the darkness of their plot is hidden from me… even from my deepest spies in Rome, and the few allies I have there.”

“Not good.” I frown now, knowing we’ve won one battle, but still have so many more we have yet to face. “I have heard nothing from the Gold Eyes, either. You?”

“No. Nor Ariana.” Quinn shakes his head, swirling his glass as his gaze darkens further. “It seems our Descendant nemesis is content to wait and see what we do, trying to find his heart with the key he gave us.”

“Will you give it to him? His heart, if we find it?” I have to ask, as I glance at Quinn.

“I have to,” he says as he stares at the fire. “I made a blood-oath to Staphylogenes at the Palace of Light, Lucca. You know how those things hold their maker, no matter what. It was the only thing I could do to convince him not to kill us all, right then and there. He was about to; he was only a hair’s breadth from wiping the slate clean of us and starting a new Ascendant’s Triad a thousand years from now, or whenever he could finally reproduce it. Though we gain power, we are still nothing but pawns to him. Only a pawn that holds the prize is worth keeping in the game.”

“Until we give him that prize,” I say as darkness churns inside my heart now, and I sip my brandy. “You know he’s going to off us the moment he gets that heart.”

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