Page 103 of Seducing Jenny
I kissed her and part of me wished my friends were not on board. Then another question occurred to me.
“Longshot,” I asked. “I know why everyone else is here, but why are you? Don’t you have council work or something?”
He folded his arms and Rhonda shifted more comfortably around his bicep. “Since I stayed up all night with the rest of the council, I was told to take the day off. I thought perhaps, were things to run afoul after you leave, I could be of better use here than in Ladrille.”
Discord made a sour face at him. “What he means to say is that if we fuck up fixing Credo, he’s here to bail us out.”
“Because he doesn’t trust us,” Surge said, looking annoyed with Longshot.
But the much taller man scowled. “Surge, you nearly died yesterday. Be insulted all you like, but I am not allowing another one of my crew down. Not again.”
Surge went quiet, his eyes searching Longshot’s face. “Longshot, you didn’t let anyone down.”
“Ishouldhave known about Jenny’s possession,” the other man said adamantly. “The moment she returned to Orhon, I should have felt it and used the old spells to detect it. I should have…” He shook his head and looked away from Surge.
“How would you have known, Longshot?” Jenny asked softly. “You weren’t even there when I returned. You were at the palace.”
“There are old spells I could have used to set a perimeter around the estate,” he murmured.
I could not believe he was bringing that up, so I tried to be as discreet as possible. “You told me you no longer did any of that.”
Surge narrowed his eyes at Longshot. “What spells?”
“I…my family…” Longshot struggled for the right words. “My family name is not Griel. What I am about to tell you, none of you can ever reveal to anyone, save Tiger, because I don’t know whether he can hear me right now—”
“I can hear everything happening in there,” Tiger said on comm.
“Good.” Longshot hesitated, looking to me.
“If you want to tell them, I won’t stop you,” I said, in full support of whatever decision he made. “But don’t feel like you must.”
“It is time.” He turned to the others. “My family name is Pinniculate.”
Surge’s body went tense, along with his expression. “This whole time…” His voice was hoarse.
Discord sat preternaturally still, less animated than a statue and unreadable.
“This whole time what?” Jenny prompted.
Surge stared at Longshot, his voice edged with anger when he spoke. “The Pinniculates were a family of magicians whodecided they should be the most powerful magicians of all. About fifty years ago, they murdered hundreds of conduits and mages to steal their power. They were monsters. What was your endgame, Longshot?”
A genuinely pained look flashed across his features. “I am not my family’s sins, Surge.”
“I have fought alongside you, bled on you, patched you up…we slept in the same house for years. How could you not tell me the truth, Longshot?” Surge’s voice rose with resentment. “After all this time, I need to know how you could keep lying to my face.”
“When we met, I wanted you to get to knowme, not judge my character based on my family name,” Longshot said quietly. “My family…before I was born, my mother tried several times to abort me. I was due to be her ninth child, after all. She died in labor, cursing me. My station within the Pinniculate family did not improve afterwards. They tried several times to kill me, before they gave up and sent me to the academy, in hopes I’d die in training or on the battlefield. Once I made it there, I changed my name to Griel, to be rid of the Pinniculate family for good. I am sorry I never told you. Their shame is a heavy burden, and I did not wish to burden anyone else with it.”
Discord broke her silence. “Is this why you never speak of your family?”
He nodded once. “They are demons, all of them. I hate everything they stand for. By blood, I am theirs. But by choice, I am my own.”
Surge turned to me. “And you knew this the whole time?”
“It was not my secret to tell, Surge.”
Surge’s lips thinned in displeasure. “When we get back to the estate, we need to have a long fucking talk about trust. Every one of us. And Longshot, whatever spells you can put around theestate, why haven’t you done it yet? Especially considering the trouble we have found ourselves in lately.”
“Because the cost is too high,” he said quietly.
