went next, and we came out in my kitchen, the hobgoblins hard at work making tons of whatever with everything we were still harvesting from my private grove. I waved, but ignored their curious stares as I continued downstairs with Darby. Letting out a deep breath when we arrived at the portal to Faerie, I glanced at him. “Are you really ready for this?”
“Yes. I want to be at your side in everything, Tamsin. If you’re not ready, I’ll be patient and wait as long as you need. But I’m ready.”
I nodded, activating the portal and bringing him through. The sun was out and I angled my face up towards it as the world soaked up some of my magic. It didn’t take much, as if knowing I wasn’t there for that today, simply a bit off the top like a trim to my hair.
“I’ve dreamed my whole life of being able to see Faerie,” Darby breathed. “It’s miraculous.”
I chuckled darkly. “This has taken a lot of work to get here.” I held up a hand to hold him off. “We can talk about that later. I think we have other things to discuss first.”
He nodded. “I love you, Tamsin.”
A shiver ran through me, part of my soul healing at not only hearing the words, but feeling the sentiment from him. “Mel said there was more to our situation that I should know.” I licked my dry lips as I searched his eyes. “I don’t know what to do here, Darby. It seems too much and something that can’t be—” I gasped as he moved in a flash and pulled me against him.
“I know it’s too much, but what we have is stronger than this hurdle,” he breathed against my lips. “Blood is not thicker than anything. I would give up my family over this if I found out the truth of them doing this to any supe. Any supe, Tamsin. But they did it to you, to your people. I didn’t have to even debate it. This is not them versus you. This is them versus what is right.”
“Slow down,” I whispered, waiting until he nodded. I pulled away and led him over to a nice plush area of grass to sit down. “What does Mel mean there was more to what you thought? You knew there was more to rare game hunting. You thought rare supe hunting. That screamed you knew, and they hunted fairies.”
His eyes went wide. “No, no, agra. I didn’t.” He blew out a long, slow breath. “You need context for this to make sense.” He waited for me to nod. “I don’t like my family. I’ve barely spent any time with them from the moment I could get out of the house. I even qualified for scholarships for a high-tier supe boarding school. I’ve barely spent any time with them since then.”
I digested that a few moments. Okay, so most of what he knew or learned was before twelve or mid-thirteen. Again I nodded.
“What I knew, and what is always said, is our family used to be rare game hunters. That was before I was really even born, so they don’t talk about it much. I’d heard a bit of this and that about humans setting down protections and it being that much harder. My dad works for a large game butcher now. It makes sense. My brother was groomed to take over, but is a logger, and Granddad does that now too.
“There were a few times that Granddad got pissed drunk and would talk about the good days and hunts. It was the words he would use that wouldn’t match up. It hit me when I was ten that he spoke like they were people, not animals. And in my ten-year-old mind, I thought rare supes then. I had no basis for that, no real information. There was one more time since then and…”
“What?” I pushed when he went quiet and looked off in the distance.
Tears filled his eyes and he yanked off his glasses, roughly wiping them when they overflowed. “It was the one time I fucking respected them. It was right before I left for boarding school and—I thought—they were such—they hate the councils and all their bluster and corruption that I thought, I believed—”
“You thought they were vigilantes,” I whispered, putting it together and saying it so he didn’t have to. “You thought it wasn’t ‘rare’ as in lions and tigers, but as in councilmen and maybe bad royals and