Dodging Calamities (Artemis University #7) - Erin R Flynn Page 0,70

your father,” Dean White surmised.

“Yes, and though she was not the only one who thought it, her grief blinded her, did something to her magic because she lost her soulmate, not simply her husband. We are dark fairies because of our complexion and fondness of the moon and magics we possess, hunting the darkness at times, but she truly became the darkness, and everything spun out from there.”

“The evil queen cast a dark curse,” I muttered, reeling from what I was hearing but again, wondering how much of our world someone had slipped to Disney in a note or five.

“Yes, and one your mother must have foreseen in some way to sneak you out of Faerie first,” Neldor replied, sounding tired. “We tried to reach my mother first. I tried to tell her it was her grief, even siding with Queen Meira and backing the light fairies in the war to show I believed she did not kill my father.”

“That’s her name?” Mel asked, glancing at me. “That’s Tam’s mother?”

“Yes.”

“And her father?”

“I think it best for Tamsin to ask about that later,” Mrs. Rothchild muttered.

Mel didn’t back down. “Tams, don’t you want to know?”

I shot her a look, not hiding what I felt. “They sold me, Mel. I don’t care how noble the reason to them. They sold me. All we’ve done, all we’ve fought against, I’ve had to fight to be free in the human system, and my own family sold me. I was literally born into my worst nightmare and sold off like a whore. So no, I don’t fucking care much about them besides you can tell them they’re traffickers.”

“Well, your mother’s dead,” Neldor snapped, clearing his throat when several people growled. “I’m not a light fairy, but I was fighting on their side, so I felt it.”

Oh right, as if that made any sense to me.

“Fairies can feel when their queen passes,” Katrina filled in for me. “No matter where they are, they will know it happens and know they have to return to Faerie to pay their respects and secure the rule of the new queen.”

Me. Which was me, in this case, if the old queen had died.

Fuck.

I nodded I heard her, but didn’t say anything.

Which seemed to grate on Neldor’s nerves from his tone. “She sacrificed herself to fight the magic and dull the effects.”

I bit back a sigh as I pinched the bridge of my nose. The light fairy gave her life to change the devastation of the evil queen’s curse. I was truly living in a Disney movie.

But with more men for the princess and tons more sex.

Un-fucking-real.

“Instead of using her blood and soul in her magic to turn all of Faerie and all fairies to stone in darkness, Queen Meira made it so we were frozen in time, in darkness. In that dark magic, you clearly have been pushing back. That was part of what she did. You could unlock the magic as her blood, the blood she sacrificed to save us from that fate.”

Everyone was quiet several minutes, nothing but the sounds of eating could be heard in my large kitchen.

“So, your mother tried to kill all fairies, and the whole world knowing it would completely fuck over all the fair folk stuck here, and my mother gave her life to stop her, and you thought you’d just come in and take charge, handle all the cleanup and how things will go now, after I saved your ass from being locked in there forever. Does that about sum this up and your fucking crazy?”

Mel wasn’t the only one who snorted.

Neldor adjusted his neck, narrowing his eyes at me. “Listen, I understand that—”

“No, you listen,” I blasted, standing and slamming my hand on the table hard enough that cups and containers fell over. “You have no idea what’s been going on while you were frozen in your mother’s madness. We’re about to go to war with a few different councils to survive. There were several times I almost didn’t make it to come rescue your ass, and you keep acting like this was a quick trip to the gas station.

“What I did fucking hurt me. I don’t know what I did. So, the fact you’ve repeatedly ignored that tells me all I need to know about you, and I won’t ever mate you. I don’t care if the fucking gods themselves signed a marriage certificate for us in their blood. I. Did. Not. The only thing I will give you is