happened to her. Although she’d never heard any of it, it felt familiar in a way she couldn’t explain. It had the resonance of truth.
Just like the firestorm.
Just like Hadrian’s trust of his fellow Pyr. He was never alone, even though he’d been orphaned, because he was surrounded by a team of fellow shifters who would even sacrifice themselves for his survival. She felt turned upside-down and inside-out, all of her preconceptions challenged, and yet, she felt alive for the first time ever.
The firestorm had brought her an awakening and a second chance, an opportunity to make amends for what she’d done in the past and to shape a better future. Rania didn’t want to let that slip away.
She’d never sought out her brothers. She’d never met them or been curious about them at all, and it had felt right to bring Hadrian to meet them. She liked the idea of having a family, just as he had his cousin, Alasdair. She’d flung them through space on impulse, but it was a whim that felt right.
She loved how Hadrian accepted her dares and met her challenges. She loved that he never took her for granted and seemed to welcome adventure. That daredevil glint in his eyes made her heart skip and she hoped she had the opportunity to prompt it over and over again.
She eyed the ring on his hand, the one that she’d had all her life, the one that the story claimed was her father’s gift to her mother. She liked the look of it on Hadrian’s hand, which was why she hadn’t asked for it back. It looked right to her there.
Had that been her father in her home in Iceland?
Were there more swan shifters? The book said that her father had been the last of his kind, before her conception. Did he have other children? Did she have siblings who were shifters?
If there were, they’d be on Maeve’s list of shifters to eliminate. Rania realized the Dark Queen didn’t intend that she’d survive, either, unless she continued to serve as an assassin. She’d been betrayed and deceived by the only one she trusted, because that had been the plan. The realization made her angry and she recognized that she’d never felt such passion before. There was joy and there was anger, there was desire, and she wanted to experience all the feelings on the spectrum.
With Hadrian.
There had only been three of her brothers in the cage in Fae. As soon as she had the idea of finding out more from the rest, she’d known it was the right answer. Asking them about Hadrian felt instinctively right, too. Even if she didn’t know her brothers, maybe they had her best interests at heart, too. Maybe they had ideas about family that were similar to Hadrian’s. They’d stuck together all these years, after all.
They might also have some knowledge of Maeve’s plan to share.
Rania couldn’t help but notice how the swans divided her from Hadrian, their postures protective and defensive. They had to know who she was and, even though she was a stranger to them, the blood bond was strong enough that they’d protect her. That was encouraging.
She shifted shape as Hadrian watched with such obvious admiration that she felt warm to her toes. To her relief, once in her swan form, Edred’s hissing made sense to her. The others gathered closer, still keeping a barrier between her and Hadrian, and she wanted to laugh that they were all talking at once. They were excited to see her! They welcomed her. Her heart glowed with what she hadn’t even realized she’d been missing.
Edred was the most emphatic and Rania listened to him closely when he told her about the capture of their brothers. Rania felt like she was in the midst of a large and noisy family, and a surprisingly affectionate one. Her brothers admitted how they’d been worried about her since they’d been cursed.
“We tried to watch over you,” Edred said. “Our annual migration takes us to Iceland for the summers and we have circled your home.”
Rania was astonished. She knew that there were swans that arrived each spring near her home, though the locals commented that they didn’t nest like the other migrating swans did.
Of course not: they had no mates.
“You stopped in the yard a few years ago,” she said, remembering the incident. “I didn’t know it was you.”
“No,” Edred said sadly. “We saw that, which was why we left.”