think she’s all right?”
The first thing Taggart had done was set up the fire pit and materialized a bunch of comfy chairs. He’d set his wife in one and wrapped her in a blanket, securing sunglasses around her eyes before he’d dropped a kiss on her forehead and told me to watch her while he finished setting up camp.
It was a little like Weekend at Bernie’s wife edition.
I shrugged. “He seems to think so. She’s supposed to wake up sometime soon. How much do you trust the Dellacourts?”
Because I’d dealt with that fucker’s human twin, and I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. Although I could throw him pretty far. I didn’t trust him as far as my hand could punch through his chest and come back with his beating heart clenched in it. That was better.
He’d worked with Gray’s father to force Gray’s transition to dark prophet. He’d nearly killed my husband, and I meant to pay him back for that someday. The only reason I hadn’t killed him that night had been the fact that he’d also been the only reason we’d been able to escape.
“They’re friends of my dad’s.” Dean sat back and crossed one leg over the other. “He’s definitely not lying when he says he knows the Seelie kings. They’re his cousins. And they aren’t known for being vicious. They’re known for being good kings.”
But sometimes good kings had to do bad things to try to save their people. I should know that. I genuinely cared about Donovan, but he hadn’t exactly cared about my rights in the beginning. “You okay with us going to meet with them?”
Dean stared at the fire for a moment. “If that’s what Summer wants. I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m doing anymore. I have to wonder about everything now. Erna was the one who told Summer I was important. It’s obvious now that Erna lies.”
He was bitter, but beyond that I thought he was scared. He’d lost the two people he’d relied on—one to her own betrayal and the other to Marcus. I knew Summer wasn’t trying to leave Dean behind, but it would feel that way to him. He’d gone from being Summer’s first priority to feeling like an afterthought in the face of her blooming relationship.
I had to remind him of all the reasons he was here.
“The lies she told you have no effect on who you are and what you’re meant to do. Erna didn’t send a witch out to the fair,” I pointed out. “She didn’t set up a prophecy about you.”
“We don’t know that prophecy is there,” he countered. “I never got a chance to look at it. I didn’t see it with my own eyes. It locked down when I touched it. I think she wanted that book for another reason, and telling Summer it had to do with me was a handy excuse.”
“I don’t think so. I did get a look at that book and I know it wants to come with me.” I hadn’t had a chance yet to grill Summer on what Erna had said because she was still calming Marcus down, probably in a nasty, glorious way. Danger revs that vampire’s engine, if you know what I mean. “And I know a thing or two about prophecy. You are absolutely the one talked about in the Earth prophecy. You’re important. I believe that deep in my bones. I know today feels like a setback.”
“I feel angrier than I was, and it’s not just about the betrayal. There was a reason I left the Vampire plane. I didn’t fit in there. My dad’s money and power couldn’t make me one of them, and I didn’t handle it well. I got into a lot of fights. Even my mom knew something had to change. I was always on the edge. I felt like my skin was too tight all the time.”
Did I ever know how that felt? “Because you haven’t become who you’re supposed to be yet. You felt the need to get away because somewhere deep down you couldn’t be who you’re supposed to be if you stayed there. You’re in the middle of it, and that is a shitty place to be. I’ve been there. I thought I was a regular old human for most of my life. I was difficult and angry and self-destructive until I accepted that I was different, and some people weren’t going to like that. Once I