His gaze burned her skin like pottery being hardened inside of a kiln. “That doesn’t explain why you’re not accompanying her, Tilda.”
Charm wasn’t going to work on this being. His intelligence was the third entity in the room, hovering overhead and shining light on every odd breath, every inconsistency. “Mary’s reasoning isn’t always sound…” she started, setting down her cup. “She isn’t always stubborn, but when she chooses to invoke her will, there is little I can do about it without shattering every eardrum in a two-mile radius.”
“Yes,” Hadrian purred, throwing a leather-booted ankle up onto the table. “I would have liked to use that weapon to my advantage a while longer. A pity you’ll supposedly be taking wing to fairy land.”
Tilda’s back teeth ground together, a spiky serpent slithering into her chest. “No supposedly about it. Anton, my husband and Mary’s father, will return for us. We’ll have our strength and value substantiated. With the next Exodus, gone we will be.”
She cursed the tic in her speech that betrayed her stress and wished for a cigarette.
“After the fae have aided me in defeating the new High Order and their allies, you mean.”
“Naturally,” Tilda responded. “That is the deal we made.”
Hadrian swung his foot off the table and stood, pacing slowly to the fire, the amulet he wore around his neck caressed by a knuckle. “And in no part of the deal was Mary to be transported by the enemy. Seems like a significant breach, does it not, Tilda?”
Her skin grew clammy. “Mary will be here. She will be wedded to you.”
His laughter thickened the air in the room until Tilda could barely draw a decent breath. “See, I’m having a hard time maintaining my confidence in you, Tilda. After all, you think your husband had a perfectly sound reason for abandoning you. An offer of power.” His smile turned her stomach over, his implications making her want to jump out of the chair and run from the room. “I know nothing of love, but I’ve witnessed beings in the throes of such useless emotions often enough to know one thing. To them, death is preferable to separation. For a moment, let alone thirteen years. And so I will ask you again, are you sure Anton gives enough of a shit to return and claim his wife and brat? Or am I wasting my goddamn time?”
Tilda barley held on to her composure. On the inside, she reeled.
These words were unwelcome.
These possibilities were ones she’d repressed—successfully—since the last Exodus. Since her husband took one last look at her and allowed himself to be drawn skyward, leaving her to this nightmare world of humans to care for a girl who had no hope of fending for herself. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been shocked over Anton’s leaving. After all, they’d both been ambitious since they’d met, constantly seeking influence in the underworld. Leadership among the population of fae who’d been cast into the human realm until their worth could be proven anew.
Every ten years, the fae Assembly weighed the fortitude and value of those residing in the Faerie Realm. If a being was deemed unworthy, they were cast out. To the humans. Tilda and Anton had once been among those sent away. Long ago. Before they understood power. How it could feel. How it could make other looks at them. Treat them.
But they’d learned.
They’d governed their population of cast out fae with the confidence of a king and queen who’d been ruling for centuries—and their subjects fell in line. Until Mary. Until she’d had her sight taken away by an enemy of her grandfather and become an outward weakness, a symbol of Anton’s failure to protect—and most of all, he couldn’t accept anything in his life being less than perfect. At least judged that way by others.
After Mary’s loss of vision, Anton had grown determined to compensate for what he deemed a failure. He’d grown their commune of fae into a village and made it successful. Established their influence in the underworld. Made them a formidable foe of the vampires. And so he’d been deemed worthy during the Exodus, unlike Tilda. Worthy enough, in fact, to be a member of the Assembly, their version of a governing council.
They’d grown apart as husband and wife. Of course they had. All relationships took an occasional downswing, didn’t they? Yes. But Tilda loved Anton in a wild, gravitational way that pulled at her insides, made her remember more of the good times than bad. They would have repaired everything. If given the time they deserved, if she hadn’t been so occupied with Mary, they would have ruled side by side with admiration for one another, for all to see. She wouldn’t be a tired, powerless slayer bar owner with no one to rule but a staff of bartenders.