“Understatement.”
Ignoring his interjection, I continued, “But you can trust me to have Aflora’s best interests at heart. She’ll have a choice to make soon, and that choice will rely very heavily on our ability to get along.”
“A choice of what?”
“Which destiny to pursue,” I replied.
“Stop speaking in fucking riddles and give me something I can understand.”
“I don’t know how to do that without risk,” I admitted.
“Then you’re fucking worthless to all of us,” he retorted, causing me to flinch. “How the hell am I supposed to protect our mate if I keep being blindsided by bullshit? I mean, the school gets attacked, and apparently, I was supposed to let her be taken? Fuck that. Now I find out the Council and the Elders have known all along that Quandary Bloods are still alive, and that you’ve been working with them for months.”
He started to laugh, the sound a bit hysterical.
“They’ve also been killing anyone and everyone associated with Quandary Bloods for hundreds of years,” I added. “Don’t forget that part, or how they casually mentioned the reason they left Aflora alive.”
“Right. Because they killed her parents.” He placed his palms on the wood table, his shoulders bowed as he muttered a string of curses under his breath. I would have been impressed by some of them if I wasn’t sensing the pain underlining each colorful word. “How the hell are we going to tell her that? She’s going to hate us.”
“She won’t,” I promised. “We didn’t do it.”
“You’re right. My fucking grandfather did.” He shoved away from the table to begin pacing, his long legs eating up the small space of the room quickly. When he nearly hit the wall, he turned and walked back to me, then rotated again, and did several laps while continuing to shake his head.
“She won’t blame you,” I said softly, meaning it. “She knows it’s not you.”
“You say that like you’ve already seen the outcome,” he replied, pausing to look at me. “Are you working with a Fortune Fae? Is that how you know so much?”
“Yes.” No point in hiding an obvious deduction. I just wouldn’t give him details, something he must have known since he didn’t bother to ask me for information on my source.
Instead, he looked at me and intelligently asked, “What can you tell me, Shade?”
“There’s a war coming,” I said, feeling that was pretty evident now based on everything that had already happened. “And Aflora is going to be forced to pick a side. Retribution or reformation.”
“And what side are we on?” he demanded.
“That remains to be seen,” I admitted honestly. “I’ve seen the potential for both avenues.” I realized the mistake in my wording the second his eyebrows flew upward into his hairline.
“Seen?”
Yeah, that’d be the word I shouldn’t have mentioned. Rather than reply, I remained silent. I’d already said too much.
“Explain,” he demanded.
“I can’t.” Not without risking everything. “One day, I will. I promise. But for now, I need you to trust that I have Aflora’s best interests at heart.”
“It’s hard to trust someone who is constantly hiding things and withholding important details, Shadow.”
“Just as it’s hard to trust someone related to the male who got us all into this mess to begin with,” I tossed back, tired of this bantering act. “You’ve studied Fortune Fae. You know that prophecies can change depending on the actions of others. If I touch or influence the wrong strand in the web too much, it could sever and end and land us on a completely new string of fate.”
He didn’t reply, just watched me with a tick in his jaw.
I sighed. “I’m walking a tightrope, Kols. I’m trying to help where I can without interfering too much, and it’s fucking exhausting. So rather than hold it against me, why don’t you try to have some fucking respect and work with me? I provide hints as I go along. If you’re smart, you’ll catch them. If not…”
Then we all fail, I thought with a shrug. I knew I was being infuriating, but I had no choice. If I gave him all the answers, our destinies would be strongly impacted and all the predictions could change.
Fortune Fae weren’t supposed to interfere too heavily in the fates of other fae, and I’d plucked Aflora’s strands several times within the notorious web that dictated our destinies. My meddling had already impacted the futures for Kols and Zeph, causing their strands to cross Aflora’s in the process. It was a consequence I knew about ahead of time, having chosen to go that route anyway, but that wasn’t the point.
I’d already altered destiny several times. The more I told him, the stronger the risk that our current strand would end in the web.