Page 247 of Bitten By the Fae

“Aflora.” The urgent tone felt like a slap to my senses, yanking me back into… Zeph’s room.

I stared at the windows overlooking the building across the street, tilting my head slightly at the strange exterior. “Is that brick?” I asked. Such an inane question but it seemed easier than facing the tumultuous thoughts in my mind.

Zeph’s palms burned into my cheeks, forcing me to look at him. At some point, he’d pulled me beneath him, his elbows braced on either side of my head. “What the hell just happened?” he demanded.

I looked up at him, noted the fury in his green eyes. “What do you mean?” And wow, my voice sounded dreadful. I really needed a glass of water because my throat was killing me.

“You just spent the last five minutes screaming,” he ground out. “I couldn’t wake you the fuck up and had to put my palmover your mouth to silence you before you alarmed all the damn humans in the building.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,oh. What the hell, Aflora?”

I opened my mouth to tell him, but I couldn’t. The words were trapped in my throat.

And then his phone began to ring.

“Answer that,” I managed to say.

“Fuck the phone.”

“It’s Kols,” I said, knowing I’d probably scared him by leaving so abruptly. But there was no way his words were true. “My parents were Royal Fae.” The statement was meant more for me than for Zeph. “It doesn’t make sense. They wouldn’t be able to do that. The Elemental Fae Council…” I trailed off, trying to figure out how the Midnight Fae had gotten away withmurderingmy parents.

And what did Kols mean about them being Quandary Blood sympathizers? I didn’t even know what that was until recently.

Except…

I am one.

My eyes went wide. “Of course,” I whispered. “They… they were protectingme.”

But that could only mean they knew about my abomination status. Was one of them really a Quandary Blood?

“Not possible,” I continued out loud, oblivious to everything around me. “A Midnight Fae can’t connect to the earth source. Unless…” My lips parted, my throat going dry. “Unless a Quandary Blood rewired it…”

I reached for Zeph, his heat having left mine when he went to grab his phone. His hand caught my wrist, drawing my palm to his and linking our fingers. “What is it?” he asked softly.

“What if my parents weren’t Earth Fae at all, but Quandary Bloods who rewired the earth source to accept their magic?” Iasked him, my heart beating erratically in my chest. “What if they weren’t sympathizers at all, but actual Quandary Bloods hiding from the eradication? They were old, Zeph. So, so old.”

My mind kept working through the puzzle, the pieces falling into place.

“I was their only heir. An heir they left with a single mother and her very powerful son.Sol.Maybe they chose his family because they knew his bloodline was the rightful connection to the source, and that’s why…” I met Zeph’s gaze. “That’s why he’s connected to it now.”

It was incredibly rare for an elemental source to allow a new entity to tap into the power when it already had a powerful conduit.

“I’d thought the earth source welcomed Sol because of his mating to Claire.” She had access to all five elements. It made perfect sense. “But what if it had nothing to do with her, and it was the source realigning itself with the appropriate monarch?”

My entire life had been a lie.

My parents were never Earth Fae.

“I’m a Quandary Blood.” Yet that statement didn’t feel quite right, and my link to my elemental power screamed at the wrongness of that claim, confusing me even more. “I don’t know who I am anymore.” My eyes didn’t well with tears. My heart didn’t break. My mind just kept whirring with theories and possibilities.

But at the end of it all, I knew one thing for sure—I despised the Midnight Fae Council and their Elders.

“They killed my parents,” I whispered. “They killed my parents.” And they’d gotten away with it.

They’ll pay, I vowed, uncertain of whom I spoke to.