"How about you tell me what prophecy," I murmur softly as Gage's hand comes to rest around my waist, pulling me back onto his lap against my silent protest.
Kane's probably at home with Amy, but Gage is here—for me. He has been since he met me. Perhaps I should just get over Kane despite how much I still want to be with him.
Oh this is so frigging frustrating.
"Very well. I'll start at the beginning. You've heard of Freya and her two daughters—Estella and Dragona, correct?"
"Um—yeah—Gage told me about them. How did you know I knew?"
"Because I told Drackus I told you," Gage answers, letting his lips start trailing over my shoulder through my shirt.
I shiver against the heat of his breath, and I feel his smile as his hands grip me a little tighter than necessary.
"Anyhow," my mother continues, further showing her distaste, "I'm the daughter of Estella."
My whole body tenses. She said it so casually, as if it wasn't a bomb being dropped.
"But—no. Estella died. I knew Grandma and Grandpa up until they died. They were your parents. You even look like them."
"They died?" Gage asks.
"An execution gone wrong," Mom says with a sigh, denying her tears their right to fall.
I continue with confusion. "But—"
"I didn't look like them that much," Mom interrupts, getting back on topic, "but when people expect you to look like someone, they tend to find similar features. Gwyneth and Palo raised me as their own child, and I loved them for that. They also kept my identity secret from everyone, including myself. Hilly never even knew, and she was their daughter. She even thought I looked more like Mother than she did.
"Hilly still doesn't know, Frankie only recently found out, and Shay is the only one I trusted with this secret other than your father. Drackus has only told his most trusted associates."
I sit back, letting Gage support me as I soak it all in. Drackus continues tuning out everything and everyone as he flips through the pages of the old book, his brow furrowing from his intense study.
"What does any of this have to do with me?" I ask, feeling weighted by truth and uncertainty as they mingle within me.
"You're the daughter everyone fears," Drackus murmurs dispassionately, so engrossed in the book that he doesn't even realize how unemotionally he just rattled that out.
"What?" I gasp, choking on the shock.
Mom slaps Drackus's leg, and he peers up from his book to offer her a shrug. "They shouldn't fear her yet, but they do. I'm just pointing that out."
His eyes dart back down to the book, never once gauging my proximity to Gage as he flips through the thick mass of pages one-by-one.
Mom sighs out as she explains. "You're Freya's chosen—the one who she bestowed her gifts upon—the embodiment of all enchanted beings."
That's laughable. All beings? I'm just a damn witch.
"No," I say while swatting at her ludicrous theory as though it has materialized in the air. "I can't do anything but witchcraft. That disproves all of this."
Gage speaks softly from behind me while rubbing my back affectionately.
"That's the only magic you control right now, and I'm not saying you'll be able to do everything every fey does, but you will encompass a great deal of their abilities in different ways. The closer you get to your immortality, the more you'll find this to be true. I've already seen it."
This is preposterous. None of this can be true. I'm just a plain and simple witch. Nothing more.
"Ah, here it is," Drackus says while sitting down incredibly close to my mother. "The daughter meant to harness the great will be one full of light and dark. Her powers will war within her, struggling to know which side to fight for.
"In the darkness, there will be only one there to truly guide her. In the light, there will be those who wish to betray her." He pauses and looks up to meet my eyes. "That's one part of the prophecy we don't understand. I'm not sure if it has something to do with what's going on in the light monarchy right now or not."
He looks back down to the book and continues on. "Light will surround her power, her magic, and her life, until she falls for her dark lover. He will be one who has descended from the greatest of his kind; one with unprecedented power that almost rivals hers. And his strength will only fuel hers.
