Page 79 of Quiet
“O’Connor?” Isa let the word linger in his mouth. He liked the feel of it. “That’s a very Irish name. Is it your mom’s?” If so, it would explain the fairy magic.
Briar nodded, and his nose wrinkled. “Like I’d take my father’s name.”
Isa wanted to get the whole story on Briar’s father one day. He’d caught bits and pieces from their connection—enough to know the man sucked beyond the telling—but not enough to allow Isa to dislike him as much as he had a feeling he should.
“Did I ever tell you mine?”
Briar shook his head. “No. But I asked Alex to find out for me. Isaiah Manfield.”
“Aw, you were stalking me.” Isa teased, delighted by the way Briar’s ears went pink. “But please don’t call me Isaiah. It makes me feel like a ninety-year-old man with a beard down to his toes.”
Briar stroked Isa’s smooth chin. “No problem there. I like Isa better, anyway.”
The door opened, and Isa scooted away from Briar. Damnit, they hadn’t even been doing anything, but Isa just made sure it looked like they had.
Both women were gracious enough to pretend like they hadn’t noticed.
“So, about this spell.” Marie began. “Maybe Fiona should tell you since it came from her.”
“Way to throw me under the bus,” Fiona said in a fake whisper. “Okay, I’ll do it, but I have to ask. How do you two even know about it in the first place?”
Isa’s eyes darted to Briar. He had definite feelings about this question. “I, ah, think Briar wants you to explain first?”
“Does he?” Marie asked, frowning for the first time since they met. “And how do you know that?”
“Can I tell—” Isa was going to ask if he could go ahead and explain everything first but got such a resoundingNohis eyes nearly crossed. “Sheesh, I get it, no show and tell until they spill.”
Briar kept his eyes trained on his parents, brows together, hands clenched in anger. Now that he’d calmed down from the initial shock of the night before, Isa could feel that he was pissed off. It had just occurred to Briar that if they’d told him the truth years ago, he might not have fallen apart when the world had been yanked out from under him.
Isa patted his leg. “You’re probably right, but we should still be polite about it.” He couldn’t even imagine what would happen if he gave his dad the look Briar was giving his parents right now. Just thinking about it made him want to throw up.
Briar’s lips quirked, but he dialed back his death glare by fifty percent.
“Oh.” Fiona held one hand to her mouth. “You have it now, don’t you? You can understand Briar.”
“Umm . . .” Isa glanced at Briar who, in turn, made aget on with itmotion with his hand at his aunt.
“I suppose we deserve your anger, Briar. But I promise you, we only did what we did out of love.”
Briar heaved a long-suffering sigh.
“You don’t need to translate that, Isa,” Marie said. “It was pretty obvious. Just rip off the bandage, Fiona.”
“There are two of us here, you know.” Fiona grumbled. “Okay, fine. Isa, I don’t know how much Briar has told you, but when Briar was young, he didn’t talk to anyone. Ever. And while we loved him no matter how much he did or didn’t say, his mom and I were both worried about how it would affect his emotional development if he never had anyone he could talk to.” She turned to Briar. “We wanted to know everything about you, love. And we were afraid that if anything was hurting you, we’d have no way of knowing. So, I did a spell.”
Marie stepped in. “We both did it. You suggested it and I agreed and I won’t apologize for it. The spell was designed to give fae-touched children someone they could ground to. Someone they could communicate with.”
Fae-touched? Isa sat back in his hands and felt Briar’s amusement echo his own.
I guess we’re both fae-touched now—in the real sense. Or maybe we both always were. Fairy Boy did say something about a spell my uncle put on me,Isa thought to himself.
Marie must have taken the boys’ silence as censure because she said, “It was the right thing to do, Briar. After we did the spell, your whole world opened up. You were able to ask for the things you wanted, and we were able to work with you to find the right teachers to help you learn the way you were born to learn.”
“Briar doesn’t have a problem with any of that. He wants to know why you didn’t tell him.”
Both women immediately looked sheepish.
“Honestly? We don’t have a good excuse for that,” Fiona said. “Other than we didn’t think he’d believe us.”
