Page 27 of The White Stag
I didn’t particularly give a shit what Tucker or Oisin was saying or how funny theythoughtit was. Finnan wasn’t nearly as amusing as he thought he was, but he was my brother, so I’d never be mean about it. Finnan had a big heart when he wasn’t getting up to trouble.
“Where did you go, Cyrus?” Reagan said, waving a hand in front of my face.
“He was thinking,” Finnan said, slamming the oven. “Cyrus doesn’t do chit-chat, jokes, or anything fun, but if you need to hear the blunt truth or have your enemy terrorized to death, he has your back.”
Reagan’s face settled into a soft smile.
“I’ll bet Cyrus has plenty of fun. It’s just different from your idea of fun.”
She just got it. It wasn’t in my DNA to enjoy fucking shit up like Finnan. I wasn’t that kind of Fae. Most people would be horrified at the things Boogeymen found fun.
“What were you thinking about?” she asked.
I was thinking about how beautiful she was. I was thinking about how she was still fighting, despite everything she’d gone through. I was thinking about how Estrella would castrate me if I did anything about that before she was back home and had her pick of every Unseelie in the kingdom. But, of course, I couldn’t justtellher that because I was pretty sure she was flirting with me right now.
“Strategy. Alastair is coming soon.”
“Liar.” Tucker smirked.
“I will not hesitate to boot your ass straight over the border, dick.”
“That’s how Cyrus says he loves you,” Finnan said.
“We need a strategy. My mother isn’t going to let me stay if we don’t have a plan.”
Estrella wasn’t going to let her stay even if I had a plan akin to the famed Battle of Greymoon, where the Seelie managed to seize our castle, and we took it back with stealth and force. That battle was so well planned and executed that it was still celebrated thousands of years later. There were celebrations throughout the Unseelie realm on every Wolf Moon to commemorate the victory.
Finnan set a massive pot of soup on the table. He’d made my favorite. It was a creamy soup with wild mushrooms and chives with bits of lamb. Finnan would have had to have put this on last night for it to be ready now and just come in here to finish it up. Hobgoblins were caretakers, but they tended to do it in their own way and mess things up when they felt like it.
Finnan pranked us all the time, but food was sacred to him. He knew all of our favorite dishes and would cook them without comment if he thought we needed cheering up. Sometimes, I wanted to wring his fucking neck when he did things like steal every last pair of my boxers and refuse to tell me where he hid them for shits and giggles, but I never did.
“It’s bad manners to discuss shitty Seelie princes over dinner. There’s dairy in this, so the mere mention of his name will curdle it. I didn’t slave away all night in the kitchen to have my soup ruined by talking about Voldemort at the table.”
That was Reagan’s favorite series when she was a kid. She only had the first book for the longest time. It was tattered and falling apart, but it went in the garbage bag with her clothes when she got carted off to a new foster home, or we had to run. Her foster parents that we’dlikedhad seen the book and bought her the whole series. She even got to watch the movies.
They all got left behind when a cruel woman came to take her away and wouldn’t let her take them with her. I knew what Finnan was doing. We discussed that bastard and strategy at the table all the time. He was stalling because we didn’t have a brilliant plan. We didn’t have anything that would convince Estrella to let her stay. We didn’t even fucking know if we could get her back home before Alastair showed up to kidnap her again.
The most we could do was distract her until she had a conversation with her mother. And we ensured her bedroom was full of distractions she could bring with her when she went home. The Unseelie didn’t look down on some of the things humans enjoyed. We didn’t stock this place with everything Unseelie to culture bomb her.
We glamored ourselves and went shopping. We picked up every fucking thing she’d ever loved and had to leave behind. If we could have cloned her puppy and had it waiting, I would have. Unfortunately, I doubted we could convince her that things weren’t totally shitty by losing herself in a book. I was sure she still loved reading and would love to reread these booksafterAlastair was taken care of.
I hated this. I’d doanythingfor her. I swore once we found her again, we’d never lose her. Alastair was making his last play to get his hands on her. He had nothing to lose and didn’t care about starting a war.
And I didn’t have a fucking plan.
Reagan
Icouldn’t really tell so much when I was younger, but now that I was an adult, Iknewwhen my monsters were keeping something from me. Finnan and Oisin liked to act like Cyrus never did chit-chat, but he spoke all the time. Finnan and Oisin made up stories to tell me, but Cyrus always read books to me. Cyrus spoke when there was something to say. When Cyrus wasn’t talking at all, Oisin was being nicer, and Finnan was joking more, something was up.
I knew I could say what I wanted here, and they would respect my opinion, but I just spent years being silenced. Icouldhave demanded they tell me, but they weren’t Alastair. However, I knew theywouldeventually spill the beans, so I enjoyed the meal with them.
They changed the subject, so I did too because I still had a million questions about everything else. They told me that my mother and father had this epic love, and she fell in love with him because of his cooking. Maybe that was something we had in common because I felt incredibly spoiled and increasingly fond of Finnan the more he cooked for me.
He was just so passionate about it when I would ask him to tell me about what he cooked. Then, Oisin and Cyrus would chime in to talk him up. It really was beautiful.
“What kind of milk is this in the soup?”
The centaur cheese was good, but I was kind of suspicious of Unseelie dairy. They seemed to milk anything with nipples, and this didn’t taste exactly like cow’s milk. Oisin and Finnan started laughing like that wasn’t a completely legitimate question to ask.
