Page 33 of The White Stag
“Oh, this totally reeks of tiny cock syndrome. Secure men have zero problems with strong women and only want to build them up. He doesn’t care about the Unseelie realm. Alastair doesn’t even like the Unseelie. He didn’t even care about the blight affecting his people. You know Alastair and his parents weren’t going without food while his people starved.
“Your Ma is a great queen. Everyone in the Unseelie realm respects her. The Seelie either feels the same or fears her. But I will tell you, Estrella won much respect with the Seelie for saving them from that blight when their king couldn’t. That never sat well with Alastair, so he marched into her kingdom and demanded her daughter. He could have just been chased back home like a good little boy, but he didn’t like being put in his place by a woman and did all the vile shit that came after.”
“I still want to be here when you kill him.”
“And that’s still not up to us. So you’re going to have to talk to your ma, little princess.”
I sighed. I’d been mentally preparing myself for that conversation for ages, but I didn’t want it to go down like that. The first time we talked when I was an adult needed to be a get-to-know-you session where we both got to have our say, not me begging her to stay behind when my life was in danger.
“I’m going to need a massive pep talk for that.”
“Let me get Finnan’s tuba and wake everyone.”
I cocked an eyebrow at Oisin. Did I even want to know?
“Why does Finnan have a tuba?”
“Why does Finnan do anything? He heard some kid practicing at your elementary school and decided it was perfect for pissing us off. The tuba isn’t evil if you know what you are doing, but Finnan uses it to wake people up or make fart noises if he doesn’t like what you are saying.”
I giggled and squeezed Oisin’s hand.
“So, this sounds like payback. Aren’t you worried about pissing Cyrus off too?”
“Oh, Cyrus is fully going to blame Finnan. This is the fourth tuba in this house. Every time Cyrus destroys one, Finnan buys a new one. We all gave up taking his fucking tuba away.”
“I want to watch.”
Oisin let out a massive belch and then grinned at me.
“I’m officially not hungover anymore. I’m going to enjoy getting Finnan back for every time he has tuba bombed me.”
I laughed and followed Oisin down the hall to steal Finnan’s tuba.
Oisin
Revenge was sweet. Finnan was a menace with that tuba. Cyrus and I would have been fully supportive of the noise if he had bought one because he legitimately wanted to learn how to play it. He didn’t. He loved that fucking tuba because the annoyance it caused filled some need in that hobgoblin brain of his.
Reagan and I were in his bedroom looking for that damned tuba. Iadoreddoing this with her, and I loved she could just be herself here. We looked around Finnan’s bedroom. Finnan had the personality of a random thunderstorm, but he was a neat freak. There were limited places he could stash a giant tuba.
“It’s definitely in the closet,” I said.
I grabbed Reagan before she could go for the closet. Finnan was really protective over that fucking tuba after we’d destroyed three of them.
“Fae 101, Reagan. We don’t do locks with keys that can be picked. Everyone uses magical locks that fight back. I’m guessing Finnan booby-trapped the closet, so we couldn’t destroy his precious tuba again. We’re trained to pick these, and Finnan knows this, but I’m thinking he was hoping we’d just try to open it without checking.”
“He sounds really protective of that tuba, Oisin.”
“He’s only obsessed with the damned thing because Cyrus keeps taking it away. Finnan would have been over it in a few months, and it would gather dust if Cyrus hadn’t bent it with his bare hands and then used his fire magic to melt it. Give me a minute.”
I ran my hands over the door without touching it. This whole tuba drama was getting ridiculous. Finnan pranked us all the time, but he generally never did the same thing twice until Cyrus destroyed the tuba. This was just spite at this point. I could end this by waking his hungover ass up with his own spite tuba.
I easily picked his magical locks. The tuba was there with a blanket draped over it. I went to reach for the blanket and stopped. I scanned the tuba too. Fucking hobgoblin. He booby-trapped it to shock the shit out of anyone that touched it.
I disarmed it and pulled it out of the closet. Putting Finnan’s spite tuba drama to bed for good just should not be this difficult, but it was going to be beautiful using the damned thing on him. I placed my finger over my lips and looked at Reagan.
“Be very quiet.”
Reagan made a zipping motion over her lips, and we crept down the hall like Krampus on Solstice. Reagan had always been a kid that liked to cut up but always held it in, so she didn’t go back into the system. She could prank whoever she wanted here, and I was honored to be the first one to rope her into one before Finnan.
