Page 78 of Blood Union (Dark Witch Chronicles 3)
Tarnley
“This is a fucking revenge plot,” Rainey announces, as she glances from Nat back to Bronywyn.
“Which is why you are here. You’d already gathered as much.” Elijah shakes his head.
“Exactly. Odette is here for you.” Nat points at Bronywyn, who’s paled drastically since we all came to that realization.
“But why wait so long?” Delaney steps forward. “You said this happened fifteen years ago, so why is she popping up now?”
“Because up until recently, I’ve been able to keep your location a secret.”
“How?”
“The council you reported to in regards to your clinic were all loyal to me. That changed when Heather and Lucy began systematically killing everyone I knew. Though I imagine they didn’t realize what they were doing, they exposed you. And in doing so, when you went after Lucy and Odette got word of a powerful dark witch, she traveled here, hoping for another victim to test her dark magic theories on.”
“It was just happy coincidence that the dark witch was the daughter of her enemy,” Nat adds.
“And you knew this? This entire fucking time, youknewshe was here for me?” Bronywyn whirls on her father, anger, betrayal, and fear rolling through our bond in steady waves.
“I did.”
“Would have been nice information to share,” Rainey growls.
“I had no plans of seeing you until you exposed yourself to her through that projection spell,” Clarance replies, calmly.
Motherfucker.“So she’s here to kill Bronywyn because you freed her science experiments.” I glance at Nat. “No offense.”
The hunter shrugs. “None taken. That’s precisely what we were to her.”
“I imagine she believed that by coming after Bronywyn, I’d resurface, and she could take me out, too. She’s always had a jealous side, and once upon a time, she’d believed we would marry. When I married your mother—” He swallows hard and shuts his eyes for a brief moment. When he re-opens them, they’re shimmering with unshed tears. “Let’s just say that when she discovered your true parentage, she took great delight in telling me that my wife had been involved in an affair with a hunter.”
Bronywyn’s grief turns to rage, and she clenches her hands into fists. “She’s the reason mom had to die. I knew she’d carried it out, but I didn’t know she was the one who outed her.”
“Yes. She was gunning for you and your sister, too. But when I took matters into my own hands, she backed off. At least, until she realized I still wanted nothing to do with her, which was about the same time I retired from the Immortal Council.”
The room falls into complete silence with everyone processing the information in their own way. Bronywyn’s emotions are overwhelming—mixing with my own and nearly suffocating me as I stand here beside her.
“I need some air.” She turns and rushes out of the room. Her father starts to follow, but I shake my head.
“I’ll go.”
With a brief nod, he stops moving. I glance at Rainey and Delaney before leaving, hoping they understand not to let the warlock follow me. I move through the house—ignoring the curious glances from those who managed to listen in—then step out onto the porch. The fire has all but died down, and the shifters have set up tents outside.
The fae walk around, having taken the first watch. They move silently through the lines of tents and around the house, and I know without seeing that some have taken post in trees far above the ground.
Finding Bronywyn takes me almost no time as her presence draws me like a magnet. I find her sitting in front of a tree, her back to the trunk, knees pulled up to her chest.
Silently, I take a seat beside her, and she leans into me. Overhead, owls hoot as the moon casts an ethereal light over our world. It seems so insane to me that we’re facing such a massive fight when the woods around us are so peaceful.
It seems to me that the rest of the world should be feeling the same sort of internal chaos as we are. And who knows, maybe it is, and we’re far too wrapped up in our own world to realize it.
“Everyone is here because of what my father did fifteen years ago,” she finally says. “This whole time, we thought we were fighting this massive war for freedom, and in reality, it’s us against one woman’s vendetta.”
“The reason doesn’t change the outcome,” I tell her. “Odette needs to be stopped. The councils need to be stopped. Her reason for being out in the open doesn’t change those facts.”
“If they die, it’s because of me. Odette let Heather nearly kill us, then Lucy—she killed Jack, and now she’s here, again; after me because of something my father did.”
From here, I hear the front door open, but I remain focused on Bronywyn’s pain. “Odette’s big plan was never about you,” I remind her. “She told you as much. She let those things happen because she had a bigger mission. You are simply a loose end she wants to tie up, Bronywyn. Everyone is here—has been here—because they believe in the bigger picture. They don’t want to be governed by a document that tells them who they can love, what they can do. Shit, look at Bella. She wants nothing more than to be normal, something the council is hell-bent on preventing per The Accords.”