Free Embrace the Magic (The Blood Rose Series Book 2) by Caris Roane Page A

frown appeared between Vojalie’s strong, arched brows as though she was trying to figure something out.
    Finally, she said, “We were both those things, friends and fae-sisters, if you will. I was grief-stricken when she left our world. But she had a terrible time when her fae husband died, Patrick. He’d been a rock in her life and that year following his death, nearly forty-one-years ago now, sent her spiraling into a dark place. I know that’s when she started thinking about leaving Bergisson.”
    Samantha stared at Vojalie as she processed this new revelation, one of so many. At some point, when she was ready to read Andrea’s journals, the five red leather tomes would undoubtedly be able to fill in a lot of the missing blanks. She’d even packed the journals in her suitcase, but didn’t feel the time was right to dig in.
    Now Vojalie was here, a different kind of source of information.
    “So, my mother had another husband. I never knew, but she never told me much about her life, and now I can see why since she’d had to lie about most of it. She said she’d come from New Mexico but had lived in Louisiana for the past thirty years before she died.”
    “I see.” Vojalie seemed very distressed, her brow puckered, her expression grim. “When I spoke with Ethan earlier, I guess I forgot to ask how much you knew. All that he told me was that last night was the first you’d learned about being part-fae. I suppose I should have guessed that Andrea would have kept silent about her former life.”
    Marta appeared in the doorway with a fresh pot of tea and a second mug. Samantha turned and led Vojalie back to the small wrought iron table.
    The lovely troll housekeeper arranged things quickly, setting out the teapot and the second mug. She brought forward an additional chair as well.
    Samantha gestured for Vojalie to sit down, then resumed her seat.
    Vojalie sipped her tea, the frown showing again. “So you know nothing about the realm-world.”
    “Only what I learned from school-ground gossip growing up, then later through university and the Internet, and last night, of course, I met Ethan at the prave.”
    “Do you often go to praves?”
    Samantha held her mug cradled in her hands. “Never. I wanted nothing to do with your realm-world. Or I suppose I should say ‘our’ realm-world now, but it still feels so wrong.” She glanced around the conservatory. The soft music of the crystals eased her and she almost asked Vojalie if she could hear them as well, but decided against it. “I just wanted a quiet life in my grandmother’s home, making my jewelry, studying for my masters.”
    “And is that your dream then? Living in your grandmother’s house, making jewelry, exploring your education?”
    “Yes and no. I’m content with my life in Shreveport, but I guess you could say my real dream was to have a cottage by a lake, surrounded by weeping willows and more lawn than I could manage by myself. And the cottage would be made of river-rock, you know tumbled boulders.”
    Once again, Vojalie teared up, but she brought her mug to her lips.
    “Is it something I said?”
    Vojalie shook her head. “I gave birth three months ago, I’m nursing, and you remind me how much I lost when Andrea left. I’m just so overcome. She was very important to me.”
    “I can see that she was.”
    She felt dizzy suddenly as a new thought surfaced. “How old was my mother when she left Bergisson? The year she died, when I was eighteen, I asked her age, but she laughed and said, ‘twenty-nine’. It was her joke about never wanting to grow old.”
    “Part of that statement was true. She would have been two-hundred-and-twenty-nine at that time. If she were alive today, she’d be ten years more.”
    Samantha put a hand to her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut. There was just so much to take in and with Vojalie’s arrival, everything she’d been hearing had become a very long stream of jolts.
    “So she was that