Free Blood of Centaurs: Book 12 of The Witch Fairy Series by Bonnie Lamer Page A

it doesn’t seem to be in their nature.  And Dagda’s right, I do remember reading that it has been the Supreme Commander pushing for the peace talks.  But the emotions didn’t feel like mine.  They felt wrong in my mind, foreign.  Darker.
    Shaking my head, I say, “No, those were not my emotions.”
    “How can you be certain?” Garren asks.
    I shrug in frustration.  “ I just am.”
    “I believe you.  I do not think reading your own emotions would elicit such a glow from your eyes,” Kallen says.  “What, exactly, did you see or feel?”
    “I sort of felt like I was in a dark tunnel travelling a hundred miles an hour until I hit the other side.  Then there it was.  The deep, dark secret no one was supposed to see.  It’s like I bypassed everything else inside her mind and zeroed in on just that.”
    Pondering this, Dagda says, “It seems detecting lies is only part of your new Fairy power.  What I do not understand is why this particular aspect of your power manifested while you were touching the Sasquatch.  You have been in close contact with all of us and you have not seen deep into our souls to our darkest secrets.”
    I narrow my eyes at him.  “Are you telling me you have a deep, dark secret?”
    Chuckling, Dagda says, “No.”
    “I believe I know why,” Kallen says.  “I do not have secrets that I keep from Xandra.  She knows everything about me, which leaves her power nothing to discover.”
    “Good point,” Dagda remarks.  “I can say the same.”  He smiles in my direction, proud that he can make this claim.
    “You have not been in physical contact with me,” Tana points out.
    “Nor me,” Garren says.
    Are they saying what I think they are saying?  “Do you guys want me to read your deepest, darkest secret?”  If Garr en’s is about something kinky he wants to do with Isla, I definitely do not want to know.
    But Tana.  She is a different story.  I may not like what I see, but it would be nice to know if she is plotting to kill me in my sleep someday.  Though, why would she offer to let me find that secret?  Taking a deep breath to make me braver, I say to Tana, “Can I try to read you?”
    Her face is blank as she approaches the couch, not giving me any indication of what I might find.  When she sits down next to me, I take her hand in mine.  Instantly, I am whooshed down a black tunnel.  It feels a bit different this time.  With the Sasquatch, the tunnel walls were strong, rigid.  But Tana’s walls are, for lack of a better word, wishy-washy.  They seem to buckle and bend, making it harder to reach the other side.
    When I finally get there, my gut wrenches.  There, behind a haze of uncertainty, is her deepest, darkest secret.  It is not at all what I expected.  For one, it isn’t even about me.  Not really.  Tana’s deepest secret is that she wishes she had never left Dagda.  She wishes she had understood at the time what was to come so she could have stood with him and helped him stay strong.  If she had, maybe my relationship with him would have had a better beginning.  But she did leave him and those were precious years lost that they could have tried for another child.  Not a child of their own.  Another child.  One who would be my brother or sister, for she has accepted my place in Dagda’s life.  She simply doesn’t always know how to show it.
    I let go of her hand and the barn returns.  I am back on the leather couch.  I don’t realize I’m crying until Kallen wipes a tear from my cheek.
    “What did you see?” he whispers.  His eyes are riveted on me.  They don’t stray to his aunt who has somehow made me cry. 
    “Xandra,” Dagda says sharply.  I look up at him.  The pain on his face is difficult to look at.  “What did you see?”  His eyes do stray to Tana and they are full of accusation.
    Nonplussed and hurt, Tana turns to me.  “Am I such a horrible Fairy that you cannot speak of it?”
    Instead of answering her,