Hand of Fate by Naomi Clark

Author:Naomi Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: urban fantasy, LGBTQ, Lesbian
Publisher: Naomi Clark
Published: 2021-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Somewhat reluctantly, I did retreat to my room after I found the letters. It might not be safe, but it wasn’t public either. I didn’t want anyone else walking in on my reading material. I checked under the bed – for what, I don’t know, but to my relief there was nothing under there – locked the door and windows, and put on both the lamp and ceiling light.

Feeling relatively safe, I then curled up on the bed and started to read the letters. With the rain trickling down the window pane and the faint scent of lavender still perfuming the air, the room almost felt cozy, and I almost felt comfortable.

And as I dug into the letters, the outside world fell away anyway.

The first one was dated several years before I was born, and they continued up until about my fifth birthday. And they painted a very different picture of Siobhán and her life than I’d ever imagined.

I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t know my mother was attractive to men. After Nolan had left, there’d been other suitors drifting in and out. Obviously there’d been this Iwan guy at some point. She was beautiful, and merging two Houses had a lot of benefits – money, land, the sort of stuff feudal lords cards about. Probably magical shit I didn’t know about as well, actually. But Siobhán had never treated any of the ones I’d known like they mattered.

The writer of these letters...he had mattered.

It wasn’t necessarily clear in his writing, which was obviously all just his point of view, and revealed nothing of what Siobhán did or thought. Remember midsummer on the beach? I didn’t want to go back to reality. Your body is my heaven. Your voice is my drug.

It was all very over the top and a little eye-rolling, but Siobhán had kept the letters. She’d hidden them away, sure, but she hadn’t burned them and smeared the ashes on her cheeks. Siobhán was not sentimental or romantic. Whoever wrote these letters, he mattered to her.

The passion and intensity of the letters never wavered, either. There were dozens of them, all full of the same lyrical devotion, reminiscing on what had apparently been one hell of a love affair. But a clandestine one. A wife was mentioned several times, never by name, but it was clear the writer had someone waiting at home for them. This was a romance of stolen moments and mounting frustration.

That became clearer as the letters went on. Around the year I was born, the passion became angrier, desperate. By the time they stopped, there was a strong sense of betrayal. You’ve given up. I never did. You’ve replaced us. I fought for us to be free.

I finished them feeling strangely unsettled. I’d been excited to get this illicit glimpse at my mother’s personal life, but I felt dirty now. This writer had poured their feelings onto the page for over a decade, and while it was clear that Siobhán had

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