All the cards

57

I headed back to Isaac and Amira- she'd ended up taking him to my room.
"Well, that's my cue to leave." Amira smirked as I walked in, and edged past me.
"It looks different." He remarked as he stood by the window. "Your room looks a lot different."
"I had to move a lot of my things into here after I gave Hayley and Jackson the apartment."
"Right, the mystery apartment." He let out a laugh.
"You can snoop." I told him. "I have nothing to hide."
"I'm happy with all that's in front of me." He stared straight at me.
"Really?" I walked closer to him. I stood beside him and he reached up to cup my face in his hand.
"I can't believe this is real." He whispered and I wrapped my arms around the back of his neck, leaning closer until our foreheads touched.
"It's real." I assured.
"Considering I've met most of your family, maybe it's time you met mine?"
"I'd like that very much. You have an aunt, right?"
"Yeah."
"I'd love to meet her."
"Great." He closed the distance, pressing a kiss to my lips. The door opened and we broke apart to see Freya.
"Sorry." She said and turned to walk away.
"No, come in." I said, stepping away from Isaac. She looked at me, distress painted on her face. "Hey, what is it?" I walked closer to her.
"I'm going to, uh, find the bathroom." Isaac excused himself and walked out of the room, leaving Freya and I together. I reached for her as her face crumpled.
"Finn- he doesn't want to stay. He doesn't want to be with us. I thought we could all be together. The way it should be, but he hates our brothers."
"Sweet sister. Finn has never gotten along with our brothers. He's always been separate from them, even when we were all together."
"He said he'd rather die than be a part of his family."
"There's a lot of history, Freya. I mean, Nik could never trust Finn with Hope, nor do I trust him with Isaiah. He wanted them dead, and it's gonna take a lot for me to be able to tolerate him in my life. He killed Kol, Freya. That's not something he can just bounce back from."
"You truly can't forgive him?"
"Not in the foreseeable future. Finn did a lot, and he has a lot to atone for. Before he even turns to us, he needs to make peace with himself and our brothers. Now, listen to me. Finn might not be welcome in my life, and he might not want to be in our siblings' but that doesn't mean he can't be in yours. He can be your brother, if you'd like. No one will judge you for it. But a happy reunion between him and the rest of us isn't in the cards."
"Never?"
"Not right now. I have always had Finn's back, Freya. Anytime he needed me I was there. When he died I felt like I'd lost a piece of me. And when he came back, all I wanted was to see him again. And I did, but then Esther brainwashed him. All through that, I still thought that he could be helped. But then he came after Hope and Izzy. And he cursed Kol to die slowly, and it's not that I don't think he can be the old Finn I knew again. But that I can't so easily forgive him. Not this time."
"I know." She looked even more depressed than when she came in.
"It's not your fault, Freya. It's going to be tricky, but it isn't your fault. We'll just have to figure it out as we go along."
"I suppose." She sighed.
"We won't ever make you choose between him and us. But I do have to choose between him and my son. You can have us all, just... separately." I looked at her sympathetically.
"I know, I'm sorry."
"You don't have anything to apologise for, Freya. None of this is your fault." I turned away to pull out some sage.
"What are you doing?"
"There's one thing I need to do. How do you feel about magic with your little sister?"
"I don't think that title works anymore."
"Oh come on, Freya. You'll always be my big sister."
"Yeah." She grinned and I softly muttered the spell for fire, lighting the sage. Once I was completely assured that no one could hear us, I turned back to Freya.
"With Lucien here, he can't know how exactly we're getting the bullet."
"And how are we getting the bullet."
"Trust me?" Freya smirked.
"I love it when you say that. It's guaranteed fun." I laughed and held out my hand and she grabbed it. I closed my eyes, concentrating. We appeared in the back of a limousine where a woman held the bullet, talking on the phone.
"-just as you said." She stopped talking as she saw us.
"Hi." Freya smirked, reaching out to grab the bullet.
"I believe this is ours?"
"Who the hell are you?" She asked and I smiled, mockingly before disappearing with Freya.
"That was anticlimactic." Freya pouted. "I want real fun where we actually get people who put up a fight."
"Well, we get to do that when we're trying to find the person who wanted to get the bullet in the first place. I don't think that woman was working alone."
"Why did we leave her?"
"Because Marcel has a plan to get back the bullet. He can question her. We have what we need." I told her and she nodded. She walked to the door.
"Let's inform our brothers."