For all the bravado that Faolan wraps around him like a shield, there’s something about him that’s been fundamentally broken for a long, long time. When you’re as old as he, you lose track of your age and the losses that come with it, but Faolan counts his years by the things he survived. His father’s only importance in his life was giving him a sibling, Cora, before he vanished like most fae parents and it was only six years later that their mother left too, leaving the children behind. Though there was some kindness in the Otherlands that was their home, Faolan and Cora trusted only each other, learning to fend for themselves, and they picked up the pieces of their lives with no help from the parents who brought them into it. It would have been easy for Faolan to turn away from his mother when she sought him out again over a hundred years later, but it wasn’t so easy to abandon the full-blooded sibling that she deposited into his arms, one that became his responsibility to bear just as Cora’s presence had been years prior. He rankled at this but accepted it willingly and though Cora’s later departure from the ensuing fighting brought its own pain, he survived it. It never occurred to him in the years following that the loyalty he gave to his younger brother would not be returned and the chaos that followed led to his banishment from the Otherlands.
The loss of his home realm was no hardship. His duty there had always been one of obligation, but the mortal world brought a freedom he hadn’t felt in centuries. Faolan took joy in flinging himself into the thick of it, unafraid of the dangers that came from being fae in this world as he poked his nose into the history it was developing. His first taste of this danger was the very place that he met Caoimhe, a fae whom he grew to love dearly, who taught him the ways of the mortal world without flinching from the parts of him that were built on abandonment. Together, they settled in a small town in Ireland several centuries years after their meeting, building a small family together among a village that didn’t shy away from their differences if only because of their helpfulness. If anyone asked him about the day that changed everything, the day his bravado became a shield rather than a piece of his personality, he would say it was the day an old vampire came into his home and killed his family. His survival, like all the other things he had lived through, came from luck and the racket of his family’s death, leaving him only with scars and a healthy distaste for anything vampiric. The years following are a blur of pain and quiet mourning, but eventually the call of family was stronger. His journey led him across the ocean to a trading post in the Ohio River Valley where an Algonquin woman, Sabine, agreed to help him make the trek to the Pacific Ocean, though what started as a business partnership became a strong connection in the two years of their journey.
The quaint town of Lethe might have become the place that Cora called home, but though Faolan has a home and a business there, he can’t handle being there for longer than a few weeks before the itch to run sends him away. If the council understands his bizarre inability to sit still or if they’ve just come to accept that things as old as him have their own quirks, they haven’t ever said, and Faolan only visits every few years to assuage his sister’s feelings. The arrival of the Riverborn have brought him more amusement than fear when his sister sent word of Lethe’s ongoing issues, but the years had done nothing to dull his visceral distaste for vampires and he vehemently disagreed with his sister’s current living arrangements. His protest fell on deaf ears and then promptly forgotten among his newest worry: the threat that’s hanging over Sabine Devereux’s head. He hadn’t thought twice when she showed up on his doorstep with her new werewolf companion in tow, bringing them to the only place he thought they’d be safe: Lethe. It hadn’t been easy to leave them again, knowing the danger that had near taken her away from him, but her safety has always been paramount to him and finding the people who might hurt her is equally important. It’s the gala’s aftermath reaching his ears that draws him back and with all the danger lurking in Lethe, Faolan thinks it might be best for him to stay for a time.
