“Twisted tree?” I grit my teeth.
“Yes.” She sniffles. “How did you know?”
I lean my head back and roar to the rising sun, my despair and anger mingling into one vicious sound that shakes the trees and promises swift vengeance on the king beyond the mountain.
3
Taylor
The scary fae doesn’t release his grip on my arm as I stumble into the pitch blackness at the back of the cave. Leading me through an arch, he turns to the right and winds deeper into the rock.
“You’re the king beyond the mountain.” My words barely make it into sound, and my hands and feet are like ice.
“I’m the king. Yes.” His tone is even, his voice deep but silky.
“I’m not your daughter,” I blurt.
He laughs. My skin crawls.
“Come now, Taylor. Are you trying to hurt my feelings?” Taunting and ugly, the words wrap around my throat, constricting it. “Of course I’m your father. That mating mark on your shoulder doesn’t change anything. The pretender on the winter throne doesn’t have a claim on you. Not like I do. We’re blood, after all. Besides, don’t you like being a princess?”
“My father died.” I cringe when his wing brushes against my back. “And I’m not a princess.”
“You had a human on earth who thought he was your father.” He leads me into another cavern, this one decorated like a swank house that’s fallen into disrepair. Guards stand along the walls, but there’s something wrong with them. I look at the nearest one, but he doesn’t look back. He can’t. His eyes are white, covered over with some sort of cataract. Where there should be a nose, there’s only a gaping hole, and I can see his yellow teeth through his cheek. When his head turns toward me, I jerk back.
“Dead.” I clutch the stone at my throat as I look down the row of guards, each one rotting and grotesque. “They’re dead, aren’t they?”
“The dead can be quite useful.” The black fae leads me deeper into the room even though everything inside me is screaming that I should run. A huge fire burns to the right, the jumping flames a deep purple. He leads me up wide, stone stairs. A white throne comes into view at the top. No, not simply white.
I stop. “Is that bone?” Delantis’s words bubble up in my mind. “On wings of death, the child will glide to sit on her throne of bone.”
“You like it?” He smiles though there is no joy in it. “It’s a favorite of mine, something that is as unique as it is effective.”
“Yeah, it really ties the room together.” I force myself to climb, because I’m afraid he’ll drag me if I don’t.
“Was that humor?” His dark eyes cut to me.
“N-no?” I don’t know what answer the monster wants, but I’m almost certain humor isn’t allowed here.
“I’m not devoid of amusement, daughter.” He tsks. “When you get to know me, I think you’ll find I can be quite humorous. Though I admit, my sense of humor might be a bit … dark.” He smiles with his fangs showing. They’re crimson at the tips. Stained. From blood?
My steps falter, and I cry out for Leander again. As I feared, the dark fae wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me up the rest of the way.
A large black pillow rests at the foot of the throne. He sits on the bones, a set of skulls lined up behind his head, and points at the pillow. “Sit, my child, and I’ll tell you a story.”
I glance around, but there doesn’t seem to be a way out of this. At least, not one that doesn’t involve zombie guards, a host of warriors, and a pissed off, scary father-fae person.
“Sit.” His voice has an edge this time, as if he isn’t accustomed to asking twice.
I lower myself to the pillow, tucking my legs under me and trying my best to keep one eye on him and another on the creepy guards.
When his fingers sift through my hair, I bite back a scream.
“Long ago, there was a great king.” His tone verges on dreamy. “He ruled his realm with a firm, but fair hand. The kingdom prospered. It became so great that its neighbor grew jealous. This neighbor, you see, believed theirs was the better realm. Warm, fertile, filled with prattling, simpering nobles who doused themselves in jewels and pretended they were gods.”
“The summer realm,” I offer.
His jaw ticks. “Do not interrupt me.”
Sorry, psycho.
“This realm of foolishness thought they were better. They roused their citizens against the good king with words like ‘unseelie’ and ‘dark magic’ and ‘evil.’ So, the king went to war for his people. He fought with honor and bravery.” He grasps my hair tighter, twining it between his fingers until my eyes water. “But there was a traitor in his midst. A fae who thought he could be king. The traitor raised a rebellion and challenged the good king for his throne. Through treachery and deceit, the pretender slayed the king and left his body on the battlefield.”
He’s talking about Leander. Has to be. Leander killed Shathinor, the former king.
“But the pretender didn’t know everything.” A smile cracks across his lips, ugly and smug. “And he should never have left the body of a necromancer to rot.” He pulls open his black shirt.
I pin my lips together to hold in the scream. His guards aren’t the only undead in this place. The scary fae is disintegrating, his rib bones exposed and his heart beating beneath a layer of damaged white flesh.
“Shathinor. You’re him.” When I try to scoot away, he takes a fistful of my hair. “Let me go.” I grip his wrist but pull my hand away quickly. Something moved beneath his skin when I touched him. No, it slithered.
“I’m not done with my story.” His tone is as gentle as his touch is brutal. “Before I was betrayed, I carried on an affair with a summer realm noble. She fed me information to aid my war efforts, and I promised to make her queen of the summer realm.” He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have, of course. Callandra was far too weak, proven by the fact that the great fool Tyrios was her mate.”
His story has familiar threads that weave a tapestry of my memories. “Tyrios—Cecile’s father.”
“Yes. I hear the pretender to my throne slew him.” He loosens his grip and strokes my hair again. “But you already know that, don’t you, dear heart?”
I cringe at the term of endearment. “Yes,” I answer quietly. “I was there.”
“What I didn’t know, because that whore Callandra never told me, was that she bore a child during the long war. My child. And hid her away in the summer realm.”
Prickles race up my back like a thousand needle sticks. I don’t want him to go on. The promise of doom grows as he speaks, and I don’t know if I can handle what else he has to say. I turn to my mate, the only one who was able to defeat the evil creature that now holds me captive. Leander, please! I’m in a cave on a mountain. Shathinor is alive. Please, come get me! I scream in my mind, but it’s like speaking underwater; the sound doesn’t go anywhere, and I feel like I’m on the verge of drowning.
Shathinor’s gaze slides to my throat. “This child was protected by a soulstone, one that Callandra stole from Queen Aurentia’s treasury. A powerful artifact, the soulstone kept the child alive, but asleep, and hidden in the summer realm. There you slumbered, just as I slumbered under the muck of a battlefield, the worms my company as I slowly rebuilt the shards of my soul.”