Page 46 of Heart of the Fae King

I eyed his ragged clothing, trying to surmise where he’d been hiding and how he’d come to be here now.

Surely there has to be some law about abandonment,I thought desperately, clinging to my anger rather than the inkling of affection I’d once felt for this fae.

“Son,” he declared, stalking forward.

“Lucius,” I replied curtly, sure he could hear my heart roaring. The wolf inside me threatened to respond, but I kept my inner beast at bay—for the moment.

It really was him.

We sized one another up for a long moment, Lucius never losing his broad smile. “You don’t seem happy to see me,” he remarked.

I scoffed so loudly, I was surprised my disdain didn’t throw him flat against the wall. “You’re joking, right?” I fired back, my eyes narrowing. “What are you even doing here, Lucius?”

“Lucius?” he snickered and spun around to reclaim his seat. Instead of taking the chair he’d had before, he ambled over to myspot behind the desk. “I’m still your king, Nyx, whether you like it or not.”

“Get out of there,” I hissed. “You shouldn’t even be in the castle.”

“I’m the Alpha King of Steelshire, child,” he laughed, plopping his frayed, filthy boots over the gleaming wood of my organized desk. “I can go wherever I want.”

My eyes popped, and I laughed, albeit mirthlessly. “Have you lost your mind as well as your honor, Lucius?” I snapped back. “You lost the right to be king when you took off.”

Blinking innocently, my father dropped his boots to the ground and splayed his hands over the desk. “Took off?” he echoed guilelessly. “I was kidnapped!”

More ire rushed through me, and I advanced on him, but I forced myself to keep my wits about me. If the guards came through, all hell would break loose, their loyalties divided, undoubtedly. I couldn’t depend on them to side with me in this case, as much as I wanted to order them to take my father into custody.

“Kidnapped? Really? And your abductors had the foresight to pack a bag for you, didn’t they? They kept you for seven years without a ransom demand? You’ll have to do better than that if you want the kingdom to believe you, Lucius. You’ve had almost a decade to make up a far better story than that. Shame on you.”

His smile froze now, the golden eyes hardening. “I managed to escape,” he replied tersely. “But I had memory loss for quite a long while…”

My eyes became slits as his eyes darted around the room. He was lying.

Alarm bells rang in the back of my mind as I ambled closer to the desk.

“You’re all recovered now, then?” I asked tauntingly. “After seven years?”

“I didn’t know anything was wrong with me,” he explained quickly—too quickly. His tone was off, different now, and nervous. I’d never heard my father nervous before. But I also hadn’t known my father to be a coward who would run off without a word to anyone. “But then I started seeing a healer who worked some magic on me, and suddenly, I remembered who I was,” he continued in the same odd tone.

“Why do I think you’re full of shit?”

“Watch your tone with me, child!”

There was the father I remembered.

“I’m not a child,” I whiplashed. “I stopped being a child the day you took off. Get out of my chair before I have you thrown in the barracks.”

His mouth dropped slightly, but to my surprise, he rose and stepped aside, regaining his fake grin. “I can see we’re both a little wary of one another,” he offered, pulling out the chair for me to sit. “Why don’t we try this again?”

“Try what? Taking off for seven years and then blindsiding me out of nowhere? What the hell do you even want, Lucius? You’ve been officially declared dead. There’s nothing here for you.”

“But I’m not dead,” he reminded me, waving a hand over his body before perching on the edge of the desk as I flopped on my chair purposefully.

Folding my arms over my chest, I glowered at him. “So what? That doesn’t change anything.”

“It might,” Lucius replied slowly. “I was a good ruler.”

Again, my jaw twitched inadvertently, as if my body was trying to tell me something my mind couldn’t quite register. I stared intently at him, his story making less sense the more I thought about it—not that I ever believed for a second that he had been kidnapped.

“It depends on who you ask, I guess,” I retorted.

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