Page 45 of Kingdom of Faewood

My breaths came faster, my chest heaving. “That means my collar can’t be removed, and I’ll never be free of it.”

Phillen’s eyes dimmed even more.

My throat grew so thick I could barely speak. I blinked my eyes rapidly as quickened breaths lifted my chest. I shook my head, not wanting to accept the truth.

It will never come off.

It will never come off.

It will never come off.

Yet my guardian had promised to one day set me free.

He’d promised to remove my collar.

My entire life he’d told me that all I had to do was be a good, dutiful lorafin, and once I reached my thirtieth birthday, that pliant behavior would be rewarded. He would remove his device, I would go to the supernatural courts, I would be awarded my freedom, and then he and I would be father and daughter only. No more callings. No more ownership. No more demands. We would be a true family in every sense of the word.

But if what he’d just told Jax was true...

The full blow of Guardian Alleron’s confession hit me like a million strikes of lightning.

I jolted in place, my entire body going rigid. Because if my collar could never be removed, then my guardian had never planned to release me.

My entire life he’d been lying to me.

He’d never planned to let me go.

Which meant he intended for me to always be his slave, and I was never to be his true daughter.

CHAPTER 12

I stood frozen in place, my heart like carved ice. Zings from my collar skittered along my nerves, flashes of pain following. But I didn’t move. I stood rigidly. Listening. Processing.

Jax continued his questions, and I digested every damning answer and soul-slicing comment that emitted from my guardian’s traitorous mouth.

My guardian was forced to verbalize honest answers under Jax’s Mistvale magic. But with each answer Guardian Alleron gave, my heart withered more and more until it felt like a dried husk.

Most of my guardian’s responses were entirely new information to me. Such as, not only could my collar never come off, but it was also only Guardian Alleron’s fingerprint that could ever wield the adaptor. Jax would never be able to wield it, not even if he took it.

And, the crystals within the adaptor and my collar came from a land far away, so far that it would require crossing the Adriastic Sea to reach it. And since my guardian had never traveled there, but had merely hired someone to retrieve my collar and his adaptor, he wasn’t even sure of their exact origins.

There was also nothing Guardian Alleron could do to alter any of my collar’s strength. It’d been set long ago when the collar had been initially forged.

In other words, I would always be caged.

Hearing that confirmed a deep-down fear that I’d been carrying in my cracking heart for full seasons—that my freedom and hope for a real family were merely a dream. And now, since I knew the collar wouldnevercome off, I would always be contained, even if I proved I was no longer a danger to others. The harsh reality was that everything that’d been whispered in my ear since I was a child... It’d all been false.

Jax had been right.

Guardian Alleron had never intended to release me from slavery.

Because the most damning information he confessed to was that he’d specifically requested the forger to make my collar irremovable, which meant that all of the seasons my guardian had promised it would one day come off had all been a deception—a way to make me pliant and eager to do his bidding. He’d never intended to remove it.

And now, I saw my mistake. My guardian and I had never made a fairy bargain. We’d never been bound by the gods and goddesses to ensure his word was true, because I’d been stupid and naïve and believed that he loved me. Because I’dtrustedhim, the male who’d been the only father I’d ever known, to keep his word.

I stood in the clearing, entirely numb, as Jax continued asking question upon question. He kept looking for some way around all of the restrictions Guardian Alleron had crafted for my collar.

But there wasn’t a way out of this, and several absolute truths slowly began to sink in.

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