Page 420 of Flirting with Darkness

My father stares at me and the chest alternately before taking a last puff of his pipe and ushering me upstairs.

“No, wait, Father. I can prove it.” I scan the ground and he humors me until I spot it.

The key.

Not around my neck but on the ground, exactly where I’d dropped it when I released him.

I pick it up and aim for the lock.

“Liesl! What are you doing?”

“Father, I need you to trust me. You know me. You know where my heart lies.”

“Liesl, stop this at once!” He steps in front of me, reaching for the key, but I’m young and he is not.

I’m spry and agile and he is not.

I dash around him, heading for the lock once more.

“Liesl! Get a hold of yourself!” he yells, pipe falling to the ground, cherry-red embers and unburned tobacco scattering all the way to the stone walls. “Think of your family, the village. If you release that demon—”

“You know me, Father. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t put our community at risk.”

I don’t know why I put the key in the lock.

Maybe it’s to prove it to myself. Maybe I want to set my father free of the inaccurate dogma he’s ascribed to.

Or maybe I want to watch the world burn.

Maybe my bout with a fae king tainted my morality.

Tainted me in some way.

I don’t know.

I don’t suspect I’ll ever know for certain.

But watching Father’s face go from twisted in terror as the lock falls to the ground, then to stunned, and finally to quizzical is likely the most gratifying thing I’ve ever experienced.

“You don’t deserve to be lied to either,” I whisper, as he gazes from me to the empty chest and back again.

He falls back, knocking into the far stone wall.

“It…it must not be within our ability to perceive.”

I nod, knowing how difficult it is to realize everything you built yourself around is a lie. “Maybe. Or perhaps there wasn’t anything in there.”

“No. Liesl, that can’t be. Our ancestors…”

“Caught a fae king, Father. I released him.”

He shakes his head, fingers trembling as the weight of centuries of lies crashing into him.

“Come on, Father. Let’s go upstairs,” I say, and lead him out of the cellar and away from the empty chest.

“We can’t keep ourselves beholden to scripture that clearly isn’t accurate,” I say as I take him back to his study. “I know it’s difficult, but in time…”

Father stares at me, gaze hollow, lips graying. “In time. In time? Liesl, there is no time left. None. You released whatever unseen force our family kept from the world for generations. It is in our world now, free to do as its evil heart delights.”

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