Page 37 of Fate and Flame
The comment struck me out of nowhere and I couldn’t hide the sadness on my face. “I can’t speak for Fenlas, King Tolero. If I could, I would visit my parents every day.” I looked away as the lump in my throat threatened to choke me, the mourning hitting me as fresh as the horrid day I’d lost them. Something about sitting with an ancient king left me feeling devastatingly vulnerable.
“Your father was a good male. Both of them were, Ara,” he said softly.
“I guess I never really knew either of them.” My voice cracked as a tear slipped out and the weight on my chest hindered my breathing. Grieving sucked. Flashes of my parent’s faces, things I’d tucked away, too painful to remember, began to surface and I tried to swallow the lump and hide my aching heart.
“I’m sure that’s not true. Perhaps you never knew Arturas, but Thassen raised you.”
“Arturas? Was that my real father’s name?”
“Yes.” He smiled as a memory came to him. “And your real mother’s name was Coraj.”
I studied the horizon, letting their names sink in as I wondered if it would ever feel normal to know I had four parents. “Were they similar? All of my parents?” I asked, wiping another tear.
He chuckled. “There was no one like Thassen. Not in this world or any other, I’d wager. He was the greatest warrior I’d ever met, but the moment Greeve placed you into his arms, he melted into a thousand pieces. I remember one time when Thassen came to visit, Inok challenged him to a friendly duel. Your father beat him, of course, so the next day he challenged him to a foot race in the mud. Your father won again. On and on they went, swimming, throwing knives, hunting—anything Inok could think of, your father was always better. One night,” he said as his eyes lit up, “I caught them taking turns pushing boulders through the sand.”
“Did Inok ever win?”
“No,” he laughed. “And to this day I think it bothers him.”
“Why didn’t he just tell me, King Tolero? Why couldn’t they find a way? Why did we stay in the Marsh Court? Why not here?”
“Your father was a member of the Hunt before I even met him. He came here once, and we became instant friends. But as soon as we learned of your fate, and Arturas and Coraj made plans to take their own lives to protect you, I called upon him. We agreed the Marsh Court would be the safest place for you. He forced me to enchant him. He knew you’d be strong of will and they would struggle to keep the secret at bay. He believed he was protecting you. Who was I to deny the request of a father?”
“I still wish I had known.” I picked at the grass. “If they could have told me somehow, maybe we could have saved them.”
“Your father died protecting you, Ara. Let him have that sacrifice with no regrets.”
The king was so sincere. For a moment, I questioned everything I knew of the world. I’d made my own assumptions of him, hated him from afar, but there was not a single thing to hate about this old fae. “Do you think they know? That I made it here to Fen?”
“I have to believe all the ones that have gone before us are still here, watching over us.” He moved his fingers over the grass, as if drawing power from our world into his palm. His old eyes found mine and held them. “This is the land of the fae, after all. Anything is possible.”
Those words settled deep into my soul. As if he’d known something he wasn’t telling me. As if he challenged me to defy my fate, though he hadn’t spoken a word of it.
He cleared his throat and looked back to the bay. “Some days, thinking she is still with me is the only way I make it through.”
He became distant again, and I let him have his moment of mourning while I sorted through my own. We watched the waves dance in the distance and listened to the hungry bird’s caw as they soared above the cerulean ocean. There was peace here. Perhaps that’s why he came.
“Ready to go back?” he asked eventually.
“I can give you a moment alone, if you’d like.”
He nodded and I stood, dusted the fresh dirt from my pants, and walked back to the hill, letting my eyes settle on the pile of dried flowers he’d apparently brought for her. The words of my prophecy rattled around in my head. Never, ever would I kill that fae. Not even at the cost of my own life.
After only moments he joined me and we went back to the castle together. As we approached, several guards and Inok ran to us. “I need a moment, my king,” he said frantically.
“You may say what you need to in front of Ara. She will be queen one day.”
“It’s about the other queen. The one we had in the dungeons.”
“What do you meanhad,” he barked, stepping closer.
“She’s gone. The selkies too.”
He was instantly moving and I followed.
“I’ll go wake Fen.” I ran past them and up the stairs, slamming the door open as he jolted upright in the bed. “Your father needs you. The queen is missing.”
He was out of bed, dressed, and to the door in an instant. I moved to follow him, and he turned, tossed me a knife, and kept going. I was more lethal than most of the males in this castle. Leave it to my mate to arm me and set me free.
