Page 104 of Beyond the Winter Kingdom
“Faerie was starving. Children were dying in the streets. I didn’t know what else to do ...”
I stayed silent, waiting for him to continue.
“My father plunged Faerie into eternal winter, and I didn’t know how to fix it, but I had to try. I had to do something ...”
Everything in me stilled.
This wasn’t just the breaking of the bond talking. In this madness there was something else. Remorse. Shame. Sorrow buried so deep it had become a part of him. It terrified me.
“What did you do?” I whispered.
“I came here once before,” he said quietly. “To the Fold.”
My brow furrowed. “And?”
“There are ley lines in every realm, but none are as powerful as this one. I needed it to destroy something for me.” His hands flexed against the grass. “A god-forged artifact. One that never should have existed.”
“Why?”
“I thought,” he choked out, taking a breath before he could go on. “Ihopedthat it would end the winter. I was afool.”
“What type of artifact?”
“Amoret’s necklace. The amulet. My father gave it to Drayden so he would gift it to Maeve. No one suspected that it was cursed. No one thought he’d hurt her.” Vareck swallowed hard and shook his head. “Maeve was his favorite. She was the heir apparent.”
I felt so lost. There was a story here I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure I wassupposedto know. “Maeve was your sister?”
“My sister. Destined to ascend.”
“Ascend?” I asked, a chill creeping down my spine. “Ascend to what?”
“Her place amongst the gods.”
A fae becoming a goddess? Was that a thing? I knew about gods and demons, how they were basically one and the same. In all the legends and stories passed down, I’d never heard of someone ascending to godhood.
“You’re not making a lot of sense, Vareck.” I moved my hand slowly, not wanting to startle him while I checked for a fever. His skin felt normal, but nothing he was saying did. “What does your sister and father have to do with a god-made artifact you asked the ley line to destroy?”
“The necklace was the key. He used it to drain Maeve of her power and kill the furies. The winter was brought on by him—byit. I couldn’t let it remain. If the necklace gave him the power to curse Faerie, then maybe destroying the necklace would undo the curse.”
I tilted my head, taking it all in. This was really personal information, and I wondered if he was in his right mind telling me all this. “All right, I’m following. Seems logical enough. Except Faerie is still frozen over. So something didn’t go as planned?”
“It didn’t work,” he said, curling his fingers harder, piercing the compacted dirt beneath us as he dug them in. Nails cracked,and blood smeared his hands like an offering. “We brought the necklace to the Fold. We asked the ley line to do what we could not ... and it still didn’t work.”
“It wouldn’t have done that for free.”
Vareck swallowed again and lowered his eyes. “It didn’t.”
The air turned heavy. The ground beneath us hummed, a feeling of satisfaction that was not my own emanating from the ley line.
I leaned in. “What did it ask for?”
“I thought I was doing the right thing. People were starving,” Vareck started, falling back on what he was saying before. Despite the manic edge, there was an awareness in how he held himself that told me the king wasn’t completely gone. Not yet, at least.
“What did you give it?” I asked again, harder this time.
His lips parted, but no sound came out at first. Finally, he whispered, “Fate.”
I frowned in disbelief. “Fate?”
