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“Oh, no, these two are locals,” Isak said, with the sharp brand of humour that poured from him whenever he was truly angry. Viskae didn’t warn him to be careful so he continued. “And me? Well, I’m originally from Vasalaer. Then I got kidnapped and forced into an indenture for a rich, entitled family who lived in a house that looks a lot like this. Joined the army against my will; got experimented on by commanders I now know obeyed dark, evil creatures; witnessed hundreds of people marched to their deaths to break open the saints' circle at Venhaus, allowing the most fucked up saints you could ever imagine to come through. Fled for my life. Met a girl. You know how it goes.”

Kaladeir had gone still, his eyes fixed on Isak with something like urgency, like desperation. “You know what the darkness approaching is.”

“The darkness approaching,” Isak repeated, that sharp edge still in his voice. “I like that. Sounds like one of those bands who write songs about the end of the world. Yes, I know what it is. I saw what came from the circle. I saw the monsters made there, and the saints who broke out of their prison through the cracked stones. I watched them kidnap your daughter. They’reexperimenting on her as we speak. Torturing her. Twisting her blood and bones until all she knows is pain.” Isak smiled, baring his teeth. “Not that you’d care about that, as the father who discarded her like she was nothing.”

“Mind your tone,” Harth warned, turning to pin Isak with a dark glare.

“I don’t think I will,” Isak laughed, not taking his eyes off the king consort, letting some of his darkness out to play. “I respect people who’ve earned it, and shitty fathers don’t deserve it.”

“You know nothing,” Kaladeir hissed, his hands coiling into fists on the desk.

Look at his eyes,Viskae said.Use that.

Brown eyes had turned from hardened anger to pain. Torture. Isak straightened his back, driving the end of his walking stick into the pretty carpet underfoot as he took several steps.

“I know what she’s been through. I know she flinches at being called Maia Nysavion because that’s how much you abandoning her hurts.Youknow nothing. You don’t know a damn thing about her, or the way she suffered in that palace, oranythingshe’s been through since she escaped it.”

Kaladeir bared sharp fae canines.

Isak just laughed. “You’ve got no comeback, have you? Because youknowyou failed her. You let them take her into a court of wolves, and they ripped her apart.” But she pulled the shredded pieces of herself back together every time. Isak barely knew her and he knew that. Maia had been broken, but reforged, over and over, until she was a wolf, too.

“I don’t owe you anything,” Kaladeir spat, adjusting a row of pens on his desk with agitated motions. His knuckles knocked into an ink pot and purple bled across the stacked paper in front of him. A muscle feathered in his bearded jaw as he glared down at the mess. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Isak Sintali,” Isak said with pride. “Maia’s mate.”

Kaladeir blinked, his rage snuffed out in an instant, and Isak reared back in surprise.Uh, what the fuck?

I’m not sure,Viskae replied.

“So you’re family,” Kaladeir sighed, dragging a hand through his dark hair, glancing at Harth. “That’s why you brought him.”

“Did you think I’d hauled him in here so he could shout at you?” Harth sighed, his broad shoulders heaving with the expulsion. Saints, these Nysavion men were huge. Isak would develop a complex if he spent much more time around them.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Kaladeir muttered under his breath. Interesting.

It wouldn’t be the first time Harth has lectured him about Maia,Viskae said.

“This feels awkward,” Sunny whispered. “Should we leave?”

“We’re Isak’s emotional support,” Anzhelika whispered back. “We can’t just leave.”

Against all odds Isak smiled, some of the lethal rage softened to mere fury. “Do you care about her?” he asked the king consort. “Even a little?” He did have a point, and it depended on Kaladeir’s response, but it was a nice bonus to watch him stiffen and snarl.

“She’smy daughter.Of course I do.”

“Good.” Isak strode across the room and dropped into one of the gold-cushioned seats before the king consort’s desk, unable to stifle his groan at taking the weight off his throbbing leg. “She needs your help.”

“You said she was taken,” Kaladeir remembered, his throat bobbing with a harsh swallow. “Are her captives any worse than the Delakore Queen?”

Isak growled, his darkness surging to give volume and threat to the sound. “If I say no, will you suggest leaving her there?”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” the king consort replied in a matching growl. Well, Isak wouldn’t be invited to any family dinners that was for sure. They’d be lucky to avoid killing each other. “I need to know how bad it is.”

“Do you know of the war between saints and fae?” Kaladeir paled; Isak smiled sharply. “Good. That saves me time explaining it. They were imprisoned in another realm when they tried to subjugate the entire fae race, and now they’ve opened gateways to come back. Everything that was locked away is spilling out—darkness, poison, monsters, armies, the saints themselves. The Eversky. The Provider. The Hunchback Saint. Those are the bastards who have your daughter. And in case you missed it the first time, they aretorturingMaia. Twisting her, forcing her magic to obeythem,not her, no matter how hard she fights, even if it’s agony, even if it kills her.”

“The saints aren’t real.”

Isak laughed harshly. “I’ll enjoy your wakeup call immensely.”