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“Oh, my child.” My father sighed. “Oh, Marzanna. No father should have to do what I did. I have waited for you to return. Waited countless mortal lifetimes. And now that you have, I have been so disappointed.”

“Pardon me for not caring,” I replied.

“As I have waited for my mate,” Vela agreed. “And finally, he has returned to me. My precious Khor. How desperately I have missed him.” She smoothed Draven’s hair, and I forced down the bile that threatened to rise in my throat.

“He may have loved you once,” I said. “That part of your story is true. But he grew to despise you.”

“He fought by my side,” she countered. “Our love knew no bounds. We were as one.”

“Don’t forget the details, Vela. They’re rather important, I’d say. He grew to loathe your cruelty. You were vicious and cold. He fought beside you, struggled to be loyal, until he could stand it no longer.” I paused, grappling with a tide of rising ancient memories.

Khor, the most powerful fae in existence aside from my father, had spent centuries by Vela’s side as her loyal companion. Like all of us, he had been worshiped like a god, by faes and mortals.

Then he came to me. He had asked for my help. He had wanted to switch sides.

It was a dangerous desire. Joining my aunts, Zorya and Devina, and I would have made our alliance much more powerful.

My father and Vela could not stand for that.

But perhaps even worse than wishing to change sides, Khor and I had become lovers.

He had abandoned Vela. Rejected their bond utterly.

“Our love was forbidden. He was bound to you, though he had no wish to be any longer,” I said clearly.

“Our bond was eternal,” Vela said, smiling. “You really thought he had a choice?”

I looked at Draven with his passive expression, his docile pose, and thought of the thousands of years we had lived before this.

If one couldn’t make a choice on who to love in such a long life, what was the point of it all?

“He loved me, Vela. You couldn’t stand that. You wouldn’t change. You had no wish to. And so his heart abandoned yours. Instead of accepting that, you killed him for it. You killed your own mate rather than letting him go free. And in killing him, you finally broke the bond between you as he could never have done on his own.”

I looked up at my father. “And you. You killed your own sisters and your own daughter. Not because you had to. But because you wished for even greater powers than you already possessed.”

I looked beyond my father’s throne.

The room was not walled behind the dais. Instead, it opened up onto a grove of oak trees surrounded by white marble arches. In the center of the grove lay a familiar-looking table.

“But you were a fool.”

From the corner of my eye, I caught my father’s frown.

“You lost a part of your own power as you stole ours.” I met his eyes. “I took the most, didn’t I? As I died? It’s the real reason you wanted me back here. Not because of some pretend love you supposedly bear for me. You are no real father.” I shook my head. “I don’t think you’ve ever had any comprehension of love. Not a single moment in your existence have you ever truly known or understood what it is. If you had...”

“If I had?” My father’s eyes were glacial.

“You would have known it was more powerful than anything you could ever have dreamed. You waited for me countless lifetimes, you say? Now I’m here. Not because you waited. But because of love.”

Vela gave a low chuckle. “She’s as naive as any mortal girl, Perun. Have you really missed her stupidity?”

I ignored her and looked at my mate, sitting there by Vela’s side.

He had mixed his blood with mine in a Siabra ritual so powerful, it had merged our abilities and our lives.

I thought of my mother, who had passed all of her magic to me before she died, even though it had left her exposed and weak to Uther’s killing blow. She had done that. For me. To safeguard me.

I thought of the fae that Fenyx had killed. How I had set them free.