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Twenty-Five

Tessa

The scent of mist tickled my nose. Luxurious silk caressed my cheeks, and my body felt as if it floated on clouds. I cracked open my eyes to find the oak top of a four-poster bed high above me. There was movement to my left. I turned. Kalen lounged in a chair beside the bed, flipping through a book.

He hadn’t noticed I’d awoken, and so, for a moment, I drank in the sight of him.

He no longer wore his black leather armor. Instead, the rolled-up sleeves of his dark tunic revealed his flexed biceps. His wavy hair was loose around his face, obscuring the brilliant sapphire of his eyes. With one ankle propped on the opposite knee, he turned another page, and the silver ring on his forefinger glinted. The sound of parchment was drowned out by the crackle of the open hearth behind him. The curtains were closed, trapping in the warmth. Something about this felt like home in a way Teine never had.

“Where are we?” I asked him. “Is Nellie all right? And my mother? Val?”

He closed the book and moved to my side. Searching my eyes, he grasped my hand and held it against his thundering heart. “We’re in Endir. Your family is here too. They’re all safe. But areyouall right? What happened?”

I smiled. But then I thought back to what I’d seen and heard, and that feeling of home and of safety burned away. “The Mortal Queen who touched me…she gave me a vision of the past. Oberon’s past.”

“Oh.” He visibly relaxed and then brushed his thumb against my cheek. “I was worried she’d done something to hurt you. It made you collapse.”

“Kalen,” I began, but my throat closed up. How was I going to tell him what I’d witnessed? It would devastate him.

His brow furrowed. “What did you see?”

I slid my hand around his. “It’s about your mother. Oberon and your mother.”

Kalen tensed, and he started to pull away, but I tightened my hold on him. “You need to hear this. And I want you to stay right here beside me. I want you to look into my eyes and know that I’m with you every step of the way. And if you want me to slow down, I’ll slow down. But I won’t stop. You need to know the truth about it all.”

His jaw tensed.

“I know,” I said. “This is hard.”

Kalen didn’t say another word. He just wrapped his other hand around mine. He listened as I told him the story of Bellicent Denare, the fae queen who’d died and then come back, time and time again, in the bodies of the Mortal Queens. I told him about Oberon’s fierce love for her and how it had made him do terrible things.

His eyes were full of anguish when I reached the end of the story. He kept his hold on my hands, clinging with such an intensity that I feared he might break if I let go. It took a long time for him to speak.

“I thought she was dead this entire time,” he finally ground out, pain laced through every word. “For some reason, this feels worse. He’s kept her hostage—”

“I don’t think he’s kept her hostage. I think she wants him to do this for her. Maybe she didn’t the first time, but what I saw…I don’t think she wants it to stop, Kalen.”

“But how could she?” Brow furrowed, he shook his head. “She made me vow to fight against the gods, no matter what happened. The mother I knew would never toy with that kind of power, even if it meant saving her own life. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I think I might understand why,” I said quietly.

“Go on.”

“The Oberon I saw in my vision was not the same man he is now. Something changed him. That power, it corrupts. It corrupted my father. It corrupted Oberon. It corrupted your mother too. And I…” I tightened my hold on his hands. “I worry it will get to me eventually, if it hasn’t already.”

Kalen sat back, frowning. “How? As long as we keep you away from Oberon, you’re safe.”

“I may have the god’s power running through my veins.”

I’d wanted to tell him before, but there’d been too much happening. Now did not seem like the best time, either, but I couldn’t hold this back from him any longer. If this was true, he deserved to know. It would mean I was dangerous. Maybe he should put me in a dungeon cell, after all.

“What are you talking about? Did you see that in the vision?” he asked.

“I found my father’s journal in the pub just before you showed up. Val has it now, I think.” I braced myself for my next words. “He’d drawn out a long family tree.Ourfamily tree. And it went all the way back to Andromeda and King Ovalis Hinde of the mortal kingdom of Talaven. It said I’m her descendent.”

Kalen released my hands and ran his fingers through his wavy hair. “You can’t be. The gods wanted tousemortals. As food. They wouldn’t have…”

“Slept with the livestock?”