It was so perfectly, achingly Teddy that it took everything in me not to order Hayden away and reclaim the moment we’d just lost.
“Gather the others,” I said, steadying my voice. “We’ll meet you at the castle as soon as possible.”
Once he disappeared to retrieve my fae friends and Ximena, the other warrior I’d come to rely on since the mage war, I stood and stared at the closed door, willing the bile in my throat to settle.
I’d been certain I’d brought them all home, but even as I visited each region, I’d had this feeling . . . a sense I couldn’t name, only chase. It’d driven me to reach deeper into my primal instincts, to listen harder to the world around me. I’d searched without knowing exactly what for. I’d counted the people who’d come back without knowing if the numbers were correct.
We’d lost so many in the mage battle, and without a record of who my uncle had sent into the human realm, certainty was impossible.
Now, though . . . now, I questioned everything.
I clenched my fists, forcing each breath to come slower. Had the human soldiers I’d spoken to lied? Although my people had worked hard to rebuild our kingdom after the mage battle had left her in ruin, our realm was still reeling. How could we know for certain who was missing and if any had been taken?
How many warriors were unaccounted for? My fists loosened when Teddy grazed her finger over myknuckles. I watched the motion, mesmerized by her affection. Then she laced her fingers with mine, and I clung to that small tether, trying to calm the chaos writhing inside me.
I’d just gotten back. I was finally home, ready to build a life with my mate.
And somehow the human soldiers had betrayed me. They hadn’t returned all my people.
Months ago, I’d warned them—if they put my fae in cages, they wouldn’t survive my wrath.
But this? This was worse. A calculated lie. A quiet theft. A treason that would not go unpunished.
They would return my people. Or I’d show them exactly what it meant to cross a fae king.
Chapter
Two
ELIAS
I pattedTeddy’s hand on my arm before we neared the castle’s meeting room. Pietro, the castle’s head guard and long-time messenger, dipped into a deep bow. I nodded at him, clapping his shoulder, more out of habit than warmth. Even with the doors shut, I heard the murmur of voices rising. Anxious and demanding.
When Pietro opened the door, I inhaled and stepped in. Every head turned.
The room was crowded with fae desperate for answers. A few familiar faces stood among them from those who worked within the castle walls and those who’d grown up here, spared from exile after their parents betrayed the crown. While my parents hadn’t forgiven the traitors, they’d given the younglings a chance. A rare mercy and one of the few things they’d gotten right.
Teddy’s grip on me tightened.
The room thrummed with panic from the fae who’d rushed to speak to me when they realized their loved ones hadnever returned. The weight of their disappointment settled on my shoulders. Not even Teddy’s touch could dull it.
I took in the meeting room and, noting the similarities that remained despite my father’s death, I swallowed back the despair surrounding me. This room held countless memories of my late father, and each one haunted me.
I loved my father to the depths of my heart, but he’d betrayed us all. He’d massacred an entire village. Everything inside me staggered at the monster he’d been while also mourning him for the incredible father he once was.
To both love and hate the dead was the cruelest form of torture. But that wasn’t what pained me that evening.
“Save our people. Be the king you were born to be. A king far better than I ever was.”
Those had been my father’s final words, and his trust in me had almost made me believe I could do it. A few short months after his death, I’d proven him wrong.
Despite every warning, every betrayal, I’d taken the humans at their word, and believed them when they said no fae remained in their realm. Like a naive babe, I’d returned home, grateful to be back with my mate, while I’d unknowingly left fae in a realm they didn’t belong.
I should’ve chased that instinct that told me something was wrong. Now we were here, and I was the fool who’d brought us.
“Where are they?”
“Are humans harming them?”
