“Wait. Who’s threatening to hurt Max?” Poppy jumped in, her voice harsh and demanding. “Is he in any danger?”
“No.” His father shook his head emphatically, before glancing over his shoulder to where the body of the unconscious fae who’d attacked them lay in the corner of the room. “Well. Notnow, anyway. But perhaps it’s better if I just start from the beginning, if you’ll indulge me telling you a rather long story.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “Please do. I’d love to know… well, everything, actually.”
“Yes. The truth is the least I can give you after all this time,” his father said resolutely. “As you know, fae don’t exactly have the best reputation amongst other magical creatures – we keep to ourselves, and we prefer it that way. So not many outsiders know about our ways or beliefs.” He sighed. “And one of those beliefs is the superiority of fae over all other beings. To most fae, humans, shifters, witches, wizards… they’re all thought of as little more than playthings. Something to keep us amused when we’re bored.”
Anger simmered low in Max’s stomach. Nothing his father said seemed to connect to the loving memories he had of him, but it certainly wasn’t endearing him – or any other fae – to Max either.
“To my shame, I felt the same way once,” Max’s father continued, grimacing as he spoke. “I’d never met anyone who wasn’t fae – I’d never left the fae realm at all. But we have a custom – or at least, some of us do – to travel to a different realm for one year, just so we can experience it. It’s supposed to show us the superiority of the fae once and for all, going out and spending time amongst the lesser creatures… which is not howIfeel, but most other fae do. But that is the custom – to amuse ourselves for one year, and then return, more confident than ever that fae alone are truly intelligent and powerful.”
“So that’s what Mom and I were to you, then?” Max growled, even as Poppy laid a calming hand on his arm. “Just anamusement?”
To his mild surprise, his father looked stricken. “No! Max, no. You must believe me when I tell you, I never thought of either of you that way. It was the opposite – the complete opposite. The two of you were the most important things in my life – the only things, I realized after I met your mother and we had you, that I had ever loved in my entire life. But that was exactly where the problem started.”
Max took a deep breath. He’d promised his father he’d hear him out. So he supposed he should hear the full story. He’d make up his mind how he felt about it after that.
“That was why everything happened the way it did,” his father said softly. “As I told you – our time outside of the fae realm is only supposed to last one year. Then, we are compelled to return to our families, our responsibilities, our clans and houses. I had thought it would be the same for me. But then… I met her.”
Max supposed he didn’t have to ask who his father meant, but he asked anyway. “You mean my mother?”
His father nodded. “Yes. The most beautiful and remarkable woman I have ever known. I didn’t even know she was a lionshifter at first – I only knew she captured my heart from the first moment I laid eyes on her. I’d never met anyone like her before – so wild and daring. So carefree. So utterly unconcerned with what anyone else thought of her. Nothing like the fae women I knew at home.”
Max suppressed a wry smile. His father was speaking about what had drawn his mother to him romantically, but Max had to admit he was right about her in certain ways – even if he’d sometimes wished shewasa little more concerned with what other people thought of her, such as when she drew up in her red convertible Mercedes to pick him up from school, wearing about forty thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry and a bright pink silk headscarf over her wild mane of blonde hair, honking the horn of her car as if there was literally anyone in a ten-mile radius who might not have seen her.
“I knew I had to stay with her – no matter the cost,” Max’s father went on, his voice determined. “I told my family, my parents, in the fae realm that I would not be returning. I made it clear that there was nothing in the fae realm compared to what I had found here, in this realm. I was prepared to abandon everything – riches, power, my noble fae clan – to stay with her. And then, after you were born, you too.”
“Wait,” Poppy said again. “Your noble fae clan? Does this mean you’re… some kind of fae prince? Or duke? Or something?”
“You could put it like that,” Max’s father said, musingly. “Our lineage is very ancient. We fae do not have such titles – it’s unnecessary for us. Fae can simply tell by looking at each other our relative ranks, our hierarchy. So there is no need to spell it out with such things as titles. But if I can explain it this way, there are very few fae who would be able to look down upon fae of my clan. Amongst our kind, we are some of the most nobleand most powerful. This is why, in the end, I couldn’t stay with you, no matter how much I may have wished it.”
“But if you’re that powerful, who could tell you you had to come back?” Max asked. “Couldn’t you do what you wanted, if you were so superior?”
His father winced. “Maybe. If I were stronger. But things do not work that way. I was quite young at the time – as we all are when we venture out into the other realms – and it was my father who was the head of our clan and house. His word was law, and he was the one who had responsibility for my behavior and how it reflected on our family. And he fully expected me to return to take up my own duties. I was, before I left, a very dutiful son. He had high expectations of me. Ones I disappointed.”
He sighed, his lips pulled tight into a grimace of pain.
“Ones that I was glad to disappoint, once I realized how lifeshouldbe lived. It shouldn’t be crushing duty, obligation, always jockeying for position amongst the elite of the fae court. Never knowing who your true friends are and who is secretly plotting behind your back. Always concerned with image, reputation. Your mother showed me a different kind of life – a different way tobe. Please believe me when I say there was nothing I wanted to do more than stay with her forever.”
“But I’m guessing your father had other plans.” Poppy’s voice from beside him was soft, but grim. Perhaps without so many conflicting emotions to cloud her judgment, she could see the situation more clearly than he could, Max thought, because it took him a moment to understand what she meant. But then, his father nodded, confirming what she’d said.
“Exactly correct. Oh, they could threatenme– disinheritance from something I no longer wanted didn’t hold much sway. They could even threaten to cut me off from my own stores ofgold. I’m sure I could have found a job doing… well, something, anyway.”
Max wasn’t sure he thought that was true, but he said nothing.
“But then they threatenedyou. You and your mother. Told me that as long as I remained where I was, there would be no place you would know peace. That they would hound you, make sure your life would be miserable no matter where you went. And… when I still defied them, they even threatened your safety, your life. That was when I knew it was hopeless. I knew that staying with you would only put you in danger. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let them harm you. Even if it meant I could no longer be in your life. What selfish right did I have to do that to you?”
Max swallowed heavily.
Well, if this doesn’t sound a little familiar…
He felt like an idiot. Hadn’t he thought the same thing about Poppy earlier today? How he had no right to put his own selfish desires above her safety?
Fat lot of good that did – trying to leave only put her even more in harm’s way.
But even if, in his case, things hadn’t worked out how he’d thought they would, he did have to admit he could see where his father was coming from. Would he make the same choice, in the same position?
Max didn’t know much about fae, but the one he’d met in the cabin was frightening enough – and if his father’s family, his own father –my grandfather??– was even more powerful and scary than that… well.
