Chapter Forty-Three
Avari
My thoughts spun faster than my feet could carry me.
‘Who was that woman?’ I followed my father to his office, where he now sat sprawled over his leather couch, sipping on a strongly scented brown drink.
His eyes travelled around the room, his mind somewhere far away.
‘Who was she?’ I repeated.
Once more he ignored me and stared at the glass in his hand. The tension in his jaw told me everything. He was hiding something, and it terrified me to think I already knew what.
Physically the woman looked fine, but her eyes revealed too much pain and anguish for a sound mind. No one could fake that much grief. But she was supposed to be dead…
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Why don’t you want to answer?’ I pressed. This was too important. More than one life could be changed if my theory proved true.
Being blunt was my only option. These men only responded to roughness. ‘Was that the Queen of Fire?’
He wouldn’t look at me. ‘Fire Kingdom doesn’t have a queen.’
Mother-fucker. ‘Was that the former Queen of Fire?’
Downing his liquor in one go, my father finally admitted, ‘It was.’
The air left my lungs. I asked for confirmation, but hearing it felt like a blade sliding between my ribs.
My voice quavered as my knees gave out and I fell into the same chair I had first been forced into when I met him. ‘What is she doing here? I thought she was dead.’
A moment of silence stretched for an eternity before he explained, ‘We all do things we regret, Ava. Unfortunately, sometimes once you make that step, there’s no coming back.’
His sorrow meant nothing as the horror of the situation dawned on me. ‘What does that mean? Is she here against her will?’
I watched his throat bob as he slouched forward. ‘Yes.’
‘Why?!’
‘There isn’t an answer to that question that will satisfy you,’ he muttered.
A sudden urge to slap him rose in my chest, his sadness only feeding my anger. What did he have to be sad about? ‘I don’t care. Tell me.’
‘She’s beautiful. I wanted her.’ The words struck like a physical blow.
‘You captured the former Queen of Fire Kingdom because she’s beautiful?’ I repeated, trying to process the words that threatened to shift my entire worldview. ‘Do they even know that she’s out there somewhere?’
Silence. They didn’t know she was alive. River, Michael, the former king, none of them knew that the woman they’d grieved had never passed away.
Unable to look at him any longer, I left, letting the door slam shut behind me.
Yet again, an inkling of trust had steered me in the wrong direction. Hours earlier I felt connected to my father in ways I cherished and revered; now he was a stranger again.
To kidnap a woman because he desired her? Nobody sane did that. To be viewed as an object, a possession to move wherever they pleased, was that how fae men viewed women?
Not once but twice I’d been captured myself. Was that their solution to everything, limiting a woman’s freedom until she bent?
Shaken and enraged, my afternoon passed in a blur of pacing around my bedroom and trying to come up with a plan. Beyond getting abducted, it was what I spent most of my time doing lately. Every plan ended the same way, at the invisible wall of this isle.
The last connection with the land itself had shown me much; it had shared secrets I suspected few ever glimpsed. But it did nothing to grow my shadows. The one power necessary to portal the former queen back to Fogoya was still out of reach.
Dinner smelled of burnt meat and tension.
The grave atmosphere between my father and me seemed to seep into the dining room itself, forging a deepening scowl on Alec's and Miriam’s faces.
Neither could understand the mood shift, and neither of us cared to explain, apart from exchanging loaded glares.
The dinner stretched for an eternity, letting my skin burn from the inside out as I dared not become complacent about the woman’s imprisonment. Each time I decided to barter for her release, my thoughts circled back to what I would do if he refused. It was an endless loop of hopelessness.
Miriam couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘Can we address the elephant in the room?’
Digging into the steamed vegetables that had long gone cold on my untouched plate, I swirled them around, unsure how to begin.
‘Ava,’ my father started cautiously, continuously analysing my hardened gaze as if I might try to burn him alive. ‘I regret it.’
‘What is she still doing here, then?’ I demanded, unable to move past the fact that he’d taken the woman’s freedom for such a pathetic cause.
‘Have you ever done something so bad that even if you wanted to fix it, it would just unravel like an avalanche threatening to sweep everything in its path?’
‘I can’t say that I have,’ I barked back, knowing it wasn’t a good enough excuse to let the situation continue for so long.
‘This is my avalanche.’ He looked sad. I’d give him that. But with such selfish tendencies, it was more likely because he’d been caught.
Miriam looked between us, lost.
Alec, in contrast, seemed mentally absent, only present in body. His expression was deliberately blank, avoiding my scrutiny.
He knew.
He allowed it to happen.
Accusation laced with darkness I was yet to command, I hissed at my brother, ‘You allowed him to take the mother of your former friend hostage?’
His cheeks flushed as he took a pause before mumbling, ‘Ava, River and I haven’t been friends for decades now.’
I saw red. My tone dropped, low and dangerous. ‘That’s your excuse? How do you sleep at night knowing a family is mourning a woman who’s still alive?’
The newfound disappointment of a father tried to interrupt, no doubt to justify his horrendous actions, but I wouldn’t allow it. Screaming over him, I demanded, ‘How long has she been here?’
Only silence answered, louder than any scream. But I wouldn’t relent. Not when I wished someone would fight for me too.
‘How. Long. Has. She. Be—’
‘Over a decade.’ Alec’s solemn tone rang in my ears as the words pierced through my recently acquired longing for a normal family.
Ten years. The number echoed until it didn’t sound real anymore.
River’s mother had been held captive for over a decade, and as her relatives learned to live with the loss, she had been trying to survive. I could only imagine the mental agony when she realised they weren’t coming to save her.
River had claimed his parents were fated mates; it meant his father would sense she was still alive, unless… ‘Is her mate bond dulled like my dragon bond in the Isles?’
It was the perpetrator of the crime who answered. ‘Yes.’
‘She’s going home. I don’t car—’
I didn’t finish my threat, laced with the hope that I meant enough to these people that they wouldn’t risk destroying our fragile new relationship. The best card I had to play was their desire to keep me.
All things considered, I thought I was doing a stellar job, judging by their stern faces, until a rift of pure night opened in the room, stealing everyone’s attention.
It took all my resolve to keep calm as the one person I hated most in the world portalled in.