Beyond the Mountain (Fae's Captive #4) - Lily Archer Page 0,6
be. Leander killed Shathinor, the former king.
“But the pretender didn’t know everything.” A smile cracks across his lips, ugly and smug. “And he should never have left the body of a necromancer to rot.” He pulls open his black shirt.
I pin my lips together to hold in the scream. His guards aren’t the only undead in this place. The scary fae is disintegrating, his rib bones exposed and his heart beating beneath a layer of damaged white flesh.
“Shathinor. You’re him.” When I try to scoot away, he takes a fistful of my hair. “Let me go.” I grip his wrist but pull my hand away quickly. Something moved beneath his skin when I touched him. No, it slithered.
“I’m not done with my story.” His tone is as gentle as his touch is brutal. “Before I was betrayed, I carried on an affair with a summer realm noble. She fed me information to aid my war efforts, and I promised to make her queen of the summer realm.” He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have, of course. Callandra was far too weak, proven by the fact that the great fool Tyrios was her mate.”
His story has familiar threads that weave a tapestry of my memories. “Tyrios—Cecile’s father.”
“Yes. I hear the pretender to my throne slew him.” He loosens his grip and strokes my hair again. “But you already know that, don’t you, dear heart?”
I cringe at the term of endearment. “Yes,” I answer quietly. “I was there.”
“What I didn’t know, because that whore Callandra never told me, was that she bore a child during the long war. My child. And hid her away in the summer realm.”
Prickles race up my back like a thousand needle sticks. I don’t want him to go on. The promise of doom grows as he speaks, and I don’t know if I can handle what else he has to say. I turn to my mate, the only one who was able to defeat the evil creature that now holds me captive. Leander, please! I’m in a cave on a mountain. Shathinor is alive. Please, come get me! I scream in my mind, but it’s like speaking underwater; the sound doesn’t go anywhere, and I feel like I’m on the verge of drowning.
Shathinor’s gaze slides to my throat. “This child was protected by a soulstone, one that Callandra stole from Queen Aurentia’s treasury. A powerful artifact, the soulstone kept the child alive, but asleep, and hidden in the summer realm. There you slumbered, just as I slumbered under the muck of a battlefield, the worms my company as I slowly rebuilt the shards of my soul.”
I shake my head. “I was born in Indiana. I have a whole life—”
“You have nothing but me, my child.” His sharp snarl echoes off the barren walls. “You and I are everlasting, and we will always be together from this day forth.” His tone softens, and something verging on actual warmth seeps into his words and multiplies my goosebumps. “I would have found you sooner, but Callandra sent you to earth as an exchange. I don’t know why she chose to do so twenty-one years ago. Perhaps you were fading? Perhaps it was because Cecile came of age during that time?” He shrugs and continues running his cold fingers along my scalp. “Callandra went to the Ancestors soon after. I didn’t know about you until you returned to Arin. Callandra hid you too well. The soulstone you bear, it disguised you from everyone but me. Blood calls to blood.”
“That’s not true.” I clasp the stone in my hand. “I have a mother and father on earth—”
“Every changeling does,” he chides. “And you were no different, but then again, you were completely different, weren’t you? No friends, a distant mother, no other family, no one to care about, and no one who cared about you.”
“I had friends.” My protest is admittedly weak.
“And then you came home,” he continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “I didn’t understand the why of your return until I questioned Cecile and the human version of you. Cecile wouldn’t tell me at first. I must admit I had a good laugh when she cried as I tortured her friend.” His tone turns teacherly. “Because humans are pets, my dear one. Not friends. Certainly not equals. But Cecile is a tender-hearted fool like her mother. Or, I suppose I should also say, like your mother.”
“My mother.” I can’t contain the confusion, the utter shock that rocks through my mind