A flash of anger sparked in his fathomless eyes, but then Malik’s lips turned up in amusement. “Come inside, whelp. The last time you were here you asked me a question. I have the answer.”
Kalen followed him into the house. Nothing had changed—but something was about to. The air was heavy with the weight of a secret that might soon crush him with the telling. Any secret Malik was excited to impart could only mean bad things for anyone around him.
“What is this answer going to cost me? You want blood?”
“I already have that,” he answered cryptically. “And so do you.”
Kalen suppressed a shiver. “Are you going to dance around this all night? I don’t even remember the question I asked.”
Malik walked to the wet bar and removed two tumblers from the glass shelf. Into each he poured two generous fingers of the fine Cognac he’d served before, his stance all too casual. But Kalen had no trouble reading the growing anticipation in the Unseelie’s expression. His posture. He turned, a feverish light in his eyes as he brought Kalen the drink, handed it to him.
“You asked me, why you? Why, of all the powerful beings in the world, did I choose you?”
“I remember now.” Kalen took a fortifying sip of the liquor, let it warm his insides as it went down. “I assumed it had to do with what Grandma told me. That I was born under a black moon, which makes me vulnerable to dark forces.”
“That is true, what she told you,” he allowed.
“But there’s more.”
“Of course. Isn’t there always?” Malik swirled the amber liquid, took a drink. Then he closed the distance between them, standing casually a mere couple of feet away. Too close. “You are one with the darkness because it’s in your blood, Kalen. It’s a part of you that causes you intense pain to deny, and yet you fight it so.” He seemed genuinely saddened by this.
“I feel it,” he admitted. “All the time.”
“There is no point in your fighting it any longer.” The other male gazed into his eyes. Kalen couldn’t look away if he tried. “You were born to be the greatest Sorcerer, the most powerful Fae in the universe. I want you to learn all that you can so that one day, when my time in the universe is done, I may pass the torch. You will rule as I have. You’re the only one who can carry on my work.”
Kalen shook his head. “That’s crazy. I’m nothing like you.”
“Remember what I said about blood. You were born under a black moon, which means your sire was a creature of power and darkness. This is what your grandmother kept from you,” the Unseelie said earnestly. “Don’t you understand?”
His brows furrowed. “Not really. You’re saying that my father was, what? A ‘creature of darkness,’ as you put it? Dave was Unseelie or something?”
“May the gods damn David Ray Black for the spineless human worm he was!” Malik thundered, hurling his glass of Cognac across the room, where it shattered into a zillion shards. The Unseelie’s fangs lengthened and his human glamour began to slip. Claws emerged at his fingertips, and his ebony wings erupted from his back as he raged.
“That worthless slug could never sire such a force as you! That is why he hated you so fucking much! That’s why he beat you and your mother daily! Why he tossed you out of his home that night, so afraid of you that he almost pissed himself when he realized you were coming into your magic! Don’t you get it, boy?”
Kalen swallowed the sickness rising in his throat with the liquor. “He wasn’t my father? Then who is?” he rasped.
Oh, God, no. If there’s any hope for me at all, please—
“You are mine! My son! You have always been mine!”
Kalen’s glass hit the carpet. He stared at Malik in sheer horror.
Malik’s palms cupped his face, sharp claws digging into his scalp. His dark gaze captured Kalen, refused to let him go. “I am your father, my boy. Your mother was once royalty, a much younger cousin to the Seelie queen who birthed Sariel. I talked my way into your mother’s bed in the Seelie court, fucked her right under your grandmother’s nose.” He chuckled, low and dangerous.
“Then I waited for her to realize I had bestowed a child upon her. She would hand over my son at his birth, and I would take away the evidence of her shame with none the wiser. That was my offer to her.”
“Which she refused.” Kalen felt numb.
“Yes, which she refused, the stupid bitch,” he spat. “She and your grandmother secreted you away to the human realm. There she seduced Black, let him believe the child was his, and he was happy. Until you were born and he overheard the two women whispering that he could never learn you were not his.”
“And you left me at his mercy for years,” Kalen hissed.
“I did not know where you were! When I finally found you, you were wearing your grandmother’s pendant and I couldn’t approach you. I waited and bided my time. Allowed you to grow into a man.”
“Allowed me to suffer, you mean,” he choked, shame and regret clogging his throat. “The pendant didn’t save me from doing what I had to do to survive. You should have intervened.”
“You grew stronger,” Malik countered. “Because of your trials, because of the darkness you encountered at the hands of others, you learned to feed your own.”
“So that’s the real reason.” He hung his head. “You let me suffer to feed this awful rage inside, so you could one day come in and show me how to hone it into a weapon.”
“You needn’t make it sound like such a harsh decision,” the Unseelie said with uncharacteristic gentleness. “Are you not strong? Are you not ready to stand at my side?”
A bitter laugh escaped his chest. “Strong? Not so sure. Stand at your side? I don’t fucking think so. I stand alone. You taught me how, remember?”
To his surprise, Malik smiled, looking extremely proud. “Yes, I do. And I taught you well. Had you agreed, that would have been a great disappointment. No one will ever be your equal, boy. Not even me, given time. I have more to teach you yet, but you have all the makings of a fine Unseelie king. My son.”
He backed away, panic fluttering. “No, I don’t. And I’m not your son. Not in any way that matters.”
“You are, and you will prove me correct.”
“Yeah? How’s that?” He was about two seconds from bolting. Fuck, he needed out of here.