“Mara?” Vareck asked, watching as she closed her eyes. She hummed a sound of questioning in response. “Can I play with your hair?”
Her eyes cracked open, raising a brow as she looked over to him. “You’re so weird. Who asks that?” Mara’s smile curved into a tired smirk. “I think we did this all out of order. Sure, go for it.”
“Calling the Winter King of Faerie weird? You are bold,” Vareck teased, each of her lighthearted expressions becoming a mirror for him to get lost in. It almost lifted the gloom of his earlier failure as a mate. Almost. “Are you awake enough for me to tell you what you wanted to know, or would you rather I wait?”
“Is this the director’s cut?” asked Mara, curling into his hand as Vareck brushed some of her curls to the side. His fingertips sifted through her tangled hair. He gave her a puzzled look, wondering what this expression meant. She sensed his unspoken question and explained. “It’s a human thing. It’s like asking . . . ” She paused to yawn once more, closing her eyes. “If it has all the hidden secrets.”
Vareck sighed, exhaling deeply as he tried to prepare himself for what was to come. Would she think the same of him after learning the truth? “Yes. It does.” It was hard to relax after everything the two of them had been through lately.
“You remember when I told you about the Corrupt King and how the curse was put on the land?” Mara gave a small nod, her eyelids looking heavy, but she still gave him her attention. “The king was a cruel and unforgiving man. He ruled Faerie the same way he ruled our family: with an iron fist.” Vareck pressed his lips together into a thin line, the earlier feeling of joy quickly fleeting.
He’d clearly gained her full focus as Mara’s eyes widened and she looked at him. “The Corrupt King . . . that’s your . . . he was your father?”
Vareck nodded. “Unfortunately. My father was obsessed with power and how to keep hold of it. Whispers traveled through the kingdom of a banshee that could see the future. Once captured, the creature offered my father three questions in exchange for her freedom. His first query was how long he would remain king. She told him that he would fall before the next new moon. It struck fear through him. The next moon was in less than a fortnight.”
“I can’t imagine any king would be pleased to learn they’d be dethroned in under two weeks,” said Mara.
“That is an understatement. But she didn’t say dethroned. She said he would fall.”
“Oh,” Mara breathed out the word in understanding. “What was his next question?”
“He asked who wanted to kill him. The answer is what started a genocide. She told him that everyone wanted him to perish, but it would be the Harpy that he least suspected that would succeed.” Vareck bit the inside of his cheek, eyes casting to the side as he let out a slow breath. His head rested down on the hard stone as his eyes flitted to look up at the ceiling of the cave.
“The last question he inquired was how he could survive. She said he couldn’t and started laughing. My father slayed her where she stood.” He sighed. “I wasn’t actually there to see all of this at the time. I was young and I was an embarrassment to my father. He had sent me away to study with various fae, to try and get my ‘urges’ under control and figure out why my magic hadn’t yet manifested. Kaia was there—”
“She was? I didn’t realize she was as old as you. Sorry, go on,” Mara said.
“Yes, Kaia was there that day. But she didn’t need to send a message. I was nowhere near the castle and I could . . . I could feel a shockwave move through the land. A shift in power. I had an elder sister at the time. Her name was Maeve, and she was an extraordinarily powerful high fae in her own right. Father told her time and time again that he wished she were a man. That her powers were better suited for a man to rule as king, and not a queen. She was his successor, but he never failed to remind us that he found our qualities lacking. We both were good at disappointing him in our own way. But that day he . . . ” Vareck trailed off, the pain of the words weighing heavily on his chest. “He killed her.”
“What?” Mara said in shock. “But why?”
Vareck cleared his throat, closing his own eyes as he continued on. “To take her power and strength. I could feel him as he stole it. Kaia later confirmed what I already knew. The whole court had seen him slaughter his only daughter—the heir to his throne—for power.”
“I don’t understand why he needed her power, though,” Mara whispered. “Why would he do that to his own . . .?”
“Back then, the King’s Guard were Harpies, and had been for millennia. He used my sister’s power to then turn and kill them all in one swoop. He destroyed every single Harpy that had pledged their loyalty and life to protect him, all because of the banshee’s word. He ordered fae soldiers to swear oath as his new King’s Guard, then commanded that every Harpy in the land be executed. Thus, the curse the remaining Harpies put on Faerie before their deaths.” Mara nodded her understanding before he continued.
“My mother was a Harpy, and at one point the only thing in the world my father ever loved before power and greed ate at him. I went back to Faerie as quickly as I could, but it was too late. I wasn’t there to save Maeve, I couldn’t stop the genocide, but I could try to save her. I begged her, begged her to run away with me. I swore I would keep her hidden and keep her safe. But . . . she wouldn’t leave.”
“She’s the one, isn’t she? The one you said redirected the curse?” Mara asked gently.
“Yes. She was in the middle of the ritual when I found her in an obscure back corner of the archives. I couldn’t stop her. I could only watch as she offered her life as a counter curse, her last words of love to me forever etched in my mind. In her sacrifice, she made a loophole. It was during that grief that my true power surfaced.” His voice had turned dull through the retelling, like an emotional switch that had been turned off. Hundreds of years later he still had to separate himself from the truth. It simply hurt too much.
“My mother and Maeve’s loss will always be too great.” Vareck cleared his throat, only breathing easily once more when Mara leaned into his side. He paused, body freezing before slowly releasing the tension. His voice was broken, barely echoing as he admitted his sin. “So, I killed him. I killed my father.”
The king gave out a quick huff of a laugh, a little too hearty and forced from the previous moment. “Well, technically Corvo and I killed my father.”
“Wait, what? Corvo?” Mara interjected in surprise.
Vareck hummed his confirmation. “I’d manifested. My Harpy had surfaced, and I was going to kill him. Using my sister’s power, my father tried to summon and bind a demon. He couldn’t use Maeve’s power the way she could. All he did was bind Corvo into one of the castle cats that I’d raised from a kitten. Since the cat and I previously had a connection, the demon’s allegiance fell to me. Somehow, it locked Corvo in place as my familiar. Together, we killed my father. I had no choice but to take up the throne immediately. I could only hope to try and fix the wrongs that my father had committed, but since then things have only gotten worse. I can’t break the curse that has plagued us. All that damage in so little time, and I haven’t been able to make any of it better. The people have lost their faith in me.”