Chapter 20

Engar"s words hung in the air, and I reeled back as if I"d been slapped. Disbelief mixed with betrayal as my mind struggled to comprehend what he had said.

"You helped her?" I repeated, disbelief etched into every syllable.

Engar nodded solemnly, his gaze fixed on me as if he was seeking forgiveness that I didn"t have permission to give. "We"re true mates. I was young, and stupid, and head over heels in love."

"But why help her? Surely you had to know what her end goal was."

His expression softened, a haunted look taking him over. "She wasn"t always the person you see now. When I met her, she was enchanting. A spitfire, sure, but also ridiculously addictive. From the first moment I met her, I stood no chance, and it wasn"t long until our mate bond flared to life. But she was also a queen, who already had a king and an heir, and she wasn"t willing to give that up to run off with me. So we lived like that for a while. In secret, behind closed doors because I couldn"t live with letting her go."

"Even though we took precautions, she somehow still fell pregnant, with you," he continued, his voice growing stronger with each word. "When she realized the implications of having a halfling child with me – a commoner, a nobody in the eyes of the fae – she started to change. She shut me out, fading away from me with every passing day."

"The day you were born was the happiest of my life." A small smile split across his face at the memory. "But I think it was the worst of hers. She"d tolerated halflings up to that point, but only because she could use them. But you were born from her, one of the most powerful fae in history, and the second you came out, we just knew. You would be more powerful than she could ever hope to be, and that scared her."

I shifted in my seat, entirely uncomfortable. I wasn"t stronger than Tantaii. I"d barely learned to use my powers, and what she"d had time to learn in a lifetime, I"d only had a few months. "I don"t understand. Why did she lock you up?"

"Because I tried to take you."

Engar"s revelation filled the room with tense silence, the raw honesty of his confession laying his actions bare. "She changed once you were born. She became obsessed with magic, with power. Endless research on becoming more powerful, until it was all she could think about. She forced me to help her. The obsession changed her, contorted her into someone I no longer recognized, until one day, she found the information she needed. Oberon"s ring, and what it could do."

"Her search for the ring was terrifying. She went after every powerful fae, every halfling on her side of the realm, tearing the world apart looking for Oberon"s ring and taking lives in the process. I couldn"t watch; I was so worried about what she might do to you. The longer her search went on, the more she hated you. I thought she might kill you. So one night, I kidnapped you." He paused, wiping a tired hand down his face before he continued. "I don"t know if it can actually be considered kidnapping when it"s your own child, but that"s what I did. I waited until she"d fallen asleep, bundled you up, and tried to escape through the portals to the mortal realm."

"She caught up to me before I even got close. She couldn"t kill me, couldn"t take the risk of knowing our true mate bond might kill her in the process, so she took you back and locked me up. I"m so sorry, Rowan," a stray tear slipped from my eyes. "She would come to me just to tell me all the things she was doing to you. Doing to the world. To punish me, to rub salt into my wounds. I failed you," he finished softly. "And you lived a horrible life because of it."

Everyone looked to me for a response, but my throat was dry, no words coming out as I tried to sort out my thoughts. Betrayal, confusion, and anger battled for dominance within me, each vying for my attention as they pummeled all the emotions I already felt. And another part of me, a softer, younger part of me, craved a connection with him. The part that had never felt what it was like to have a father, and now one was standing right in front of me.

The weight of his words settled heavily on my shoulders, threatening to crush me and pull me under. How do I reconcile the story he is telling me with the experiences I"ve had? Had he really sacrificed everything to try and protect me?

"I don"t know what to say," I finally managed to choke out. "I don"t know how to process all of this."

Engar nodded, his eyes dark, swimming with emotional turmoil that I didn"t want to dive into. "I understand. I don"t expect you to forgive me, not after everything that has happened."

His words cut to the bone, sinking deep inside my soul. But despite the hurt, I couldn"t bring myself to hate him for it. He"d made mistakes, but his imprisonment and the upbringing I couldn"t remember weren"t his fault. The blame lay with Queen Tantaii, and no one else. Her choices were her own, and that wasn"t something I could hold against him.

But I also wasn"t ready to let him in.

"We need to focus on stopping Tantaii," Callan prodded us. "I can"t imagine we have a lot of time."

"We will know when it begins," Engar said, chewing his lip as he thought. "The in-between is a very sensitive place. Interfering with the magic will bleed into both realms. We"ll know, and we need to be ready."

"How are we supposed to stop her? She"s got the ring. She"s got the power. A fae army at her disposal. We don"t stand a chance." My outlook was grim, disheartened. In my mind, we"d already lost.

"We can get numbers if you and Oliver can open portals wide enough to get them through," Nia said, with Eldrin nodding along with her. "Fae, royals with magic, and those trained in combat, and plenty of pagu with their riders. Give me a day, and we"ll be back."

"And I can give you shifters," Wolfe"s staticky voice blared from the phone, his tone serious. "I won"t force anyone to fight, but I"ll explain the situation and give them the option. The one thing my father did right was training these shifters in combat."

"And then what?" I questioned. "She"s more powerful than all of us combined now."

"You have to kill her," Engar said. "Whatever it takes."

Something struck me then, my eyes widening. "Won"t that mean that you die too?"

"Yes," he answered bluntly, schooling his expression tightly. "But not while she wears the ring. The ring has unknown power, and seeing the way it healed you while we were in the prison, I"m not confident that killing me would kill her too. And if I do die, well, I wish we could have gotten more time together, all those years ago. I kick myself every day for not succeeding in taking you away from her. But the time for that has passed. The only way out of this now is if we kill her and take that ring off her finger, and I"ve been prepared to die for that eventuality for five hundred years."

"We have to try," Callan said, watching me, checking my emotions through our bond. He was right. To not try was to just lay down and die. Not only that, but this was my fault. But killing Tantaii had a very real consequence this time, in the father that I"d never known and would never get to know if we killed her. I"d given her the ring because I couldn"t stand to see my friends die, just for Finn to be murdered anyway. I couldn"t let his death go to waste.

Not him, not Evie, not anyone else.