“You can’t be serious.”

I had to stand and do something, anything other than sit across from Feros and make eye contact with him after that. He truly was out of his mind if he was not just putting me on and trying to make the realm’s most unfunny joke in the worst way. This was not something to joke about and the last thing I was prepared to deal with, surely this had to just be his very strange brand of humor.

“Please tell me this is a joke.”

“I never said anything.”

“In this case that is probably more damning that anything else.”

I was still facing away from him, but I could feel his eyes boring into my back, though nothing could tempt me to turn and face him. This terribly complicated so many things, even if I did not necessarily feel the same way, just knowing that he was in love with me colored my view of him and all situations related to him. I did not feel anything for him, that much was definitely certain, but the fact that I did not made me worried exactly how he would react, though as soon as the worry surfaced I realized that we had already covered the fact that he could read my mind and likely already knew that.

“I figured this would be your reaction,” he said. “I had not planned on ever saying anything, but then you started to demand answers and you were bound to work it out even if I never said anything.”

“How long?” Toria could never find out, I could see no path where it would do anything but make her upset no matter how unreciprocated it was.

“Ah, yes, the proverbial elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss since I’ve known you since you were a little girl, but I assure you that I did not see you in any sort of romantic way until you were older.”

“Gods,” I cursed, putting my head in my hands. That particular line of thinking had not even crossed my mind yet, but now that it had been brought up that did add a whole new level of discomfort over the whole situation. “You really know exactly how to make things even worse, it truly is a talent with you.”

He let out a long sigh. “Look I am not trying to start anything with you, nor do I think that it is a particularly good idea for you to even consider spending any of your time and effort on someone like me, it was merely an unavoidable fact that we have to get past for you to get the answers you so desire. It does not need to make things awkward or weird, just process it and let’s move on. You have Toria and I could not be more happy for you that you have someone who is much better than I could ever be anyway, she affords you a position of power and a potential life beyond what I could provide.”

“That means you have considered what a life with us together would mean.”

A long, airy laugh escaped him followed by another deep sigh. “A man can dream, can he not? There is nothing wrong with living out a fantasy in your own mind, but I never thought that it would be a good idea or thought I should act on any of the desires. You have your path and I have mine, that is just the way of things and I have lived a multitude of lifetimes and well understand that while some things might be nice in the short term, they will end nastily. I would much rather have you around as someone I can watch have a happy life and perhaps work in the background to make sure things in your life turn out just a bit better than might otherwise. If I manage that, then I will be happy.”

“I do not want to deal with this right now,” I groaned softly, “This was something that if given a choice I probably would not have wanted to find out. I just wanted to know your motivations for everything else.”

“Then come sit back down and ask me about those. I will not make a fuss if you decide to never acknowledge this part of the conversation happened again. I am not some beast who has had his secret revealed so is going to spend the rest of his time trying to get you to fall in love with me as well. Besides, I have always been encouraging of your relationship with Toria and have tried to steer you towards understanding that you have legitimate feelings and that it was not all just convenient politics. I know you have never looked at me in the same kind of way before and I long ago came to peace with it.”

“Fine.” I returned to my seat, though I could not bring myself to meet his eyes yet. Things were going to feel very awkward with him for a while, if I ever managed to get over it at all. Though it did help that he was correct that he had been very pushy with things regarding Toria, had he wanted me for himself he should have been obstructive. “Why did you decide to start working with my family then?”

“Originally it was just convenient, I needed a place to lay low and your father needed a tutor for his children. I have had more than ample time to learn all sorts of different magical techniques and demon magic had luckily been one of them. Your father probably would have gotten distrustful of me eventually, even though he is generally less observant than he should be for a monarch wielding a lot of power, but it was simple enough to seek out information and skills that just so happened to line up with political situations on the horizon.”

“Are you saying that you somehow caused political tension to cement your position?”

“Any smart person in my position would.” He shrugged his shoulders like it was a common practice to actively work to make the monarch that employed you have a tougher time. “I never started anything that could lead to terrible wars or make your father’s kingdom weaker, just annoying enough to where I could swoop in and save the day.”

“My father would have had your head if he would have found out. He may not be the most observant person and a bit pig-headed if he gets it in his head that he is the only one who sees the situation for what it is, but one of my brothers or myself would have figured it out. I had, in fact, figured a bit of it out and actually tried to tell him that you were up to no good. I gave up trying to convince him, though I could have easily pursued the idea and eventually wore him down to believe me.”

“The chances were always low. As I have told you over and over, you are the brains in your family and even if you would have found everything out, you are clever enough to have kept it in your back pocket to use for your own benefit later. Like now, even though you do not particularly like how I feel about you, you already know on some level that it will be extremely beneficial to you later. If there is a situation where it would be my life or yours, you have the back pocket knowledge that I might strongly consider your life over my own.”

“You would not sacrifice yourself for me,” I snorted. “That is an absurd example, you care about your own preservation above anyone and everyone else.”

“That is precisely what draws me to you,” he said with a grin, leaning slightly closer to me over the table. “You understand and see through me despite what I put forth as the truth. The number of people who take me at face value and think I am trustworthy in everything I say is staggering, I have never understood why, but it has been a blessing as a curse.”

The lid on the pot started to rattle again, but before I could rise to my feet to go fix it, a small filament of power snaked from Feros’ core and pulled the pot farther from the flames. The disgusting feeling of his power immediately filled my senses and I felt sick at once. I could not help but grimace and shudder against the feeling.

“Just what is that magic?” I asked as I pulled farther away from him.

“Something so ancient and primal that no one can stand it any longer,” he answered bitterly. “Thanks largely to the intense workings of the fae political machine and love of spreading gossip and misinformation.”

“Everything comes back to the fae with you.”

“More than you know,” he laughed sharply, “perhaps now you might get some insight though. I should definitely not tell you anything, it is a patently bad idea, but I think it is about time I told someone. Might as well be you.”

“Wait.” I put up my hand like I could shield myself from any information that might be harmful. “Is knowing any of this going to put me in any direct danger?”

He paused and took much too long to think for my tastes, I would have much rather he instantly would be able to tell me that I would not be in any danger. Though it was no surprise, being around him typically always turned out to be a stupendously bad idea, no matter how good of an idea it had seemed not even three minutes prior. Bad things followed him, this was no secret.

“Not any more danger than you having known me from the start,” he replied. “Quite honestly if anything catches up with me the fae will be likely to scorch anything that even had a tiny, tangential bit to do with me. You were doomed from the very start, though I have made it this long without them catching up to me, even if they are closer than I have let them get in a long while.”

“Terrific,” I said with dripping sarcasm, “of course you have doomed us all.”

“Your instincts are to blame me immediately, though I did not ask to have anyone pursue me and seek my demise. I have seen the aftermath of the fae doing what they consider ‘cleaning up’ an area after figuring out that I have been there and it is sobering to say the least, none of it I would consider worth anything I have ever done, not even the most terrible.”

Feros went quite, for one of the first times I had seen, his perpetual grin dropping and his face aligning to something that wasn’t quite what I would call somber, but I had a feeling that it was as close to what his natural sad expression would be if he were in his natural form and not a shell. It gave me pause to think if person I had been unfairly assuming that he was just a bad person who only did shady things. I had always exercised caution when being around him, it just felt right to do so, but I also had some trust in him and he had never personally done anything to me that did not advance my ambitions in some way. The love aspect complicated if he only did those positive things for me to garner my appreciation, though even if that were true, it did show that he at least knew a bit about love and doing acts of service to express it. I did not know yet what to make of the creature, but I was starting to see that he was right in that there was much more to him than I had given opportunity to learn about and understand before.

“So the fae do not like your magic. I can understand that, I am not pleased to be around it myself.” I wanted the subject to stay on topic yet change the direction, if I was already doomed, then there was little that would be accomplished by worrying over it. “It feels… strange.”

“To say that they do not like it is a huge understatement, they abhor it, despise it to their very core. It reminds them of the only time they have ever had any direct competition.” His expression had shifted away from sorrow to something more angry and focused. “Fae as a species very much pride themselves on being unmatched and any time they find someone who can, they make sure to eliminate them. Sometimes it’s a single person or a specific type of a creature and sometimes it’s an entire species.” Feros placed his hands on the table, they were balled into fists. “They systematically eradicated my species. Not just the high level mages and people in power, but the women, children, and families that wanted nothing other than to live their lives because my kind dared to wield a similar amount of power to them and they could not stand that.”

“Did you people go to war with them?” I asked, surely there had to be some reason beyond just being on a similar power level. “Perhaps do or say something that would warrant them to seek your destruction?”

“Does that even matter? Does that justify the annihilation of my people?”

“I do not know, I can not think of anything that would warrant wiping out a whole species,” I admitted. “It does feel wrong to me, but so wrong that I feel like there has to be some justification and not just because they felt threatened.”

“There is a reason that creatures of all types avoid the fae like they are a dark plague. People have forgotten to time exactly why they fear them so and think perhaps it is just due to their tricksy nature or their bad tempers, but really it is because of the terrible, dark things they had done. Things have faded with time, multitudes of kingdoms have risen and fallen in every realm, books containing the wars have fallen into forgotten corners of libraries and given into the ravages of time, sometimes completely turning to dust and being lost forever. Though the whys of the hatred have been clouded from the haze of time, the disgust persists and there is still the general feeling that they should be feared and shunned.”

I nodded in understanding, but I felt that something was being left out, this seemed far too one sided, especially when the taint attached to his magic was undeniable. If just one of his kind made other magical creatures feel so uncomfortable, I could not imagine what a whole realm full of them would be like as an experience. Far be it from me to condemn a species because they made me feel uncomfortable, but I wondered just how vile their abilities would have to be to make their power so disagreeable to others. There were few things that could impact the magical abilities of an entire species and only one of them, the blessing of a virtuous god, was positive. My mind immediately went to some dark gods, perhaps they had long ago made some terrible pact with them.

“You are not entirely wrong,” he said begrudgingly, obviously reading my mind, “I will not try to sugarcoat that aspect of it. The very ancients of my species did pledge fealty to some less than savory gods and there were unpleasant side effects. However, I do not think it is fair to blame all the people born after who carry the mark, but did not themselves have anything to do with it. It is not my fault I was born what I am, I did not ask to carry the dark god’s taint, and it was none of my people’s fault at the time of our destruction. My people were slaughtered for the sins of our forefathers, but those sins were not our own.”

I went quiet, taking in everything I had been told. The more he spoke and revealed about himself, the more questions I had. I had always known that he was some foul creature, likely something I had yet to hear much of, but the fact that he was the last of an eradicated species was not something I would have ever guessed.

“Would you throw an infant in the dungeon because his father had killed the king before he was born?”

“What?” The comparison seemed absurd to me.

“Think about it, the situation is not all that different,” he pressed. “My ancestors made the sacrifices and rituals to the dark, unnamed gods centuries before I was born and everyone who had been a part of it had been long dead according to everything I knew. I did not ask to be a part of the ritual, nor did I have a choice in my birth. Is it my fault that my ancestors made that choice?”

“No, it could not be your fault.” I couldn’t help but draw the parallel to my own birth, a birth that by all right no one thought could happen and if given a choice, I would have been chosen to be born all demon and no human. Still, there had been points where both sides of my lineage had decided that I somehow was to blame for the perceived abomination that was my existence. I knew for a fact that the Church at the very least would love to personally dismember me then burn the rest of me at the stake even though I did not ask to be what I am.

“Of course it is not my fault,” he sighed, “it was none of our faults. Perhaps the only thing that we did wrong was think we could try to pick ourselves back up and make up for what had happened, interact with the rest of existence and try to move on. We should have used our magic and sealed ourselves away, working together we should have been able to accomplish that, but instead we tried another route and the fae were far more evil than we could have ever imagined.”

Sensing he wanted to tell me more about what happened, but feeling hungrier then ever, I rose wordlessly and went to the simmering pot and filled a dubiously clean bowl that had been left behind, then returned to the table to sit politely and listen to his story. The aroma from the bowl was not fantastic, I was missing many spices that would make it palatable and I was certainly not a skilled cook, but anything in my hungry belly would be welcome.

“The fae did not even have the decency to try any diplomacy, not even put up any sort of show to try to make it seem like they ever even considered anything other than our destruction.” He leaned back again in his chair like the smell of the stew offended him in some way. “What did you put in that?” he asked with disgust.

“Out of everything you have told me so far and the unpleasantness you have recounted and the smell of my dinner is what you find offensive?” I could not help but let a little laugh escape me at the absurdity of it.

His face cracked into a grin and he gave a small nod of his head. “Fair play, though I would tell Toria when she awakens and is hungry that I made it.”

“You are ridiculous.” I rolled my eyes and took a bite, then did my best to hide the fact that he was very much right, there was no way I would own up to the fact that I made the stew if Toria asked. It was simultaneously unpleasantly bland and tasted awful, no wonder as a child my mother would make sure I was always shooed from the kitchen despite being so eager to help.

“Exactly,” he said with a knowing smirk. “Anyway, I was ranting about the fae, my favorite subject to rant about. They had sent what they called scholars to talk with us, I remember vividly when they had arrived at the castle. They were lithe, tall, and exotic, their noses plugged and in the air whenever they had to deal with us and acted like they suffered to even look in our direction. I had told my father that no good would come of them, but he wanted to try to make peace and he thought this was just their way of extending the olive branch.”

“You were royalty?”

“Yes, I was a prince once, long, long ago,” he said with a nod. “I had all the best tutors and upbringing, much learned about the world, groomed to be a shining example of what our kind could aspire to be, not held back by the sins of the past. I was to ascend the throne and lead my people back into the light. Not even the best efforts at making me as powerful and learned as possible mattered in the end though. As soon as the scholars recorded whatever it was they were after for prosperity, probably some propaganda about how justified their genocide would be, they swept the castle with their armies. It was sincerely overkill, they had all condensed their power to a single house, I honestly can’t even recall what the house was at this point, it was not the silly seasonal divisions they uphold now, but they acted as one while we had not even fully considered mobilizing a force. In the ever dark comedy that is hindsight, we thought that mobilizing any sort of troops would make us look aggressive and invite trouble.”

“That sounds exactly like the kind of mistake that a kingdom might make who is a bit too attached to the idea of making peace. You cannot have peace for your own people if you are not willing to fight for that peace.”

“I taught you that,” he said proudly. “You are right, we certainly should have armed to the teeth as soon as we decided to try interacting with everyone else again. Looking back at what should have happened does not change the fact that it did, so no use lamenting on it, as much as I sometimes want to. I cannot tell you how often over the millennia that I have lost myself to replaying the scene of my people’s destruction over and over again, wondering if anything I could have done at the time would have made any difference. I was a powerful magic wielder in my own right and I tried, but as soon as I realized what was happening and that I was outmatched my survival instinct took over and I ran.”

“I think anyone would when faced with extinction.”

“At that point in time I am not even sure I cared about my own survival, I just wanted them to fail at their mission, to ensure that they did not wipe the slate clean of us. I wanted there to be a chance that I could return and destroy their sense of victory and I could see that I was vastly outmatched at the time. I managed to down a few on my way out of the castle, maybe even killed a few, but even in the midst of a genocide I was too young and stupid to feel the rage I should have and I let my personal feelings on trying to do good stop me.”

“How did you get out?” I was becoming invested in his story, it was far more interesting that any backstory I had ever dreamed up for him.

“They had sealed the castle with a magical barrier than I guess they thought was impenetrable so they did not take much care in worrying about someone investigating how to get through it. Whomever had set it up did not take into account that when someone is faced with death and a seemingly impenetrable trap, they are willing to try absolutely everything to get around in and they had been too short sighted to think that someone might literally try to dig underneath it. Sure enough, their barrier ended at the ground and I was able to dig out an area big enough to wriggle through and I ran into the countryside. There were squads of fae across the land hunting down each and every one of us, but since I knew they were out looking with a bit of luck on my side, I was able to keep ahead of them and hide when I needed to. I had always been a bit skilled at keeping my magic close at hand and hard to detect and after a few days they felt satisfied we had been eradicated and left, leaving me to a realm completely emptied of everything I had ever known. They had taken everything the thought might have some value, the castle was devoid of all furniture and even all the cutlery when I finally made my way back. Though they did leave all the bodies, my gods the blood and gore.”

He went silent for a long while, eyes distant while he was deep in thought. I did not want to press him after such a terrible memory and finished my terrible meal instead, grateful when the bowl was finally empty, though it did feel nice to have something warm in my stomach after days of a few bites of dried meat and sips of stale water.

“They must know about me by now,” he muttered, his eyes regaining their clarity. “Perhaps they would have been unsure at the start and I covered my tracks fairly well, but I’m sure that room gave me away. I had not had the time to fully cleanse it before we fled. I should have cleansed it daily, especially having Alice in my care, it was always going to be just a matter of time before some form of fae tried to reclaim her. Even though I knew it would happen, I suppose I was happily living with my head in the sand. You would think that after all the time I have had to learn that I would not still make stupid mistakes, but obviously this is not the case.”

“If the fae know about you, then what does that mean?”

“Now we get to the crux of what you originally wanted to know,” he explained, “why I have been so keen on getting Toria out on his excursion and away from your father’s castle.”

I had a deeply unsettled feeling about what he was going to say. I knew deep in my soul that there would be a reason I did not want to hear for why we had left so hurriedly. Sure, it had been possible that the window for Toria to strike had just been perfect, but there had been his own personal push to get things moving, he would not have been content until we had left the castle and started the journey.

“They will come for the girl eventually, though once they have caught onto my scent that will become secondary, but perhaps by leaving it might buy your kingdom some time. I am certain your father would have handed over the girl to keep peace and if it had only been the girl they were after it would have been well and good, but as I said, they tend to eradicate anyone connected to me.”

My eyes widened and my stomach sank.

“I made sure to fully cleanse my presence from your father’s castle and I may have pulled some other tricks while you were waiting on me to leave, I doubt the fae will be able to detect a trace of me there and in fact, I do not think your father or any one in the castle will even remember who I am. That should preserve them for now, but they will still come for me eventually, they are like dogs on the scent for blood.”