Page 130 of I Summon the Sea

My jaw clenches.

“Beware of Athdara,” the king continues softly. “He’s not who he seems.”

Bile rises in my throat at the reminder. I don’t want to think about the blow Jai’s words have dealt me. The memory of his handsome face won’t leave me, even as I gaze at the king sitting beside me.

Gazing at the king makes me nauseous, and it’s not because he is bad-looking, on the contrary… He’s handsome, his gray eyes shiny, his jaw firm, and his body strong, but the memory of Jai’s kiss is too recent, too bright.

Too raw and painful.

“He’s human,” I manage through a throat gone dry.

“Not in the sense you think it means. Not any more than we fae are human. He’s from my world. He fell through, as we did, but his purpose is much more sinister.”

“What? No.” He’s from the world of the fae? I feel sick to my stomach. That can’t be true. “Not human? What purpose? What do you mean?”

“He’s here, waiting. Biding his time.”

“Biding his time for what?”

“Destruction.”

A laugh escapes me. I shake my head. “I don’t believe it.”

“If you think him nice, then your capacity for judgment is lacking. Do you want to know what he has done to your kind?”

“My kind?”

“Humankind.” He studies me intently. “Aren’t you human?”

I fight a flinch. “Look, he’s human, despite his magic. I’ve seen him.” Talked to him, touched him, heard him. Kissed him. Let him in close, closer than anyone else, ever. “He’s not some sinister monster.”

“He’s a doomed man… and he knows it.”

“Doomed?” I’m faltering, losing direction. I can hardly follow the information being lobbed at me tonight.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t realized.” The king’s mouth purses. “He carries an Eosphor inside him, a creature of old, able to summon all dragons to his bidding, able to open portals into other worlds. He has the makings of a dragon king. Only, that is a creature of legends, and Jaien will go insane long before he reaches that potential. I saw the potential in him and brought him to live with me, but now he’s only holding onto his sanity thanks to my help. I draw out the darkness from him before it consumes him, but he may not survive this. He needs to come into his full power as soon as possible.”

“The king is helping me.”Jai had said that. That’s why he can’t kill the king. He depends on him for his sanity. And Phaethon won’t let him because, for some reason, he needs the king, too.

Pieces are falling into place.

“You need a dragon king for your plans,” I whisper. “To open the gates and invade the next world. And Phaethon wants the same.”

The king gives me a long look. “Close. You see, we don’t want to invade the next world. We want to cross into the previous one.” He nods, as if to himself. “We want to go back home.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Did I hear him correctly?“You want to go back?”

“We fae weren’t always the way we are today,” he says, his tone somber. “I told you. Passing through the worlds… changed us.”

“I find it hard to believe you ever looked human.”

“What is human? We pass from world to world through the centuries and millennia, changing over and over. Truth is, nobody is native to any world. There is no pure race, and you cannot move through the gates and passages without profound changes. Of course, you need the knowledge of the sacred doors and the ways through. Disasters push us to wander, cross over. Invade.”

That’s some excuse…

“Epidemics caused bylumina, lesser fae crossing through tiny cracks, bringing diseases from other worlds, had already started to decimate our world. There were wars and great epidemics, and the kings of our kingdom had closed the gates to the underworld to prevent anything worse. The telchins were posted to protect the passages.”

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