He looked puzzled by her accusation, the soft breeze stirring his satin gold hair.
“There was no need to attempt to contact you until you came into your powers. You were of no use until then.”
She should have been prepared for the callous explanation.
A father who hadn’t bothered to send her so much as a postcard in the past thirty years wasn’t interested in her as a person, no matter how many fantasies she’d woven about him.
If he suddenly decided to contact her, it had to be about what-can-you-do-for-me.
Just like it’d been with her mother.
Still, she couldn’t halt the heavy sense of disappointment that lodged in the pit of her stomach.
“What powers?” she at last forced herself to demand. Might as well get all the bad news over with at once.
Like ripping off a bandage.
“The power to create a portal, first of all,” Sariel said, impervious to her thickened voice and slumped shoulders.
“I can’t . . .” She gave a shake of her head. She’d worry about who’d created the portal later. “Never mind. What else?”
“Your human blood had to be fully consumed by the pure fey that now runs through your veins,” he said. “Only then could you pass through the barriers and release me.”
Was that why she was changing? Because the fey blood was overwhelming the human?
And if so, why would that cause her to be a sudden fey-magnet?
“Release you from what?” she obediently asked, her gaze flicking down his tall body.
She couldn’t see any shackles, but maybe they were invisible.
Or metaphorical.
“I’m being held prisoner,” he insisted.
“By who?”
“That is not the point,” he said, his velvet voice edged with impatience. “All that matters is that you are the key to my escape. As I said, that is the reason you were born.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sally stared at the cool, beautiful face even as she battled back the stupid urge to cry.
“Let me see if I have this right.” She was relieved when her voice came out mocking instead of pathetic. Hey, a girl had her pride, didn’t she? “You lured my mother into your bed so you could have sex with her and create a child who would grow up to be the magical key you need to release you from your prison.”
Sariel dipped his head in agreement. “Precisely.”
Sally abruptly turned her head to glance over the meadow filled with fragrant flowers and fluttering butterflies.
“Why am I not surprised?” she muttered.
There was a faint rustle of silk, then her supposed father was standing directly in front of her. As if he was annoyed she might find something more interesting than his glorious beauty.
“I do not understand.”
She forced herself to meet his amber gaze. “My mother needed an heir to carry on her legacy. Why wouldn’t my father be a desperate imp in need of a magical key?”
He blinked, the jade flecks in his eyes shimmering with outrage.
“Imp?”
Sally frowned in confusion. “Isn’t that what you are?”
“Certainly not.”
“You said I now have fey blood.”
“I said pure fey blood,” he corrected.
“What’s the difference?”
“Only the Chatri can claim to have blood that is pure,” he said, giving a dismissive wave of his hand. “Imps, fairies, sprites, and the rest are lesser fey.”
Sally felt her chin drop, her breath locked in her lungs as she stared at Sariel in shock.
“You’re a . . . Chatri?”
He peered down the length of his regal nose. “I am their king.”
Ah. Of course he was.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“I thought you left the world centuries ago?”
“We returned to our homelands when our children began to seek mates among the lesser fey,” he confessed, his nose flaring as if he could smell something nasty. “We could not allow our race to become corrupted.”
This from a man who’d slept with a strange witch just to make a metaphoric key?
“Then how did you become imprisoned?”
Something that might have been annoyance darkened his amber eyes. Or was it embarrassment?
“I remained behind to close the doorways. I was distracted and vulnerable to an age-old enemy I had thought we’d sealed off from the world.”
“Who?”
He brushed off her question with a shrug. “I will explain all once I am free.”
Yep. Embarrassment.
The mighty king clearly didn’t want to discuss how he came to be taken by an enemy he considered beneath him.
Of course, Sally sensed this man considered most creatures beneath him.
Including her.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Use the map on the box.”
“Oh.” She held up the box in her hand. Foolishly, she hadn’t connected the two. “Did you make this?”
“Naturally.”
Sally snorted. There was no naturally about it.
“How did it end up at the cottage?”
A brilliant butterfly landed on his shoulder, adding to his sense of otherworldliness.
“I hid it among your mother’s belongings when she left,” he said.
Sally paused, remembering back to the day she’d found the box on the rubbish heap. She’d just assumed that it’d been left behind by the previous owners.
“My mother must have been the one to throw it away,” she muttered.
His shrug sent the butterfly fluttering into the air. “It would not matter what she did with it, the magic was bound to you.”
She grimaced. How much magic had been attached to her before she’d ever been born?
Her mother’s sorcery spell. Her father’s GPS spell.
She hoped to hell she didn’t have any grandparents who’d gotten in on the action.
“Fantastic,” she muttered.
Sariel ignored her sarcasm. “The map is etched on the box. You must follow it to release me.”
Sally stilled. Okay. What was she missing?
“Why do I have to follow some treasure map when you’re standing right here?”
He lifted a hand to wave it toward the sun-filled meadow. “My powers allow me to create a mirage that appears real to others.”
“So this is all an illusion?” Sally demanded in disbelief.
She would have sworn on her favorite book of spells that this was real.
She could hear the sound of birds singing in the distant trees, she could feel the brush of the breeze and the heat of the sun on her skin. She could smell the heady scent of fine wine.