Page 124 of Captive of Secrets and Storms

My fingers dig into my skirt. “Calla’s diary said her father was sick. She wrote like she was already mourning him long before she ever wed King Korrin.”

“That must’ve been his first bout of illness.”

“First?” I blink. “There were more?”

“Years of it.” Anders plants his feet on the ground and scoots so he sits upright in the chair, his laced fingers resting on his lap. “A debilitating condition plagued King Alaric the last sixty-three years of his rule until he succumbed to its effects twelve years before the Veil fell.”

When the Shadow War started…

I lean back. My chair creaks. “I didn’t know.”

Before Darius, I thought of Fae as near-invincible. Nothing but a blade to the heart or throat could kill them. I never suspected the superior race could perish from something as mundane as an illness.

“Again, that is unsurprising,” Anders replies with a grim expression. “Though, not for the reason you think.”

“What do you mean?”

He stares at his hands, tapping his forefingers together.

“Fae do not get sick in the way humans do. In fact,” he continues, meeting my stare with a loaded one of his own, “they very rarely get sick. And those who do often suffer due to the actions of another.”

I search his eyes.

I think of Darius in that cell—of Petra shoving that vial of smoky liquid down his throat.

My pulse quickens. “Are you saying someone made the Fae king ill?”

“I’m saying King Alaric died under suspicious circumstances. And that made his daughter’s subsequent ascension to the throne…difficult.”

“They suspected her of killing him?”

He nods. “Some did.”

“But why?” I frown, recalling the brief history lesson Anders delivered before he opened the lineage book spread before me. “The king allowed Calla to marry a human and remain his heir. He loved her. What would she have to gain from his death?”

Anders lifts a brow. “Aside from a throne?”

I shake my head. “I don’t believe it.”

The diary entries I’ve read were written by a loving, devoted daughter and a female madly in love. I sense no ambition or greed. No devious intent.

Granted, the diary entries were written decades before her father’s death. Things could have changed. But my gut says that’s not true.

“Neither do I,” he says with a shrug. “But others believed it. Hence, the War of Blood and Shadows began.”

“The what?”

“The War of Blood and Shadows,” he repeats. “Or, as humans call it, The War of Shadows.”

I blink. “You’re saying the war was started because some Fae didn’t want Calla to take the throne?”

“I’m saying King Marek used his brother’s death and his niece's unorthodox relationship to stoke the fires of rebellion and begin the bloodiest war in Fae history.”

A loud cough echoes through the library.

I stiffen and whip my head around. Rows of books greet me. No one is in sight.

Anders clears his throat and draws a pocket watch out of his loose trousers, noting the time. “I must go soon. Do you have other questions before I leave?”