An hour later, when I had gotten all the information I could from the chamber hidden in the dungeons, I made my way to the one person I hoped would have some answers.

I had come here many times as a shadowling, seeking comfort in my father’s wise words, and as I landed on the balcony of his private room, I prayed for one last chance to speak to the demon I’d admired so much back then.

I prayed I wasn’t making a huge mistake. On the outside, it appeared my father was my enemy, but there had been several times lately when he’d looked at me in such a way that I could have sworn I saw his sadness. Regret. It was as if the man I once knew was trapped inside his own body.

But if I was wrong about him, and he was truly my enemy, I would be killed by morning.

All I needed was a few minutes with him. I prayed my intuition was guiding me down the right path.

With silent footsteps, I walked into my father’s private chambers where he lay sleeping in the center of his large bed. I stood at the foot of the stone platform in the middle of the room and slowly uncorked the potion Lisette had given me.

I poured the murky brown liquid onto the floor and watched in awe as a dome rose up around us, locking my father and me inside.

“Father,” I said, placing my hand on the bed at his side. “Father, please wake up. I need to talk to you, and I don’t have much time.”

I held my breath as he stirred, opening his eyes wide at the sight of me.

“Lea, what are you doing here?” he asked, and I nearly cried at the sound of his nickname for me. He hadn’t called me that once since I’d come home. Not until now. “It’s too dangerous for you to be here. Go, before someone hears you.”

I shook my head and reached for his hands, recognizing the man I had once loved still there behind his eyes.

“We’re safe for now,” I said. “I don’t have time to explain everything, but I’ve encased us in a protection spell. No one can hear us, and no magic can reach us inside this room.”

He glanced at the diamond scepter lying against the edge of the bed and let out a breath of relief.

He gathered me into his arms and held me so tightly, I thought he might crack a rib.

“Dear girl, how I’ve missed you,” he said.

His tears fell onto my skin, and I hugged him back.

“I’ve missed you, too, Father,” I said. I pulled away, wiping tears from my own eyes. There was no time for tears now. Thirteen minutes would pass by in a blink if I let it. “I need you to tell me the truth. What happened after I left? What happened to you? Why don’t you fight it?”

He shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Lea,” he said. “But I’m afraid the time for fighting has come to an end. I no longer have the power to stand against the Order the way I should have all those years ago when you begged me to join you. You have to believe me when I say that I truly thought I was doing what was best for our people at the time. I believed the Order would take what they wanted and leave us alone. We are immortal, after all. I thought we could outlast them. I never dreamed they would destroy our lands the way they have.”

“But why didn’t you fight after you saw what was possible?” I asked. “I don’t understand what’s happened to your power, Father. You should be stronger than ever.”

His face crumpled as more tears flowed from his eyes.

“I was only trying to protect you,” he said.

“Protect me?” I asked, clutching his hands. I remembered Tatiana’s words to me the first night of the King’s Festival. She’d spoken to me of sacrifices beyond my understanding, and I realized I was about to hear the truth from my own father’s lips. “Please, tell me. What have you done, Father?”

He shook his head. “After you left, Kael came to the city gates, demanding to speak with me. He said he had news of the princess, so I allowed him to pass into the city and meet with me in the throne room. He told me you had followed Jackson into the human world. I had already suspected as much, but I knew you were a fighter. I thought you could hold your own.”

“What else did he tell you?” I asked, chills running through me like waves.

“He said that the High Priestess herself had taken notice of you,” he said, finally glancing up to look in my eyes. “He said that unless I agreed to her terms, she would capture you and use you to open a new portal in the human world. He said that you would become a slave to the Order, and that I would never see you again.”

I lowered my head, the truth of his words finally starting to sink in.

“Tell me you didn’t make a deal with the High Priestess,” I said, glancing again at the scepter with its large diamond embedded in the top.

“I felt as though I had no choice,” he said. “You are the future of this kingdom, Lea. At the time, I had no idea it was even possible to free a demon who had been captured by the Order. If I refused to agree to their terms, it would be like condemning my own daughter to death. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“So, you condemned the entire kingdom,” I said. “You condemned yourself, instead.”

“The High Priestess demanded a piece of my power,” he said. “A large piece of my power. Kael placed a curse on me, allowing him to drain my power whenever he wants. He was placed here as watchdog for the priestess, keeping your mother and me in line with her diamonds that are constantly watching us. In return for this piece of me, she agreed to keep her hunters away from you. She also agreed to let me continue to rule this kingdom, even if only in appearance. The demons who lived here in the King’s City would be spared, as well, as long as I agreed not to interfere with her hunters outside these gates.”

“All those demons,” I said, my heart breaking. This was all my fault. Thousands had been taken just to save my life. “Father, how could you agree to such a thing?”

He lifted a hand to my face. His lip trembled for a moment before he spoke again. “How could I refuse her?” he asked. “You did what you thought was right in following Denaer, giving up your place and duty here at my side to save Aerden and bring him home, no matter the cost. Have I not done the same thing?”

I shook my head. “This is different,” I said. “You had an entire army at your command. You could have refused her offer and joined us in the fight. You could have stood by my side in the human world and helped me bring them down.”

“By the time Kael had worked his way into this castle, the choice had already been taken from me,” he said. “If I had refused him, he would have taken you and destroyed this city with an army of hunters. Yes, I made a mistake not joining you in the human world when I had the chance, but when Kael arrived, it was too late for me.”

I fought for the words I needed to say, feeling the seconds tick by and turn into minutes. I was running out of time.

“How do I fix this?” I asked. “If I kill Kael, will that restore your power?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But Kael is much stronger than you can imagine. He not only has the greater half of my power flowing through him. He also has taken every soul stone and sacrifice given to me over the past twenty-five years for himself. You are strong, my daughter, but taking him on in a fight by yourself would be a death sentence.”

“I would rather die than see you like this,” I said. “But I do understand Kael’s power. He’s manipulating the games, Father. He sees Aerden as a threat, and he’s determined to have him killed. Those potions today? I know you saw them. Those demons cheated. They could have killed Aerden if he hadn’t broken free at the last minute. I’m not sure he’ll be so lucky in tomorrow’s fight. But there’s something else, Father. Something I have just now seen with my own eyes. Did you know Kael has an entire army of Stone Guardians beneath the dungeons of this castle?”

Father shook his head, the truth evident in the flash of fear in his eyes. “That can’t be true,” he said. “The Stone Guardians have been extinct for centuries.”

“No, Father. He has at least a hundred hidden below the castle,” I said. “That’s why the prisoners have been mining sapphires for months in the secret deposits at the edge of the city. I think Kael has slaves working down there to create sapphire hearts for each of the guardians. I think he intends to awaken them soon and destroy this city. He has to be stopped before he gets the chance.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said, bringing a hand to his forehead. “Everything I’ve ever heard about the Stone Guardians proves that they battled themselves into extinction almost a thousand years ago. It doesn’t make sense that you could simply give them a new heart and awaken them in this way. There has to be another explanation.”

“Could they have been conjured?” I asked. “Their appearance and magic replicated, somehow?”

My father nodded. “Yes. If a demon had the right magic, they could recreate the appearance and strength of a Stone Guardian,” he said. “But for what purpose? What could he be planning to do with them?”

“We’re running out of time to figure this out,” I said. “The spell that is holding the magic at bay will run out in less than two minutes. I’m not sure when I’ll have the chance to speak with you again.”

“My smart girl, thinking of such a potion,” he said, smiling. “You always were a clever little thing. When the magic returns to my scepter, Kael will again be able to see and hear everything that goes on around me. He watches me like a hawk, punishing me if I step out of line. He tells me what to say, how to act, and what to do at every moment. He is the true ruler of the King’s City these days, only no one knows the truth except your mother and I, and we are both helpless to speak against him. If either of us so much as hints at what he’s done to me, the diamond in that scepter will drain the rest of my power instantly. Your mother wears a similar diamond around her neck. We are prisoners in our own kingdom, no different from you or Aerden.”

I closed my eyes, realizing why my father had only been communicating with me through the odd glance at just the right time, when Kael wasn’t watching. It also explained why my mother had been so eager to please Kael and to see me obey him. I’d known he was powerful here in the city, but I had never imagined to what extent he had stolen that power for himself.

“I can’t ever step more than a few feet away from that damned thing, or I am hit with an excruciating pain that takes weeks to recover from,” Father said, motioning to the scepter. “When he gave it to me, he cast some sort of binding spell on it, linking it to me for the rest of my life. I tested it in the early days, and I lived to regret it.”

“Tell me what I can do,” I said.

“You can live,” he said, brushing my hair from my face. “Find a way to get out of this city, and take Aerden with you. Go tonight, if you can. Go far away and don’t look back. Continue your work with the Resistance, and once you’ve put an end to the High Priestess herself, come home and put a dagger through Kael’s heart.”

He smiled, and I threw my arms around him.

“I will,” I said. “I hate to leave you again, but I will do everything I can to be home soon.”

“That’s my girl,” he said, stroking my hair the way he did all those years ago, comforting me when I’d had a nightmare. “I love you more than anything in this world. I’m so proud of all you’ve accomplished, Lea.I hope you know that.”

“Proud?” I asked, pulling away so I could look in his eyes. “How can you be proud of me when I’m the one who was responsible for the death and kidnapping of so many of our people?”

“Don’t put that guilt on yourself,” he said. “You were simply following your heart and doing what you felt was right. You were brave, even in the face of unimaginable horror. I am the one who has failed our people, Lea, but I am powerless to make things right, no matter how much I want to. It’s up to you now to save as many as you can. Return home when the Order is through, and I will pass the kingdom onto you, so that you may be the queen and ruler they deserve.”

“I’m so sorry, Father,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry.” He smiled as he wiped a tear from my cheek. “Be fierce. Be the warrior you were born to be.”

I nodded, wishing for just a little more time with him, but knowing that only a handful of seconds remained.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you too, my sweet, strong Lazalea,” he said. “You are the last hope of our kingdom now. Go quickly, so that you may live to fight another day.”

I stood, my heart racing as the barrier that surrounded us began to fade.

We were out of time.

“Goodbye, Father,” I said, squeezing his hand one last time before I darted toward the balcony. Before I passed through the barrier, though, my father called my name one last time, and I turned to him. “Yes?”

“I will see you again, my daughter, in this world or the next.”

“In this world or the next,” I repeated softly.

The barrier shimmered and faded from sight. I turned, great sadness in my heart, jumped from the balcony, and flew into the darkness toward the south garden to meet Ezrah.