Ishtak hobbled forward. “No more than I’ve allowed them to do.”
I swallowed my questions and my ferocity at seeing a Goddess of the Veil in such condition. “I need your help. My husband is dying and I do not know how to save him.”
She shuffled forward, peering down at Arthur, his chest barely moving. “The King of Heartstone Castle has returned where he vowed never to return again.”
“Great Goddess of the Underfae!” Piffle cried. “Oh, Dark Mistress of the Underrealm! He does not return of his own free will! We have dragged him here! He does not know!”
“Tell me,” I demanded. “Tell me what has been done to your faekind.”
Though her body stood crippled, her eyes darted to me in sharp anger. “You have no power here, Reshina, Goddess of the Ravenfae. No authority to ask such things.”
I swept my hand in an arc, stunning the Underfae creeping closer along the walls. They stilled, frozen. “I have every authority. You’ve done something to them. I know it to be true.”
Her beady black eyes narrowed.
“But I care not,” I continued. “I am here, begging you to savehim.”
“I saved him once already.”
“How?”
She bent on cracking knees and I followed, refusing to trust her so close to the man I loved. With bony fingers, she pulled back the tatters of his shirt. Her eyes squinted to slits as she looked over the wound, tracing the flayed skin. “Ah,” she cackled, “Therehe is.”
“Who?”
“The Beast.”
In a split moment he shifted, transforming before us. With fur indistinguishable from black in the dim light, the Beast’s chest heaved and he turned, a low growl rumbling from his throat.
“But the curse…” I trailed. “The curse was broken. I was able to leave. Why is the Beast still with him?”
Ishtak slowly rose, her eyes filled with greed. “You have returned to this place, Beast. Do you remember the cost?”
A dark voice I’d never heard rumbled from his chest. “YES, MOTHER.”
“Mother?” I took a step back, pulling Piffle behind me. “Explain yourself.”
A dark grin lifted her lips. “When the curse you delivered upon this land settled into its king, he fell into the Underrealm. My realm. I knew the father, but the son was…different.”
She slid her hand over the Beast’s arm and I darted forward, snatching it into mine. “You will refrain from touching my husband, Ishtak.”
“This Beast is not your husband.”
I dropped her hand. “Everypart of him is my husband.”
Her low cackle set my teeth on edge. “My children would have killed your Arthur had I not intervened after he fell. They’d almost drained him dry, hadn’t they, Piffle?”
The Changeling fae nodded, clinging to my skirts.
“What did you do to him?” I whispered.
“I bound him to my realm by way of the Beast inside, forcing him to feed my children in exchange for saving his life.”
“Feed your…” I searched the walls. Hundreds of Underfae crawled along them, leering over us as one hoard. “The biting. The hunting. The obsession with blood… the Beast was hunting to feedthem?”
“The sustenance my children seek was delivered herethrough the Beast. He drank the blood of animals and it nourished their bodies through a power given to me as Goddess of the Underfae. He was their brother.” She lifted her arms, twisting them to show the bruised bite marks all through her skin. “I assume you are the reason he has not been hunting and I have become their primary source of food.”
“Ishtak,” I whispered. “How have the Underfae become…this?”
