13

Daxeel's scent is all over me.

A strong enough claim that, as I wander the corridors with Eamon, headed for the tower, I'm not oblivious to the lingering looks from the contenders we pass. Dark and light fae spare me glances, but it's the dark males who linger their stare a little too long, who curl their lips in almost snarls.

I wonder how many of them know of my slight against Daxeel.

It was a great slight. So much so that I'd be surprised if it didn't fuel like a blaze through their lands in gossip. Their outrage is palpable, I can almost taste it on the stairs I take.

Eamon picks up on it, too.

It's why his hand rests on the small of my back as he escorts me up the steps. And I feel even safer with Rune ahead, because while we aren't friends, I don't have much doubt that he would defend me if it came to that.

But no dark male moves for me. They just sneer, letting their blatant distaste show in the once-overs they give me from blazing eyes.

All because Daxeel made a point of scenting me.

My early wash wasn't all that thorough either.

It was a few minutes of dunking myself into the tub in the washroom, but nothing more than running a soapy cloth over myself. Not a scrub.

So I know I smell like I've been claimed as I lean into Eamon, as if to hide from the glares aimed my way.

Some steps ahead, Rune has Aleana by the waist and supports her weight as she climbs the stairs. She's been weaker today, but I think that's more her hangover after passing out in the Hall last Quiet than it is her sickness.

I study them, the way she leans into him, how his head is angled towards her—and how delicately his thumb brushes over her corseted waist as though to comfort her against the fierce, disdainful looks from the dokkalves.

It's now that I see how isolated she is from her people, how they regard her like a disease of their kind. But also now that I see a tenderness in Rune as he keeps her weary pace, one step at a time, yet never huffs then throws her over his shoulder. He just helps.

A nudge against my arm tugs me out of my observations.

Glancing up at Eamon, a question in my eyes, I mouth ‘What?'

Eamon smirks, cuts his gaze to the pair ahead, then back at me. Leaning closer, he whispers softly, "Took you long enough."

We don't go into detail.

Rune will hear our words, no matter how whispered. But it has clicked like a puzzle piece in my mind. Rune and Aleana.

I mouth my answer, ‘Daxeel?'

Does Daxeel know?

That small smile still playing on Eamon's lips, he shrugs.

I tuck the thought away for another time, because as we reach the landing, Eamon's hand presses harder into the small of my back, his sharper nails scraping over the flimsy fabric of my purple bodice.

His head snaps to the side, away from me.

I lean forward to look around him, to see what tenses him and gives him pause.

My lashes lower over my eyes as a familiar sneer greets me.

Some steps down the landing's corridor, Taroh walks towards us with those two lordsons he's often with, like they are sewn at the legs.

My mouth purses on instinct as I flicker my gaze over the one I just now decide is named Boil. He would be ordinary in my eyes, with his sandy hair, dull brown irises, muted complexion—but the boil on his proud, slender face stands out. Not a kind of boil that a healer could tend to, no it's that angry sort, a red lump on the point of his chin—it"s a Fae Mark, utterly useless, and part disgusting.

The sight of it scrunches my face.

Taroh advances on me, and he steals back my attention like a fishhook through my fucking cheek.

Our stares lock.

The slight flare of his nostrils betrays him. He catches Daxeel's scent on me. Of course, to him, he might only smell a male on me, and he's only guessing it's Daxeel. An accurate guess with too real consequences.

"Your value descends each day, bedder." Taroh's drawl comes from around Eamon's rigid body. "Are there any more dokkalves you'd like to add to your collection as you freelance as an unpaid whore?"

I throw a quiet snarl around Eamon's hard chest. But before Taroh can say another word, before I can spit my own retort, Eamon twists with a growl.

His hand slips away from my back.

My wide eyes snap to my closest friend as he does the unthinkable.

Eamon moves too fast, faster than I've ever seen him move, and his fist is a blasted canon through the air. Coming from an angle, his knuckles crack into Taroh's cheekbone.

I hear—no, I feel—the bone crunch.

Air rushes up all around me. Strands of my own hair whip my face, the short hem of my purple satin skirt lifts in the disturbed air of the landing.

It's the force of Taroh hitting the wall, the sudden surge of tension in the nearby fae, and the speed of Rune flying down the steps to stand at my side.

Without so much as a glance at me, Rune snatches my wrist and yanks me hard. I'm thrown aside, the toes of my boots knocking into a step. I almost go tumbling over the stairs, almost smack into Aleana who reaches out flattened hands to halt me.

All that stops me from spilling over is the banister I grab onto.

Aleana's hands find my forearm. Her clutched fingers are weak as she tugs me towards her, I follow into her pull until I'm up some steps and looking down on the landing.

Turns out, I was right about Rune coming to my aid.

Rune and Eamon are my shields as Taroh rights himself.

His eyes are wild forest fires.

Taroh's rage is something I've come to know. Whenever he corners me, attacks me, his eyes are cold like the spilled blood of the dead in snowy battlefields. But now, as he stares down Eamon who doesn't even flinch, his eyes are blazes. The same savage rage I saw in him when Daxeel decked him.

It's Rune who bites out the words, "Anything else you want to say to the halfling, or would you rather pick up the scraps of dignity you have left and leave?"

Dark chuckles ripple through the watching fae. But the only ones who smile or grin with a bloodthirst that shudders my spine are the dokkalves.

The litalves are unnerved. Some throw their glances between me, Eamon and Taroh. Because they know, they know Eamon should have never done that, never hit Taroh. Others are tense, hands hovering near their weapons, ready to draw and join a brawl—if that's what this becomes.

I hope it doesn't.

I pray it doesn't.

Taroh stares down Rune, but his courage lasts a mere second before his throat bobs and he takes a step back. Another moment passes, no one speaks. Whatever Taroh decides is what will be. A brawl, ending in bloodshed—in death. Or peace for another phase.

Then Taroh turns and storms down the stairs. His two lordson companions follow him—Boil throws me a sneer dripping with disgust—and for a while we just watch them go.

It's only when Rune relaxes and jumps the three steps to return to Aleana's side that I let the breath loosen from me. My chest deflates with it, and I slump against the banister.

Eamon doesn't jump the steps.

He turns, his face stone, and he looks up at me.

The look I give him isn't exactly disapproving, but it is sad. The frown tucks into the space between my brows, it twists my mouth into something grim.

Eamon could be sent to the Grott for punching Taroh, a lordson.

The Grott…

I shudder to think of it. I only know of two fae who have survived their banishments there, but if they talk about it, it's not to me since they are only court acquaintances.

Rumours are what I have to go on.

They are enough that cold dread trickles through me.

"Don't be sad," Eamon's voice is as soft as it can be, but I see the severity of his own apprehensions in his tight eyes. "I will be fine. Taroh won't want it confirmed he got knocked on his ass by one like me."

‘One like me.'

One who likes other males, or one with halfblood?

Both, maybe.

Even if he will be fine, and nothing comes of this, it's too loud a truth to ignore. My own troubles are becoming the troubles of those I love. The one I hold dearest to me committed acrime to defend me.

All my mess is a spiderweb, and Eamon just got caught in it.

He was bound to get stuck in it at some point. A fly hanging around a pot of honey doesn't have the best of chances. I can't watch him pay the price for my mistakes and my slights.

"I wish I could just get my father to see," I whisper.

That's the fastest, simplest solution to all of this. If father just severed our engagement, then it all goes away. Taroh won't feel entitled to stalk me, hurt me, attack me. And so, Eamon won't be in a position where he might need to defend me—and get himself into a whole lot of trouble for it.

Most of my troubles would vanish.

Eamon takes a step closer. "The chances of your father ending your engagement are slim, Nari. You don't have other suitable offers to fall back on."

His hand rests on the banister near mine and, behind me, Rune and Aleana are statues—no doubt listening to every word we share. I don't even notice the few fae around who do the same, but most have drifted off, bored now that the threat of spilled blood has dispersed.

Still, that sorrow has my face tight as I look down at him, just three steps away. The stakes are higher now.

"Daxeel—" I start, but Eamon cuts that down, fast.

"Even if my cousin wanted to wed you," he reminds me of that abyss, that truth that guts me, that Daxeel wouldn't marry me, "your father wouldn't have let you marry him back then." Eamon's mouth turns down with a frown. "What makes you think he would allow it now? He is a racist male."

My lips push out with a heavy sigh, because I have no answer.

It's true. Father doesn't even let Eamon into the house. Servants have to come tell me when they spot Eamon coming across the hills or fields, and I run out to meet him.

Before Eamon, I held the beliefs my father gave me. Of course I did—I was raised to believe these prejudices as absolute truths. Then I met Eamon, and he peeled them from my mind, strip after strip. Then the Fae Eclipse came, and Daxeel stole my heart.

Beyond the truth that the dark and light fae are always at odds, always look down on the other, have always suffered a great divide, my father has his own experiences that has fostered this hatred in him. A hatred that runs so deep that he'll never be rid of it.

Father's first wife died in a fire-arrow attack from the dark ones. She was in the now-gone village near the border of the Wastelands, long before my time. When father received news about the attack on her home village, where she was visiting, he rode two days straight to reach her. But she was a charred skeleton by the time he got there, only recognisable by the copper band around her left wrist, a worthless piece of jewellery her favourite human servant gave her. It was the only piece of jewellery that—when the dark fae invaded the village after the sun went down and looted from the dead—was left on her burnt corpse.

Father loved her. His mate. So rare, such a rare thing for the litalves. A mate. Where every dark male has evate, so few light males have mates.

But his mate had status in life—and duties that came even in her death.

The daughter of a governor, the governor of that exact village that burnt to ash.

As her husband, even in her death, father was forced to fund all evacuations, funerals and relocations.

The family's wealth was weak then, but it was ruined by that attack on that village by the dark ones.

Father lost his life to their kind. All that mattered to him, the mother of his six-month-old babe, his mate, his status, his wealth—everything.

It's not only his pure hatred for them that pushes father to separate Daxeel and me, but fear. He fears for me at the hands of a dark one.

"Father is blinded," I whisper the words like a confession I shouldn't speak.

Eamon steals another step towards me. His hand slides closer on the banister, and the fear glitters in his smooth eyes.

My voice is uneasy, "He steals my life to protect it. I won't marry Taroh."

Eamon frowns at me.

Behind me, Aleana's uncertain voice reminds me of her presence, "Don't you mean you don't want to marry him?"

She thinks I lie. The starkness of the truth, the unrealistic nature of my declaration, confuses her.

I shake my head, my gaze unfaltering from Eamon's. "I won't marry Taroh. No matter what happens. I refuse."

Eamon's mind shifts to thoughts of the Grott, the place of punishment, and it shows in the sudden pallor of his normally golden skin. "And what other option do you have, Nari?" He doesn't mean to push me into it, but he steals away a fantasy future I've been building in my mind, a future with Daxeel. Eamon steals that from me as he adds, "You'll be banished or disowned. Without security, what will you do?"

I lean against the banister.

For a beat, I consider him, consider his words. My face hardens against the anger prickling up inside of me, against the tickle of tears in my throat, like icicles sprouting beneath my flesh.

Then my words exhale with a whoosh, "I don't know." I drop my head and stare down at the toes of my boots. "What if father just listens to me? If I tell him everything, father might… he might sever the engagement."

Eamon steps towards me, his hand coming for my cheek. He cups my jawline and tilts my face to align with his. Sorrow dims the golden hue of his eyes. "I wish that were true, Nari. But the reason you haven't done it yet is because you know he won't save you from that fate. You are a pawn to your father. I am sorry."

I don't know a tear spills down my cheek until his thumb brushes it away.

"I am sorry," he echoes those words softly and it's enough to twist my face and summon streams of tears.

Eamon makes to drag me closer to him, to hold me through my cries. But I jerk my chin out of his gentle hold, then step aside.

"No," I whisper.

I can't keep weeping into the chest of my dearest friend, hoping that fate will steal me away for a better life. I can't keep pinning all my hopes on Daxeel who loathes me still. And I can't let anyone else get hurt in their attempts to protect me.

"No." The word is spoken as firmly as my jaw is set. "Father will see." He has to. "I have to try. I need to at least try."

And if I don't, and our marriage comes to be, I will be the one to pay for what Eamon did. I will pay for his violence with Taroh's violence.

"Go on without me. I'll meet you up there," I tell him.

"Nari—" It's all he manages before I turn my back on them, then storm back down the stairs.

I leave them for the tower.

And I take my future into my own hands as I march for the offices.

Closer to the first passage, just two phases away now, the offices are flooded with energy. It's a taut, tense energy that has me rigid on the wooden chair.

But it's more than the shouts and rustles of paper behind me in this once-ballroom that has my shoulders curved and my hands clasped too tightly on my lap and my bottom lip nearly bruised from all the anxious chewing.

Opposite the desk, father reclines in his chair. It's not a relaxed posture, it's exhausted. His cheek is turned to me, and his eyes are fixed on the dust of a bookshelf.

Everything I told him, from Taroh's first attack on me ten years ago and how Daxeel saved me, to the slurred words Taroh just fired at me, keeps father in a pensive silence.

I omitted my renewed relationship with Daxeel, of course. I'm a fool, not a dullard.

I think when I first came to father half an hour ago, he was relieved to see me. Grateful that I came to visit him, like he has always been.

Even when I was a child and would come into the library just to play with rocks on the floor beside his desk, he would often spare small smiles on me. Never chide me, never tell me to leave. He would give me parchment scraps and quills so I could pretend to write important letters as he did, but they were just scribbles and sketched suns and trees and spidery figures.

Always glad I visited.

But that softness in his eyes vanished the moment I sat myself down and started with, "Don't make me marry him."

His face hardened. He didn't tense in his chair, he slowly deflated—but he kept his silence and he listened.

Didn't interrupt me once.

But he offered no surprise, no disgust, no comfort.

So as I sit here now in this punishing quiet, and my heart pounds viciously against my chest, and my nails cut too deep into the meat of my palms, I wait for father to speak.

I wait a long while before, finally, he sighs out words that break the quiet, "My daffodil."

Hope surges through me. I almost choke on it.

Stiffened on the chair, I lean forward just an inch and rest my hands on the edge of the desk. My wide eyes are glued to father's profile. I watch his unreadable face glisten like the deepest shade of mahogany under the harsh light of the glowjars.

"My child," he says softly, then turns to face me. But his gaze is on my hands that grip the table edge. "I spoiled you."

My lashes flutter once, twice, before my head tilts to the side. A frown wrinkles my face.

"It isn't a regret. It was done with purpose," he speaks as though speaking to himself. "I raised you with more care, love and fanciful, pretty dresses than I ever afforded your sister."

At the mention of Pandora, his gaze lifts over my shoulder.

Frown still etched onto my features, I trace his stare to the entryway to the back of the offices where we're tucked away. There, between the two bookshelves, my sister hovers.

Unease has her hands fisted at her sides, a nervous trait we share, and her uncertain brown eyes shift between father and me.

I wonder how long she's been there.

She's without armour this phase. And I think it's because of the considerable swell of her belly, that she can't squeeze into the leathers anymore, and so she wears an ugly green sweater, and some type of stockings with a plain pair of white shorts.

I run the attire over with a mild look of distaste that intensifies when I lift my gaze to hers.

Her jaw ticks.

She doesn't move from the entryway. Doesn't peel away from the shelves and come closer to us.

Keeping her distance, she speaks nothing at all.

Father draws my attention back to him as he says, "I intentionally moulded you into a lady. From your birth, I ensured you would make a fine one. One that the lords would want as a bride, despite the circumstances around your birth." The smile he gives me is small and tight. It's sad. "All you need now is the title."

My lips part around an answer, but before I can speak it, father lifts his hand to silence me.

"And that title," he adds, his tone as suddenly stern as his stare, "is not wife of a dark male brute."

The blood escapes my head and I feel the pallor of my face.

Through the heart lodged in my throat, I manage to utter a weak sound. I mentioned Daxeel only once in my lengthy tale to father. I mentioned only that he saved me from Taroh at the High Court.

But father knows me well. He knows that I would offer Daxeel up as a replacement fiancé.

Dark male brute.

He is so much more than that.

"Daxeel is of ancient blood." I hardly summon the courage to strengthen my voice. It's a hushed, pathetic sound. "He's the son of a general, his mother is a viscountess. That is high status," I plead, breathless. "I would have been more than a lady with a marriage to him. And I would have been loved."

My cheeks are wet, like the sensation in my slick throat that I swallow back. Hands slipping from the edge of the desk, I fight the wobble of my bottom lip.

I hold father's stare.

He's made no decision yet, and so I have hope because above all that I am, I am a fool.

"I stole your future with him." Father's honesty shocks me into silence. "Because he is of the dark blood. He is of beasts, the unevolved of the fae, and he will never be good enough for mine. A prince, a generalson, I couldn't possibly care less. No child of mine will marry one of them, no matter their status."

"Father," I breath the word like a prayer. The chair creaks under my weight as I reach out for him, hands pushing parchment across the desk. "Forget Daxeel. Will you spare me from Taroh?"

His face hardens.

Slowly, he lifts his chin and looks down his nose at me. "When Taroh comes to know you better, he should fall under your spell as your dark male did. With your talents," and I know he means my seductive edge, a trait I've sharpened over time, "I have no doubts that Taroh will come to see you as a fine wife."

The breath shudders from me; a shiver of pain and rage and heartache.

My hands flatten on parchment and slowly, I scrunch them in my fists, but my eyes don't stray from father's unyielding stare.

"Narcissa…" he starts with a kind, forced smile, "you are so pretty, you are a lover of the written word, you are a skilled and talented dancer. You want for baubles and room enough to keep your treasures. You want for love and protection, because it's all I've shown you in your youth. I made you into who you are."

I know what he's telling me, the constant insult I get from Pandora, and a truth I'm suddenly all too aware of. "You made me into a brat?"

"You are what I wanted in a second daughter. This is what allows me to price your tocher so high. You are coveted, so coveted that lesser lordsons with unsuitable wealth or social standings have made many offers on your contracts, and I have rejected them—because I know your worth. I love you, my daffodil, but this is your purpose." He sighs a soft breath. "You will marry Taroh."

The finality of his decision strikes through me like a sword.

A sudden swell of heat steals my head, and I'm dizzy.

Slowly, I push up from the chair and I'm unsteady on my feet.

"You love me," I echo his statement in a daze. Through clouded eyes, I keep father's mahogany stare. "And so little you do."

It's not an accusation. I speak it like the truth it is—all the evidence I ever needed to know how insignificant I am.

Each time father held me when I cried after spilling pudding, or when I wanted a new dress and Pandora wanted a knife, but I received it from the budget and Pandora was neglected.

It was never favouritism, love or adoration. It was intention, to make me into what and who I am.

Yes, father loves me. But not enough.

I turn on my sister, I see the grim set of her mouth, and I hate her so much I want to shred her face with my nails. "Father means for my rape." I take a step towards her. I hear father flinch behind me. "You mean for my death. Which is worse, sister?"

Pandora looks as though I slapped her across the face. A part of me wants to. Instead, I shove into her shoulder as I storm off.

Behind me, harsh footsteps keep my pace.

I'm halfway across the offices when my sister shouts after me, "You truly mean that? You believe that I mean for you to die?"

I call over my shoulder, "You would have taken the potion if you had my wellbeing in your heart."

I shove through the main door and out into the foyer.

Contenders are strewn about, moving through the halls for the quarters, the offices, the harem, finishing all their needs and matters before the first passage starts in two phases.

I stalk around a youngling, some years old and in my way. The son of an official, I don't doubt, and I find I hate the boy, too. I hate everyone and everything, and I want all their suffering to match mine.

The rage is too strong. I need to get out of here, get to the tower.

But I almost stagger at the sight of him.

Across the foyer, at the foot of the wooden staircase, Daxeel stands with Samick and Caius. All three of them have their intent stares on me, then shift them to the female who comes up to my back.

Pandora snatches my arm before I can reach the stairs. She yanks me hard enough that I stumble before I turn on her.

"I did not take the potion, because the seed is enough," she snaps at me, and the ferocity of her stare means all patience and pity has been thrown aside in favour for all the slights I've thrown at her.

She's reached her breaking point with me.

Still, I lift my chin and take a purposeful step towards her. Not even father by the doorway of the offices can cause my hesitation.

‘The seed is enough.'

I sneer my answer in her face, "Obviously fucking not."

Her teeth bare with a snarl she aims down at me.

Hand around my forearm, her fingers grip like flesh eating vines.

I wince.

A tug of my arm does nothing to loosen her strength, and she holds me still.

I don't back down. Pain hisses my voice, "If you cared so much about me, you would terminate."

"Terminate?" she snarls the word down at me like it's a poison. "One thing father did wrong in raising you to be this brat that you are, it was to delude you into believing you are at the centre of the universe. Not everything is about you, Narcissa."

A yelp escapes me. She throws my arm from her grip with such force that I stagger back.

Father steps closer, moves like a wolf coming to break up a fight between its pups, but then his stare turns feral as it lifts—

And I feel Daxeel moving closer.

I throw a look over my shoulder at him, seeing how he advances, the threat in each slink of his muscles, the danger storming in his eyes… and his ferocious eyes fixed on Pandora.

"You throw your sister to her death." His words are a growl like no other I've heard from him. A growl laced with ice.

I shudder at the sound and step aside.

He moves to stand in front of me, a shield.

"Your apology is weak. Mere twisted words," and the growl tenses my shoulders, pins me in place. "You think she can survive the trials? The first passage alone will annihilate her. If you were not able to commit to the Sacrament, then your first failure was signing up to compete. Your sister pays for your failures."

My wide gaze is stuck on Daxeel.

For him to so boldly, so openly come to my defence in front of everyone gathered in the foyer, on the stairs, in doorways…

He's announcing me. In the face of his peers, his fellow dark males, he is deflecting the slight I served him in the High Court and locking in his protection of me. This is more than an ex-love coming to my aid. This is a fucking statement.

My breath trembles with my hands at my sides.

His upper lip curls as he says, "You treat her like an unpleasant child, when she has every right to fear her fate—and resent you, who delivered it to her."

Father pushes forward to stand at my sister's side. Face slack with shock, his eyes burn with outrage. And it's all fixed on me.

My retreat is instant. I take an instinctual step back.

My shoulders curve inwards as the icy ropes of fear turns into a blizzard in my chest. I want—need—to make myself smaller.

But as though smelling every bit of that panic, Daxeel transfers his weight onto one leg, shifting his body to shield more of me.

"Has this resumed, child?" My father's voice is calm, but there's a storm beneath it, one that sends a tremor down my cold spine. "Tell me now, have you touched this darkling?" he spits the word like the insult it is, and growls rumble through the corridor. "Tell me if you have sullied your body once again with this beast!"

"I am the beast?" Daxeel's snarl is slow but utterly commanding. "You sell her off to a male who hurts her, send her into a trial she'll die in, she begs for your help and you deny her the only one who would have died to protect her—" If my eyes could get any wider they would fall out of my head, but I stare at Daxeel as though it's the first time I have seen him, because it's the power of what he confesses.

He would have died to protect me.

And maybe he still would.

But as though I'm little more than a mere mouse hidden behind him, he goes on, "Is this how your family shows their love?" he spits. "Her ill fate in all regards can be blamed on her pathetic father and her woeful sister. You have no honour," he says and turns his glacier look on Pandora. "If this is how you treat the ones you love—" he drops his gaze to her swollen belly "—your babe has my gravest sympathies."

Behind me, Samick scoffs. He wears a lazy grin that I turn my wild, teary eyes on. But Caius is looking right at me, not at all distracted by the confrontation in the lobby. He looks only at me with a stare made of daggers.

Rising sobs carve out an aching sensation in my chest. It turns my breaths shallow and hoarse. The tears fall freely down my cheeks, and I don't know what to do.

Run, weep, join Daxeel, or turn against him.

I know what I should do.

Go to my family and accept my punishment.

But I won't.

I can't.

Especially not now that Daxeel has made a very public announcement about me, right in front of my father. It's something I'll pay for, a punishment I can't face.

So I'm sliding my boot back against the floorboards, my instinct preparing for retreat, for escape.

Daxeel is defending me, but I know that's the evate urge taking over, not love. Not my ally, not the one I fell in love with all that time ago. I needed this from him back then. But now, it's sullied because I know he doesn't want me like I want him.

My kind devil is still a devil.

I turn and run for the tower.