14

Eamon is my angel, my brother, my comforter.

The moment I rush through the archway and onto the harsh stone of the tower, he pushes from his usual velvet cushion and steals me away to the edge of the roof.

He knew of course, knew the outcome I would face in confronting my father, but not once does he rub that in like salt to an iron-struck wound. In all his dignity, he simply wraps his arms around me.

I melt into him.

He holds me. Through the tears, the time that passes and takes us into the First Wind, and long after Daxeel and Samick join everyone on the tower with fresh drinks, Eamon just holds me.

Now, though, it's a looser embrace, and we keep tucked away near the tower edge. He's perched on the edge of a stack of crates.

I lean against him, my temple rested on his collarbone, and in silence, we watch bottles being passed around.

The hunger in my bloodshot eyes isn't for Daxeel who cuts his gaze to me every other moment. It isn't for the honeywine that Aleana hogs as she sits close enough to Rune on the cushions that their arms almost touch. The hunger is for the dark papered, somewhat inky looking smoke that Samick has pinched between his fingers. Grimroot, found in Dorcha from a plant that blooms only in the darkness.

The smoke that billows out from Samick's sharp, fine nose is pure onyx. He parts his pale lips around the last of the vapours before handing off the grimroot to Daxeel at his side, leaned against the tower's wall.

Without his narrowed gaze leaving me, Daxeel takes the root and brings it to his full lips.

I watch as he smokes it for a beat, then the black vapours steal him from my sight entirely. I stay slumped against Eamon's firm, slender chest.

Daxeel pushes from the wall and—holding the root to his lips, dark vapours lashing around him like shadows—he moves for me.

The bite of Eamon's sharp clavicle digs into my temple. But my tired, reddened eyes betray nothing more than my soul's fatigue as Daxeel advances.

Daxeel offers the root with a look darker than the smoke. "Only a little."

A hush falls over Rune and Aleana.

Hand on my side, Eamon's grip tenses.

And I just stare at Daxeel.

This is the first time he's spoken to me so openly, besides calling me vicious one in the Hall when Bracken was staring at me. This is direct—and comes with an offering.

Hesitantly, I reach for the root, my irritated, itchy eyes fixed on his shadowy ones.

I pinch it between my fingers, suddenly aware of the truth of his words.

‘Only a little.'

I can't overindulge like they can. I'm the only litalf up here on the tower. The rest are dark ones, they can handle the grimroot better than I can. And I'm the only halfling, because while Eamon is a hybrid, he has fae blood and nothing human about him.

Do they see me as an outsider?

I don't feel like one.

Maybe I should.

Maybe I shouldn't trust the root I bring to my lips. But I find I care so little about anything at all right now.

I suck in a long, harsh breath from the root.

The hit is instant. A chesty cough jolts me. My face twists against the unusual taste of mud mixed with fire and snow.

Eamon's curt laugh jolts his chest against my side. "Don't like it?"

Shaking my head, I pass it to him.

Daxeel watches the spiralling smoke escape my lips.

Strained, I manage to choke out, "It burns."

Daxeel lifts his stare to mine and holds. After a long moment—everyone watching, listening—he says, "We're all going to Kithe." My heart drops at the reminder that they all leave Comlar. But then he adds, "To the Gloaming."

I think it's a tavern of sorts, but I have only heard it mentioned once or twice in passing around Comlar, and so I'm not quite sure if it's a public house or more of a restaurant.

Daxeel doesn't elaborate. Doesn't ask me to join them, because he doesn't have to. His words are an invitation—maybe more of an indirect order.

I don't think he would let me reject the offer.

Before I can respond, he's turning his back on me, headed for Aleana. He helps her stand from the cushion.

Rune finally peels away from his sitter duties, eyes on the grimroot. No hesitation, he makes for us and steals it from Eamon, like he's been craving a hit of that murky smoke for a while now.

Then I realize. All of them take care to keep the smoke away from Aleana, like it'll harm her somehow, or even just that she's too poorly this phase to inhale the vapours.

Eamon tucks his chin to the crown of my head. "It's a bar."

A frown pinches my face. Then I understand, the Gloaming is a bar. I spare the name a fleeting thought, a smiled thought that doesn't reach my face, because the gloaming is that special time where day meets night, ‘dusk' to the ordinary-tongued folk, but to those who think in poetry, the gloaming is so much more. It is the flurry of special lights in that romantic red and purple sky, it's the fireflies above, it's the stillness of the air and when night can be tasted—it is light and dark blended as one.

Eamon's voice rumbles against me. "Will you come?"

In answer, I nod; my cheek rubs against the sliver of warm tawny skin revealed between the undone strings of his blouse. Father will have a fit if he finds out.

But to hell with father.

I've never wandered this far from Comlar before. Never walked the pearlescent path beyond the Gilded Glade.

Before this phase, I might have felt the security of Comlar slipping away from me with each step I take further down the hill. Now, it feels like an escape from a cruel prison, a prison where my father and sister are my guards, the ones to keep me in the cage, and the iilra are the wardens.

My mind skips a beat, then stumbles as I try to simply comprehend how much has changed in the short time I have been in the Midlands. Not yet a month, and my life feels like Knife, that little demon of a brownie, has sunk his metallic needle-like teeth into my life then—in a frenzy—torn it to pieces.

I blame Knife.

Still, all this time on from that night, Knife is the one I blame most of all, since he was the one who woke father in the night and led him out to me under the willow with Daxeel.

At the thought of the critter, my mouth twists with a scowl, and I fix it on the throngs of fae we approach. Dark and light, they are littered all over the edges of the path—and they gamble.

On wooden boards, with cards, with names scribbled onto cheap parchment scraps, dice in cups, the dark and light come together and gamble off-grounds where they won't be penalised for it.

I'm torn at the sight of them. Dozens. The litalves basking under the glow of the moon; the dark ones stalking the shade.

Part of me thinks of gloaming; the other part thinks of that word, that slap in the face, a glossy sheen draped over an ugly, puss and boiled lie—unity.

Some steps ahead, Eamon rips me out of my bitter mind. His breath catches on the grimroot he smokes. I almost think he chokes on a cough. But as I flick my attention to him, his back tenses beneath the flimsy white of his shirt.

And I'm quick to figure out why.

Down the edge of the path, Ridge is planted on a boulder, hunched with his legs spread, hands clasped between his thighs, and his faint grin snagged on the wooden board at his boots.

Another litalf—a female contender whose hair is like fire—sits on the other side of the game board and throws black and white stones onto it.

Her loss is instant. She hisses a foul word at the stones before Ridge widens his grin and steals the small silver coins she gambled with. As he stuffs the coins into his pocket, he looks up at our scattered group wandering downhill. His gaze lingers over Eamon the longest before he snaps his attention to me and gives a friendly wink.

At my side, Aleana leans around my shoulder to get a good look at the gambling games, and I feel the curiosity spark off her.

But I'm more focused on the sudden chill pressing against my back. Behind me, Daxeel's aura shifts into ice—and I had no idea he had wandered so close to me in our stroll, that he had abandoned Samick somewhere behind and come up to my back as though feeling an urge to shield me. Suppose he does.

Still, I lift my hand in a lazy wave aimed at the familiar fae with cherry blossom hair. My limbs are made heavy by the grimroot I tried just once more before we left the tower. It's what keeps my pace wandering and my mind distracted on this walk.

"Should we be worried," Ridge starts and pushes up from the boulder, headed for me, "that one of ours is sneaking off with the enemy?"

There's a lightness to his words, he's only playing, and I veer off to meet him.

Daxeel keeps close to me.

"You should be more concerned about how you'll miss out," I say with a smile and a flickered look to Eamon's pink face, "if you don't come down to the Gloaming for a drink."

Not my place to invite anyone to this bar with this group, but I owe Eamon this and so much more, so I dangle a loosecome with us all the same.

Ridge's lilac eyes glitter like they've come to life. His rosy lips widen even more around white, sharp teeth.

"Oh I'm certain I'll be thirsty for a drink once I have cleared out Luna's pockets," he says, and I guess Luna is the fire-haired female watching us, her gaze lingering over me, then Daxeel, then Samick. "Perhaps I'll see you there."

My small is wicked, but loose under the cloud of grimroot. "I hope so."

With that, and the sheer glacier nips of Daxeel's disapproval biting at my back, I wiggle my fingers in a farewell, then leave Ridge to his gambling.

Eamon looks over his shoulder at me with a fierce blush that creeps along his sharp cheekbones and a pursed set to his mouth, but I see the smile he fights, the warmth in the way he looks at me, and then he's turned around again, walking alongside Rune who he shares the root with.

I think Eamon's cheeks stay hot the rest of the walk to Kithe.

And the moment we reach Kithe, I decide that I am in love.

At home, I find romance in the ordered streets of the Royal City; I see beauty in the rowhouses built too close together, but to make friends with neighbours is quite a nice thing; I smile at the tidy gardens beside the porches; and I hear the songs in the water fountains that bring a forever soothing rush to the air.

Kithe is not the Royal City.

The path leads directly to the heart of the town, through a narrow, dimly lit lane. The dampness in the air reminds me of fresh morning waves on a beach, a pinch of salt and the sweeping caramel aroma from nearby markets.

Then as we leave behind the damp lane and step into the rushing bustle of a busy street—I widen my eyes.

First, my attention is snatched by the folk. Not just the sheer number of them flooding the narrow and winding streets of Kithe, streets lined with four-levelled homes with sagged thatched roofs and little balconies hanging overhead, but rather how the folk blend.

Unity.

That word echoes in my mind.

Here, I see it.

A litalf male and a dokkalf female walk hand in hand; a dark male with a human he steers through the streets, a human I think might be his changeling child; a light female who smiles bright and laughs, the sound is like bells; and even that irritating sound of children screeching as their parents chase them down for wash hour, even that sounds a little like a layer of a melody.

My breath is restrained, like I can't bring myself to fully release it because if I did, it would somehow disturb this romance around, it would blow away all the beauty like a gale wind.

At my side, Aleana reaches out for my hand.

My eyes flare for a beat. I forgot she was there. I was so entirely consumed by the fragrance of this town, the song of Kithe that Aleana had melted into the little pockets and shadows of darkness.

Grip firm on my hand, her skinny legs find strength enough to steer us through the throngs of folk, and we keep pace.

Daxeel falls into step behind us, he and Samick becoming our shadows.

We take a small bridge connecting a divided road that is split down the middle with a little rush of water coming from underground, and I find it fascinating.

"Is this amethyst?" I ask, running my palm over the bridge's barrier—feeling the polished kiss of blackwood against my skin, but the jagged bite of a harsh, raw crystal, too. "It's only found in Licht."

Aleana smiles, a toothy grin that glitters her eyes. "Probably imported—or that type found in the human world."

I shake my head and let my hand fall away from the barrier. Quickly, I duck out of the way, moving behind Aleana, to let an elder pass. To the untrained eye, elders might look young, like a human might look well for their fortieth or fiftieth year, but elders carry the weight of eternity on their sagged shoulders, wear too many losses in the wrinkles around their eyes and mouths, and their nails turn grey like their hair turns silver.

I don't think the elder even sees me as he walks by, as though he's already a spirit simply travelling over a bridge.

Then I forget all about him and turn back to Aleana with a sigh. "The human crystals don't glow. These must be from Licht."

I'm glued to her side as we walk the rest of the way, and it's a sort of town I would like to see painted.

Ribbons of canals and bridges unwinding through the crooked and bending streets of Kithe. Above, vines connects from house to house, thick ropes of purple pebbled with flowerbuds that gleam violet—and the vines hook from window to window, crisscrossing overhead.

From a balcony three stories up, my eyes narrow and my instinct narrows in on a humming human who leans over the banister and fastens damp linen to the ropey vines. The flowers embedded in the vines whistle faintly, as though they like to be disturbed by the human, and their song is like the melody of a gentle wind.

All the study in the archives for so many years, and I am stunned.

Beside me, Daxeel sticks close, and I feel the heat of his gaze caressing my cheek. He watches me, I watch his town.

We pass a human servant—told by the clean beige suits he wears, waistcoat and all—at the mouth of an alleyway with a sort of shovel. He starts clearing the mess that a passing kelpie made. I arch a brow at him—this city must be wealthy for it to keep servants.

The light in the all-consuming darkness of the Midlands, it comes in so many forms. It's the warmth of the amber firelight flickering from the street lanterns; the crimsons and blues and whites that illuminate windows all around; and it's the faint purple hue of the flowers catching on the surface of the calm waters that run under the small bridges.

Chunks of amethyst are pebbled over the railings, polished wood interrupted by the raw texture of the gleaming crystal, but speckled throughout the blackstone streets of Kithe, these specks of amethyst wedged between the stone slabs.

Then Eamon and Rune cut down a lane where the light doesn't reach. Thick dark smoke from the grimroot clouds around me in one final puff that Rune takes, then he flicks it to the wall. Embers splash through the air before the root dies on the ground.

And they stop.

Down the end of the narrow lane, only one light source penetrates the darkness—barely. A red lacquered door that glistens faintly in the blackness, a blood moon in the thickest moment of night.

The door is small and narrow. I note that Samick stands at least two head's taller than it as he moves around us. He reaches out a hand, inked in sharp lines as thin as Daxeel's tattoos, then he raps his knuckles on the door—one, two, three.

It creaks open to reveal the stark white face of a human, a human who has not seen the sun in some time, or perhaps ever in his life. He spares us a mere glance before pulling aside the door and making way.

Samick dips his head and steps over the threshold, then disappears inside.

I turn over my shoulder to see Daxeel's eyes gleaming like lights of their own, if the depths of a dangerous ocean were a light source. How they gleam from kohled eyes, inky hair falling into his face, the shadows of the Midlands—he was made for the dark.

I falter under his fierce stare, as I often do, before I turn back to the shrunken door.

One by one, we dip inside.

I follow behind Aleana, losing her grip on my hand as she goes, and I have to crouch to fit through the doorframe.

It's…

It's nothing like what I thought, yet everything like it to.

The Gloaming.