15

Baris a word beneath this place; this magickal, lovely place.

Feels like I've been stuffed into a green bottle, one filled with thick forestry. The floor is a deep-green marble with gold swirls and cracks. Leafy bars are hidden behind staircases and tucked into alcoves with tall velvet stools pressed up against them.

But it's the balconies above that snare my attention, and I pay no mind to the human man who let us enter, the one who murmurs a welcome and bows his head.

Beyond the balcony barriers, I see that the rooms above have no walls lining them. Where walls should be are tall glass pools filled with all sorts of fish of red and orange and yellow and white and black; floating green moss rocks; midnight blue weeds that sway with the current; and slimy grey grindylows feasting on the heads of fallen fish.

Aquariums.

I've never seen one before, these glass water prisons.

It's an extraordinary thing to behold. That shows in my faint smile as my neck arches back so I can get a good look at every single creature I can spot swimming on the other side of the glass.

Bottle blue and forest green—that's the theme of the Gloaming. And it's a warm, welcoming embrace of comfort, yet something otherworldly. It takes me a moment to piece it together. This place feels like home because it's meant to.

The fish, the plants, the colours, the dark corners, the cosy warmth of illuminated alcoves, the upper levels with games of darts and rock toss, the shelves of leather-bound tomes that come from both lands—

The Gloaming is a blend of both Licht and Dorcha. It's awelcome home to fae from both lands.

And it's a reminder of where I am. Kithe, a blended town in the Midlands, a town where we mix together as one.

Before Daxeel can steal me out of the wonder, I count at least a dozen aquariums, some grand, some small—but then the warmth of his familiar touch clutches my wrist.

I blink at Daxeel, at his unreadable expression.

Then his mouth twists into a mocking smirk. "Would you rather I leave you to stay down here with strangers?"

With a frown that reaches from my brow to my lips, I throw a glance around me—and notice that only me and Daxeel still linger at the entrance. Weaving through speckled throngs of folk, the others are halfway across the bar already, headed for some metal spiralling stairs.

I don't apologize, and I certainly don't thank him for snapping me out of my daze. But I don't pull my wrist from his grip either.

"I hadn't seen grindylows before," I confess.

It's true, to a degree. Some drawings here and there in archives, sure, but grindylows favour the waters with bridges submerged in them, bridges to the human realms, their preferred prey—specifically human children. But the only water bridge I'm ever near is the one at the High Court, and all the merfolk and selkies in there give me the chills, so I never got close enough to get a good look at those morning hunters, the grindylows.

Now that I flicker my attention back to one of those creatures feasting on bone, I find my fascination fast quenched, and my nose scrunching with mild distaste.

"They're a bit… slimy," I mutter, almost to myself, almost like I forget who is standing with me, holding firm onto my wrist.

He traces my stare. "Should they be dry water creatures?"

He mocks me with the sharp glint in his eyes that he aims my way, like a sword swung. But his grip hasn't loosened, not with dozens of other fae swarming the ground floor of the Gloaming, and our group already climbing the spiral staircase.

"Merfolk aren't all that slimy. Wet, but not like… that." I jerk my chin at the grindylow who picks his nose with what I am certain is a human fingerbone. "Not like a cadaver that's been left to soak in wild waters for years."

That's exactly what its grey and bulbous skin reminds me of. Those bodies that sometimes wash up at sea. Silly humans, enslaved or what have you, thinking they can escape. They always wash up.

"Maybe you'll like the drinks better than the water life." Daxeel's gravelly voice thickens with amusement. "Or maybe you'll find a body in your honeywine."

At my affronted look, he just stares at me for a moment.

Before he can hide the small smile that dares to ghost over his lips, he's pushing through the strings of fae and dragging me with him. And just like that, his fleeting moment of warmth is gone.

Daxeel's face is as cold as it often is, eyes unreadable, but his hand on my wrist is a command. He guides me through the lower level to the stairs that lead all the way to the third floor.

I pass a fae who drinks from a glass chalice, but her grey drink bubbles gently, then another who sips from a crystal tumbler that is just smoke. She sips the smoke vapours, and I make a face at the otherwise empty glass. Whatever sort of magick these drinks are, I don't know, but I'm certain it's out of my allowance range.

The bottom floor must be for commoners, I think bitterly. Commoners—exactly what I am. At least those folk down there can afford to drink here at the Gloaming, because I'm certain that without Daxeel and his wealth, I wouldn't be able to afford a mere mead. But then dokkalf culture means I won't pay for a thing, that the males will take care of it.

Daxeel's gold isn't something we ever spoke about. I only really learned from Eamon about the family's wealth.

Now I know it is enough to secure a private alcove on the third level, because that is exactly where Daxeel takes me. It's only when we are slipping through the gauzy curtains embroidered with black buttery wings that he lets my wrist go—and grazes the pad of his thumb along my palm as he does.

I tilt my head back. It hits the edge of the bookshelf, but I don't so much as wince as I stare at the alcove ceiling if one can call it that. Rather than a ceiling, its rippling blue waters, so deep and dark that it reminds me of Daxeel's eyes.

The water doesn't spill, not a drop, it just ripples above this hidden bar in this cosy alcove, wall to wall.

And I can't take my eyes off her—the ashray.

Eyes wide, my lips are parted around nothing but light breaths as I just watch her swim back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes she turns and twists, her pearlescent, ghostly legs kicking out behind her so leisurely that she makes it look as easy as breathing. Suppose it is as easy as breathing is to her. Ashrays are of the water, for the water, belonging to the water.

Her hair is as ghostly pale as her white eyes and translucent skin, but what really captivates me about this water creature is what her skin does. Each time she reaches the farther end of the water ripples, where the shadows are thickest and the light is weakest—she glows.

Like the marble of the High Court, like the fruits that hang from trees, like the amethysts on the bridges, the worms and flies in the glowjars, this ashray becomes a source of light herself.

That is something I didn't know about her kind. I knew very little about ashrays, since they belong to the dark lands. But I know that—just like the dark males—if ashrays are caught in sunlight, they die. But where the dark males burn, the ashrays melt into puddles of water and that's them gone.

A strange death to have. Not so painful, but surely unfulfilling.

Then the scrape of a stool drags over the marble.

I blink once, twice, then throw my gaze to Aleana. She shimmies herself onto the leather, cushioned stool, then slams a now-empty glass on the bar-top.

The bartender is quick to make her a fresh one. It takes all that time for the traces of awe to fade from my face, to come back to the noise and company of the alcove.

On the loveseat tucked in the corner near the butterfly-wing-curtain, Eamon stretches out like a cat under the sunrays. Opposite him, Samick is hunched over a jar of live pixies, and he snacks on them one at a time.

It disturbs me enough that I look away, fast. And I find myself staring at Rune who runs his hands down his face, then drops into the armchair opposite Daxeel on a sofa.

But Rune wasn't in the alcove a moment ago, and neither was Aleana. I just brushed her little disappearance off as a washroom break, but now…

I lean in close enough to smell the spice of her wispy drink on her breath. "Where did you sneak off to?"

We're far away enough from the males on the couches and velvet chairs that I'm safe whispering to her, but I force enough of a punch to my words that she follows my implications just fine.

Her eyes widen—shame and… fear?

Fingers tense around the long-stemmed glass in her grip, and I'm certain she's holding her breath.

"I took some tonic…" Her weak voice falters and she cuts her gaze down to her fresh drink that seems to float in the glass, not actually sit in it as it should.

"With an escort?" I press just as the bartender replaces my empty tumbler for a fresh one, filled with a faint pink drink that tastes of pureed strawberries and has sugar stuck to the rim. It's the drink Daxeel ordered for me after he abandoned me at the entrance—and is a fast favourite.

Face hot, Aleana lifts her gaze to mine. Short lashes fringe her diamond eyes, the pain in them shuttering her expression. Though she blushes, something fierce and hot, the sickly pallor of her complexion fleetingly has me thinking of the ashray in the ripple pool above us, an eternal ghostly sheen to her tanned skin.

"I'm always to be with an escort," she murmurs her words, and I sense she contains the truths she wants to speak.

My brow pinches with my mouth. I aim the suspicion on her—because when it comes to me and her brother, or divulging her family's ancestry, or telling me much of anything, she's all too eager to be loose lipped.

Now, I feel the cage erect all around her truths, and only slivers of it are escaping through the bars.

Before I can push her any further, shadows stretch up the gauzy curtains at the entrance.

As I look up at the rustle of the butterfly curtain, I see that Ridge finds us easily. He raps his knuckles on the wall before he dips inside.

He's followed by the litalf female he was gambling with. Luna, the milky-skinned female who would be pretty if it weren't for the sharpened tips of her teeth. A culture in the warriors from the southern parts of Licht. They file their teeth into weapons, and crimson tattoos down the sides of their faces—one small cross for each life taken in battle. She wears little more than a dozen of those crimson marks, but I think that's not all too many.

Lilac eyes land on me from across the bar.

I lift my hand in a limp wave, and Ridge approaches with a smile. It doesn't escape my notice that he doesn't risk going for our custom of a kiss to my cheek. He just bows his head, and I know it's because of Daxeel's guarding of me in the Hall during Master Cup and how closely he watches me all the time.

"Nari," Ridge gestures to me, then to the tattooed female whose crimson curls are now loose down her back. "You remember Luna—or perhaps you have suffered a head wound in the hours since you met."

My smile is forced on her. Hard to conjure enough welcoming energy for her when all she's doing is staring over at Daxeel—whose eyes are pierced through my soul.

Still, I make the return introductions with Aleana before Ridge excuses himself to get a drink, and Luna—with a lingering look at Daxeel, then a once-over spared on me—follows.

My nostrils flare with the deep inhale I draw in.

Before I even turn back to my drink, I catch Eamon pushing from the loveseat and finding himself at the bar. Right next to Ridge.

I smile something small for only a moment before I lean back into Aleana.

Her dazed eyes lift to meet me, as though she was expecting the second coming of my questions—and she looks so utterly exhausted already in her hunched, narrow shoulders and the lazy droop of her lashes.

"You like him, don't you?"

Her mouth flattens into a thin line. A speckle of dimples appears on her chin with the gesture. "I don't know Ridge enough to speak on my opinion of him."

Something pulses between us.

Gazes locked, our faces turn severe—studious. And we're back on the tower again, sizing each other up.

I draw back to the spine of my stool. I lean against it and steal my drink from the bar. Before I bring the sugared rim to my lips, I mutter, "And I was told evasion was a litalf thing—perhaps beneath your kind."

"I was told," Aleana starts and sets her empty glass down, but can't bring herself to meet my gaze, "that you were too self-focused to concern yourself with anyone else."

The harshness of my swallow is not for anything other than the words I fight back. The urge to kick the legs of her stool stiffens my legs, curls my toes in my boots—and instead, I force a tight smile.

"I suppose you only like nosy females when it's yourself who pries and no one else."

Aleana's eyes flash on me. "Maybe this is why you have no female friends."

My eyes narrow into slits. "I could say the same about you."

With that, I slip off my stool and shove my empty glass away. It topples over the edge of the bar and lands on a stack of dish cloths.

Aleana's drooped gaze follows me as I push back from the bar and, with a sniff, flip my hair over my shoulder. I make to leave, to storm off somewhere, maybe to Eamon who's back on the couch with Ridge now, or to Daxeel who…

Who—

White hot panic jolts through me.

Whatever anger Aleana stirred in me is amplified the moment I land my gaze on him—and Luna. That crimson-haired warrior who has her forearms braced on the edge of the couch, and her face much too close to Daxeel as she mouths words that are silent to me. Her smile is too seductive, her lashes too low over her consuming black eyes, and the way she watches me—I hate her, and if I can't shove Aleana, then I'll shove this bitch.

A hiss crawls up my throat.

I throw myself forward a step before I'm stomping over to the couches, hands fisted at my sides.

Daxeel's gaze turns on me, but my snarl is reserved for Luna. Her smile is small, amused, as she watches me advance. Slowly, she draws back from the edge of the sofa, and as she rises up to her full height and her smile is aimed at me like a sword, I feel the jolt of panic in my chest.

Still, my steps don't falter.

But I don't get close, not before Daxeel shoves off the sofa and intercepts me. His arm hooks around my middle and he lifts me clean off the floor.

In only three steps, he's dragged me over to the bar—and he drops me there.

"Always stepping to warriors you won't survive," he spits, exasperated, and his hand hasn't left my middle—his fingertips linger at the curve of my waist, a tender touch he seems too tired to fight.

I see the gleam in his eyes, the one I recognize from all those small smiles he used to let slip. The same sort of almost smile he tried to hide from me in the lobby downstairs.

The very smile that tells me he didn't overhear any tensions between Aleana and I—and so, I am unafraid.

And I even start to let myself wonder if my fight with father was the start of Daxeel's thawing. What it might mean to him that I finally stood my ground against my father, that I did not deny our relations in front of my family and the garrison eavesdroppers and onlookers—that I let him claim me so publicly.

I wonder just how much that fight has changed things.

Rune smacks his hand down on the bar, jerking me out of my thoughts, snapping me out of this locked gaze with Daxeel I only just now realize I was stuck in.

"Aleana wants to go home," he says and, as I hear the words, I look over at the stool. But she's not there, and with a quick glance around, I find her leaning against the wall by the butterfly curtain.

She has no glower saved for me. No trace of our spat on her weary, slack face. At first glance, one might think she's sleeping, slumped against the wall.

"Samick's staying." With a glance at me, Rune adds, "Eamon, too."

I nod, then I flatten my hand against Daxeel's chest.

His gaze snaps down to me.

"Will you walk me to Comlar?" I can't brace the walk alone. Not in the dead of the Quiet—it's much too dangerous, and Taroh is still out there, somewhere. I don't fancy stumbling into him, drunk.

For a beat, Daxeel considers me. A loose strand of hair falls into his eye, brushing over the thick length of his lashes. "No."

My heart drops to my bottom.

Slowly, my hand slips down his chest as I loosen a breath. "Oh."

Rune doesn't give us a moment of privacy. He just draws his hand back from the bar, then—using a stretched ribbon—fingers his golden hair into a lazy bun.

Stealing my focus, Daxeel's grip on my waist tightens. He tilts his head and the blue light of the ripple water above dances over the inky lines lashing up the side of neck. "You will stay with me this Quiet."

Rune pushes back from the bar. I don't watch as he goes to prepare Aleana for our leave, I keep my gaze locked up at Daxeel.

"Yes," is all I say.

Still on my side, his hand firms and it brings a smile to my lips.

Then he snaps the moment like a twig as he lifts his gaze over my head. With his free hand, he reaches out for the quill that the bartender offers him and signs his name on a smooth piece of parchment. The tab.

Slipping his hand back around to the small of my back, he steps away from the bar, and takes me with him.

Rune and Aleana lead the way, and I'm grateful that the latter is as rocky as a boat in a storm, because then she can't hint at our disagreement, and then Daxeel won't turn on me.

I have my schemes to work on.

I have a bond to forge.

On the way out, Eamon winks his goodbye at me—a wink given from the loveseat in the corner, the one he's sat on beside Ridge. I don't intrude with a kiss farewell, I let him have his time without someone to babysit, to coddle.

Before I dip through the curtains with Daxeel, I look over my shoulder at Samick. He plays against Luna at darts, and his farewell is an icy, lingering look before he pitches a black metal dart into the target—a live pixie.

Samick spears its little heart in one effortless throw.

Guess he isn't snacking on them anymore, but I'm not certain which is a worse fate for those poor little critters.

With a twisted grimace, I lean into Daxeel and leave the Gloaming.

After a quarter-hour of bridges and canals and narrow lanes and wider roads, we have cut through the centre of the town, and made it up the sloped streets to the nicer homes. These ones don't sag and wilt, they have no vines criss-crossing overhead, and no kelpies left tethered to posts on the road.

This is the affluent part of Kithe, it doesn't take a trickster to figure that out.

The homes up here remind me somewhat of the rowhouses in Royal City—but they aren't attached, they aren't so closely pushed together, and they don't all match in shape and size and colour.

These are terraced homes, and the one that we're headed towards is—I think—the prettiest on the street. Whatever material it's crafted from, I don't know, but it looks like crushed stardust and midnight packed into a seven-levelled home with a lush front garden of gleaming blue leaves and bushes.

I don't get long to admire it, though. Not before Rune carries Aleana up the porch steps, and Daxeel guides me through the creaky metal gate after them.

I note the plague on the gate, the cursive gold-painted words, ‘HEMLOCK HOUSE'. So it's that sort of street, rich enough for the homes to have names.

Ahead, Rune carries Aleana through the door.

Aleana's strength was exhausted some streets back and Rune picked her up into his arms. Her sleep is so deep that she might seem dead if it weren't for the constant song of her snores.

They disappear into the darkness beyond the lacquered blue door.

Before I can step over the threshold, Daxeel's hand abandons the small of my back, and he's snatching my wrist. He drags me inside, my boots scuffing to keep up.

On its own, the door gently shuts—and locks.

I throw it a bewildered look before I'm being led up the staircase tucked against the wall. The darkness in here is whole; complete. I see nothing at all, not now that the door is closed. I only feel the steps I almost trip over and the firm grip on my wrist.

Daxeel's command is soft in the darkness swallowing me whole, "Stop."

I do.

I think we've reached the landing when he snatches me up against him and throws me over his shoulder. Impatient, or I'm making too much noise in the quiet home tackling the stairs in the dark.

Either way, I dangle, limp, as his bootsteps thump on carpet, and I know we're climbing more steps.

He takes me to the fourth floor. And I have the striking thought, one that stiffens me and steals my breath in my throat.

Comlar…

I'm not in Comlar. I'm alone with Daxeel for the first time since I arrived, and not within the confines of Eamon's bargain. In Kithe, Daxeel can kill me.

Panic hits my chest like a canon.

A strangled sound is all I manage as he carries me down a dim corridor, then pushes down a door handle—and he's taking me into a blue room.

His eyes, his eyes, his eyes.

The glowjars illuminate the bedroom and I gaze at the ocean hues of the painted walls.

Then my view is stolen and a squeal catches in my throat.

Daxeel flips me off his shoulder.

I grunt as I land on a thick, plush bed. The softness of the mattress sends me up with a light bounce, and before my back can settle down on the rich blue furs, Daxeel has already yanked his sweater over his head and kicked off his boots.

I don't get more than a heartbeat to right myself before he's moving over me. His knee presses into the mattress, dipping it as he grabs the skirt of my dress. One hard yank, and I'm tugged down towards him, my legs spreading over his thighs.

No patience in the way he pulls the dress over my head and tosses it away. Before it even lands on the floorboards, he has one hand shoving against my middle to pin me in place, the other reaching down between my spread legs—and with his blue eyes burning through the darkness, piercing into my stunned gaze, he yanks my lingerie to the side.

It"s a rough gesture, enough to force a wince through me, but it doesn't bring so much as a bite of pain. It just tenses me, and I'm rigid beneath him—pinned by his smouldering gaze, the primal movements of his muscles beneath his skin.

Daxeel spares no time on foreplay. He doesn't finger or tongue me to climax before taking pleasure in me. He doesn't have to, I'm ready for him, slick against the head of his cock that he pushes against me.

And I don't utter a single word under his fierce stare. Almost as though I fear any word I speak might shatter this urge in him, might steal him back to the reality of what he means to do.

Forge the bond.

So my lips part around nothing but a strangled gasp as he kneels between my spread legs and pushes the head of his cock to the slickness of my heat.

One hand flattened on my middle where my dress is rumpled, he holds me down, but it's the silent ferocity of his gaze that keeps me rigid and traps a breath in my chest.

It's all I can do to just stare up at him.

The silence of it, his dominance, his power.

I don't dare move.

No warning, he slams himself deep inside of me. And the ferocity of it is instant, the cut of his nails on my torso, the stretching of my walls as he fills me too much, too fast.

My gasp hitches into a cry as my back arches off the mattress. On instinct, my hand slaps down to his, as if to tear his grip from my middle, but I just clutch onto his wrist, my eyes shut against the sudden intrusion.

That thrust in itself was a punishment, I know it.

I don't get a chance to acclimate. Daxeel spares me no moments to get used to the full sensation, one that borders on an ache, before his nails dig deeper into my torso, enough to draw droplets of blood.

A primal sound crawls up his throat, something desperate and savage—a sound that keeps me still beneath him as he slips back out to the tip, then slams inside of me again.

I grunt at the hard impact—

But my lashes flutter as I stare up at the arched ceiling.

I hear it.

Daxeel comes with a sudden surge of tension that ripples through his body. A feral groan draws out of him, his fingers digging into the flesh of my tummy, and I feel it, I feel the tremors of his cock against my walls, the pulsations that come with a spread of warmth deep inside of me.

Then his hold on my middle relaxes. Those sharp nails of his slip out of my skin, and the touch of his fingertips turns… tender.

But there is no shame to be found when I flick my gaze to his and see that he's already watching me, his eyes burning like blue flames through the darkness.

"I thought of nothing else and no one else for all the years you slighted me," his husky voice is wrought with the climax that ribbons out of him. "Forgive that I'm a little eager, but I promise you, I'm nowhere near finished." His cock twitches against my walls, a shudder running up his chest. He breathes out the threat with a whisper of exhaustion, "I won't be kind."

Then he's falling over me—drapes himself over me like a shield of darkness. I almost think he's to kiss me, to love me, as he brings his soft mouth to the curve of my neck. But his mouth finds my shoulder instead and—

He bites, hard.

His teeth tear into my flesh, and the spill of warm blood is fast to follow.

A hollow cry rips through me; a throaty growl rumbles his chest against mine. And he's thrusting into me again.

The bite is savage.

It's a punishment.

But it's one I welcome.

Hooking my legs around his waist, I keep him as trapped inside of me as he keeps me pinned beneath him.

His pace is punishing.

Each thrust is so forceful that I should be fucked up the mattress to the bedhead, but his hand grips my throat for each aching slam of his cock into me.

I find the pleasure in it. Those wispy ribbons of thrills between the aches. I grab onto them with as much desperation as my hands grabbing onto his sides. His skin tears under my fingernails, but he doesn't falter.

Fuck, I need this. I need the pain of him slamming into me—his hot mouth cascading over the tear that escapes me, that rolls down my cheek.

I need to suffer this exquisite pain.

My hands slap against his back with a sudden surge of need that flames through me. The bite of my nails catch on the ribbed scars smearing his back—all he gives in answer is a hiss of pain. My throat tightens around the harsh grunts he thrusts out of me.

Weaved together, our guttural sounds are anything but sweet, they are desperate and hungry to destroy.

Grip firm on my neck, he slams into me with the same force he uses to bring me down on his cock. There's nothing sweet or tender about the way he takes me—this is primal, hateful fucking and I feel every bit of it stretching me, his fingers digging too hard into my neck, his grunts too savage.

A gravelled sound ribbons out of my throat, wrapped in a choke. My lashes flutter shut as those spears of pleasure start to piston through me.

Pushing his weight up, he lifts himself enough to have his nose brush mine. A mockery of his affections, one he used to offer so tenderly, now stained by our poison.

His words are a throaty growl, a threat, "Don't you ever close your eyes on me."

He punches his command with a brutal thrust that fills me with an ache strong enough to earn a hiss from me.

My head falls back, my lips forming around a hollow cry.

He's fast to devour it, devour me. Nothing sweet in the way he kisses me. It's consuming and bitter and hateful. His mouth crashes down on mine and he eats up my whimpers, as his thrusts grow harder, deeper, stretching me. The pain dizzies me, the pleasure tingles my bones and curls my toes.

All I can do is be his doll, I have no room to move, to adjust the angle, and I find I don't want to—I'm relishing the pain he delivers with the pleasure.

I need both.

Weneed both.

He delivers.

Fleetingly, I hope there's silencing magick in these walls, vines to feast on the cries rising through me.

All punishing hatred in him is lost as he searches for his own pleasure. Mouth pressed against mine, his grunts turns raspy, impatient, and his pace becomes erratic.

Now, he drives himself into me like I am home.

And as I shout my climax into his mouth, he eats it up like it's my fucking soul—and his own comes in a groan that shudders his body.

He doesn't lose his pace. He keeps the harsh slams into me, over and over and over until—his body twitches with a surge of tension I feel deep in my cunt.

My arms hug tight around him, like no matter how firmly I hold on, he might still slip away. I hold him through it, feeling his harsh pants against my lips, the frown of his brow against mine, every shudder that rattles him.

Then he bites my lips hard enough to earn a wince from me. "Turn over."

And that Quiet, he takes me again.