16

Tiny threads tickle my nose. Cocooned in the thick black blanket that reminds me something of furs but plusher, I blink awake in the dim light of the bedroom.

More than the blanket, a solid weight is wrapped around me—it pins me in place. Then I feel it all; a chest carved from muscle pressed against my bare back, a solid arm draped over my middle, and the warmth of steady breaths at the crown of my head.

All of it swirls back to me in flashes.

And my lips tug into a sleepy smile.

We are bonded.

The sigh of relief I breathe is dense enough to deflate me, and I sink into the soft mattress a bit more. Good. I want to stay here all phase. All my life.

But it's the start of the Warmth, I feel that in the beads of sweat gathering on my forehead, and this is the final phase before the first passage.

I won't be in the trial. But that doesn't mean I can stay in Daxeel's bed all phase, even if I want to. Besides, maybe I'm a tad nervous for when Aleana wakes up and announces our spat to her brother.

Bonded or not, how rough he was last Quiet has warned me off pinning all my hopes on our reconciliation. More work to be done.

And I need to return to the garrison.

Father can't punish me right now. Not while my life is owned by the Sacrament. What can he do? Can't steal me away from Comlar, can't banish me until the Sacrament is done.

But when that time comes, another month from now, I hope to have Daxeel's heart entirely. I hope to have his kiss, a true one, and to have his acceptance.

He might not marry me. Might keep me as a lover instead.

I want him to wed me, but any offer of escape is an offer I'll take.

With the bond forged, he'll be fuelled by the urge to keep me close, always, for the rest of our lives. I wish that meant a guaranteed marriage, his undying love.

But our game is not over yet.

I'm not disappointed. This Warmth, I'm nothing less than pleased.

Look how far I've come in one month.

Let's see what I can do with another.

I'm nothing if not tenacious.

So I don't disturb his sleep as I slip out from beneath his solid arm and the thick blankets.

He stirs, a weak frown creasing his brow, but the drink from the Quiet keeps him under.

I slide off the bed until I'm crouched on the floor. I'm as naked as can be, but I've never been one for shame. So I rise to stand by the floor-to-ceiling window as I dart my gaze around for my clothes in the near-darkness.

The black panelled windows conceal the outside with the thickness of a grey-leafed tree. Not much light is getting in here.

The faint light that dusts in through the window from those grey leaves is mild, but enough to illuminate the waxed black floorboards and the crumpled emerald dress tucked under the edge of the bed. And, at the base of the cushioned window bench, I spot my lingerie and a single boot.

My chest tightens with a held breath as I crouch down and reach for the satin lump. The lacquered black bedframe sits low to the floor, so it's such a small gap that my knuckles scrape over the wood. But it's when my hand knocks the heel of my second boot that I wince.

I peer up at Daxeel on the layers of black furs and night-sky blankets. But he's still plummeted in the depths of sleep.

As I slip into my lingerie, then step into the dress, I fleetingly wonder if it exhausts him to let his primal self take over. How he took me last night, pure mateship, pure beast—does it drain him of his strength?

Seems it might.

Snatching up my boots, I spare Daxeel a final look before I tip-toe out of the bedroom. And, as I gently shut the door behind me, I suck in a sharp breath.

In front of my eyes, the lacquered wood transforms—it shifts from a pale canary yellow into a blue that belongs to the depths of wild waters.

I spare the changing door a frown that warps my whole face before I turn for the carpeted staircase—and make to sneak my way out of Hemlock House without being caught.

I'm not all too excited about the idea of running into another early Warmth riser, not when I stink of Daxeel and sex and drink, and I likely look like I've rolled my way through a brothel.

But I only make it to the second floor, to the top of the staircase, before I freeze on the spot. And I look down the stairs at a female I've seen before but have never spoken to. The last one I want to run into this Warmth.

I recognize her from the High Court in Licht all those years ago. She only ever spared me lingering, cold looks back then.

In the foyer is Daxeel's mother.

Her fur-lined coat is shrugged off her shoulders. A servant—a human slave—peels it from her slim, toned arms. The glowjars glisten on her skin, shimmering the dark complexion like freshly brewed coffee.

It's early in the Warmth, but whatever her errand was, she's done it and returned to the house—just in time to catch me sneaking out.

She turns her fierce eyes on me. Like I was all that time ago, I'm faintly surprised they aren't blue, like all her children's eyes. Her irises are pools of stirred tar.

And there's nothing friendly in them. Not for me.

"Melantha," the softness of how I speak her name in greeting comes with a swift curtesy. I'm obligated to that gesture, what with her status in Dorcha, that also applies to the Midlands, but also to show respect to Daxeel's mother.

She doesn't greet me back.

Her pointed chin lifts, and though she's a level below me, she somehow looks up at me down her nose. From all angles, her cheeks are hollow, her nose narrow, her lips thin. But this angle thins her face even more, and I think of a dagger, an ateralum one since her sword-straight hair is spilled ink that ends with a blunt cut at her sharp jawline.

Tucking my gaze to the stairs, I start down the steps for the foyer. The laces of my boots are spindled around my fingers, and so my feet are bare on the lush carpet, and the satin dress I wear is all wrinkled from spending some hours as a lump under a bed.

"Tris," Melantha utters the slave's name with such delicacy that if anyone was in doubt of her status, then the polished glass of her voice would be all the confirmation needed. "Narcissa will be joining me for tea."

I pause on the bottom step. My toes curl and disappear into the thick carpet, my fingers tightening around the laces.

Without another look at me, she lifts her narrow hand, and her bony knuckles tense as she gestures me to follow.

I do.

I'm suddenly aware of myself, of the blood that's dried on my shoulder from a bite her son ripped into my flesh, and of his stink all over me, the wrinkles of my dress. I shadow her around the foyer, through a large sitting room that makes me think of being stuffed into a green phial, then to the paned doors.

Melantha waits for another servant—this one a bit on the frumpy side and I wonder how much they are rationed here—to open the glass doors for us. They lead to a small courtyard with blackwood beams above, wispy grey vines wrapped around them, and small orbs of fireflies and their soft orange light dangling just a reach above.

Light comes from nowhere else in the enclosed courtyard, not from the stones or the thick greenery enveloping us—only from the orbs and the vines. Casts a soft, pleasant dusk over the courtyard, and I think this would be my favourite spot for an early coffee when I'm not quite ready to face the brightness of day.

Melantha cuts to the right—and it's like she's cutting through my thoughts before I can fully settle on them.

I follow her to the edge of the patio.

She drapes herself over the many cushions of what we call in my land a daybed, but since there's no day in the Midlands, I don't quite know what it's called here. Her leather wrapped leg hikes, her boot resting on the foot of the table, and her arms are spread out over the cushions—a wolf sprawled out on the grass beneath sunrays on a pleasant evening.

I wonder that she might have been a warrior once. The muscle bulk is gone, her tone something like a dancer's, that solid and lean and slim physique I've chased for years, but never quite achieved. The humanness of my blood keeps some fat around my middle, keeps my hips too wide, my breasts too full and not nearly perky enough.

And I feel all of that oddness, the humanness, as I step around the small table and sit on the metal chair. It's hard on the ass, but I ignore the bite of pain, cross my ankles, rest my hands on my lap, and keep my spine straight.

More than this being Daxeel's mother running me over so bluntly with her gaze, like she can read all my past behaviours and actions and current intentions on every fibre of my dress, but that she's a viscountess, the wife of a general, and should be respected as such.

Like her gaze, this female herself is a bludgeon. I find that the moment she speaks, and I feel like I've been knocked over the head—"You don't deserve him."

The suddenness of her words, the plain manner in which she simply states them, strikes me silent.

My breath is choppy as I draw it in, but I say nothing. And the two servants come out into the patio, bringing a flourish of silver trays and golden painted teacups and porcelain plates stacked neatly with crustless sandwiches.

My silence holds in their company, as they pour teas, and it holds once they take their places against the wall.

Despite the hunger coiling in my belly, I don't reach for a meat and goat's cheese sandwich. Not even as my mouth starts to water.

"He told me all about you." So different to how Aleana confessed Daxeel's letters about me, Melantha rolls the words off her tongue with unbridled judgement.

I sense she judged me back then, too. This isn't a new thing, this isn't stemming from my slight. This came before. One of the reasons I avoided her like a cold around the court.

I have no mother, but I hear some can be this way, protective of their brood. Maybe too much so.

I suffer it in silence.

Her black eyes are pits of nothingness that she hooks me with. "A natural flair for luring in males… in your words and in your dances and in your smiles."

I whisper because it's all I can manage, "Daxeel pursued me—"

"Do not play with me as you would him." I flinch at the sheer strength of her interruption. "I know your kind of female, your tricks and your arts. You pursued him from the moment you saw him. You only feigned modesty."

The heat burns at my cheeks.

Teas have gone ignored. Probably cold now. My mouth doesn't water anymore, and that hungry coil in my belly has turned into a pit of snakes, disturbed.

Mutely, I shake my head.

But before I can defend myself, she adds, "My suspicion is that you realized when he interrupted your fiancé, he revealed himself as a protector, and that was an advantage you sought. Daxeel has always been a protector," and her voice softens for that one sentence before hardening again. "You have seen his scars."

Swallowing back a lump of unspoken words, I nod. They flash in my mind like a painting seared into the insides of my eyelids. His back, littered in raised white lines, jagged and violent. Whipping scars.

"Those were meant for me." Her smile is small—and utterly wicked. "My husband loathes that he cannot control his evate or earn her love."

I look up my lashes at her at the mention of evate. I didn't know that was the bond between Daxeel's parents—but less did I know how ruthless their bond was. I wonder if she means for me to take that piece of truth, the ugly side of evate, and store it away in my heart.

She goes on, "His temper takes over. And Daxeel stands between me and the whip. He has done so since he was too young, and so he has many scars. But it was you," and her voice lowers into a near-growl, "who left scars not of flesh, but of heart and soul."

Melantha makes no move for tea or sandwiches, and it's an unspoken, glaring truth between us that she only invited me out here to give me a piece of her mind.

My hands are wringing together on my lap so roughly that I feel the pain of pulled knuckles and the bite of nails digging in too hard.

Keeping her relaxed posture, Melantha warns, "I promise you, Narcissa, that if you dare hurt my son again, I will make sure no one is around to stand between you and my whip."

My eyes widen a fraction. All the blood rushes out of my face and down to my chest.

A fae promise.

I'm collecting too many of those.

"I love him." Still, my fingers twist on my lap. "I mean him no ill, no harm, no slight."

She's quiet for a moment, but her stare feels like a rod beating my face. Then, she asks, "What is your meaning with him?"

"His love, his forgiveness, a true second chance with him…" In a whisper, I add, "Marriage."

"Protection," she hisses it like it's a correction. "From your father. From your fiancé. From the future you face without my son."

Boots discarded on the ground beside my bare feet, I watch them glitter under the dim firefly lights, how the leather flickers orange and dusty brown on repeat.

I don't respond to Melantha's accusation—because she's right, yes, but also she doesn't want me to. She doesn't want me to tell her that it's a half truth she speaks, because I do love Daxeel, and I want my future with him, the future I might have had if I had done things differently that night.

I doubt standing up to his mother right now would earn me any favours with Daxeel, especially after my fight with Aleana he's yet to learn anything about.

Am I wallowing or does it all seem so unfair?

"You won him over in body." Melantha runs her gaze over me, and I say nothing because the stink of her son is anywhere and everywhere she looks. "But did you really win?"

I flick my gaze up at the dark twinkle in her eyes, the cruel curl of her thin mouth, the hunger she must feel to watch me like a beast to be ripped apart.

"Are you safe now, Narcissa?" she asks softly, but there's nothing gentle about her hushed tone, nor in the way she watches me with her lively eyes.

A sudden lump in my throat almost chokes me. My heart has leapt up there—and there it is to stay for a while.

With a sigh, I reach down to pick up my boots. "I find there is no truth I can speak to you that you want to hear—and so you paint me the way you do." I slip my foot into one, then fix up the lace. "You love your son, you want to protect him from the wicked halfling who broke his heart, and I understand that," I add with a bitter smile aimed at her stony face. I shove my foot into the other boot. "But if you'll excuse me… I just don't want to talk to you anymore."

Her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline.

I push up from the metal chair. My bottom feels deflated. I ache to rub it back to its shape from whatever flattened mess it is now. Instead, I kick my boot back in a firm, jolted curtesy, more military focused than for nobles, but I'm tired of her already.

She watches as I stalk off, and even once I'm through the glass paned doors, it's like she's still watching me, like she can see through the walls. Ridiculous of course, but I don't shake that feeling, I can't shake that feeling that I'm being watched closely as I stalk through the foyer, then out the front door.

Behind me, the door shuts on its own.

I frown at it for only a moment before I mutter unkind words about Melantha under my breath and crouch over to tighten my laces.

The string of "fuck" "bitch" "judgemental" "uppity" "your son isn't even that great, he's actually a bit of an arse" becomes a murmured melody as I straighten up—and catch a pair of lovely hazel eyes on me.

Those eyes glitter amber with what I suspect to be amusement, and my face heats up, fast.

It's a just a human.

But it's a young, female human standing in a white cloak in the front-garden over. Kalice, I guess. Aleana has mentioned her once or twice—her human changeling neighbour.

And she just heard some real nasty stuff I said about her friend's family.

I do all that I can think to do. Smile and let the blush steal my face. I don't doubt that my smile looks as forced as it feels. Still, I manage to slap one on for the human girl.

The slender human only meets my stare for a beat before she reaches her frail hands to the back of her bone-white cloak, then draws the hood over her mousy hair.

Just like that, her face is hidden in shadows.

Hmm.

Something of a bitch.

I roll my tongue against the side of my cheek as I push through the metal gate. Its groan is louder than the Warmth's hush draped over the town.

I take the streets I remember from the Gloaming back to the centre of the town. It might be a longer route than I need take to Comlar, but it's the one I know—and I don't want to take any wandering chances around here, not when I'm on my own and the streets are as dead as a human in the care of an unseelie.

I walk a cracked stone bridge over a familiar stream.

I don't hear the water disturb beyond the gentle current. So when the soft lure of a loving hum snares over me, I flinch with a gasp and throw my wild stare at the intruder.

From the calm ripples of the pale waters, a head has emerged. The glistening turquoise hue of his complexion is so closely matched to the waters washing over him that it takes me a moment to spot him—but it's the white of his eyes that hooks me, textured like paint strokes.

A blue selkie.

He blinks his blank, yet focused eyes at me. "Why don't you come in for a swim, pretty halfling?"

Halfway over the bridge, the glare I aim his way is darkened by my rising moodiness. I need coffee and a cool breeze and a wash, not a chat with a blue selkie.

The sneer sticks to my face like the satin of my dress clings to my skin. "So you can fuck me or drown me?"

He shadows me along the bridge, his head and neck above water, but the rest of his glistening water-blue body submerged, and the camouflage means I can't see the rest of him.

"Both," he answers with a faint smile. No malice to be found in the way he watches me, eyes so wide and almost brimming with admiration. It's easy to see how humans fall for the blue selkies. They do adore their chosen ones.

It's the fate of the chosen one that isn't to my interest.

He means to make his water bride. Fuck me and drown me, simultaneously, then keep my spirit for the rest of his century-long life. Only when he dies would he take my spirit's hand and steal me away to the afterlife with him—and join with me fully there.

Suppose it's their version of mates or evate. A twisted kind.

"Come to me, my halfling bride," he starts to sing as I near the end of the bridge, and the haunting melody of his voice snares around me like invisible ribbons and ropes, "to the waters where many have died. In my arms, you will be loved forever; all I need is your eternal surrender—"

"Oh, go drown," I snap at him, and just like that, I cut through his call as though my voice is a sword.

I'm one step away from the edge of the bridge when I hear his faint response, his softly spoken words, "I do… every phase."

When I look over my shoulder at him, face twisted and my boot slamming down on the street—he's gone.

I decide now, this is not going to be a great phase. Already teeming with unwanted encounters, and this should be a lesson learned to not walk the darkness alone.

I doubt that blue selkie would have pulled tricks like that on dark females. But oh let's pick on the light halfling, she's an easy target.

My mood has soured so much that my scowl keeps for too long, and so I will need extra skin firming lotion when I get back to my bedchamber in the garrison.

The longer I take to get to Comlar, the deeper into the Warmth time edges, and I just can't take it much longer.

Since it's almost an hour walk and mostly uphill, I need a cool change in the air. Especially now that tangled strands of hair are stuck to my temples and the cotton of my dress is darker in some spots with sweat patches.

But a half-hour into the walk, I'm still in town. On the outskirts now, but it's the path uphill that's the gruelling part—I just need to find it.

I don't exactly know my way directly from the house to the uphill path, so I waste time wandering familiar streets, but so many of them look the same, and finally I turn onto a street I recognize by its broken black lantern, the one snapped in two and looks like it was kicked by a drunken dark fae—and I know where I am now.

The relief ribbons out of me with a sigh, one weighed down by the heat swelling around me, the humidity suffocating me.

I turn for the long lane. It's the final one before the path begins, but that doesn't ease how stiff my shoulders get as I push through the thick shadows lashing around me, thicker than the heat of the Warmth.

Sparse light affords pockets of visibility as I stalk down the lane, and I feel it goes on forever.

But forever is not my worry, not when the clicking of heeled boots start to echo around me. The sound bounces off the walls and, in darkness, it's hard to pinpoint the source exactly.

For a while, I think it's my boots clocking on the stone ground.

But then I can separate the two sounds—my boots and another pair, not far behind me, and much more expensive than the hollow clacks of my heels.

Before I can even look over my shoulder, that familiar drawl snakes through the shadows of the lane, "Each time I see you, the stink of him is stronger."

I let my eyes shut on the icy sensation of sheer dread trickling down me. A deep inhale through the nostrils, and my chest inflates, then I brave the dread and turn to see Taroh standing in a tender wisp of light that disturbs the darkness like a mere swirl of dust.

Hands stuffed into the pockets of his breeches, he has his head tilted back and he looks down his nose at me. The disdain shows in the wrinkle of his pursed lips, but the brewing rage is in the bulge of his pockets—his hands curled into fists.

Maybe it's the exhaustion, the arguments I've been getting myself into of late, or simply that I haven't yet had coffee, but whatever it is, I just sigh something weary at him.

"We are not yet married. I owe you nothing." There is no bite to the lull of my voice. I merely state truths. "You cling to an old slight that is between you and him, but I pay the price at your hand. Why, Taroh?" I lift my hands, palms upturned, then let them slap back down to my sides. "Why must this be your vendetta against me? Can't it be that I think you are unworthy of me? That you would make a poor husband despite your wealth?"

Lashes lower over fierce emerald eyes, eyes that gleam like their own light source in the dark. Slowly, a smile snakes over his pale lips. "Your slights bother me, yes. But they are insignificant, because you are insignificant. You are a mere bride to be, a womb to be used—" I flinch at that, the burn of sick in my throat. "—and you come in pretty packaging, but that does not make your voice important. You, Nari, are no threat to me or my intentions with you."

He takes a step forward. The ivory leather of his boot flattens on a dark patch of the ground. He tips his weight onto it, prepared to pounce, prepared to run at me—but he is motionless.

I'm stiff as a statue. Every muscle ready to whip me around and spear me through the lane, up the hill, into the courtyard of Comlar, which I hope, I pray is busy enough to offer me protection.

But that's all dependant on the bold assumption I can outrun him for that long. I might be strong, a dancer, and have a stamina he doesn't possess, but I am running on some hours sleep, too much drink, drenched in my own sweat from the humidity, and tired out by Daxeel. Sprinting all that way uphill—I am not sure this is the right phase for it.

"Then why must you hate me so?" I switch my focus to a pleading whine in my voice and hope that does something, anything to get him away from me. "If I matter so little, and my low opinion of you is so utterly insignificant, then why—why," I grit out the word through clenched teeth, "must you torment me?"

"You are my betrothed. Another claims you for all to smell. I am in a battle with him." He finally pushes his weight onto that boot, and he's slinked out of the light. Still, he's a shadow, and I see him well enough that I'm not yet running. "You are stuck in the middle, in a sense. But in another… you are all too willing to flaunt his scent, his claim, and slight me in doing so."

"I love him, Taroh." I shake my head with a sigh. "This is not about you, it has never been about you. I love a dark one, and I want to be with him. That is the core truth of it all, buried beneath these perceptions of slights and injustices, I simply love another."

Another step and his shadow moves that bit closer.

I take a step back on instinct.

"How many others do you love?" The guttural sound of a snarl has crept into his voice. "Eamon, Daxeel—and now, Rune, is it? How they have all taken to you," he drawls the words in a near-song, and it's warning enough that I'm staggering back from his advancing, slow steps. "I wonder if that's what you are good for. Did they figure it out before I did, just how lovely your mouth is when it's full?"

It doesn't take a scribe to assess my odds here.

I don't stand a fucking chance. No knife in my boot, no weapons at hand, no dark fae to come to the sounds of my cries. This lane is simply a walled lane, and there are no homes down here—no ears to hear me.

And Taroh…

Slinking into a dusting of light, he looks more furious than I've ever seen him, something feral in his wild, gleaming eyes. No twist to his face, no scowl or snarl, just a fierce, unwavering stare locked into prey.

All fae come from beasts. All fae were once animals.

I see that in him now, the awakening of something primal.

I turn—and I run.

The smack of my heels on the ground bounces off the stone walls all around me. But Taroh's punishing pace is louder, faster, and it rushes up behind me.

Frizzed locks of hair whip my cheeks as I barrel through the shadows of the lane, my boots clomping, hard, on the ground, my harsh breaths a string of tangled gasps and cries.

But no matter how much strength I force into this run—

I hear him gaining on me.

He isn't as exhausted, he isn't feeling the aftereffects of the drink and the sex, and he hasn't endured a too-long walk in this early heat like I have. He has enjoyed his coffees and breakfast, a wash, fresh clothes, and is well-rested.

He has the advantage that's pushing his pace that bit faster than mine. Not much faster, because I am quick, but it's enough that I can almost feel his harsh panting on the nape of my clammy neck.

Then the breath is knocked clean out of me.

Taroh slams into my back with enough force to throw me off my feet—and he falls with me.

I have just a moment to cross my arms in front of my face before I crack down on the ground. Not a second later, Taroh slams down beside me.

Panic flurries in my chest.

Get up, get up, get up.

Now is my chance—get up and run, he'll take too long to recover, it's the head start I need.

But as I blink against the shadows, I see splotches of white lights and a ribbon of crimson. I frown against it all, then—rolling onto my side—reach my hand up to my face. My fingertips touch to a wet patch on my face, one that streams from my hairline to my eye. A slight trail of blood.

Must have knocked my head on landing.

Still, I brace myself against the hum of aches sprouting on my knees, down my left arm, and thumping in my head. Flattening my hands on the stone, I push myself up onto staggering feet—and with each strain, my moan is long and gravelly.

I get a mere heartbeat to right myself, blink in the darkness, and suck in a sharp breath before the pain erupts in my mouth. The whir of a hand through the air—and Taroh backhands me hard enough that I'm thrown against the wall.

The hot rush of blood fills my mouth.

I blink against the daze, watching Taroh move through the shadows, eyes wild.

His nostrils flare as he closes the distance between us, but the sheer ugliness of his smile is what shudders me.

Then he rushes for me—

I cringe, hands scrambling through the air as though they can't decide whether to become shields or to claw out at him.

Blood spits from between my split lips as I shriek, "Taroh!"

"Narcissa," he heaves my name with sheer rage before he strikes again. The palm of his hand slams against my cheekbone—and it feels like it might shatter.

My legs buckle and I hit the harsh road. My hands slap down on stone, the force of the impact enough to ache my elbows.

"Will your dark one weep when he sees how I have claimed you." His boots smack back and forth as he paces my crumpled body. "Will he tend to your wounds or fuck his scent into you?"

Mutely, I stare down at the droplets of blood between my splayed hands, running hot and red from the cut of my lips, the crack of my cheekbone, the ache of my head. But I don't quite see it.

"Say you survive—survive all the ones who will go against you in the Sacrament," he pants the words, a storm of adrenaline powering through him, all the way into his fists tensed at his sides, "survive the light and the dark ones who will cut you down for your slights… then maybe, if you are so fortunate, I will wed you still."

He pauses in his pacing, his boot coming to press into my back. With a shove, he forces me down on my belly.

My cheek is smushed against the cold stone of the ground, wet with blood and tears, and all I manage is a whimpered, "Please…"

"Let us be creative, Narcissa… How should I punish you in our marriage? Perhaps I could carve my name into your flesh, bite my mark onto your—"

Oomph!

It's all I hear, the grunt of air slammed out of a body before a smack, then a crack that cringes me against the ground.

Taroh's boot is gone from my back.

Face twisted, I turn my watery eyes around the lane. Shadows creep into the pockets of light, and through the glaze of tears, I focus on the edge of one dusty spot of light.

A tall, broad-shouldered silhouette stands over a crumpled one.

I blink once, twice, then utter a stifled sob of relief.

Yellowish hair, tugged into a rather messy bun, no shirt to cover his golden chest, but he wears wrinkled combat trousers and leather boots, and the sparse light dances off the silver blades he has strapped to his legs and biceps.

Rune stands over Taroh.

A feral instinct alights his canary eyes into something brighter than the sun rising over a field of wild daffodils. It should be beautiful, and maybe it is, but all I see is the ferocity of this dark male who shines like a light god.

Another heavy breath ribbons through me, and I slump.

I don't bat an eye as Rune kicks out—and the toe of his boot connects so hard to Taroh's stomach that he's sent flipping through the air. At least a few ribs are cracked from the impact, I don't doubt it. But I couldn't give a fuck about Taroh and his injuries.

So I don't bother so much as sparing him a glance as I push up onto my knees. My watery eyes are for Rune and him only as he pulls away from the opposite wall.

His gleaming eyes are lemon shavings that shine in the dark. His gaze cuts to me and holds for a beat before he steps forward.

He isn't the male to offer his hand. Dark ones feel such little compassion or even sympathy, but he shows enough with that step.

The little I know of Rune, I sense about him that he would have stopped Taroh even if I wasn't with Daxeel, if I was a mere a stranger on the street.

I think the same of Daxeel, too.

Samick, I have no idea. I get the feeling he would just kill anyone and everyone on the road because they are in his way.

Accepting his step as an ease, I wipe at my cheeks. "I'm either the luckiest or the unluckiest in all the Midlands," I heave out the words with a watery sigh. "Going to Comlar by any chance?"

His mouth flattens. He looks me over, lingering on the wounds my face wears, then nods once. "It's fortunate for you that I decided to go ahead of the others."

Rune just watches as I struggle to my feet. He makes no move to leave me behind as I swat again at my cheeks, sniff back a snivel, and—for some vain reason I can't understand right now—smooth out the skirt of my dress.

With a thick swallow, I fix my wavering expression on him and nod, firm. "And you'll walk me?"

"Yes," is all he says before he pushes into a stride, then starts up the path.

I fall into step beside him. Trickles of anxiety still ache my finger bones. I flex them as if to shake them out.

I cast a fleeting look over my shoulder at Taroh. And since he hasn't moved an inch, moaned or uttered an insult, I suspect he was knocked out cold on landing.

We leave him behind in the lane.

We pass the edge of the town, where the steed barns are lined against the trees, and we make for the hill ahead.

It's at the birth of the path that Rune silently offers me a washed rag.

I take it without a word of thanks, feeling the soft material beneath the warmth of its dampness. A rag he must keep on him to wipe off blood after a phase on the battle blocks.

I dab at my lip.

"You make a habit of this," Rune decides, his golden hair tugged up into a bun. It bobs slightly with his steps.

Holding the cloth to my swollen mouth, my words come out muffled, "Being attacked by Taroh?"

"Making enemies," he says. "Getting yourself into trouble. You seem to have a knack for it."

I mull on it for a moment.

Assuming he knows nothing about my spat with Aleana last Quiet, or the trouble with Melantha this Warmth, he's still right. He's observed enough of me now, heard enough, to know I've made enemies all over the place, with my betrothed, with my beloved, with my sister, and my own father.

More than that, at the root of these troubles… is me. Not that it's all my fault, but that my own decisions bring me to the fights. I am a catalyst for them—it's not that they simply happen to me.

Even Pandora…

My heart sinks as the image flashes in my mind, my hand holding a quill, signing my name on parchment—and if I had never done this, if I had denied Pandora, then I wouldn't be in half this trouble.

Or even with Taroh, how I reject him, all the while knowing I can't take him in a fight, that my only hope is to either outrun him or have a sneaky blade in my boot he wouldn't know anything about.

"Maybe," I think aloud, but with my lips swelling more with each passing second, it's getting harder to speak, "I'm not submissive enough, given I can't hold my own in a fight."

He turns a frown on me, a question, maybe a gleam of curiosity.

"Both our kinds," I explain, "value violence. Whether it's for war or dominance. The weaker one should submit, right?" I throw a look up at him, at the now thoughtful frown on his face as he considers me. "Except I so rarely want to submit. I defend myself with words and actions… and that gets me in trouble, because I can't fight my way out."

He's only quiet for a moment. "You can't fight at all?"

I shake my head, loose strands of chestnut waves smacking my cheek. This mop atop my head is too tangled, I need to oil it a while before I hit the washroom. And I have a bunch of wounds to treat. I've got a tiring phase ahead of me.

"Father wanted a lady." That's the only answer I give. I don't add that I never wanted to, that if father had made me fight, I would've screamed and cried and fled.

"Your father failed you." Rune speaks with conviction, with absolute faith in his opinion, like it's fact and nothing less. "Now you must depend on decency from others to spare you from those sorts of attacks. Not everyone will save you."

I nod because I know this.

Light or dark, it's irrelevant. There are bad males of both, then the ones who will stand by or ignore, and then the ones who will fight. In all races, it's the individual that makes the difference.

"Aleana can't fight," I say as we pass the boulders.

Gameboards are still scattered all over the dried and dead grass, but no fae around. A lot of them will be resting now that the Sacrament is next phase, and the others will be hungover.

Ones like Rune make the effort to get some more practice in on the battle blocks. That's what he dressed for, at least, the leathers and the daggers strapped to his waist, the holsters on his thighs, and even the sagging bun to keep his hair back.

His cat eyes are glued ahead—but his lips purse and it gives him away. "Aleana is sickly," he says.

I lift the damp cloth to my temple and pat away the streaks of blood. "Is that why you don't make a move?"

His eyes flash and swerve to me. But he doesn't break the slowed pace uphill, slowed for me to keep up.

I hold steady under his stare. "It's obvious to anyone paying attention."

A heartbeat passes, then another, before he asks, voice like a steel blade, "And what exactly is obvious?"

"You like her." I wipe at a dried crimson path on my eyebrow. "Maybe you love her, I don't know. But you don't do anything about it, even though she looks at you the same."

He grunts a hmph sound, scratchy and a bit growly.

We pass my favourite tree, where I sit with Eamon sometimes. The Gilded Glade. We're closer to the garrison now, and I wonder how long we've been walking, how long those pauses have been between our shared thoughts.

We walk a while longer in silence, so long that I don't think he'll speak again before he leaves me in the courtyard. But he does, and it startles me enough to lift my brows and part my aching lips—

"I had evate once."

I stare at the darkness ahead.

Rune's voice lowers into something… sad, "She was a whore. I met her at a brothel long ago, when I was a training warrior living in the barracks." His throat bobs. "I saw her in the lineup and experienced evate. I left. I am a warrior." I hear the compressed scoff in his tense words. "I am a chosen soldier by a high warlord. I have fought for my life since my low birth. And I just turned—and ran."

I aim my slack look at his sharp profile. All the questions swarming my mind come out in a whooshed breath, but they don't form.

"It was the first time in my life I was ever truly afraid. I panicked," he adds with a grim smile, bitter and strained. "I returned for her the following Quiets. But she was gone."

Now I hear it. It echoes in my mind.

‘I had evate once.'

"What happened to her?" My voice is hushed against the stagnant air, but he hears me.

"She figured out what it was—what she was to me. Not always a welcome fate to our females. Many fear it, for good reason," he adds and turns a dark look on me. "So she fled, knowing I would return to take her. I hunted her for almost a week. All the way to the Wastelands."

The breath shudders out of me just as a twist of nausea tugs in my chest.

She must've tried to get to the light lands where Rune wouldn't find her, because we would have hidden her, and Rune wouldn't survive against the sun to reach her. And the laws would have prevented him from trying.

But to cross between our two lands means to go through the Midlands or the Wastelands.

Beasts live in the Wastelands. Ferals. Unevolved type of fae, cannibals and beasts. No language, no homes, no minds. Pure beasts.

They say we came from them, that they are the first fae—but I shudder to think of those things being the animals within our males, especially the dark ones.

Then there's the wastelanders.

I wouldn't know the difference between them and the ferals if I was ever unlucky enough to meet either. But the wastelanders are different. Males born dokkalf, but something happens to them as they grow through their youth. Their rage is stronger, their violence fiercer, bloodlust insatiable. And before they mature, their tantrums can destroy entire villages. There's no stopping it. So the ones who aren't killed by their parents or neighbours are the ones abandoned in the Wastelands where the ferals roam. Then they themselves become feral.

I think it's a sad fate. A sickness maybe.

And I can't fathom the fear that Rune's evate must have felt out there in that barren land of darkness and beasts.

"I'm sorry for her," I confess a truth, because I know the fate he's implying his evate faced. The beasts got her.

"The bond wasn't forged," he says, but there's no reassurance in his distant voice, because he adds, "yet she was still evate. And I feel the loss of her always. That is how I know she was the one, not a passing experience. She was the other piece of my soul—and now there is a hole in my chest, it always aches. I felt it the moment I stepped into the Wastelands. I was too late."

I have no words for him, nothing more than sheer pity for his pain, for his loss. His mistakes cost him dearly, and if she were just an evate experience with no true mateship beyond that, then he wouldn't feel her loss so gravely. He wouldn't feel it in his soul.

She was his one—and she is dead.

What can I say to that?

"Aleana," he starts, and his expression hardens with his tone, "deserves evate from a good male, deserves a male who is hers wholly—not one who yearns for a deceased female and will unite with her in the afterlife."

If my heart was aching before, it's being shredded to pieces now. Like a jar of pixies unleashed in my chest, I feel tiny nails and teeth ripping through me.

A tear slips down my cheek at the tragedy of it all, for Rune, his evate, Aleana, and a me that could have been if I'd given in to the temptation to chase after Daxeel through dark lands.

We fall into silence for the rest of the walk.

I don't push him on Aleana. I walk quietly beside this male who I know is good.

And when we part ways in the courtyard, he dips his head in farewell, and I give a sharp curtsey.

I don't go to my bedchamber like I should, at least to take care of the bruise budding along my cheekbone or the cut on my lip or the bite from Daxeel on my shoulder.

Instead, I find myself veering down the corridors that will lead me to the dance hall.

The dancers have replaced me already. With my commitment to the Sacrament, I can't perform with them now. But this phase, they show me kindness.

I wander into the hall and, hesitantly, sneak a spot on the farthest end of the line of their practice.

Only some glances are spared my way, but none of them ask me what I'm doing or tell me to leave. They understand—the emptiness of the mind when the music starts and the body moves. A slate wiped clean.

And so I dance.