17

Daxeel drops into the cerulean velvet chair by the unlit hearth. Tris, the red-haired slave, a freckled human, whisks to his side in a heartbeat, and sets to pouring out a mug of coffee and plating some grilled pixie hearts and fried morke eggs, as black as ink blots.

He throws a blackened heart into his mouth, his weary gaze on Samick across the lounge. "What are you doing up so early?"

Snowy strands of hair fall into Samick's face. He flicks his seafoam eyes up from the parchments and charcoals scattered all around the table he's hunched over. "I have not gone to bed yet."

Through his fatigue, Daxeel picks up on the scent of a female. "Someone from the Gloaming?"

Samick rubs his charcoal-stained fingertips together as he considers his sketch. "Luna, the female Ridge brought with him."

In answer, he just hums something curt. For a moment, he studies the black smudges on the parchments. Daxeel doesn't have to guess what Samick is sketching—those beloved ateralum throwing stars of his.

New designs, probably.

Samick's trait is a rare one, and he cherishes it. The ability to manipulate the stubborn, unique black metal. It's a trait only found among a few ancient tribes of fae in the northern mountains of the Ice Court.

Other traits exist, some rare—like Rune's ability to silence prey with a single touch, or rarer still, some have the sense of fate—and others more common, like Daxeel's mild shapeshifting talents.

But Samick's fae trait is one that regards him amongst the dokkalves as a life worth saving above most others, and one that pays in bricks of gold.

For a long moment, Samick considers him. His icy gaze is as unfeeling and inexpressive as his face. Has always been that way with him. A lifelong brotherhood, and Samick never thaws.

"You bonded," he says after a moment.

Daxeel takes the mug of freshly brewed coffee. "It changes nothing."

Samick is silent as he considers him. It's not until Dax drinks the mug empty, then sets it aside and reclines in the armchair, that Samick speaks, "It will be more difficult now."

Looking up at the arched ceiling, trimmed with gold, he sighs, "It was always going to be difficult."

Another pause, then an arctic voice, "You love her again."

The smile that touches Daxeel's lips, lips that still taste of her, is bitter. "She is the most vexing, selfish female I've ever had the displeasure of knowing. Her claws live under my skin. I eat, sleep, breathe her haunting existence—and I'm certain she only exists to torment me. Yes, I love her. I have since I met her. I love her to the bottom of my heart, but I loathe her to the pits of my soul."

Samick sighs a sound so icy and small not many would pick up on it, the sound of an icicle forming on a cave wall. Disappointment edges through the room, and it's mildly surprising that the golden chandelier above Samick doesn't freeze over.

"Through the bond," Dax starts, "she'll be a second anchor. It has an undeniable advantage for the first passage."

"An advantage you have been rejecting for a month." Samick's eyes flash. "Now it's suddenly an opportunity worth having? What changed?"

Dax turns his cheek and looks at the doorway.

From the upper levels, there is movement, the hushed creak of a door, soft slippers on carpet. Aleana is getting up.

"Nothing has changed." Daxeel's tone hardens with his stony expression. "I'll do what I must when the time comes."

And that cuts it off because Aleana's uneasy, fatigued steps start down the stairs.

Daxeel dismisses the ache in his chest as not for Nari, but one for his sister. Pity for her that she's misguided in her adoration for Nari. Shame that she doesn't know of the plan.

"You should rest," he says to Samick.

"I slept some hours last week."

Dark ones need less rest than any of the fae, but Samick even less so. He's different. And for it, most dark males are ill at ease around him. Daxeel was one of them, four decades ago when they first met at the barracks. Forty years… such little time, and so much can happen, so much can change.

"The first passage is tomorrow," Daxeel says as Aleana comes in, and her bare face is striking in its ashy tone.

Apparently she hasn't even had the energy to change out of her clammy cotton nightdress, the black material still clinging to damp patches of her body.

Ignoring the now-cold, congealed morke eggs, Daxeel adds, "The more sleep you have, the better."

Samick says nothing but keeps working on the star sketches.

Aleana slumps into the sofa not a moment before Tris has abandoned the wall she stands at, and she sets to catering to his sickly sister. She prepares coffee, butters toasted bread, and sets out a row of tonics.

Aleana meets his gaze. Her smile is tight, forced, and her eyes circled in darkness, like she wears bruises. Traces of blood are dotted at the corner of her mouth, telling of a violent fit she lazily wiped away.

"Where's Rune?" she asks and keeps her tone light, but it just sounds frail.

Daxeel's eyes narrow on her.

She ignores him and downs a cloudy tonic first, the white powder mixed with tepid water. Stinks of stagnant puddles and rainwater.

Scratching charcoal over thick parchment, Samick says, "Left for Comlar already." If there is a reason why, Samick doesn't share it beyond the fleeting look he throws at Aleana.

Her shoulders slump slightly. "Oh."

Daxeel keeps his ice stare on her. He only tears it away when the front door shudders with a knock. It must be a familiar fae, because no slave has a moment to answer it before the creak of the door shudders through the house—and it opens for the visitor on its own.

A hush falls over the lounge.

Samick stiffens at the table.

Daxeel slits his gaze on the arched entrance to the lounge, lacquered cerulean and gold.

Both listen for footsteps, for a familiar heartbeat, for the recognizable sound of a voice. None comes—and so they know exactly who it is moving through the house as silent as a ghost.

Aleana is the only one who has to look to know it's Dare, and the second he steps into the room, her fatigued smile brightens just a tad more, as much as her wilted self can afford.

Dare's tall, slender frame moves with lethal precision, even when he's only pausing in the doorway and running a bloodied hand through his thick head of dark curls.

The blood on his hand, like every other smear he wears on his cheek, or down the marble tone of his arms, is dried. But there is a lot of it, and Daxeel would guess that he recently killed at least one litalf and maybe two dokkalves.

But Dare looks entirely unaffected by his particularly cruel bloodlust—or the extent of the bruising that purples his clavicle, or the healing gashes that scatter his hands. If anyone could make a battered fatigue look dangerous, it's him.

"Sorry I'm late," he drawls and there's nothing apologetic about him, not in his disinterested tone or in the wink he delivers to Aleana.

Tendrils of his dark hair are crusted with dirt, some ends dipped in dried blood. The pearly flash of his grin brightens the moonlight gleam of his skin. But it's his eyes that glitter like clumps of gold freshly carved from a cave—and they hone in on Aleana. The fatigued female slumped on the couch like a wilted flower.

"A sight for tired eyes, as always." Paying no mind to Dax or Samick, he moves for the sofa. More of a predator than most dark males Daxeel knows, Dare slinks for Aleana with silent bootsteps and a hungry gleam in his golden eyes.

He swoops down to brush a kiss over her sharp cheekbone, a protruding feature that betrays how her condition worsens, but Dare speaks nothing of it before he falls back onto the sofa.

Dare hikes up a leg and rests his forearm on his knee. "Now who," he starts with a flashed grin aimed at Aleana, "is that pretty thing out front? Don't tell me that's little Kalice all grown up."

Daxeel would roll his eyes if he had the energy. Dare knows all too well who that neighbour is, since she was around nineteen years last time he was in Kithe.

Dare just likes his females more grown than that. Fuller, wider, older. But he does love to get under Samick's skin.

At the table, Samick has hardened like an ice sculpture. The coldness radiates from his sudden shift, and it's enough to draw in Dare's glittering gold gaze.

Aleana frowns something fatigued for a moment. "Leave her be, Alasdare."

A darkness settles over Dare's ivory face, but the excitement of the challenge forever burns in his eyes. "She's got quite an ass these days."

Daxeel worries sometimes, worries how far his old friend will take his hunger for the hunt, the chase, the conquer. If he would take it far enough to cross his brothers when all else became too dull.

But then Dare just winks at Samick and slumps into the feathery cushions. He turns his golden gaze back on Aleana. "Miss me terribly?"

"I managed." She smiles small, then uncorks a phial of steamy purple tonic. "With so many light males around, most of them in love with themselves, it was as though you were never gone."

Dare's grin splits his face. The whiteness of his teeth matches the tone of his complexion, made so much starker by the pitch-black hue of his loose curls. Looks just about ready to snap a bite out of anyone who gets too close, and it's not often that hybrids have that about them, the threading of savagery from both races blended so seamlessly in their bond.

But it's the glitter of his eyes that stirs Daxeel.

Narrowing his eyes on Dare, he growls a warning, "That is my sister—save your flirtations for another. Preferably not a female who lives on this street. I don't want the nuisance of their wrath on my doorstep when you discard them."

It's happened only once, but Daxeel lords it over his head, and he's right to do so.

Before the Fae Eclipse, before Nari, when they were very young and all shared barracks, Dare messed around with a pair of sisters. Naturally, when the sisters connected the dots, there wasn't much sleep to be had in the barracks for a week or so, not with morke being thrown through the door at all hours, or kelpie skins buried under their bedsheets, and—thanks to one sister in particular—their entire room being set ablaze with the white flame.

That last one excited Dare so much that he retuned for a second chase, just to see if he could get her again. He did. Then more weeks of suffering plagued the barracks once he tossed her aside.

Decades later and Dare hasn't changed.

Slumping in the sofa, like a lazy prince would drape himself over a throne after too many drinks and not enough care, Dare watches as Tris bustles over with fresh pots of coffee.

She fixes him a serve, and as she does, he takes great care in his gilded gaze running over the laces of her beige corset, then the swell of her poufy skirt. "Am I to be abstinent in my time here?"

"Abstinent in terms of don't fuck anyone in this house," Daxeel decides, throwing a blanket of safety over the red-faced slave. "Whatever you do in brothels or at Comlar, I don't care."

Daxeel watches as he finally tears his gaze away from Tris. Behind all those flirtations and jests, he sees the exhaustion clinging to his old friend.

Daxeel says, "We expected you two phases ago."

Dare runs his pale hand over his tired face. He is a hybrid, born of light and dark blood, so he tires quicker than a fullblood dokkalf, but it's the litalf side of him that makes him such a coveted assassin, spy, and tracker.

"My mission took longer than expected," is all he offers up, then he sweeps the mug of steamy coffee into his loose grip.

Daxeel studies the bruises smearing his left hand, rips in the flesh of his knuckles, gashes down the insides of his palm, and he wonders if those injuries extend to the flesh beneath his dragon leathers.

"But I'm here now." He runs the pad of his thumb along a scratch on his eyebrow. "In time for the first passage, so get your dagger out your ass."

Samick's cold voice creeps through the room, "Some might be disappointed you made it back in one piece."

He's still bristled by the comments about Kalice. Because if anyone could get her into bed, it's Dare. And if anyone could break her heart, throw her away, and laugh at her tears, then forget she ever existed, it's Dare.

Dare only smiles at the icy blond.

But no one gets the chance to retort before Aleana hisses, "Can you males put away your egos for a single Warmth? I'm not energised enough for this."

Turning a frown on her, Daxeel studies the pinch of her lips, the furrow of her brow, the way she stirs her coffee with too much force and some spills over the edge.

Whatever has his sister in a mood, he doesn't know. But if she felt like sharing, then she would. And he's not too keen on prying, since it might be about Rune, and that is not a conversation he wants to open a door to.

So he keeps it closed and instead says, "I need the room, Aleana. Go find mother."

She throws an ugly glare at him. But she doesn't argue the order. She just snatches her coffee and a phial of tonic before she's stalking out of the lounge.

And he waits until she's out the room, far up a level of stairs, and out of earshot before he turns to Dare.

"There is something I need you to do."

Dare throws back the entire mug's fill of coffee. After a hard swallow, he sighs a breath of instant release, and flicks his gaze to Dax. Without Aleana around, the look he gives Dax is levelled and grim. "Wouldn't have anything to do with the all too familiar scent wafting from you, would it?"

Daxeel stiffens in the chair. He hasn't washed Nari's scent from his body yet—just woke up, saw she was gone, and came down here… maybe hoping to find her sharing tea with his mother, or even sitting alone at the panelled windows.

But she was gone.

His jaw tightens. "It has everything to do with Nari."

Dare arches a dark brow in question, but he asks a different question entirely, "How is your vicious halfling faring these days? Breaking any hearts of late, or is she too busy bedding litalf princes?"

Daxeel clenches his jaw, tight.

It's Samick who says, "You were gone too long, brother. Things have changed—and there is much to fill you in on."