18

TEN YEARS EARLIER

Father is down in the court, and with his watchful and ever racist eyes, I can only sneak my moments with Daxeel out of sight.

No one ever follows me up onto the tower, other than Eamon. And since Eamon wanders the edge of the roof with his favourite casual lover, Fern, some distance away, and he couldn't care less about me right now, I give Daxeel all my attention.

Carrying honeywine bottles—one in each hand—I wander onto the tower of the High Court. Maybe my pace is a little hesitant, a tad reluctant.

It took an hour to sneak off, since father paraded me around the nobles for stiff welcomes. And since we arrived an hour later than I planned, I've kept Daxeel waiting too long.

Last time I saw him, he hunted me down in the woods and went into the human lands with me. His mood wasn't warm, and now with my tardiness, I doubt he'll be all over me this night.

Still, he waits for me.

Against the short wall, he's sat in the shade, hidden from the moonlight. One leg hiked up, his forearm rests on his knee, and he lazily fingers a pinkie-sized knife.

He doesn't look at me, but his senses are too sharp for him not to know I'm here, I'm approaching, that I've come to him.

"I brought an apology," I say and lift the honeywines. I keep my wandering pace over to him.

Head bowed, inky strands of hair fall over his shadowy face, and he looks up at me from beneath his lashes. Pools of molten blue, his eyes are as unforgiving as a blade in a throat.

Under the death of his stare, I kick my golden sandals off and move to sit beside his outstretched leg.

"I didn't want to waste more time looking for tavarak, so I just got these." I hand him one of the bottles, and after a beat, realize he's not going to take it.

With a huff, I set it aside and—after a few yanks—uncork my own. I'm some swigs in before I roll my eyes and my words come out in something of a whine, "A carriage rolled over on the road. We had to wait for the servants to push it back up."

Kohl borders the deep ocean hue of his eyes. They watch me closely, consider me for a long moment.

"Then father insisted I shadow him for too long," I add. "All I wanted was to come up here, to you."

Daxeel doesn't soften exactly, but he reaches out for the second bottle. He presses his thumb to the underside of the cork and it pops off from the pressure. If I needed any demonstration of his strength, that would be it.

"We did not finish our conversation," he tells me, voice empty of the adoration I yearn for him to shower me with.

His words bring a frown to my brow. "What conversation?"

He drinks from the bottle, but I know he doesn't like the sweetness of the honeywine. He's not one for sugar. This is his offered branch, the bridge he builds in the gap between us.

"This," he says with a jerk of his chin, but his eyes don't leave mine. "I asked if you could leave it" —and he did, when he walked me back to my home after the human realm— "and you said you would miss it. You didn't give a true answer."

I stretch out my legs alongside him. Flexing my toes against the cool kiss of the air, I think on it a moment.

I only know this land. Licht is home and light is all I know. Even our nights have the moon and the stars. The dark lands don't have any of that. But more, they have foreign trees that won't wave their leaves at me in greeting. Gnomes are gone, and so I'm sure they have frightful creatures in their place, ones much more dangerous than any I can imagine.

Even their own females leave to be here with our kind. What sort of place must Dorcha be for their own folk to leave it in the masses?

On that thought, my answer comes, and I hope he doesn't attack this evasion, "Everyone chases the light. Even your females."

The look he runs me over with is darker than the far corner of the night sky. So he does recognize the evasion in my answer.

His annoyance is a smoulder.

‘You vex me.'

Cutting my stare to the hem of my golden dress, I add with a smile, "Eamon says your females are from nymphs, and that's why they come here. Is that true?"

Daxeel drinks again, and the bottle is near empty with how easily he pours it down his throat. "You think my land is harsh, and that is why our females leave," he decides, and his firm tone punches that it is not a question.

But I nod in answer all the same.

The tension in his clenched jaw loosens somewhat, even the shadows in his dimples soften. "They are not from nymphs," he tells me. "It's a common joke in Dorcha."

At my frown, a silent question, his full lips twitch at the corner, an almost smirk. A temptation to thaw completely.

"Our females are able to take multiple husbands. It's their bodies, it calls out to mate, to reproduce," he says. "Some might take several husbands for this reason, the urge to reproduce, and to be offered different males for better chances. That is why it is accommodated within our laws and culture." His smirk is firm before he adds, "And so the joke began with that."

My frown remains intact. "Are they insatiable?"

He shakes his head slightly, and looks out to the roofs of the other towers.

I trace his gaze to Eamon and Fern, three roofs down. They don't walk the tower length anymore, but now share a kiss under the moonlight.

Daxeel sighs and brings his harsh stare back to me. "Dokkalves are a difficult kind to reproduce. Most don't make it to birth, and many die at infancy. Females are hardest to create. And we lose so many of them in youth, or to your males with promises of the sun," he says and his lip curls at the reminder of light males. "That's the purpose of those rare marriages, to maintain our population." His brow pinches before he adds, seemingly as an afterthought, "It's the only reason it's legal to wed human females."

Not entirely dissimilar to our lands—wedding humans to validate heirs and offspring. But we don't have group marriages. It's a concept that I'm still not quite grasping.

I do wonder of the humans.

"What's it like for them? The humans? Can they take more than one husband?"

Offence curls his upper lip. "Human wives, litalves, halflings, even hybrids—they are not afforded the same rights as our females. If one was to be a wife of a dark fae male, absolute fidelity is expected." Something stirs in his eyes, darkening them. "The crime of infidelity is… fatal."

I narrow my eyes on his hard stare. "But their husbands?"

"Always faithful. Hence marriage is not often sought out among our kind—the males at least," he adds with a crack in his hard mask, a small smirk. "We live long lives, a thousand years for some, and with one female? Many might think that tedious."

I suck my teeth once, a sharp and annoyed gesture. "But if you love the female?"

Why I entertain my jealousies is a mystery to me. A future with Daxeel isn't in my fate. Yet I torment myself all the same.

He finishes off the bottle. Mine is only halfway done. "Love is eternal—so yes, marriage would occur."

For a beat, I just nod and look over at the tower roofs again. Eamon and Fern are nowhere in sight now, so I suspect they are rolling around the roof together, hidden by the short walls lining it.

Bringing the bottle to my lips, I chug back the rest of the wine.

Daxeel watches my every swallow wave down my throat.

I need to down it all before I scrape up the nerve. And when the bottle is empty and I place it beside Daxeel's, it's a fight to bring myself to look at him.

All I can manage is a flickering look from beneath my lashes as I whisper the words that flush my cheeks, "And would you marry? Say, marry a halfling?"

If his eyes are windows into the deepest, darkest blues of the ocean, then I am throwing over a line and fishing.

"Why wouldn't I?" He watches me closely. "I have no bother about little hybrid offspring."

My look is a frown tugging down my mouth. "I don't fancy birthing children."

I know I have to. It's my purpose, but I loathe the idea of pregnancy, the birth, of younglings running around—a responsibility outside of myself. I don't want any of it.

That smirk returns, a ghost over his lips, and he studies me closely. "It's more than that," he says, firm. "You don't want to share the love."

I bite the inside of my cheek.

Still watching me, reading me, learning me, he adds, "You were raised the youngest, but not as a warrior like your sister. You were the darling—you still are."

The growing smile gives me away.

He moves for me, slowly. "You want to be the only one." I'm guided onto my back as he leans over me. "The darling."

He mocks me, but all I can answer with is a small laugh.

I don't argue it. I'm not ashamed.

Especially since Daxeel's smile spreads into a lazy grin as he brings his lips to mine.

"Could you live without this, darling?" he breathes the words over my mouth. "Live in a land where the light is the path, the fruit, the flowers and the trees, the grass and the stone—could you find your sun in the dark?"

He doesn't propose, he doesn't speak of marriage, but my heart flips all the same. Flutters ignite in my writhing belly. The sensation is enough to curl my toes.

"Yes," I whisper my answer and his kiss comes hard and hungry.

I live in a fantasy with him, because he still doesn't offer me anything real. No marriage, no protection, no escape.

Soon, he will leave—and I will weep every night for him.

But not tonight.

Tonight, I part my lips for his, run the sole of my foot over his leg and—

Smack!

Frowning, I throw a scowl over at the other side of the tower.

Daxeel exhales a weary sigh through his nostrils, then pushes away from me. He leans against the short wall again, his dark look on his old friend, Dare.

I push up to sit.

The other male—a hybrid of light and dark—has landed on our tower roof from the one over. I didn't know he was over there, especially not with the halfling female he has cradled in his arms.

Gently, he sets her down. And it clicks in my mind.

Dare stole away this flushed, smiling halfling to a private tower roof, had his fun with her, and now brings her back to the safety of this tower—the one with the stairs winding down to the court.

I swerve a narrowed glare to Daxeel. "Did you know they were up here this whole time?"

I'd only a moment ago been on my back for him. How far would he have taken it with Dare so close by?

Daxeel's eyes flash with onyx specks as he arches an eyebrow at me, then flicks his attention back to Dare, but Dare only has eyes for the halfling he has clearly just bedded, what with her rumpled dress, messy hair, and his tousled dark locks, the smears of lip paint on his neck, and the poorly fastened belt of his leather trousers.

Tucking a red curl behind her ear, the halfling asks, "Do you want to come feed fruits to the humans?"

My eyes roll to the back of my head.

I know this halfling from around. She's in some lessons of mine, and we'll stand together at parties on occasion, but her humanity is strong, and it bores me terribly.

Griselda, her name is, and right now her face is as aflame as her crimson hair. She blinks those glassy eyes up at Dare who stands two heads taller than her at least.

Pinkish smears of her lip-paint glitter on his smiling lips and along his marble-toned neck, then disappear down the collar of his leathers pulled tight over his slender muscles. Slender for a dark fae, normal for a hybrid, strong for a litalf.

Silent, Daxeel and I both watch as Dare lifts his pale hand to her freckled neck.

Smiling still, he runs a finger along her throat. His golden eyes follow the movement. "Why would I do that?"

"The fruit helps their pain," she says with a wider smile, and I think her naivety is not cut out for this realm. "Aids them through the torture of their fate."

I lean in closer to Daxeel and whisper into his ear, "Now that's the sort of halfling who would do better in the human realm."

With a curt hum, he nods and mutters a word Griselda can't hear from across the tower roof, "Weakling."

Dare—though he can hear us as clear as a breeze rustling through trees—doesn't acknowledge us at all. His hand drops from her neck and reaches for her wrist instead.

Her smile is as dazed as her eyes.

She watches him, enchanted.

Strands of his dark hair fall into his face as his smile turns dark. He lifts her fingers to his mouth. Over her knuckles, he ghosts a kiss that never quite takes, and he holds her gaze with his golden eyes.

I'menchanted. I watch with such intensity, breath pinned to my chest, that I'm ready to hang on any word he might utter.

"You misunderstand me," Dare says, and the words are spoken so softly, and the way he beholds her is so loving, and the way he brushes those never-kisses over her fingers is so tender. "I had the chase. I conquered."

Realization starts to tug at her, it frowns her brow and downturns her mouth.

Dare grins something breathtaking against her fingertips. "You gave me my prize. So why would I entertain you any longer? What more do you have offer me?"

My heart plummets for her.

And hers does, too. I see it in the hurt flashing through her eyes. Then, with a sharp intake of breath, she yanks her hand out of his tender hold.

His grin fades to a satisfied smile and I have a horrible thought, that this—this part here, with the rejection and the hurt—is a fragment of his fun, that the pleasure doesn't end with his orgasm, it ends with this.

I throw a look at Daxeel, but he just shakes his head, a weary ‘do not get involved' that I read too easily.

I roll my tongue over the inside of my cheek.

Then—

"Oh!" I slap my hands to my mouth.

Daxeel stiffens beside me and throws out his arm to shove against my middle, like a barrier between me and the other side of the tower.

Griselda slaps Dare. She strikes out at him, and it happens so fast that I'm stunned at her speed and her sheer foolery.

But then… No, the slap didn't connect.

Before her palm could touch his glistening ivory cheek, before the slap could turn his complexion purple and red and angry, he caught her wrist.

All that humour and those lying looks of love and adoration, it's all vanished from Dare now. Those eyes, once welcoming pools of gold, are now daggers, hard and cold like gilt steel.

He looks through her.

His whisper is a promise of spilled blood to come, "Try that again, and I will bite your lovely fingers clean off your hand." His grip on her wrist tightens enough that Griselda winces, then—with a fresh smile—he releases her.

She staggers back, her rumpled skirt catching between her legs. "Beast," she spits at him, then runs for the archway.

I watch her go.

We all do.

And once she's disappeared down the staircase, Dare turns to us. His grin is wide for me and comes with a wink, but now I'm not so sure I can read Dare at all. All those smiles and grins and winks and even the times he's shared nectarquills with me or just sat with Daxeel and me in lessons—I thought I was reading his friendliness towards me well enough.

But now, I pity any female who knows him.

Bedder.

Worse than a bedder, he likes the hurt of the abandonment too. His litalf side, surely. The thrill of torment. But the dokkalf side makes him so much more ruthless. A dangerous combination.

Those golden eyes are pools again, and they land on the empty bottles of wine. With a sigh, he takes a step back and says, "I'll steal us some more."

He moves for the archway—and I've suddenly forgotten all that earlier compassion for Griselda.

"Get fruit, too!" I shout, because in just some steps, he's already at the entrance to the stairs. "And cake!"

Dare throws a look over his shoulder at me, one with a raised eyebrow and a smile dancing on his lips. "Anything else, darling?"

My face turns hot instantly.

Daxeel snorts a near-silent laugh beside me.

‘Darling.'

So Dare very much heard our little talk about me, me being the baby of my family—and how I want that still. I do not want to know which part of his bedding of Griselda he was at when he started to eavesdrop.

"Yes," I mutter, then sniff as though I can sniff away my shame. I meet his glittering eyes dead on. "And valerian."

"I'll see what I can do." Dare winks, then he's gone to loot from the court.

Daxeel and I don't get another moment alone, don't get to finish what that kiss started, because before Dare returns with wine and tavarak and valerian stalk (and a slice of milk cake for me), Eamon and Fern abandon their roof for this one, and that's how the rest of my night is spent.

I spend my night drinking, smoking and eating on a tower with a dark male I love, two hybrids, and an unseelie.

I find I don't mind it so much.

Maybe I like a little.

Feels very much like… I have more friends… or even, silly me, family.