20

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All Quiet, the weight of his arm stayed draped over my middle. But there was no cocoon as we slept.

Distance was wedged between us, wide enough for another person to slip into, and it felt so much like a hole shredding bigger and deeper into an abyss.

That abyss echoes in my chest as I watch him tie up the laces of his boots. His trousers and sweater already on. Fresh memories flicker in my mind at the sight of him, at the stark difference between then and now.

A shield draped over me, his mouth comes down on mine. Softly. Slowly. Deeply. He kisses me and I melt. Then more along my face and cheekbones and even on my eyelids.

Sat on the edge of a rickety wooden chair, he gets ready to leave before the Quiet has even shifted into the Warmth.

How I love the way he worships me. Slow kisses, chaste and lingering. I gasp into his mouth, legs tensing over his hips.

He moves in and out of me gently, he glides with whispered moans he utters against my lips.

I'm losing him too early. Daxeel needs to head back to Kithe, change and gather what he needs before returning to Comlar, where the contenders will gather in the courtyard.

And I hate that any of this is happening at all.

As loving as he is, he is dark fae, he is male, and he can't fight his nature. His domination of me is tender, but I recognize it all the same. It's in the way he threads his fingers through mine and pins my hands down on the bed. It's in the sweep of his mouth over my cheek, an almost kiss, but how he keeps his head above mine, always above me.

"Don't go." My voice keeps quiet as I push up from the pillow. The furs slip from my chest and reveal the see-through bodice of my chemise.

Daxeel's natural kohled eyes lift to the outline of my breasts. He yanks the laces tight, then straightens up in the chair. "I stayed as long as I could."

He pushes my arms above my head, steals them both in one hand—and holds them down. His free hand wanders my body, and it can't settle on one thing. His hand wanders the length of my side, feeling the curve of my hip, the dip of my waist, then up to my face where his touch is tender and loving, but then to my neck where he keeps a gentle hold, but holds me down all the same.

Daxeel shoves up from the creaky chair, then rolls out a stiffness from his shoulder. My bed is small, especially for a dark male, so I doubt it's a comfortable sleep for him in my bedchamber.

He moans.

Not groans or grunts or snarls. It's a soft sound at my ear.

Do you know what it's like to have one of them, a dark male, moan for you?

It's everything and more, it's bliss and godly. I am godly beneath him and he worships me so gently, so softly. Don't spook her. That's what it takes me back to.

Without another word, he makes to leave.

He's halfway across the bedchamber before I kick and shimmy my way out of the furs. "Wait," I snap at him.

He stills.

Like each time I've given that command, he obeys it, as though he's swept back to the statues in the garden of the High Court. But his eyes smoulder with obvious annoyance as they follow me across the room.

He watches me rip open the rusty jewellery box on the desk in dire need of a polish. Delicately, I pluck out the silver beaded bracelet I prize above most of my treasures. And while it's worthless, it means something to me.

So, with a nervous smile, I turn to him.

"I wear this on my person for every dance," I tell him and close the distance between us. "Every time. I don't know what it means to me, if it's a lucky charm or just a bauble. Like the ones you left for me." I stretch out the bracelet and his eyes cut over it for a beat. "But I need you to have it on you for the Sacrament. If it's luck… I need you to have it."

He makes no move for it. He just watches me.

Slowly, I lower myself to my knees in front of him. Then a pulse of lust hits me, hard. I blink through it, a flicker of surprise on my face as I process the desire raging inside of me—but not mine. His. And I think again of the bond.

I say nothing about it.

Steadying my hands, I reach for his holster. There, I coil the bracelet around and around, until it's secure on the strap, then I fasten the clasp.

Still, he doesn't move, not a muscle, not an inch.

Pushing up from the floor, I grab the trunk from the foot of the bed and drag it over to him.

Silent, he only watches me.

And I step onto the solid wood trunk—it brings me eye-level to his chin, close enough that I can reach his mouth. So I do that, I rest my hands on his strong shoulders, lean into him, and bring my lips to his.

This might be our last moment because he might die in this passage. No matter how skilled a fighter, how brutal a warrior, how dark his blood, Daxeel is mortal as all fae are.

I'm not ashamed to swallow my pride with him. I will toss my pride aside and declare it my enemy—for him.

It's no surprise he doesn't kiss me back. It doesn't stop me.

The flutter of his lashes tickles my skin. His eyes shut, his body tenses, but he still doesn't kiss me back.

"I know you hate me," I say against his lips. "But be careful. Be safe. Survive. Even if it's to come back and hate me more, just come back alive."

Then—

He ghosts his lips over mine. The whisper of a kiss. It firms as his hands come up to my jawline, and he holds me in place. His kiss is hard on mine now. And I know—with this poisoned chaste kiss—what he's telling me, that it will never be the way I want it to be.

Daxeel comes, long and smooth and tender. He moans in my ear. A kiss he grazes there then words he strains out with a breathy sound, "You will never have this with me."

He shatters it with that. And my face twists with a cry as I finish with him, and he laughs against my ear. I climax and weep.

The shudders haven't even stopped assaulting my legs as he pulls out of me. He wipes himself on my inner thigh and says, "Daffodil is a fitting name for you. Disarming in appearance, pretty, but a little-known poison as vicious as any other."

He steals the kiss away from me.

With a step back, the warmth is gone.

I fix a dazed look on him.

The tension in his jaw flexes before he grabs the bracelet on his holster.

The blood rushes out of my face in a split moment of panic. I don't get the chance to shout ‘no!' before he yanks it clean off the strap.

All I see are little beads flying through the air.

I choke on a strangled sound.

The beads hit the floorboards. It's all I hear, like the blow of a horn in my ear, but it's little precious beads skittering and scattering.

Slack-faced, I turn my wet eyes up at him, at the shadowy look he gives me, the gleam of hunger in his eyes—hunger to destroy me, hurt me.

"Did you think it would that easy, Nari?" He tilts his head to the side, as though genuine confusion has him in its grip, like he just can't imagine a world where he would gift me forgiveness. "That, if you seduced me into you, it would change how I feel?" His voice drops to a gravelly growl as he takes a menacing step closer to me. "I made my promises."

Stepping off the trunk, I swat at my damp nose with the back of my hand. "Fuck you."

Cobalt eyes flash in the dark.

"You shouldn't have done that." My voice wobbles into a whine. "That hurt."

In two steps, he's on me. His hand snatches out and steals my neck in his grip—then lifts me until my feet dangle above the floor and my face is turning hot.

"I've made it very clear," he brings his snarl to my face, "that I intend to hurt you, Nari. But nothing I can do to you will ever mend the shame you committed against me. This war will end in blood."

Abrupt, he releases my neck.

I drop with a thud, my feet slapping to the floor.

I swat out at him with a hiss. "Careful, Daxeel. You forget how weak you think I am. By the time you're done, I might be broken beyond repair."

Shoving by him, I take a few steps before I can't control it a second longer, and I drop to my knees. I start hunting for the beads. I need to find all twelve of them.

For a moment, he stands there behind me—and just watches.

I don't look up at him, I have my hunting sights on silver beads.

Then he leaves without another word.

And I silently weep until I find all the beads.

Those same grandstands from the opening ceremony have been erected around the courtyard again. Tall, the blackwood structures reach all the way up past the height of my favoured tower.

With every noble, family member, spectator, iilra, scribe and contender crammed into the courtyard, it's suffocating down here. Last time it was this busy, I stayed tucked against a wall with Eamon as I waited for the dance to start.

Now, I have no such reprieve from this chaos. I'm stuck in it, my shoulders bumping into the hard muscular arms of the warrior fae waiting around for the beginning of the first passage, and I have to make myself smaller as I squeeze between their predatory bodies.

That's the unease in the air, the one that prickles my flesh, curls my upper lip in a silent snarl—predatory.

On the hunt for a familiar face, any familiar face, I push and slip and sneak my way through the throngs of fae. Each one of them sheathed in holstered daggers and throwing stars, in leathers and light chainlink armour draped over broad shoulders, in thin plates of metal shielding their chests, with bows and arrows and axes, I'm finding it harder to fill my lungs with each passing moment.

The panic in my eyes must be obvious to anyone who cares to spare me a glance, but none do as I search for Eamon, or Aleana, or even father—I'll take anyone at this point just to feel a little safer out here.

My cobalt boots are soft on the stone ground. Plain breeches shield my legs, and the blue sweater hugs me tight like a comfort blanket. But with the vulnerability I'm plagued with in the thrum of the courtyard, I feel I might as well be naked, standing in a field of vicious faerie hounds.

I'm about to manoeuvre my way between the backs of two dark males when the one with spidery chainlinks draped over his shoulders takes a step back.

I suck in a sharp breath, muscles bolting to my bones.

He doesn't look at me, he only moved to reach down for his weapons belt and tuck away a gold flaked dagger—one I recognize, though it's been ten years since I last saw it.

Still, out here in the pit of predators, my reaction is instinctual, it's my primal self rising, and that silent snarl isn't so silent anymore.

At the sound of it, his dark eyebrow arches and, slowly, the dark male turns his somewhat amused look on me.

My eyes widen some as I lift my gaze up and up to meet his glittering gilded stare. Porcelain skin gleams with the light of the glowworms, a cool tone to his complexion, such a striking difference to his dark waves.

He doesn't turn to me fully, but he watches me, a mouse cornered.

Hidden behind loose strands of chestnut hair, my snarled lip trembles a little, but he sees it. "Alasdare," I hiss the name with as much tension as what keeps me pinned in place.

In answer, a grin that can't be considered anything less than preying sweeps across his handsome face, the sharp points of his rear teeth revealed like the promise of a bloody end for me.

My hiss quietens.

His golden eyes brighten in the dim, dusty light. And he winks—that one simple gesture that silences me entirely. "Narcissa," he practically purrs my name, "Don't you look good enough to just… bite?"

I stumble a step back—but he follows with a fluid move that I hardly see at all. His golden eyes have me snared.

There's a hunger in the gleam, one that chills my spine all the way down to my tailbone. We might have shared moments in the Fae Eclipse, and maybe I thought him something of a friend, but the way he's watching me now is without any of the kindness he once showed me.

Those eyes have sharpened into gold blades, like the razored metal shards that edge the whip coiled around his forearm. I don't get the sense he's amiable with me now, no matter his grin. And his regard of me is not the only difference I notice in Dare.

He wears scars now.

And I mean wears them. Proudly. Those permanent ones from ateralum that are ridged: Jagged, ugly cuts down the side of his neck, one line after another, and I know fae well enough to see the precision in it, to know that those weren't a frenzied attack, they were intentional.

Fleetingly, I think of Luna and her tattoos, those crimson strikes down the side of her face. Then it clicks for me, that these scars are how many lives he has taken. I know it in my gut. Those are his trophies. More than I can count, they disappear down the collar of his leather vest.

The grin vanishes from his face in a blink.

I have only a moment to suck in a sharp breath before he's closed the distance between us—and I wince at the sudden searing sensation at the dip of my neck.

Staggering back, my wild eyes are on him. I reach my hand up to my collarbone. My fingertips touch blood. Hot and wet, but only a small smear.

He cut me. A mere scratch, but still.

Looking down on me, Dare tilts his head. In the darkness, shadows are cast down his pale face, over his coal-toned hair, and he brings his full mouth to my brow.

"Boo," he snaps in a whisper. It's enough to jolt me with a gasp.

I turn and shove through the crowd to the far wall.

He doesn't give chase, though I imagine his instincts would itch to hunt me down. But all I hear is a faint laugh before the sound melts in with the hum of the courtyard.

I escape in one piece.

I make it to the wall I stood at with Eamon a month ago.

And the tight ball of tension in my chest suddenly loosens. Like metal pieces peeling away and fading into nothing but dust and ash.

Eamon knows me, knows my thoughts before I do apparently. Because already, he's at the wall, reclined against it, waiting for me.

I rush at him.

His smile is small as I throw myself into his arms. The hug he wraps around me is loose and lazy, but it soothes the nervous tingles nipping at me all over.

"Rumour is," he drops his head to speak his rough, jagged voice into my hair, "you forged the bond."

I slump against his hard, lean chest. My answer is a grunt and a lazy nod. I'm certain he feels my expression tighten against his silky blouse, undone at the strings.

His chest muffles my words, "I was foolish enough to think it might be easier than this. That once we forged the bond, it would run smoother. But I think he might hate me now more than ever."

If he wants to say I told you so, he fights the urge smoothly. "All it means now is that he can't kill you without dying himself."

Eamon's hands slip from my back. He steps away from the embrace.

His attempt at a smile eases me, but I note the strain of it around his dark-circled eyes, and I sense he hasn't gotten very much sleep.

For a moment, his gaze snaps to my cheekbone, then drops to my mouth. The bruises that Taroh left are dimmed now, mere red marks thanks to the garrison's supply of balms in the washroom.

But Eamon still studies them, and I think he must have been told of the attack, and so he scrutinises the echoes of my wounds as if to ensure they don't suddenly turn purple and bleed.

Satisfied, he says, "It seems he cares enough to spare you from this." He casts a look over my head to the contenders mobbing the courtyard. "He kept the bargain—I wasn't so sure he would honour it."

My mouth flattens into a grim line.

I never doubted Daxeel in our bargain. I trusted, maybe too easily, that he wouldn't break it.

Bargains are different between our kinds. Dokkalves give their word. Their word is their bond, their dignity, their reputation, their honour. Like a kiss, a bargain is sacred, and they will almost always fulfil it.

But they do have a choice.

They can break it if they choose, if they decide it outweighs their better interests. Shame will come with such a deflection of responsibility, but it's possible.

Litalves have no such ability. The light ones cannot abandon bargains any better than lie. Fully bound to our bargains, as the soul is bound to the body, and truths to tongues.

Dark fae hold bargains like a sacred promise shared through their gods. But for us, it's shared through our life source.

I suppose it's something I should have considered.

"He spared me from this," I say, but I wonder if I'm speaking more to myself than to Eamon. "He forged the bond. I have faith in him."

I must have faith. Without it, I have only desolation.

Eamon steals my attention back as he clasps his cool fingers around my wrist. For a beat, we share a silent look, and I don't know what we're trying to tell each other with it.

Then he turns and steers me down the wall to the grandstands.

At the bottom of the steps leading all the way up to the top row of seats, a black-hooded iilra lingers with a scroll and inked quill, and the way she lurks reminds me too much of a spirit trapped in some haunted home.

Without fail, the iilra bring unease to me. It's in the sudden tension that bolts my shoulders, the slow and stiff turn of my steps, and the focused way my eyes lock onto her as though just waiting for her to strike at me with all sorts of dark magick.

Even hidden behind a hood and a cloak, iilra maintain that effect on me. It's a sense, something about them that's just not quite right. Like the cloaks, the shadowy edges, the glimmer of the black like it's weaved from dark souls writhing in place.

The iilra turns as we approach, sensing us, sensing me—and she seems to float over the stone ground.

"Contender Narcissa Elmfield," her wispy, strained voice comes from the darkness of the hood. "Second to Pandora Elmfield, a disqualified contestant."

Eamon keeps a solid stance in front of me, but I know that's for my own sense of safety, not because he'll have to intervene between us.

"Yes," I manage a whisper from around Eamon's arm I hide behind. "I'm Narcissa Elmfield. But I'm not to compete. I have a bargain—with Daxeel of the House of Taraan. Did he not come to you?"

"Yes," she says and the relief ribbons through me. The iilra hands me the quill and then outstretches the parchment scroll. "Now you must sign."

I frown at the parchment, then notice a blank line that I assume is for my signature, because below it is Daxeel's.

I'm quick to scribble my name on the scratchy paper.

Satisfied, the iilra snatches the quill back—and then she's gone.

Just a formality, but one that apparently caught attention.

Gaze fixed over my head, Eamon looks across the courtyard, wearing a frown on his mouth.

Leaning up on the toes of my boots, I look between the solid figures of the crowded fae to the coffee-brown eyes aimed at me.

Father.

The sight of him is a punch to the gut. An instant rush of tears barrels through me, and it takes everything in me not to crumble.

The confusion is visible in the small creases etched onto his face. He wears them around his pinched mouth, at the tip of his nose, and the pinch of his brow. His stare flickers over my plain breeches, the snug fit of my sweater, my loose waves, before it lands on my face.

Father is easy to read. He wonders why I'm not dressed for the Sacrament.

Beside him, my sister scrutinises me but with less of a frown.

Pandora is quicker to realize my abandonment of the duties I owe the Sacrament.

She sighs something heavy enough to deflate her chest and shoulders—but not the large swell of her belly that only seems to get bigger each time I see it. Something about the time here in the Midlands is speeding that pregnancy up.

I could turn my back on them. I could snub father and sister. But something stirs in my chest, and I find myself lifting my hand. The gesture snares in both coffee-brown stares. And I wave. A small, slight gesture without malice.

I hope they read what I say with that wave.

I'm safe.

The bitter part of me scoffs, ‘Like you care.'

It's all I give them before Eamon leads me up the stairs of the stand. He takes me to the fifth row, where some familiar faces look our way as we sidestep down the seats.

Eamon's mother, Morticia, offers me a strained smile but it's fleeting and she fast returns her whispers to her sister. Daxeel's mother, Melantha, isn't so quick to tug her attention away from me. It lingers, runs me over, then—before she finally turns back to her sister—her face twists with plain distaste.

Aleana is slumped on the seat closest. It would be a buffer between me and Melantha if it weren't for the spat I had with Aleana two Quiets ago.

We haven't talked since. Haven't even seen each other.

Eamon stands aside and guides me past him.

Aleana and I watch each other as I move for the seat beside hers, then Eamon takes the other. I'm tucked between them, but Aleana and I are in our own world right now, our gazes hooked, and I'm distantly reminded of when we first talked on the tower, and we sized each other up in total silence for a while too long.

Then—

I breathe a sigh of relief.

Exhaustion clings to Aleana, but she forces a smile at me. She stays slumped in her seat, deep shadows under her eyes, and a half empty bottle of tonic in her slender fingers.

I return the smile.

Neither of us apologise. I'm not sure we are sorry. But we move on from it, and that's enough for me.

"Is it true?" her whisper croaks and I realize how much it's worn on her, all the drinks and smokes and late hours, and now, the anxieties we share for Daxeel in the first passage, but ones she harbours for Caius, too. And Rune, and Samick. Maybe even Dare.

I reach out for her hand and steal it in mine. With a small smile, I give her palm a gentle squeeze and a nod. I answer her question with that gesture alone.

Yes, Aleana. We are bonded.

And with that, I leave the conversation for another time. I ease one worry of hers. It's all I can do.

And we wait.

An hour passes before the stands are crammed full with the spectators. Not just nobles and families and friends, but a lot of admirals and generals and their seconds, too.

General Caspan and Second Bracken are just two rows down from us. It's hard not to notice them since Bracken looks over his shoulder at—not me but—Melantha a handful of times. Then he spares Aleana a scathing look.

She feigns ignorance but I notice she leans in closer to me, like I can protect her. I would try. But I would fail, and we would both go down in sprays of guts and blood.

I don't know much about Bracken, but I do know he has it out for Daxeel and, to a male like him, ones like Aleana and I are perfect pawns. Weaker than he is, so much weaker. But hearts that beat outside of Daxeel's body—cut us, he bleeds. Taroh's reasoning, I've learned.

Now, though, Bracken seems to have forgotten our existence entirely as a hush as heavy as the darkness itself presses down on us.

With only the contenders, the courtyard has lost half its crowd. Still, there are hundreds of fae down there—and the divide is clear.

Dark ones gather at the base of our stand.

I realize exactly what my position means up here on this seat. I'm with them. A declaration of loyalty, one made unintentionally.

Across the courtyard, the light fae warriors congregate in larger numbers. Maybe three times as many as the dokkalves.

Despite the light fae outnumbering the dark ones, the battle is unsure. Because dark fae are more lethal in every way, in their minds and instincts and bodies.

‘They evolved to kill. We evolved to live.'

Something father used to say when I was young and full of questions.

Now I only have one question—

Will you survive?

And I aim it at the dark male down there I can't seem to keep my gaze off for too long. Leaning against the trunk of a narrow, potted tree, he's partially hidden by the midnight leaves that gleam like his eyes. He doesn't lift those eyes to me.

With Rune and Samick, he waits.

We all do.

We wait as a dozen iilra spread around the courtyard, becoming the outline of a rectangle. Nearby contenders standing too close take steps back. Slowly, the iilra lower to their knees and flatten their bandaged hands on the stone floor of the courtyard.

They chant.

From up here, the sound is like the wind whispering to me. A shudder rattles me. I cringe against the thickening sense of magick in the air.

Whatever words they speak to the gods to draw on their magick, I don't recognize them. Foreign to my ears. But I feel them, thick shadowy hands grabbing at me.

Can't stop the hiss from crawling up my throat, and similar ones from the stands across the courtyard trickle through the air, where my kind sit in masses and cringe against the dark magick.

The chanting deepens to a growl, one savage enough to rumble the courtyard. Even my seat starts to tremble beneath me.

Hands snatch out, mine for Eamon's, Aleana's for mine.

Then the chanting is shoved down by the sudden weight of whispers and gasps. The stone blocks of the courtyard ground start to bubble and fester. The stench is more rotten than the fruits my kind feed to wayward humans. Stone by stone, from the gaps a thick, black sludge boils out and slicks and slimes it's way over the ground.

Magick.

I've seen little of it in my life. I don't exactly hang around with the Four Sisters of my land. And our magick is reserved for sacred times.

Like fresh tar, the slime crawls all over the cracks and contours of the ground. But it stays in the rectangular formation of the iilra, until it's fully spread out and—it becomes a black pool.

Faint sketches seem etched onto the surface of this tarry floor. I can't quite make them out. I inch closer in my seat. It does nothing to clear the images, but I now understand I'm looking into a window of sorts.

The longer the chants, the clearer the images through the window, and I can soon make out the shimmers of caves and a cliffside and a sea. It's murky, but I recognize it for what it is. The black pool is a portal, like the bridges between realms but unnatural, and we can see right through it.

What it shows us is enough to twist a cool of sick in my belly. Dragon caves—for the contenders to fulfil their purpose of the first passage. To find their anchor, to retrieve a dragon eye.

Breaking the stiffness of the warriors in the courtyard, a dozen or so dokkalves move for the tarry window.

My gaze snaps to Daxeel. He's one of the contenders to step forward.

Heart in my throat, I scream in my mind for him to look at me. He doesn't. Not once as he moves with Rune and Samick for the black pool does he spare me the look I desperately need from him.

I'm so focused on piercing the back of his head with my stare alone that I don't notice his boots. Not until it's too late, and he's stepping onto the edge of the tar.

Rune and Samick follow at his side.

And then—

They vanish.

In a blink, they drop into the tar like it's a deep lake. And they are gone. Just like that, they have fallen into the window, and Daxeel didn't look at me once.

More advance on the tar, then fall into it.

It goes on and on, litalves and dokkalves, until all the contenders have vanished and the only ones in the courtyard are the iilra, who straighten their spines and spread out their blackened hands and keep their chants in whispers.

But I can see the contenders in the surface of the black pool. The reflection of another place, a sea and a cliff and woods.

I'm too far up in the stand to see everything, and the images are choppy, the faces of some contenders larger than others, like they are closer to the portal on the other side.

I don't see Daxeel in any of those faces.

Wherever he is on the other side, it's far from the portal, far from the magick, and he feels farthest from me.