3

Pandora came to my bedchamber at the break of the Warmth.

For a while, I pulled the furs over my head and ignored the incessant knocking. It went on too long, until I had little choice but to crack open the door and peer out at her through puffy, bloodshot eyes.

‘Let me train you.'

That's all she managed to say before I slammed the door on her face.

Train me. That's a laugh. The only time I've handled weapons is when I've played with Eamon's dupe daggers. I can step into that first passage with a weapon strapped to every bit of my body, and still not stand a chance against a fae warrior.

I'm going to need a lifetime of weapons and combat training shoved into two weeks if I have any chance of surviving this… this torture she threw me to.

So I avoid her. Just as I avoid father.

The wicked, cruel, violent thoughts I have about them…

I shudder to think how I will react if they do manage to corner me.

I do now what I think best. Surround myself with others.

My shields. Deterrents.

Pandora won't want to face me with too many ears and eyes around. I wait until the corridors of the garrison are at their busiest, just after the lunch break, before I head for the Hall.

In there, I find a piece to the puzzle—a part of my scheme.

My plan is still brewing, just a spark. I need more security before I fan it into a blaze.

It makes sense then that I start with the harem worker who's always looking at me, the one who spoke to Daxeel—the one I'm certain he visits.

Before I can commit to the bargain that I might make with Daxeel—when I offer him my body in exchange for his help, I offer him the one part of me, my sex, because he's never had that with me—I need to find this female and get her to tell me all the grim details.

Especially now that Daxeel has issued me with a fae's promise. In the end, I will meet his dagger.

Still, I have some hope, because a fae's promise is breakable. It's not common for those nearly binding words to be dismissed, for a fae to change their minds and go back on them. But it can happen—and so I hold tight onto my foolish bud of hope.

I find the harem worker in the Hall.

After the lunch rush, most of the fae are gone for a brief rest or headed back to the battle blocks. The servers stay and clean up.

It's quiet in here, as expected, as hoped.

In just a cotton dress, much too short for father's liking, I feel the warmth of the smouldering hearths as I wander around the benches and tables. I make my way for the bar, where the blond beauty stacks dirty dishes by a little window in the wall. From the other side, human hands reach out and steal away the glasses and plates, then retreat with them.

Servants, I think to myself.

Then Daxeel's voice is in my mind, firm and unyielding, ‘Slaves'.

My hands fist at my sides, sudden annoyance sprouting in me. He talks to me on the tower, kisses my core, protects me from Taroh out in the open—then bites me, hates me, and fucks a whore.

But I force my hands to relax as I approach her. Cornering her with the anger I feel won't help me. It'll hardly open her up.

So as I approach the edge of the bar, and she looks up with a shuttering expression that quickly turns to red panic, I let a practiced smile slip onto my face. A small smile that draws her into me, lets her feel like I'm letting her in on a secret, not that she's about to spill her own to me.

My slender hand settles on the wooden bar, and it drags along the edge as I round the corner, until all that's between us is a hinged bench.

"I think it's time we talked," I say, my voice light and friendly.

I disarm her with the smile still in place, but I give her no room for argument as I step back and move for the table tucked in the corner. Out of earshot of the other servers.

I settle myself onto a creaky seat that I suspect has been knocked about too many times, and only a moment later, she's falling into the one opposite me.

Her gaze is as shifty as the fingers she has fidgeting on her lap.

Might be a halfling like me, sure, but the difference in how we just sit here, with a small table between us, is all one needs to know. I come from a fallen family, a poor one, but a family that was once great all the same. I was raised with posture and manners. She was raised in slums, no manners, maybe the child of a slave, a halfling that was never taken in by her fae parent.

Sometimes, I do feel a little sorry for the less fortunate of my kind.

Mostly, I just feel sorry for myself.

"I'll cut to the point," I start and fold my arms on the table.

I lean closer to her.

She mirrors me, leaning forward, but her fingers are all twisted together, red and angry. She's too nervous.

"I'm not here to hurt you," I promise as though it'll soothe her nerves some, "or to judge you."

My words work.

Tension is still twisted in her muscles, but her shoulders do sag some, and I hear the faintest breath of relief escape her.

She swallows, then lifts her cautious gaze to mine, a fierce blush on her pretty face—and I want to claw it off.

But I just keep the smile on. "What does he ask of you when he visits?"

Fleetingly, I wonder if she can lie as I can.

Eamon can lie. All hybrids can. But I don't know of any other halfling like me, one with my gift. My fae trait is glamour, and so I think of my ability to lie as my human trait.

Does she have a human trait?

I hope she's not like me. I trust in the light ones better, knowing they can't lie.

I watch her closely.

She turns her cheek to me and looks out the dusty window at the dark. Here with me, with any female who asks her these things, she yearns to escape. I read that in the taut pull of her mouth, in the flames on her cheek.

She looks down at her hands. "At the beginning…" her whisper falters. "At first," she starts again, "it was only instructions."

"What instructions?"

"To kiss him. He never kisses back. Sometimes, I dance for him. Whisper his name like a prayer." She has shame in her work, it's in the ugly crimson that has spread down to her chest now. "Sometimes he is passive, other times he is gentle, sometimes he's rough. It's never unpleasant."

I stew in her words for a beat.

In my mind, I peel them back, layer after layer, and note what might serve me.

Daxeel watches her dance and so he pretends it is me; she kisses him as he wishes I would beg for his kiss, but he rejects his own participation, he only allows hers; and his name whispered from my lips is what he really wants to hear.

What this harem worker tells me is valuable. It's not just words and secrets, it's a weapon she hands over to me.

I'm learning his desires—so I am learning his weaknesses.

"What does that have to do with me?" I ask, though what I really mean is how those instructions from Daxeel mean she recognizes my significance to him, enough to have her staring at me all the time.

"I am skilled," she breathes the words with the shame of a shunned village. "I have the brewing trait."

Tears are in her eyes, and I read her too easily. I promised I would not harm her, but she's afraid that will change, that I will destroy her. Like a fae promise, my assurance can change as circumstances do.

"I learned when I was little, small things, like tonics…" She shakes her head. "I specialise in a popular brew here. If I have the essence of someone—like a fingernail, or blood, or hair, even saliva—I can use it in the brew… and for an hour, I will look like them."

Her gaze snaps up into my stunned one.

"With Daxeel, I look like you."

For a beat, my mouth just hangs open.

I stare blankly at her.

Then, of all the questions I should ask, I go for the one screaming in my mind, "All of me?"

Has Daxeel already had me in the way I never thought he had? Has this whore and her brewing mastery stolen away my bargain?

He might be content using her that way, and can keep away from me… And it explains how he is able to only take it so far with me here when he touches me.

"Not your scent," she confesses. "Not your voice. Not your mannerisms, your smiles—all that makes you, you. I cannot imitate that."

My jaw sets for a beat. It's my turn to look out the window at the dark woods. "How long?"

"Since you arrived," she says softly. "Each time he brings me a piece of you. A strand of hair… or I take it from your seat when I serve you."

I sit in this for a moment.

Staring out the window, I decide I'm not upset about the imitation of my body. Not when it means he only ever thinks of me when he beds someone else. Not when it means he's so desperate to have me. But it's still a problem, because maybe the imitation is good enough to keep him from falling into my trap.

I have talents of my own. Glamour, lies, and my personal favourite, seduction. I can read on males what they like, what will work, what will turn them away from me. It's not a fae trait exactly, but a skill I developed naturally, like some others of my kind are better suited to fiddles and painting than others are.

And it so happens that Daxeel likes my natural way of seduction, that I myself am his temptation. I never had to act or pretend with him for him to want me, not outside of the time I challenged him with a dupe dagger.

I release a heavy sigh and reach into the pocket of my plain dress. I tug out the single coin and flatten it down on the table. A shilling, not a nugget, but the silver is more than the thanks she deserves.

I say nothing as I push from my seat.

Before I can walk off, she stops me.

Her hand snatches my wrist and stills me.

Looking up at me, she adds, "When he is gentle, he might sometimes speak—words he thinks are too quiet for me to hear, but I do hear them. Vicious one… I don't know if that means anything to you. But other times, I dress in clothes that he brings—yours. And if you were to ask me how I think he feels about you…" Her smile is tight, and I know this extra information isn't because of the tip I gave, but rather a thanks for not beating her senseless. "He hates that he loves you. But hate and love you, he does."

I nod once.

Her grip falls from my wrist.

I stare blankly at the wall for a moment. "You will not see him anymore. I don't care if you leave, fake illness, or simply pretend you're too busy for his visit." I turn a dark look down at her and she blanches. "But if you do accept him again, I will kill you."

It doesn't matter if I'm lying or not, what matters is that she believes I'm telling the truth.

She nods.

Then I'm gone.

If Daxeel wants to play these wicked games—fucking me with his tongue on the tower, fingers inside of me in the corridors, then finding his release in an imitation of me—then I will play with him.

I stole away his crutch, and now he will have no imitation of me to chase down.

It's me or nothing, dark one.

I will have him fall into my trap again. I will take back my one love.

This is about more than getting out of the Sacrament.

This is about us. How desperately I will fight, play this cruel game, to steal him back, earn his forgiveness—and have the life I should have had with him. A happy one.

I know what I need to do, that my slight against him—especially that it was so public—was as severe as it would've been for me to take another to my bed.

So I must let him punish me, I should feed into it, and use those moments with him, his desperation to have me and hurt me, to my advantage. In those moments, I can convince him of my remorse, regret, and I can lure him back into my trap, and I can have him fall in love with me all over again.

It would not serve me to throw myself at his feet in a flurry of tears and sobs and pleads. All my begging would fall onto the wings of the wind and drift away, he would only consider me like one might consider mud on their boots.

I wouldn't be me if I were to do that, and he would recognize that shift. He would see I have cracked too soon, and he would be disgusted by it.

But I know I need help. I'm no match for him alone.

I find my help in the library.

Aleana is buried. She's buried in the layers of her silky dress and ruffled moss-green bodice; and she's buried deep down the aisles dedicated to the Sacrament.

How eagerly she tries to save me from this fate. Eamon too, so I know he's in the aisles around us, somewhere, searching for the answers.

Aleana is a diamond I stumbled upon.

She's a friend, and it warms me that she sees me much the same. It saddens me a bit too, I won't lie. How she must think of what could have been. If I'd been better to her brother, she would have me as a sister already. If fate didn't impregnate Pandora, then Aleana would have more hope that I might come to be in her life after the Sacrament.

So I decide to go to her and tell her everything.

And that's just what I do when I find her on the floor, surrounded by scrolls and tomes. I drop down beside her, and though it's her brother I tell her about, she doesn't even flinch.

She doesn't blanch, she doesn't cringe—she listens, and by the intensity in her gaze, the more I tell her, the better I sense she has already started forming a plan.

This, all these secrets I've been keeping about me and Daxeel, this all along might have been the answer we looked for in scrolls.

Finally, when all the words have been said, I lean back against the bite of the bookshelf and slump with a sigh. Feel almost out of breath, like telling her everything—from the touches in the corridor to the moment on the tower and to the whore and his fae promise—was more exhausting than a dance.

Aleana wears a sharp glint to her gaze, all knowing. "A fae promise," she starts, her mind spinning behind sharp eyes, "is as certain as the sun rising in your lands."

Defeat deflates me. My shoulders sag with a sighed breath.

"It's only certain if our darkness doesn't invade your lands." She winks, and it's dazzling.

I frown. "So it's certain… but not entirely?"

"It's a true threat, an absolute promise for the way things are in the moment it's said. But things change, and when they do, the promise changes, too."

"And I can change things," I decide with a nod, a nod that's more for myself than Aleana.

For a beat, she chews on her bottom lip.

"You might not have to work too hard to change the promise," she finally says. "Both in the corridor and on the tower, he scented you. Our males are… different to yours. Their animal side is stronger, and they feel a constant need to touch what is theirs in whatever way they can."

"So him scenting me," I start, mind working to catch up, "means he's blocking other males—like Taroh—from touching me?"

She tucks a black lock of straight hair behind her pointed ear, sharp enough to cut glass. "He's claimed you for all the garrison to know."

That explains why Taroh hasn't been around me for the past week.

I gave the thought of it away to the new strain on our arrangement with the Sacrament owning me, but it's Daxeel. It's all him, protecting me from Taroh's unwanted advances.

And now that I do think on it, the memory of him stepping closer to me near the battle blocks, challenging Taroh with his stare and proximity alone—since then, Taroh has left me alone.

Aleana sighs a small breath, but it's not one of sorrow or frustration, but rather hope and realization. "My brother is losing his battle to stay away from you." Her smile darkens into something wicked and she tilts her head, looking up at me from beneath her lashes. "Nari, do you know what evate is?"

For a beat, I'm still. I blink, then slowly, I let a nod tug at my head.

Evate is three things.

It is the moment a dark male first ever sees or smells a potential mate. It's a moment of lust and rage, of the animal within stirred awake. The instincts storming within the male, to fuck, to kill; to maim, to kiss.

And it is more.

It is the female herself.

And it is the connection between the pair.

Evate is the experience, the mate, and the bond.

A fate that exists for dark males.

I'm utterly still. "He had evate with me?" I whisper, my mind flickering to the time he first saw me, watched me dance, how he couldn't look anywhere else but at me. "When he saw me dance that night, he experienced evate?"

Her diamond eyes blaze like the flames in the hearth, the ones that tell when time passes by the hour. "Close, but more than that," she says, her breathless voice turning desperate, and she leans closer, as though she needs me to be the one to figure it out.

The thought is fleeting, but I wonder if she can't say more than what she is telling me; perhaps that her words are bound by a bargain or a fae promise, and she's trying so desperately to manoeuvre her way around it.

‘More than that…'

The experience is about a potential mate. So many of these evate moments fade away to nothing, nothing comes of them. The animal within is tired and goes back to sleep. The female it awoke for might just be not all that interesting to them when the beast gets closer.

‘More than that…'

The words are a rushed puff of air that come from my tight chest, "I am his evate…"

I am his mate.

His animal didn't return to sleep after it found me.

The beast stayed.

I should feel something. I should feel elated, feel my heart flip in my chest, my stomach churn with butterflies assaulting it. I should want to run to him, throw myself at his feet and plead for his forgiveness, beg for him to hear my apologies.

Instead, I feel dread.

For an evate to break her dark male's heart…

I shudder to think of the pain he must suffer, even now. And that would mean that the suffering he wants for me—no, not wants, craves, needs—is more brutal than I can ever imagine.

There has to be a way I can dig myself out of this grave.

Maybe the final evate meaning, the third but by no means the least. "We didn't have sex," I tell her, and so that means, "The bond wasn't forged."

Only through mating is the final stage achieved. Only when we mate will our souls come together and bond—and our lives tied.

If the mate falls, the male will follow.

"He loved you before he knew for certain what you were," she tells me, her words hushed and fast.

The dokkalf male can only be certain once the bond is forged, once the female has been mated with. Only then can he be absolutely certain of what she is to him.

Aleana says, "He wrote to me often. Once, he told me that if no bond was forged through mating, and you weren't his one, he would keep you still, because he loved you. But Nari…" Her face twists, grim. "You did what you did, and you shamed him before the bond was forged. It changed everything."

It takes a moment for it to click.

It's been so long, more than decade, since I read about evates in the scripture halls. I took a passing interest, even if it was one I forgot later in my life, but because mates are found among the litalves, I wanted to learn the differences.

We haven't forged the bond, and so our lives and souls are not connected. I could die now, and he would go on living.

The loss would torment him forever, but he would survive. And my soul would wait for his in the afterlife, so the legend goes, and only in his death would we unite.

It's the loophole… A loophole that lets dark males kill their evates. If the bond isn't forged, if there is no mating, then the dokkalf himself can cut her down with his sword.

"If he fights his desires for me…" I push from the shelves to shift onto my folded legs, closer to her. "If he doesn't fuck me, he can kill me."

And Eamon's bargain with Daxeel is the only thing stopping him from actually killing me here and now at Comlar.

If that chill of anxiety had me in its grip before, then now I've turned to ice—ice with a stir of sick deep inside of it.

My flesh prickles against the icy crawl of nerves slinking over me.

I swallow back the sickly sensation and utter the only word I can manage, "Fuck."

Aleana takes my hands in hers, firm but clammy. "Forge the bond." Her nerves burn hot but mine are glacier. "You'll get everything you want. Love, protection, marriage, him. But you need the bond, Nari."

I sense a sudden shift in the air. It stokes my nerves, loosens a breath from my lips, and I turn to look up the row at the end of the shelves.

Eamon stands there in the shadows, his mouth pinched, eyes creased, and arms folded. If worry had a face, it would be his in this moment.

Eamon knows… He knew.

But he didn't want me to know any of this.

I frown at him, feeling the bite of betrayal in my writhing insides.

He reads it so easily.

In a blink, he's storming down the aisle towards us. His eyes are sharp as they cut to Aleana, who has enough awareness to slink back to her shelf. She knows how greatly she overstepped, and again I think of a possible bargain to keep her silence, I think of her fight with Caius.

I wonder if this is what they talk about, fight about, at the house in Kithe. Is Aleana the only one to stand up against the males and fight for me, for my second chance, for me to understand all the pieces on the chessboard?

A whispered word I aim up at Eamon, "Why?"

His angular jaw tenses for a moment, then he lowers himself to a crouch at my side. His voice is subdued, keeping his words a secret from anyone lurking in the nearby aisles, "Why did I hide from you the one thing that would fool you into pursuing him? Nari," he hisses my name with a rush of desperation, a plea for me to understand, "if you go to him, which you are now more tempted than ever to, he will kill you. He can betray his bargain with me, it might not be strong enough to protect you. I don't… I can't…" He shakes his head, his golden eyes wet. "Please don't go to him."

Tears of my own fill my eyes. "What else can I do?"

"Accept defeat," he snaps, urgent, and steals my arms in his grip. His face comes closer, the snarl of the dark fae stealing his face. "I am sorry for you, Nari. But you are not the only one who will hurt when his sword pierces your heart."

"But you're asking me to give up the one I love—the one I want. Need."

His fingers dig harder into my arms.

I wince, but his grip doesn't loosen, his face doesn't soften. There's pain in the grimace that his sneer fights off. A battle of pain and anger.

"Is it love that pushes you to him? Do you love him enough that you will die for him? Or is it the Sacrament, or even Taroh that has you on this path, your fear of marriage to him?"

"All of it," I admit, and it's the truth. "If I never saw him again, Eamon, every day and night I would have wept for him—for the rest of my life. I never would have stopped yearning. I would have written more, maybe run off to find him when I got that desperate. I never would have stopped."

Eamon turns his snarl to Aleana, who has a good enough mind to keep quiet. "Stay here," he growls, then snatches me up from the floor.

He keeps a firm hold on my arm as he drags me through the library. And it's still strong enough to bruise my flesh when he steers me down a corridor to the servant quarters and pushes me into an alcove—one whose vines remind me of those that feed on noise in my lands.

I realize he's taken me here because he needs those darker vines to eat up our words—and so no one, no one at all, can overhear us.

"Whatever you decide to do, Nari…"

The lump in his throat bobs.

He drops his head to mine, our foreheads touching, and his hands find my cheeks. Like he's saying goodbye to me.

I lean into his hold, my oldest friend, my closest friend, a brother and a confidant.

"Listen to me," he hisses and breaks the tender moment, but keeps his hold on my face. "Whatever you do… do not lie to him."

Colour drains from my face.

Blankly, I stare up at him.

Eamon adds darkly, "He will know you are lying. He will figure it out, and you won't survive it. And don't lie to me," he adds at my stunned look. "I've known for a long time. You are too careless with your words."

His tone is final, and the look he gives is one that says ‘don't you dare argue with me'.

So I smile something sad up at him.

I throw myself against him, arms wrapped around his middle, and I hold him tight. His returned embrace is stiff, but he returns it and that's all that matters.

"I hope you're right about this," he says softly.

Me too.