18

I’m being cooked alive.

The heat under these furs is sweltering. The Warmth seeps in through the cracks of the bedchamber windows with the power of two roaring fireplaces.

The air is too thick.

Might help if I pull the furs off my head at least to breathe, but no—I’m in hiding.

I’m hiding from whoever is coming up the corridor to my bedchamber. The familiar creaks of the floorboards I’ve learned over this past week.

I listen as the fourth creak with the highest pitch betrays the approach of my unwanted visitor.

Strange thing is, I hear no actual footsteps. No thud of a boot on the wood boards, no scuff of a heel to tell me who is coming.

It’s silence after the fourth creak—

Until a knock shudders the door.

Buried beneath layer of furs, I frown my sweaty brow in the shadows of my little cocoon. The knock was only a single tap of the fist on the doorframe. A knock I don’t recognize, or at least haven’t heard since I started my self-burial.

“I know you are awake, heartbreaker. Open the door.”

The frown digs deeper into my face until it warps into a scowl.

Alasdare.

That explains the silent footsteps. It’s the way he moves, trained to be a spy, a shadow that not even the sharpest and most perceptive of his own kind could detect.

But he wanted me to know he was coming, otherwise he wouldn’t have stepped on the creaky boards. That was his kindness.

Still, I ignore him.

I’m motionless beneath the furs. My breaths are stifled, the air is thick, and my clammy body is rigid.

Go away, go away, go away.

In all the phases I’ve been sweating away in this bed, I haven’t even unlocked the door for Eamon, and he’s come a few times. I just want to be alone.

A flinch strikes through me.

Dare’s fist comes down on the doorframe once more. “If you don’t open the door, I’ll let myself in.”

No, you won’t. The door is locked. I’m not a complete idiot.

Guess I’m idiot enough, though.

Idiot enough to fool myself into believing I was snaring Daxeel again. That he might love me more than hate me. That he wasn’t going to end the bond, end me .

A fisted ache rises up my chest.

I shut my eyes on the tears brewing and push all reminders of my fate out of mind.

A loud clack spears through the bedchamber.

I feel the sound in my bones—the clack of the lock.

My eyes widen as the door swings open.

He breaks in.

In two heartbeats, Dare reaches the foot of the bed. He snatches a fistful of furs, then yanks them down until my scowl is revealed.

I aim my narrowed eyes down the crumpled furs and blankets.

At the foot of the bed, Dare keeps his hand fisted in them, but his attention is on me, gilt eyes gleaming like fireflies.

An eyebrow arches with a hint of amusement.

Amused by my suffering.

“How did you get in?” The hoarseness of my throaty voice should surprise me, but I hardly feel anything.

“It’s my job.” His tone is light. “And Hemlock House likes me best. All doors open for me.”

Distantly, I’m aware of some phases or weeks ago—time is such a haze to me now—when the door swung open with so much fever that it almost knocked me off my feet; it opened for him, for Dare, the meddlesome spy I wish would drink a cup of molten iron, maybe see if he is as allergic to it as I am.

Those ugly thoughts twist my mind, and it shows. My scowl is so warped that it’s turned ugly.

Dare mirrors it with a wrinkled nose and mouth. He runs me over with blatant disdain, as though he can see through the remaining sheet to the clammy chemise that clings to my body.

“Gods, you stink.” Hard, he yanks the layers right off me. The furs hit the floorboards. “Normally I would suggest a wash after training, but I beg you have now one. For my sake.”

My mind is as sluggish as a carriage trudging through mud.

Then my throaty voice crinkles through the air like old parchment, “Training?”

Dare pushes back from the foot of the bed.

He clicks his slender, pale fingers once—and in-rushes Tris.

I cut my weary eyes to her, to the pile of fresh linen in her arms, the fast swerve of her gaze as she takes in every bit of mess in the bedchamber, from sweaty, discarded stockings on the chairs and tables to stacked trays and crockeries crusted with old, mouldy food residue.

The flat line of her mouth betrays her thoughts to me, the blatant ‘ I have a lot of work to do ’ disappointment.

“Training.” Dare echoes the word as he makes for the wardrobe. He starts to rifle through the clothes hanging in there. “Did you think you would get through the second passage on your looks alone?” The glance he spares me is one of mockery. “You might be a pretty halfling, but all fae are pretty.”

Dare plucks out a pair of slim black breeches and a fitted blue sweater. He tosses them at me—and they lob me off the head.

I hiss something grumbled, like I’m still in the throes of sleep, but then a pair of black boots knock off my thigh and turn my hiss into a snarl.

“You have five minutes to wash—and then I enter your washroom.” His eyes gleam, less with excitement, more with the gold steel threat that shudders my spine. “In case you haven’t noticed, I have no problem invading your space. Make it quick.”

Before I can react—with words or a middle finger—Tris has set the linen down on a chair and rushed to my side. She takes me by the arm; her fingers are cool on the sweat of my flesh.

There is no energy in me. None to fight Tris or Dare, none to do much more than let Tris lead me to the washroom.

She washes me, makes quick work of it, then helps me dress like I’m a dazed elder who has lost all grip on reality.

The last part might be true.

It’s my first time on the roof of Hemlock House.

If I’d known it even existed, I imagine I would have filled more of my blank time up here. I’ve always liked rooftops and towers, liked the breeze better up here, the view, the softness of the quiet that steals me away from the noise of rickety carriages and the shouts of nearby folk.

I like to stand on the edge, spread my arms and feel for a moment like I might be able to fly.

But I don’t do that now.

Dare won’t humour my whims.

Beyond the smiles and jests and teasing, Dare is a no-nonsense male when it comes down to it. Like Samick. It’s only their exteriors that differ.

Rune is softer at his core.

If Rune was the one Daxeel asked to train me, I think he would indulge me, let me stand at the edge of the roof, my hands on the metal railing, and give me some moments to let the Breeze brush through my still-damp hair, ghost over my face, thread through my fingers.

But it’s Dare, and he only allows me a second before he’s chucking a coiled rope at my back. “Unless your plan is to jump to your death, you’re wasting my time.”

I throw a lazy sneer over my shoulder.

In this rooftop armoury, Dare leans against the spear racks, and I think it a little poetic. A clash of battle and romance, the chaotic blend of loveseats and cushioned chairs with throwing knives and battered targets crafted from boiled leather.

Dare reaches for the wooden table at his side. From it, he plucks another rope, this one leathery and sharp, then lifts it—ready to chuck a coil at me again.

I don’t doubt the second strike will come with more power, hurt just that bit more.

So I surrender.

With a huff, I push away from the black metal railing.

Dare doesn’t watch me approach in all my lethargy. He’s quick to move for the stack of brittle branches piled under the table of coiled whips.

“There is little point in starting with sparring. You have no skill in battle.” He shifts the foliage to pile beside the charred stone pit that’s seen many uses. “Your priority will be to hide until I find you. Fires are not for your warmth. They are short, quick stops to cook whatever meat you can get your hands on.”

I drop down beside the fire pit.

My lashes are heavy over my reddened eyes, and I yawn something pained, but I watch. I watch Dare stack the branches and dried leaves in a particular fashion; and I listen as he tells me how long certain fish will take to cook, how to gut them, and how long to risk a fire before stomping it out and moving on.

It takes me until the start of the First Wind before I get the hang of fire building. It’s not like I ever did it before. Our servants were always the ones to light the hearths.

But I do it, and it’s only then that Dare lets me flee.

I return to my bedchamber.

Fresh sheets await me, and I climb into them in my breeches and sweater. I don’t even kick off my boots.

Sleep finds me fast.

The next phase, Dare comes again.

And the one after that.

Each phase, he drags me out of bed to the roof, where he teaches me the survival basics.

I learn to gut a fish, cook it, de-bone it. I learn what water is safe to drink, which berries to avoid, and that when teaching, Dare has little humour in him.

Like a steel blade, he keeps a sharp edge about him. Doesn’t crack so much as a smile during the lessons. He only loosens up after I prove I can do it without his help.

On the fifth phase, I graduate to the sparring mat.

Dare stands opposite me, only combat trousers to shield him, the marble gleam of his skin glistening in the reflection of the glowjars scattered around.

“There is a weak spot on all dokkalves. More than humans or litalves or your unseelie pets,” he tells me. “It is our eyes.”

There’s enough energy in me now to react. It’s slight—a mere brow-raise—but it’s something.

He leans his weight back onto one foot, a prepared stance. “We see through the darkness like no other can. We see much farther than any other fae or beast. Our eyes are our strength and our weakness. If a dark one gets you—claw out his fucking eyes, and you will have time to run.”

I’m better focused than I was in my first lesson. My eyes are a touch wide, my brows raised, and I’m nodding along with his words.

There is a reassurance in this, the promise of a weakness in dark fae.

His eyes, his eyes, his eyes.

Takes on a whole other meaning now.

“I’ll come at you from the front—” He gestures between us. “—but you’ll move into me.”

Again, I nod along.

We do just as he said.

He moves for me; I move into him.

Dare pauses with his chest against me, my forehead pressed to his clavicle, and his hands gripped firm on my shoulders.

“Your attacker will expect you to retreat, to keep distance. Instinct will want to draw you away . So now, as your attacker, I will need to readjust my approach, since you drew closer. My best response, at this angle, is to break your neck. What will you do to stop me?”

I blink against the pallor of his collarbone.

It takes a moment before my mind clicks.

It’s a trick question.

He wants me to focus on his eyes in this move. But that is not the best option for me right now, not at this angle.

I drop.

Legs buckling beneath me, I drop to a crouch at his feet, then roll to the side.

“You’re fast.” Dare looks down at me with an approving nod of the head. The gesture disturbs his dark curls; a few loose strands fall into his face and seem to brighten his golden eyes. “Not fast enough to fight, but to what?”

“Run.” I push up from the mat and run my hands down my weary face. “Fast enough to run and climb trees and scream for help—then die anyway because all this is pretence.” My words faded to a murmur, not for him, but my own thoughts slipping down my tongue.

“I don’t stand a chance,” I finish in a whisper.

Dare just frowns at me, his brow lifted, a look derived from mockery. “Morticia survived the passages when her sister was stolen by her evate. Morticia survived, unprepared and unskilled. You can, too.”

I scoff hard enough to jolt my shoulders. “Survive just so he can kill me in the end? So he can get his wish from Mother?”

Because that’s the truth of it, isn’t it?

It’s not the other warriors in the second passage that I have to worry about. It’s Daxeel. If I survive the others, the hunger, the poisoned berries, the wild beasts, and the elements on the mountain, then all I’ve done is become a lamb who survived long enough to walk right into the wolf’s mouth.

Daxeel needs me alive for the end of the second passage.

He needs me alive to sacrifice the bond to Mother—to sacrifice me .

These thoughts aren’t ones I let myself entertain for too long. I often beat them away with fatigue and rotting in my bed. Because once I let them in, my glass strength starts to crack.

My face twists with the sudden surge of tears that roll down my cheeks, the ache of the sob spreading in my chest.

I sniff back snot I didn’t have just moments ago.

But in Dare, there is no pity to be found.

He looks me over like I’m little more than an unimpressive painting. “You have given up so easily.”

My mouth is pulled tight with a grimace.

I shake my head. “He’s going to kill me.” My voice breaks on the words.

But all that does is urge Dare to roll his eyes.

“You have weeks left,” he drawls, as though bored of me and the sobs I often fall into. “One here, one on the mountain at least, and you think you have lost already.”

“I have lost,” I grit out through bared teeth. “He made the fae promise. I thought I could change his mind, and then the promise would change with it. But he’s always had this plan. He was always going to do this.”

Dare turns his back on me.

He makes for the weapons table.

But I saw the exhausted shake of the head before he moved away.

I watch him pick through the throwing stars.

“He was never meant to fuck you, heartbreaker. He was never meant to forge that bond. If you ask me, Daxeel is lying to himself more than he is lying to you.” He shrugs a shoulder and fingers through the small throwing knives laid out on the table. “The lie he tells himself is that he can sever the bond through the wish, then kill you.” He cuts his gaze to me for a lingering moment, one weighted with meaning. “He can no more lift that blade to you than to his own dying sister.”

Dare takes a fistful of stars from the table and turns to me. His chin is lowered, his eyes lifted to look at me from beneath his long lashes.

“Your weapon against Daxeel is in your hand, heartbreaker. Guilt .” His eyes flash on that word, like it’s a cursed word that rots the soul. “His guilt for what he’s done to you, how he punishes you, and how deep his love for you runs—it will consume him. It’s time, perhaps, for you to punish him .”

For a long moment, I just stare at him.

Slack-faced, I watch as he extends his hand and holds out the fistful of silvery and chalky black stars.

He arches a dark, shaped eyebrow at me before he gestures to the weapons.

“Pull it together. Pick your weapon. And strategize.”

Whether it’s the lessons, Dare’s insensitive pep talk, or the reminder of Aleana dying, I don’t know, but for the first time since I learned my horrible fate in Daxeel’s hand, I think of someone else.

Compassion, maybe.

And so the moment Dare dismisses me with a flick of the hand, I rush through Hemlock House to find Aleana.

It takes a quarter of an hour, but I do locate her—in the dining hall with my Eamon.

They both look up as I stumble through the doorway.

Stillness ripples over them. Statues in tall-spined chairs. The surprise blinks their eyes.

Aleana’s face fast softens into relief.

Then Eamon’s splits with a grin; one that deflates him with a hushed breath.

It’s Aleana who announces, “I thought you’d died in that bed. All my knocks went ignored.”

The smile I spare her is small, maybe a little ashamed.

I gravitate closer and take the chair beside hers.

“Mine too,” Eamon adds with a twinkle in his bronze eyes. There’s no chiding to be found in him. Only pity.

“Dare’s been kicking my ass,” I mumble and slouch in my seat.

Eamon grins around the words, “His patience is as inconsistent as his flings.”

Beside me, Aleana empties a phial into her chalice. It turns her water cloudy. She steals the chalice into her skinny hand and lifts it to her chapped lips.

I missed too much. She’s back on the tonics, and in all my self-isolation, I had no idea, and now even less of an idea why .

Between the sips, a ghastly wheezing sound scrapes through her chest, the kind of strained breath I know from that almost lethal ‘common cold’ I had in my youth.

My mouth turns down at the corners.

I’m a horrid friend.

So selfish, so terrible.

“Ridge is coming this Quiet,” Eamon tells me. “The three of us—” and he lifts his chin in a gesture to Aleana “—are going to have some wine in the garden.”

An invite.

I answer, firm, “The four of us.”

The relief is found in the softness of his eyes and the tender flick of his smile. But his smile is quick to tighten at the sound of a rustling dress coming up the stairs to the dining hall entrance.

I home in on the scuff of leather boots that follows.

I turn my chin and look at the open doorway a moment before Tris skitters to a halt, her hefty skirt tangled around her legs, and her corseted bosom flustered.

“A caller,” she announces with a deep curtsey. “Ronan Bogh of Licht.”

“Ronan?” I echo, and there’s a pitch to my voice, a squeak not unlike the horrid sound of Tris washing the windows clean.

A stroke of brown leather in the doorway; Ronan strides inside. Hands clasped behind his back, his spine is stiffer than a frosted tree in winter.

My chin lifts a touch higher, my brows raise that bit more.

Stiff in my chair, I’m ready to rise and meet him.

But all the greeting Ronan gives me is a flickered look my way, not a bow or a word. Instead, he rounds the end of the table—for Eamon.

A frown tucks into my face.

Eamon stills. A spoonful of custard hovers near his parted lips, but after a beat, he lowers it to the bowl and looks up at Ronan.

Then I see it.

In Ronan’s gloved hand, an envelope. One with a wax seal stamped with the crest of the Queens Court.

“You have been summoned for your crime.” Ronan sets the envelope down beside the bowl. “For your assault against lordson Taroh, heir of Lord Braxis of the Queen’s Court.”

My hand grips the arm of my chair. “What crime? What are you talking about, Ronan?”

He only cuts his gaze to me for a heartbeat before he lands it on Eamon. “There are many witnesses to the assault. By the lawless culture of the Midlands, the repercussions are applied to the customs of these lands. You are challenged to an honour duel.”

Aleana drops her knife to the plate. It clatters just as the air is punched out of me and all I can manage is a strangled breath.

An honour duel…

“No!” Aleana snaps. “No, you cannot do this! Your authority doesn’t reach these lands.”

But honour duels do.

Ronan just shoots me a grim look, an arrow notched, then leaves without another word.

Stunned, I watch him go. And I watch the doorway for a heartbeat longer before Eamon leans back in his chair and breaks the wax seal.

He reads the summons in silence.

We join him in it, the thick blanket of tension draped over us.

Aleana is perched on the edge of her seat.

I lean so far over the table that the sharp edge bites into my ribs.

“What?” I hiss. “What does it say?”

Eamon tosses the parchment aside. “It states the date of the duel,” he sighs. “The phase of the final passage.”

“No,” Aleana speaks the word with less vigour this time, and so it’s more of an echo in the emptiness of the dining hall. “He can’t do that.”

But he can.

It’s the Midlands.

Honour duels are the way things are done here.

Without prisons and courts, blood will run in the street. But slap the word honour on the deaths and it’s a thing of pride and rules.

And without me, Eamon never would have punched a lordson in the face.

Without me, Eamon wouldn’t be facing down a fight he won’t win—won’t survive.

The defeat is quick to seep back into my muscles and slump me in my seat. “It’s my fault.”

Of course it is.

Still, my Eamon won’t speak that truth.

“You didn’t force me to ground that rodent.” Eamon shakes his head. “I did that all on my own.”

I look up my lashes at him with nothing but sorrow. “It’s my own issues with Taroh that led to this. His father has only challenged you because he’s convinced I have something to do with Taroh’s disappearance. He can’t get to me, or anyone else in the Sacrament, so he went after your slight.”

Eamon just reaches across the table for me.

I slip my hand into his and feel the reassuring squeeze of his fingers around mine, but it’s empty—because the promise of it is something he can’t promise.

‘I’ll be ok.’

No, he won’t.

Lord Braxis will employ a second to take his place in the duel, and he will choose wisely.

Aleana mirrors my thoughts. “You have to use a second, Eamon, you must.”

“With everyone competing in the Sacrament,” he mumbles his words and draws back into his chair, abandoning my hand, “no one can sign their name to anything. They belong to the Sacrament. I’m on my own.”

“That’s what they want. That’s why they chose the phase that the second passage begins,” I hiss out the words like snake venom.

Eamon eyes the parchment as though it’s a keyhole into the mind of the lord himself.

Then he decides, “It’s a scare tactic. Braxis predicts I’ll come forward with information about Taroh’s disappearance in exchange for a cease.”

“But we don’t know anything about his disappearance,” I snap and hit my hand down on the table. My plate rattles, empty, but I ignore it.

“It doesn’t matter. It matters that he believes I know what happened.”

Aleana throws a bewildered look between us. “I didn’t know he was still missing. What has it to do with any of us?”

“He’s using you,” I say with a whooshing breath, “to shake information out of me. He thinks I know where Taroh is.”

“Or Daxeel.” Eamon’s face is grim. “Either way, he’ll use me to rattle you… or kill me to hurt you.”