2

The iilra who died in the rush of shadows have been replaced. Quickly. Too quickly, almost as though reinforcements were at the borders of this neutral land, waiting.

Suspicion would narrow my eyes on them down in the courtyard, but I find I have such little energy to do much more than watch. So I watch them, and have done since I ran out of the offices and made for the tower just a half-hour ago.

The iilra don’t do anything out of the ordinary—if forming an ateralum-gated barrier around a spiral of Cursed Shadows that surges from the centre of the dead portal up into the dark skies is an ordinary thing.

My lashes lower on the courtyard until there is only the darkness of my eyelids.

I draw in a deep breath.

I sense him— smell him—the moment he steps through the archway, onto the roof of the tower.

That familiar blend of leather, polished metal, and earth, peppered with the faintest hint of almond soap and the blood he’s freshly spilled.

Daxeel’s scent snakes around me, each layer a compliment to the next.

Memories flitter through my mind, how I once welcomed the fragrance of my dark one.

Now, I feel a rush that reminds me of falling, an ache that spreads through my chest.

Despair.

I say nothing as he advances on me.

I keep my back to him.

Since he does little to silence his soft bootsteps, I decide he wants me to know he’s come to me. His chest presses to my spine, the warmth of his mouth brushes over my jawline, down the smooth skin of my neck.

I stay in darkness

My eyes keep shut, relaxed on the sensations he torments me with. I don’t tug away or hit out at him as his arm comes around my middle. Fleetingly, I wonder if he means to stop me from taking a step off the edge of the tower and plummeting to my death.

Sometimes, I might like to fall.

I almost melt into him. Instinct of the old love we shared aches to bond us together again.

But I fight the urge.

I open my eyes and stare ahead at the pulsating spiral of darkness.

Daxeel watches them, too.

Heartbeats pass in silence.

“The Cursed Shadows,” he murmurs against my neck, “is darkness we can control.” The fullness of his mouth tickles my skin. He grazes the tenderest kiss up to the shell of my ear. “Darkness that can swallow lands, even those under the guardianship of the sun.”

It takes a moment, a few breaths to pass before his words sink in. Realization stiffens me in his loving embrace. My back tenses against his chest.

I feel his lips against my ear as they warp into a grin.

“For now,” he says, and his voice is a murmur still, so soft and so tender, like he’s worshipping me, telling me all the ways he loves me, “the Cursed Shadows are contained to my body. I am the conduit between the spiral and space.” He pauses to nip the lobe of my ear. I don’t flinch. “Then, when I triumph in the second passage, I will have succeeded where previous generations failed. I will have won the Sacrament.”

And then what?

It’s the question I should ask. It’s the question that flitters through my mind like a petal on winds.

But it doesn’t stick around.

Selfish, some call me. Self-absorbed, even.

Maybe it’s the truth. Because I only think of myself in the face of the Cursed Shadows—in the threats beneath the whispers of his words.

It’s self-pity that sorrows me.

“All this time,” I say softly, “you were wearing a mask, even in the Eclipse.” Unshed tears thicken the defeat of my voice. The courtyard seems glazed now. “I’ve never known you. Not truly.”

In a breath, I’m tugged back from the tower’s edge. The arm around my middle yanks just once, but firm enough that I stagger.

Daxeel spins me around to stumble into his chest.

Before I can right myself, stuck in this haze of delay and disorientation, his hands snatch up my cheeks, and he brings his lips to mine.

Even through the cloudiness of gathered tears in my sight, the cobalt gleam of his eyes captures me whole. I stare into them, eyes meant to destroy me—and feel the lazy grin he presses to my lips.

A tear escapes my eye. Just one. It rolls down my cheek.

“If I can’t fall out of love with you,” he says and drags his smile to the corner of my mouth, “then I will ruin the love you have for me.”

There, at the edge of my lips, where that single tear streaks a path, he plants a chaste kiss.

He kisses it away.

“Your tear taste of your defeat,” he whispers, and it spurs on more to fall down my cheeks, “and of my victory.”

Turning my chin, I tug out of his hold.

He lets me go, hands dropping to his sides. His eyes gleam brighter in the darkness, wisps of shadows licking up his inked neck.

He watches me stagger back a step, two steps, and is silent as I run my hands down my face.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” My voice hitches into a whine against my palms, not a whine of tears, but as he said, my defeat . “You’re breaking me, Daxeel.”

And he is.

I came here to Comlar with ugly, na?ve hope. Too hopeful, too cocky.

His sheer ruthlessness isn’t what I knew of him, isn’t what I expected.

Now, I am well acquainted with that darkness that lives within him.

For the first time since he stepped foot on the tower, strength hardens his tone, it snuffs out the tease of his victory and solidifies into barbed stone, “Then you are too weak.”

I scoff. The gesture jolts my shoulders.

Dropping my hands from my face, I throw a withering look at him, not one of fury or hurt, but of sheer exhaustion.

It startles him, enough to shutter his face. The crack in his mask is gone in a blink.

‘Too weak.’

What a laugh that should give me.

But there is no humour in me when I say, “You knew that when you loved me. You went to such great lengths never to scare me, and now? Now I’m too weak?”

He levels his stare with mine. “I do that still. If I revealed my true self to you, the rage within me, you wouldn’t just crack or break. Your heart would stop, and you would crumble at my feet.”

I run him over with a detached look. “I don’t know who you are. I miss my dark one.”

“You killed him.”

My eyes are dead as I consider him.

I have nothing to give, no bite nor bark, no hiss nor snarl—and no begging to come.

I just look at him as though he’s little more than an empty phial. Just there.

“When should I be ready?” The dullness of my tone matches the look I wear.

Daxeel drags his piercing gaze over me, from the death in my eyes to the toes of my boots, and back up again. His upper lip twitches as if to snarl; it doesn’t take form. “Eamon has moved most of your belongings already. He’ll return for the rest—and you will come to Kithe with him.” He takes a single, purposeful step closer. “I suggest you use your spare hours cleaning yourself up.”

“So I’m fresh for you?”

And there it is.

It might not be words spoken in a growl, or a snarl to twist my face. But the sharpness of the words I speak with a bitter smile, it’s the spark of life he’s been waiting for.

“So you can fuck a clean body, master ?”

The grin that sweeps his face should startle me, it should frighten me, because it’s more than a reaction to the title, it’s a promise.

I just find that I care very little about very much in this moment.

Distantly, I’m aware of the tears wetting my cheeks and the strangled sound of my voice, “I want the old you back.”

Then he’s a blur.

A blur of blood-stained black leathers and gleaming blue eyes. He moves for me. All I can do is suck in a strangled gasp before he’s on me.

Daxeel snatches me up by the throat and, in a blink, I’m on my back.

I land, hard, on a pile of cushions. Feathers lift up around me. The pillows soften my fall, but not enough to stop the ache in my back as I glare up at my beloved monster.

Leaning over me, he keeps me pinned down by the neck. Strands of blood-caked hair fall into his face. “Look how easily you submit; how easily you cry; how quickly you beg… I wonder Nari, when I’m through with you…” He bites at my wet lips, his teeth nipping hard enough to scrape a bead of blood or two. “How softly you’ll die?”

My face twists as I turn my chin, as though I can escape him, or at least the wild gleam of his eyes. But all that happens is that his grip tightens just a touch more, a threat .

“Die,” I echo the word with a bitter laugh, a laugh that’s as hollow as I am inside. “You can’t kill me, Daxeel. I know what I am to you, mate ,” and I spit the word with the bitterness it floods me with.

Daxeel blinks. His lashes flutter over his dimming cerulean eyes.

My laugh fades to a grim smile. “Yes, I know. I am your eh-va-tayy ,” I enunciate the word like a melody meant to destroy him, as it has done to me. Tears leak down my temples and into my hair. “You can’t kill me—so why not just accept what this is, Daxeel? Marry me, shower me with all the things I want, gift me with animals and dresses, and then thank me for the fucking honour,” I spit up at his stormy face, the stone mask just barely pulled over the rageful beast stirring within him.

Daxeel shoves away from me, as though I burned him.

Jaw clenched, he rises.

I am limp on the cushions, gazing up at him.

He stands over me, his chest heaving, hands fisted at his sides.

I watch as his lips curl around a snarl that catches in his throat.

Might take a bite of me.

Might kill me right here and now—even if it means he’ll die too.

There is, I think, a sick romance in that.

Daxeel pushes back one step. His throat bobs and, after a long breath that he draws in through his nose, he spits words at me like they are as low as me, as dirty as he thinks I am: “This Quiet, I will have you. Dress nice for your master.” He uses that word against me, one I spoke with the same mocking venom.

Then he leaves.

The command strikes through me. I feel it in my bones.

Dress nice…

The message is more than that. The message he leaves me with is one thing only.

I own you, Nari .

It’s no lie.

He does own me.

In more ways that he might realise, and in more twisted ways I care to admit.

I am Daxeel’s slave.