21

DAXEEL

Daxeel’s steps are silent.

Boots kick through damp air. Wispy shadows skitter, his new companions. He feels their icy touch, like the cool whisper of a breeze on a wet face, both a kiss and a bite.

With each step closer to the bound and gagged fae crumpled on the ground, the shadows disturb. They shudder and twist and coil around his boots—then lash out at the slumbering fae.

Drip,

drip,

drip.

Daxeel sighs a sound as soft as his bootfalls. Eyes gleaming in the shadows of the dungeon, he lowers himself onto the wooden chair. His leathers glisten in the thick humidity.

Dampness gathers on the stone walls. It trickles down the cracks, over the crevices, and falls from the ceiling.

Drip,

drip,

drip.

Daxeel watches the droplets hit the small puddle on the damp floor. Beads of crimson blood merge with the stagnant water.

Drip,

drip,

drip.

Cobalt eyes burn with a rage that trickles down his muscles like ice. Tension shudders through him. The shadows hiss before they coil inwards and keep to his boots, his shoulders.

For a while, he just sits in the dark, quiet companions in the shadows, watching the steady rise and fall of the litalf’s chest. His gaze glides over the curled-up position the fae sleeps in; knees hiked to the chest, the disturbed frown on his face, as though bad dreams haunt him in his sleep.

Drip,

drip,

drip.

Daxeel kicks out at the fae.

The toe of his boot strikes the male’s shin, hard. Hard enough that a sudden wince spears through the prisoner.

He startles, awake.

Green eyes flare through the dark, wild and alert.

Silent, Daxeel draws out a blade from his belt. A plain ateralum knife, no longer than his middle finger, but precious all the same. He brings it to his lap and, for a moment, just considers it, turns it over in his fingers.

The prisoner is still. Frozen on the wet, dungeon floor. Tensions bind his muscles to his bones, threaded with spindled metals, like the metals of the chains that bind his wrists to the floor.

Taroh watches Daxeel.

If Daxeel was to glance up for a moment, he would see the same as he does in his peripherals. A breath pinned to the fae’s chest. Braced for what the knife can do.

Daxeel sighs a gentle sound. He lifts his gaze from the knife. “We have a slight problem.”

Lashes flutter. A clash battles in Taroh’s eyes; flickers of hope snuffed out by the tightened look of panic.

And still, he hardly breathes.

“I had every intention of killing you.” Daxeel’s hair falls into his eyes as he tilts his head and studies the detailing of the dagger. “But the wrong fae has been accused of your disappearance—and it creates problems for me.”

Taroh grunts, but the sound is muffled by the gag; the dirty, soaked cloth stuffed into his mouth.

Daxeel has heard it so many times before from so many other victims. He is well-acquainted with what Taroh communicates in that one grunt. A sound to plead, to barter, to bargain.

They are all the same that way.

“Your father has declared an honour duel,” Daxeel continues. “In some phases, my blood will stand against yours in the Midlands. I am certain your father will employ a skilled second. But with so many of your finest warriors in the Sacrament, I do wonder who your father has chosen.”

Taroh’s lashes flutter. No hope in the gesture, his shoulders slump. The whisper of defeat loosens from him, a ribbon unravelling.

Honour duels . The implications of such a challenge.

Daxeel smiles as he watches the realization sink into the prisoner.

Taroh’s family think him dead already.

“One way to stop this is to… release you.” But the dark smile playing on Daxeel’s lips fuels no such hope. “Another…”

He sighs something soft and turns his chin to the side.

Head still bowed, his gaze gleams through the shadows that crawl over his shoulders, that flick at his ears. And he aims that daggered gaze on the stillness of the doorway, where only blackness gathers as a tense pocket of air.

Taroh flinches.

Just moments ago, that doorway was undisturbed. No fae stood there, no darkness shuddered.

Now, in the stillness, a tall fae stands as a contradiction.

Though the marble likeness of this newcomer’s complexion gleams against the darkness, he is somehow welcomed by it, too. A moon that belongs to the night sky; a star that gleams in blackness.

Taroh recognizes him—even though he shouldn’t.

Shielding the lower half of the intruder’s face is a black mask, the kind weaved from the smoothest blend of silk and armour. It moulds to the fae’s face, from the high cheekbones down to the underside of his chin. It hides the truth of who he is. But it’s not the faint gleam of his complexion that betrays his identity.

Taroh sees him in the flakes of gold he wears for eyes, the forever razored whip coiled around his forearm, and the recognizable black metal dagger flecked with gold at his waist.

Alasdare.

Taroh recognizes him, a hybrid once in the Fae Eclipse, a friend of Daxeel, a killer prowling Comlar—and a ghost.

A tremor runs down Taroh’s spine.

And so Daxeel knows that Taroh has heard the stories, all about Dare and what he’s done, what he can do.

The tension is a swell of heat.

Daxeel is a terrible enough fate. But there is something about Dare, something just… off , like milk on the verge of sourness, a fruit rotted in only some spots.

Something about Dare sets other folk on edge.

And Daxeel has watched that same ghostly sheen slacken so many faces over the years—when a prisoner looks up at the hybrid.

“Another way,” Daxeel echoes, and the reminder of his presence is enough to jerk Taroh’s shoulders, “is to entice your father… Give him something to hope for.”

Green eyes swerve to him, a touch wider than before he noticed Dare. He keeps enough smarts to swerve his attention back and forth between the two.

“Proof of life,” the silky drawl comes from the darkness right behind Taroh—

The litalf jolts with a rushed breath, muffled by the gag. The metal restraints clang with the fright.

Taroh whirls around fast enough to fall onto his side, into a stagnant puddle that’s quick to soak his grimy blouse. He keeps his wild stare hooked on Dare, the hybrid who he didn’t hear approach, not a whisper of disturbed air.

Dare towers over him, the mask gone to expose the faint rosy tug of his lips, an almost-smile wide enough to just reveal the sharp ends of some teeth.

Slowly, Dare lowers to a crouch.

He rests his forearms on his knees and levels his stare with Taroh’s. “Think your father will agree to delay the duel if we promise to return you alive?”

One blink, two—then Taroh nods; a slow gesture that’s accompanied by a frown of doubt.

‘ What’s the catch ,’ his eyes gleam.

Daxeel answers the unspoken question. “But how to prove that you are still very much alive. Which body part do you think your father will recognize? Let’s start with your hand.”

Dare hooks his finger around the edge of the gag. His eyes flicker with a dark hunger as he tugs it out of Taroh’s mouth.

Through a toothy smile, Dare whispers, “I like to hear the screams.”

The screams are quick to start.

If Taroh had any thread of resilience within him, he released it too quickly. The stubborn arrogance he’s carried with him all this time, Daxeel watches it disperse as though it was never anything more than a vapour of smoke from an extinguished candle.

But what he respects the least in the fae writhing on the floor, it’s not that he yanks uselessly against his chains or that he flails his legs in lame attempts to boot out at Dare; it’s that tears leak from bloodshot eyes, and that they came as quickly as the screams did.

All Daxeel sees in those tears are Nari’s.

In the gardens of the High Court in Licht, against the mossy surface of a statue, tears blotched her cheeks. Braids ripped, lips swollen, dress torn—and a wet face.

So Daxeel watches every bit of it, every back and forth saw of Dare’s blade through Taroh’s fingerbones, every blubbered pleading word that twists into cries, every shudder of his body as the nerves are struck through him.

Daxeel watches until it’s done.

Only then do the cries soften into moans.

Dare tosses the bony fingers to the floor, then pushes up to stand. He steps over the limp body of the litalf.

A relaxed weight lowers his lashes over golden eyes, his feral urges soothed, the beast within him lulled—and now he takes care to run a cloth over his blade. His slow, wandering steps direct him to the erected cotton sheet in the corner, a bulkiness in its shape to betray that it hides something from plain sight.

Numbness steals Taroh’s face. Holding his bloody hand to his chest, he’s rolled onto his side and just stares at the fingers discarded on the floor. The coarseness of his breaths shudder through the dungeon.

“You best pray we survive the Sacrament,” Daxeel starts and throws a glance over at Dare, “because we are the only folk who know you are down here. And if we die…”

Dare pulls the cotton sheet. It ripples as it falls to the puddled floor. And now, revealed, is a humble pile of jarred food and waterskins.

Dare throws a grin over his shoulder. “Better ration.”

The humour isn’t reflected on Daxeel. He presses his hands into his knees and slowly pushes up from the chair.

Taroh’s gaze flickers. Finally, it draws away from his severed fingers and lifts to the dark one standing over him.

His tears still fall, quiet now. The faint lantern lights shine off them, but he fights them in the way he lifts his proud chin and tightens his angular jaw.

His breath hitches over the wet words, “What do you want from me?”

Daxeel takes a determined step forward. His boot flattens on the smears of Taroh’s fresh, glistening blood.

Shadows thicken around him, the formation of an ominous shield.

“I want you to pray that I win,” Daxeel growls out the words with a snarl of warning. “You will pray that I defeat your people. Because if I do not survive, I will not return here—and no one, no one , will ever find you.” Slowly, he lowers to one knee, then plucks the two severed fingers from the floor. “In these prayers for my victory, you will be a traitor to your people to save yourself.”

Dark vapours unribbon from his shoulders and flick out at Taroh.

The prisoner cringes to the damp floor.

Daxeel bares his teeth. “ That is what I want.”