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I see a series of homely cottages clustered along a shallow stream, the water sparkling under the starlight. Strange plants grow in and around the edges of the riverbed, but outside of that, the place is a desert.

Des is quiet as the two of us land in the shimmery sand covering much of what I can see. The island is small, probably only ten miles across or so. Some of the other floating islands seemed massive, but this place…this place feels like an afterthought, forgotten by most of the Otherworld.

Maybe that’s why I like it. There’s something about how lonely and overlooked it is that appeals to me. And out here, so far away from any city light, it feels like it’s just me and Des and an endless ocean of stars.

“This is where I spent my early childhood,” he says, so softly that I almost miss it.

My attention snaps from the barren landscape to him.

“You did?”

It seems impossible that someone as beautifully complex as Des came from this strange, desolate place.

His eyes have a faraway look to them, like he’s lost in a memory. “My mother worked as the town scribe.” He points to a cluster of buildings in the distance. “She used to come home smelling of parchment, her fingers stained with ink.”

I barely breathe, afraid anything I say will halt this story in its tracks.

“We were so poor that we didn’t live in a proper house.” Des looks both pained and happy as he recalls it. “We lived in the caves of Arestys.”

“Can I see where you lived?” I ask.

All expression wipes clean from Des’s face. “It no longer exists.” His eyes meet mine. “But I can show you the caves.”

***

I duck my head as I move through the caverns beneath Arestys’s surface. The rock here has formed into a maze of honeycomb-like structures. There’s a sad beauty to this place, like a rainbow in an oil slick.

The tunnels are cold and drafty, claustrophobic and wet.

Deslivedhere.

My mate, the King of the Night, spent days—years—in these caves. It seems an unusually cruel existence in a place as magical as the Otherworld.

“So your mother raised you here?” I ask.

His mother, the scribe. The same woman Des claimed would’ve liked me. The same woman who must’ve once been part of the royal harem.

Des nods, his jaw hard as we wind our way through the tunnels.

I glance around at the gloomy caverns. There’s a dark sort of magic here, deep within the rock. It’s made of desperation and wishes, of unfulfilled desires and dreams locked away.

How is it that a son born into a royal harem ended up here? And how is it that a boy who grew up here became king?

“What about your father?” I press, sidestepping a puddle.

“Funny you should ask that…” The way he says this makes me think it’s not funny at all.

He lets his words fade into nothingness, and I don’t press him for more.

Ahead of us, the tunnel opens into a crater the size of a football field. Up until now we’ve been belowground, but here the stars twinkle overhead, shining down into the bowl-shaped depression.

Des steps ahead of me, his huge boots kicking up dust as he heads across it.

Near the center of the crater, he kneels.

It’s all I can do not to stare at him. His white hair, his broad muscular back, his tattoos, and those wings he stubbornly refuses to hide all look so very appealing—so very appealing and so very tragic.

He’s my own personal brand of salvation, yet right now I get the impression he’s the one who needs saving.