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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. “Buthowto 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.