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Buried deep; hand flat on the small of my back; he curves over me like a snake ready to strike, a faerie hound pinning down prey it’s not quite ready to eat yet.

The warmth of his breath is a warning brushing over the shell of my ear. “I gave you kindness.”

And he bites down on my shoulder, hard.

My shout strangles in my throat, it flexes my feet on the furs, as though I can push my weight onto them and shove out of his reach.

Against my wound, his snarl is throaty, “In return, you rejected me with such venom that your slight is eternal.”

You broke my heart.

And so, he breaks me.

The sick part of it, the sickest part of all, is how we both relish in it. How we both find twisted pleasure in our shared poison.

Several more times this Quiet.

5

††††††

I wake to scars.

Daxeel might not have booted me out of his bedchamber after having me in his sheets, but he makes sure I know the distance between us is still there.

He sleeps with his back to me.

Forever in the darkness of the Midlands, the only light that illuminates the deep blues of the tall walls and arched ceiling are from the glowjars and the now-simmering fire in the hearth. But that light is enough that, as I blink my weary eyes open, I see the ribbed skin of his back.

Honeyed flesh pulled tight over muscle—then torn.

Shredded.

And my face tightens at the sight of it.

Slowly, my hand slips out from under the weight of the fluffy blankets—not quite furs, but softer and thicker, like I’m wrapped in layers of plush teddy skins, the sort of toys father often bought me when I was little.

My fingers tremble with a fatigue I only notice now. My body calls out for the early Warmth coffees I’m so used to, but it tremors for the meals I’ve been skipping of late.

I toss aside thoughts of hunger, of coffee, and I reach out my wavering fingers for his back.

Those ribbed white scars disrupt the smooth caramel tone of his complexion. Ghosting my fingertips over them, I never quite touch the raised lines with puckered edges—but my face grimaces at the sight of them.

Melantha’s cool voice echoes in my mind, a threat looming in the distance,‘Daxeel stands between me and the whip.’

His father’s whip.

A lashing meant for Melantha.

‘He has done so since he was too young, and so he has many scars.’

My eyes burn with the threat of tears; my mind flickers with images, a young boy with ocean eyes and a determined set to his jaw, standing in front of his crumpled mother—and staring up at his father.

‘But it was you who left scars not of flesh, but of heart and soul.’

Lashes shut on unshed tears.

My throat flexes with a thick swallow.