Page 7

I’ve seen him around since he broke Taroh’s nose in the statue gardens of the High Court. But since he walked me to my home village, I haven’t spoken to him. Not a word shared beyond our fleeting looks.

But I have learned more about this dark male.

Daxeel of the House of Taraan.

Eamon’s cousin. One of the three who live in Kithe, a lawless and blended town in the Midlands. A cousin Eamon so strongly urged me away from, warned me of the dark fae’s nature.

But is this male’s nature so rotten?

He saved me from Taroh. He walked me home. And he has onlylookedmy way since, held my gaze for some moments, but graced me with the space still between us.

It’s a new experience for me, to be afforded this power, the authority in my hands. I’m the one who decides when we speak, when we hold each other’s stares, for how long, and I give no invitation for him to approach me… and so he doesn’t.

Even now, as I lean against the coarse trunk of the oak tree, the gleam of the moonlight flickering through the thinning leaves above me, and my lilac skirt rises from the friction, just above the line of my stocking, and his gaze burns into the meat of my thigh from across the glade—

Even now, he doesn’t make a move to approach me.

I think it something unusual. Sweet, perhaps. Or is it a foreign sort of kindness that he affords me this… this…respect?

A respect my father doesn’t offer me when he shoves me into the arms of Taroh, a respect Taroh doesn’t give when he forces himself onto me because I am his future property.

Eamon warned me of the dark nature prowling within these males, including his cousin. But I have seen nothing to frighten me away from him.

I only feel drawn in. Invited.

“Look at that,” the pure venom of Lilith’s hiss stiffens me, a snake’s hiss before it strikes. “I didn’t know she practices whoring.”

I turn a narrowed look on her.

My mouth puckers at the sight of them, some light ones huddled under these sparsely leafed oak trees that the dark fae didn’t want to take shelter under, because of their poor shade from the moonlight.

Isha dangles from the thick branch of the tree, his boots not far above the reddish hair of Griselda, a fellow halfling.

She’s tucked to the edge of a mushroom plot, picking her favourites.

The woodland-light fae hybrid who kneels at her side watches her every move—and just as I wonder if he carries a flame for her, he snatches out, fast. His hand draws back from her wild, reddish hair, and pinched in his fingers is a small pixie.

He bites the head clean off.

I drift my attention to Lilith.

She fingers a ribbon at her cocked hip, but her eyes are daggers aimed across the glade.

It’s Fyn who hangs on her every word. He stands behind her, arms looped around her middle, and his chin rests on her shoulder.

His agreement only comes in the occasional hum.

It’s enough to encourage her in all her poison.

I trace her gaze across the field to the black, glossy boulder.

There, in the cusp of shade and moonlight, Aisla flirts with a dark male. Sat on the boulder, her knees are tucked to her chest, and she aims her silly smile at the dark one who circles her, slow and predatory.

Skin like marble, in tone and strength, he wears his inky leathers with a stark contrast that reminds me of the moon against the blanket of a night sky.

There is something uneasy about this male. More than the golden gleam of his eyes, one I don’t trust and that sucks my insides deeper into me, as though my organs ache to retreat from him, its his smile that tenses me. It’s a smile that spreads over white teeth, sharper canines at the rear of his mouth, rosy lips that look somewhat stained with litalf blood…

And I know, deep in my gut, it's a smile made for biting hearts.