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“I let my baser nature get the better of me, but your mate is right. I want to leave you whole and untouched—” a soldiers says at my back, “—for now.”

I turn to the fairy who spoke. She has long, wheat blonde hair that’s been plaited away from her angelic face. In her hand she holds a sickle sword.

Walking up to the soldier, I clasp her cheeks, looking deep into her seafoam eyes. The soldier remains still, the Thief’s gaze lit with interest. I glance down at the woman’s lips. “It’s not my mind you want to touch, is it, Thief?”

The soldier studies me before lowering her eyes to my lips.

“You want what you got only a taste of in Karnon’s prison,” I say.

Back then all he did was kiss me. He hadn’t done more.

I feel the hot rush of my power.

Kiss him. Kill him. Take it all at once.

I lean in, my lips so close to the soldier’s, my hands sliding up her cheeks. My fingertips brush that plaited hair of hers—

We will drag him under and make him give us everything.

That quicksilver gaze lingers on me for a second or two.

“Look up at your mate,” he says out of nowhere.

I frown. All my tightly coiled power is dissipating.

Not how this is supposed to be playing out.

“Why?” I say, my gaze unwavering.

“I want to make sure you’re watching.”

I can feel a humming along my skin. Magic—dark, oily magic—begins to vibrate around me. It separates itself from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, thickening in the air.

Around me, the other fairies are beginning to look around in confusion.

I narrow my eyes at the Thief, even as the magic begins to congeal into twisting clouds of smoke.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Look up.”

My eyes linger on the Thief for a long moment, but eventually I do look up, my eyes drawn to my mate.

I gasp at the sight.

Chapter 34

Desmond

The years mayhave passed, but my father still fights the same.

Like a coward.

I chase him through the darkness, the two of us becoming one with it before we return from shadows to men. Over and over and over.

“You cannot kill me,” he says as our blades clash. The two of us hover in midair, most of the fairies fighting below.

“So long as you suffer, I don’t fucking care.” Save for Callie’s father, I have never hungered for vengeance so badly. I want to skewer him like an animal and roast him over a spit. I want to carve him up and make him watch as I remove his organs one by one. I want to use every bit of torture I’ve perfected over the centuries to make him pay for my mother, for my siblings, for the threat he poses to my mate.