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Des kisses my forehead, then his eyes drift up. He touches the crown I’m still wearing. “And here I thought you didn’t want to be a queen,” he says, eyeing the thing.

I reach for it possessively. “It’s my war prize.” … Even if it looks like something a blind man made while drunk.

“I must admit, you are delightfully cruel when you want to be.”

It wasbeautiful nightmarebefore, and now it’sdelightfully cruel. I should be mortified by these compliments, and maybe the socially acceptable part of me is, but the part of me that wants to feast on men’s hearts and bathe in their dying breaths is covetously collecting them, one by one.

Des’s gaze is heavy and hungry when it drops to me. “Do you take war prizes from all your victims?”

I shiver a little. “They’re not my victims.”

“Hmm.”

“They’renot.”

“Are you going to answer the question?”

I take the crown off my head and study it. It truly is ugly.

“Only the really bad ones,” I say. “The ones who like to break people.” They are the ones I enjoy twisting to my every whim. “I take mementos from them.”

Back at my house I have a box full of these mementos I’ve lifted over the years. On particularly bad days, days when not even Johnnie or Jack or Jose could numb my pain away, I’d steal away to my guest room, where I kept that box, and I’d sit there for hours, taking out item after item, holding each in my palm. And I would remember how I broke a few of the great villains of the world.

If my confession freaks Des out, he doesn’t show it. In fact, his expression has gotten hungrier. The fae side of him is positively delighted to hear this perversion of mine.

“I … learned about that box one of the times I visited your house,” Des admits.

My brow wrinkles. He knew? I think I’m alarmed.

“Then why did you ask?” I say.

Des begins to back me up, directing me with his body to his chamber’s balcony. “I wanted to hear you say it.”

Behind me, the cool evening breeze stirs my hair. I turn and step outside, my skin pebbling.

Unlike the Banished Lands, Somnia is awash in magic. It radiates from every night blooming flower, every pixie that zips around like gusts of wind. It laces each decadent cloud plume, and it drips down like rain from the heavens. And now I’m a part of it, from my fae magic to the bond that connects me to this white-haired king.

I stare at Des as I take a seat on the stone floor of the balcony.

He has no idea just how in love with him I am. It would be impossible for him to understand.

I must be making a strange face because he says, “What is it, cherub?”

This is the point in the conversation where we barter for secrets. He gives me something I want, and I confess some coveted truth. You know, our typical give and take.

I remember Des’s sad eyes.Callie, you don’t owe me. Not for something like this.

He doesn’t owe me for something like this, either.

I shake my head. “I love you so much. You’ll never really know.”

His features sharpen and the look in his eyes intensifies. “The way fairies love … it’s the same way we live. It’s immortal, violent, irrational and unbendable.

“I understand your words, cherub, because there are aspects of my love for you that are, simply put,unfathomable.”

My heart begins to gallop as we stare at each other, our connection singing to me. I can feel Des beneath my sternum, even as I stare at him. He’s always in me, always a part of me. It’s the most uncanny sensation.

Never breaking eye contact, Des lifts a hand. From deep in his chambers, a bottle of something pink and bubbly floats into his open palm. A few seconds later two elaborate flutes slip into his other hand.